Chapter II
Halbarad caught up with the merchant as soon as we had left the gates. My kinsman can be a bit — gruff, shall we say — when he thinks someone is doing something wrong. Such was the case now.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
"I'm going to Deadman's Dike," the man snapped. "That is where I said I thought my horses went."
Halbarad pulled his horse in front, forcing us all to stop. "You can't just go off on an assumption!" He shot back.
"If you expect us to be any help," I added in a milder tone, "we need to see the place where you lost the horses. That way we'll have a good starting point to our search."
The merchant's face turned red, and his knuckles whitened as he gripped the reins. The next words that came out of his mouth were no surprise to me.
"I don't take orders from unkempt ruffians like you."
And before we could do anything he had manoeuvred around us and set off, again, for the Dike.