“Yes! He's cool, right?!” Arel laughed.

“And you whined, you were afraid that nothing would come of it.”

“I believed. I believed, and…”

“What?”

“We need to prepare for his meeting! We need to meet him properly!” Arel opened a drawer and took out a box of dyes, smiled a drunken smile, looking at Lis.

“What are you up to?” In the voice of Lis there was tension.

“I don’t have a bell strip here, otherwise I would put it on you again.”

Lis said nothing, but a look of doom appeared on his face.

“I have here a lot of muzzles for slaves,” Arel threw a muzzle mask consisting of thin straps at Lis.

“Do you want to put it on me?” Lis asked somewhat defiantly.

“I wanted to. You're a slave of Nikto, and I thought that such a meeting he would like. Twenty years ago, all the slaves here wore such. They are slightly different so that you can immediately identify a slave from a plantation or a slave from a barnyard. This is the muzzle of the slave who served in the house.”

“And, that is, it should be an honor for me? Well, Arel, give me the muzzle of the slave of the cesspool cleaner! I'll put it on!”

Arel laughed:

“Lis, I wanted to do it, but I changed my mind.”

“It's strange. I can't even imagine why?”

“They all have a leather flap in place of their mouths. When the slave ate, he could lift it a little, and still he always walked with his mouth shut so that his rotten teeth were not visible and so as not to offend the sirs with the stench.”

“And? What confused you?”

“I like to see your mouth, your lips. How you twist them, even now, in an attempt to seem indifferent. This is so funny! You make me laugh, Lis. And I remembered, remembered something that will hook you much more than a banal slave muzzle.”

“You…” Lis looked at the box in his hand.

“Who are you, Lis?”

And Lis lowered his head:

“I'm a jester, I'm a fool,” he said quietly. And the drunken Arel laughed.

Chapter two

Black Bey

“The old man said everything right,” said Mike Rout, “as he said, there they went out.”

“Well, like this!” Edin Ol, sitting next to Black Bey, grinned, content.

“There are not many exits from the Great Quagmire. Everyone knows that!”

“And from there to the Royal Route in the most remote place,” Mike continued.

“So we'll meet them at the abandoned cemetery,” Bey said.

“Yes,” Mike nodded, pouring local muddy liquor into a rough earthen mug on the table. He drank it all down in one gulp and winced, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“We grazed them all day, they are heading in this direction, as the old one said.”

Bey grimaced as if he had also taken a sip of the moonshine of the marsh, although he didn’t take a sip:

“Don't remind me of him once again, this vile old man pisses me off!”

He looked around the squalid little room of the low hut in which they were. The scarce furnishings of the dwellings of the bog dwellers didn’t favor a cozy pastime. Bey slanted down, looking at the dirt floor and the rotten straw heaped in the corner.

“There's something there! I swear in the name of Gods! And I don't like it!”

They stared at the pile of straw.

“I also hear some sounds from there, especially at night,” Toby said carefully.

“They are rats rustling in the straw,” Edin Ol replied.

“You shouldn't have quarreled with Gregor,” Toby said.

“I didn't quarrel with Gregor,” Bey objected, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from the corner he hated. “I simply explained to him that I was no longer able to pay for his expensive magical experiments and so-called “ingredients”. We had to choose: either this outing, or dubious magical rites!”

“No more dubious than this outing,” Toby said, shivering and looking away from the dark corner too.

“Just rats!” Edin Ol repeated angrily, as if he wanted to convince himself of this first of all.

“We've been in this damn swamp for a month now, and I don't like the way these locals look sideways at us. I don’t understand what’s on their minds!” Bey was reaching for the mug, but, feeling the pungent smell of bad moonshine, grimacing, set it aside.

“And we came across a skeleton again, this is the second,” said Mike Rout.

This one is much further and not so tangled in thorns.”

“And?” Bey interrupted him skeptically.

“He also has no arm. Again the same as the first one. Have the animals eaten one arm?”

“I don’t know!” Bey flared up. “I don’t care! I also want to get out of here as soon as possible, like everyone else!”

“Gregor would have been better with us, Bey,” Toby said. “The old swamp man has snake eyes.”

“Well, if they put up with us, then they need it,” Edin objected. He got up from behind a roughly put together low table and, going up to a bench in the corner, pushed it sharply to the side, threw away the straw.

“Edin!” Bey shouted at him, “don't touch anything there for the sake of the Gods!”

“There's nothing here.”

“What's there? Under the straw?” Mike Rout asked curiously.

“Planks of some kind, everything rotten. If you try to pick them up…”

“Edin! Sit down!” Ordered Bey, turning to the rest of the soldiers sitting at the table:

“Okay, we've been sitting here all summer, and where were they sitting? In the quagmire? Locals claim that there is nothing there but mud and water. Where?! Where have they been sitting all this time?!”

Edin Ol returned to the table:

“Now it doesn't matter, Bey, where they were sitting, in the quagmire they ate dirt or in the same hut. They showed up, and this is the main thing. We must go out at dawn!”

“Don't worry, Edin,” Mike Rout said. “They walk so slowly that it won't be difficult to ambush them.”

He chuckled:

“They barely move their legs. It's a pity to watch the girl. Very thin. Maybe they really ate swamp slurry alone. Remember her in Lower, huh? Such a beauty she was, and now she is barely alive.”

“She had to run far from them then,” said Bey, “well, it’s her own fault.”

“Yes, she drags around with him, like tied,” agreed Mike, “thin, he seemed to suck her!”

“Damn Devil!” Bey shook his head.

“We grazed them all day until they made a small fire and lay down for the night. They walk slowly, but he keeps the direction right, she trails after him, well, just like on a leash. We came close, close to them, they seemed not to understand anything.”

“What were they talking about? Have you heard?”

“Who?!”

“They!”

“They didn't speak at all! They walked in silence, lit a fire in silence and lay down. I say it looks like both of them don't understand anything. Come and take with your bare hands.”

“Well, so many days to spend no one knows where, exhausted,” said Edin Ol happily, “the easier it will be for us to deal with them.”

“He is alone, and the unclean ones didn’t come to his aid,” Mike said. “We checked everything to see if the accomplices were hiding in ambush. There’s nobody there.”

“How do you think, why is it so?” Toby asked.

“And how do we know,” Edin waved him off, “it's easier for us!”

“I can't wait to be able to cut off his stupid head!” Bey slammed his fist on the rough tabletop. “How tired I am of him, this damn Son of the Devil! I can’t think about anything but about him! And how to take revenge on them all! For the streets, for my girl! I will cut off his head and take it to the prince's estate! I would go out with this Nikto for a one-on-one battle, he was tempting me, but I just don’t want to waste time. So we will just shoot him!”

Bey turned to the warrior with the crossbow, who was sitting on a bench by the entrance.

“Shoot and that’s done!”