They ran for the rest of the day.

     Thomas surprused himself by being able to keep up with the others, but the soldiers were concerned by the trail they were leaving through the dense undergrowth, a trail a child would have been able to follow.

     "Don't worry about it," said Thomas, grinning, as they paused to catch their breaths in the lee of a low, overgrown wall. "In fact, it's good. It works right in our favour."

     "How's that?" asked Matthew uncertainly.

     "They'll follow us," said the wizard. "They'll all come this way, and when they've gone a few miles we teleport back to the building they smoked us out of. We spent all night and half the day there, I know it well enough to teleport accurately. They'll all be gone from there by then, following us, and we simply move out in a different direction, this time taking care to cover our trail."

     Drenn grinned with delight. "Sanclair, my old teacher, would have been proud of you. I'd like to let them catch up with us first, though. I want to catch one of them."

     "What for?" asked Matthew.

     "Information," said the priest. "He can tell us where their centres of population are. The best places to hide out while we wait to hear from Saturn. Otherwise, we're likely to blunder into one of their cities and find ourselves captured before we know what's happening."

     "And what do we do with him when he's told us everything he knows?" asked Matthew doubtfully. "If he's told us where to hide, he'll tell his friends when we let him go."

     "We don't let him go," the priest replied grimly. "We..."

     "No!" snapped Thomas firmly. "We don't kill him. It would be murder, pure and simple."

     "They have made themselves our enemies," pointed out the priest. "Samnos allows us to..."

     "I don't care what Samnos lets you do!" cried the wizard, his eyes burning with determination. "We're not at war with these people. It's a simple misunderstanding, one that we may still be able to sort out. We're not killers."

     Drenn examined the wizard sharply, his steely grey eyes narrowing, but then he nodded. "Very well," he said, "but we need the information. What do you propose we do with him?"

     Thomas had no answer to that, though, and shortly afterwards they got back to their feet and trotted on.

     They'd covered about ten miles by the time the sun sank behind the towering, ruined buildings, but the darkness of the stretching shadows was offset by the soft, silvery glow of the ring arching overhead like a sholog's scimitar. The soldiers, trained in the art of travelling through hostile territory, made good use of the light to scan their surroundings, alert for the slightest sign of human activity, and several times Drenn spotted furtive movements in the buildings towering on either side of them.

     He called the others' attention to it and the Tharians, expecting that they were about to come under attack again, began looking for a defensible position, but any building they entered might already be occupied by the enemy. As the hours went by and nothing happened, though, they cautiously allowed themselves to relax.

     "I don't think they're hostile," said Matthew, squinting through the darkness at a grove of trees they were passing in which he thought he'd seen movement. "I think they're different people from the soldiers who attacked us."

     "I thought I got a glimpse of one back there," agreed Jop Sonno. "The impression I got was of feathers and war paint. Barbaric tribesmen rather than organised soldiers."

     Drenn nodded. "If that is the case, they're probably more scared of us than we are of them. They probably think we belong to the same civilisation as the soldiers. The barbarians are probably the original inhabitants of this country, the soldiers having arrived more recently. I wonder where from."

     "Maybe they're part of an expeditionary force," suggested Thomas. "Scouting the area. Maybe they don't actually belong to this land at all. Their cities may be hundreds of miles away."

     That turned out not to be the case, though. It was only a couple of hours later that they saw lights in the lower windows of the buildings ahead. Lights from camp fires or dwellings of some kind. They were approaching one of the inhabited areas, either a barbarian encampment or a city of the more sophisticated military people.

     "Time to teleport out, Tom," said Matthew.

     "No, not yet," said Drenn, though. "We still need information, and we can get it as easily from a townsman as a soldier."

     "You want us to walk in there?" asked Matthew in amazement. "In case it escaped your notice, they don't exactly like us very much."

     "The wizard can teleport us out in an instant if danger threatens," said Drenn, regarding Thomas confidently. "We will not be attacked without being challenged first. That will be our signal to leave, but I think we'll be able to sneak in without being seen. We can grab someone and..."

     "Just grab someone?" said Matthew, frowning. "Some innocent civilian you mean? We aren't bandits! We will not behave like bandits!"

     "We will not, of course, harm them," sighed the priest in exasperation. "Samnos would punish me terribly for such a sin."

     He glared at the Flight Leader until he nodded, smiling sheepishly. "Yeah, I know," said Matthew. "I know you wouldn't do that. It's just, you know. The way you've been just lately. It makes us wonder, you know?"

     Drenn nodded. "I have, perhaps, overreacted to our situation. Forgotten the ideals of my faith. The protection of the innocent is my most important priority, though, and the civilians of this world are innocent. We will merely talk to them. If they refuse to talk, or react with fear, we will leave."

     The others nodded, Thomas feeling greatly relieved, and after another moment in which to collect their thoughts they continued on.

☆☆☆

     As they drew closer, they were surprised at the size and sophistication of the community they were approaching. They had, perhaps subconsciously, been expecting that people who lived in the ruins of a city built by someone else would be simple and primitive, not too different from the humanoid tribes inhabiting the ruins of old Agglemonian cities back on Tharia. Old Mala, for instance, was inhabited by eternally warring tribes of shologs, goblins and feral humans, fashioning tools and weapons from whatever they could find in the decaying buildings, and although they'd been willing to grant that the inhabitants of this city might not be as wild and hostile as shologs, they had nevertheless been expecting to find more or less the same kind of culture here.

     As they drew closer to the lighted buildings, though, they were surprised to see that the inhabitants had not only demolished the upper storeys, to remove the danger of their collapse trapping and hurting people below, but that they had substantially rebuilt the remaining lower storeys, making them their own. They had used the rubble to build sturdy walls across the canyon/streets, walls that impressed the newcomers with the sophistication of their design and construction.

     What they had created bore little resemblance to any Tharian city, since every building was the size of a nobleman’s mansion divided into dozens of individual dwellings, but it had the same feel as a Tharian city except for being surrounded by towering, crumbling skyscrapers instead of open countryside. The buildings were bedecked by colourful banners and pennants, flags bearing heraldic designs and coats of arms fluttering in the wind, and soldiers dressed in shining, metal armour strode along the wall, passing a few friendly words as they passed each other on a walkway that had to have been several feet wide.

     The road they were following was more or less straight, like all the streets they'd seen so far, dividing the original city into a checkerboard pattern of squares hundreds of yards along each side, but ahead they saw a road that cut across the others at an angle as it headed towards the walled community. It also differed from the other roads they'd seen so far in that it had been cleared of shrubbery, revealing a surface of packed earth covering whatever surface the road had originally been made of. The earth bore the deep grooves of wheel tracks, signifying the passage of a considerable amount of traffic during the daylight hours, although now the road was bare and empty, the community having been shut up for the night.

     "A wall," said Drenn, chuckling with amazement. "Well, that changes everything. Getting inside's not going to be as easy as I thought."

     "We could probably sneak in," said Jop Sonno, studying the wall through narrowed eyes. "We could climb over..."

     "Forget it," said Matthew, however. "Look at those guards. They're well trained and they mean business." He frowned. "You don't need defences like that to fend off spear wielding barbarians. They must be divided into several warring nations. That explains why we were greeted so aggressively by the soldiers. Our uniforms must have made them think we were citizens of a rival kingdom neighbouring their own."

     The others agreed, nodding soberly.

     "Maybe we could just wander in through open gates with a group of citizens," suggested Roj Villa. "Blend in with the locals. We could obtain some civilian clothing from somewhere..."

     A shower of arrows suddenly flew out from the surrounding darkness, hitting the Tharians and bouncing harmlessly off their glass ceramic armour. All except Matthew, who suffered a graze to his forehead. Drenn's sword leapt from its scabbard and he spun around, searching the surrounding greenery, and he was running to the attack while the others were still recovering from their surprise.

     Thomas hurriedly cast his Globe of Force spell, but nothing happened and he cursed bitterly. The spell must have changed since he'd last cast it. He cast his Shield spell instead, therefore. The first defensive spell he'd ever learned, way back in the Fourth Shadowwar. It was a much less powerful spell, though, and could only protect him from the front. He spun around to face the direction from which the arrows had come, therefore, praying that they hadn't been surrounded, that there weren't more enemies behind them who might even now be aiming an arrow at his exposed back.

     "They've found us!" he cried. "We've got to teleport out! Form a group, quick! Everyone link hands!"

     The others were milling around in confusion, though, looking for enemies to fight. They heard sounds of fighting from the direction Drenn had gone, and with a battlecry they ran off to help him. Thomas was left standing alone, staring in wide eyed terror. He ran over to the nearest building, clambering over the overgrown rubble that had fallen from above until he was standing with his back to it, his eyes darting back and forth across the forested street as the words of attack spells crowded into his head.

     He knew he ought to go after the others, that they might need magical support in their battle, but leaving his place by the wall would leave his back exposed again, and if he was killed, the others would be stranded, with no-one to teleport them out. Their eventual capture would be certain. He had a duty to keep himself safe, but how safe was he, standing all alone while the others were fighting elsewhere? If a group of enemy soldiers turned up here, how many would he be able to strike down with his remaining spells before he was overcome? He quivered in an agony of indecision and then, with a blistering curse, he ran off after the others.

     Ahead of him, he saw Matthew and his men charging through a dense bank of greenery to join up with Drenn, who was in furious battle with nearly a dozen men. They were all dirty and unkempt, dressed in worn, faded clothes. Scarred and evil, their narrow eyes blazing with malice and greed as they strove to bring down this madman who thought he could take them all on by himself. Thomas saw Matthew leaping to the priest's aid, charging through the encircling enemies to stand at his back, but the wizard looked for a covered position from which to cast his spells. There was an overgrown wall by the side of the road. Perfect.

     The bad guys weren't soldiers this time, he noted. They were outlaws. Highwaymen. They were skilled swordsmen, though, and the four Tharian soldiers were soon surrounded and hard pressed, even Drenn, who was trained in fighting multiple opponents. The priest already had two dead bandits lying at his feet, however, and as Jop Sonno and Roj Villa arrived, taking their places so that they formed a defensive square, he dispatched a third, lopping off his greasy haired, stubbly head with a casual, almost indifferent twist of his blade.

     His fighting prowess made the outlaws hang back doubtfully, and Thomas thought that if there'd been fewer of them they might have turned and fled. They outnumbered the Tharians too heavily, though. If they were like Tharian outlaws then they were probably used to losing a couple of their number while bringing down their victims. It just meant more loot for the rest, and there were always more bored farmers' sons too lazy to work for a living to replace the fallen. New recruits for the old timers to boss around and feel superior to. They pressed in for a renewed attack, therefore, and the Tharians crowded closer together until their shoulders jostled, swinging their swords frantically in an attempt to hold them back.

     Thomas stood to cast a volley of Firebolts, and brilliant bolts of fire flew from his fingers, each of them striking a different outlaw. Not enough to kill them but making them jerk in sudden agony allowing Matthew and Roj Villa to each dispatch an opponent. Some of the outlaws turned to face their new enemy, and Thomas aimed his next barrage of Firebolts at them, this time two of them being hit by enough of the magical bolts of energy to kill them.

     That left six outlaws still alive, suddenly faced not only by skilled swordsmen but by a man with deadly powers, able to strike them dead merely by pointing his finger. Suddenly, they were facing not just the loss of a couple of their less good fighters but total eradication. They couldn't know that Thomas only had enough magic left for one more firebolt spell.. So far as they knew, he might be able to carry on striking them down until they were all dead. They shrieked in terror, therefore, and fled, disappearing into the undergrowth.

     "Nice one, Tom," said Matthew, lowering his sword gratefully and pressing a hand against a nasty cut on the back of his sword hand. He turned to look his men over, noting that the infantryman had received a minor wound to the head while Jop Sonno seemed to have emerged completely unscathed. Drenn, of course, was also unharmed.

     "I haven't got much magic left," warned Thomas, "We ought to teleport out of here before the soldiers catch up with us."

     "Not yet," said Matthew, however, eying the dead bandits thoughtfully. "I think we've solved the problem of how to dress locally..."