Vale of Andrath

The Midgewater was quiet but for the  buzz of flies and the familiar "neek breek" croaking on insects. The sun dropped lower, the glow turning the brackish water crimson as Corrben stood on the edge of the ruin. He had spilled as much blood to soak the lands of his birth, the blood of southrons who seemed determined to destroy and steal all the hard wrought work his people had done. Raiders and thieves, rapists, murderers and con artists were all among the flow of folk from the south.

The squint eyed southerner was bound and forced onto his knees in the stone floor of the ruins in Midgewater. Corrben stood just to the side of him, his hands streaked with blood, staining the leather bindings wrapped around his knuckles. He noticed the unusually dark color, nearly burgundy rather than crimson as it oozed from the broken nose of the prisoner. Splattered on the pale stone, it looked nearly black.

Corrben and the other scouts crept up on the camp site. The southerners were sitting on crates, drinking stolen ale and smoking stolen pipeweed. There had been a raid on a Staddle farm and likely this was some of the booty. He crouched, his spear gripped in his hand, feeling a trickle of sweat down the back of his neck. There were three men, including one of those squinty eyed ugly bastards who were notoriously cruel and good fighters. The other was a woman, though it was hard to tell if she was young because her face was lined and dirty, hard from poverty and war. 

"How long do you think it'll take them  brigands to find our hideout and kill us all?" Brittleleaf pondered as he scraped the whetstone along the blade, "I've got a whole gold coin that says three days, what about you?"

Oakdale hunched his shoulders, "How are you going to collect on that debt? I say two more days tops."