Sun was already up for a few hours as Nat finally caught a smell of burned wood, the sign he was closing in on the so called Sap town. He stopped for a moment and took his drinking bottle from the belt. Taking a few gulps of water gave him a reason to look around, see if he was followed or watched. He had no doubt that if somebody raided that village or town, let alone Orcs, they wanted something more than the townsmen's crop stocks. Carefully attaching the bottle back to his belt, Nat walked to and sat down on a nearby rock. He needed to think of the best way to approach the town.

[i]"Should I simply enter by road?"[/i] he asked himself, knowing this would be the least suspicious way. To anyone who might be watching, that is. Yet it would leave him too vulnerable and he was not sure if that's worth a risk.

Nat heard somebody trip, at least twenty steps from him away in the brushes. The brush then rustled a bit and the sound stopped. [i]Definitely, I'm being watched. By such clumsiness, no one else but an Orc scout.[/i] he thought. Nat realized that suddenly becoming sneaky and approacing the town other than by the road would give perfect cause to attack him. With a sigh, he stood up and continued following the road. It soon led him to the ransacked town, half of which seemed burned or destroyed. 
[i]Why are there so few corpses? Sap was small, yet there seems to be too few of the dead.[/i] Nat thought while crossing the town. There seemed to be no survivors, or they have been hiding. When the half-elf finally reached the town's center, the main road seemed heavily trampled and had wagon's tracks that seemed somewhat recent. [i]Could the inhabitants have fled the town?[/i] he thought. Crouching and touching the dirt, he understood that the the wagon was followed, as the dirt under its tracks wasn't as fresh as that of footsteps. At the very least, a squad of men must have marched through here. The wagon had its tracks coming from outside the town, yet they were deeper as it left Sap. That meant only one thing and Nat knew exactly what.

[i]What sort of an idiot would dare to help the wounded that the Tyrant's army left?[/i] Nat spat on the road, he then looked around and took his drinking bottle once more. After swallowing some water, he had no doubt that he was watched right now. He needed to leave Sap and do that swiftly, otherwise somebody will come out and question him. Nat started following the tracks of wagon and its pursuers without looking around too much, so it would seem to an observer that he was continuing the journey as planned.
[i]The only place where that woman's husband might be is the place that wagon went. [/i] the half-elf thought. "I hate it that I always keep up to my promises." Nat mumbled to himself while going, occasionally hearing cracks of branches in the forests surrounding the road.