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Gulping, the lad passes his sword to his left hand and joins his fellows in holding it up at a forty five degree angle.

Moving away from his window, James gets dressed and then goes out to the kitchen for breakfast. He finds Tersa and Jiron there finishing up their meal. “I see Illan has them working hard this morning,” he says.

Smiling, Jiron replies, “They’ve been at it for over an hour now.”

“May have to construct a barracks of some kind if they’re going to be here permanently,” says James as he sits down at the table.

Tersa gets up and brings him over a plate with eggs and tubers.

Seeing the eggs, he asks, “So Ezra has the new chickens laying already?”

“Most of them never even stopped as she was afraid of,” Tersa replies, sitting back down next to her brother

“Good,” James says as he takes a large bite of eggs.

“While the recruits are training, the rest of us are on patrol duty,” Jiron informs him. “Illan says they must have at least three hours of practice a day, maybe more when all of us are here. They didn’t really expect all this training when we first asked around for help, but it makes sense.”

Nodding, James adds, “After what we’ve been through the last week, any and all training can only help.” He eats a couple more bites in silence before continuing, “I saw a girl out there with the others.”

“Oh, that’s Errin,” he says. “She’s the daughter of some farmer on the far side of town. When her father heard we were asking for help, he brought her over to us. Said she was a hellcat and would fit right in.”

“He did, did he?” James asks.

“Yeah, he did,” answers Jiron with a grin. “In fact, he seemed right glad to be rid of her. But she’s caused no problems and she can shoot a bow better than any of the others. You probably didn’t see her yesterday because we have her mainly patrolling the woods.”

“Does she want to be here?” he asks, concerned about forcing someone to do something against their will. Especially something that could endanger their lives.

“She’s taken to it with great determination,” Jiron tells him. “Yern says that she was wasted back on the farm and that’s where she would have most likely spent her days seeing as how the Cardri army doesn’t allow women recruits.”

They spend the remainder of breakfast catching up on small details that have cropped up since James was gone, thankfully nothing of any real importance. Just before he’s done eating, Roland comes in from the front room.

“Oh, there you are,” he says to James. “I need to talk to you.”

Getting up, James says to Jiron and Tersa, “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Of course,” Jiron says.

He follows Roland as he exits the kitchen and moves toward James’ room. Once inside, he closes the door and comes over to the chest and lifts the lid. What had once been a chest filled to the brim, now contains only a few coins.

“What happened?” asked James, shocked.

“What happened?” echoes Roland. “We’ve got construction going on and that seems to be a constant drain on our coins. New recruits for security, not to mention arming them and feeding them, plus just the maintenance of this place, it all costs. We’re fast running out of money.”

“I’ll go down to Alexander’s and get some more,” he tells him.

“Do that,” he says. “Also, you need to tell him that you’ll allow me to withdraw funds while you’re gone so I can keep this place going. I tried to while they were hunting for you, but since you hadn’t made that stipulation, he wouldn’t release any to me.”

“Sorry, I hadn’t thought of that,” apologizes James. “I’ll take care of that today.”

“That’s not the worst of it,” Roland says with a worried look.

“Oh?” asks James.

“The money you have with Alexander will last awhile, but at the rate we’re spending, it probably won’t last more than a few months, maybe less. We have to find a source of income, one that’s consistent and which we can count on.”

“Do you have any suggestions?” he asks.

Shaking his head, Roland says, “No. The only one I can even think of is for