The Lord Roger was grateful for his new rescuers, but realised there was much still to be done. When his jester explained that Marchan seemed to be able to travel around in the dark, the Lord Roger looked over at Marchan.

'Ah,' Roger said, looking closely at him in the low light. 'You are a dwarf. I had assumed you were a child. Now that Stee Vohn has said it, I see that you are a dwarf.'

'What did he say, sir?' asked Trevor.

'That your friend can see in the dark. It's a trick of the dwarves. All dwarves can do that,' said Roger. 'The Ancients made them able to see in the dark.'

Marchan fell silent. He had noticed that other people couldn't see things in the dark as easily as he could, but had not thought it was a special thing to dwarves. He looked up. 'You know of dwarves, sir?' he asked, hopefully.

'You are the first I have seen in a dozen years or more,' was the reply. 'There once was some traffic between here and the dwarf city east of here beyond the Bay of Chitay. When I was younger, I journeyed there and learned a few things about them. I am glad to see that the dwarves are abroad again.'

'They're not, that I know of,' said Marchan. 'I have never seen one of my own kind. I was rescued from a battlefield as a babe.'

'Oh, we will talk more about this later. Right now, we must remove the remaining enemy within my tower. Can you gather weapons for my men. That will probably be the best way to allow us to retake the tower and if you can go around without torch light and go silenty that will be a huge advantage to anyone else going.'

Marchan nodded and walked away. He went back upstairs and scoured the rooms they had been in for weapons. Suddenly, he heard the sound of yelling. Apparently, one of those still awake had found one of his drugged companions. Marchan rushed back downstairs with the weapons he could carry and discovered a man in the guard chamber. He set down the weapons on the floor and readied his blowgun and tried to shoot the man, but heard a man behind him, coming down the stairs. He turned and shot the newcomer, who fell as the drug overtook him. The man in the chamber, however, came running out with a torch at the sound of the fall. Marchan stooped and raised a spear so the man had to stop short to avoid it. Marchan stepped forward and poked the man's belly. He dropped the torch on the ground where it started to smoulder and drew his sword. Marchan tried to poke his belly harder, but the man swiped it aside with his sword and rushed in too close for the spear to do much good. Marchan dropped to his knees and took a full punch into the man's upper leg. He fell on top of Marchan who grabbed a knife that he had laid there and slit the man's throat.

Suddenly, Marchan realised what he had just done. The supper he had been given suddenly reappeared on the floor before him. When he was finished, he dragged himself across the guards chamber, opened the door again, released his friends and sat down. The warriors came out and Trevor found him on the floor.

The Lord Roger found the man with the slit throat. He came back to Marchan and Treover, 'You are a warrior now, child. I will forever be in your debt. When we have regained what is mine I will give whatever you need for the quest you are on. In the meantime, rest. You have done enough.'

The men left, picking up weapons in the hall as they went by. Trevor went with them, as did Canod. The Jester found Marchan in the guardroom and lay down beside him.

'I shall now play leech,' he said. 'You are a new warrior and the best that I can do, unfortunately, is to drug you and let you sleep it off. If you didn't find your first kill like this I would question your sanity. Men who kill without remorse are the worse type of men.'

He pulled out one of his darts and pricked Marchan's skin with it and Marchan knew no more.