Chapter 7 (continued)

Jerrod was awed by her confidence. She saw a city full of trolls as at worst a delay! "Not only is she more beautiful than any other woman I have ever laid eyes on, she is as deadly as her dirk!," he gushed to himself as he scrambled to his feet. The thought frightened him a little.

Neun Ja took charge as the others gathered together. "Greetings, my friends. It is good to see you alive. However, we have little time and even less to waste. Fortunately, the animals are still alive and I believe we would be well served to collect our belongings and flee with the horses. While they will make us more conspicuous, I think it hardly likely that we will go unnoticed as it is. Jerrod, you and Derazha come with me. We will collect our belongings from our rooms and check the inn to see if anyone else survived the massacre. The rest you, if you could go and prepare the horses for our flight, we will return with alacrity."

Neun Ja led them upstairs. "Jerrod, please go collect the belongings of yourself and your roommates. Derazha, if you would collect the belongings from our room and those from Brianna and Wolf's as well, I will check the other rooms for survivors."

Derazha merely nodded and proceeded to accede to Neun Ja's request. Jerrod gulped as his heart skipped a beat. He had to go off on his own! What if there were more trolls?

After a moment's hesitation, the young mage steeled himself. Well, what if there were? He was, after all, a mage. The trolls were the ones in danger! All he had to do was prepare a spell and those trolls would rue the day that they crossed paths with him!

Lost in his reverie, Jerrod almost failed to notice when his two associates left to do their own tasks. Quickly he gathered his mana and prepared a trigger word. Any troll that crossed his path now would find itself the focus of a bolt of electricity which would leave little more than a smoking pile of ash.

Boldly, Jerrod thrust open the door to his room. He brief an inward sigh of relief when he found nothing there but what was left of the room's furnishings and the belongings that he and Urki and Ordolf had left in the room. Almost nothing any way. There was a dead troll which had apparently been slain in the brief struggle Urki and Ordolf had put up earlier, but by this point, Jerrod's day had more than prepared him for the sight of a single dead troll. Still, Jerrod was a little spell-shocked. The corpse added a little to Jerrod's trepidation, but nothing more menacing evinced itself.

Evidently the trolls either hadn't thought of, or hadn't gotten around to, collecting the adventurers' belongings. The Wand was still there and the packs were relatively unscathed despite the violence of the brief fight. Jerrod quickly collected them and began to head for the door when he noticed something around the neck of the dead troll. As he bent to inspect the item around the neck of the corpse, he saw that it was a crystal of some sort hung on some sort of slender chain.

"Interesting," Jerrod thought. "I wonder what a troll would be doing wearing something like this? It hardly seems the sort of thing one would favor. There's no gold and no apparent martial purpose. Well, whatever it is I think I'll keep it. It might come in handy for a spell. If nothing else, it will serve as a memento of my first taste of combat."

Removing the pendant from the troll, the young mage pocketed the bauble without giving it further thought. Having set them down to gather his prize, Jerrod picked the packs he'd gathered back up. He headed for the door and saw that he was the first to complete his mission. The hall was empty. Jerrod steeled himself and assumed what he thought was a quite martial posture. The effect of his pose might not have been quite what Jerrod hoped, however. The rapid dart of Jerrod's looked quite a bit more nervous that vigilant.

Jerrod was cheered when Derazha soon reappeared in the doorway of the room of the ranger and the shaman. Moments later, Neun Ja reappeared as well. She gave a brief shake of her head to indicate that there was no one else left alive in the guest rooms and then headed back down stairs.

When the trio reached the back door, Jerrod saw that the others had been busy. Not only were horses in the stable yard, but they were saddled and ready to go with two of the pack animals attached by lead lines to each of the party's mounts. The others were already in their saddles and waiting. Quickly, Jerrod and Derazha distributed the packs as Neun Ja explained to the others that they had found no other survivors. The threesome joined their comrades on horseback and they made ready to face the battle to get to the Mermaid's Tit.

The horses were restive from the smell of troll blood. The sounds and smells of the live trolls on the street did nothing to make the steeds any more tranquil. They danced and skittered at the slightest provocation. Despite her mount's reluctance, Enki road up to the courtyard's gate. Reaching down, she unbarred the gate and grasped its handle.

"Everyone ready?," she asked.

When each of others indicated that they were, Enki nodded and swung the gate wide. With a wild scream that may have been less than wise, Urki led the party out onto the street at a gallop. Enki rode at the rear, less as rear guard than as a first line of defense. The speed of their entry onto Nova Ekirigilio's streets stood the adventurers in good stead. Despite the warning that Urki's shout had provided the trolls roaming the streets, the octet swept by their opposition unscathed until they were nearly at the docks. It wasn't that there were no trolls on the short route the little band took to waterfront. There was a plentiful supply. The trolls simply could not intercede quickly enough to present an impediment to the riders as they flew by.