Lot hadn't thought himself the kind of man who would wait on anyone in this situation. Surely, they should have been back by now; what with the pursuit of that lady-knight's jailers being a sure thing. Yet, something else made him stay. [i]I owe the princess that much,[/i] he thought. [i]Just to give her a bit of a chance to escape after all of that?[/i]

He paced around the camp. There was a lot he managed to do in idle days waiting for them: he never thought, for one, that he could neatly organize three spaces for sleeping in a cave of all places. It had been a place he wondered would be the home of some kind of predatory animals. Bears, mainly, if the bones he had swept out with a kick of his feet on the second day were any indication. On the third day he did a little foraging...to mixed results; a few berries had him keeled over for hours, more filling than most meals despite their minuscule size. He had them in a basket in the rear of the cave, where his own bedroll was propped onto a conveniently lounge-shaped rock. On the forth day he managed to prop up a series of palisades out of bits of detritus—a palisade of cloth and twigs would have fit the bill, but it's green sheen was hard to see in the daylight, only until he lit a fire at night.

On the fifth day, he heard the sound of heavy hoof beats, drawing him to the flap of the canopy he propped over the cave entrance. He looked out into the landscape to wait further. [i]Those damn devil dames...[/i] he thought. [i]They actually made it...[/i]