The bartender looked busy when Tommi caught sight of her and, he thought, he could just as easily ask the Marshal if any scrolls could be bought locally. He and Lionel drained their cups and headed back out the front door. The two dwarves had gone, and one had left half a pint in the bottom of his cup, which hadn't been cleared away yet.
Tommi and Lionel headed down the hill and south on the road, until they came to the south tower. It had once been tall and made of stone, but was now mostly a foundation with a wooden watchpost built on top. The fallen stones from when it had been toppled by a dragon had long been piled aside (where they had not been pilfered) and had spent most of a hundred years overgrown with dirt and grasses. But now, the Marshal was overseeing digging them out, and using them to lay a secondary wall south of the tower itself.
Marshal Stratus was a goliath, a half-giant. He was tall - taller even than Lunn Dornuk - and he had white hair in spite of being only a few years older than Tommi. His skin had a slightly bluish tinge and his eyes were such a light blue that they almost looked white. In spite of being busy overseeing the construction of improved defenses, he nodded to Tommi and Lionel as they approached and said, "Good day t'you, fellows. What can I do for you?"
* * *
During this time, the others were circling the town to the west, travelling by various trails past the "outside" of what had been the town's old wall. Everywhere it was being worked on, either filling in gaps with a wooden palisade or rebuilding the wall out of its own old stones. The group's behaviour was admittedly strange (why travel around when you could go right through in less than a third of the time?) so they kept their distance. The journey was difficult for Sir Isteval, who was near the end of his ability to keep up, though he did as much as he could to hide it.
