Those fickle traders have really hampered our mission.  We want to hit these bandits hard, and some of the traders were initially keen to give us plenty of their men.  But there are some that weren't so happy to be fronting the cost of doing this job -  and they were vocally reluctant.  Under this pressure the seventeen men we'd been promised soon dwindled to just eight as we had a couple of the smaller caravan traders pull their staff out of the project.  That was yesterday morning.

We needed a little more time - the big caravan companies wanted to be involved, but they wouldn't commit immediately when we talked to them yesterday morning.  The eight guards that we'd gathered we sent off to meet with the Willesden family at Canden, who we were supposed to be meeting this lunchtime.  We sent a letter with the guards to explain to the Willesden homestead the problems that we'd encountered, and asked them to wait one extra day.  We promised to be with them tomorrow even if we were on our own.

It looks like we will not be on our own, though.  Another meeting with two of the largest firms this afternoon by Elenhugh and Mullory convinced them to provide us with some of their men.  When we'd met with them yesterday, they'd just had their teams return from the cross-country journey - they had wanted to help, but their guards were stood down.  They had rallied, though, and with the promise of a small bonus had managed to re-enlist some of their people for this extra work.  Both had faced the same problems, and both had arrived with the same conclusion - finding the location of the bandits base was excellent news.  One had promised seven more guards, and the other six.

It turns out that these guards often work together, and as part of a larger team of guards.  They'd all been on the attacked caravan only a few days ago, and they also knew some of the guards who worked elsewhere.  We met with them this evening over a meal, and there were another three guards that had joined them - we're not even sure who is paying the wages of these extra men during this trip. That's sixteen more men to our cause, along with yesterday's eight and possibly ten more from the settlements, we could have a force of thirty four, plus ourselves, of course.  This makes the numbers more reasonable, and we might have a chance of achieving our objective of smashing the Bandit camp.

We're meeting tomorrow morning, where we'll assess the men we've recruited.  We'll then move on to Canden after we've shared breakfast with them.  From their demeanour in the bar tonight, I'd say that most of these had missed the earlier fight with the Bandits, and were keen to be involved in some action.  I think that guarding these caravans is often a more dull job than they like to portray.