Four

Dann and Miller trudged along the stone path, hunching over to let their rain-cloaks take the worst of the weather.
“The big sticks I understand,” Dann remarked. “But I don’t understand the little skinny ones. Why do we need little skinny sticks?”
“For poking things, of course.”
Dann risked the rain to make a rude gesture at Miller’s back.
“You know that I could have stayed in the fishy smokey place, right?” He asked. “Or gone to bed, or any number of other things that aren’t this?”
“That’s true,” Conceded Miller. “And a fair point.”
He turned and gestured back towards the distant tower.
“This is further from town than you’ve been before, right?”
“I think so, yes.”
“The land slopes down a bit up ahead.” Miller pointed & started walking again. “So all the rain that’s falling on the path runs down towards the low point. It should drain out these little holes that someone bored under the ridges, but they get blocked by dust and dirt.”
“So unless we want wet feet, we need to clear those out as we go?”
“Yep. It doesn’t get very deep, but it’s deep enough to be annoying, and I don’t want to be walking back in wet shoes.” Miller thought for a moment. “Wetter than necessary shoes.”

They walked carefully along the ridges, keeping each other balanced by hanging onto either end of a staff carried between them. Periodically Dann would poke at the ridge under Miller’s feet, or Miller at the ridge under Dann’s, and they’d walk cautiously on.
“It never gets too badly flooded around here,” Miller explained. “But in the rain it’s muddy off the path and wet on it.”
“Do you know what we’re looking for exactly?” Dann asked, poking the accumulated muck out of a hole under Miller’s feet & watching the water on the path flow out. “Aside from lights that aren’t there anymore?”
“Not exactly, no. They looked to be right around this area, but moving sideways, towards the mountains. There’s a joining of paths up ahead a bit, and one of them cuts through this one and the two that run parallel, so I figured the lights were probably on that path.”
Dann gave him a confused look.
“OK, but … Why does that matter?
“Because there’s nothing out here.” Miller explained. “That path runs to the cliff edge and breaks off at a collapsed part of the cliff edge; No village, just a bunch of fallen stone and some weird looking islands in a line further out. The other direction heads towards the mountains, but there’s nothing up that way either.”
“So if there’s nothing in either direction,” Dann thought aloud. “And they didn’t come past us before or after you saw the lights, … “
“Then what the hell is someone doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Said Miller. “And is it something we need to be worried about?”

They stood, watching the last of the water drain away, and carefully stepped down onto the thin film of mud covering the stone path.
They walked up the gentle slope towards the junction.
“And this is definitely where the lights were?”
“Not definitely, but it’s the only point of interest out here, so as good a place to start as any.”
They reached the junction and stopped. Another stone path intersected this one at a shallow angle, then curved off gently towards the coast.
Miller leaned out & started drawing in the wet earth with his poking stick.
“There’s two more paths parallel to this, maybe 40 and 80 paces towards the mountains. The other one heads for the coast and off a cliff.”
Dann looked around, first towards the coast, then towards the mountains. He put his head on one side, then stepped onto the ridge & peered out at the paths in the distance.
“What do you see?” Asked Miller.
“Something’s missing.” Dann declared, then marched forward, reached out, and poked his stick into a gap in the stone path, feeling out the extent of the hole. “There should be a block here with a little piece of ridge on it; One that twists so that the ridges run down towards the coast, not along it.”
Miller walked up and joined him, poking at the ridge on the other side.
“This one’s gone too.” He looked around, gripping his big stick. “Those things are heavy, and they drop straight down. There’s no way they slipped out or floated away.”
Dann mirrored his stance.
“So those lights you saw were someone messing with the path, you think?”
“Had to be; I can’t see anything else out here being of interest.” Miller shrugged. “Not clear on why though.”
“Merchant wagons.” Dann replied. “Not the little ones that people pull by themselves, but the big ones with the animals pulling them.”
Miller made a ‘go on’ gesture.
“Small wagons are light, so they can just carry it over the gap, or bump over it if they don’t see it in time.” Dann explained. “But you can’t do that with the bigger ones; They’re too heavy. So you’d have to find the missing pieces, or build something up in the hole, and maybe repair the wheel, and all that time you’re stopped in the middle of nowhere, right on a path that nobody uses.”
“And everyone uses the path closest to the coast.” Miller muttered, looking up and down the path, then starting to go through his pockets. “Dann, what do you have that’s brightly coloured?”

As they walked back, Dann kept looking over his shoulder.
“Will it work?”
“Should do.” Miller replied, turned to look at the bright blue banner tied to one of the poking sticks, limply waving over the junction. “The stones & mud in the missing-piece hole should stop it from falling over, and it’ll be visible for miles even without the looking box or the tower, so if a merchant comes along, they’ll at least see it and hopefully stop in time.”
“And if whoever put it there comes back & takes it down?” Asked Dann. ” They’d have no warning then.”
Miller grinned a nasty grin.
“True, but I’d see that it was gone, know they were there, and round up a bunch of folks from town. And then we’d all go down there and beat the shit out of them.”
They resumed the walk back to town.
“The extra flag was a good idea though.” Miller commented. “That far out it’s hard to spot from the junction, and tying it flat to the path means it’s hard to miss.”
“Those damn holes may as well make themselves useful.” Dann grumbled. “And maybe it’ll make someone wonder why it’s there, tied to the ridges & under their feet, and go a bit carefully.”
Miller paused again & looked back.
“Best we can do under the circumstances. No point in rounding up people to fix it if whoever did it can just disable it again.” He said. “If there were more towns around here with towers we could pass a warning message back using the flags, but …”
“There’s shit-all out here.” Dann finished the thought.
They set off again.