The horse archers loosed a final volley of arrows, then turned away; crossbow fire from the parapet of the fortress had already felled several of them. Richard turned his attention back to the courtyard, just to see if any of the characters down there had been struck by a message arrow. None had; but one of them had walked over to investigate an arrow that was lying on the ground. As Richard watched, he picked it up. Richard moused over him. The character’s name was Barfuin and he was a K’Shetriae warrior of modest accomplishments. Double-clicking to obtain a more detailed summary of Barfuin, Richard was rewarded with a grid of statistics and a head-and-shoulders portrait. He could not help but be struck by the similarity between Barfuin and the dreadfully low-resolution K’Shetriae icon that had come up on his GPS screen this morning, when he had been attempting to browse the points of interest of greater Nodaway. The most obvious fact was that they both had blue hair. Which was palette drift again. He slammed his laptop shut and pushed it out of the way, because a waitress was approaching with his eggs and bacon.