Blind Ravens, part 2

The next morning, Leander woke to overcast skies and a rumble of thunder in the distance. He dressed quickly and headed down the hall to the main of the inn for some breakfast, hoping Mea hadn’t left yet. The main room was unfortunately empty of blind girls, so Leander took his breakfast to the table that they had sat at last night, so he’d be able to see Mea if she came in. He want to see if she was going to La Ruse, she seamed to know a lot about the post and it would be nice to have a guide. Leander smiled into his porridge, a blind girl as a city guide, that was… unusual. A gleam from under the table caught his eye, he reached out and snagged the gleaming thing, and he now saw it was a necklace. The necklace had leather thong and from it hung a silver disk with a stylized raven cut into the metal, he looked closer and saw the small raven had an even smaller blindfold on it. Leander recognized the necklace; he had seen Mea wearing it last night, but hadn’t mentioned it. He slid the necklace into his pocket, maybe he could find someone to give it to her in the port, but he would never get there if he just sat in the inn all day long. Leander picked up his rucksack and walked out of the inn, heading along the southerly road that led to the port of La Ruse. After a few hours of peaceful walking it started to get dark, the clouds that had threatened rain all day finally opened up and the rain started to pour down by the bucketful. Leander sighed and jogged over to covered spot under a tree, hopefully this would be a quick rain storm and he would be able start walking again soon, the port was still a half a day of steady walking ahead of him. He heard voices then, coming from the thicket of trees behind him. He tried looking through the thicket, but it was… well… thick and he couldn’t see who was talking. He moved closer, trying to see who was speaking. Leander peeked his head around a tree trunk and saw first and foremost all the weapons that they carried, there were only two of them, but the each had at least three times the amount of weapons a normal traveler would be carrying. He ducked his head back be hind the tree before they saw him, they probably weren’t the kind of people to take kindly to others spying on them. The two young men looked very much the same, they where most likely twins, both with black wavy hair and blue eyes. They where talking quietly, heads bent over a map in the shelter of a huge pine tree. Leander heard a noise behind him and started to turn, but something smashed into the side of his head and he blacked out. A few minutes later he came to. He was tied hand and foot, with his back resting against the huge pine tree. Three people, two boys and one girl, stood looming over him, faces identical masks of distrust and suspicion. In fact, it looked like they where triplets, all three of them with black hair and blue eyes.

“Who are you?” demanded the girl in a thick Scottish accent “What do you want?” leaning against her leg was a heavy tree branch, the object Leander suspected was responsible for his pounding headache.

“Who are you?” the girl demanded again, razing the tree branch threateningly, but one of her brothers put a hand on her arm and stopped her

“Lorna…” he said warningly, the girl called Lorna rolled her eyes and dropped the branch, but then whipped a knife out of her boot.

“If you are fond of your ears, then you will tell me who you are!” Leander tried, but his throat was dry and constricted and he could only make a little choking sound. The girl called Lorna scowled at him and said something in rapid-fire Scottish to her heavily armed brothers. They advanced towards Leander and hauled him up by his elbows. Lorna approached, pulling a little bottle out of an inner pocket, she held the bottle under Leander’s nose, but he held his breath.

“You’ll need air eventually” she said “And I could stand here all day” Already Leander’s lungs where starting to burn. He couldn’t last much longer. “Just a quick breath” he thought, but as he gasped in a breath, the evil Scot girl practically shoved the little bottle up his nose. Leander had the impression of falling down a dark tunnel, and everything when black.