They continued walking along the broad dirt road for a while, large trees, mostly pines, made both sides of the road into a vast darkness. No signs of human civilisation yet, except from the tracks of the cart. One track going up and another, a rather erratic one going back.

After about 30 minutes walk in their up-tempo pace, they found a fork in the road. The first sign of humanity proudly presenting itself at the intersection: an actual signpost. It was even painted once. The tracks of the cart went to the right, so that village would be a far cry of being happy at their arrival. At least left they still had a chance, so that’s where they’d go…

The sign said “Banesville” and Nargi distracted himself from the feeling gnawing in his gut that him and Grishar wouldn’t be kindly received there. He wondered what kind of village it would be. He had seen a lot of them on raids in the time when he was still a Rikhu. Some settlements had walls and towers, like orc villages, but most didn’t. Most of them were like a puddle: deepest in the middle and spread thin on the outside, without a clear end to them. If Banesville was a village like that, they’d encounter the occasional farm first alternated with patches of forest or unkempt brush, then farms would be built side by side, their fields slowly getting smaller and then at some point there would be more building then field. If you went towards the higher structures at that point (some of which would be in stone, like the one with the belltower) you’d probably find a large square. In the daytime there would be stalls with people selling wares. At night the salesmen would be at home or in the inn, which would most likely be situated on the square itself. This was how human villages were supposed to be and therefore what Nargi was expecting.

Banesville was different. It arrived without the two-miles notice of scattered farms. One minute they were in the dense forest, the next, they were surrounded by small square wooden buildings with slanted wooden roofs. They just showed up at the side of the road, packed together in a way that the sides of each building almost overlapped with the next one. They were still heavily surrounded by forest. After each set of buildings, a small path would branch out from the main road, which would lead to another batch of crammed together buildings. All the buildings were small and had two stories, trees were lumbering high above the houses, keeping the entire village in the shade. Nargi wished to carefully inspect the town before announcing themselves, but Grishar was obviously way too excited to take it slow. The little kobold was jumping up and down with enthusiasm, looking at Nargi pleadingly. It was the first time he’d been in a human settlement.

Nargi was a little worried, since there were no people in sight. It was a bright morning, humans should be up-and-about at a time like this. But no one walked the street and there were no bustling noises from inside of the buildings. Strange…

Not being able to hold it in much longer Grishar exploded in a series of well-practiced greetings. The timing wasn’t quite right, but considering his excitement, this was probably the most he could ever expect form the little kobold.

“Good day to you, humans on Banesil! We civilised! We mean you no ham! This Nargi, I Grishar. Good day to you! We give gold for stufsies and talki, very civilised! We mean you no ham!”

Nothing happened. Grishar kept repeating his string of greetings, but no humans came out. Either they were scared shitless or they weren’t there at all. Nargi decided they should find a place that was likely to be open in the daytime, like a shop or a tavern. So far it seemed they had only passed housing. Maybe the villagers were out working in the forest? Everything was made of wood here, so maybe the corner of the village they’d entered was occupied by lumberjacks? Solitary lumberjacks with no family?

This felt wrong, but it did smell like humans here. There were no signs of a raid having taken place nor any smells of blood or goblins or orcs. The humans that lived here had to be alright. But where were they? Nargi told Grishar to be silent for a bit. Just until they found out what had happened to the people here. They proceeded carefully along the road until they found a shop. The sign on the door said: ‘cherry bizarre’, but the door was closed. Nargi carefully opened it and found himself in an empty shop. It was clearly some kind of bakery, but there were no baked goods on the shelves, nor did Nargi smell anything freshly made.

“What is this?” Grishar asked.

“This is supposed to be a bakery, but there’s no baked goods.”

“What’s a bakery?”

“It’s a place where you can buy bread and cakes.”

“What’s bread and cakes?”

“A type of human food. It’s quite nice actually.”

“I don’t think it’s nice if it is not there Nargi…” the kobold spoke in a voice that signalled he didn’t like being fooled.

“True.” The orc had to admit. There was nothing nice about missing patisserie.

“Good day to you, humans on Banesil! We civilised! We mean you no ham!“ Grishar started again, which was rewarded with a stern look from Nargi. Grishar stopped yelling and pouted. It was a horrifying sight.

“Stop contorting your face like that, it doesn’t help.”

“mwemememememe” grumbled Grishar, parroting Nargi’s tone. He was clearly very annoyed with the missing humans and the lack of baked goods. Nargi couldn’t really blame him. He had been looking forward to this for weeks and the incident with the cart had made him extra on edge.

Nargi pulled Grishar out of the empty bakery and continued his search for the humans, carefully exploring the buildings at the side of the main road. They passed more abandoned shops but found no city square. There were no cobblestones either. It was just the same dirt road they had been walking on for weeks. The only animals they found were a couple of chickens in a wooden enclosure. Grishar wanted to try and eat one, since he had never seen one before and he said they smelled tasty. Nargi knew he was right, but reminded him to be ¬civilised: as soon as they had found people, they’d buy one. This only led to Grishar starting to call out for the people again and no stern looks could make the little kobold shut up.

Furthering their way through the village, the smell of humans got more intense. He urged Grishar to stop yelling again, and when it didn’t have the desired effect, he picked the kobold up and clasped his mouth shut. Grishar struggled a bit, but stopped when both of them heard the sound. It was the sound of humans singing.

The closed in on the sound, sneaking up to a very large building. It was larger than any of the buildings they had passed so far. The sheer height of it was impressive: the wooden building rose above the treetops in its entirety and took up the ground space of at least thirty of the buildings they’d seen before. Its tall windows were so high op, no one would be able to look out of them. The wood on the sides was heavily decorated by woodcutters, showing all kinds of images, mostly of humans bowing down to some entity. Grishar remarked sadly that none of the woodcuttings depicted sex. Nargi ignored him as he stood in front of the large closed doors of the looming building. Inside there were at least 200 voices, but probably more. It seemed that the entire population of the village was gathered here: men women and children, all singing.

Nargi was pondering what the best idea was and decided to wait for the crowd to get out of the building. He didn’t want to interrupt anything. The closest to this that he’d ever experienced was a warlord’s funeral, and you don’t want an outsider to crash something sacred like that.

Unfortunately, Grishar knew of no such thing and opened the door. It took him all of his strength to open it just a little bit. It creaked heavily as Grishar stuck his hear around the corner and the singing stopped.

“Good day to you, humans on Banesil!” Grishar shouted cheerfully to the crowd.

Nargi pushed open the door a little further so he could see inside. No use in pretending not to be here now… The ceremony had been disturbed already.

“We apologise for the inconvenience of intruding on your ceremony…” Nargi started.

“We civilised, we give gold to you and you give cakes and chicken to we!” Grishar interrupted.

As Nargi tried to find the right words, Grishar added: “We mean you no ham!”

Instead of what the effect of their words SHOULD have been, the entire crowd started panicking. People started pushing women and children to the back of the building and a bald man in an extremely extravagant robe, that clearly separated him from the rest of the villagers, raised his arms started chanting things.

Oh shit…