They slowly approached the strong gate of the city which looked unharmed as ever. As a matter of fact, the fortifications as a whole did look quite normal. Of course, having those dark-skinned southerners in front of the gate in a land where everybody was colored somewhere between white and very light brown skin (from working outside) did in fact signal something out of the ordinary.

Laban looked suspiciously at those men and thought: "God, they look tough. It reminds me of the battle at the delta of the great river Anuket. They had fought until many of their men had died even when the battle turned sour for them. I think at that day nearly half of the royal guard of Khem-Ur vanished. I can under no circumstance let them know I am from Khem-Ur. I heard rumors that the Kiffians gave them some land to settle after their defeat by our hands. Maybe I better pretend to be a Kiffian."

Laban gave Reza a warning look that Reza understood immediately. He saw Reza slowly taking down a small religious symbol he was wearing like a pendant. The eye of one of their gods, a telltale sign he came from Khem-Ur.

They arrived by the gate. There was only an old man before them with a small cart which he pulled himself. The guards were actually not harassing the old man. They just looked at what he had on the back of the cart and demanded a coin for entry which was not uncommon for traders in cities and then let him in.

Next were they. The leader of this guard squad was a tall Sherdana with a bronze armor vest and a mean looking sword. He had many obvious scars on his body which gave Laban the impression that he was a veteran of many battles. He had piercing eyes and a very straightforward attitude.

Laban felt that he had to approach the whole situation strong but not provocative. Veterans like that man were usually not taking shit from anybody unanswered. Around that leader were three more guards with varying degree of equipment. One was a Sherdana and two others were from another tribe of the sea people – Ekwesh was the name of that tribe if Laban remembered correctly. Their armor was lighter, and their heritage was different from the Sherdana. They had an even darker slightly olive skin tone and were said to come from some far-away island out in the west.

"So, who are you and why are you here?", asked the guard in the typical northern Aermorikan dialect. However, he had a strong accent. Laban answered while putting on a slight Kiffian accent into his tone. "My name is Laban. I am a Kiffian mercenary. Me and my small company have come to Alessina in search of work."

"The king of Alessina won´t employ you anymore."

"Then the new king might do."

"There is no new king. Only us!"

"You are from the sea tribes, aren’t you? Maybe your people might be needing some additional muscle to ... keep the peace?"

The leader of the guard looked at Laban in a menacing way: "We always look for strong man for work and women for ... entertainment." While saying so he didn’t look at Dil-Shad like one would assume he would do but kept looking straight into Laban’s eyes to gauge his reaction.

When the other men of the guard squad heard his words the seemingly got their spears and swords ready. Suddenly some bowmen became visible on the top of the wall. Reza’s hand moved slightly down to the hilt of his sword, while Brendan crossed his arms in front of his chest. Laban knew Brendan could throw two daggers within the blink of an eye and hit his targets perfectly. Still, he hoped that would not be necessary. He didn’t long to die by arrows at the gates of Alessina.

Laban smiled at the man facing him. "Some are good to toil on fields and farms. Others are much better when employed otherwise. And about that women. She is related to a friend of mine. If something happens to her, I might get in trouble with my friend. Please show me some kindness here."

The guard leader kept looking straight into Laban’s eyes. Not showing any signs of relaxation which was bad as far as Laban had experienced in the past. Some of the other guards had partly encircled them. He could see in Reza’s and Brendan’s eyes that they would be willing to try to slaughter them all. If it wasn’t for the archers, they could have a real chance to survive. They could kill the guards even without a real fight.

"You said you are a Kiffian?", asked the man.

"Yes."

"You don’t look like a Kiffian. They have a slightly darker skin tone like you however you are as tall as one of them."

"Not all of my people have the same skin color. The eastern Kiffians which live close to the desert look less dark", said Laban knowing while it was true what he said that the eastern Kiffians still had a darker skin tone then the average Khem-Urian like himself.

Half a truth and half a lie seemed to him the best strategy to get through this. During all of this he didn’t flinch even for a second and kept looking straight into the eyes of the guard leader. He knew that one perceived moment of weakness would immediately spell doom for them. And he trusted his gang blindly not to behave careless. Even their jester Brendan knew peril when it was at hand and could then be quiet and attentive.

"Let’s assume that is true. Then what about this?" Saying so the guard’s captains pulled Laban’s sickle sword out of the sheath with one fluid motion and held it to Laban’s throat. "This doesn’t look like a Kiffian sword to me."

Laban was shocked at how fast this man was with his sword. He was good! But he kept his coolness, looked him again into the eyes and said: "You know now I am a mercenary. When I left my homeland, I went east and was hired in Khem-Ur by some local Lord. In the end I managed to procure a Khem-Urian sword after my original sword had broken.”

The guard leader slowly nodded. "I believe you”, he said and put Laban’s sword back into his sheath. On the inside Laban started to relax a little bit after this intense and perilous moment."

Suddenly the guard captain said something that sounded like "Ham resh pa ram." That caught Laban of guard. It was undoubtedly something spoken in Kiffian, but he had said it with such a strong accent that Laban had problems understanding the words correctly. He spoke some everyday Kiffian, but he felt that the man might have slurred the words on purpose because a Kiffian should understand him anyway. But somebody who was not a Kiffian would not be able to decipher his slurred words.

Laban looked at any clue from the behavior of the man. The man stood there with his hand open. It looked to Laban that he was asking for money. Laban slowly looked down and put his hand in his bag pretended to look for his purse. He knew exactly where his purse was but tried to buy some time.

"It’s about money", he thought. "’Ham resh pa ram.’ Let’s start from what I know.”

“Pa” was spoken correctly and meant "for". Thinking about that "ram" might be a slurred "am" which means "me". Now he could no longer fish for his purse without arousing suspicion, so he pulled his purse out. The guard captain was looking at him with a seemingly friendly face, but Laban did not fail to notice that his eyes looked piercing as ever.

"If it is about money, then ‘Ham’ might be ‘Ha’ which means copper on Kiffian.” Laban slowly opened the purse and started to put a random number of copper coins from his purse in his hand. The man looked at every move Laban was making. "But now ‘resh’. I have no idea what that means." Laban was alarmed and slowly started counting copper coins from his hand onto the palm of the guard’s captain. He put one, two, three coins down. He thought about it. The old man before them had paid one coin to get in. "Could it be? What was the Kiffian word for five again?" His mind was racing. Then he got struck by a brainwave: "The word for ‘five’ was ‘rek’ in Khem-Urian and ‘re in the Kiffian language! So, the correct wording was ‘Ha re pa am’ – ‘Copper five for me’" in the way the Kiffians would structure the sentence.

At that moment Laban had put the sixth coin into the hand of the man, looked up and said: "Five for the city and one coin for you, my friend”, and put on a big smile." The man looked at the coins and at Laban and stood there silent for a moment. Then he did take a last look at the group and moved out of Laban’s way. "Better not cause any trouble here. I will have an eye on you!"

They entered the city through the gate. After a few minutes they arrived the market district that lied in the central quarter of the city, simply called The Market. It was surrounded by the other five districts of the city called Old City (with the palace, barracks and arsenal), Upper Town, The Harbor, Fountain District, and Artisans' Corner (where the craftsmen of the city had their homes and workshops, for Alessina was famous for woodwork, stone cutting, pottery, and
sculpture in almost all civilized countries.

The main market was packed with stalls and push carts. Farmers offered their goods from field and animal, craftsmen discussed with merchants about the quality of their products and wrote down orders, children and stray dogs and cats rushed over the markets, trying to find or catch something useful. The market was framed with historic buildings with richly adorned and colored fronts, stucco ornaments at their windows and doors and a size well fit for families living there with all generations under one roof. They were slightly remembered of the splendid cities of the far, great cities that lied in the East, with their unbelievably rich families that had been nursing and financing the cities from year to year, from year to year, from generation to generation never allowing even one stain on the street or the houses at least of their wealthy district. It seemed as if Alessina had been developed and nurtured by a related kind of citizens' pride over the years. The walls were high, the streets more or less clean and plain, and the smell of the canalization was held away from the inner city. Had they possibly used a specific technique for their sewage system?

But still, the pack was alarmed. Something wasn't right. Brendan's eyes shot nervously up and down and from left to right, and Dil-Shad was standing there with her eyes closed. She said: "Do you hear that? That is not the normal sound of a market in the middle of the day. You don’t hear loud voices, laughter, quarrels or the typical chatter of acquaintances meeting at the market. It's the sound of oppression and fear. They are afraid of doing and saying something wrong."

Reza whispered something into Laban’s ear. “Yes”, the leader answered, “you do that. We will meet at the inn ‘Old Temple’ in a couple of hours. You see the inn at the opposite end of the market?” Laban pointed with his chin at a large, astonishingly well-preserved house that must have been several centuries old. Reza nodded and vanished between the booths. “What’s Reza up to?”, Brendan asked, but Laban portended him not to ask, not now. Brendan understood but started talking again, although quietly.

“I have counted at least 20 men with weapons, not all of them wearing uniform dress or armor. Maybe they are some kind of secret guard or irregular soldiers. They disguise themselves good, but not good enough for me. Don’t look up, but have you seen the splendid, lordly house with the red and gold façade at the left side of the market? On the first floor on the left side there are two men hiding behind the curtains. They are observing the market and the people. House guards would not loiter on the bel étage watching out of the window.”

The others were stunned, partly because Brendan’s eyes were as keen as those of an eagle, partly because he had talked for a minute without pulling a joke or saying something stupid. He had even used a foreign word.

Mabon looked at him and shook his shoulder: “Demon, get out of my friend! Where has Bullshit-Brendan gone?”

The other two smiled, but Laban got angry immediately and hissed: “Shut the fuck up, sorcerer's apprentice. Or what do you think is funny exactly right now?” Brendan wanted to defend his friend and opened his mouth, but Laban was faster: “And you, potato face, shut the fuck up, too. Your observations are of great worth, but do not test me, not now, not here!”

Brendan’s face was red by anger, and Mabon had to press his friend’s right hand so hard he hurt himself to avoid that Brendan could long for his hunting knife.

After some tense seconds, they all relaxed. Dil-Shad started to speak again: “As I said, the people seem anxious and oppressed. No wonder with so many guards among them. The sea-people seem to spread fear and mistrust to control the inhabitants.

Maybe it’s their kind of politics. If they don’t love you, that they have at least to fear you.” All of them looked around again. Alessina must have been a great, wealthy city in the past and still there were signs that it was a livable place – but supposedly not for the sea-people. Could they do anything to rescue the city and restore safety and freedom?

Without a word, Laban walked off and headed to the inn he had described to Reza. Walking across the market they could feel the cold, tense atmosphere more and more and grew more and more alarmed. They expected being raided by the hidden guards or that of them would die from a hidden knife or something like that. Brendan was following last to cover their back, while Laban shoved the gang through the people making room with his powerful body.

No one dared touching them, although Brendan could see two men whispering while looking at them from a -rather sloppy, to Brendan’s understanding- hideout behind a stash of tomatoes and paprikas. He was about to greet them but decided to purport not to have recognized them. “Shall they think that we are easy prey. So, we can use an element of surprise for our advantage!”, he told to himself.

They eventually arrived at the tavern and sat down. Reza who had split off from the group was still nowhere to be seen. The tavern was quiet and relative empty. Not unusual considering it was noon. Most likely it would get livelier in here in the evening, but some gut feeling told Laban that this place was too quiet.

"Oi!", he yelled. The innkeeper looked up. “Bring us some beer or wine.” The innkeeper did come himself shortly afterwards carrying a plate with four cups on it. "No barmaid here?", thought Laban but kept his mouth shut. "Anything else?", asked the innkeeper.

"Yes, please, can you tell me what happened here? The last time I came here there were no sea-people running the city", Laban said. The innkeeper looked around in a slight panic but seemed to relax at once recognizing that there were no sea-people or any of their affiliates in the inn.

"I don’t want to talk about it but let’s just say: One night we heard a commotion and the next morning our king hang dead on the marketplace and most of his guards were dead. The rest of us didn’t have time to even get armed and fight. Since then, they have been in charge here..."

Laban gave the innkeeper a bronze coin and then turned around like nothing happened and said to the others: "Let’s wait for Reza to arrive. I wonder what kind of story he will tell."