A Race Into the Wilderness, and Barr's Tracking Test

Yesterday was not fun.  We had agreed to go out onto the caravan trail to help and, if necessary, assist the incoming caravan, but an hour after dawn another scout arrived with news.  The caravan had been attacked by bandits, they'd done some damage.  The news was not good, but it was far from a disaster.  The report told us that there had been casualties - three caravan guards had been killed, and another half dozen injured.  But there were eight dead bandits, and they'd been turned back quite easily.

From what I could gather the guards had been caught by surprise, otherwise they'd not have been hurt at all.  The bandits were just not up to the job, and were hurt badly in the first counter attack.  Unfortunately, they'd used some kind of heavy crossbow and a lucky shot had broken a wheel on one of the back carts. As they were so far into this journey, they had no spares left and couldn't replace it easily, so the scouts are all returned mid morning with some new parts parts.  The whole column of carts was stopped, they didn't want to split up - it's much safer when they stay together.

We tried to get their agreement so we could go with the scouts, but they were keen to move quickly and get the caravan moving again.  We knew we couldn't keep up with them, so we decided to take extra food supplies out to them at a slower pace.  The caravan was a day away still.

We grabbed some supplies (on account) from the local traders and set out just after the scouts had left.  Riding quickly it took us five hours to reach the caravan, and we greeted them warmly, handing over the food supplies and the invoices that went with them.  The scouts had been here for a couple of hours before, and with the new parts they'd repaired the wheel quickly and moved on northwards.

After travelling with them back along our trail for half an hour or so, we left them and continued back down to the place where the attack had occurred and they had been stopped.  They'd piled up the bodies and burned them, so the place was easy to find  We were in luck - the bandit's tracks were still visible.  It was getting dark by this point, though, so we found a place to camp and settled for the night.

This morning, we picked up the trail from first light.  It was tough going - Barr was really tested in finding this trail.  We followed it all day, and in the lower lying land it was easy to follow in the frost.  On the higher, rockier lands we really struggled, and at times we cast about trying to pick the trail up again.  This really slowed our progress - we spent over an hour at one point trying to pick up the trail as it came over a high, rocky hill.

We've now arrived at a small settlement, it's named Candon by the locals, and we've found lodgings in a simple wooden barn.  The trail didn't come into this village, but went across some of the farmed land a mile or so to the south of it.  The villagers are surprised the bandits came this close, they're not welcome here.  There are about 150 people here, and about fifty of them are men who have been toiling in the fields all summer long.  Now it's almost winter, they have a little time on their hands, and they don't appear shy about defending their homes.

We'll be resuming our hunt in the morning.