15

You think you've much more to offer by way of entertainment and edification than this self-styled Princess of the Bardbrood. It'd be a fine feeling indeed to prove it.

You keep mulling over the curious encounter with the Bardbrood youths as you walk on into the twilight. You'd lost a good bit of daylight in the diversion, and you hope to advance as far as you can towards Ruffino's duchy on your first full day of travel.

But as the shadows deepen, you finally elect to make camp. If you wait until it's fully dark, you might accidentally take a termite hive as a pillow, or worse.

You shiver briefly as an evening breeze goes past. You've never traversed these roads before, and apart from the familiar trek to Billingsley this is the farthest you've ever been from home.