All in dark clothing. All wearing large-brimmed, handsome hats adorned with wafting feathers with their hair flowing long from under them. All with dark scarves with holes at the eyes covering the top half of their faces.

He had never been set upon by highwaymen, though he’d heard the tales since he was a boy, and he’d never tired of listening to the telling of them.

In the now, seeing them, their sturdy bodies with their thick thighs on their glorious steeds washed in moonlight, he lamented his choice to become a Go’Doan priest and not a highwayman.

All those men in one city, it had been an enticement Jellan could not forego.

But a life beholden to no one and nothing…you had your merry band, preyed on the weak, enjoyed your takings, wore a handsome hat, and then you did it all again.

Oh, what a life that would have been.

Jellan had a decent seat on a horse. If he spent more time on one, he was sure it would get better.

And he’d be keen to learn his way about a whip.

“Stand and deliver!” one of the men shouted.

Ah, the romance.

“What do these words mean?” Daemon asked Marian, regarding the men with some interest, and surprisingly, or perhaps guilelessly, no ire.

“Let me handle this,” Marian said by way of answer. Then, to the highwayman who spoke, she called, “It would be good you leave us be.”

“It would be good you toss that purse, madam,” the man replied. “And then we would be pleased to bid you goodnight and take our leave.”

Of course, they had a purse. Or Daemon did, hanging at his belt.

This was because Marian proved deft at lifting them from unsuspecting citizens strolling the pavements.

She was a clever cunt, that Marian. Crafty. Skilled.

Jellan detested her.

“Truly, it’s in your best interests to move along,” Marian advised.

“I think not,” the man said.

“I think so,” Marian retorted.

Another crack of a whip, this from a different highwayman, and Jellan saw his chance.

He kicked his heels into his mount’s sides, jerked the reins back, and with nowhere to go, as they were surrounded, his mount rose up, pawing the air with his front hooves.

When the highwaymen’s steeds automatically drew back at the rearing horse, and Jellan’s mount came down, he cut the reins again, cried out in false surprise, and dug his heels violently into his horse, who bunched his back haunches and burst forth, nearly bowling into one of the gentlemen robbers.

“Give chase!” he heard yelled, not by Marian or Daemon.

By a highwayman.

This was unexpected. He had no purse.

He had nothing.