The spring roars through the animal run, churning around roots and fallen branches. Rellian slips through the alder screen from the west, soaked through, his breath hard but controlled.
Rellian Blackblade
They followed the noise west, but not for long. Voices are already reaching the ravine rim.
Muffled calls drift above the beeches. The water masks some of them, yet boots scrape against stone somewhere beyond the rain-dark branches.
Rellian Blackblade
The hollow will fail us if they search the banks. We climb east, now, before they see where the roots end.
He points toward a steep ascent between beech roots, where slick earth rises out of the flood's reach. Ferns and low branches offer cover, but the slope is narrow.
Rellian Blackblade
Stay close. Put your hands on the roots and climb when I climb. If the ground gives way, do not call out.
Above, a voice orders the searchers toward the hollow. Rellian squares himself beneath the ascent, watching Ambrose and waiting only for movement.
✓ Quest Accepted
Hold the line with Rellian
“Is there a path to escape the assassins”
NO, AND WORSE (Likely, rolled 93)
Rellian climbs first, testing each slick handhold. Halfway up, a stone breaks loose above him and strikes the mud beside Ambrose, followed by a hissed command from the ridge.
Rellian Blackblade
They have reached the upper path. We cannot go back, and the ravine is closing below us.
Rellian freezes against the slope. Through the rain, armed figures appear between the beeches above, while other voices answer from the flooded hollow beneath them.
Eastern Assassins
There! Hold the bank. Drive them upward, and leave no passage through the hollow.
The ascent ends at a fallen trunk wedged across the slope. Beyond it, the assassins spread through the rain, blades lowered as they descend toward the stranded fugitives.
Rellian Blackblade
No way out remains unseen. When they close, we must break their line before they force us into the water.
A second horn answers from beyond the ridge. The rain conceals its source, but the sound proves the cordon extends farther than the hollow, leaving Ambrose and Rellian trapped between converging hunters.