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tell and should not even know.” He looked at me apologetically and I decided to probe no further.  
    The steady marching steps outside slowly had increased to a constant droning, this was a troop of at least a fifty soldiers, which seemed pretty excessive to me.
     
    Quietly we exchanged a look and lurked closer to the small hatchway.
    These soldiers looked much more orderly and a huge deal more grim than the soldiers I met at the waking area, probably the service around the exit area was given to the troops cannon fodder seeing how dangerous it was.
    Disciplined the soldiers marched into the village while keeping a rectangular formation.
    A crowd of villagers already had assembled at the towns center and a good amount of boxes had been piled up, so that was the reason for the many soldiers and not because they expected fighting.
    I semi-expected to witness horses or mules, but probably there were none aboard of the ship at all. No one did expect this huge relapse into primitive times.
    The troop leader stepped forward and snapped some short orders, to which the soldiers expanded their formation, revealing a somewhat corpulent man in their midst. “Marple enlarge” I murmured and was able to see that this guy was not a soldier, he was wearing a weird mixture of a toga and chaps .
    He was visibly puffing and was busy trying to get into a dignified pose.
    “ Who are you talking with?” suddenly Mark asked and I realized that my order to Marple had been too loud. “Well okay I will tell you. My glasses are very smart and can do many different things for me. I just took a closer look at that bloke in the soldiers middle. Do you know him?”  
    “ Sure, that is our official prefect, he calls the shots around here.”  
    “ Aha, right, now I’ll listen what he is telling your people. Could you do me the favor and stay very quiet while I do that?”  
    Mark nods and I state very distinctly addressed at Marple “Glasses please enhance the sound level at my line of vision.”
    With a piqued tone of voice Marple replies “Why so formal? Very well you should be able to hear more clearly.”
    In the meantime the prefect caught his breath and was taking account of the boxes with a satisfied look.
    “ This is looking good. I had my doubts if y’all could meet the requirements. List and be snappy!” With explicit impatience he waved a villager close, which hesitantly came closer and handed over what had to be an inventory list.  
    The prefect grabbed the list and went through the records, while mustering the stacks.
    “ For the protocol” he suddenly barked with notable anger. “You have yet again a backlog of chickens. Next time at least a 20 chickens have to be delivered to avoid a harsh penalty.” He took out a second list and compared it with the inventory, now and then he muttered something and crossed out records from his list.  
    “ Well done, you managed to compensate your backlog of carrots, more chickens next time and there won’t be any trouble.”  
    He went to a wooden chair with an impressively high back, sat down with a content breath, clapped his hands and announced “Time to dispense justice. What disputes and crimes do you have for me this month?”
     
    “ Here” a loud and very deep male voice rumbled from behind the crowd, while another man softly stated “Damn it, just let it go will you.” “No we sort this out here and now!” The prefect signs the guards to bring forth the two men.  
    A lean fellow with a yeanling trailing behind on a rope steps forward.
    The loud voice belongs to a true giant of a man, he drones “So it is like this sir. I say this yeanling is duly mine. It was my ram who sired it and I never agreed to that!”
    The prefect scrutinizes the two guys and then addresses the yeanlings handler “And why is it then that you claim the yeanling for you?”
    To this the rather slimly built man replies “This silly monkey business, how is it my fault if he cannot properly