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Crabannan found Javan putting up tents. Or, rather, he found where Javan was supposed to be putting up tents, because he was getting very little done. Instead, he was exchanging angry words and angrier glances with the two boys he had fought with earlier. Where was Garstan? Crabannan wondered. He had been in enough fights and arguments to tell that this one was quickly heading in the wrong direction.
He only caught the last few sentences from Javan: "I might not have been perfectly behaved in the past, but at least I’m not a wimp when it comes down to it. Now you two just shut up about the stables – it was an accident and I shouldn’t have to keep explaining myself – and I don’t always disobey Eodwine! Do you understand?"
An accident? There was evidently history here with which Crabannan was unfamailiar. Nonetheless, to his rough sense of justice, it seemed that Javan was being unfairly singled out and picked on. He acted accordingly. Children could be so devilishly cruel sometimes, and this made him angry.
Crabannan quickly stepped to Javan's side and glowered down at the lad's tormentors, Garmund and Cnebba, fixing them both with the darkest, most menacing stare he could conjure up. He looked from one to the other, and back.
"First, tell me what's going on here. Second, where's Garstan? Third, why aren't you putting up tents?"
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