Day 3, Northern Italy, 30th 2000

Dear Diary !

I have shocking news! In the late evening, somewhere near the beautiful city of genoa, we were ambushed by a horde of mercenaries! We just came through a small pinewood in a deep green valley, when suddenly about 20 armored men rushed out of the shadows. At first we were a litle confused, not knowing what they could want from us. But then their leader gave the order not to hurt the horses. He had a slightly swedish accent, and davarto murmered "They must have been hired by that swedish horsethief calling himself kronprinse!". I told him that there might be better times for discussing this matter and so we searched through our backpacks to find anything that could be used as a weapon. Indy said it would be stupid to fight, since we could easily flee on our racing horses. I must admit that this was by far the best idea I had heard that day, but it was already too late, since most of us were already in the heat of the battle! I noticed pamela throwing plates and cups with the precisision of a skilled ninja using throwing stars, while davarto leaped off the back of his horse, whirling his didgeridoo high above his head having a strange australian battle song on his lips. The mercenaries seemed to be quite surprised to meet such grim resistance by a bunch of managers and horse trainers and the gods of war certainly were smiling on us. It was a complete chaos - the whole wood turned into a battlefield. Since that miserable italian issue of a warrior that wanted to grasp my dear horse, stopped his sinister action after he had smelled my boot, I looked around to see if one of my comrades could need any help. Only a few yards away I saw one of the bandits fleeing in terror from blondie who wielded a heavy frying pan. This seemed to disencourage his comrades completely, and having lost any spark of remaining morale, they picked up their belongings and ran away as quickly as they could. Hakim managed to chase the leader and told him to inform his swedish employers, that we would pay back everything on the racetrack! Luckily, no one of us had been injured and so we could go on with our journey to paris. We chose to make a break in Monaco, but this is another story....    

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