Loka stepped from the carriage, swinging the door shut and crunching toward the press of torches, grey fog swirling like river water around her legs.  Trunks groaned and the twisted treetops shivered noisily in the night breeze, black and indistinct against the hazy moonlight.  She tilted her hat back, in a casual gesture, parting the crowd with a gentle push of the back of her hand.  She looked from one to the other, critically, as if daring them to say something, before giving Gregor himself a hard, searching once-over.

"I'll tell you later." was all she said in dismissive answer to his returned look.

"You [i]sure[/i] she's not your wife, friend?" murmured the gravedigger quietly.

Loka ignored him and peered over the scene, her lips twisting sourly at the gruesome sight of the carnage.  Several bodies, one now difficult to distinguish from another.  Rent limbs and ruined torsos.  She had seen her share of blood, of course.  But there was something obscene about the human midden, torn apart, half-eaten and left to rot.

"Who were these people, that they were on the road at night in such a place?" she asked, "Travelers?  On foot?  That is very odd."  

Her head cocked, birdlike, and she bent down with her legs remaining straight, plucking a broken length of slim silver chain from the blood-wet mud.  A fat, golden ring set with some elaborate sigil hung from the loop; the signet of Doloureux.

"...And why did this one wear a ring on a chain?"