Much to Chance’s embarrassment, the farmer’s family served up a veritable feast for them to eat, and despite how much he protested that they were offering enough already, they wouldn’t take no for an answer and continue to add to it. While the food was being readied, Snarl entertained the kids. He seemed to have a gift for it and before too long the kids were riding around on his shoulders, to much laughter and squeals.

Theras, a clay mug in his hands, sat back on one of the stools, shaking his head as he watched proceedings. “It has been a long while since we have heard much laughter here,” he observed.

“It has been hard of late,” Elysa agreed, setting down a loaf of dark bread on the table, alongside a platter of butter.

“Hopefully it will not be the same in the future,” Chance told them.

“With that lot gone, I am sure that it will be,” Theras replied.

“There are other bands of bandits, though,” Chance pointed out. “Removing one lot will only be a temporary reprieve while they are still around.”

“Well, they may be more reluctant in the future once an example is made of this lot,” Theras said.

Chance sat up straighter on his stool, a frown forming. “Set an example of them? How?”

“They’ll probably hang, like any other bandit.”

A chill ran through Chance at the farmer’s words. “Hang them? But you said some of them had just fallen on hard times.”

“I know,” Theras responded, “But they made the decision to take up that kind of life. This will send a message to others not to follow them.”

Chance stood. His head was spinning, his mind racing and he was finding it hard to breathe. He had not expected that would be what would happen, not that he had exactly thought about it much. To hang someone, that was such an archaic thing that it hadn’t crossed his mind. “If you will excuse me for a moment,” he said, heading for the door. He felt the need to get out of the farmhouse, to get some fresh air, to breathe. The eyes of everyone were on him as he stepped outside. Moments later Yrip slipped out to join him.

“You are okay?” the little kobold asked, concerned for Chance.

“I just…” Chance started to say, before stopping and considering his words. “I had no idea they would get hanged.”

“What would you have the townsfolk do with them?”

“I don’t know. Work out which of them were the real bad eggs, lock them up somewhere, and the rest, who were as much victims as those they stole from, would be fined or made to work off the damage they had caused. Cheese and crackers, but hanging them? They should be let go.”

Yrip looked at him, puzzled. “Let them go? They would just return to banditry.”

“Not if they had options. Not if they were shown a better way.”

The little kobold frowned. “I do not understand.”

Chance managed half a smile. “That would make two of us then. I can’t allow this to happen, though. They are my responsibility, so I need to fix it, but I am not sure what to do yet. I will have to think of something before tomorrow.”

“It would be best to think on a full stomach,” Yrip told him. “These people have provided us with a feast; it would be a shame to let it go to waste.”

Chance sighed and looked back to the farmhouse, to the soft light spilling out through the open door into the dark of night. “I am not sure.”

“You can’t help anyone if you don’t look after yourself,” Yrip persisted.

“Fine,” Chance replied. “I’ll come back.”

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He headed back into the farmhouse, to see the rest were all seated at the table already. Snarl looked too large for it where he was perched on a stool between the two kids. They were giggling over something he had said.

“All well?” Theras asked.

Chance nodded, taking a seat a the table. “Yes, just needed some fresh air.”

Yrip joined him at the table and they began to eat from the spread laid out before them. There was much talking as they ate, mostly from Snarl, although Chance for the most are in silence. His thoughts were racing, trying to resolve the issue of what to do with the bandits.

He really didn’t notice much of what he ate, only that there was food before him that kept appearing, placed before him by Yrip whenever he had finished one thing or another. The others appeared to enjoy it, and by the talk and laughter going on, the company as well. Occasionally he answered a question when asked, but for the most he was left alone, to ponder, to consider. It took some time, but eventually, the meal came to an end, and the children, reluctantly, were sent off to sleep.

“We must be retiring too,” Chance announced, rising from his stool. “We have a lot to do still tomorrow.”

“Where are you planning on sleeping?” Theras asked.

“We will find a place, beneath tree and star,” Snarl told him.

Elysa frowned. “We can’t be having that.”

Chance waved it aside. “The weather is fine, we have blankets and we can’t impose on you any more than we already have. It is not the first night we have spent in the open and it won’t be the last either.”

Elysa did not seem convinced by the argument but acquiesced to it anyway. With a final good night offered, Chance and his friends took their leave, heading back out into the star-lit dark of night.

“Nice kids,” Snarl remarked as they walked away from the farmhouse.

“You got on well with them,” Chance observed.

“I have a way with kids.”

“That is so he can eat them unaware later,” Yrip remarked, the little kobold grinning.

Snarl cackle-laughed. “That lot? All skin and bones. Not worth the effort.”

They came to a stand of trees nearby to the farm and the storeroom where the bandits were being kept, and there they set up a camp for the night. They constructed a small firepit there, laid out a small pile of wood in it and then Chance called upon his druidic power to bring forth a fire in it, to give them some light and warmth. Snarl and Yrip rolled up in their blankets and settled in for the night. Chance stood for a minute, looking at the fire, before taking his staff and hand and starting to walk away.

“You should sleep,” Snarl told him.

“Later,” Chance said. “I need to think.”

“I know you dwarves are a tough lot, but you have been running on next to no sleep while undertaking hard labour for a couple of days now. You can’t keep pushing yourself like that.

“There is something I have to do first,” Chance told Snarl. “Then I will, I promise.”

“You had better,” Snarl added, closing his eyes.

Chance left them to sleep and wandered off, his feet taking him down to the edge of the stream that ran nearby. There he stopped, listening as it gurgled and splashed along beneath the starlight, the dark waters waiting for the moon to rise and shine upon it. The air was largely still, and cool, while off in the distance came the call of night birds that he now knew were owls. The old Chance wouldn’t have had a clue what they were, but the voice in his head helped him to identify them.

It was all rather peaceful, and for a change, he needed that. Odd, that; he always battled against any sort of peace and quiet in his past life, as he had always equated it with boredom. Gotta keep moving, gotta be part of the action. That was how he had lived, never still, always on the go.

As he stared at the waters, he became aware of the wolf at his side, Shags having left the storeroom to join him.

“What am I going to do, Shags?” Chance asked.

What do you want to do?

Chance sighed before shrugging. “Go home, I guess.”

I can’t help with that. It might take a while. And in the meantime?

A bitter half-laugh came from Chance. “I haven’t figured that part out. I’m finding out how little I know, and how much different everything is than I am used to. It makes adjusting hard. The way things work, the laws and custom, none are as I know them.”

There are no real laws in this part, Shags noted. It is why there is so much trouble, so many bandits. Chaos reigns when order departs.

Chance looked down at Shags. “You are a wolf,” he noted. “How is it that you know so much that nobody else seems to.”

The wolf turned his head to look up at Chance with his serious golden eyes. Do you really want to know?

“Perhaps not.” Chance fell silent again, staring at the running water as it murmured and laughed. “There are no laws here,” he mused.

There used to be.

Slowly Chance nodded his head. “If the bandits were gone, there might be again. Solve that and solve the problem. I may have an idea.”