'I have no need,' the stranger said, remaining where he stood.

The other two men stepped forward, raising their clubs. The butcher also drew a knife, as long as a cutlass. 'It is very unfortunate that you do not.'

'That's too bad.' The spotty-faced man removed his hand–and with it a long knife–from inside his coat. ''Tis true.' The stranger smiled even more venomously. 'Who are you,' the spotty-faced man asked, still holding his hand inside his coat, 'to tell us what is right and what is not?' They were holding clubs of the kind used to stun animals in a slaughterhouse. The butcher nodded, and beckoned towards a part of the crowd, from which stepped two stocky men with close-cropped hair. The spotty-faced man, slowly sliding a hand under his coat, glanced at the butcher. 'What is this? Another man's horse, saddlebags and property, and you can't take your watery little eyes off them, can't wait to get your scabby mitts on them? Is that fitting behaviour?' 'Move away from the horse,' he repeated, smiling venomously. He was wearing a dark brown tunic over a padded coat and high riding boots. The stranger had thick, curly, chestnut hair. The butcher turned slowly towards the newcomer, who had appeared from a recess in the wall, and the people gathered around the entrance to the dungeon. 'Quiet, Alderman, and stay out of this, or you're in for a hiding,' the spotty-faced man warned. 'A sturdy mare, and saddlebags nicely stuffed. And we'll take the sorcerer's horse and chattels. 'For there's no one to pay for the basilisk. 'You've saved yourself a shilling, Alderman,' the spotty-faced man added. And you can't kill a basilisk without a looking glass, everyone knows that.' Why, he even went in without a looking glass, taking only a sword. It was plain from the start he was heading to his doom, just like the others. 'And now he's dead, sure as eggs is eggs. 'We made a deal with a living man, Alderman,' said the spotty-faced man's companion, a giant in a leather butcher's apron. 'But we struck a deal,' the fat man muttered hesitantly. Haven't enough people perished? Why wait?' 'Have you forgotten, Alderman, that a basilisk is lurking in that there dungeon? No one who goes in there comes out. 'For what?' the spotty-faced man snarled. 'Let's wait a little longer,' he said, wiping the sweat from his thinning eyebrows. A fat man in a yellow jerkin shifted from one foot to the other, cleared his throat and took off his crumpled biretta. The townspeople, crammed among the ruins, stared in silence at the black hole gaping in the debris, at the rubble-strewn opening. 'It's been an hour and a quarter since he went down. 'He won't get out of there, I'm telling you,' the pockmarked man said, shaking his head with conviction.

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