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*

I awoke in utter darkness.
No, wrong, the darkness wasn't complete. There was the sky, as deep, dark, and star-spangled as you might want it. Too bad it was below me instead of above; these crooks had taken the shakedown somewhat too literal for my taste. Turning my head a bit I could see that I was hanging upside down from a wooden rack, with their whole stock of dried scavenger flanking me. A dark, oily liquid had pooled below my head, that is, above me; since I knew all too well that it was a puddle of my own blood I was seeing I decided to lose my lunch on top of it.
Nobody seemed to care, though.
Amateurs.

I had expected those crooks to have set up sentries, but if they had done so, none were anywhere near me. Their problem.
As cautiously as was possible for a man bound by his hands and feet, I started to wiggle in my bonds; the rack gave an ominous creak while smoked scavengers bumped lazily into me. Their dried carcasses felt cold and nasty when scraping along my skin-
-skin?

Now wait a moment... these bastards had stripped me of my armor! Of course, that had been a sensible thing to do since the ramshackle rack surely wouldn't have taken that weight on top of mine, but...
I imagined Quentin donning my clothes and dancing around the outpost in childish merriment; that did it. An uncontrolled roar broke from my throat. The crooks had finally managed to hurt my pride. Now imagine my astonishment when my roar was answered by a not-too-distant hiss!
Snappers.
Instantly, my blood ran cold. No, I certainly didn't want to end up as snapper food, I already had decided on that earlier that day. There still were no audible signs of life other than mine and the snapper's around the outpost, so I reinforced my efforts to bring down the wooden rack until I swung wildly to and fro. Well, I risked breaking my neck should I actually succeed, but even that sounded better to me than being eaten alive...

*

I don't know how long I took, but there finally was the moment when the wooden frame gave off a protracted squeak and toppled over. We raised quite a cloud of dust when we landed on the ground with a series of dull thuds, my company of dead scavengers and me. As you can tell I didn't break my neck in the fall; I severely hurt my already aching shoulder instead.
The not-too-distant snapper hissed again, though its hiss had taken on another quality by now. It sounded more like a desperate wail to me.
Anyhow, I didn't have the time for animal studies then. My imminent problem was that I was still connected to a wooden rack along with an awful lot of dried meat; as the crooks hadn't left me dangling there with a blade equipped, the only thing I could think of was the dying fire that crackled somewhere on the other side of the makeshift shooting range, close to the mountainside.
So off to the fireplace I went. You probably can't imagine how tedious it is to drag yourself across rocky ground with tons of weight attached to your legs; I left a lot of tattooed skin at the crook's outpost. I wasn't sure then about what it was that hindered my progress in several places; since the mushy bundles were easily pushed out of my way, though, it didn't concern me too much.

It was only after I had reached the campfire that a flash of genius told me I might as well have unfastened the bonds around my ankles right where I had toppled the rack. Lo and behold, bringing the hands (they had been bound behind my back) close to my bound feet and opening the amateurish knot was a matter of minutes. I was just glad that nobody had witnessed my idiocy...
Anyhow, the problem of my bound hands remained.
I can tell you, burning your wrists and fingers can be awfully painful. With my interest in crooks, snappers and Gomez suddenly drastically diminished, the only action I still felt capable of was curling up in a corner and dozing off.

*

Yes, I woke up again.
You can guess that I still didn't feel too well, but at least a bit of my resolve to pull through with my mission had returned along with the rising morning sun. As it turned out, I had chosen my 'bed' next to the mangled carcass of one of the ten or twenty crooks. The fact that his arm had been torn off and the reek of blood and waste permeated everything obviously hadn't disturbed my sleep at all; bite me, I probably didn't smell any better. Wondering about what had happened here, I got up on my hurting legs and took a look around. Dead crooks lay everywhere (answering my question about last night's obstacles), with the occasional dead snapper draped in between.

I can still only guess what had happened. My reptilian fans had probably taken their time feeding on the guy near the watchtower and afterward begun a leisurely search for me. They must have followed the bloody trail I left and thus chanced upon the crooks' outpost.
Well, it definitely looked like I had missed the dance. Not that I was too unhappy about it, mind you, since my lust for action was momentarily sated.

The body count accounted for all four snappers (one of them had been neatly pinned to a hut by a lucky arrow, must have been the nightly squealer), but not for the outpost's whole population; there was no trace of Quentin or his toady.
Not that I cared about them; actually I got a good laugh out of the thought of those two rapscallions fleeing in terror. The bad thing was that one of them obviously had taken my armor along, as I didn't find it anywhere in the smallish outpost even though I discovered my sword and crossbow on a heap of goods, stuff that had in all probability been put away for trading.
I engaged in bitter cursing for a while, then I decided to have a bit of dried scavenger and bottled beer for breakfast, and after that I intended to set out again. I did not plan on going naked, though. First, I didn't exactly know where I was, so for all I knew getting to the Old Camp might take endless hours. Besides, I didn't feel the slightest inclination to make it any easier for snappers or other beasts which had set their minds on swallowing me whole.

The search for decent clothes didn't turn up anything spectacular. To be true, I hadn't set my mind on making a fashion statement, anyway, but peeling crudely-made leather-and-fur coverings off a mutilated carcass didn't do much to cheer me up. Especially not when the stuff wasn't even remotely resembling armor.

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