Dubhaine Family/Moira/Roleplays/2009/January

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January 3rd

"Well Ranulf, it looks like we've a nice morning for it," Moira and her men were gathered around a hastily prepared fire, frying eggs and bacon in their billycans as they recovered from the night's forced march.

The Rangers were a rough-looking bunch, dressed in motley forest buff and sporting an eclectic mix of weaponry. A few grizzled veterans sported shields with faded armorials, testament to the noble knights they'd served in ancient campaigns. Bright eyes glittered above their greying beards, deep voices thick with mirth as they calmed the nerves of the smooth-faced youths facing their first battle.

"I'd have preferred a few more days to get the men into shape," Ranulf turned his eggs gently so as not to break the yolks.

"War rarely gives us the time we'd prefer," Moira dropped a hunk of rough black bread in the boiling fat of her billycan and stirred it with her dagger. Soon it was indistinguishable from the blood sausage that was already sizzling gamely.

"How can you eat at a time like this?" it was Reynard, a young woodsman from Braga.

"Because if you don't eat now, you may never eat again," whispered the cold shadow of a voice Moira had never expected to hear again. With the first utterance she was half on her feet, billycan dangerously close to spilling its precious cargo in the fire, an astonished look on her face as she saw hulking form of Yfain emerging from the early morning mist.

"But I saw you die!"

Yfain's familiar roguish face seemed gaunt and drawn, "It seems death has found me less to his liking than he imagined."

A silence fell across the company: a silence so deep that a dropped pin would have echoed like thunder; a silence so long that the stars lost their morning splendour and drowned themselves in the sun's brilliant ocean.

"War never changes," his face lit up like the sun as he remembered his purpose, "And neither do her first-born sons."

"I take it you know this hulking brute?" Ranulf's tone was blunted by a mouthful of bacon.

"Ranulf, allow me to introduce you to the dirtiest son-of-a-whore reaver to ever steal his own mother's milk," she sat back down and a space opened beside her for the Cagilian giant.

"Aye lass," the old Yfain roared heartily as he slapped her on the shoulder, "and never a drop was wasted."

"Here, you look like you could use this more than me," she passed the pan to him, but he returned it untouched.

"Don't go worrying about that lass, it'll take more than an empty stomach to put my arm off its aim," and fetching a brandy flask from his sheepskin jerkin he took a deep swig.