"He's gone, yer majesty,"

Baron Ulrek's expression was exceptionally dour today. Early in the morning, Ulrek Bathory had summoned his chamberlain to the great hall to perform a number of routine chores before the vampire lord began his slumber through the daylight hours. But the chamberlain never arrived. Hours passed, and at dawn Ulrek ordered the keep's guards to seize the chamberlain and bring him before the throne. Now it was early in the afternoon, and nearly the entirety of the keep's guard contingent had been mobilized to search every conceivable hiding place.

"You are certain of this?"

"Aye, yer majesty," affirmed the guard commander. "We've gone through the undercroft, looked in every barrel, and every space we thought a man could try to hide within. I'm certain he's gone."

Ulrek listened through the thoughts of his numerous guards and retainers throughout the fortress. Felboge Keep was rank with fear and anxiety today, even more so than usual, but as Ulrek scoured the minds of his servants, he found no trace of disloyalty. The traitorous thoughts he had been sensing were notably absent. Ulrek knew now that his chamberlain was gone, and worse still, that he harbored ill will for his former master. Ulrek cursed himself for not making a greater effort to hunt down the traitor while he had the chance.

"Where could he have gone?" Ulrek wondered aloud.

"Impossible to say, yer majesty. Probably made off with some jewels and coins and hiding in some crag on the moor now. Fret not, sire, he'll spend the rest of his miserable days a wretch on the lam, but he can't hide forever. His hide'll be staked to the walls soon enough."

"'Soon enough'? Soon enough is [i]not[/i] good enough." Ulrek was well aware that his missing chamberlain did not leave for a handful of golden vespers. The chamberlain knew too much, and if his knowledge reached the wrong ears, then Ulrek's wish for the throne of the Imperium was in jeopardy. "Nothing enters or leaves without my approval. How was this even allowed to happen?"

"You see, sire..." the commander gulped, "there was a terrible storm last night. In all the thunder and rain, he must've gotten through somehow."

Before Ulrek could chastise his guard captain, the door to the great hall was thrown open by another guard, his boots and greaves caked in mud.

"Sire!" The new arrival announced as he made his way up to Baron Ulrek's throne. "We found these in the moat!"

The guard laid at Ulrek's feet a soaking wet scrap of silk from a robe as well as a long length of rope tied around a muddy beam of wood. The chamberlain's escape had been confirmed.

"Looks like he used that to rappel down the wall in the storm," mused the commander.

"We also found some tracks in the mud, leading away from the keep into the moor."

"Take these to the houndkeeper," Ulrek ordered the mud-stained guard. "Allow his dogs to acquire his scent and follow those tracks. "I want the borders closed to anyone without written permission to enter or leave these lands. Anyone matching a rough description of this man is to be arrested and brought in for identification."

"As you wish, sire."

"Find him quickly," Ulrek ordered his guard captain, "or your skin will be nailed to the keep in his stead."

[hr]

He was roused from his sleep by the snorting and grunting of hogs. A wet, muddy snout prodded under his thigh; bringing to an end a fitful and restless night of sleep. He shooed the pig away and sat up from what had passed for a bed that night - a bed of weeds and straw laid over the muddy floor of a sty house. It was a wretched place to spend an evening, but the warmth of the hogs and a crude roof over his head made it preferable to sleeping out on the moor. He crawled through the doorway of the hut into a muddy pig sty. With his walking stick in hand, the former chamberlain of Felboge Keep waded through the filth and climbed over the low fence, making his way onto the street of the town.

He was a positively wretched figure, clad in a tattered robe and hood of coarse wool caked with mud and hog shit. When assuming a hobbling, staff-dependent limp, the former chamberlain was indistinguishable from a lowly, unremarkable vagabond. It was a disguise that would attract little attention as he made his way out of the Great Weald to the fringes of the Imperial Heartlands and ultimately the capital and Castle Bathory.

It would be nearly a week at his current pace to pass the borders of the Great Weald and be free of the wrath of his former master, who by now had certainly recognized his absence. Once in the Imperial Heartlands, the former chamberlain could travel by horseback, but so long as apprehension by Ulrek's men was a possibility, he had to maintain a low profile. Under the frayed woolen hood, passersby never suspected that the destitute man ambling down the southern road toward the borderlands had once been among the closest advisers of the horrifying master of this realm. No one could have imagined that the forgettablr drifter was in fact a courier bearing a secret that would set the Xelwyth Imperium ablaze.