After a quick breakfast the following morning we organised ourselves into the four groups arranged the previous day, broke camp and headed of to our designated patrol areas. Other than myself, my two bodyguards and my squire the party was made up of four light calvary and a mounted man at arms.
We first headed over to the toll booth we’re I had a quick word with Hasculf to see if he had anymore thoughts on where the bandits might be hiding. When he proved unable to provide us with any we rode up to the nearest edge of our patrol area and then down to the river and back. This first pass of the area was more aimed at giving me a better feel for the local than actually searching for the bandits.
Other than two small farms and the ruins of what must once have been a substantial building our patrol area was seemingly devoid of any potential bandit hiding spots. Never the less our second pass didn’t concentrate on those three spots but rather an attempt to eliminate the rest of the area from our enquiries. Shortly before nightfall and without having found any sign of bandits I assigned three of the cavalrymen to covertly watch the two farms and the ruin while the rest of us headed back to camp.
We were not the last to return, that was the two groups searching the forest and not the only ones to come up empty. The others had already ruled out all the possible hiding spots we had previously discussed. At this point no one was really that hopeful of ever finding the bandits, I tried to raise their spirits but didn’t have much luck.
The next day dawned and we went out again, I had instructed Rantham to call at the Sawka family farm in the hope he could learn something. The two calvarymen watching the farms reported nothing suspicious happening when I returned to pick them up so I deciding to openly pay them a visit later for a word with the farmers and went onto the ruin. The man watching the ruins also had nothing to report so I had everyone thoroughly search them without turning up anything relevant to our search.
We did however manage to discover an old rusted sword and the remains of its scabbard plus a small number of silver and bronze coins minted during the reign of the emperor Nugent over three centuries ago. Our visits to the farms provided equally disappointing as they were unaware of any large hiding spots we might have missed. So we headed in the direction of the river and searched its bank for awhile not really expecting to turn up anything.
We were about to head back to camp when a messenger arrived from Erdak to inform me that he had spotted what he thought might be the bandit camp.
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