[OOC Note: This adventure was for a version of Fenley, Fenley Brittleleaf, created for an RP situation that never came to pass. I am rebooting the character for a new RP opportunity. Thus, the following writing does not apply to the current Fenley Plumwood. It is preserved for historical purposes only. After all, there could be two people with the name Fenley in Bree-land!]
The weather was perfect: a high sun making sparkling rainbows and bright reflections on every bit of ice, its rays cutting through the crisp, refreshing air. You could stand still out of the shade and warm right up, but if you kept moving, the chill in the air was invigorating and made every movement feel sharp, every moment more alive. There was very little wind, not enough to make the cheeks feel tight and stiff, but enough to make the trees creak wearily and sway just barely enough to make the otherwise silent, empty woods feel in motion.
And if that wasn't perfect enough, work on Thornley's barn was at a standstill, so Fenley had nothing to do. Legitimately. Even Master Greenlake was taking the day off. A delivery of timber had been delayed, had finally arrived, and had turned out to be the wrong order. You can't put shingles on before there's a roof to put them onto!
Occasionally Fenley or Jake heard animal sounds in the woods. Mostly birds. The occasional wolf, keeping quite a distance: wolves have to be pretty desperate, or very sure of their overwhelming numbers, to attack a man, let alone a man with a wolfhound. They prefer tastier meals that don't fight back. Like the sheep Fenley could hear at times; someone nearby was grazing a flock. Was that a flute, too? Both pleasant and sensible: a flute tells the wolves that these sheep are protected, and again, unless it's been a hungry season, they will keep away.
The sun hanging low made blinding reflections on the drifts of snow that still lingered under denser thickets, and the ice that clung to branches in places where last night's freezing rain hadn't been cleared away by this morning's break in the cold. It also caught something else, dull metal but not so dull it didn't bounce sunbeams into Fenley's eyes from where it dangled from a low pine branch. Something out of place.
Jake sniffed it, then everything in the area nearby, as Fenley picked it up. A dull iron chain, crudely forged, ending in something that looked like a collar, though too small for a neck, more the size of a man's ankle. The collar was two half-circles of pig-iron, that had once been held together by another link of chain, perhaps. But mars, dents, and scratches told how something dull had broken that chain loose, perhaps a hefty stone, as a hammer would have broken it more cleanly. There were even a few spots of blood, suggesting someone striking at the chain in desperation might have hit the ankle (or wrist, it could have been a thick wrist) a few times before the chain finally broke.
While Fenley was examining this strange artifact, Jake, who'd been sniffing the area, suddenly sat up, his hackles rising. He turned and stared into a thick thicket of brush, tail raised and muzzle pointed forward with the intensity of an archer's arrow sitting on the string, its very motionlessness conveying more motion than if it were flying. A moment passed, then Jake barked: not a merry bark, the call that there's something interesting, but a bark of warning. Fenley saw a glimpse of a short, misshapen figure emerging from the thicket, a spear clutched in a knobby fist. He wasted not a moment; the chain clutched in one hand, he turned and ran, Jake easily keeping pace. The goblin's smaller stride could not compete with Fenley's knowledge of every fold and turn in these hills; a few minutes later, as the carpenter and his dog emerged into the northern fields of Bree-land, the goblin had long returned to whatever filthy warren it lurked in.
The chain jingled mysteriously in Fenley's hands as they walked past sheep-pastures and croplands towards Thornley's barns.
