The Wandering Duelist, Chapter 2: The Inn at Eastcross

Voslo and Kory make it to an Inn just outside the walls of Bradhall, where they get some news of the broader world, and Kory gets in trouble.

Transcript

“Have you been to all nine states of the Concordant?” Kory asked. They had been on the road nearly the entire day now, and the sun was low, painting the sky orange in the west ahead of them. The only sound more constant than the pattering of hooves and the grinding of wheel on axel had been Kory’s litany of questions.

            “Yes,” Voslo answered curtly. He had tired of questions hours before.

            “Even the capitol?” The merchant continued, unrelenting.

            “Is Belmaras not in Belmar? Is Belmar not one of our nine states?” The weathered fighter raised an eyebrow.

            “Have you ever been beyond the borders? You know, to the darklands? Oh! Have you ever dueled a barbarian?” He continued, his voice always climbing higher in an endless ladder of excitement.

            “No, and no,” Voslo answered, not even looking over at the man.

“Did you really kill both the Feddest Twins with a single strike?” Kory asked, with a mind-spinning shift in subject matter. He was good at doing that. 

            Voslo rolled his eyes. “Who told you that?”

            “Just heard it somewhere once, maybe from a singer.”

            “Believe everything you hear from singers then? What about children’s tales? Consult the children often for news, do you?” Voslo spit off the side of the wagon, a habit he picked up during a stint in Helmond as a younger man.

            “You could have just said no,” Kory pouted.

            The truth was that he had killed them both in a single blow. He was a younger, faster man then, not just in body but in mind. The Feddest twins had challenged him together and allowed him the opportunity to name a second, but he refused, since he never learned how to fight shoulder to shoulder with another man. It seemed less awkward to just fight them both himself. In the ensuing duel, one had moved in high a bit closer to him, and the other ducked somewhat under his brother’s elbow to come in low. Voslo’s mind, in that moment, saw that a straight line at the right angle would cut both their exposed necks. He did so in one motion, but could not back up quick enough to avoid the brothers falling upon him and bleeding to death all over his leathers. 

            “I don’t think on my duels when they’re done,” Voslo said flatly. “Let’s leave it at that.”

            “As you will, Master Stettman,” Kory graciously nodded.

            “Don’t call me that,” the old man huffed.

            “As you will, Lord Stettman.”

            “Don’t call me that either, damnit.”

            “Well what am I to call you then?” Kory asked, flustered.

            “Voslo, Just Voslo,” he grunted.

            “Just Voslo then, that works well enough for me.” Then Kory nodded to their right, at a thin ridge line appearing in the mountains to the north. “The Ritani Ridges. We’ll see Bradhall soon.”

            Voslo looked around at the approaching twilight. “Not bad time at all, merchant. When you said a day, I thought you meant in the morrow.”

            Kory smiled and gestured towards the two horses that drew his cart. “My most valued possessions, these,” he said with a sly grin. “Won them in a game of darts against a group of nomads when I was in Galwan. Barely escaped with my life I did, but managed to rope these two in tow as my due prize.”

            Voslo remembered just that morning when Kory had insisted his Tijeran Wine was his most prized possession, but let it go. Merchants were merchants, after all. Slippery things, like the weeds that grow in the sea off the Vulture Coast. 

            It was nearly dark when the lights from the windows of Bradhall’s Black Tower became apparent, and an orange glow from the city’s streets could be noticed. Voslo had seen the towering thing before, of course, but it still always caught him off guard. Who would build such a high structure? What poor bastard had to walk those many flights of stairs to light those high window lamps? Surely no lord. 

            “There is an inn just this side of the city,” Kory explained, though Voslo already knew it. “A favorite of coursers coming in from the Sandpath, who can’t bear the thought of even going a half-league further after their harrowing journey. It should be a sleepy, uneventful sort of place. Let’s put in there, and in the morning, we’ll prepare to head to the central market square.”

            “As you say, merchant,” he nodded, and patted his face with his small kerchief to wipe off what he hoped was the last of the day’s sweat.

            “You can call me Kory you know.”

            “Sure,” Voslo nodded again. 

            It was dark when they came to the roadside inn. A single oil lamp hung above the entrance, and at a tilted angle that suggested it would soon fall. Two large windows flanked either side of it, and the tavern seemed alive through them. Glass windows were always the promise of a full and successful tavern, since their cost was beyond the reach of most, and nowhere were they more likely to break. The noise already came through onto the road, the sound of a bard and of some instruments. The sound of people losing and earning money.  

            They sallied over to a hitch, and the merchant slid off into the dry dirt. Withered grass broke beneath them as he led the horses a little further. At length he unwagoned them and set them to hitch on a long post. There were five other courser’s wagons there, of varying richness. Only a few other single horses were apart from the wagons, belonging to people traveling alone most likely. One of them, Voslo noticed, was a fine Rikkayan Gray. 

            “Good animals,” the swordsman said, approaching one of Kory’s and rubbing it on the shoulder vigorously, dust flying from its painted coat. “Worth the trouble, by my estimation.”

            “Maybe,” Kory returned, wiping sweat from his brow. The hottest days were behind them, but it was still summer. “Been more than a few as have tried to relieve me of them. Dawnlings, they’re called by the Rikkayans. They are from the hills east even of Helmond and the Black Mountains. A rare thing, and I am told they sell in the Imperial Market for a fortune.”

            “Then why not sell them and get some labor-steed more fitted for merchantry?” Voslo asked.

            “Because labor-steeds were not at stake that night in Galwan,” Kory answered easily. “When I’ve won something truly, when I’ve earned it myself, I find it hard to part with.”

            The merchant busied himself with the horses for a moment. His hands were sunbeaten, his posture was a little stooped, and his shoulders hung low and forward. His eyes were a kind of dull green, like the Solmarans often had, but they looked sunken in the thin frame of his gaunt face. His nose was sharp, and his chin looked strong despite his thinness. With some good meat and training, Voslo thought, perhaps he’d be a fine-looking young man. 

            “Let’s see the innkeeper then. I’m sure you’ve a thought for rest by now?” Kory looked over to him.

            “I wouldn’t say no to some hot stew and a bed, I’ll admit,” Voslo said. With that, they turned together and entered the inn.

            As the windows had suggested, it was bustling inside. Some man, he didn’t look a bard, was on a raised platform drumming spoons against his knee and singing a drinking shanty. A few tables of men nearest him were joining in the song. Perhaps forty guests were spread between a dozen old oaken tables. Two of those tables had games going, one looked like Lucky Knuckles and the other a game of cards. Voslo noticed three glaves, bodyguards, among the tables with their tall halberds, forged far in the north. Hiring northerners to serve as glaves was a common practice among the wealthiest coursers.

            “What have you for food tonight, dearest?” Kory asked the woman innkeeper behind the newer, polished slab of oak that served as the bar.

            “I ain’t your dearest,” she answered flatly.

            “If you were a seven-foot man from the hills, armpit hairs long enough to braid and arse-hair to serve as fine rope, but you had hot food for me and my friend, well I’d reckon you my dearest,” Kory answered.

            She laughed a little at that, and when she smiled, was nearly pretty. She had long blonde hair in the Belmaran fashion, with dark almond eyes and a thin, muscled frame that showed a life of hard work, though she wore it below a long-sleeve tan shirt easily two sizes too large for her and stained by wine and beer along the cuffs. “I’ve rabbit stew, that’s our staple. The deer vanished from these lands a year ago with the drought. Besides that, it’s potato and mutton, maybe some carrots.”

            “Potato and mutton,” Voslo said definitively, still standing.

            She eyed him up and down a moment, then her eyes lingered on the second, wooden sword that hung from his side. “A duelist?” She asked.

            “Aye,” he answered, unstrapping his belt, and setting the two swords to lean against the bar as he took his seat. He frowned down at the small steel pin on his left breast, its three sabers crossing to represent the three types of duels, and fixed it with his fingers. In theory the purpose of the pin was to let others know he was a legal duelist, but in practice, people usually guessed it from the two swords he wore at his side. One made of steel, and one made of wood. 

            Kory Rush produced two electrum shil from his shilpurse and slid it across the bar to the innkeeper. “For our meals, and a room for the night.”     

“That’ll do,” she said happily. She raised the shil up and examined it a moment. The Belrase Serpent, a rose in its mouth, was minted on the small, rectangular piece of metal - the sigil of the king’s house.

            Kory leaned over to another man at the bar, shorter than he and older, looking very tired from what must have been a long journey. He had a dark blue, well-worn cap on that resembled the cap Kory wore. “Pardon me sir,” he said. “You look much traveled, and by your reddening, I’d say coming from the South. I’m coming from the North and would enjoy some news of these parts. I’m a courser, like yourself.”

            “A courser out of where?” The older Rikkayan man examined Kory skeptically. Most coursers were from Rikkan, and Kory clearly was not.

            “Solmar,” Kory answered without hesitation. “Torrig Kalkasey was my Oathman.”

            The stout trader regarded him a moment, then his face relaxed. “He was a good man, Torrig.”

            “Among the best,” Kory assured him. “May he rest in the longsleep. So, what news, if any?”

            One side of the older man’s mouth turned sour, like he was chewing on a thought he didn’t much like the taste of. “If you’re coming from northways, I’m sure you’ve seen the riots and all?”

            Kory nodded. “Yes, I saw the fires up near Tulleras but kept wide of the place and moved on. A fellow courser told me about that little walled town near the Colic Ford, what was it called?” He searched his head for a moment.

            “Rarrenkeep,” the man answered grimly.

            “Rarrenkeep!” Kory sounded excited for the name, then changed his tone appropriately. “That Rarrenkeep had been all but burnt to the ground. That it is more ash and charred wood now than rampart and stone, and that all its people left.”

            “I believe it,” the traveler nodded. “Sad times, these. Who benefits from all that? Those people burnt their own town to the ground, a good town, one with walls! Now they all have to leave their home because they destroyed it, and I hope wherever takes ‘em next, there’s no walls there!”

            The innkeeper had been standing there a minute, listening pensively. In each hand she had a simple tin plate, on which was a punitive amount of mutton, and a hearty serving of potatoes. “Maybe those noble lords up in Belmaras will start talking about allowing us our Joinings again.” She didn’t sound hopeful though, as she laid a plate down in front of Kory and Voslo.

            The duelist regarded the off coloring of the mutton a moment, before spooning some of the potatoes into his mouth and chewing them down. “I heard about that, the Joinings being dissolved. Bad business, that.”

            “Well I would hope you heard about it, seeing as it happened four years ago,” Kory pointed out. “And seeing as it’s the greatest loss of the freemen’s rights ever since we were given rights at all by the High King.”

            Voslo only heard about the Joinings being dissolved a few months earlier, but there didn’t seem any need to interrupt the discussion with that little fact. 

            The innkeeper added her copper to the conversation. “The Joinings were our only chance to come together as a community and share our thoughts and woes with our lords, who are supposed to be our intermediaries to the governors and regents. Without them, we’ve no voice in this country at all. So as far as I’m concerned, keep burning things until they notice the fires.”

            For his part, Voslo Stettman wasn’t sure the Joinings had been all that helpful to begin with. He’d been to a few, here and there. The lords and landbarrons usually seemed half asleep when they were receiving the speeches of the people. He doubted whether a single word was ever passed up the chain from farmer to governor, let alone to the Lord Steward himself.

            “If it was four years ago, why all the sudden, then?” Voslo asked, and everyone gave him an incredulous look. “What? Just asking. Why weren’t they lighting fires four years ago?”

            “It’s that new religion,” the old merchant at the bar answered. 

            “It’s the drought that’s done it, and this heat,” the innkeeper said. 

            Kory nodded. “People are scarce of food, but they still see the wagons that carry wine and dried fruits and fresh barley up to the mansions of the rich.”

            “It’s that king who ain’t even a king!” Another stranger took a seat to the right of the old courser. He had shaggy blonde hair and dark brown eyes set in a tan face. “Lord Steward,” he said in a mocking voice. “If it ain’t a royal Belrase arse warming the throne, shouldn’t be no arse in it at all. You’d think the Serpent was the sign of the Belkind family instead of the Belrase, for the way Yosan Belkind slithered his way into the Stewardship.” 

            Everyone shifted a little uncomfortably in their seats at that. High politics was best avoided by the freemen. Still, it was hardly an uncommon sentiment, and Voslo had heard it grumbled by many over the years. The boy-prince Darron Belrase was orphaned when he was only six years old, the result of poisoned wine if the rumors were to be believed. The king left no brothers or other heirs. In response, a council composed of the governors and regents of the Nine States elected Yosan Belkind to hold the throne in Stewardship until the boy’s twenty-first year. He was the father of Prince Darron’s future bride Armeia Belkind, and the patriarch of an old family with powerful political connections. It had been fourteen years now, though Voslo could hardly believe it, and in just a few months the prince would finally come into his father’s throne. The closer the day came, the more loudly people criticized the Lord Steward Yosan Belkind, or wondered aloud if he would try to keep the throne for himself instead of hand it over to its rightful heir.

            The duelist scratched at his gray and brown beard, then cleared his throat with an aim to change subjects. “What new religion?” 

He looked to the old courser, but the blonde innkeeper answered instead. “It’s black news,” she spit by her foot on the floor. “And the Justicant has been far too slow to deal with it. We live in the light of the Book up here. We’ve the Proofs, the Three Evidents, the Forty Reasons. I don’t understand how our people are being swindled by superstitions and charlatans claiming to work miracles.”

            It was the first Voslo heard of that. “What do you mean?” He didn’t hide his lack of knowledge at this one. He was never the kind of man to sit and gossip idly with others, and so news reached him slowly if at all.

            Kory shook his head. “How have you not heard of the Lion of Diadveen by now?”

            The old man’s face turned, and the innkeeper’s, and someone further down the bar besides, at the mention of the name. Voslo had never heard it one time. “Someone has a lion?” 

            Kory outright laughed at that. “No, no.” He began to try a word, but then laughed again. 

            “That’s what they call him,” the old courser explained. “Or it’s what he calls himself, or whatever. Who can make heads or tails of the nonsense of religious folk? He’s a miracle worker, they claim. And they claim every miracle.”

            “Miracles?” Voslo scratched at his graying beard again. “Like what? Like making the sun go back again or something?” He didn’t know what miracles were supposed to be like. There were just ancient stories, from ancient times, that you weren’t supposed to speak of anymore.

            “Raising the dead, for one,” the Innkeep answered. “Then healing, that’s one I’ve heard often. Then some lunatic came in here one night, swore up and down he saw the man disappear in broad daylight, and reappear somewhere else in an instant. Things of that sort.”

            “I’ve heard some such similar madness,” the old courser cut in. “Raising the dead, who could believe such a thing?” He scoffed

            “Did he?” Voslo asked. Everyone stared daggers at him.

            “Did he what?” The lady innkeeper said the words slowly and pointedly.

            “Raise the dead? Seems an odd thing for people to say they saw without seeing it,” he explained.

            The other four at the bar stared at each other a moment without a word, then broke into laughter in unison. 

            “I like your friend,” the old courser told Kory. “Good humor in him.”

            “Yes, yes,” Kory glanced nervously over to Voslo. “A bastion of it, he is.”

            Voslo just shrugged and returned to his potatoes. He didn’t care what the news of the world was. His world was simple enough, and straight forward. Go town to town. Announce himself and where he would be staying. Wait for a duelist to appear and challenge him. It didn’t matter to him who was Steward or who was King, who was Landbarron or who was Governor. It certainly didn’t matter to him if someone out there was stirring peasants up. 

            Kory Rush continued to prove a talkative young man. As a plate of potatoes and bad mutton gave way to pints of cheap ale, one guest at the bar turned into another, and never without Kory talking them up and pressing some news from them. Voslo, for his part, simply enjoyed his drinks. He had a good stomach for drink, always had. What would turn most men drunk simply served to relax the old fighter. 

            The same could not be said about Kory. The courser was drinking about as much as his duelist companion, but was slap drunk, and had given up interrogating travelers. He turned instead to a loud game of Lucky Knuckles. His opponent was a middle-aged man, somewhere between Voslo and Kory in years. He had short blonde hair and dark eyes, the look of a Belmaran head to toe. As they were rarely coursers, this was probably some lesser noble, shuffling between castles and holdfasts and baileys. His clothes were fine, thin wool, and brightly colored in yellows and oranges, but lacked any sigil that Voslo could see.

            “Another round!” The Belmaran shouted, slamming his fist into the table.

            Kory stood up and regarded the two die cast between them, then his opponent, before offering a gracious bow. “I am afraid I, I…,” he belched loudly.  “I can not, my good man. Elsewise, you’ll not leave with your breeches on, I fear.”

            The Belmaran’s face turned to a cold scowl. Voslo stealthily slid a hand to the left side of his belt, where a sharp dirk was sheathed, and unstrapped its fastener.

            “Ya lost!” The innkeep shouted over, having seen the tension growing. “Now to bed with ya, or if you’re not staying for the eve, then out the door instead.”

            “I wouldn’t stay in a piss pot like this anyways,” he said loudly, looking around at the tavern as though regarding it for the first time, and showing obvious contempt. “I’ll take my shil elsewhere.”

            “You’ve still some left?” Kory said with a grin, and Voslo slowly began sliding his knife from his belt. 

            “More than you’ll ever make, courser!” He spit, pulled a bag up over his shoulder, and marched angrily out the door. Voslo relaxed, and slid the dirk back, securing it once more to its sheath.

            Most the inn paid the entire affair no notice. The singer using spoons from before had been replaced by a curly-haired blonde boy who was properly a bard. He plucked his lap-harp and was singing The Ruse of Edensgain in a sweet, high voice that remained largely overshadowed by the overall noise of the place. 

“One man he set to keep the farce from turning,

            To visit empty tents and keep hearth-fires burning.

            Mikono thought he had them surrounded, in his folley,

            While the High King secretly bridged the Nicali.”

The bard shouted the last words of that stanza, and a few others joined him to yell “bridged the Nicali” with such an energy of triumph you would think they had been there themselves. Kory stumbled back over to the bar, shouting “bridged the Nicali” well after everyone else. He produced another electrum shil, smiling ear to ear, and placed it on the bar in front of the innkeeper. 

            “Told you…that, that I’d be good for it,” he managed in that unique accent that all drunk men share. “Another.”

            Voslo raised a hand to the lady and shook his head. “He’ll take some fresh water, if you’ve any.”

            The innkeeper shrugged. “Fresh water is harder to come by than wine or ale these days. I’ll fetch him something weak, though.”

            “That’ll do,” he agreed. “How much did you win?” Voslo raised the question.

            The merchant grinned. “A shilring.”

            He laughed. “Have you ever made so much in a night with your wares?”

            Kory looked thoughtful for a moment, then laughed back. “Don’t believe I have!” With that he slapped Voslo on the shoulder and got himself to his feet. “I need to take a piss, and if the inn is this packed, I’ll not risk the latrine.” He stumbled past the duelist to the heavy wooden door, and used most of his weight to pull it open before continuing outside into the dark.

            The lady innkeeper returned with some mixed wine in a cup and placed it at the empty seat. “Where’d he go? To sleep, I hope.”

            “Not so lucky,” Voslo answered.

            “So what are you two, then? You don’t look like a glave, but he sure looks like a courser. You in business together?” She asked. “I’m Janna, by the way.”

            “I’m Voslo,” he said. “And I’m not sure of the rest. I picked a ride with him this morning. He decided I looked like I was good with a sword, and offered me a part of his profits if I keep him company.”

            “Are you?” Janna asked. “Good with a sword?” 

            “So far,” he answered back. Janna had the look on her face that was asking, quietly, if he wasn’t too old to still be dueling. He knew that face well. Most people wore it once they saw him. “Is this your bar?” He asked, to change the subject.

            She gestured widely with her arms. “Shit-bucket, piss-pot and all,” she answered. 

            “It was your father’s?” He ventured.

            “Why?” She put on a pouting face. “Because a woman can’t own an inn, huh?”

            Voslo didn’t answer, he just raised an eyebrow and sat quietly, looking at her.

            “Pff. Yes, it was my pa’s,” she confessed. “He passed a few years back. I’ve a brother, somewhere out there, if he’s still alive. Should be his by right. No one knows where he is though. He was always a traveler at heart, my brother, so I run it instead.”

            “You’re a fortunate woman,” he said as he took another drink from his dark ale. “Not common for a lady to have some of her own shil in her shilpurse.”

            “That’s true enough,” she nodded. “And anyone should be so lucky to own an inn this side of Bradhall. It was just fifty years ago when my pa built it with his own hands, he and his brother. Bradhall wasn’t nothing back then. It had just been sore beaten down by the Purge, and was slow in recovering. People thought he was mad using what little money he had to invest in it, but he turned out right in the end. It’s the door to the sandpath, he always used to say. No one gets through a thing except by its door. Well, now here we are.”

            Voslo nodded, quietly, thinking on the times he had walked the Sandpath himself. It was a brutal six-day journey for most people, though it could be made in five if you rode alone, dangerous as that was. A near-perfect straight line of road that, like all capitol roads, connected the state capitol Sampur to the royal capitol, Belmaras, in Belmar. Unlike other capitol roads though, this one cut through leagues of rolling and shifting sand, of dunes that always transformed and never stayed put. The road was often covered completely in some places, and it wasn’t uncommon to get lost for a day, or forever. Still, dangerous as it was, it provided the only route from the sprawling desert-city Sampur to the rest of the Concordant. It was little wonder that most who completed the journey would then stay in the first tavern they saw on the way to Bradhall.

            The innkeeper was called away to other things, and for a while Voslo just sat there listening to various conversations, or else just enjoying a drink and trying to hear the words of the singer. When he finished The Ruse of Edensgain he asked for suggestions about what his small but captive audience might hear next. Several songs were called out, but The Lay of the Mage King came out on top. 

It was an even more popular story than The Ruse. In it, the High King Eden Belrase fights the mage Vitrund to the death, ending the era in which charlatans used tricks to fool the people and control kings. Two centuries later and the so-called Mage King had become more a caricature of evil and deceit than he was a real person, if ever he had been one. Virtually every ill that lead to or followed the Calamity was, in some fashion, lain on his shoulders. It led to the banning of all such superstitions as magic or alchemy and marked the beginning of the light of reason and the writing of the Book of Proofs. 

“I’ve seen you here,” Janna said after a bit. “I recognize you now.”

            Voslo nodded, turning in his seat from the bard to the innkeeper. “I come by every few years, whenever black luck takes me to Sampur, or fortune brings me back again.”

            “That’s how you knew it was my pa’s,” she realized.

            “Aye. Just wanted to hear more about it was all,” he said. “Didn’t mean to mislead.”

            “Speaking of leading and misleading, you might wanna go check on that friend of yours. He’s been gone a minute too long for a piss. Happens often enough that someone steps outside, falls over, and goes asleep in the dirt for the night. Would be a shame, as you’ve bought a room already,” Janna noted.

            The wizened fighter agreed and got to his feet. “Better go check on him. He is my ride, after all.” He opened the door and stepped out into the warm summer night. It was cloudy, though no one was fool enough to hope for rain. 

            “Help….” 

A weak voice came from just outside the lamplight, and Voslo recognized it. He hurried over to the merchant and found him beaten and crawling on the ground. His cap was gone, and a patch of his curly brown hair clung to the side of his face, matted in tears and blood alike.

“By every damn proof man, what happened?” Voslo helped him to his feet and gave him the rag he usually used to clean blood off his sword, that the young man might clean it off his face.

“That bastard,” he spit some blood down to the ground, and then blew bloodied snot from his nose. “It was, it was that bastard I beat at knuckles.”

            “Gambling is a dangerous pastime, let it be a lesson. You’re not grievously wounded from what I see. Let’s get you inside and clean you up,” Voslo reasoned.

            “No…no you have to chase him. You have to find him,” the merchant said, growing irritated. “He took something off me.” He rubbed his chest. “My necklace, he took it.”    

“How am I supposed to find him, eh?” Voslo asked. “I am sorry you lost a necklace, but it is gone now, and done. Do well in your craft, merchant, and I’m sure you’ll have another necklace.”

            Kory didn’t say anything. His eyes were wide, and he just stared at the ground, until he began hobbling forward with a limp. Voslo walked close by him, to catch him should he fall, and was surprised when the man kept limping past the door to the inn and towards the horses instead.

            “What are you doing?” Voslo asked, already tired of this day.

            “Must…have to find him,” Kory answered. He leaned up against one of the painted steeds, sneezed, and blew blood onto its coat.

            “You’ll fall right off that horse, assuming you can even get up.” Voslo grabbed the man by his shoulders, pulling him back. “We need to get you inside. There’s no telling how bad these wounds are until we get you cleaned.”

            Kory shook him off and leaned against the horse again, this time throwing an arm up and grabbing the horn of the saddle. He pulled at it, but nothing happened. There was no strength left for lifting in his arms. “Must…,” he whispered to himself.

            Voslo took a deep long breath, then let it out in a sigh. “Damnit. I’ll go after him. You promise you’ll stay here, and I’ll go after him.” 

He pulled Kory forcibly this time and led him through the door of the inn and to Janna behind the bar. “Can you see to his cleaning?”

Janna’s eyes were wide. “Blazing hell, what happened? Who roughed him up?”

“The man he beat at lucky knuckles. Do you have a girl who can help?”

“I do,” she nodded. “Willa! Willa come here!” She shouted towards the kitchen, and a younger girl appeared, blonde like Janna, but short and dressed in a dull grey cooking apron. “There’s no orders for food. Take this young man to the back and get him washed up. Use some warm water for it, and fetch the fresh rags. There are bandages in my quarter upstairs, I’ll fetch them and bring them down to you.”

Willa regarded the bloodied man, then nodded. “Of course, ma’am.” She made her way around the bar and took Kory gently by the arm.

Before she could lead him away, he reached back out and, with impressive strength, seized Voslo’s jerkin hard. He looked at the old man with eyes full of fire, and no one would have guessed then that he was drunk. “Find him. Find him.” 

“I will try,” Voslo nodded. 

Before he could hear any retort, he turned and made his way through the door and back into the night. When he got to the horses, he noticed, by incident, that the large Rikkayan Gray that caught his eyes earlier was now gone. “Well, at least I know what his horse looks like,” he reckoned aloud.

Voslo grabbed one of the painted Dawnlings by its reigns and lead it to the dry, cracked road that laid just at the edge of the lamplight. He pulled at the saddle horn once, and it seemed sturdy enough. With a resigned sigh, he hoisted himself onto the back of the creature. It always surprised him, how high up a horse’s back actually was. Uncomfortably securing the saddle and getting his feet positioned, he gave it a slight kick and urged it down the road in the black of night.

“Bloody hell,” he cursed as he bobbed side to side, truly the image of a man uncomfortable on horseback. “I’ve really got to stop helping people.”