Blegh…,” Medeia groaned, as she wiped blood and gore that had spattered her cheek in the tumble with the dying fat man.

“No offense taken, Tor! Man, I’m sure glad to see you!”, she said brightly, as Torgrin offered her a hand up. She moved to dust off her backside, squinting down at the porcine fellow with a snort.

“What do you think this guy wanted? He doesn’t really look like the sort of man my father would send after me, does he?”, poking at him curiously with a leather-bound toe.

“Hells if I be knowing, lass,” Torgrin muttered, turning the deceased's cheek aside with the flat of his ax. He spotted an odd sort of mark, like that branded into a slave at birth, seared into the flesh just below the porcine man's left ear. It looked like an eye within a side-turned square, and the dwarf pointed it out to Medeia with a thick fingertip. “Whata’ye ken about this mark? Ever seen the like of it, Med?”

She bent to inspect the mark, and though Medeia couldn’t recalling ever seeing it before in her life, she couldn’t help feeling that it was somehow familiar to her all the same. She shook her head in negation, deciding to keep this small tidbit to herself, at least until they caught up with Garron. He was always reading some tome or another whenever he could, so perhaps he knew what the mark meant, and from whence it came.

Thinking of him brought his absence back to mind in a hurry, and she skittered around the side of the vendor’s booth. The pie she’d so desired was lain in waste, its crust bespeckled with dirt and grime from its unceremonious tumble to the ground. There were scuff marks bored into the soft earth, as if Garron had backpedaled quickly in an attempt to evade something, probably the pie.

Following Garron’s tracks was easy enough; the man was no sneak, and his passage left plenty of evidence. Blood spatters peppered the ground, running off into the slender pools formed by the furrows rent in the soft, wet soil. Slung like a sack of potatoes against a crumbling shack, a cloaked body lay, its head a bloody ruin. Turning to Torgrin, Medeia couldn’t mask the worry that had crept unbidden into her face.

“Looks like he met with some resistance, doesn’t it?”, she asked worriedly. ”I’m really starting to hate this ‘Decrulitlul’. First, no pie, and now someone’s made off with my man.”

“Well, it be not like he’s a slip of a—“

Whatever Torgrin had been about to say was cut off, as four beings unveiled themselves from the shadows. Dressed in silvery armor overlain by dark travelling cloaks, Medeia’s sharp eyes noted the same crest emblazoned on the breast of the armor as on the recently deceased vendor’s neck. Again, the eye in the side-turned square turned up. The sound of metal sliding against metal rang out, as the attackers drew oddly shaped blades from below their cloaks.

“Oho! Methinks they want not to chit and chat, eh?,"grinned the dwarf darkly, flicking a bit of brain matter from the honed edge of his blade, his gaze settling on the closest assailant.

"Well, that be fine, as it be my ax what prefers to do the talking!” With a thundering roar, he lit off in a fit of steel and beard.

As was the case in any fight, time seemed to slow for Medeia. Drawing her own blade from its sheath in her right hand, her left dipped down to her thigh, slipping a throwing knife into its grip. “Time for talk has abated, my friend,” she muttered, and lunged at the blade-thin man before her. Quick as silver, he parried the strike, and blade struck blade in a shower of sparks. A well-timed duck and north-eastern lunge stabbed the throwing knife deep into the unprotected meat of his underarm. Blood flowed like a river, the man offering a pained cry as he stumbled back. Before he'd backpedaled further, Medeia’s knife slipped out from the parry and she used this unguarded opportunity to lodge it hilt-deep into his left eye-socket. Planting a foot into his chest, she freed the knife and blade with a meaty squelch, flicking off gore and ruin with a practiced spin of the blades.

Hardly missing a beat, the other man’s arm locked around her neck, trying to topple her over backwards. An oddly accented voice hissed into her ear, “Forget my blade and taste its sting.” As the man’s companion slashed heatedly at her arm, she twisted, and white-hot pain flared in her tricep. Leather offered little in the way of protection, but still it and her movement saved her from being one limb the less. A smarting cut showed through the armor, though Medeia paid this no heed. Her thoughts stayed ahead of her, with Garron.

Dropping down and driving back into the second attacker with a pointy elbow thrown into the groin, she twisted out of his grip. Pivoting on the balls of her feet, she brought the hunting knife around with her, using her own twisting motion as a rotor in a centrifuge. Forward propulsion and an upwards tilt to the knife’s path brought the blade hacking into the less guarded gullet of the man, slicing so deep into the flesh of his neck that the white tendons beneath showed through the rush of blood. His blade dropped with a metallic clang to the earth as his hands strove to keep his head attached to his torso. A shove to the sternum brought him crashing down in a dying heap easily enough. Still, he tried to speak, mouth agape like a fish out of water. His windpipe was well and truly severed, and thus all he got for his trouble was a quicker death by choking on his own blood.

Turning to gauge how Torgrin was fairing with his twin assailants, it came as no surprise to Medeia that the dwarf was already done. His two attackers were lain out prone at his feet, one’s armor breastplate hewn near in two by a strong frontal blow from the broadax. The other had earned a madman’s shave, the head only barely held to the body by a thin flap of skin. The ax had cut it nearly in twain. The dwarf looked none the worse for wear, save for a fresh ding on his curaiss.

“Ye be hurt, lass”, Torgrin noted, pointing the axhead at her arm. “Be their blades poisoned? Let me look it over.”

Medeia grudgingly allowed him to poke and prod at the cut, until he was satisfied that no poison had been used.

“I don’t really give a fig if it is or not, Tor,” she replied after a moment. “I don’t like this, not one bit. We need to find Garron, and we need to do so now!”

“Alright, alright, ye wee lass. I hear ye plain without the yelling, ye ken.” Careful to mind the wake of bodies now strewn behind them, they made for the docks, in the direction Garron’s tracks led off. Someone’s day would be ruined, unless the villagers often left their dead for the terns and gulls to feed.