It took them the whole night to get back to the Ohruk camp. By the time the sun was rising, Katters was glad they'd spent the afternoon resting. Thorog seemed to take it in his stride, but Zebra was looking tired and Bartholomew had stumbled and fallen to his knees a few times. Their captors hadn't been unkind - Katters felt that either they'd treat you like people, or they'd kill you. Nevertheless, there was no conversation that night.

They came upon the camp as the horizon was starting to glow with the promise of dawn. Katters wasn't sure she'd have spotted it except for the guards who materialised out of the darkness to halt the party. And then they were among a series of bushes, except when you looked closer you noticed that this bush here was rather regularly-shaped, and that one there had the remains of a campfire sitting outside it.

They were taken to another tent, off to the side. Another Ohruk was standing guard outside. There was a low, muttered conversation, and the four of them were lead into the tent. Their escort left, although the guard remained standing outside. The message was clear - this was where they were to stay.

Katters and Zebra collapsed to the ground on one side of the tent. Bartholomew curled up against Katters and soon his breathing slowed. Katters wasn't used to having children fall asleep on her, but it was too late to move now.

"So," Zebra said to Thorog, "not one of the ones who want to kill us?"

"No. But it could have been better."

"Hey, we're not dead. That's something."

Thorog shrugged. "We'll be a while here. There's no rules bannin' me from being here, but, well, I'm a bit of a way out of the way. People get suspicious when you just turn up in the wrong place."

"I guess the war isn't helping things."

"How long's a while?" Katters asked.

The Ohruk shrugged. "A week, maybe more. They'll want me to speak to them, an' then runners'll be sent out, an' we'll have to wait until they return."

"More than a week? The shop'll be trashed by the time we get back."

"Assuming they let us go back," Zebra muttered.

"Nothing we can help," Thorog said. "Sleep now. We'll worry about time in the morning."

* * *

Despite their circumstances, Katters slept well. It seemed like no time until the guard poked his head into the tent and started shouting at them in Ohrukish. She was still cleaning the sleep out of her eyes when Thorog was hustled off, presumably to be interviewed by the tribe's higher-ups. Some time later, one of the guards placed some sort of weird gourd full of porridge inside the tent. Katters and Zebra immediately fell upon it - despite neither of them having any particular fondness for porridge, they hadn't had any proper food for several nights.

There was a small cough behind them. They turned. Bartholomew looked up at them.

Katters looked at Zebra. Zebra looked at Katters. "I, uh, I guess we'd better leave some for him," Zebra said, looking at the remains of the meal.

"You sure?" Katters said.

"Yeah."

They collapsed to one side of the tent and let Bartholomew finish off breakfast. "So," Katters said. "D'you think he'll work out a solution?"

"Thorog? 'course he will. He's got us this far, hasn't he?"

"Yeah, but, what if they decide he's just too suspicious to let loose?"

"They won't." Zebra waved the problem away. "He'll explain everything."

"But what if they connect him with what happened at Crossroads?"

"What did happen at Crossroads? He didn't do anything wrong - he just got in a brawl."

"Yeah, but, we were involved before that too."

"They don't know that."

"Yeah, I guess. He knows what he's doing."

"All he's got to do is get out of this tribe's territory, right? That can't be too hard. We don't want to cause any trouble."

"Yeah."

"I mean it's not like we've been spying on them...unless they think we're spies. Katters, d'you think they think we're spies?"

"Nah. We hadn't seen anything until they caught us."

"But we were heading from Crossroads, right? That's human territory."

"But Thorog'll explain that. He's good at explaining things."

"They'll expect that if he's a spy, though, won't they?"

"Zebra, don't go getting nervous. One of us has got to be the confident, reassuring one."

"Dun' worry!" piped up Bartholomew. "One of 'em tries to come in here, I'll stick em!"

Katters frowned at the boy. "What with? They kind-of took all our stuff." Her hand strayed to her pocket, where a scalpel still rested.

"Nuh-uh! I managed to hide something!" With that, Bartholomew stuck a hand down his pants and pulled out a two-foot-long branch, just big enough to avoid being labelled a stick. "I hid it," he confided to Katters.

"Really."

"I can stand guard now." The boy marched to the front of the tent and stood next to the flap, stick planted in the ground.

"I thought you were going to become a highwayman," Zebra said.

"Shhh! Can't talk! 'm on duty."

"Ah. Of course." But for some reason, the tense, nervous atmosphere of before had dissipated.

Katters and Zebra lounged back on the ground, waiting for whatever came, while Bartholomew stood to attention (or as close as he could get to attention) at the entrance. The tableaux lasted for all of five minutes before Bartholomew grew bored of guard duty.

"D'you reckon they'd let me join their army?" he said, eyes still on the entrance as if to enforce the fact that despite his apparently casual conversation, he was still ready to leap to the defence of the group should hungry Ohruks invade the tent.

"Who'd let you join?"

"The Ohruks."

Zebra coughed. "I think they have a height thing to get into the army here. 'Your head must be taller than the line to ride the Ohruk Army Train' sort of thing."

Bartholomew bit his lip, thinking. "I could stand on a box," he said, finally.

"I don't think that'd cut it."

"But I wanna fight! I wanna join the army an' have adventures an' ride a horse!"

"You don't necessarily have to be in the army to have adventures," Zebra said.

"Or ride a horse," added Katters, scraping out the porridge gourd. "What's this thing made of, anyway?"

"The porridge?"

"No, the bowl thing. It's like a giant watermelon."

"If I was riding a horse, though..." Bartholomew ventured, "I'd be tall enough to get in, wouldn't I?"

"It's quite hard, though," Katters said, giving the outside of the bowl an experimental tap.

"Oh, I don't know," Zebra said. "I picked it up pretty fast. Can't go bareback though."

"I'm talking about the bowl, and you know it."

"D'you reckon they have swords, or do they use, like, clubs and stuff?" Bartholomew asked.

"They could probably just throw these at people," Katters said. "Put rocks on the inside and it'd knock someone out."

"I don't think they've got much metal out here," Zebra said. "Not great at smithing, your basic nomadic tribe. Probably spears and stuff."

"You know a lot about nomads for someone who's never been outside a city."

"Hey, I'm outside a city now, aren't I?"

"Not by- hold on." Katters' ears pricked up. "I think we have visitors."

Just then the tent flap parted. Bartholomew presented his stick, ready to give the intruder a hiding, but it was only Thorog.

"What's the news?" Zebra asked.

"Turns out we won't be waiting around here too long," Thorog said. "We'll be goin' south again."

"But we just came from there!" Katters said.

"Yup. Human scouts were spotted in the area last night. A couple were captured, it seems, an' decided to give away the location of their army. Which means this band are heading t'war. And as prisoners, we're going along for the ride."