“What made you decide to become… robbers?” he asked guardedly.

Panamon Creel shot a quick look at him, arching his eyebrows in surprise.

“What do you care what the reasons were? Plan on writing our life story?” He paused and caught himself suddenly, smiling quickly at his own irritability. “There’s no secret to it, Shea. I’ve never been much at making an honest living, never very good at common work. I was a wild kid, loved adventure, loved the outdoors-hated work. Then I lost my hand in an accident, and it became even harder to find work that would make me a comfortable living, get me what I wanted. I was deep in the Southland then, living in Talhan. I got in a little trouble and then a lot more. The next thing I knew I was roaming the four lands robbing for a living. The funny thing was I found myself so good at it that I couldn’t quit. And I enjoyed it-all of it! So here I am, maybe not rich, but happy in the prime of my youth-or at least, my manhood.”

“Don’t you ever think about going back?” Shea persisted, unable to believe the man was being honest with himself. “Don’t you ever think about a home and…?”

“Please, let’s not be maudlin, lad!” The other roared in laughter. “Keep this up and you’ll have me in tears, begging for forgiveness on my tired old knees!”

He broke into such an uncontrollable fit of raucous guffaws that even the silent Troll glanced over in quiet contemplation for a moment before returning to his meal. Shea felt a fierce flush of indignation spreading over his face and turned slowly back to his food, chewing the beef with grinding bites of anger and embarrassment. After several moments the laughter died into small chuckles, the thief shaking his head in amusement as he tried to swallow a little food. Then without further prompting, he continued his narration in a quieter tone of voice.

“Keltset has a different story than mine, I want to make that clear. I had no reason to take up this kind of life, but he had every reason. He was a mute since birth, and the Trolls don’t like deformed people. Kind of a joke on them, I guess. So they made life pretty rough for him, kicked him around and beat him when they were mad at anything that they couldn’t take their anger out on directly. He was the butt of every joke, but he never fought back because those people were all he had. Then he became big, so big and strong that the others were frightened of him. One night some of the young ones tried to hurt him, really hurt him so he might go away, even die. But it didn’t work out quite as they expected. They pushed him too far, and he fought back and killed three of them. As a result he was driven from the village, and an outcast Troll has no home once outside his own tribe or whatever they are. So he wandered around on his own until I found him.”