Shaun handed Thomas a length of rope, and the wizard rolled an outlaw onto his front, pulled his arms behind his back and tied them as securely as he could, wondering whether or not to tell the others that Haldorn had a mandatory death sentence for outlaws. These poor wretches had several weeks in a suffocatingly hot, rat infested dungeon to look forward to while their cases were heard by the Haldornian judiciary, following which they would be disembowelled in public. Given the choice, they would probably have preferred to have their throats cut quickly and mercifully in their sleep. After some consideration, though, he decided to say nothing. He was extremely fond of the cleric and would never do a thing to hurt her if he could possibly help it. This was one of those occasions where ignorance was bliss.
Shaun then gathered up the outlaws’ steel weapons, which were much too valuable to just leave lying around, and tied them together into an easy to carry bundle.
“Hey, our horses have run off!” cried Jerry suddenly. “All the noise must have frightened them off!”
“Doesn’t matter,” replied Matthew. “All the outlaws’ horses are still here, we can use them.”
“Yes, but all our equipment was on them,” pointed out the tiny nome. “All our pot holing equipment, our food, spare clothes. Everything!”
“They probably haven’t gone far,” replied Matthew. “We’ll probably find them a few hundred yards away, grazing happily on a patch of grass. Come on, let’s go look for them.”
Matthew, Jerry and the two trogs set out in different directions to look for their horses, but still hadn’t found them after an hour’s searching. “You know what they’ve gone and done, don’t you?” said the young soldier in frustration. “They’ve gone all the way back to the palace, taking all our stuff with them. Everything!”
“Not quite everything,” pointed out Thomas. “I kept most of my stuff in my backpack. I sort of felt it was safer that way. I’ve got a red light glowbottle, the white light glowbottle, the bottle of magic and all the stuff I normally carry there. What about you, Jerry? Have you still got your spellbook?”
“Yes, thank the Gods. Like you, I feel safer carrying it on my person.”
“Me too,” added Lirenna.
“Well, that’s something at least,” said Shaun. “We’re going to need more than that if we’re going to go ahead with this mission, though. We’ve got a choice. We can either go back to the palace and see if they’ll let us have our stuff back, or we can go on and try to buy some more equipment and supplies at the next town we come to. What do you think?”
“If we go back, we lose four days at least,” said Angus. “I say we go on. I expect these fellows here...” he waved a hand at the bound outlaws, who glared back at him, “have plenty of the local currency on them, enough to buy us just about anything we want.”
“They’re not likely to have specialist pot holing equipment for sale, though, are they?” pointed out Shaun.
“You do not need pot holing equipment,” said the slaver, coming over to rejoin them. “The tunnels we will be using have been used by various subterranean races for tens of thousands of years. Where they were narrow, they have been widened. Where the floor was rough and uneven, it has been smoothed and leveled. Where the going was too steep, alternate tunnels have been dug, or stairs built. There is nowhere between here and the Underworld where you cannot walk as easily as you do on the surface. Besides, regardless of what you decide, I am going on. I will not spend one moment longer on the surface than is absolutely necessary.”
“Well, that’s that then,” said Thomas. “Looks like we’re going on.”
They searched each of their bandit prisoners, to take all their money and make sure they had no hidden weapons, and then those who’d lost horses chose new ones from the bandits’ mounts. It meant that Angus, Douglas and Jerry had to ride full size horses instead of the ponies they’d come on, but they managed well enough. They then saddled up and continued north, having at least two more hours before sunrise and wanting to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the scene of the battle, just in case. Half a dozen of the bandits had escaped, after all, and no-one wanted to take the chance that their loyalty and friendship with the prisoners might turn out to be stronger than their fear of the slaver. When the daytime came, and the cthillian went off to hide from the rays of the yellow sun, the questers remained especially vigilant for any sign of them, but they didn’t show up. The day passed uneventfully, and when the night came again they set off once more.
An hour before midnight, they came upon a town large enough for their purposes. Likely to have enough jail cells to hold eighteen prisoners and have the supplies they needed. They entered, therefore, while the slaver waited outside. The largest moon was full, the bright streaks of a meteor shower filled the sky alongside the dancing curtains of an auroral display, and a huge comet, ten times the diameter of the moon, loomed overhead, bathing the town in a silvery light so bright that they could see almost as well as during the daytime. Truly dark nights were rare on Tharia.
The buildings were square and bricklike, with stark, rectangular doorways and square windows. There was not a single attempt at decorative ornamentation anywhere, and when Thomas went over to the nearest building to examine it, he saw why. What, from a distance, looked like hard baked clay was, in fact, nothing more than dry mud, held together by a thin framework of wooden poles and straw. So long as the climate was hot and dry, as it was for most of the year, it would be fine, but during the autumn rains a great part of it would be washed away, taking with it any decorative ornamentation they might have put on it. Having to splash fresh mud on the walls every year, therefore, they would do only the most basic job and not bother with irrelevancies like decorations that wouldn’t last longer than a few months.
The young wizard was struck by the contrast between this town and the prince’s magnificent palace and thought that, since there might well be some resentment of the aristocracy among the villagers, it might be best if they didn’t say where they’d come from. He mentioned this to the others, and they all agreed. “Yes,” said Shaun. “If anyone asks, we’ll say that we come from Lydia, along the spice road. We don’t want any trouble if we can possibly avoid it.”
Most of the town was asleep, but a few people were still up and about, taking advantage of the cometlight and the setting red sun to get a few extra hours of work in. A woodcarver, an old, wrinkled man wearing loose white robes, sandals and a turban, was whittling away at a large block of wood that he held in his swollen, arthritic hands. A cobbler was sitting in a doorway, putting stitches in a sheet of leather with a long curved needle held between hard, calloused fingers and an old woman wearing a long skirt that came down to her feet was sitting in a wicker chair mending holes in a net curtain. She stared at them with eyes that were cloudy with cataracts as they passed.
There was an empty, open area in the centre of town in which a single, huge fig tree grew. Sitting under the tree, his back nestled comfortably amongst its cluster of central trunks, was an immensely fat, elderly man dressed only in a strip of cloth wrapped around his waist, partly hidden in front by the drooping bulge of his huge stomach. His head was shaved, his fat arms were covered with strange tattoos and around his neck, almost hidden by his multiple chins, was a carved wooden owl on a thin length of string, the emblem of Tizar, Goddess of Wisdom. At first they thought he was asleep, but as they got closer they saw that he was meditating, his eyes open and staring ahead at nothing. They tiptoed past so as not to disturb him, and made their way to the jail on the other side of the square.
The sheriff wasn’t in, presumably he was at home in bed, but his deputy was on duty, guarding a pair of shifty looking characters that glared sullenly at them from behind the bars of their cells. He didn’t speak common but he recognised the bandits instantly and ushered them into an empty cell before making frantic hand signals for the questers to remain where they were and dashing off. They looked at each other in puzzlement for a few moments, but a couple of minutes later he returned with the sheriff, still hastily pulling on his clothes. He stared in amazement at the bandits in their cell, and then turned to face the questers, delight and disbelief on his face.
“So it is true, you have captured Ashlazzar and his men!” he exclaimed. “Aumradi told me, but I did not think it could possibly be true. His gang has been terrorising the area for years, and have defied our every effort to capture them. You must be mighty warriors to have done what our armies could not.”
“They did not defeat us!” called out Ashlazzar, his hands still tied behind his back. “They had a demon with them, and it was this that defeated us. Those pacharros are in league with the minions of Hell! Kill them at once, before they bring ruin and disaster down upon us all!”
“He’s lying,” said Shaun. “There was no demon with us. See, our sister is a cleric of Caroli. Would she be in league with a demon?”
“I believe you,” replied the sheriff. “Ashlazzar is renowned as a liar, a cheat and a traitor. And besides, if you were truly in league with evil forces, you would have simply killed them instead of bringing them to justice.”
“It is true, I swear it!” screamed the bandit. “I saw the creature. Its skin was the colour of hot coals and it had the trunk of an elephant.”
“Come,” said the sheriff. “Let us continue this discussion elsewhere. I will take you to the tavern, where we can talk in more pleasant surroundings.”
They left the jail, leaving the bundle of captured weapons in the sheriff’s office, and he led them back across the square, the questers following.