"What can we do for you?" asked Thomas nervously. He wondered whether he ought to stand, but was unsure whether rising to his full height would be seen as threatening and provocative. So long as he remained seated and the trog remained standing their eyes were more or less level, and it seemed to him that this was the polite thing to do. He looked to Lirenna for help, remembering her saying that there were trogs in Haven and thinking that she'd know how to deal with them, but she was looking at the trogs, not at him, and he wasn't able to get her attention.

     Fortunately the trog gave no indication that he was offended by Thomas's failure to rise and took a position on the other side of the table where he could face all three of them at once. His two companions stood a little way back, like bodyguards, and watched the other patrons of the bar with dark eyed suspicion.

     "I am Shale Granore," he said, removing his helmet to reveal a completely bald head covered by a skullcap stretched tightly across his scalp. "I am Manir of the Granore family, of the Underberg clan and I have a business proposition for you. Are you interested?"

     Thomas glanced at Jerry and Lirenna, who glanced at each other and then nodded. "We might be," he said cautiously. "Can you be a little more specific?"

     "We are offering two gold clannets a day to anyone who will accompany us on a business venture. There will be fighting involved, so most of those we've hired already are good with a sword, but three wizards would be most welcome. As well as the power you can wield, your presence would lend confidence to our people and terrify the enemy. What do you say?"

     "I'm afraid we've only just graduated, so we won't be wielding very much power."

     "But you can do spells. I saw you."

     "Yes, but only one every few hours. After that, we're just ordinary people until we've absorbed more magic force and studied our spellbooks. Still, in some situations, one spell is all you need." He glanced at Lirenna, who gave a pained expression and lowered her eyes.

     Shale seemed to think for a while, and then said, "That doesn't matter. We didn't expect to be hiring three Arch-Mages doing tricks in a country pub for food and board. We still want you, for one gold clannet a day."

     "Hey, you said two a day," said Jerry, indignantly.

     "For one spell a day, you get one. Take it or leave it."

     "You mentioned fighting," said Lirenna. "Who exactly will we be fighting?"

     Thomas glanced at her in surprise. After her experience with the woodsman he’d expected her to flat out refuse. Then he remembered her sleep spell and her ability to enchant people. To her, fighting didn’t necessarily mean killing.

     "Nobody important," said Shale. "Buglins, a few shologs, maybe." He eyed Jerry shrewdly and said "Goblins."

  
     "Goblins, eh?" said Jerry, his eyes narrowing. He recognised an attempt to manipulate him when he saw one. The nome, goblin wars were remembered all across the continent, and this trog clearly thought that he could trigger the tiny nome just by mentioning the small, green humanoids. Jerry almost turned the trog down flat just from stubbornness and general principles, but then he hesitated. The trog was offering gold, and that wasn't an offer turned down lightly. “Keep talking,” he said therefore.

     “You're thinking of joining up?” said Thomas, surprised.

     “I just want to know more,” the nome replied. “I might be interested. Aren’t you? They’re offering gold.”

     “Not if it means fighting! I mean, look at me. I'm no fighter.”

     “Not with a sword, obviously,” said Jerry. “None of us are. I don't think it’s quite sunk in yet just what you are. A wizard. If you want to fight, you don't have to wave a sword around. You can kill a man with a word and a wave of your hand.”

     Thomas nodded, unconvinced. “My family's expecting me home,” he said quietly. He was aware how lame it sounded even as he said it.

     “Shouldn't take more than a few days,” said the trog. “You'll be on your way home before you know it with your pockets filled with gold.”

     “How do we know it’s nor some kind of crazy suicide mission?" He eyed the trog warily, but Shale didn't seem bothered by the suggestion and Thomas later learned that direct talk was the normal way of things in trog society, that they spoke their minds and expected others to do the same. Circumlocution and careful talk was suspicious and often regarded as dishonest, an attempt to deceive and confuse. Far from being angered, therefore, Shale seemed to relax and began to explain what it was all about.

     The trouble was to do with a trog mining village called Dermakarak, which was about fifty miles north of their current location, in the Copper Mountains. It had once been inhabited by fourteen trog families from the realm of Alka-Zarum, a small trog Kingdom to the north west of Ilandia, but had been abandoned about a hundred years before when the vein of gold they were mining ran out.

     Despite being sealed up and the entrance disguised, it had since been inhabited by several different kinds of undesirables, mainly buglins, but also, as he'd mentioned earlier, goblins and possibly a few shologs as well. It was a common fate for abandoned trog villages, and it was a cause of friction with the humans who lived in the area since it allowed far more of the evil humanoids to inhabit the mountains than would otherwise have been the case. Now, however, another vein had been discovered nearby and the trogs wanted to re-inhabit the village, use it as a base of operations for the new mining operation. First, though, it had to be cleared out and the new occupants killed or evicted, and that was where the hired fighters came in.

     Shale held the titles to the village, being the grandson of Redeye Granore, the founder and first Manir of Dermakarak. He chuckled. "There's many who'd like to get their hands on that vein," he said. "They even tried to set up a secret operation up there to the east and tunnel in, but we caught ‘em and sent 'em packing. No-one rips off ol' Shale Granore and gets away with it."

     He stood up. "We'll give you the night to sleep on it. We're leaving at first light tomorrow, so catch us if you want to come. See you then, perhaps." He left, and the other two trogs followed him, watched with interest by everyone in the room who broke into a hubbub of fascinated speculation the moment the door closed behind them. Ears at neighbouring tables were strained as they waited to hear what the wizards would decide, and they decided to retire upstairs, to the room the three of them were sharing, so they could talk in privacy.

     "Bloody hell!" exclaimed Thomas in surprise. "We're not even home yet and we're in demand already. And to think I was worried about finding work."

     "Tragius said the world can be divided into two kinds of places," replied Jerry. "Those where wizards are always in demand and those where they're hunted like wild animals. This seems to fall into the first category."

     Thomas nodded. "So, what do you think?" he asked.

     "Well, I'm going, even if you're not," said Jerry. "I need to get some gold in my pockets somehow, and it would be nice to get a few goblins while I’m at it. I owe them for the deaths of my parents."

     "What about you, Lenny?" he asked, using the abbreviated form of her name that he'd started using as their friendship grew.

     "I don't know," she said doubtfully, fingering her silky dark hair with a slender finger. "The money would be useful, wizardry is expensive, but once I'm home the Queen will give me everything I need in return for my help in maintaining the magics that hide Haven from accidental discovery. I won't need my own source of income, and I don't like the idea of killing anything, even goblins and buglins."

     "We don't have to kill them, just drive them out. They'll probably surrender or run when they see us coming, and if by some chance some fighting does break out, you could probably stop it by putting a few of them to sleep. By being there, you could be saving lives, not taking them."

     "Mmm," she said thoughtfully. "What about you? Are you going?"

     "If you go, I will. Like you said, wizardry's expensive and right now I've got exactly..." He reached into a pouch and pulled out the day's earnings, counting rapidly. "Fourteen pence to my name. My parents don't have any money, and without money to buy equipment and spell components I might as well sell my spellbook and follow dad into the cobbling business. This kind of work, fighting humanoids and other bad guys, is probably the only kind of work I'm going to be able to get until I've built up a reputation for myself. I wouldn't like to go alone, though. I Don't know. Maybe."

     "If you go, then so will I," said the demi shae with sudden determination. "Once I'm back in Haven, it's not likely that I'll ever leave the valley again. I'd like to see a bit of the world first, and I've always wondered what a trog village looked like."

     "Looks like it's agreed then," said Jerry excitedly. "We're going hunting!"