Loki lands a little ways off and waits.

They're talking about how soon the area will be exhausted of food and when it would be wise to move south and how they'd expect the valley to react to a rainstorm. The conversation wraps up a while later; he doesn't seem inclined to hurry it along for her.

"Our scouts aren't anywhere near there in the first place. Did something happen?"

"Yes, one was caught within eight-foot-bow-range of the place; Tyelcormo demonstrated the shot. Spooked the Fëanorians, which spooked the orcs, so the orcs are heading to their new home now and it's going to be more inconvenient to collect horses et cetera and they're not thrilled about following through on that at all."

"Who?"

"Sarpalarë. She says she was lost, which doesn't seem a virtue in a scout; and that you didn't have enough selection of ranged weapons that she could take anything less poorly suited to scouting than a bow that can't be fired while standing on flat ground; and that she couldn't have made the shot, which I can't verify, but even if she was just standing there without a ranged weapon in hand it makes her look a bit like a spy."

"I see. Is she all right? What does my brother want to hear from us?"

"She's fine; I spoke to her to make sure they weren't spoofing where it was they found her and she didn't have some really good explanation but she and they agreed on the place. I'm not sure what he wants, but he expects to be unimpressed; I'm hoping you'll surprise me."

"My answer depends very strongly on your assessment of what the best thing we can salvage from this is. Am I playing to avoid a war, or to get one of my people back alive, or to let my brother feel out how much unnecessary time is going to be wasted on nonsense for the next several centuries?"

"If you don't have a good explanation for what she was doing there, I will trade for her safe return anyway by teaching one of them to fly so they have a bird scout and can feel sure that at any given time they aren't being menaced by oversized bows. I don't think they're going to go to war with you over it in light of that being the baseline option."

He looks at her intently. "Thank you for that. I appreciate it tremendously. We do not send scouts out with weapons like that; we also don't send scouts in their direction at all. The group Sarpalaurë was assigned to was headed out to the coast, and has not come back to tell me they lost one of their number; I'll send people after them now, unless you can think of a reason I shouldn't."

"Does this involve the scout-fetchers going in the direction of the Fëanorian camp?"

"No. They went - well, should have gone - very nearly due west."

"Then fetching them back seems reasonable. I assume Sarpalarë is out of a job when she comes home?"

"We'll stop scouting until we're ready to move on again; it's obviously not worth the risk. In your assessment was she planning to fire on them?"

"Based on your story plus the facts I can verify she left camp without a giant bow, acquired one and split off from her group in some order of operations, circled around you unnoticed, and then was found in a spot that demonstrably allows shots into the camp with Quendi vision. I think it is pretty reasonable to conclude that everyone, including Sarpalarë, is very lucky that Fëanor did not happen to go outdoors before she was noticed."

"She had help acquiring the weapon; I don't think in the timeframe discussed she could have built one."

"So someone in her scouting group was complicit? I doubt she could have hidden it from them effectively if someone here had smuggled it to her before she left."

"Or after she left them someone met her; we haven't been watching comings and goings all that closely, and people leave to hunt. Though not with a weapon like that. Her scouting group, if they haven't met some calamity, are in any event suspect for not immediately returning and reporting that they'd lost someone." He shakes his head. "You're welcome to stay for the trial. And I suppose to tell Fëanor he can send some people, though he'd better choose them well."

"I was hoping to make it to a Dwarf kingdom and back in the next three days; how long do you expect this to take?"

"Well, we have to get her back first; I can't try something this grave in absentia."

"Any objection to the trade-her-for-a-bird idea, or do you plan to ask them to retain custody of her here until the trial's over and abide by its result?"

"I'm not sure. Shall we step inside where we can have more privacy?"