The events at the Inn on the Bridge had unfolded in front of Rysinde's eyes in a semi dream like manner. Two days later, almost inexplicably, however, he and Golver sat by a camp fire surrounded by a gang of armed vagabonds, drifters and highway thieves who answered to them. Well to Golver at any rate, he mentally added. How was this possible? It was possible because if Golver had a real genius, it was the gift of surviving effectively at life's rock bottom. He inspired in Rysinde both fear and a certain awe in equal measure.

Two days earlier, as they sat down at a table in the tavern close to the hearth, even the normally unobservant Rysinde sensed an uncomfortable tension in the air. The tavern had slowly begun to empty and local farmers and merchants finished their drinks and headed for the door. Golver sat in silence, examining the smooth dark reflective surface of his ale. Finally, the bartender spoke.

"Time for you sirs to leave," he called to them, "there is no more a welcome for you here."

Golver said nothing, as if the bartender's words had been spoken in a different tavern on the far side of the world. Rysinde sank deeper into his seat, desperate to avoid any attention at all.

"I said..." started the man, but Golver swiftly interjected.

"Don't talk when I'm drinking friend, it's watery and sour and I wasn't going to say anything, I just wanted some quite while I drank it," he said with an uncharacteristic calm. Rysinde inwardly grimaced, correctly guessing that the understated, softly spoken persona that Golver was affecting was his most violent.

"Let's go Golver, don't..." said Rysinde, silencing himself when he caught a look from his companion.

"There's nothing for you here," said the man, "whatever you've come for, it isn't here, go now and there will be no trouble," he continued, Golver detecting a note of fear in his voice.

"What makes you think we're here for something?" said Golver, sensing that the barkeeper had given away something crucial as he spoke. The man had little to respond to Golver with other than bluster, giving the career manipulator and bully powerful clues that opportunity was right under his nose. Golver wiped his chin with his sleeve and put down his drink. He pushed back his stool and stood up, walking over to the bar. The bartender, a broad shouldered man with at least six inches of height on the squat Golver, could not help but show his intimidation and fear.

"I think you've gone and got me confused with someone, haven't you," Golver said, leaning over the bar, "I know how it works in small little places like this. Nothing ever happens and then you hear that you've got trouble in the area, everyone waits on a knife edge for trouble to walk through the door. It leads to, well to foolish, foolish moments like this. Ones where you leave yourself all on your own with a stranger who comes to feel all unwelcome. See, whoever you've been waiting for, it ain't me or my friend here."

Attempting to keep up a front of authority and determination, the barkeeper indicated that he was content to allow the hostility to defuse, assuming that was possible.

"So, my question is, " Golver said, reaching over the bar for a bottle of root spirit and a glass, "...is who you've been expecting and what's got nice, simple farm folk like you lot here," he said gesturing towards the growing crowd of locals outside the tavern, "...so agitated?"

The barkeeper engaged in a momentary, internal debate between his forces of common sense and naivety. Naivety swiftly won out, sweeping all judgement before it and he furtively gestured for Golver and Rysinde to follow him. He guided the two strangers to his tavern through the kitchen and cold store to a flight of stairs that took them to that back of the building, where the hosteling rooms were. He pulled a key from his apron and unlocked the door and then knocked it gently.

"Meya my love, it's me, is he awake?" he said softly.

"Yes, just, I think he's over the worst..."

As the barkeeper pushed the door open, Golver saw a young girl crouched at the bedside of a man, almost instantly recognisable as a soldier of some kind, with a bandaged thigh. The sheets were dark with dried blood and he was grey and feverish. On a table near his bed was the livery that had been recovered by local children; here before Golver was opportunity in scrambled form. A wounded soldier of Dran all alone in the wilderness, with only well meaning locals to help.

"Father?" the girl asked Golver and Rysinde's new host, wondering who the two unsavoury looking men behind him were.

"These men, they can help I think..." he said feebly. Then turning to Golver he explained the course of events that had led to this moment.

"We found him, he was wounded and we couldn't just leave him to die," said the man. This, Golver knew, was more than simply an act of charity; Dranians always found the resting place of their warrior sons eventually. If they found out that the locals had left a Dranian to his or her fate, they would invariably torch the village or town before they left for home. It was a practice that meant that wherever a Dranian soldier went, they could expect to be treated like minor royalty. Golver pushed past the barkeeper and knelt by the Dranian's bedside'

"Looks nasty, that," he whispered, "...I know you won't tell me what you've been doing out here to get yourself hurt like that, but folks like you don't just drift around, you've always got a job on haven't you?"

The Dranian groaned, as if in the grips of a fever.

"I know you can hear me friend, I can help you, if you let me," Golver said. There was a silence as the man shuddered and shivered, and then he spoke.

"You want to help me? " he grunted through the pain, "I need a dozen men, armed and ready to go when I can get up, horses too if you can. Got someone to find and deal with?"

"The person that gave you that, eh?" asked Golver, pointing to the wound on the Dranian's leg.

"No, that came from, from out of nowhere...can you do it? Can you get me men? Tell me now or leave me be."

Golver nodded a broke into a broad, triumphant smile as an unexpected wave of rain began to lash the window panes.

"Yes, yes I'll find you your men and well deal with whoever you're looking for. It'll cost you mind, but I'm sure your lords are good for it."

The Dranian slumped in his bed and ushered Golver away. Golver turned to the barkeeper as he stepped out of the room.

"Two beds for my friend and I," he demanded, "...we will be staying, it appears. I don't think you want to do anything to inconvenience the man you've got in there.Also, where do you find scum like us around here?"

The barkeeper looked horrified at the prospect of having Golver and Rysinde as guests, but knew now that they had been effectively deputised by the injured Dranian, they were above reproach.

"The Kyurin brothers, that's who you need, Olun and Toore, they're a way out in the woods," he said. Rysinde, a silent witness to these deliberations was truly astounded not only at Golver's ability to salvage any situation no matter how hopeless, but also to know implicitly that a reserve army of scum was just around any corner.

They walked back down the stairs to the kitchen and then the bar room, which had now filled up again with wet and reproachful looking local drinkers. Golver picked up the drink he had helped himself to from the bar and also grabbed the bottle he had previously appropriated. As he sat down by the window, scowling at the tavern's regular drinkers to keep them at bay and show who the newest and most important guest in town was, the darkening skies beyond the window of the tavern were suddenly illuminated. A burst of white light from somewhere deep within the wooded hillsides, which then faded to an iridescent cool blue, lit up the village of Oldwater. Golver let out an involuntary gasp of surprise as dozens of startled and then frightened drinkers raced to the windows.

"It's a witching, there's a witching abroad tonight," shouted an elderly man by Golver's elbow.

"No," muttered Golver to himself, "No, it's him, him again from the Empty Hand. Our old friend..."

Golver watched the light slowly fade, not knowing in that moment that his most hated nemesis, Frangka and her newfound companions had been visited by the Burning Man as they travelled to the Library.