what exciting bird-feeder action I had to share. Maybe Mr and Mrs Blackbird would raise another family for us to watch and stress over.
But, at the Dungeons & Dragons game that evening, Adam didn’t mention the birds, or Freezer the cat, or give any indication that anything at all had passed between us. He greeted me with just the same awkward semi-formality as everyone else, accepted a mint julep, which Freddie had discovered was his favourite cocktail, arranged his screen and notepads and coloured pens on the table, and said, ‘Right, shall we get started?’
In the game, our party had reached the castle where the young girl was being held prisoner, but had no way of gaining entrance. The previous week had ended with us trying to buy our way in by bribing one of the shifty guards who patrolled the perimeter.
Adam rolled the dice. ‘The guard accepts your bribe, and you return under cover of darkness to gain entrance to Castle Drakeford. The night is stormy, with gusts of wind ruffling your cloaks and whistling through the battlements above your heads. The sky is overcast, but occasionally scudding clouds part to reveal a sliver of moon, thin as the blade of a sickle. You can hear the hoot of an owl swooping overhead, and there are other creatures hunting in the darkness above you, too. You think they may be bats – at least, you hope that is what they are.’
I shivered and took a gulp of my red wine. Around me, Freddie, Archie, Nat, Tim and Lara’s faces were still and intent. The candles on the table flickered. The pub was full, but the tables around us were silent as they, too, listened to Adam’s voice.
Over the past few weeks, the Dungeons & Dragons game had become quite the spectator sport, with a huge waiting list of people who wanted to join as soon as one of our characters came to a sticky end. But so far we had all survived, and Adam had refused numerous requests to start games with other groups – planning our adventure was taking up almost all his spare time, he said. I wondered what he did with the rest of it – aside from saving local wildlife – if he had very much time outside his impressive-sounding job at the hedge fund.
‘The guard greets you with a grunt, carefully unhooking a heavy bunch of keys from his belt,’ he carried on. ‘The clink of metal on metal resounds in the still night air, and you hope that it will not alert other guards to your presence. He fits a key into the iron lock, and you hear the grinding of the mechanism within as he slowly turns it. The door swings open with a creak, and beyond you see only darkness.’
‘We should kill the guard,’ Dun said, with a coldness that I couldn’t imagine being there if he was still cheerful, smiley Archie. ‘Now that he’s let us in. It’s too risky. He knows that we’re here; he could tell anyone and we’d be screwed.’
‘It’s a good point,’ said Hesketh. ‘Secrecy is the only defence we have once we’re in there.’
‘I cannot countenance the murder of an innocent man,’ said Lorien.
‘But he’s one of Brandrel’s men,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s not exactly innocent, is it? He’ll have been pillaging all over the place most of his life.’
Adam watched in silence as we argued the toss. Once we’d made a decision, a couple of rolls of the dice would determine what happened next – whether we succeeded in doing away with the guard; whether, if we decided not to try, he alerted his colleagues to our presence; whether they found us in the darkness underneath the castle.
‘I could cast a spell of silence on him,’ Annella said. Under her blunt dark fringe, Nat’s eyes were bright. ‘It would render him speechless for twenty-four hours, by which time we’d be safely inside. If it works.’
‘I say we do that,’ I said.
‘Agreed,’ said Annella.
‘I still think it would be safer…’ Dun began, but he was outvoted.
‘Very well.’ Adam rolled the dice. ‘An eight. Annella’s spell is successful.’
‘We’d better get our skates on, then,’ Freddie said, then segued back into being Hesketh. ‘I mean, we should make haste, and explore as much of this dungeon as we can whilst we have the cover of darkness and secrecy.’
‘We could split up,’ suggested Lorien. ‘Half of us go to the heart of the castle to find and rescue