The clarinet was met with a rapier blade. Olly San narrowed his eyes
but his opponent remained just outside the glow of the firelight,
invisible against the gloom. All Olly San could discern was that he
was shorter than himself and was a little barrel like. Suddenly, the
stranger began the fight, whipping his sword out and around the
clarinet and moving in for the kill. Olly san moved quickly,
however, and managed to deflect the blade although only just. The
fight continued furiously for a couple of minutes and olly san began
to think that the stranger might have an unfair advantage as he felt
himself weakening and stepping back to escape the onslaught.
Suddenly a new figure appeared in the clearing attacking the barrel
with a well-aimed karate kick. From the ground, the enemy sized up
the situation and decided to make a run for it. He whistled and a
similarly masked and cloaked figure ran into the clearing,
effortlessly picked up the antagonist and jogged out into the wet
dark.
All this happened so fast that Olly san, leaning against the tree to
catch his breath and hugging his clarinet had no time to react while
his companion seemed to be having some difficulty with her clothing.

The Queen of all things SHUXI mooched under the tree angrily kicking
the folds of her ball dress out of the way.
"I hate those stupid events you have to go to" she muttered -
"haven't you got anything decent to wear?"
olly san chucked her some dry things from his bags and then averted
his eyes, bashfully, as the queen tugged the dripping cloth of her
and put on some more revealing, but more comfortable, garments.
She stood there glaring at the remains of her finery. "I could have
taken them both if I hadn't been wearing that stupid thing," she
continued. "Why didn't you use the clarinet power?" she asked,
angrily rounding on the shrinking olly san.
"I don't know," he murmured. "I was saving it!"
"What on earth for?"
"Well, it's had a quite busy week and I didn't want to over exert
it. Besides you came just in time so it wasn't really needed."
"Yes, but we still have no idea who they are, do we?"
Olly san thought it wisest to remain silent and unobtrusively began
to pack his clarinet away and prepare his steed for travel.

To be continued……