When I had been dropped down in armor and wearing swords, usually, the reasons had been good ones.
There was a counter argument, exemplified by the time I’d been sent to Vienna. All the same, naked and weaponless, I started up the slope away from the lake.
The land hereabouts looked a trifle wild and untended, not a wilderness but rather a sorry land left uncultivated for too long. Rank grasses grew in swathes of green, and the heads of wild flowers, red, blue, violet, peeped above. There was a line of a track where the ground had been trodden by occasional usage. Along this track came a group of arguing and gesticulating people. Back a few ulms lay the red-tiled roofs and white walls of a small town, a fantastic spire flashing gold in the suns light.
I dropped into the concealment of a
