“You…” Lis looked at the box in his hand.

“Who are you, Lis?”

And Lis lowered his head:

“I'm a jester, I'm a fool,” he said quietly. And the drunken Arel laughed.

Chapter two

Black Bey

“The old man said everything right,” said Mike Rout, “as he said, there they went out.”

“Well, like this!” Edin Ol, sitting next to Black Bey, grinned, content.

“There are not many exits from the Great Quagmire. Everyone knows that!”

“And from there to the Royal Route in the most remote place,” Mike continued.

“So we'll meet them at the abandoned cemetery,” Bey said.

“Yes,” Mike nodded, pouring local muddy liquor into a rough earthen mug on the table. He drank it all down in one gulp and winced, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“We grazed them all day, they are heading in this direction, as the old one said.”

Bey grimaced as if he had also taken a sip of the moonshine of the marsh, although he didn’t take a sip:

“Don't remind me of him once again, this vile old man pisses me off!”

He looked around the squalid little room of the low hut in which they were. The scarce furnishings of the dwellings of the bog dwellers didn’t favor a cozy pastime. Bey slanted down, looking at the dirt floor and the rotten straw heaped in the corner.

“There's something there! I swear in the name of Gods! And I don't like it!”

They stared at the pile of straw.

“I also hear some sounds from there, especially at night,” Toby said carefully.

“They are rats rustling in the straw,” Edin Ol replied.

“You shouldn't have quarreled with Gregor,” Toby said.

“I didn't quarrel with Gregor,” Bey objected, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from the corner he hated. “I simply explained to him that I was no longer able to pay for his expensive magical experiments and so-called “ingredients”. We had to choose: either this outing, or dubious magical rites!”

“No more dubious than this outing,” Toby said, shivering and looking away from the dark corner too.

“Just rats!” Edin Ol repeated angrily, as if he wanted to convince himself of this first of all.

“We've been in this damn swamp for a month now, and I don't like the way these locals look sideways at us. I don’t understand what’s on their minds!” Bey was reaching for the mug, but, feeling the pungent smell of bad moonshine, grimacing, set it aside.

“And we came across a skeleton again, this is the second,” said Mike Rout.

This one is much further and not so tangled in thorns.”

“And?” Bey interrupted him skeptically.

“He also has no arm. Again the same as the first one. Have the animals eaten one arm?”

“I don’t know!” Bey flared up. “I don’t care! I also want to get out of here as soon as possible, like everyone else!”

“Gregor would have been better with us, Bey,” Toby said. “The old swamp man has snake eyes.”

“Well, if they put up with us, then they need it,” Edin objected. He got up from behind a roughly put together low table and, going up to a bench in the corner, pushed it sharply to the side, threw away the straw.

“Edin!” Bey shouted at him, “don't touch anything there for the sake of the Gods!”

“There's nothing here.”

“What's there? Under the straw?” Mike Rout asked curiously.

“Planks of some kind, everything rotten. If you try to pick them up…”

“Edin! Sit down!” Ordered Bey, turning to the rest of the soldiers sitting at the table:

“Okay, we've been sitting here all summer, and where were they sitting? In the quagmire? Locals claim that there is nothing there but mud and water. Where?! Where have they been sitting all this time?!”

Edin Ol returned to the table:

“Now it doesn't matter, Bey, where they were sitting, in the quagmire they ate dirt or in the same hut. They showed up, and this is the main thing. We must go out at dawn!”