The Medicine Seller emerged from the trees. He had a habit of vanishing, sometimes for hours, always rejoining the group without much comment. There was little point when he hadn't found much - the Chasined were quite good at covering their tracks.

He was well at home in the wilds. He didn't look like he should be - he looked like the kind of person who'd be more at home in a wealthy manor than trudging through wetlands. But the Medicine Seller had lived his life traipsing through the places in his world where civilization gave way to tangled roots and the barriers between the physical and spiritual broke down and the world belonged to older things.

"There is a deer trail," he said in his slow monotone. He held up what seemed to be a broken stick at first, though on closer inspection it was, in fact the broken shaft of an arrow. It had been stripped of its head and plumage and one end had the unmistakable coppery stain of blood. He'd found it, discarded in a shrub. He was sure the implication was clear enough - someone had been hunting in the area, and given the fresh stains on the shaft, it hadn't been too long ago.

And then he added, almost absentmindedly;

"There is also a considerable quantity of dawn lotus."

He was helping.