Douglas Niles: Lord of the Rose

The front door of the inn opened, and a young woman dressed in a filmy gown stumbled out, looking around wildly as she was trailed by a burst of raucous laughter. She appeared to be crying but stopped when she saw the dwarf and human. Quickly she turned her face away and started along the front porch toward the barracks. More laughter, roaring peals, came from the great room as a huge brute of a warrior came bursting through the door.

“Where’d she go?” he demanded, as the dwarf started toward the doors.

He was a monstrous fellow, perhaps six and a half feet tall, solid as a bear with arms that dangled well below his waist. His lower jaw jutted in an ugly sneer, a visage that looked to be shaped by more than a fraction of ogre blood.

“Who?” asked the dwarf innocently.

By then, the big fellow had glanced around and spotted the woman, who had been jolted into action by the sight of him and was fleeing. “Hold, there, wench!” he roared, chasing after her with a startling burst of speed.

It was no contest-after two dozen strides he wrapped a big paw around her waist, then snatched her up and, with a bellowed guffaw, tossed her over his shoulder. He swaggered back to the tavern doors, grinning broadly at the dwarf and the human.

“Loosen th’ leash a bit and they run right off on ya!” he noted, before pushing through the doors, bearing his squirming prisoner into the room. He was greeted with whistles, whoops, and heavy stomping. The revelry overwhelmed the uneven notes of a flute, tones that wavered between sharp and flat.

“Just a second,” said the human rider to his dwarf companion. He looked around the corral, his eyes alighting on the gully dwarf.

The dwarf scowled but stood still and waited while the man crossed the courtyard toward the scruffy fellow, who, after opening the gate for the sheep, had promptly sat down in the mud and apparently gone to sleep.

“Hey, you,” the rider said, kicking the pudgy, rounded figure, slumped next to a clean-picked turkey carcass. The gully dwarf was already snoring loudly. “Wake up.”

“Huh?” The gully dwarf, of indeterminate gender and age, glared up at the man. “You not Highbulp, order me around! Me sleep!” the creature declared.

“How’d you like a job?” asked the stranger. He withdrew two steel coins from his pocket, handing one to the suddenly slack-jawed Aghar.

“Sure, a job!” declared the gully dwarf, chomping on the coin and promptly breaking a tooth, then scowling suspiciously. “What I gotta do?”

“It’s simple, little guy. I know this gate opens when that rope gets pulled. When my friend and I come out of the tavern and get on our horses, open the gate for us. I’ll give you the other coin on our way out.”

“Sure!” beamed the Aghar, before another dramatic mood swing brought a glower to his rounded, grimy face. “How I know you pay me?”

“If I don’t pay you,” the man said, patting the creature on the shoulder before turning back to the tavern, “I will owe you double next time I see you.”

The Aghar grinned, a grin that turned to a frown, as he scratched his head and watched the human ambling back to his companion. With a contented sigh, he returned to his nap.

The two travelers pushed open the front doors of the tavern. The setting sun spilled in behind them, brightening the cavernous chamber and turning the room’s collective attention to the new arrivals. The warrior walked as if he was alone and at his ease, barely glancing at anything, but the dwarf studied the room carefully. He glared at a quartet of baaz draconians leering from the table nearest the door, puffed out his chest and strutted as he passed a table of scowling hill dwarves, met the steady, appraising gaze of a pair of Solamnic Knights who stood at the bar, and finally stared down a drunken half-ogre who stumbled into his path. After that, there was a general shifting around, and space cleared for them at the bar.

“Dwarf spirits, a double shot!” the dwarf barked at the harried old barmaid.

“I hear you, don’t have to shout!” she snapped back. She finished drawing ale into a couple of mugs and set them down in front of the two knights, both of whom wore the emblem of the Rose. A miserable-looking goblin, his mouth gagged with a filthy rag while his wrists and ankles were shackled with stout metal manacles, huddled at the feet of one of the Solamnics. The creature was hunched over, holding something small in its clawed hands.

“All right, dwarf spirits-and you?” She looked at the warrior impatiently.

“Do you have any of that red ale from Coastlund?”

She snorted. “I got mead from Thelgaard and yellow ale from Solanthus.”

“Well then, give me dwarf spirits, too. A double shot.”

She slammed down two small, clay glasses and hoisted a jug from behind the bar. It was clearly heavy, but she held it steadily as she trickled each glass full. When they were topped off, she set down the jug, pushed the glasses across the bar and left to wait on a raucous draconian at the other end of the bar.

“Lively place,” the dwarf remarked. He tossed back half of his glass and smacked his lips.

“Yep,” the warrior replied. He took a sip from his own glass and winced as the fire ran across his tongue and down his gullet. “Cornellus always has a wild bunch around.”

They leaned back and watched the musical entertainment for a few minutes. The minstrel was an elf, dressed in patched leather leggings and a threadbare cloak. He alternated between his flute and a mandolin, but whenever his tune verged on melodious the hill dwarves would jeer him into making a mistake, and then the whole room would erupt in laughter.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.” The speaker was the nearer Knight of Solamnia. He had finished his mug and was pulling on his riding gloves as he stonily addressed the warrior. “This is a long way from any place.”

“Easy enough to find,” the warrior replied.

“You look familiar, though. Ever been through Sanction?” asked the knight, scrutinizing the whiskered, weather-beaten face.

The rider shook his head.

“What about Caergoth? I spend lots of time there, in the Ducal Guard. You one of Duke Crawford’s men?”

“Nope.” The stranger took a sip of his spirits.

“Cleaning out the riff-raff?” the dwarf asked the knight, nudging the shackled goblin with his foot. The wretched creature looked up apathetically then lowered his head. In his shackled hands he held a chip of stone, a greenish quartz, clutching the shard to his breast like it was great treasure.

“A rabble-rouser,” said the second knight from behind the first. “Preaching about Hiddukel to all the gobs in the hills. We’re taking him in for a talk with the duke.” He laughed mirthlessly.

The first knight stared at the human warrior until his companion, also gloved, tapped him on the shoulder. Each of them took hold of the hobgoblin’s wrist cuffs and pulled the creature roughly to his feet. Side by side, one watching to the right and the other left, they walked to the door, yanking the hobgoblin behind them.

“Some nerve, their kind coming up here,” snapped the hag of a barmaid, returning to meet their eyes. She unleashed a toothless grin at the warrior. “Act like they own the place! Still, that Reynaud was looking you over, all right. Like he reckanized you from somewheres…”

The man shrugged.

“Bah, frightened of shadows, them knights,” said the dwarf, extending his glass for a refill.

The crone poured. “Cornel don’t have no use for them knights either, but he tolerates their business. To keep the peace, you know. Still, that hob was a good enough customer. Never bothered no one. Just sat there and rubbed his green stone-sometimes he’d rub it so hard it glowed!”