David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

This pair is using cane too." "Pardon me my steed," Garric called.

"He's strange, I know, but just as harmless as a pony. It's a long story, and I'll willingly recite it when I buy the house a round of ale." The older man rubbed the axe-head on his apron. "We drink cider in these parts," he said argumentatively. "Bloody good cider, if I do say so myself." "Then won't you all join me in a cider?" said Garric, walking up to the group, by now all four men and the boy. The woman and child were peering down from a second-floor window. Garric brought out a silver piece, a Grapeleaf from Ornifal with the worn face of Valence II on the other side. He spun it up from his thumb to sparkle in the light, caught it, and handed it to the tapster. The latter frowned, rang the coin on his axe-head to judge the silver content, and said, "All right, then." "Are them two coming in?" said one of the hunters, bobbing his bow staff in the direction of Kore and the aegipan. A patch of his scalp was pink scar tissue; he'd tried to grease the remainder of his black hair over the injury to hide it.

Garric turned, partly to give himself time to decide on an answer to the question, and waved to Kore and Shin. "You can come forward, now!" he called. "The gentlemen know that we're friendly travellers with money for lodgings." The men staring at himweren't convinced yet, but phrasing things that way could help disarm their suspicions. Garric smiled at the innkeeper, the least hostile of the group, and said,

"I'm not surprised at your concern, of course. An earlier traveller had promised to bring word of my coming and my companions, a Master Orra. Did he not mention that?" The innkeeper frowned. "Orra?" he said. "We've seen no one of that name. When was he to arrive?" "He should've been here earlier today," Garric said. Shin and Kore were approaching, the aegipan walking on his hands ahead of the ambling ogre. "Riding a flea-bitten gray. Ah-we travelled at a good pace, but we didn't pass him on the way." "No white horse been by here since a year ago my birthday," growled the stable hand in a scarcely intelligible accent. "And that was afore the Sister dragged everything down t'Hell and spit it back up again." "Not a bad description of the Change," Carus remarked. His image wore an engaging smile, but Garric felt a cool undercurrent as his ancestor's mind judged how best to move if everything went wrong: snatch the axe, punch the helve into temple of the hunter on the right, bring the blade back around to eliminate the tapster and the other hunter in the same stroke…

The ancient warrior's reflexes weren't needed now; they were almost never needed. But theywere available, and sometimes that'd saved Garric's life and perhaps the kingdom. Shin hopped upright; the ogre knelt, dipped her head, and offered Garric's sword back to him on her upturned palms. Garric nonchalantly buckled his weapons on, silently amused by Carus' background calculations of how best to kill everyone around them now that he had the sword. Just in case, of course. "Thank you, Kore," Garric said. "You may rise." Looking at the local men again, he went on, "My jester, Shin, will-" The aegipan bowed low.

"-share the room with me. You do have private rooms, do you not?"

"Here?" the innkeeper said. The silver piece had wiped away his initial truculence. "Why, no sir, there's no call for that here at the Notch House." "You got the lean-to out back for a pantry, Noddy," the scalp-scarred hunter said. "You could put'em in there." "That won't be necessary," Garric said quickly. "The common room will do very well.

As for my mount-" Kore curtsied, cleverly throwing her left foot back rather than her right foot forward-which might've given the impression she was lunging at the locals. "If you have a dry outbuilding, I think that would be better than the stables. Kore's quite harmless-" If Carus'd had a physical body, his laughter would've been ringing from the steep sides of the valley. "-but her presence might spook the other animals." "Noway it's going to be spend the night with me!" the stable hand said. He hopped backward, bringing the pitchfork down tines-foremost in a posture of defense. "There's the grain shed, I guess," the innkeeper said, rubbing his chin with his knuckles. "He, ah… Does he eat grain?" "I assure you your grain is safe from me, Master Noddy," Kore said. "Though I trust you won't object if I rid the building of some of its rats?" One of the hunters looked at the other and said quizzically, "What is he, then?" "Why do you suppose he's asking his partner, Kore?" the aegipan said in an arch tone. "Surely it's obvious that any of the three of us would be the proper party." "To begin with, I'm not 'he,' gentle sir," Kore said.

She gestured to her upper, then her lower, set of dugs. "And appearances are deceiving. On the face of it, I'm a perfectly proportioned female ogre in the prime of life, scarcely three hundred years old. In reality, however, I am a beast of burden, bearing Master Garric with a modest deportment rarely to be met with in a horse-no matter how good that horse might taste." "Gentlemen," Garric said,

"I'm very thirsty, and I could use supper as well." "As could your jester, dear master," said Shin. To Noddy he added, "I don't suppose you have asparagus at Notch House, do you?" The innkeeper stared at the aegipan, then raised his eyes to Garric's. "What might asparagus be, sir?" he asked. "Shin will settle for porridge and some fruit,"

Garric said. Seeing Noddy frown he added quickly, "Or vegetables. At least some onions?" "We might run to onions," the innkeeper allowed.

"Leest, run back quick and tell your mistress to throw some porridge on to warm. Now!" The boy sprinted for the frame building. He wouldn't have raced off like that to carry out a task, but he was excited at the chance to tell his mother what he'd learned-little though that was in fact. "And a lamb, perhaps?" said Kore. The men walking toward the house stopped and turned, wide-eyed. "No? Well, a haunch of mutton?"

"We've ham," said the innkeeper. "And sidemeat." The ogre gave a theatrical sigh. "It's fitting," she said to the sky, "quite fitting.

I will gnaw my hog femur and think deeply philosophical thoughts about the advantages of a diet of pork." Garric cleared his throat and started the procession on into the house again. The scarred hunter unstrung his bow, though his partner still kept an arrow nocked. "Is there a side-trail Master Orra could've taken between the Boar's Skull Inn and here?" Garric asked. "There's game tracks," said one hunter.

"Hogs and deer. I guess he could've gone off down one 'a those if he wanted." "Why'd he want to?" the other hunter said. "If he could afford a horse, he wasn't hunting for meat and hides." "We passed a peel tower, I believe the name is," Shin said as he trotted up the three steps to the front door. His hooves clacked on the boards. "Who is it that lives there, if I may ask?" "Well, I can't rightly tell you, ah, Master Jester," said the innkeeper, opening the door for his guests. "It wasn't here before the Bad Time, you see." "I wish they wasn't there now, I do," said the stable hand, frowning as he picked bits of horse manure from the tines of his fork. He glared at the innkeeper with a fierceness that surprised Garric. "It's all right for you, you get the profit. But it's me drives the hogs there and I don't half like it!" "Now, Cayler, you needn't act so put upon," Noddy said, bowing Garric ahead of him into the common room of the inn. "Don't I give you all the cider you can drink each time you come back? And don't you drink it?" "Excuse me, Master Noddy," Garric said, wondering as he spoke whether that was the innkeeper's birth name or merely a nickname. "Does your stablehand go to the tower regularly, then?"

Noddy cleared his throat. "Rabanda!" he called up the stairs in the corner. "Come down here and help me with our guests!" He set the axe on the bar in some embarrassment, then turned to face Garric again.