Trod the refugees.
There were always victims of any incursion, driven from their homes by the ravages of the Inter'Nelerors, sent from the stark, bleak landscapes of Ozerbord through the Pass of the Five to walk amongst the rich lands by the O-Road. Many dropped off along the way, tinkering and plying their trade, telling the stories of the northwest townships to new and eager ears. Some stayed. Some didn't.
Through the city of Odolotos, leaving some behind, the trains of refugees trudged wearily, but they were close. Critta-Kalthin was near, and the raids of the Baroness Iximaz had reached beyond the Wattufs, Permeshuns, and Batvegs. They were young men, mostly, eager for glory, eager to fight against a foe they could actually best. Not for them a life in the fields, scratching a living from the harsh soil; these were the dreamers and thinkers and would-be heroes of a new age. And when they got there, they could be of use to the Baroness... and her strange, crow-like maidservant, who smiled a crooked, grey-toothed smile all the time.
Oh, the Inter'Nelerors had hit Borrd hard, that much was clear from the number of nervous-looking rookie guards pointing bows or wands aloft, eyes always watching the skies above, ears pricked for a wingbeat. But the seas were safer, and felt safer, and the trade barges out of the Critta Gap were always eager for more hands on deck. The braver ones got recruited into the Rangers, taking the green as it was called, and hunted Sues from horseback when the Baron went a-raiding, the clever ones learned magic, and the really clever ones did both. But sometimes, the grubby, down-at-heel beggars among the refugees were recruited, such as the skinny, head-touched boy who called himself Earl and talked to trees like they were men, by that smiling vizier, and that was because they were dangerous.
He'd come with a bodyguard-cum-carer, a dwarf woman with a magical, spark-spitting crossbow, from out of the shot-blasted ruins of his home in Ozerbord. A simple lad, but his clothes were oddly courtly and he spoke well, and where he went an old magic went with him. And what he said, as he looked into the water, made the smiling old beggar smile all the wider.
She sprinted back to Castle De'endee, the lad lollygagging behind and the dwarf wheezing as she tried to keep up with the Big Folk's long-leggitty strides, and scrabbled down the stairs to her private quarters in the dungeons. There waited a motley gathering, quite literally in one case; a professional Fat Lady in a harlequin's outfit, a wizened mantis of a clerk, and the spine-covered, near-incomprehensible grotesque called Fish. Together, they formulated a plan to strike at a Marizu stronghold, called Axxor in their base and glittery tongue, operating out of Aohtree, and prepared a case for to bring the new guards there, with provisions for a short and bloody engagement with that oh-so-hated foe.
And then her lady summoned her, and bade her look upon a letter from one Sir Tomash, of Teebor, and she laughed and laughed and laughed.