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Acting roll for Brenna

"You must be tired, lovie" says Mistress Weather to Brenna, "Here. take this potion. It will keep you awake."

She reaches into her bag and offers a bottle to Brenna.

"I don't think this is a night for sleep", says the wise woman, "This is a sacred night, a holy night, when the powers of light and of darkness are at fight. We should stay vigil until dawn."
"It will be harder to find the murderer in the morning" says Lieutenant Peter, "When the guests have left."
"And what about my daughter?" says Macey. "What about her? How can you even think about going to sleep when she is captured by orcs?".

"I decided I was old enough to leave my mother." says Kitty, "So I suppose that makes me an adult, of sorts. She wasn't too happy about it, but I was determined to see a little of the world. But I was a Royal servant. You don't give that up lightly. But this is a royal fortress, officially. So it was sort of obvious to come here. I got permission easily enough from the steward, then the King sent me the ring as a leaving present. I expected some money, but I didn't get that. I got the ring, which was a surprise."

Mr Swathmore smiles. "Was the King a generous employer?" he asks.
"He gave me the ring, so I won't criticise him" says Kitty, "But he doesn't have the reputation of being an easy man to deal with. But then he's the King."

Pint pulls Brenna to one side. They see Mr Swathmore getting very close to Kitty and saying something to her.

Martha comes to your table to bring PInt's cider ((coffee didn't arrive in Northern Europe until the 17th century)).
"You shouldn't ask to go to bed if Peter says not" she says to Brenna, "He's commanding officer now."

Pint's phrasing that made him facepalm helped break some of the tension. It caused Brenna to crack a smile at the dwarf's obvious embarrassment and hasty correction and she couldn't help but chuckle softly (managing to keep it subdued since laughing seemed highly inappropriate while Caitlin's fate was in question). She hadn't known Pint long, but he seemed the good sort, she thought. Someone to trust should things take another turn for the worse tonight. "Plenty," she answered.

She was about to sit down in an empty chair at the table when Mistress Weather offers her a bottle.

"Thank you," Brenna said, taking a few steps toward her able to accept the potion. Samuel's worries over the woman being the one who had poisoned Barring replayed in her mind. Could it be poisoned too? Unlikely. Too many witnesses. And, despite her being the most obvious culprit... Brenna still trusted that the old woman was telling the truth.

So she popped the cork off, raised it in a small toast toward Pint's mug of cider. "Til morning then.." and drank it.

Pint was thankful for the cider that Martha brought, but as he reminded him that Lieutenant Peter was in command and that he was, in fact, the Lieutenant, he almost wanted to scream 'NOBODY CARES!' at her.

Thankfully, he restrained himself and managed to just what looked like half a grin and half a scowl. "Ahuh.." That's the best he could muster without sounding downright disrespectful.

"Good." He was glad to have Brenna by his side, she was about the only person he could really trust in the inn. Even Dalin, who seemed to be thoroughly beholden to Mistress Weather, was someone that he could only afford to keep at arm's length.

He wasn't too sure about the drink that Mistress Weather Brenna, but he figured she wouldn't outright poison her with these many witnesses. Thus he gave his own toast and drank heavily from his cider.

"To dawn! May it get here soon enough!" As he drank he made sure to keep an eye on the King talking to Kitty. What was he up to this time?

Brenna takes the small bottle. The liquid is very drak brown or black - she can't see in the flickering torchlight of the Inn - and it has astrange, welcoming aroma. It is slightly bitter to drink and there are bits in it. But she feel it coursing throuhg her veins, counteracting the strong drink she has taken, and she instantly feels refereshed and more alert.

Mistress Weather smiles. "Mistress Weather will do you. We have a potion for every ill.""Mistress Weather indeed has great knowledge" says Dalin the dwarf.
"We should get to bed" says Rosalind, "The women I mean. Obviously the fighting men have to stay up. Mistress Weather, you waste your potion on that girl."
"We're not going to bed" says Martha, "Lieutenant Peter has spoken, and he's in charge now".

PInt soaks up his namesake of cider. From the corner of his eye, he watches the King and Kitty. The King seems to be asking her what she thinks of the monarch.
"Well the palace was a good place to be," says Kitty, "I know the townsfolk say the taxes are too high, but that's the other side of it. The palace servants are paid for out of taxes. I enjoyed my time there, but it was a bit restricting. And with not having a father, people gossip you know. So I'm not sorry I decided to come here."
"Rosalind? Oh, I really don't think you'd expect me to discuss my current employer, whilst she's here. The Inn's well run. Few people stay more than a day - except for yourself, Sir. It's a place of passage. But you do see people coming back. Like Henry Fitzroy, for instance."

The bell goes.
"Well answer it" says Lieutenant Peter.
It's Father Geoffrey. He's covered in mud and small scratches.
"I have a magic light," he explains, "which I can also put in its cover. So I used it to sneak up on the orcs carrying Caitlin away. They've tied her up to a tree, with a huge fire nearby which they are dancing around. I thought maybe I could cut her free, but there were too many of them, too close together. In the end I decided there was nothing I could do and came back here."
"I didn't authorise this" says Lieutenant Peter, "How do I know what people are doing if no-one even tells me of their movements? I insist that no-one leave the Inn, for any purpose whatsoever, without my express permission."
'He's right, you know" says Martha, "It's his job to organise our defence."
"You do have a point" says Lady Helena, "I think I'll ask Mistress Weather for a little poison potion to take in case I too am captured by orcs. I wouldn't be at the mercy of those pigs, no way."
"Oh, it is a terrible thing to die by your own hand" says Kitty.
"We'll get you out" says the King quiety to Kitty, so Pint wouldn't have heard unless he were listening, "I have hired a doughty warrior. It's my fault, I should have recognised that this is a trap."

Brenna had no intention of really going to bed, so wasn't going to argue with Martha. Though she wondered briefly why Rosalind was so insistent about it.

She felt her irritation rise as the landlady mentioned the wasted potion. Not that she was much of a fighter, but it had only been her and Pint out there even trying to rescue Caitlin. And possibly Father Geoffrey.

Almost on cue, the Father returned and she listened intently to his description of Caitlin's situation.

"How many orcs, Father?" she couldn't help but ask, guilt for her earlier failure weighing on her again. The poor girl must be terrified. Despite (mostly) agreeing that they should hold out until morning, she could not help but second guess and doubt that decision.

Pint wasn't focused enough on the King and Kitty's conversation to not hear Rosalind throw shade at Brenna. "Oi!" He nearly spat his drink when she belittled the rogue's fighting abilities. "Wot's the matter with ye?? Brenna 'ere stabbed the bloody Orc Chieftain by herself! More than these kill stealing soldiers can do! Canna even kill an Orc unless it's been riddled with holes first by a dwarf!" If Rosalind wasn't the head of the inn he would have hurled more insults her way, but Pint was trying to contain himself. He was more temperamental right now, and he was still pissed off that the soldiers had stole his kill, taking that as an opportunity to leer at said soldiers. He'd like to see them try fighting the guy that took down the Rhino Man from earlier-- even though right now wasn't the time for in fighting.

He set his mug down and tried to focus on the King and Kitty's conversation when the Cleric showed up out of nowhere. "Wot the sod?" He hated to agree with Lieutenant Peter, but it was troubling that people were just sneaking around like this. It was why Caitlin got herself captured in the first place.

Speaking of, the news that Caitlin was going to be sacrificed nearby were troubling and surprising. "They're still out in the forest!? I thought for sure they woulda taken her to their lair or somethin'." He stroke his beard in thought. This was annoying, it was too good of an opportunity to not sally forth and try to rescue her, but doing so would leave the King exposed and there was no way Pint was going to split what little forces he had. He needed Brenna at the minimum and he expected zero help from Peter and the guards.

"It has to be a trap." Pint said, looking at Brenna. "They're trying to lure us out. Why else tie 'er up so close to the inn? I ain't saying we shouldn't try to rescue her but if we do we're gonna be looking at heavy resistance. They'll probably be expecting us."

He was really out of ideas. He just couldn't leave the King by himself- he had given him his word that he'd get him out and leaving to try and rescue Caitlin left the King wide open for assassination.

If only they knew who the murderer was...

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?"