…wait and watch longer. Men aren’t known for their gossip.

A long breath out your nose is the only sign of frustration you give, carefully sliding down and sitting among the roots of your tree. The men talk in words just a little too distant to understand, coming across to you as muffled noises bearing the occasional familiar syllables. Words like ‘respect’, with a spat ‘p’ and ‘bastards’ with an echoing ‘ba’ sounds manage to make sense, though their context is often lost in the moans of agreement or in bitter laughter.

The result is that you sit in darkness, sweating away and listening to nothing, watching the moonlight shift across the ground as much as the unmoving men. They shove each other and joke and mutter and smile and frown, until you’re not even seeing them, just looking ahead while holding your dark top away from your body and begging a breeze to come by.

Eventually, after a long time of just waiting, you watch as they begin to shuffle off, retreating deeper into the village. No one else had walked up or down the path in the meantime, despite the delay, and so the captain you seek must still be within the big house on the hill.

You wait until they are fully gone and look between the trees for anyone coming your way, in either direction. Fully alone, you tug off the black top and trousers, bundling them hastily into the bag and putting it in your now familiar nook between the tree roots before running for the path. It feels good to be out of the extra layers, and from being crouched for so long and boiled in your clothes, you lift your arms and let the wind of your speed cut up under the leather top and begin to blow you dry.

You slow down when on the path, quickly changing to a purposeful nonchalance as you walk up to the mansion. The shadow of the roof guard fades about a corner as it comes into sight.

Following the gravel path you watched the others walk, you make your way to the side of the building and take the split which leads to the front. The other leads past bushes and likely to the back entrance, something to remember if you have no luck with conventional ingress. Eventually, after passing numerous high vaulted windows, you make it to the inlet that holds a grand and practical entrance, thick set wooden door looking more like that of a castle than a home, and the high walls on both sides, each without windows, funnelling you a little, enough to induce the sensation of being swallowed. The guard stands to the side, leaning against the wall and even bigger up close.

He glances your way, easing his folded arms for a moment before he takes you in. He could probably overpower you with them both tied behind his back, and while he relaxes again, he doesn’t stop watching you. For your part, you look at the axe looped into his belt and consider him more than able of splitting you down the middle if you make a wrong move. What if there’s a password? A secret handshake? The thoughts had not even occurred to you! They occur now as you approach and manage to spill even more sweat from your pores. He’s looking, his eyes boring into you, his body towering over you, his face like carven stone.

“Hot night.”

You nearly squeak like a mouse when he rumbles his voice your way. If you thought his face like a stone and his body like a rockslide of boulders, his voice, rumbling like thunder, completes his elemental feel. You put a shaking hand on the door, and another on your dyed leather top, pulling it out and back to circulate some air about it.

“Heh. Don’t I know it.”

It’s all you can think of to say, smiling as you sweat suspiciously and even chuckling in a distressingly nervous manner. Suddenly, sneaking and disguises and **** all seem things you’re horribly underqualified for. Gods! What if ‘Hot night’ is some kind of code phrase!

You pull on the door handle, finding it locked, and you swallow the sudden ocean of spit in your mouth. It’s locked. Does he have the key? Why doesn’t he open it? He doesn’t move by even a hair. Only his steady breathing animates him, and the shining jewels of his watching eyes. You pull again, turning to smile at him and ask him if you can enter.

Nothing comes out. How can your mouth be so dry now!? It wasn’t a second ago!

“Try pushing.”

You blink at his words, watching silent as they rattle through your mind and fall into place. You try pushing. It opens.

Giving him a last ‘god’s but aren’t I just stupid’ smile, you walk through the door and into the mansion proper.