with her reasoning. An inspection of the bodies had revealed little, though, for the men carried no obvious marks, not even the familiar trident-and-bottle insignia of the enemy, which the companions had expected to find.
By all appearances, they had been simple robbers, coin-cidentally stumbling into the companions' path, and that had seemed even more plausible when Ivan and the others had arrived in Carradoon to find Cadderly, Avery, and Rufo safe and secure at the Dragon's Codpiece.
But prudent, .battle-tested Ivan had not let his guard down, not one bit.
"We should go find Cadderly and Danica," he said to Pikel.
"Tut tut," Pikel argued, blushing with embarrassment and waggling a stubby finger Ivan's way. Danica had not returned to her room the previous night, and the dwarves didn't have to struggle to figure out where she had stayed, and why she had stayed there.
"We won't bother them if we don't need to," Ivan growled back. "Just want to keep an eye on them, that's all." Ivan nodded to the end of the aisle, where the suspicious shopper was gathering more goods. "I'm not so sure we seen the last of the group that hit us on the road."
"Eh?" Pikel balked.
"Sure, that bunch is dead," Ivan said as Pikel finally hopped around to regard the man, "but me thinking's that they got friends, and me fear's that we were more than accidental targets."
"Uh-oh," Pikel whined. He looked back to Ivan, crestfallen and obviously worried.
"We'll just watch 'em, that's all," Ivan said comfortingly. "We'll just watch 'em close."
Vander paced nervously about the barn on the outskirts of town. Ghost had telepathically contacted him using the power of the GAearunj that morning to set the plans into motion; the strike against Cadderly would come before the next dawn.' All of the other assassins w.ere gone from the farm, sent into position with their remaining associates in Carradoon. There had still been no word of the five who had gone into the mountains, but word of the arrival of Danica and the dwarves into die city did not bode well for the missing Night Masks.
Still, fourteen expertly trained assassins should prove an ample number for a single, unsuspecting kill. At least, that had been Ghost's reasoning when he had told Vander, the most powerful of the group, to remain at the farm, out of the way.
Truly the firbolg did not mind the specifics of the instructions; executions had always left a sour taste in the honorable giant's mouth. What bothered Vander now was Ghost's motivations in keeping him beyond the immediate action. The only times the devious little assassin ever used this method of attack was when Ghost sincerely respected the powers of his intended victim. On those occasions, Vander became no more than a secret escape route for Ghost. If the assassin got into serious trouble, he could just summon his magical item and flee to Vander's body, . . . leaving Vander back in Ghost's body to suffer whatever peril the assassin had gotten himself into.
How long would it continue? the firbolg wondered for about the ten thousandth time. How long would he remain the plaything of that wicked, honorless little weakling?
For all of his pacing and all of his painstaking thought, Vander could see no end and no escape. He could find consolation only by telling himself that in the morning Cadderly would be dead, and this wretched chapter of his miserable life would be at an end.
"You seem in a hurry," the young wizard commented when Rufo, his face chalk white with flour, entered the Dragon's Codpiece and made his way straight for the stairs.
Rufo looked at Bogo Rath and snorted derisively, but didn't have the courage to ignore the young wizard's hand gesture that Rufo should go over and join him.
"What do you need?" Rufo snapped, angry at all the world and especially impatient in yet another situation in which he was forced to serve. Everywhere the angular man turned, he found someone more than willing to give him orders.
Bogo laughed heartily and flipped his stringy hair over to the side, out of his green eyes. "How go your meetings?" the wizard asked.
Again Rufo snorted. "You should ask Avery," he replied, venom dripping from every word. "Certainly I, the errand boy, would not know!" As evidence to his point, Rufo held up the few small sacks of purchases he had made in the first stores he had visited that day.
"You deserve better treatment than this " Bogo commented, trying to sound