It was by all an account a pleasant day, enough clouds drifted across the sky to break the sun’s heat but not so many as hide the blue and render the day dreary.  Keto trailed a few steps after Quartes, humming to herself, and watching the Landian’s routine of scanning their surroundings.  He paused, crouching down to look at something within the dispersed grasses of the Greenway.

“Trouble?” she asked as she caught up and the Landian straightened, brushing the dust off his knees.  The Landian’s pale gaze was scanning out to the horizon.

“A group had been through this way, a Bovini was at least with them, but they cut off the trail here.”

“There’s not much out here,” Keto offered as she stepped up and looked down at the tracks, or at least what she assumed what were the tracks.

“There’s no settlements that I know of, but it doesn’t mean people haven’t wandered out this way.”

“Maybe they saw something to hunt off the path and went after it?”  Keto offered.

“Maybe,” the Landian echoed, a frown on his face.  After a moment, he continued his trek along the Greenway, Keto catching up after shifting the weight of her pack.  She noted that his gaze scanned more frequently off to their right, the way she presumed the tracks had gone, but after a while he returned to his general routine.

He could pass hours like that.  Keto knew it from experience, and the small madness she had suffered from it.  Which led to her our routine.

“Is this what you did with the Four Heroes?”

The Landian finished a scan and glanced over his shoulder before looking back forward.  “More details please.”

Keto nodded her head.  She was learning that the Landian disliked conjecture.  Which meant he would request more specifics from her to avoid it.  “In your time with the Four Heroes did you all just walk from place to place like this?  Did you talk of things, is this when you made your plans?”

“By the time I met Verken and the others they were already well into their war.  They travelled with their armies, and not always together.  I only checked in every few nights, or more often when I had news of dragonkin to bring them.”

Keto raised an eyebrow, “You didn’t lead them on what to do next?  Point them towards some of the Dragons?”

“It was their war, I was an ally.  There to lend my strength but it was their goals to set.”

“If they didn’t want to do something that you did?”

Quartes glanced over his shoulder, “I think you’ve seen that I am capable of achieving my own goals.  Those cases where I needed allies where ones where we were naturally aligned.”

Keto mulled this over.  It didn’t necessarily surprise her.  Her travels with the Landian had certainly shown that while he was not opposed interaction, he was not inclined to it.  She supposed part of the mystique of his legend was the tendency with which he did come and go.  Still, it wasn’t exactly a way to change the world.  Except that it had.  Keto shook her head.  “Did they get along?”

“The Four Heroes,” Keto added after a moment when Quartes didn’t respond.  “They would’ve had to agree on what to do, and four is a crowd.”

“I found them arguing on several occasions.  Certainly once the area around Sanctuary Lake was secured, its Dragon slain, they had differing opinions on what to do next.” Keto waited patiently.  “Reznor returned south to the settlements they had founded there, preferring rule and to be back close to the sea.  Verken built a home on the lake for himself and those ready for peace.  I headed north with Migin and Verken, to the mountain that now holds the former’s name and the Dragon there.”

“You have a bad habit of making the fantastic mundane,” Keto offered.

“That,” Quartes began, pausing in his steps to let Keto catch up, “is why I bring a bard along.”  He gestured at the trail before them, Keto saw some signs of a hoof print.  “They rejoined the trail, you may be right that they hunted something.”  Keto stood staring at the prints as Quartes continued on his trek.  After a moment she caught up.

“Reznor was in conflict with them the most often.  He was after all a smuggler they had done business with, Koric was never happy that Reznor had decided to stick around.  They gave him the south as much to get rid of him as wanting someone to look after what civilization they had already made.”

Keto made her mental notes, and then jogged the few steps to come abreast with the Landian.  Quartes shifted to the side of the trail to make room for both of them.  “Anything more dramatic?  A fight over a woman?  Arguments over where to go next.”

The Landian thought for a moment.  “I remember Koric and Migin arguing over a horse once.”

Keto sighed.