by Ulysses Troy
The stranger moved quickly. He searched inside with his eyes for a chair, and there was one vacant near the inn’s center, next to an isolated table. While he walked, the smell his nose caught did not please him, yet he tried to ignore it. Drunkards vomit a lot. Walking through the tables, he had to push a drunkard out of his way and deny an offer to gamble from another.
After the stranger sat on the chair, he wanted to take time and rest a bit before looking for the innkeeper. It was a long and devastating journey that he had made. Endless miles on a horse’s saddle were taking their toll on him. And now, for a moment, he was grateful to the Holy One to have some peaceful time under a proper roof. It was much more than he had gotten for weeks. Even more than he could ask for.
He relaxed for some minutes, stretched his legs and his neck, and thought about old memories. He always loved to think about the past, at least the good parts of it. And after he decided he had taken enough time to rest, the stranger started to search the inn with his eyes for the innkeeper. He couldn’t find him, but a group of woodsmen that were dancing near the fire captured his attention. They were singing a song with their ugly voices, which filled the room and echoed through the inn’s wooden walls, yet the rest of the people did not care about them. They were drunk, or their kind.
Apart from the woodsmen, someone else was also singing. Yet unlike them, he was not singing to be amused, but to amuse. A young bard; slim and frail, standing in the center of the inn with his lute. He was performing a cheerful song of old. A song that the stranger couldn’t remember the name of yet had always liked. The song was a good one, but the bard was an amateur.
As time passed, the woodsmen’s voices started to suppress the bard’s, and one could easily tell he was not happy with that. In a glance, he stopped playing the lute in his hands and walked towards the large group. His eyes were blazing, displaying his anger. He must have interpreted their attempt to have fun as a sign of disrespect to his efforts. When he finally arrived near the group, the bard cleared his throat and spoke with a high tone.
“Gentlemen, I hope you are aware that you are hampering my performance with your hideous attempt of a song!”
All of the woodsmen stopped in an instant and turned their hairy faces towards the bard. This is not good.
“You call it a performance?” A heavy man said. His large brown beard was covered with beer. “My ass can sing better!”
“Please, gentlemen, be more respectful!” The bard tried to talk some sense into them, but his efforts were in vain.
“And what will you do to make us?” the fat woodsman said laughing, while the rest of the group started to circle the bard. It took the stranger a few more seconds to realize what was going to happen. He touched the scabbard of his sword, to check it one last time, and then stood up to walk towards the woodsmen and bard.
“Leave him alone,” he said with a deep voice to draw their attention to himself, away from the unfortunate bard.
“What did you say?” Surprised to have been challenged, the fat woodsman turned his face to look at him, and then burst into a laugh. It was even more annoying than his last. “Fellas, did you hear him too?”
“We have just finished a hard day’s work,” the slim one said in his high-pitched voice. He was holding a mug of beer in his hands. “You better have more than guts to challenge us like that.”
“He must be really drunk, Terrence!” another woodsman shouted from behind, “or really dumb. I can’t decide which.”
“Leave him alone, now.” Stranger’s voice was cold, and it cut like Crimson Steel.
“And why would I . . .” The fat woodsman pointed to all his friends while approaching the stranger, “ . . . we do that?”
“Because . . .” the stranger stood tall and held the scabbard of his sword with his right hand, “ . . . it’s night, and people are asleep in their beds.” He looked right into the eyes of the fat woodsman, “It would be rude to awake them to carry bodies.”
The fat man scowled. He was clenching his teeth in anger. He looked at his axe, which stood a few meters away. He was drunk, yet still smart enough to know that he had no chance to reach it, not before the stranger took his life with his sword. The stranger knew that, too. That was why he had only threatened him. Otherwise, the steel would already be in his hands.
Before the fat man could answer, another woodsman stepped in. “Forget about it, Holth! We had enough fun, anyway,” he said, grabbing the fat woodsman’s left arm and pulling it towards himself. The stranger was still standing in front of them, waiting for their next move. And as he presumed, the fat woodsman listened to his friend. The whole group left the inn without causing more trouble. The stranger never liked to threaten, yet he had to very often. It was better than starting a fight and shedding blood, anyway.
He was a stranger to most of these northerners, yet in the south, folk knew his name and told stories about his unexceptional heroism. There, he was no stranger, but Conrad of Battum, a tireless hero known for his bravery and unmatched skills at the sword. One who ventured through the land adventure after adventure, to keep an old promise.
“Thank you, brave gentleman!” the bard said gratefully, “if there is anything I can do to . . .”
“Sing better.”
Conrad moved to return to his table without waiting for an answer. Suddenly, a man appeared from the room at the back.
“What the fuck is happening in my place?” he asked the bard.
“The woodsmen, they reeled again,” the bard answered.
“That fucking Holth!” The man roared with fury. “I will beat his ass for good one day.”
“Are you the innkeeper?” Conrad said, turning his face towards the man.
“Yes, I am.”
“Then get me some beer.”
***
“Do you want anything else apart from beer?” Innkeeper asked from behind his wooden counter, wiping the mugs with a dirty cloth. He was a bald man of large build, wearing a dirty white apron.
“I need a room for the night. Warm stew, fresh bread, and also some forage for my horse.”
“And I want a fucking palace over the hills, but do you see it?” the innkeeper said with a sinister smile. His eyes were bright blue, and his accent was a heavy one, an accent from the north. A Vanheimian accent.
“It is not the same thing ,” Conrad looked directly into the man’s face. “This is an inn, and you are an innkeeper."
Still smiling, the innkeeper answered. “Warm stew? Hahaha! Go to that Crimson Shit if you want to eat stew. Here, we have only bread and beer.”
“Drinking beer with bread?” Conrad knitted his eyebrows. “You folk don’t have much taste.”
“Let me tell you what we don’t have: tourins!” He stopped wiping the mugs for a moment and pointed to the loud crowd in his inn with his left hand. “All of these fuckers would want to go to the Crimson Horse if they had the tourins for a decent drink. But as all of them are poor goatfuckers, they have to see my ugly face every night.” The innkeeper laughed again, but this time even louder.
“I can see you are happy with it. The guardsman said honest folk are in their beds, but it looks like almost half the town is drinking in your inn.”
“Most of them are not even living in the town.” Innkeeper wiped a large mug with his dirty swab. “Many people ran to Gannadár from nearby villages for shelter and caused that bloody mess.”
“I did not know that war had started nearby,” Conrad said, with a curious tone.
“Not a war, but worse: Jamedians.” The innkeeper spit nails when spelling the name of Jamedians. “Those damned pomegranate lover mercenaries have been harassing the smallfolk for weeks!” He pointed to the crowd again. “It all started when a goddamned nobleman from Parlar refused to pay them the money they had agreed on after they fought a small war for him. And now, they are trying to recover their loss of coins by simply pillaging the villages wherever they go! Even though the Count’s men have chased them for good
, the folk and the Baron still think they may return for vengeance.” He placed a mug on the table. “And Guardsman? Are you talking about Roule? Of course, who else can it be? That bloody fool always talks about the same shit! Just go outside at night to extract water from a well or check the stables and the fucker ends up next to you out of nowhere and randomly starts to give speeches about how honest folk should behave,” the innkeeper put one of the mugs on the table, now clean. “He wasn’t always like that. All of that shit went to his head after a fucking thief cut Old Gellon’s ears for some tourins.”
“So, it was true. And I thought he was simply exaggerating.”
“Roule? The only thing that fool exaggerates is his favorite sow’s beauty! He really thinks that little Porcié of his can win one of those beauty contests brewed by Benovians one day. My ass!”
“Enough about the guardsman.” Conrad tapped on the table a few times with his fist and looked at the innkeeper. “You said you have beer and bread.”
The innkeeper looked into his eyes for a while. “You are not a listener, are you? Okay, I will bring you some, but just don’t wait for something tasty, or even fresh."
The innkeeper put a mug in front of Conrad and then filled it with beer. Conrad grabbed the mug and started to drink. It was a bad one, as bad as the innkeeper had said, but at least, it was cold enough, and Conrad was grateful for that. While he drank his beer, the innkeeper surprisingly brought some eggs from the kitchen behind. He placed these in front of Conrad too, “Take these. I was keeping them from these drunkards, maybe for some honest folk who would come in the morning. You seem decent enough. But don’t forget, it will raise the price.”
“Thanks.” Conrad took the eggs from the table. “I hope the taste is worth the ‘raise’.” While cracking the brown-colored eggs that were probably laid by a Golden-haired Chicken of Nellen, Conrad remembered the guardsman’s words about the innkeeper. “So, the name is Unwin, right?”
“Yes, I guess Roule slipped that out of his damn mouth too.”
Conrad ignored the innkeeper’s words about the guardsman. “A Vanheimian name spelled with a Vanheimian accent. What are you doing in northern Baltaire, so far south of your homeland?”
Unwin gritted his teeth looking at the shells of the adventurer’s eggs, now broken. “Does it really matter?”
“Well, I am curious . . .”
“Let’s say because of something with . . . the family. Believe me, it’s a long and boring story to tell. “
Family? Now that’s interesting. “Apart from your family, you should be missing the lands of the north too. They say it is hard for Vanheimians to break their bonds.” And also loyal to death.
Unwin knitted his eyebrows. He saw what Conrad was trying to do and was uncomfortable about it. “Yes, I may be hailing from Vanheim, but a man’s home is not where he was born but where he sows.” He grabbed a mug of beer and raised it high, looking at the crowd. “To the good folk of Gannadár, I invite all of you to drink for the honor of our beloved King! Long live King Philippe!”
The drunk crowd joined him instantly as voices from every side of the inn rose.
“Long live Philippe!”
“Long may he reign!”
“For the House of Balthar!”
After drinking all of the beer in a trice, Unwin put the mug on the table and looked right into Conrad’s face. “No one here can doubt my patriotism or loyalty to the crown, especially not a stranger. I am the one who should ask questions here, and the question is what an armed stranger with this attitude can hope to find in Gannadár.”
Conrad drank from his mug and barely managed to prevent a belch. “Maybe a friend.” Then, he took another sip of the beer and spoke, still feeling its poor-brewed taste on his tongue. “A black-haired bard with blue clothes from the South.”
Everything had been gone wrong four weeks ago, in a village beside the famous river of Lanáel. Conrad had been traveling through the land after an adventure as usual, with his constant companion and best friend Gavise of Beocur. Riding on the road, the two encountered a group of villagers taking the harvest of the year to a town nearby to sell. While chatting with this small crowd, the two learned the main reason for their journey to town: They hoped to find someone there who would help them eliminate a gang of bandits their village was in trouble with. They were desperate to deal with these bandits on their own, as their reckless Baron had abandoned the village to its fate.
In Gavise’s way of thinking, this was a perfect opportunity to add another glorious victory to their collection of heroic achievements, so he proposed that Conrad aid the peasants. Conrad agreed with him, but unlike Gavise, he did not decide to help the peasants out of a desire or passion for glory or fame. He did it because of his past, as it was his past that instilled in him a deep hatred of men of lawlessness and dishonesty. It was a past that he wanted to forget yet remembered every night.
The villagers had selected one peasant among them as a guide to lead adventurers Conrad of Battum and Gavise of Beocur to the village, while they themselves continued their journey to the town, with the grateful relief of having found someone who would help them. The guide they picked was not the best, yet he managed to take them to his village without getting lost in the woods.
When Conrad tried to remember the village, the first thing that ever came to his mind was the miller. Delighted by the adventurers’ arrival, the villagers wanted to host these two heroes as best they could. And the miller, a white-bearded man in his late fifties, had a shack just next to his mill, in pretty good shape for a village of their level of wealth. So, the rest of the villagers tried to convince him to let the two spend the night there. They eventually succeeded, even though the convincing took nearly an hour. Still, one didn’t have to possess as sharp a sense of perception as Conrad did to be aware of the miller’s never-ending grumblings.
Staying in the village for the night, the first with light of morning the two went after the band of bandits, who had established a base in a cavern near the village according to the villagers. And they were right, but it took the two adventurers hours to find the cave, whereupon they had to face the fact that it was long abandoned, left with only junk and some used goods. Conrad and Gavise had to return to the village empty handed, to inform the folk of the bad news.
The villagers did not welcome the news at all. They accused the two of telling lies, trying to cheat them, and being frauds. Among them, an old woman even threw a giant tomato at Gavise and ruined the bard’s velvet clothes. The villagers were only able to calm down a bit when a farmer among them with common sense, one who happened to have heard of Conrad’s famous deeds, spoke in their favor. The woman apologized for throwing a tomato at Gavise, and the villagers let them stay in the miller’s shack for one more night. And on that very night, Conrad’s friend disappeared.
The old friend of Conrad had left the shack to ask the villagers for some beer to quench his thirst. Conrad, who had done the lion’s share of the work as always while tracing the bandits, fell asleep instantly with fatigue. And when he woke up from his sleep the next morning, he wasn’t able to find Gavise in the shack or the village. The strange thing was that none of the villagers had seen Gavise or even heard a thing about him. It was almost like he had dissolved into thin air.
Even though he always claimed vehemently to be the opposite, the two-faced, fraudulent, craven, sordid and unsuccessful bard Gavise of Beocur was not a stranger to these kinds of disappearances. At one point in their adventures, he had been kidnapped by Baron Joachim de Channot’s men, who wanted to intimidate Conrad by kidnapping his valued friend. But it was a very peaceful incident compared to that other experience of his friend’s. Once, the bard of many talents had been detained by the ‘Regel’, a gang of twenty fierce lawless women, after an epic struggle that ended with the bard’s ultimate defeat. Conrad was sure Gavise would never ever write a single word about that heroic battle of his.
But none of these had been nearly as myst
erious as this one. And Conrad was afraid that his friend might have been kidnapped by his longtime enemies. The main thing that was feeding his concern was the fame they had recently gained. It was always hard to be safe when everyone knew who you were and what your true intentions were. And when everyone knew you, it was much easier to make enemies.
The tracks that he had been following had brought him to the Barony of Gannát. A small Barony under the County of Loussión. According to a traveler from the north that he encountered on the road, a bard looking very much like Gavise was at Gannadár. Conrad wasn’t able to learn more about his friend from that mysterious traveler, except that he was traveling alone, safe and sound. At least it meant that there was a chance Gavise hadn’t been kidnapped by one of Conrad’s enemies, but when it was about Gavise, everything was possible, as Conrad’s old friend wasn’t famed for his luck.
Unwin’s eyes glowed under the light of the inn while he blessed Conrad with his ugly smile again. “How far South?”
“Not much. It is quite famous for being called “south” by northerners and “north” by southerners. The capital.”
“Beocur.” He paused for a moment. “Yes, I know that friend of yours. What was his name, Pavis?”
“Gavise. Gavise of Beocur.” It was much easier than Conrad had thought it would be. He just hoped Unwin knew about his friend’s location, too.
“Of course, I remember him! It would be impossible to forget a dork like that!" Unwin burst into a laugh. "That vain piece of shit came here to spend a night. He was asking for red wine every ten minutes, even though I said to him that I didn’t have any kind of wine.”
“Then?”
“He kept asking and asking, like if he did not get that he wouldn’t have any drink at all.”