The further away Talic had gotten away from the Citadel, the more surprised the ex-noble had become. He had expected his humongously large feet to take a bath in mud mixed with remainders of grass right now, but instead they were treading on a neatly arranged section of pavement still. Slowly it dawned upon him that the average capital citizen's opinion about the remote north regions might not exactly be up-to-date if one wanted to wrap it in nice words, or rather shamelessly ignorant if one insisted on being blunt. It was a nice surprise: Maybe this would be over quicker and easier than he had anticipated ?

Or probably not... He had seen one of those stone cairns before, but the fact that the neatly paved road seemed to end just behind this one was a clear sign that he had indeed reach the very northern border of the province. So yes, this still had its full potential to become a long, dirty and no less dangerous crawl. Talic twisted his head, checking his rear before checking who was already waiting in front of him and noticing with pleasure that noone was to be seen behind him anywhere. Had they already found out ? Had they already organized a manhunt and had it already gotten on his tracks ? Those kind of questions had been roaming in Talic's head for days by now and, while he wasn't pissed off by them, he'd be glad for some fresh thoughts for sure.

Talic's problem was that he was easily recognizable even in the middle of a crowded marketplace. Any spy hired to hunt him down probably would have an easy game jumping from place to place and just asking the same set of questions: 'Did you happen to see a walking tower ? Like [i]this[/i] big, maybe ? Yes ? Where did he go ?'. For this reason he had went cross-country for the major part of his journey so far and it even seemed to have worked: Nobody in front of him looked like a hired killer as well. Well... at least not a killer hired against humans anyway.

His eyes jumped from face to face, briefly inspecting everyone waiting. A woman with hair even longer than his and a set of improvised looking armor... a lucky one, given that almost everybody else didn't seem to have even that. A burly man with a bow... Why did he use it as a walking stick ? Hopefully he knew what he was doing. Last but not least another male, a swordsman it seemed. One brief glance at his face already told a story about having been lucky at least once in his life. So these would be his companions either until the other side or until death. A slight shiver ran down Talic's spine at the thought of the latter possibility.

"Greetings!" he stated, trying to avoid anything that could hint at his noble origin. There was no point in making a point out of it. Talic then positioned himself at the wayside next to the others, wondering if they were waiting for anybody else to come.