“No,” Arcolin said. “They need all the skills I mentioned, and more, to do the work you hired us to do. A tailor does not merely sew cloth pieces together, like a housewife patching a shirt.”

“True. So … how long will you stay in the city?”

“I expect to march again tomorrow morning,” Arcolin said. “Unless more of the horses need shoes reset. If you have more questions for me, Burek can take them on, and I can catch up.”

“What can you tell us specifically about these men?” the Councilor asked.

Arcolin shrugged. “The village headman knew about the brigands and lied—tried to tell us they had no problems and knew nothing.” He told the rest of what had happened that day and night, and then why he had captured the headman.

“And you saw him—”

“We saw him run from the village as we marched back through, and captured him. He gave some tale about a stray cow; his excuse the first time was a stray bull.”

“No doubt our city guard will hear about a stray calf,” the Councilor said. “But the others? You said they were the merchant’s hire; would they be complicit in his crimes?”

“They could be,” Arcolin said. “They offered no resistance when we told them to stand aside, but few men, criminal or not, will oppose their single sword to a hundred. One I am fairly sure has a criminal past, the tall black-haired man with the scarred forehead—”

“Ugly brute,” the Councilor said. “But I suppose that scar proves he’s really a soldier, at least.”

“Not if it’s a brand that’s been cut over to obscure the design,” Arcolin said. “I never saw the man myself, but my senior sergeant, when he was on recruit training one year, saw a recruit branded for multiple crimes. My sergeant thinks this is the same fellow. If it is, he will not have changed his ways.”

“How can we tell?”

“Have your guards strip him. If he has well-marked stripes on his back, not just white scars, that’s a strong suggestion, with the scar on his forehead. It was a fox-head brand once.”

“What about the others?”

“The merchant said he hired one, and that one hired the others. I didn’t talk with them on the way here; as long as they didn’t give trouble, that was enough for me. They were under guard the whole way. I’d talk to the merchant.”

“Oh, we will. Now the Guild has withdrawn protection, we will have out of him whatever he knows.”

“Indeed.” Arcolin heard the noise of cart wheels and hooves. Burek came in, leading his horse and the men with the carts and the carter.

The men loaded sacks of grain and hams into the carts, and when the carts were full lashed the last bundles of swords to the packsaddles. “If you do not need me presently, I should get back to the camp,” Arcolin said. I am at your service, should you call.”