THIS WAS AN EXPERIMENT AT TALKING INSTEAD OF TYPING BUT THIS BIT DOES FIT INTO THE STORY SO FAR

While Timmy rode along with the carter he learned a lot from his conversation with the man. He learned about how life was organized at the Citadel and there was much more that he knew nothing about. In fact it was beginning to dawn on him just how ignorant he had been to rely on so many unfounded assumptions.

The privileged son of a wealthy man, he had taken a lot for granted and had been unaware that his pride in how well he had adjusted to being suddenly orphaned from all that he knew, was not so well deserved as he'd thought being the result of the protective bubble that surrounded him thanks to all that his father had wrought for the Hiltons business interests which were far wider reaching than he'd known.

The Citadel, according to the carter, was in a state of almost open warfare between the various Guilds because of the lack of a central authority, or as he put it "some say its because we aint got no king but I don't reckon we needs one. Useless buggers giving themselves airs they are across the way there on the continent. What we need is a strong leader what can organize things and stop them Guilds fighting like cats in a sack all trying to get the advantage over the others."

They were still a long way from their destination when dusk began to fall. The Carter told Timmy that they would camp for the night in the deep forest before continuing on their way in the morning because Brocks Barn was some considerable distance off the beaten track.

The cart was designed to make camping pleasent for the driver and his passenger, it had a canvas roof in case of rain and it had soft coverings in case they were needed at night as well as straw pallets to take the pain out of sleeping on bare boards.

After they had made camp and settled down for the night they continued their day long conversation with Timmy asking questions having had all day to absorb a lot of the information he had received from the driver. Timmy was bursting with questions but the answers he got didn't always help him very much, after all he was trying to make up a loss of several years of education that should have arrived at a gentler pace but instead was being force fed into him in a very short time.