Fafnir produced a clay pipe from his belt and filled the bowl with leaf before lighting it with a brand he took from the fireplace. Padric settled down on a bench and marveled inwardly at how good it felt to sit up off the ground after so long. Rosheen sat on the serving table behind him.

“I arrived a fortnight past,” Fafnir began, the pipe clenched firmly in his teeth. “I had a sword to deliver to a fomori here. One Faabar. He commissioned it when I passed this way a year or more ago.” Padric could feel Rosheen cast a look his way, but kept his attention directed entirely on the dwarf. “I am told that the fomori is injured, so I wait. But I do not wait long, before…” Fafnir took a long drag off his pipe and shook his head gravely. “One of the women found the village elder dead in the eel pond, the same day I arrived. A man named Brogan.”

“The eel pond?” Rosheen asked.

Fafnir nodded. “The lord who resides near here bids the villagers breed them. Developed a taste for them while warring in Sasana I am told.”

Rosheen gagged slightly. “I hope the man was dead before he fell in.” Padric tried not to smile.

“The herbalist claims he was drowned,” Fafnir said.

“The villagers…they fled after the body was found?” Padric asked.

“They did,” Fafnir replied. “The women, children and the old amongst them. To the holdfast of the same eel-eating lord, Kederic the Winetongue. The herdsman stayed behind, taking their flocks out into the hills most nights for safety.”

“Why leave over one dead man? Did they fear a pox?”

“It is possible. The herbalist spoke heatedly with the men after he saw the body and it was on his instructions that the villagers fled. They have all since returned, hale and healthy. More than that I cannot say, the herbalist is a gnome and has little love for me. He tells me nothing and will not let me deliver the blade, for the fomori, he claims, is grievously injured.”

Fafnir blew pipe smoke out of his nostrils. “But, the herdsmen gather here most every night. I hear gossip from them when they drink. They say Faabar is not like to recover, although never within the gnome’s hearing. They also say that the elder was murdered. Slain by his husk servant. This they say for all to hear.”

“This Brogan must have been a rich man,” Padric huffed.

Fafnir shrugged. “I know little of him, save that he sent the husk to me with a request to replace the iron plough blade that caused hurt to the fomori with one of steel. Hours later, the man was dead and the husk could not be found.”