If the others were big, Ford was ridiculous about it. To make matters worse he wasn't even thin like a lot of royals, but held vast muscle that rippled as he moved. He was serious faced and had probably come to call Tor on his insolence, which he deserved no doubt, but couldn't seem to care about at the moment. They had Royal Guards with them, which made everyone stiffen, but they didn't attack, not yet at any rate.

He spoke clearly, but in a low tone.

“Hold fast. The Royal Guard are a tough group, but they can't match our armor or weapons right now. If it comes to a fight right now, they lose.” It was just the truth. If this were a fist fight, any two of them could probably take out most of the people with them, sure.

But it wasn't and none of the Royal Guard had high quality shields or weapons at all. Sensible, since those would probably be ones he'd made himself. He did see a couple of the ones that had come down to Ward for the investigation though. They'd obviously got the others out during the attack, with Sorlee. Good idea. They probably couldn’t have taken the Larval anyway and running made sense if you couldn’t win any other way. So they let Tor fight and buy them time, and did the part they could that would make a difference.

Brilliant really.

Tor felt like he could barely stand, then it got worse, so he sat on the ground which was better, because when he fell over into the powdery dust it didn't hurt. Not that it would have with the shield on. After a while he noticed it, a buzzing kind of thing. Different pitches started to come through and finally with a lot of effort, he pried his eyes open to see what was going on.

People he didn't know were over him, speaking in some foreign tongue. He was so thirsty that he couldn't stand it, so he tried to get up and run away, in case they were bad people. The big people could be, his ma had told him that. If he saw any he was supposed to run home.