Pfren reaches his homeland on Erynor (Friday) morning, landing on the beaches just outside of Slíen. He rests a bit, and then continues to fly over the forests, at one point spotting an old friend, a ranger named Cormak who is surprised to see him down at the beach. Pfren informs the skeptical ranger of the imposters. The ranger responds by saying “Well, you know what the ancients say,” and then in the secret druidic tongue says “Prove to me you are who you say.” He then reaches down to a bush and picks some large berries that look like black cherries, saying “You must be famished from your long journey. Here, these will refresh you and remove some of the taint of that foreign soil.” And Cormak hands him the poisonous nightberries.

Pfren recognizes the test for what it is, and replies with the correct response: “No thanks friend, the airs of Obad-Hai refresh me well enough.” And in druidic he says “I am truly who I say, the druid Pfren Tu’all of the Deerfolk clan of the Blackmoors, servant of Obad-Hai.” With that, Cormak is satisfied that the druid is telling the truth, and Pfren tells the ranger to pass on the word that the others are imposters.

When the druid reaches the Chieftain’s råth (fortified manor,) he sees the imposters upon the battlement walls pointing him out to the warriors, calling for them to kill the imposter. A battle ensues.

Meanwhile, far to the east, Mirzam and Seth are riding their stolen horse, which is slowing down to a trot out of sheer exhaustion. Mirzam takes out a dagger, trying to coerce more speed out of the horse with small stabs. Seth is disturbed by this and compels Mirzam to stop. After a brief argument, Mirzam relents. But at that moment, the horse rears up, whinnying in pain and fear. The two barely manage to hold on, but then the horse falls to its side, pinning the bard’s right leg under its bulk.

Seth looks at the horse’s corpse and can see a small bolt protruding from its neck. Mirzam tries to pull the horse off of Seth’s leg, but between his weakened state and the bard’s awkward position, neither can summon the strength to make the horse budge. Shooting pain travels up his leg, and Seth realizes that his leg is broken. The bard then uses a blink spell to blink out from under the horse. Mirzam helps drag Seth away and sets him down against a nearby tree. As they are trying to set the bard’s leg, Mirzam spots a Blackmoor ranger of the bear clan approaching with his sword drawn. The sword is a fine piece of Imperial make, made of Aquilinian Steel. Behind him, back about 30 feet is a younger ranger who points a crossbow at them, four trained wolfhounds at his side. Two more rangers lie hidden in the underbrush several yards off the road, their longbows covering the unwary pair.

The ranger approaches, never taking his eyes off the elf, saying to the wizard, “If you move, he dies.” as he points his sword at the bard. Seth asks why a ranger would attack them, and what he plans to do with them now. The ranger responds by pulling out leather straps and gags the wizard. When Seth protests, he is answered with a crossbow bolt slamming into the tree inches from his shoulder, fired by the boy with the dogs. As the older ranger tries to tie up the elf’s hands, Mirzam attempts to cast invisibility with his silent spell feat. But the anti-magic fields of the Éruvian monuments prevent the spell from working.

At this sign of struggle, the young ranger shoots at the bard and the 4 wolfhounds charge the two tribesmen. Seth pulls out his recorder and plays a tune of fascination, fascinating one of the hounds, but another resists the magic and attacks the bard. Two more go after the wizard, and the ranger slams the pommel of his sword into Mirzam’s head, knocking him to his knees. The wizard puts his hands up in a sign of surrender, his head bleeding from the blow to his temple.

The ranger kicks the dogs away from the two deerfolk, and again makes his threat. “Next time I won’t accept your surrenders.” The boy reloads and moves forward, kicking the fascinated dog. They are tied hands to feet as another ranger walks out and talks to the older ranger. He leaves, but comes back a few minutes later with a couple of poles carved from young trees. A pole is pushed between the elf’s arms and through the bard’s legs and another is done through the elf’s legs and the bard’s arms. They are held up upon branches to hang like captured quarry. Seth tries hard not to scream as his broken leg throbs in pain.

Time passes and the sun sets. The elf and the bard know that many miles to the west, the Samhain meeting has begun, and that they have failed to reach it in time. Worse yet, imposters are their speaking as them, telling unknown lies to the druids. They can only hope that Pfren had made it in time.

It is now 9 o’clock on the 31st of Winterfilth, the day the tribesmen of the Blackmoors call Samhain, and the start of winter. One of the rangers nocks his bow with an odd-looking arrow covered in strange runes. He goes to a clearing and fires off the arrow, which makes a loud whistling noise as it flies into the night sky and explodes into a ball of multicolored light that dissipates after a few seconds. The bard recognizes it as a signal flare.

It is hard for the bard to talk, but he manages to speak through clenched teeth when the rangers give him some water. “Which one of you is the leader here?”

The older ranger looks at him with contempt. “Which one do you think?”

The bard ignores the sarcasm. “What do you intend to do with us?”

“You will be turned over to the Viskoth.”

“Why are you betraying your kinsmen to our common enemy?”

“You are not my kinsman. You are Deerfolk.”

“But we are all of the Blackmoors!”

At this the ranger looks up at the bard, confusion mixed with annoyance clearly visible on his face. “You people of Slíen, you always talk as if we were all one people, united under your ‘benevolent’ rule.” The bard tries to press his point, glad that at least now the ranger will talk to him.

“But we ARE all one people, even if our two tribes have had issues in the past, we are one nation fighting for survival against those who would subjugate us all!”
The ranger laughs at the bard. “Nation?! Only a Deerfolk would talk such nonsense. The knights are here, now. And where, dear bardha, are the druids? And what could they do even if they were here?”

“But you serve the druids!”

“I serve my family and my clan, not a bunch of passive old men hiding in their groves waiting for death to come because their ‘spirits’ told them it was time.”

Such talk disturbs the bard deeply. “Will you let ancient hatreds blind you to the danger that surrounds you now?”

“This isn’t about hatred,” He replies after a moment, “It’s about survival.”

Meanwhile, a few miles to the east, the apostate monk Jonas Khelorn is running through the woods, when he sees the campfire of the rangers. It is a false campfire meant to lure in potential stalkers, and it works to catch Jonas’s attention. He approaches the fire, trying to remain as quiet as possible. He sees movement at the edge of his vision, a darting form here, a flash of movement there. He tries to climb up a tree to get a better view, but fails and drops to the ground.

As he stands back up, a hand snakes around his neck and the monk can feel the sharp edge of a blade press into his neck. A voice whispers a heavily accented Viskothic into his ear “Move and you’ll get the shave of a lifetime. Get on your knees.” The monk thinks about pulling free from his attacker, but the blade is too firmly pressed on his neck. He drops to his knees, hoping to get some slack from the movement. As he does this, the ranger takes a cloth soaked in nightberry-juice and locks it over the apostate’s mouth. Within seconds, Jonas is unconscious, dreaming of burning the ranger alive. Within twenty minutes, an unconscious Pfren is dropped down next to Seth, tied up and threaded through the poles like the others.

It is now around midnight, the height of the Samhain meeting, the time when discussions are over and decisions are reached. Even as they hang there, the druids must be speaking, giving their proclamations to the assembled tribes of men, elves, wizards and fey, as well as the Mirabarian convoy led by the senator from Waterdeep who is there representing the king. All the while, Cadfael records the event for posterity in his great history books. It is a watershed moment in the history of their lands, but the companions have failed to be a part of it. Worse, imposters stand in their place, pouring lies into vulnerable and unsuspecting ears.

It is now about 2 a.m. on Elénathor (Saturday,) the 1st of Blotmath (November.) Horses and loud men in metal armor can be heard and within minutes, 4 heavily armed and armored Viskothic knights in chainmail and orange tabards ride into the clearing. Words are exchanged between the older ranger and their leader, whose personal crest on his shield marks him as a nobleman. The nobleman looks over at the companions with distaste. He barks orders at his men and soon all three companions are tied to horses with leather straps, one per knight. Before they leave, the nobleman looks down at the ranger and reaches into his belt. He pulls off a small bag of coins and tosses it to the ranger. When the bard sees this, he is infuriated and glares hard at the ranger. The bear clan ranger cannot return the bards gaze, and looks away. The knights ride off down the road with their prisoners heading back south towards Viskoth.

After 3 and a half hours of riding, the apostate has regained consciousness. It takes another 20 minutes for him to regain his senses and realize what has happened. He looks up and sees the elf and the bard similarly tied to other horses. He struggles a bit with his hands, trying to test the straps that hold his hands, binding them to his feet. His chest and back burn with bruises and sprains from the terribly awkward ride, and his legs feel cold and numb. He concentrates all of his energies, and forces the terrible fires to come forth, burning the straps. The horse, feeling the burning from the apostates hands, rears up in pain and fear. It may be a war horse, but it was never trained to deal with unnatural fires under its belly.

As the horse rears and the rider struggles to regain control, the freed Jonas slips off the horse, but falls and lands beneath it. The spooked horse attacks him, recognizing him as the source of its pain. The horse tramples the apostate, smashing its hooves into his head and chest. The former monk rolls away and tries to dart away into the night. But the other horsemen rein in their steeds, loosing bolts from readied crossbows. The arrows graze the apostate, who is unable to get very far. Lingering effects of the nightberries, his legs suffering from loss of blood after being tied to the horse for three hours, his back and chest deeply bruised, and the trampling of the horse have all taken their toll on the man, it is all he can do to stand and defend himself.

Seth briefly entertains hope that Jonas will escape, possibly returning to help them when he can, but that hope is quickly dispelled when he sees the three knights dismount, two withdrawing swords and advancing while the third stays with the mounts while the nobleman lights a torch. The military discipline of these knights is obvious, and the bard knows that Jonas will be no match for them. Even the monk realizes this, and he quickly surrenders, and is led back to the horse. The nobleman says “Kill him if he does that again.”

They ride on. By dawn the horsemen and their prisoners arrive back at the Viskothic fort the companions had assaulted days before. They ride into the fort, and the prisoners are unloaded. As they are dragged up to their feet, the three look up and see 6 Justicars file out of the commander’s quarters. When they reach the companions, the head blackrobe raises his cowled head to face them. His face is scarred with old burns.