Ch. 2, Page 7

As Robilar watched his burning arrow leave a fiery signal across a cloudless nighttime sky, he saw one potential flaw in Tenser's plan. The signal arrow had gone over the east wall of the fort, but Robilar now had to be on the west side of the fort to open the drawbridge.  There was no more than a skeleton crew left in the fort, with Captain Drake and his men out looking for an adventuring party that did not exist, but that still left Robilar an awful lot of killing to do from one end of the fort to the other.

Good thing he had a sword.

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Ch. 2, Page 6

It was Terik's second night in the woods east of the fort.  It was cold, dark, and uncomfortable and not at all his plan.  If Terik had his way, they would have just charged right in a month ago, taken the sentries at the drawbridge by surprise, and killed all the brigands in their sleep.  But no, Robilar said their new partner had brains and he was so impressed that Terik's plan was vetoed on the spot.  And if the signal didn't come tonight, it meant Robilar couldn't arrange the distraction yet and it meant a third night in the woods and...

Oh.  There was the signal arrow now.  Better tell Tenser.

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Ch. 2, Page 5

Gronan of Simmerya.  Robilar had thought him distracted on the far side of the fort.  Gronan had only been with the bandits for three months, but was practically Drake's right hand man already.  He was thought to be as loyal to the captain as he was fierce in battle, two qualities that did not help Robilar's plan.

"I want my 30 men in armor and ready to fight in 5 minutes! Rouse the troops!" Captain Drake shouted at his nearest guards.  "Gronan, I want you on the field with me!"

Robilar suppressed a smile as Drake turned to walk away.  It turned out he would have Gronan out of the way after all.  But then he heard Gronan addressing him from behind...

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Ch. 2, Page 4

Robilar stopped muscling past the sentry when he saw Captain Drake coming down the steps already.  Robilar straightened up and tried to look respectful.  And he was.  He considered himself no slouch as a fighting man, but Captain Drake had served in the Great Kingdom's legions before coming (fleeing?) to Greyhawk.  He was only one of two men in the whole place Robilar worried about, and by worrying he meant doubted he could take in a fair fight.

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Ch. 2, Page 3

Robilar reached around his neck and lifted the whistle out from under his cloak.  Captain Drake was a stickler for protocols such as using the signal whistles.  The green recruit was still staring off into the woods and babbling.  Robilar tried not to be too annoyed.  After all, this boy would probably not live through the night.

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Ch. 2, page 2

Robilar knew the boy, though his name escaped him at the moment.  One of several of the newer bandits who claimed to have come from the Wild Coast.  Robilar held a derisive sneer in check at the very thought of it.  If these boys were from the Coast, it was from the safety of Safeton.  Had they been from further south, ever seen the thunder lizards that roamed there...well, they would not have looked so green, he was sure of that.

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Chapter Two

Tenser did return to Castle Greyhawk.  He went with Yrag and without Yrag.  He made new friends, fellow adventurers all, who sometimes accompanied him.

He did ask Ehlissa to return with him.  Indeed, he asked her twice.  The first time she coolly said she had more important things to do.  The second time, three weeks later, she icily gave him a lecture on how he should find a more reliable method of making money off of magic, as she was doing, and it was time for him to think of his long range plans for a career if he ever planned to settle down someday.  Tenser told her he had no desire to settle down, but this only seemed to bother her more instead of less.  So he gave up asking, though he told himself he would ask again in a few weeks.

But six months passed.  Six months since Tenser had his first taste of Castle Greyhawk.  He had seen quite a lot of the first dungeon level and some of a second and third level to the dungeons already.  There were monstrous denizens aplenty and many hard-won battles, but the treasure to be looted grew larger and more valuable with each haul.  Word of so much treasure spread quickly, so that there was soon competition for it.

There was a friendly rivalry between the competing adventuring companies, but it was still always a sad day when an expedition had been planned, only to find a new section of the dungeons cleared out by rivals the day before.  It got so bad for a while that Tenser stopped returning to the City of Greyhawk at all for a week or more at a time, for fear he would miss something good.

But it was not just rival adventurers that were the problem.  Word of the castle's spoils had drawn bandits and brigands to the region, thick as flies on a dead rat.  The scoundrels had always been a nuisance, but they were better organized now, with stronger leaders, so much so that sometimes it was safer to stay in the castle than venture out of it. 

Many of the brigands, it turned out, were using a small fort in the area as their base of operations...

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