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would probably be able to contact Captain Linson. We breathed easier after that, and many of the fellows were vastly engaged by this use of sorcery on their behalf.
    A simple pull on the whipstaff and a hail to the boat’s crew were all that was needed to let us glide gently in to the bank. Preparations were rapidly made. We took a great quantity of weaponry, and provisions, and there was a certain amount of scuffling and laughing, for these lads were your real paktuns, dour and doughty fighting men who could let themselves go when the mood was on them. We watched as the sailors who were not going with us pulled Tuscurs Maiden out to midstream and then set off hauling downriver.
    We shouted the remberees, and watched, and presently were left on the bank, a party of fighting men and women dedicated to two main objectives — if you did not count the paramount objective of staying alive. One was to deal with the vile adherents of Lem the Silver Leem. The other to win a fortune that did not magically disappear before it could be spent.
    We marched along the riverbank to Pettarsmot, and saw few folk working the fields close to the town.
    The place was solid enough, with a fortress from which the flags flew.
    They left the gate open for us. As we’d trudged along so the folk in the fields had followed on, their day’s work done. The evening light lay mellow and rubicund upon the bricks and the masonry. The shadows looked purple under the archway. We walked in, ready to shout the Lahals and to slake our thirsts at the nearest tavern.
    A guard consisting of two ranks of spearmen waited, at ease, and their officer sauntered across. He wore metal armor. His sword was scabbarded.
    “Llahal!” called Pompino. “We are weary travelers going inland. We do not wish—”
    The officer — he was a so-Hikdar — said in a cold voice: “What you want or do not want is not important. Just look up there.”
    We looked up to the walls. Rows of armored men drew bows, and every arrow head pointed at us.
    “Now just throw down your weapons, all quiet and peaceable.”
    Useless to rage. Some of us no doubt could have escaped; most of us would be shafted. We threw down our weapons.
    They marched us off to the lock-up and tumbled us onto foul-smelling straw with water-running stone walls about us. The sound of iron bars clanging shut rattled through the cell and through our stupid skulls, by Krun. We’d been taken up like brainless milbys in a snare. Fine warrior paktuns of Kregen we were!

Chapter four
I learn about Ros the Claw
     
    “Well,” I said in what I hoped was a reasonable voice, “you can’t really blame them. We’ll see a local dignitary in the morning and explain. Then we can set off for the interior.”
    “You’re a fambly, Jak!” foamed Pompino. He strode up and down the stone cell and folk drew their legs out of his way. “Onker! We should have come in here with drawn swords!”
    “Then,” said Dayra in her level voice, “we’d all be dead.”
    In circumstances like these, people display their own peculiar characteristics. Murkizon was all for hitting the first guard over the head and breaking out. They’d taken our weapons away, of course; we were in no doubt that we’d pick them up, or others, in the nearest guardroom.
    Rondas the Bold, his vulturine features beaked and grim, seconded Murkizon. Nath Kemchug was perfectly prepared to bash a few skulls to win free.
    Surprisingly, Quendur the Ripper and Lisa the Empoin sided with me and counseled caution. They, too, felt that in a civilized country the mistake would soon be cleared up.
    “Mistake?” said Larghos the Flatch. He held the lady Nalfi close. “Mistake? The only mistake we made is in not doing as horter Pompino and Cap’n Murkizon suggested.”
    If we fell to a quarrel among ourselves, well, that would be perfectly natural. It wouldn’t help at all.
    Dayra had expressed her surprise that the lady Nalfi had elected to accompany us. But, Nalfi had,