Save that, he spoke Finnish very well, but he had this air about him and an intense glare that made me a little wary of him. Our friends were growing ...estless. My friends never approved of my interest in Slavs; they saw all of them as rogues or criminals. They tried to pry me away from him to dance. His friends wanted to move on to another club. Vanya wanted to stay and had a heated conversation with his friends. I had taken courses in high school , but only recognized random words like went,. .. we're just a couple of laboring men," Pryor said.But Elbert Franklin cut to the chase. "He's askin', whether it matter to you we're black men." We've got black people -- some -- in our group already," Roald said. "That's not going to be a problem."There was a long pause. "We got a young girl," Franklin said, finally. Pryor looked at him with an expression of alarm on his face."We hid her," Franklin said. "Until we could see about you people."Roald smiled. "A good thing to do. Cautious. You. I also practiced quickly creating the protective NP-pad over the front of my fist, to make sure I could spread the impact over all of my hand and forearm. That was easy, as the size and shape of NP-plates are flexible enough now that one of them could mold itself to the shape of my fist.One thing that I had no trouble with was in deciding which mind provided the shield. In an emergency I wouldn't want every mind to think some other mind was going to do it, and nor would be want every mind to do. .. I wasn’t at all sure who I was trying to reassure.Or then I could just continue walking towards the village and hope that there would already be some organized resistance. The problem was that nothing I had seen among the Elves had convinced me there would be.So, one more strike. Three more wounded enemies. I started to calculate the number of the killed or wounded Trolls but my brains just refused to co-operate. Three. There would be three more. I could still count to three.I woke up.