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Pint challenges the landlady.
"KIll one orc" she says scornfully, "and you'll bring more of them upon us. They won't rest now, not now that they have a chieftain to avenge. I told you to keep the gate shut."
"Then how would we have rescued Caitlin?" asks Lieutenant Peter, "In the event we couldn't, because this other young lady also got herself into trouble. We can only rescue one person at once. No, Caitlin by her actions has got us all into trouble. Now I did wonder if she was the murderer, but Fr Geoffrey says she was tied up to a tree. Which rules out being in colaboration with the orcs."

"She was tied up, close to a big fire, with orcs dancing around" says the cleric. "I counted twelve figures" he says, in response to Brenna's question. "one of them was wearing the mask and robes of a shaman, with a necklace of teeth around his neck. You've got to watch the shamans. They're the real leaders of the orcs."

"The orcs haven't come for Caitlin" says the Petulan ambassador, "she a nobody, a nothing. They must want something, and that can only be to disrupt the marriage of Lady Helena to Henry Fitzroy. I submit that the orcs think that Caitlin is the Lady Helena."
"Do you want me to offer to swap places?" asks Lady Helena.
The room comes together in a rare smile.
"As the landlady says" says Lady Helena, "the orcs are going to attack. It's just a matter of when, and in what numbers. I'm not going to allow myself to be captured. I'm going to get a flask of poison from Mistress Weather. Do you want one too, Brenna?"

"The Petulan ambassador is right" says the King, to Pint, "the orcs don't necessarily know what we know. We need to try to put ourselves into their minds, to work out what they will do next. They wouldn't have come this far into our territory for Caitlin, that's for sure."

Brenna was glad to have Pint jump to her defense, but Peter's follow up statement was nearly as aggravating as Rosalind's. Was he saying that he'd been too busy rescuing her and therefore they couldn't rescue Caitlin? What a load of horse crap. Probably she should just bite her tongue, but she could only take being insulted so many times in such a short amount of time and her cheeks were starting to turn the same color as her hair.

"Had I needed rescued by you, Lieutenant, I'd be tied to a tree next to Caitlin," she said, glaring boldly at Peter. Way to make friends, Brenna...

She kept her glare on Peter for a moment until the cleric described how Caitlin was being kept and she tried to force her attention to the problem at hand. "Why would the orcs care about a human wedding?" she asked the ambassador.

She was still thinking about how to rescue Caitlin, but if the ambassador had insight here that she had missed in the chaos of the evening, she didn't want to overlook it.

"You don't insult the commanding officer" says Martha, making up to Peter, "You're in charge now aren't you, darling?"
"Yes, it's not helpful, Brenna," says Lieutenant Peter, " to have people doing their own thing, getting themselves into trouble. Getting us all into trouble in the case of Caitlin. You need to take orders from me."

"But first we need to concentrate on the internal threat" says the ambassador, "It's obvious that all this is to disrupt the wedding. What other motive could there be? But why would orcs know about, much less care about, a human wedding? Well one theory is that they have intelligence, and wish to disrupt the friendship between Westerland and Petula. But another theory is that someone is paying them. That person would have to be very rich, and would have to have an interest in stopping the wedding. And that person would also be the same person who killed Captain Baring."

"Of course... sir," Brenna said with a very obviously forced politeness that left much doubt that she'd do anything of the sort should push come to shove.

"...What other motive could there be?..."

To kill the king.

Thankfully, she did not give voice to that thought, still intent on keeping Mr. Swathmore's secret. But the ambassador did have a good point about someone paying them. Again, her suspicions drifted to Rosalind and the woman's snippy attitude. Was she hiding something?

With a frustrated sigh, Brenna rose to her feet, intending to go fetch her bow and quiver from where she'd left them beneath the blankets on the bed. Should the orcs launch an assault, she wanted something more than her dagger. She sure wasn't planning on going down without a fight.

"You're not going to bed are you?" says Martha to the departing Brenna, "Lieutenant Peter said no-one is to go to bed. He wants to catch the killer and deal with the orcs."
Brenna's back is already turned to her as she makes her way up the wooden stairs.
Betty is in the chamber, rearranging some of the bedding.
"You can hear everything up that stairway" she says to Brenna, "Martha's on a roll, isn't she? Her fancy man is now acting commander, and it's gone to her head."
Brenna finds the bow quiver.
"Are you going to shoot some orcs?" asks Betty, "That's brave."

"No, I'll be right back," Brenna called back over her shoulder, though didn't bother to offer further explanation. Martha had certainly gone from having Brenna's sympathies only a short while ago to getting under her skin very quickly.

Betty seemed to reflect Brenna's thought and the locksmith's apprentice snickered slightly, releasing some of the tension in her shoulders. "We'll see if her fancy man can manage to keep things together tonight."


"If only I were braver..." she answered rather sadly, gripping her bow tighter. "Maybe Caitlin could be rescued from her fate."

She shook her head, torn between feeling like a coward and knowing it would be nothing but suicide to go out in the dark against a foe that had much better night vision than herself.

Strange... at the beginning of the night, Betty would have seemed the least likely of the barmaids for Brenna to buddy up to, but she struck Brenna as honest and straightforward, even if she was a bit less than ... tactful. "I don't know what's going to happen tonight. A few of those downstairs think the orcs are going to launch a full assault. If they break in, I'll shoot as many as I can."

She lingered, not overly anxious to rejoin Martha and Peter... hopefully Pint would forgive her for abandoning him for a few more minutes. "What do you make of this whole mess? With Captain Baring, I mean."

"It was Caitlin's own fault, love" says Betty, "She had all that money, all those looks. But no, she had to have Henry Fitzroy. And if she didn't get him, she was going to have attention. Mind you, someone should have told Lady Helena to refuse him whilst she had the chance. Then everything would have been different. But too late now."

"As for Baring, he was a ******, no-one liked him. Maybe Kitty. Pompous, full of himself, even Martha wouldn't have him. But having said that, I didn't do him in myself, if that's what you're thinking. Whatever else you can say about him, he was a good soldier. Why would I lose my own protection? Lieutenant Peter is useless."

"Martha thinks she's better than me, but she's not. So did she do Baring in to get Peter a promotion? Thing is, it's only for one day. He'll probably lose it when the next captain is appointed. That'll be by Henry Fitzroy, he's Baring's superior. I don't know who he'll appoint, probably someone we don't know from Fort Middlesburgh. If we survive that long. There might not be an Inn left, by morning."

"I think that Mistress Weather must have something to do with it. That's my two pennorth, anyway. But I don't know what she had to do with Baring, other than maybe being in league with the orcs. But then what are they after, and what's in it for her. If we could find out what they want, we could just give them it, then maybe they'd leave the rest of us alone. I mean, maybe the ambassador had a point when he suggested that maybe they thought Caitlin was the Lady Helena. The King would pay a good ransom for Lady Helena, because he's desperate to get that son of his married off. Mistress Weather could have set it all up, and poisoned Baring to prevent him from stopping it. Because he had a very strong sense of right and wrong, did Baring, the arrogant ****".

"...I didn't do him in myself, if that's what you're thinking..."

Brenna shook her head at Betty's statement. Betty had never really made Brenna's short list of suspects.

"Has Mistress Weather stopped here before?"

"Mistress Weather?" says Betty, "Yes, she's in occasionally. She's an itinerant fortune teller, witch, healer, whatever. I don't think she has a permanent home. She's acquired that dwarf relatively recently. I wouldn't say we know her well, she's not one of those people who stops over regularly. But I do know who she is."

"She dresses up poor, but she's not short of a penny or two, at least sometimes. She's stayed in the royal suite before now, though she can't have it if we have a genuine noble visitor, of course. She didn't have anything to do with Baring, as far as I could tell. He looked down on her, of course. I don't think she speaks Orcish, but she knows some words, enough to give people the impression she knows a lot. I bet I know more Orcish myself, I picked it up from Thugley."

"Don't look at me like that, Brenna. Half orcs are half human as well as half orcish, you know. And some humans are more pigs than any orc. But see that medallion that Mistress Weather has? That's the orcish symbol. A moon between two horns. It's a fertility symbol."

"Hmmm..." Brenna contemplated. Maybe she'd been wrong to trust the wise woman. Or maybe her first thought about the cat was right.

"Let's just try and make it through until morning. Then Pint, the priest, and I can make haste to Fort Middlesburgh and send reinforcements."

Assuming they lived through the night.

"Is there any way in or out other than the main gate ... besides coming over the wall?"

"The orcs will have to hide away in the morning. They can't stand the light" says Betty, "But they know that. They wouldn't have done all this just to let us go. UNless their plan was to capture Caitlin all along. But I don't see it. How is Caitlin important enough for them? Maybe what the Petulan ambassador said about them mistaking her for Lady Helena is true. But if we knew who they really wanted, we could throw them to them, and then they'd leave the rest of us alone. I don't want to die for some noble."

"There's no way in except through the main gate. But you can get over the wall, if you've got a ladder. It's a bit of a drop on the other side, but it's into soft soil. Not undoable for an atheletic person. I wouldn't try it myself."

'What's the noise from downstairs? Brenna, it's some sort of argument blowing up. I can hear Macey shouting, and the Petulan ambassador. There's Lieutenant Peter trying to keep the peace - how did he get to lieutenant, he's so useless."

"Maybe, whilst everyone is distracted, what do you say, we try to find Thugley?"