Seven Trogite ships, all painted dead black, came into view early the following morning, and Ara was fairly sure she knew exactly who - and what - the men on those ships were. If she was right, Bolan and the other villagers had left just in time.

A fair number of bleak-faced men came ashore, and one of the few priests who still remained in the village went down to the beach to meet them. ‘I’ll go tell Adnari Estarg that you’re here, Captain Brulda,’ the young priest said to the one who appeared to be the leader of the strangers.

The grim fellow laughed. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, young man,’ he advised. ‘If you wake Estarg up before noon, he’ll find all sorts of unpleasant things for you to do. Where are the slave-pens? We’d like to take a look at the merchandise before Estarg starts telling us fairy tales about these new slaves.’

‘The Adnari wouldn’t lie to you, Captain,’ the young priest declared.

‘Oh, really?’ Brulda said sarcastically. ‘And will the sun come up in the west tomorrow as well? Estarg wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and bit him right on the nose. We want to see the slaves, boy. Lead the way.’

‘Are you sure these slaves are healthy?’ one of the other strangers asked the priest as he led them toward the slave-pen. ‘We bought five shiploads of slaves down the coast of Tanshall last year, and more than half of them died of some kind of disease before we were six days out.’

‘Oh, they’re very healthy,’ the priest assured him, ‘and they’re farmers already, so their new owners in the Empire won’t have to waste all that time teaching them what they’re supposed to do.’

‘That might even raise the price we’ll get for them,’ the slaver agreed.

The empty slave-pen with its broken-down wall upset the visitors more than a little, and they rushed into the village to discuss the matter with Adnari Estarg.

‘You idiot!’ the one called Brulda bellowed at the fat churchman. ‘Why didn’t you have any guards around that rickety pen?’

‘What are you talking about, Brulda?’ Estarg, who seemed to be still about half-asleep, demanded.

‘Your slaves broke out during the night, you fool! Your slave-pen’s empty!’

‘That’s impossible!’

‘Go look for yourself, you dunce!’

Jalkan rushed out of the hut, and he came back swearing after a little while. ‘They’re gone, Adnari,’ he declared. ‘They broke down that rickety wall on the west side of the pen sometime during the night and ran away.’

‘Go chase them down!’ Estarg shouted.

‘All by myself? Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘But all of my money is escaping! Help him, Brulda!’

‘Not on your life, Estarg,’ the slaver said. ‘I came here to buy slaves, not to capture them.’

The bickering and screaming continued for quite some time, and Ara found it all rather entertaining.

Then she saw something that promised to brighten her day even more.

Several dozen Maag longships, led by Sorgan Hook-Beak’s Seagull, were coming into the large bay.

‘The ships are burning, Adnari!’ The young priest who’d met the slavers on the beach screamed, bursting into the crude hut in a state of sheer panic

‘What are you talking about?’ the slaver Brulda roared.

‘Some pirate ships just swept in, and they set fire to every ship in the bay!’

Ara found the reaction of the assorted scoundrels in the hut quite satisfying. When six men all try to go through a doorway at the same time, things start to get quite physical. Eventually, the slaver Brulda managed to bash his way through the others with the stout club he had hanging from his belt.

‘My ships!’ he cried out in anguish. ‘My ships are on fire! Somebody do something! Save my ships!’

There was nothing that any of the Trogites on the beach could do to save any of the ships in the bay, and the men still on board those ships were forced to swim ashore to keep from being burned alive. The Maags quite obviously knew exactly what they were doing, and by now nothing short of torrential rain would even slow the fires, and the sky was clear and blue, with no rain in sight.

The Trogites on the beach watched in horror as their only means of returning home went up in smoke and flame. They had come as conquerors, but now they were trapped.

‘Ah, me,’ Ara murmured with mock sympathy. ‘What a shame.’

And then she laughed. There were several ways she could have made her mocking laughter audible to the panic-stricken Trogites, but she decided against it. Her little scheme still had many more twists and turns to entertain these scoundrels, and she was sure she’d enjoy them more if the Trogites didn’t expect them.

‘You’re exaggerating, Jalkan,’ Adnari Estarg declared. ‘These natives are little more than sheep. They wouldn’t dare to do something like that.’

‘I wouldn’t want to bet my life on that,’ Jalkan replied bluntly. ‘We didn’t really treat these people very well when we came ashore, so I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that they’re making plans right now to come back here and kill every one of us.’

‘Amar wouldn’t permit that!’ the young priest who’d met the slavers on the beach protested.

‘Grow up, boy,’ Brulda the slaver said. ‘Amar’s nothing but a myth, and this is the real world.’ He turned to Jalkan. ‘Do these natives have weapons of any kind at all?’

‘I saw an archer during the first war who could kill people from a quarter of a mile away, Brulda. These natives do know how to kill an enemy, and right now the word “enemy” means us. If we still had those five armies we had when we came here, we might be all right, but they all deserted when they heard about the gold in the mountains, so we’re all alone and totally unprotected. If we stay here, I don’t think any of us will still be alive next week.’

‘That gets right to the point, I guess,’ Brulda admitted. ‘I don’t see that we’ve got much choice. If we want to keep breathing, we’ll have to go north and see if we can catch up with the deserters.’

Ara smiled. She hadn’t really left these rascals many options, and the slaver Brulda had chosen the correct one right at the start.

‘I’ll need some of your men, Brulda,’ the fat priest declared, ‘probably twenty or so.’

‘What for?’