<span style="text-decoration: underline">The Armoury</span><br/><br/>Angelica Brigetchsen 207 was old and had learnt all the tricks she was ever going to. Officially retired, they greying hound had been posted to the quartermaster as a reward for service. No one expected her to do very much, but that wasn’t in her nature. The light duties she was issued were treated as Gerhardt’s Gospel and dealt with as promptly as her sore hands could see to them. There were few pieces in the armoury that hadn’t, at some point, been polished and oiled by the dedicated servant to the Reik, but her eyes were starting to fail and her legs just weren’t quite the same as they had been a few years before.<br/><br/>Still, she was what could competently be described as sleek. Her silvery fur gave her an air of mature respectability. Her features were still sharp and pleasant to look upon and her eyes, even if sight was failing, still bore a painfully vibrant lime-green hue. There were scars on her arms, not unusually so for a retired hound. Her light work uniform displayed them proudly like badges of honour. She was trim too. Retirement had not led to the acquisition of ‘puppy fat’.<br/><br/>The old hound was seated at her small workshop table, tongue firmly stuck out the corner of her mouth as she attended to the fine task of rebinding the braiding on an officer’s scabbard. It was delicate work, made harder by the slight jitter in Angelica’s clawed fingers. If there was one thing that wasn’t starting to fail, it was the hound’s sense of smell. She knew that Wachtmeister Reimund was behind the issuing grille close by. By the rich smell, he was oiling a heavy weapon.<br/><br/>Close by, but somewhere unknown was Stabsfeldwebel Hannah Grunewald. Angelica could always tell where the guard captain was by the scent of subtle perfume that she chose to wear against regulations. Everyone had their little vices, even if they were as dull as the hound’s own hidden chew-toy.<br/><br/>Quartermaster Süssmann lurked somewhere near as well. The weapons were his children as much as anything could be. It would be a rare day when he wasn’t present somewhere within the massed ranks of firearms, swords and accompanying kit. Angelica knew from experience that quartermasters tended to make a tidy profit from things that ‘disappeared’ from shipments. Süssmann wasn’t one of them. Süssmann liked<i>lists.</i><br/><br/>The newcomer brought a scent with her too. The familiar canine odour that announced ‘Wölfentreuen’ like a blazing beacon. Immediately Angelica’s tail began to wag furiously. She didn’t get many visitors from the hound community in the armoury, for those that served with the mountain troops tended to stick to themselves and appeared to suffer from a uniform streak of cunning that made them somewhat on the intense side for a hound seeking to end her days in happy service.<br/><br/>Angelica put the scabbard very reverently down and got to her feet. Her knees ached a little and there was a slight pinch in the thigh where once a spear had somehow got itself wedged. She turned from her tools and personal affects then brought herself up to proper stature with a few creaks and pops of her spine. Old age wasn’t something that hounds had been bred for. That there were painkillers freely available from the commissary was a relief. The elves she worked with treated her kindly too. There had been many a leg-twitch inducing scritch between the ears. After a life in the field, Angelica didn’t feel too poorly about the gentle posting. She still served and more importantly, she was still useful.<br/><br/>The hound rolled her neck twice and then set off, following her nose. A hound’s nose never lied. Before she even saw Anje Angelica knew her general age, gender and could smell the excitement on her. Something important had happened to this pup recently and that thrill rolled off her like billowing thunderheads. Angelica quickened her pace and ignored her ailments. Her tail picked up speed as her instincts sympathised and took on board the other hound’s excitement and made it her own. It wasn’t war-hunger scent. It was a happy-hound marker.<br/><br/>When she saw Anje however, the tail stopped mid swish and her mouth dropped open like a drawbridge and stayed that way. Angelica’s eyes went wide and an expression of shock shot through every element of her face and posture. She brought her hand up and stabbed one sharply clawed finger at Anje and burbled with the infectious hound excitement a single word.<br/><br/><b>[Teutari]</b><span style="color: #ff8000">‘<i>Hat!’</i></span><div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>