"Miss, get inside!"
The short, fat man jolted in fright and yanked down the carriage curtain. Then his face changed as he stared hard at Green and the others. "You lot..."
"My lord, we didn't see anything. Rest assured."
An old wandering knight quickly chimed in.
The short, fat man looked at Green and the others again. After they played dumb for a while, they were all deemed to have passed muster. With a cold snort, he drove the convoy out of the city.
"What's there to be afraid of? Once we reach Bangal City, I'll become an official wizard apprentice..."
The little girl's dissatisfied muttering drifted faintly into Green and the others' ears from inside the carriage.
Green paused slightly. Could it be that a formal wizard there intended to take this little girl as a disciple?
That night, the five wandering knights, Green included, sat around a campfire drinking and eating dry rations. On the other side, the short, fat man and the little girl sat beside the carriage around another fire, eating the refined food they had prepared.
After half a day together, and with more than twenty days of traveling together ahead of them, the rough-looking wandering knights had grown somewhat familiar. They began laughing, joking, and boasting.
The burliest-looking man among them was nicknamed Wild Bear. As he gnawed on dry rations with his shiny bald head gleaming in the firelight, he bragged about his past adventures—nothing more than tales of black wizards and mutated monsters. As a wandering knight, the limits of what he had encountered and imagined lay only there.
Another man, whose face seemed steeped in Killing Intent, did not like to talk. So far, all they knew was that his nickname was Cobra.
The remaining two were twin brothers, nicknamed Iron