Aaronymous and I cranked this out over the past few days. I'm happy as a clam with it. I expect we'll move it to a child page or what have you as that gets sorted out.

Tob sat in the crook of the sturdy maple. She was a good tree, easily eighty winters old, and covered in the dark green foliage of a late summer with plenty of sun and perfect rains. It was always such in the old Druid’s grove, and Tob had spent many a fine summer shower cooling off under the fat wet drops of rain the old man provided via incantation at a time. The sky was clear now, but dark, and the bright stars of Tob’s people, Clan Meredudd, shown clearly through a small gap in the leaves. He was pleased to see the three stars, each on named secretly by each clan member at their own naming ceremony when they reached adulthood. To him, they were Raven, Owl, and Hawk, because Tob was a simple man, if not a simpleton. Tonight, the three of them peeking in on him augured good fortune. He would see the sunrise before he slept.

Janus slipped silently through his Masters grove. The foliage almost seemed to part for him of its own will. The young man's mind raced, as he made his way to the Eastern edge of the grove. The forest was upset, this night. Even without the spell, he had noticed it, the squirrels were in the high branches, the birds, while not silent, were not making unnecessary noise. Casting the spell to speak with Gont, the eldest of the owls in the grove, he had learned the facts of the matter. Dolfanc were passing near the grove, and a Human was stalking them.

When Tob was not gazing at the tiny patch of sky visible through the trees, he was watching the sward that abutted this edge of the forest. It was fallow, and high with brush, grasses, and marsh loving bushes. It flooded too often to be of any use to any but a rice farmer, and it was too far from safety to be any use to them either. So it lay fallow on the banks of a slow section of the river Eld, at a bend that would be an oxbow if the right flood came. The ground was wet, leeches and snakes were as plentiful as were stoats and muskrats and rivercats (not a cat at all, but names stick sometimes even when they aren’t deserved,) and no one bothered to go there unless they had some black right they needed to perform, some favor to beg of the povodne vilas and hope they will drown a rival and not the asker.

Scouting it earlier, as Tob’s favorite places were the ones untouched by the feet of men other than he, he had found the spore of dolfanc, carelessly left by a bush at the edge of a deerpath. Identifying it was easy – dolfanc were uniformly wretched creatures, riddled with parasites regardless of their pedigree. No other carnivore could survive such a malignant digestive tract, and the odor was putrid, rotten with a musk that only a dolfanc could find attractive. His nose found it first, followed by his eyes. Then he saw evidence that there had been more than one dolfanc, which was sensible if one considered it, which Tob didn’t. He had training, which compensated for a lack of imagination. One dolfanc was as unlikely an event as a baby bear without a mama bear nearby, or so Tob had been trained.

After the spore he found the more obvious bent reeds, and deeper holes where heavier feet had stepped and stayed. The tracks came to within eyeshot of the Druid’s grove, and stopped and rested, and then left again. Tob would be shocked by such carelessness from any man under his command, and would have cuffed him silly for leaving such a sign of one’s presence and numbers. Dolfanc typically had even less imagination than Tob, and worse training.

So he waited. His short bow rested across two other branches, an arrow’s notch clutching at the string like a departing lover. His quiver hung from a higher branch, easy to reach and comfortably out of the way. He had been watching, waiting, and quietly stretching his legs, arms and back since an hour past sunset. One of the many advantages of a lack of imagination is tremendous patience, and great powers of concentration as a result.

Janus approached the Eastern swamp, and slowed his pace to a creep, keeping low, and careful to not disturb even the thinnest twig beneath his feet. He swung southward, and crept to the edge of the woodline, the wind in his face. His keen blue eyes surveyed swampy bottom ground and here, on his home ground, he could feel the tension in the air. His eyes showed him nothing, but he knew nonetheless that he was very close... this Human who was brave (or foolish) enough to stalk Dolfanc by himself, was at least very good at concealment.

While Tob waited, he remembered other waits. He remembered his first hunt as an adult, named member of the clan, with his father, Huwyll. They had waited all day for an elk that turned out to be so old and so slow that shooting him was more of a mercy than a meal. The prayer that they said as they offered the elk to their Gods had wound up making them both stifle laughs through the backs of their hands and bitten cheeks. Afterward, Tob had climbed the tree nearest the spot where they felled the elk as high as he safely could, and placed the elk’s heart there, to get it closer to the gods and to feed it to the earthly servants of those same gods. It had been a fine wait, and a good kill.

He remembered other waits, worse ones. He remembered waiting for the mayor, a low noble of little regard, of a town called Lud on the front of the Race War to permit his people to evacuate. That had not been a fine wait. At that point in his military career he had been commanded by the King's Field Marshall to muster the remaining populations on the front into functioning militias. The town was filled with young boys, old men, and women with few means, all able bodied men having been conscripted, or having fled to avoid conscription. A handful of the old men left were able enough to muster a limited defense of the town, enough to slow down the approaching hoard of dolfanc long enough for the rest of the town to evacuate, if they hurried.

The mayor, a self proclaimed Thane with enough control over the local area to keep the rabble in line, faced the loss of everything, from land to title to riches. So he dallied. He insisted that Tob could stop the coming army using the town's meager resources and Tob's own skills as a tactician and warrior. Tob informed him of the flat impossibly of what he suggested. The mayor demurred. Tob counseled him that the town was lost, and now it was only a matter of how many people would be lost with the land. The mayor called him a coward, and reminded him that the king had placed Tob at his disposal, and not the other way around. Tob trained a group of old men, wearing the insult with quiet dignity and the knowledge that the gods would set that score aright before too long. Before that night was over, they did. Lud was lost, and the Thane with it, and Tob lost a bit in the bargain as well.

A slapping splash broke Tob's reverie. From his perch on the edge of the grove Tob heard the sound of a muskrat alerting his kinfolk that there was danger. He peered into the night, looking over the reedy marsh that was lit by a narrow slice of moon. He sniffed the air, and smelled the dank rot of still water and vegetable decomposition, and beneath it, something more feral.  The musk of a creature that was not a creation of his gods floated on the air. He looked harder, and saw the tall rushes parting. Once seen, it was painfully obvious, and soon he could hear the gentle sloshing of a creature of considerable size stalking the shallows, working its odious way to the grove herself.

Janus slowly rose enough to peer over the brush that concealed him, hearing one of the muskrats of the bog sounding their own alarm. The sounds of something very large reached his ears.... possibly more than one somethings. Whatever it/they were, they either knew nothing of moving quietly, or cared nothing about it. He eased his scimitar in its sheath, and grasped his staff loosely in his right hand, this was about to get nasty, and he didnt need to see this hidden stalker to know the ambush would commence soon.

As the ground grew higher and drier, the grass grew shorter and sparser, until a thicket a yard deep was all that separated the forest from the marsh. Here, deer would graze on another night, but not tonight. Tob had left enough of his own scent around to scare any deer away in this season, when they were all eyes, ears, and nose, and no guts. He kept a clear field of combat whenever he had time to prepare it, and no deer this close to the grove had any business nearby tonight anyway.

Up onto the thicket tromped a form a good bit larger than Tob had been expecting, and then another. These dolfanc were of a variety with which he was familiar - enormous, strong, stupid, violent, and predatory. The ogre was blight on the creation of his own gods, a work of a dark power he would always rage against. He held a special rage in his heart for ogres, after the night he burned Lud.

Janus saw the huge forms emerging from the bog in the moonlight, and recognized them immediately as Ogres. He eased the staff to the forest floor, and pulled out the sprig of holly, and three night berries from his pouch. Slowly easing to a stand, he quietly intoned the words that Goentryx, his master had taught him so long ago.
"Silaeus non ventrise, do-nar mokrath Beldremethellae"

He smiled to himself, as the magic wrapped him, Beldrem's embrace, Goentryx had called it. He felt the holly and berries disappear, and then saw the two brutes begin to glow with a soft light, outlining them perfectly to any who might be watching, making them an easy target, and obscuring their own sense of sight, by ruining their nightvision.

The ogres stiffened at the sudden change in their condition. They were a superstitious lot, as anyone in a world of magic and dolfanc and intercessory gods should be, and they had taken a night or two previously to test the grove, to grow comfortable enough to believe that it would not hurt them on its own. Now, it appeared the grove was not as passive as they had previously hoped. Under the circumstances, smaller dolfanc would flee. Ogres are less circumspect, and more surly, even on their best days.

The larger of the pair of ogres, the apparent leader or the duo, uttered a roar of indignation and charged at the wood-line that he thought of as his aggressor now, instead of just a source for prey. It was not mindless aggression: he did not get to be an adult ogre, and the big bull of his group by mindlessness. He knew he had to find his opponent and slay him immediately, because the benefit of surprise had been lost. If that opponent was the forest itself, he would slay it just as surely. He hefted a daunting spiked club that looked like it could crush armor and bone like duck's eggs, raising it over his head and charging into the woods. His slightly smaller companion, either mate, offspring, lackey, or some combination, raised a short spear high and charged in behind its leader.

When the ogres had suddenly been illuminated like marginal illustrations in a monastic text, Tob had sucked in a breath of quiet surprise. The stars were with him more than he had expected, and he cursed himself for not being prepared to be so blessed. Quickly he grabbed his bow, and notched an extra arrow on the string. The massive ogre charged into the woods, glowing like foxfire, and after he passed Tob let two arrows fly as one. Their broad, heavy, flat, and very sharp leaf heads provided a tiny resistance as the bow accelerated them toward their target.

They struck the massive creature between his enormous shoulder blades, sinking in squarely. There were those of more courtly inclination who would declare this sort of shot to be ungentlemanly, and even unfair. Tob followed the laws of his people and his gods rigorously: bring death swiftly to all you bring it to; give evil no quarter; treat the creations of the evil ones with all deserved contempt; and treat your enemy with less respect than you treat an animal you slay for food. Ogres were not rivals to be faced in open combat. They were abominations on a world his gods created as they saw fit, obscene acts of a rival creator. There was no dishonor in treating them ruthlessly, no cruelty that could apply to them.

The ogre roared his outrage and fell face down onto the lush forest floor, grinding to a halt across moss-covered roots. His junior partner followed blindly into the forest, stopping at the sound of the leader's howls of pain and outrage. He looked around in the dark to try and find his target, swinging his spear wildly. The aura surrounding him made the rest of the forest seem impenetrable and black. He was a creature of the dark, and not naturally inclined to be frightened of it.

Janus silently and quickly cursed himself for a fool, as the death howls of the first ogre echoed off the trees, and carried into the night.

"Well done, dung-for-brains, silence first, *then* faerie fire"

But he had no time for self-deprecation now, he dismissed those thoughts, and produced another sprig of Holly, and a tanglefoot sprig, reaching out towards the faintly glowing remaining brute, he intoned another incantation.

"Kor nok serenth mas din Beldremethellae."

Once more the warmth of Beldrems embrace flowed through him, and he could feel the Grove bending to his will. The grasses and roots reached up, branches bent down, wrapping and coiling around the ogres feet and legs, holding him fast in place.

The young Druid still had not spotted his ally, but whoever he was, the ogre was now nicely wrapped and outlined, served up on a platter for that bow he had heard twinging.

It seemed to Tob that the grove itself was on his side. "My stars, thank you," he muttered quietly as he saw the silhouetted vines creep up the glowing legs of the smaller ogre. The blue witch light from the ogre's skin reflected of of the shiny surfaces of the low ground-covering vines, and shined gently through the lighter leaves of the longer vines and lower branches. The ogre's cry of distress would have been pitiable if Tob could pity an ogre.

Instead, he filled it with arrows. The ogre slumped lifelessly to the ground, where the vine embraced it hungrily. Tob descended from his perch, after quickly kissing the tree trunk in slightly misplaced gratitude. With his short sword he quickly issued a coups de grace to the first ogre, who lay moaning in his last throws of life.

His quarry lay there, dead and luminous at the edge of the woods, and Tob considered them - too few to be a tribe, not a mated pair. They were two isolated monstrosities, adrift in a world their god did not create but only wished to corrupt. At sunup, he would examine them to try and determine if they were part of any larger group, and see if they were scouts or merely ogres so antisocial that even their own kind rejected them. He would get his arrows back in the morning. He wanted to wait for the adrenal rush of combat to wear off before he would travel in the dark, so he paced the ground around his kills, and when he could bear to hold still, he leaned against the tree trunk there. Tob did not believe there were more than just the two of them.

Janus sank back down as he heard the twanging of the bow string again, and the glowing brute slumped to the forest floor, he retrieved his staff, and watched as his obscured ally dropped, lithely, and nearly silently from the boughs of a tree. The young druid arched an eyebrow as the man kissed
the tree. A grin crossed his face, as he knew now who had been fool enough to stalk pair of ogres.

He pursed his lips and gave three short rapid chirping sounds, imitating a night quail's call. It had been 7 years since the two of them had worked out that signal, and Janus almost laughed as he recalled sneaking up on the Wallace farmstead, though their prey that night had been the lovely twin daughters of Lawrence Wallace.

Tob stiffened reflexively. His experience in the Race Wars had left his nerves strung the tiniest bit too tightly. His first thought was that it was a night quail, but then that no night quail would call when there were ogres yelling about the forest, and then that it must be a signal, and since he had no one to signal to it was someone else's signal and he was therefor a dead man. All that in an instant, a lesson learned from painful ambushes and careful planning. Only after his nerves had told him his end was coming did his memory pipe up and suggest that he was on the edge of the grove that was the home of his oldest friend and ally, one of the only men he held higher than any member of clan Meredudd.

He gave his own return signal, a katydid that always sounded a little tin to Tob, although no dolfanc had ever appeared to suspect that the insect call was a hoax. He looked around the woods, his sharp eyes useless in the shadows outside the area gently lit by the gloaming aura of the inert massive dolfanc, searching for the only boy who ever knew these woods, all woods, better than him, better than even the choshu.

Janus rose, a wide grin on his face as he began to close the distance to his childhood friend. He didn't bother trying to move quietly, nor to leave no trace of his passing.

"I should have known it was you, Tob. Who else would be traipsing about the Masters grove, stalking Ogres, on a night more fit for looking at the stars with young lady.... or an older one, for that matter?"

Janus' voice was filled with laughter, and he wrapped his arms around Tob's shoulders in a genuine embrace.
"It's damned sure good to see you, Brother."

Tob laughed, and laughed hard. He grabbed Janus in a bear hug and squeezed hard enough to prove to himself that he, that Tob, was back in the grove, back in the peaceable kingdom at last. He looked at Janus, trying to see through the man he had left behind to the boys they had been before the race war. He wanted something normal, some mead, some wine, some honey blond hair, some soft rumped giggle happy girl he could impress. Someplace where dolfanc were a tale around the fire, and the only thing hissing in the dark was a hen roasting on a spit.

"Wallace's girls married off yet?" He kept one arm around Janus's shoulders, and swung him around til they were heading down one the the many paths through the grove that the two of them had walked, snuck, and run for over a decade. "These two will keep warm until sun-up," he said, arching a thumb to point at the ogres, "and as I recall Mellie Wallace could take quite a chill without a little heating up."

Janus groaned as the breath was crushed from his chest by the big Ranger's embrace. Tob had always been stronger, swifter, and heartier than he, but Janus squeezed him back as hard as he could. He half stumbled around as Tob swung him around and clapped his arm on Tob's shoulders, walking up the path that led to the Masters domicile.

"Mellie is married to Sean McHugh, a fat hog farmer with a face like a horse.."

Janus paused a moment, not sure if he should proceed or not, but there seemed to be no sense in trying to keep the bad news from his friend.

"Lucia, died during a flood two years ago, the Eld jumped its banks, and swept her off."

The smile faded from Janus' face as his free hand reached into his cloak, and pulled a metal flask, filled with berryshine, the Masters recipe.... he popped the cork and handed it to Tob.

"To Lucia"

"To Lucia, who got the better end of the bargain." Tob was a little stunned by his own words, and by the bitter venom in them. Now that he was back in the grove, he could feel the difference between who he was now and who he had been when he left, and parts of who he had become felt as out of place in the grove as the dolfanc. He sucked back a mouthful of the berryshine, bitter and sweet and burning, astringent and cleansing. A more sophisticated palate would have been able to discern the berries involved, the flowers the bees nursed to get the honey that went into it, and the roots and barks that the master used to make his berryshine the best in the land. Tob knew he liked it better than anyone else's. "I shouldn't talk like that here," he said quietly as they walked. "It's been a long time. You've manned up a bit since I left."

Janus was taken aback a bit, by the unexpected response to the news, but said nothing, and fought to keep his face still, to betray nothing to his friend. He reached over instead, and snatched the flask back from Tob's hand, noticing he hadn't passed it back on his own... Janus didn't know what that meant, and didn't dwell on it long.

"To Lucia, who left us too soon."

He lifted the flask to his lips, and sipped down enough of the clear alcohol to feel the warming in his gullet. Their steps had slowed a bit, as they rounded a long curve in the path, that swung around a steep hillock the two of them had rode snow-sleds on as youths. The two men both stepped over the root of the ash tree that humped up out of the ground here both of them having tripped on it enough times to know it was there, even in the dark.

He passed the flask back to to Tob, slapping him in the chest with a smile.

"The master released me to tend the grove, and indeed the whole island as I saw fit after the flood. I think he's ready to retire. He's been so quiet lately, and very moody." Janus had been concerned over that, but had written it off as the Master being crotchety in his advancing years.

"It really is good to see you back, Tob. Will you be staying long?"

"So it's your grove to care for now? You have done well." Tob voice held no envy, only admiration. Tob took another pull, a smaller one, at his friend's flask. "I have no king anymore, and the barons are all busy arguing over who owns what in the army, so I'm one of many veterans of the Race War without a kingdom left to pay me my daily ration of ale. I'm home for now. I think I'll sign on to guard traveling merchants from the other broke veterans until I can save up enough to get a spot of land of my own. Maybe I'll raise sheep or goats or ..." It sounded good, but unlikely, nearly invisible. That vision of a bucolic world with a fattening wife and fat babies and a roof overhead all the time didn't include Tob when he envisioned it. He passed the flask back to his friend.

Janus looked over his shoulder at his friend, happy to have him back, but growing concerned, under the surface of their talk. He took a pull at the flask, grimaced as it set his throat on fire, and handed it back to Tob, taking the opportunity to get another look at his friends face. Tobs eyes were on swivels, constantly scanning, his nostrils were flared, testing the air. Despite the leisurely pace, and friendly posture, the man was on alert, here in the lands of his childhood, within earshot of the Safest House in Derugar.

"I'm sorry Tob, my words were vague, This is still the Masters Grove, in every sense of the word. I tend it only, keeping it healthy and safe. When all is well here, I am free to roam about and do the same all over the Isle, and beyond, if needs be. Mostly I wander about, tending the Gifts of Beldrem, handling the innumerable mundane tasks that crop up. I am no longer Goentryx' pupil, though, He remains the Master."

The ground started to rise gently here and the sound of the water trickling through the rocky bottom of the creek reached his ears. The creek drained from the center of the grove, winding through the forest before joining the Eld, to the east. He quickened his step a bit, as the path crested, and crossed over the creek in a living bridge, vines and trees, grown and tended to form a span over the six pace banks of the creek. It was only a footbridge, though it would easily bear the weight of a Horse, and probably much more.

Janus let his eyes roam across the clearing that was beautifully lit, at this hour, by moonlight, and starlight, and the floating of glow bugs, and various mosses, that glowed in the dark, offering a soft green edging to the paths that radiated out from the Masters Domicile. He chuckled when he thought of it as what it really was.... a Hollow Log.

But then it was no ordinary dead tree, either, It was half buried, in the forest floor, and still taller than a man could reach sitting on horseback at its tallest point. It was truly a gargantuan tree, Longer than three of the tallest trees in the grove, easily. The whole thing was petrified, as hard as stone, and so old it boggled Janus' mind to think of a whole forest of those trees. Closed on each end with living plants, and punctured at regular intervals by window panes, as well as a chimney, on top, one could tell it was a dwelling.

The Hot spring bubbled at the center of the grove, surrounded by rock outcroppings, and natural, if tended, shrubs and flowers. The moonlight almost seemed to stop and play, in the steam rising from the pool, before bouncing off its surface, making the whole thing an awe- inspiring setting when the moon was full.

"Plenty of time for caravan guarding, Tob... for tonight, lets raid the Masters Pantry, and set by his hearth, smoking our pipes, and catching up. Rest Easy, Brother, You are home."