"Remember when I asked you to be as quiet as possible?"

"Yes I do, and I'm trying my best. It's just -"

"Trying? I can't see how you're trying, unless you somehow got moving quietly mixed up with stumbling about like a drunken, horn-honking clown in a drum factory."

Zelensha's mouth smiled as she whispered, but her eyes flashed with near-homicidal anger. I pondered the terrible and embarrassing fate that befell the last man I had seen cross her, by refusing to pay up after a lost game of Stonedance. "Make me," he said when Zelensha insisted he pay up. In the end, the stingy stranger was just as surprised as everyone else when he finally managed to eat that entire 'dance set, including all the little silver and amber playing pieces. I guess losing those teeth really helped.

Zelensha had the anger control of a volcano in woolen underwear, and she came from the Mercian capital of Sanguine. Though she refused to elaborate on her background, it was pretty obvious to me that that it involved at least one of Sanguine's famous thieves' guilds. She was, after all, exceptionally handy with a dagger, and her evening ritual included polishing a large set of larcenous-looking tools.

"For zog's sake, she continued, "it's daylight and you have two eyes." "From now on, why don't you try not stepping on every twig, pinecone and zogging hedgehog that appears in front of you?" She shook her head fiercely and moved on ahead.

We were moving - as quietly as possible - through an area dominated by strange formations of weatherworn, moss-covered rock. According to our sources, a bandit camp lay somewhere nearby, concealed by the glacier-polished boulders and slabs that surrounded us. We were pretty certain that these were the same bandits that raided our employer's caravan five days ago, just after it had crossed the Tribelands border and entered the wilderness beyond. Whether or not the bandits still had the enchanted signet ring that our employer was desperate to retrieve, was more of an open question.

Five minutes after our little chat, Zelensha suddenly stopped, and she immediately lifted her bow in a gesture for me to do the same. Crouching down and peeking around a rock wall, I saw that a modest tent camp lay less than a hundred meters ahead, nestled within the low cliffs. Five tents of rough construction encircled a central pole, which consisted of a tree trunk, assorted wooden pikes, and the attached skulls of three large animals. Two rather inattentive-looking guards slouched near the pole, engaged in an unhurried conversation.

"Not much of a bandit camp," I whispered. "And that begs the question: How did our employer lose something as important as an enchanted signet ring to a bunch of tent-dwelling also-rans? Are you sure there isn't some -"

Once again Zelensha gestured for me to be silent. The two guards had ceased their slouching, and now walked from tent to tent, waking the people within. Occasionally, one of guards pointed up towards the setting sun, as if explaining that it was time to get up and be about the night's business. After a while, fully a dozen people - humans, orks, even a badly scarred mirdain - were gathered around the pole, listening quite intently to a large mahirim with graying fur.

Less than five minutes later, the gray-furred mahirim led ten bandits off into the gathering darkness. They carried little with them, and it seemed obvious that they were off to raid of some nearby settlement, and that they were likely to return to the camp before sunrise. Meanwhile, it seemed as if only two or three bandits remained to guard the camp.

Tapping Zelensha on the shoulder, I suggested that we make our move as soon as the departing raiders were out of earshot, while dusk still lingered, and while the new guards were still busy preparing their breakfast.

I somehow managed to move quite silently as we left cover and half-ran towards the bandit camp. As we entered the circle of tents, however, one of the guards froze and turned towards us, probably because he had heard my chain mail rustling as I ran. Zelensha, clad in leather armor, didn't make a sound.

Without breaking her stride, Zelensha fired two simultaneous arrows towards the newly attentive guard. Both arrows struck true, and the bandit - a scrawny-looking and unshaved human - sunk do his knees without having uttered a sound. "Throw me your tinderbox," the other guard half-shouted to him, "my flint's all w-"

As the remaining guard turned towards his friend, he was rewarded with the sight of Torgrim Eiriksson charging towards him, sword held high and an encouraging smile on my lips. The guard dropped his tinderbox - depleted flint and all - and reached for a sheathed sword which lay in the grass beside him. It was far too late, however, and after aiming for a second or two while the bandit scrambled, I killed him with a single blow to the head.

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