shirt into the knight’s face and knocked him off balance.
Then Kroogi screamed at the top of his lungs so loudly that
my ears rang, and he leapt at the knight with his big hands
going for the knight’s throat.
I was so surprised that I just sat there with my papers
and pen and satchel and watched the two of them fighting
and rolling in the dirt, yelling and cursing each other and
using words that Ark would have slapped my face for
using, as he’d done once when I said a word I’d heard a
fisherman use but which I won’t say ever again, or at least
not when Ark is around.
More townspeople gathered around, shouting at Kroogi
to beat the knight up, but some people came who yelled for
the knight to beat up Kroogi because they didn’t like the
fact that Kroogi was once a barbarian, even if he was a nice
guy mostly and made toys at Yuletime for some families
when he had the chance.
Then someone pushed someone else, and then the
whole crowd was going at it and everyone was kicking and
punching and shoving and flailing away, and grown men
had blood coming from their noses and mouths, and their
hair was pulled out, and some had clubs and hoes, and
someone else screamed like he was dying, and about then I
felt someone grab me around the waist and drag me off,
and it was Jarvis.
“Damn you!” he shouted at me as he dragged me off.
“What in the Abyss did you do now?”
So I told him, and he put me up here on the roof of the
Cats & Kitties, where he said I couldn’t cause any more
trouble while he tried to restore order in town. It’s nice and
warm up here, and I have a great view of the town and sea
and farms, but I can still hear people yelling, and some lady
is wailing over and over, and I wish I had asked Jarvis for
something to eat, because now I am really hungry. I think
Jarvis is coming back up the ladder now, so I’d better close
this up. Oops! I see that it isn’t Jarvis, it’s Goodwife Fils –
*****
Report Number Four
Same day (Cotterpin says the 13th), late afternoon
Hi, Astinus. I’m a few miles outside of town now,
sitting under a tree, where no one except Cotterpin can find
me, I hope. This is probably my last official report to you,
because there doesn’t seem to be much point in continuing
to try to find someone who understands why the gods got so
tired of Istar, when everyone gets so upset about the whole
issue and thinks either that Istar was wonderful or that Istar
was bad but wasn’t as bad as some other places around here
that should have gotten hit with their own fiery mountains
first.
My stomach hurts but I’m not hungry, and I feel just
awful, like I’m going to have a good cry in a minute after I
finish writing this all down, even if Ark says boys shouldn’t
cry, but I’m a kender and not a human so maybe it’s okay if
I feel bad for just a little while.
Everyone hates me, and I hate me, and I hate being a
recorder, and I hate sitting out here on a rock in the
wilderness because I have no one to talk to except for
Cotterpin, the tinker gnome, but he’s already gone to sleep
in his steam-powered lawn chair under the oak tree here.
Ark is going to be very disappointed that I got thrown in jail
and made part of the town burn up and started a riot and
everything. I’ll write down how I got here, but I don’t care if
it’s interesting or important anymore.
After Magistrate Jarvis caught Goodwife Filster on the
tavern roof and wrestled with her and they both almost fell
off and he took her butcher’s cleaver away and made her get
down the ladder again and leave me alone, he said it would
be best if I left town for a while.
“How long is ‘for a while’?” I asked, and he said, “Until