I have always been a curious person. When I would see something out of place, odd or unusual, I just had to stop and look. This had gotten me in more conflict in my in my long elven life than I would like to admit. I suppose it grew out of that most dangerous of elements, a questioning mind. I was of that mind when I stopped along the hills between villages, stepped down off my sandy brown roan and stretched my legs. Just before, out of the corner of my eye, I had seen a small flash of light in the distance, but only for a moment. That curious event, not to mention being tired of the long tedious ride, is what drove me to stop.

        I grimaced slightly when I finished my stretch; my saffron tunic and brown cotton pants were stiff with dust from the long ride. Dust rose lightly when I tried to brush the top layer of it from my tunic sleeves and brigandine armored vest. Eventually, I resigned myself to the spots of dirt and stepped over to a knob of a rock that provided a wonderful view of the rolling hills carpeted in reds and purples of heather all around. With a practiced hand, I pulled out the lenses, leather and cord and tied my spyglass together in a minute; then I looked about. At first, I saw nothing and was about to put the spyglass away; but a bit of motion caught my eye. That was when I saw him by a modest lake in the far distance.

        The human man crawled slowly to the edge of the cool water that was shaded by large, weathered oak trees that dominated the valley floor alongside the pond. With hard breaths he pulled himself upright with his back against a large rock four times the size of a person's head. Blood glistened as it soaked into his blue tunic and leather jerkin vest low on his left side. Through my spyglass I still swear to this day that at that moment, I saw him look at me and mouth two words. Shocked, I tore myself from the sight and raced to my horse, my spyglass shoved into a convenient belt pouch. I urged my horse into a gallop and looked for a way down.

        I arrived at the valley floor by way of a runoff trail a half-hour later, only to find the man long dead. I took out a cloth and wiped the traces of sweat from my face and fixed my stray brown hair back into the customary ponytail I wore. I turned in the saddle and scanned the ground. I only saw his horse's tracks when I was on my way down. Here was no different. Wherever he was attacked from, he was game to have lasted this long with an obvious open arrow or crossbow bolt wound in his chest. With a sigh, I dismounted and tied the horse to a twisted scrub tree near both the water and some grass. Once I gathered the dead man's belongings from his person and horse, I knelt near the body and arranged what I found in front of me. I had the hope something would tell me who the man was; where he was from. Carefully I arranged the man's possessions on the ground between us.

        A week's worth of jerked venison, a near full waterskin, thick leather and glass lens pieces for rolling a spyglass just like my own, an empty sword scabbard, a knife and an odd bamboo tube. I turned the case over in my hands. It was not quite as long as half the length of a man's arm though easily large enough to hold a scrolled parchment or two. At one end was the seam of a lid with an obvious catch to latch it closed. The catch, while it looked simple to open, turned out to be quite the opposite. Clumsily I struggled with it for a moment, but in the end it was as closed as when I started.

        The wind picked up slowly and blew a cool breeze off the small pond while I pondered the odd container; on a hunch I slid the catch down along the tube instead up towards what I thought was the lid and was rewarded with a pleasant click of release. Inside, the parchments were an odd collection. Roughly sketched maps, a list of accounts for nearly 50 pounds of rock crystal, copper ore and turquoise, and finally a list that detailed how the accounts should be divided for claim and storage and whom they were to be stored for. The last parchment for the list of accounts was instructions to one James McKennith.

        "Well met tae ye James" I murmured, "What be ye doin out here?"

        After a second glance through the documents, I carefully replaced them into their bamboo container. I gathered his meager possessions and wrapped them in a spare shirt I kept in my saddlebags and stored the items for later. That done, I backtracked along the pond's shore and into the thick stand of trees; my search paid off when I found his dapple-gray horse still saddled with the dead man's bedroll. It was a large horse, obviously mountain bred from its large size and width. His horse was not sure of me at first, but with some dried fruit and easy words, I led him back to my own horse to collect the deceased and be on my way.

        In no time I had the blanket-shrouded form bound and tied in place on the back of the dapple-gray. His provisions were hardly touched so he had to be from someplace nearby, I surmised while I climbed onto the back of my roan. That left few places to choose from. I nudged my horse into a slow walk while I looked out across the soft heather, forest and grass-covered hills and up along to the dark Ice Reach Mountains that towered almost overhead. I sighed, there was no more than three, no two places that this man came from. Dodry, a small mining town further up into the Ice Reach, or Hitchincrow, a farming village and trading post at the river bend that was right along the main trade route from Gateway and the other large walled cities to the south. I took a chance on a hunch and that list of accounts and pointed the roan towards Dodry in the higher country where my business now seemed to take me.