Disobedience

Finding the trails of the other parties and singling out the one belonging to Seoras’s group had been easy enough. For one not all of them were exactly the stealthy type. Also they had no reason to assume they would be followed.

So Alexis had little trouble to lead her friends through the dense pinewood forest. They had to make a bit of haste given they had some catching up to do, but she felt they were gaining. Looking at the tracks, it seemed that every once in a while, Seoras’s group paused and one or two people veered off, only to return a bit later, prompting the group as a whole to move on again.

As the three Wulvers decided to investigate one such stop, they found out exactly what they were doing. The trail lead to one of the watchtowers that were strategically distributed throughout the large forest. They were meant to look out for fires and the like, so everyone would be swiftly alerted and countermeasures could be taken. The guards that had been attending those towers lay dead, throats cut.

As many things Seoras did, it was ruthlessly efficient and made sense to give the fires more time to do damage. It was also very close if not beyond the self imposed boundaries of the original Wulvers. The three returned to following the main trail in silence.

It was strange how the perception of time could shift when one was focused on a task. Later on Alexis for the life of her would not have been able to tell how long they were sneaking after their one time leader. Could have been an hour. Could have been several. She only knew dawn was still a good while away when the smell hit them.

The smell of burned wood. And not much later the nightly silence was displaced by screams of panic.
They started to run.

A few moments later they reached the edge of a large clearing. The clearing was overseen by a rather large house surrounded by some fields and a small stable. One could barely hear the horses whinny nervously. No, the main source of noice was closer to the treeline.

Three barracks, most likely housing workers. All of them barricaded from the outside. Each of them watched by one of Seoras’s men. All of them on fire, with people screaming desperately inside.

The realisation hit Alexis that the trees were not the only target Seoras was after. Maybe not even the main one. But at that point she was already sprinting, shield and sword in hand.