>>5809380You nodded weakly to Pearce, and yawned. Pearce laughed, giving you a pat on the shoulder.
“Well, get up and get to it,” he said, helping you to rise. “Don’t make me carry you back to the wagon.”
“It’d be easy for you, though,” you mumbled sleepily. “You damned giant.”
“You’re just scrawny,” he retorted, though you heard the smile in his voice.
You couldn’t be sure if Pearce supported you all the way there, or maybe DID carry you, in fact. By the time you reached the wagon and laid down across the seat, you were groggy enough to slip immediately out of consciousness and into dreaming.
When you awoke, the sun was rising. A blanket was draped across you, and a bundle of fabric was under your head as a makeshift pillow. You looked across the carriage and found Pearce, sleeping sitting upright, slumped against the wall next to the window, face mashed comically against the closed slats. You smirked for a moment, and then noticed he had stripped down to his undershirt. Reaching under your head, you found his mages’ robes—your ‘pillow’. You rolled it back up and set it gently in his lap, careful not to wake the big fellow, and let yourself out of the carriage on gentle and quiet elven feet. Hearing you wake, Muffins squeezed out from where he had been sleeping—or serving as sentry—beneath your own place of rest, and joined you as you made your rounds.
Outside, you found the smouldering remnants of last night’s goblin bonfire and, sprawled around it in varying states of annihilation, the goblins. Some were half-clad, some naked, and for a moment you feared a fabled goblin orgy had occurred. However, there were no pooling… Fluids… Nor any other such indications of debauchery of that sort. Rather, it was the usual antics of the drunk and disorderly which you found proof of: scattered bottles and goblets, cards and game-board left half-played or hurled about in frustration, and signs of at least a few scuffles in swollen-shut eyes or bruised knuckles. Terzo was among them, and showed some of the same signs of wear-and-tear as the green-skinned locals.
It took you longer to find Ruldfo Van Houtzmann. You paused with a shudder when you found your father’s unmistakable attire forming a comically-pointed trail to Zith-Zi’s tent, with his unmentionables lying just before the flaps.
“No,” you gasped.
