They were greeted by half a dozen members of the town guard. They wore ancient, ill fitting boiled leather armour that had probably been in their families for generations and carried old swords and axes, some made of real steel worn thin by decades of careful sharpening. Their leader, a powerful looking man of about fifty wearing a helm with a crest of faded red feathers, came forward to greet them. "Thank the Gods you've come!" he said. "We were afraid young Albert wouldn't get through! By the Gods, we're glad to see you!"

The men looked at each other in puzzlement. "I don't know what the bloody drass you're talking about," said Gallit, raising his voice to be heard above the weather. "This is a routine patrol. Our decision to come here instead of Hollybury was made at the last moment, when we heard that the bridge over the Thime was washed out."

The guardsman looked grief stricken. "You mean he didn't get through?"

"He may have," said Gallit. "He may have arrived in Fort Battleaxe after we left. Look, do you mind if we continue this discussion inside? If we stand in the drassing rain much longer, we're going to grow drassing gills."

"Yes, of course, of course!" apologised the guardsman. "Please, come this way. My name's Ableman, by the way. Flint Ableman." He paused, as if waiting for the Beltharans to introduce themselves in turn, but Gallit just gave a grunt and pushed his way past into the town, and the guardsman hurried back into the lead to show the way.

The street was narrow, the wooden buildings crowded close together to make the defensive wall as small as possible, and rainwater washed in a stream past their feet, carrying the occasional half rotted vegetable and dead rat. The small windows were almost all dark, with only one or two shining with the ruddy orange light of an oil lamp. It was still only early evening, of course. The yellow sun was presumably still above the horizon, somewhere above the heavy cloud cover, but it must have been almost too dark to see inside those buildings. There should have been more lights. The whole town should have been lit up. It's as if they're hiding, the priest thought. They're afraid. Something terrible has happened here, and the remaining townspeople are cowering with fear.

The guardsman led them to a communal hall near the centre of town, where the men gratefully stripped off their soaking wet clothes and hung them over the backs of wooden benches to dry. A couple of scared looking townswomen then began passing around blankets, but after wrapping them around their waists the men looked after the metal parts of their uniforms first, drying off the precious iron and wiping them with grease or oil. "Is Albert all right?" one of the woman asked Gallit, staring into his eyes with desperate hope, but the Sergeant could only repeat his assurances that he was sure he was safe. The woman nodded gratefully and hurried on before she broke down completely.

"I look like a prune," said Cheston, examining his fingers ruefully. "I haven't been as wrinkled as this since I was a baby."

"That sudden silence is everyone suddenly picturing you as a baby," said Gordon Grey, grinning. "I used to think you just fell out of the sky in a storm, like frogs."

"Frogs like water. I don't. If I liked water I'd have joined the navy. You know what's so great about the navy? When the Captain says charge, he has to come with you." Drake frowned at that but said nothing.

"My uncle Jack was in the merchant navy. He died fighting Lantellans off the coast of Astoran..." Drake stopped listening and gave all his attention to his equipment.

They finished drying themselves and the townspeople brought food and drink. Later, as the men were relaxing and swapping war stories, Ableman returned with the town's mayor to invite Gallit to a briefing. The Sergeant beckoned to Drake and Rivan, his Corporal, to follow him as the Mayor led them into an adjoining room. Drake had expected the problem to be the trolls. One family wouldn't have been much of a problem, as Lofton had explained earlier, but the giant creatures had occasionally been known to band together into tribes of twenty or thirty, making an almost unstoppable force that only an army of regular soldiers would have been able to handle. The guardsman dismissed them with a shrug, though. "Oh them," he said. "They come here every couple of months or so, making a lot of noise and trampling the crops, but they're too stupid to cause us too much trouble. We can handle them. No, they're not the problem at all."

"Then what the bloody drass is the problem?" asked Gallit impatiently.

"Shologs," said Ableman. "Dozens of them, and hundreds of goblins. They've virtually laid siege to us. They came about a month ago. Killed twenty farming families, drove the rest inside the town walls and made off with over half our cattle. We sent out a patrol to find their camp and wipe them out, but they were ambushed in the forest and massacred to the last man. Since then, there have been barely enough of us to defend the town and we dare not go out after them again. We've been made prisoners in our own town, while they roam the countryside with impunity. Our crops go untended. Our animals, those we weren't able to bring inside the walls, we had to turn them free or watch them starve in their pens. We have enough food in store to last us another three or four weeks. After that..." He shrugged miserably.

"Wait a minute," interrupted Gallit. "You said a few dozen snouts. You can disregard the gobs. Beat the snouts and the gobs'll just run away. Surely a town this size can muster enough men to wipe out a tribe that small! What in the bloody name of hell happened to you?"

"Most of our experienced fighting men were killed in a, er, dispute with our neighbours, Conyspring. The patrol that went out and was wiped out by the shologs were the last of our trained fighters. Those left to defend the walls have almost never held a weapon before. There's only myself and a couple of others, retired but returned to service for the duration of this emergency, who know one end of a sword from the other."

"I see," said Gallit grimly, his lips thin with anger. "Another war between the forest towns. How many times have we drassing well told you..."

"Please!" interrupted Ableman. "You know nothing about the circumstances leading up to the dispute, and anyway we've got more immediate problems. We can discuss this after we've dealt with the shologs."

"All right," said Gallit. "How long ago did this Albert of yours set out?"

"About ten days ago. He thought he might be able to get through to Fort Battleaxe to bring help, thinking that one man might be able to get through unnoticed. No-one had any better ideas, so we let him. Like I said, that was about ten days ago."

"We left Fort Battleaxe eight days ago, so we might have just missed him," said Gallit. "They don't know we were going to come this way, we didn't know ourselves until three days ago, so if he did get through and they decided to send help, they might be just behind us. We'll wait a day or two, see if anyone turns up, and in the meantime we'll send out a few scouts, find out what they're up to, exactly how many of them there are. I'll decide what we're going to do when they get back and make their report."

An aide to the Mayor then brought in a map of the surrounding area and the men pored over it as the Captain of the Guard pointed out various strategic features of the lands around. Drake found himself unable to pay proper attention, though, as a strange restlessness gripped him, the certainty that there was something he should be doing. He began pacing up and down, struggling to think if there was something he'd forgotten, until Gallit rounded on him angrily. "Are we boring you?" he demanded. "If you'd rather not be included in staff meetings again..."

"I should accompany the scouts tomorrow," said Drake on an impulse, and the moment he said it the feeling of restlessness left him, to be replaced by calm certainty. "And if you decide not to help these people, if you decide to pull the men out and continue on, I will remain."

"You are a member of this squad!" snapped Gallit angrily. "You'll do as you're bloody well told!"

"My first loyalty is to Samnos, He is my commanding officer. I must do as He directs me, and I believe it is His will that I remain."

Gallit fumed, but the Emperor himself had accepted the priesthood's conditions for fighting in his armies, and priests of Samnos were far too valuable to risk alienating them. They gave such an advantage in battle that every country on the continent had enlisted them, and they would pack their bags and leave if the country they served tried to fight another country that had priests of Samnos in it. The result was that wars between civilized countries had all but ceased since the God of the fight against evil had first revealed himself to mankind at the dawn of the Agglemonian age, and it was believed to be one of the main causes for the rise of the Empire.

"Good, good," said Ableman, shaking his hand. "We knew that you, at least, a man of the Gods, would help us. Let's hope that these military men also decide to do the decent thing and come to our aid."

"That depends on what the scouts report," snarled Gallit, unperturbed. "If there are too many of them, it would be bloody stupid of us to throw our lives away in a hopeless battle. It would be better to return to Fort Battleaxe and bring reinforcements."

"By the time you get back, you might find nothing here but burned out ruins," said Ableman. "You are our only hope."

"We'll see what the scouts report, and then we'll decide," repeated Gallit, his voice rising with impatience.

"Who are you going to send?" asked Rivan.

"Chubb, I think. He's one of the least inept of this bunch of useless apes I've been saddled with. Grew up in the woods. Mason as well, and Spencer."

"And me," added Drake.

"You will stay here," insisted Gallit, though. "I won't have some snot nosed recruit stampeding around the countryside alerting the snouts and putting my scouts in danger. You'll leave town when we all do, to fight openly."

"I will accompany the scouts," insisted Drake flatly, his tone of voice leaving no room for discussion. "It is the will of Samnos. I will not alert the shologs. The gifts that Samnos grants his followers will allow me to go unnoticed. Your scouts will not come to harm because of me."

Gallit leaned close and whispered directly into his face. "If you do, me and the snouts will have something in common." He then turned and stalked out of the room.