It had been a hard night, a cold and cheerless one in their rude, makeshift shelter, but he took solace in the knowledge that it would be his last night in the wilds for the foreseeable future.He shared a few meager strips of smoked beef with his guide, who, ten days into their journey, was every bit as grim and silent as he had been since his services were first engaged on the far side of the high mountain pass. The half-barbarian Tessini were a dark and stocky lot, as little inclined to give up their secrets as the dwarves who lived in massive underground cities somewhere beneath these very mountains. So short and broad-shouldered was the guide that he might easily have been mistaken for a dwarf were it not for the hawkish features on his clean-shaven face.The guide was very nearly as unfriendly as a dwarf too, the man who was presently calling himself Nicolas thought, vaguely annoyed at his inability to crack the man’s reserve. Even now, with their journey together nearly at an end, the Tessino still refused to meet Nicolas’s eyes and looked away when Nicolas was doing no more than passing him a hardened heel of week-old bread.
