Mayor Dalen held the hunting hearing in a room that still smelled of onions.
Mossbank's meeting hall hosted village meals, winter storage, public votes, contract discussions, and anything else requiring more chairs than the mayor owned. Two long tables had been pushed together beneath the district seal. The Copper Hounds sat on one side. The local hunting cooperative occupied the other.
A gnome clerk stood near the rear wall with the copied map and the map seller's written statement. She answered questions about where the map was purchased, what the advertisement promised, and whether the seller had been warned. She did not tell Mayor Dalen how to apply Corathian law.
The mayor began with the boundary.
The blue cords were legal claim markers. Their placement matched the district registry. The Copper Hounds had crossed them. The fact that the adventurers did not understand the markers did not make the claim disappear.
The ridgebacks complicated the decision.
