A dozen paces removed, one of the Templars in her full plate has been induced to take a heavy seat on a stone at the edge of the roadway. Flint is there. He has both her sword and his tucked under his arm, and the details of whatever corroborating conversation is occurring are largely indistinguishable under the heavy clang-clang-clang of the transport's lock being broken.

Here, down in the mud, the man in the leather armor slides his attention from Derrica to Julius retreating toward the back of the transport, and back again. He's quite clear when he says to her, "Well, I can't make any promises. But let's see if a drink relieves this itch in my throat enough to make conversation."

He is maybe forty and sports a Marcher accent so broad that it's indistinguishable. Under a dark, closely kept beard, the man has a fairly unremarkable face excepting the scar that clips through one eyebrow. That said, his smile involves a fair number of teeth and might be charming were it expressed in less fraught circumstances. In these, it's something of an aggravating pretense.