outside the inn. I've had a look round since I arrived this morning and Monsalvat looks a pleasant place for a few weeks rest, even if it takes a bit of getting to- those endless mountain passes and uninhabited valleys and roads which wind this way and that over foaming torrents. Someone puts a lot of work into keeping the roads open.

My other horses are safely in the stables, my squire and page settled in their accommodation- and doing the necessary upkeep on my armour after the end of a hard summer campaigning. The commune of Udine paid me this year, which is why I'm in this part of the world. I've never actually been in the mountains before- passed through them or gone round them, naturally, but never actually spent time in them.

Monsalvat has a good reputation as a place where a warrior can have a bit of rest and recreation, with a nice little court headed by a particularly lovely and learned Queen. Generous with the invitations to court, too, though I gather I'm between formal receptions. The castle looks good on its hill dominating the town, with the still higher wall of the mountains white behind it. The town has an air of properity without ostentation; a couple of decent sized but not overpowering churches, a clutch of stone towers where the local lords live, decent walls (but who in their right senses would ever try to get a siege train here? You'd be wiped out on the road if you even tried) and a pleasant lake. People look happy. It's quite hard work talking to them- the German I picked up when I served the Archbishop of Koln and the Katzenellenbogens is very differet from the brand they speak, which sometimes sounds more like an odd form of Veneto Italian spoken in a German accent.

I think I'll like it here. It's also supposed to be a good place to find out who's recruiting this winter.

As the inn's horseboy takes Bruna away, a lady comes out of the inn. I look at her- and look again a bit harder. Very pretty, well dressed- looks too respectable to be in an inn at all, even an upmarket one. I make an appropriate bow to her. She makes a suitable reverence back.

"Good afternoon, my lady" I say in my best courtly French- this will give some indication of her status. "Permit me to introduce myself. I am called Talorcan and I come from a far away land by the mighty ocean"

"Delighted to meet you, Sir Talorcan" she replies (so she speaks courtly French too- interesting accent). "My name in Flidhais and I too am a stanger visiting this beautiful land"