adventures

showing enough of himself to aim at anything, squeezed the trigger.
From the Informative Record of Recent Grel History:
One of the Grel vanished in a puff of fire.
'Vital new fact: the human is armed!' shouted the Grel Master. 'Take cover!'
The Grel ran to various positions about the room, already checking through their huge storehouse
of tactical information concerning gunfights in enclosed areas.
When they looked up from their carefully and swiftly chosen locations, they discovered that
their quarry, who obviously knew nothing of such tactics, had bolted straight for the exit.
'Fire!' screamed the Grel Master.
Extract Ends
Stokes had a terrible, mortal feeling in his stomach as he ran for the door, clutching the gun to his
chest.
Half of it was that he'd shot someone. He didn't like that. He didn't like being full enough of
fear and anger to be able to do it. It gave him a fatal sense of deserving the energy bolt in the
back that he knew he was about to get. He was a soldier now, and soldiers were killed.
The other half of it was simple, rabbitlike logic. He could see now that there was a long corridor
on the other side of the door, that he had bought time for the others after all, because the Grel
were going to have a clear aim at him all along that tunnel.
If he had been a rabbit, he would have accepted that immediately and stood still to be shot.
But because he was a human being, he ran anyway.
He just got over the threshold of the door when something far too solid and sudden knocked
his feet away from him.
And then he fell into darkness.
Bernice was doing a quick head count of her hosts, who were now sitting around their kitchen
table, each at a chair with their name on the back. 'Lazy, Moody, Laddish, Gushy, Bitchy, Liberal
and Cute. Seven of you, and I knew that before I was told it. How is that possible?'
Wolsey shrugged a languid cat shrug. He and Bernice had been given mugs of warm mead and
seats with GUEST carved on the back. 'I have ceased to understand much of what you say. What
worries me, Dick, is that these seven tadpoles are convinced you're female. Perhaps they've
escaped from some travelling show. I hear the King has a new plan to deal with such as they: it's
called Care in the Entertainment Community.'
'We have not escaped from a show!' exclaimed Moody. 'We work in our mine, and sell the
rubies and diamonds that we find there in the village market.'
Bernice frowned. 'Is there much of a market for precious stones in a small agrarian community?'
The dwarves all looked at her blankly.
'Perhaps they're a little short,' suggested Wolsey.
'Oh, for goodness' sake!' Bernice slapped the table. 'Look, once and for all, where am I? What
is this place?'
'The Land of Good King Rupert,' said Gushy.
'Who?' Wolsey laughed. 'Gadzooks, these squibs have never heard of England. Is that possible?
Why, I thought there would always be an –'
'Don't sing,' Bernice told him sharply. She rubbed her brow. 'You lot can't even agree on what
country we're in. I have memories of being an entirely different person to who you think I am
now, and –'
'Was she just as lovely?' asked Cute, in a small, plaintive voice.
Bernice ignored him. She was deeply disturbed by these dwarves. They seemed to be characterizations
of her best students, quick sketches of their most basic traits, rather than the whole,
albeit young, personalities that she knew. In Cute's case, he was just pretty and gawped at her.
That said something about her, surely, that, before all this weird business had happened, she'd