Chapter 16

Emerging from a group of bushes, emerge twenty men, all of them armed and all looking rather filthy. Their tunics were caked in black stains while various insects were crawling around the bird shite that covered their cloaks. The only thing that looked clean in their outfits was a single large lavender strap tied to their elbows. “Identify yourselves strangers!” Varkii shouts at them. One of them raises his axe and points it at us and shouts “I’ll ask the same of you Remanian pig!” the stranger replies. “They’re Barbarian mercenaries” Pal’lacon murmured. We had faced down some of their kind before, many Barbarians mercenaries or sellswords as we called them were used to bolster Persian ranks during the war.

I hear Pal’Lacon muttering some old Latin curses, but then h