Ezril always thought his life would end within the Green Horn’s walls; old and desolate, not seeing anything beyond it. Or if he was lucky, he’d die young, maybe spoken of in the reaches of the underbelly considering how much time he had spent there.
When Ezril and Urden left the forest sometime within their first week, they came across a small city, smaller even than Green Horn. The route Urden had taken at the time had shown they would not go through it, however. So at a slowing pace and with the sun frowning down on them, Urden brought Dainty to a stop. His instructions to Ezril had been simple.
“Go to the guards at the gate,” he told Ezril. “Inform him of the dead Titan boar in the forest and ask for payment for the information he would require to find it. If the guard fails to believe you, point to where Dainty is. I’ll be waiting at an acceptable distance.”
Ezril obeyed and was off.
The guards watched Ezril’s approach with skepticism. His week-old clothes smelled of mud, grime, sweat and something else he could not put a name to, perhaps a special component of the forest. It was enough to deter even him from trusting himself. His leather sandals were made of low quality and were torn in different places. Walking, he’d been able to undoubtedly feel the dirt beneath them which was wrong, considering sandals were not designed to be that way—he could say so with a certainty.
He broke the information down to the guards the best way possible, just as he had learned in the underbelly. Then he watched the guards ponder on his information and knew the moment they chose to take him as a liar. He couldn’t blame them; a child his age couldn’t bring down a boar, let alone a Titan.
As they reached for him, no doubt to have him give up whoever had set him up to the task, Ezril reached a finger out in Urden’s direction.
“The priest sent me,” he said.
His words held with them a power, and just the knowledge that he claimed to know a priest who was not very far away brought the men to a halt.
“How much?” the taller of both guards asked as he withdrew trembling fingers, his mate staring into the distance and making out the shape of a man on a horse.
If it was a priest he saw, was a different question. But people rarely risked offending a priest just as people did not dare pretend to be one.
At the mention of money Ezril smiled. He understood the business of trade. He knew to work the buyer until he gave up all he was willing or even able to. He knew the tells that showed a man would give whatever was required, at least, he knew most of them. And the guards were beginning to display most of them. These were skills learned in the underbelly—skills garnered from watching the children and the adults haggle prices that could so easily end in fist-fights. But when the time came to work the man, he remembered Urden’s choice.
Ezril took his disappointment at not being able to haggle his first real business deal quietly as he returned to Urden with a pouch filled with more gold than he had imagined the soldiers would’ve been willing to give.
“The Titan will give them far more than this if used right,” Urden explained as they rode on, continuing their journey. “Perhaps thrice more.”
“Then why did we settle for whatever they wanted to give?” Ezril asked, confused. If Urden had known the real cost of the Titan boar, shouldn’t he have chosen a price?
“And why would I want more?” Urden asked. “If they had offered a single gold coin, I would’ve accepted it—we would have accepted it.”
“Sounds like poor business to me.”
“True,” Urden agreed. “But I am a priest not a business man. This is the way we do business. Of what use is all the money in the world to me? I could simply kill another and sell, or I could return to the seminary and they would care for me. That city, however, will always need money.”
“So why did you ask them to pay? You could’ve just given them for free.” There was a whining in Ezril’s voice and he had realized too late to conceal it.
Urden watched him with the eyes of a teacher torn between teaching a child or allowing them figure a lesson out on their own. In the end, it seemed the latter won. He returned his attention back to the road and continued on in his silence.
That was the first time Ezril witnessed the power of the position of a priest over humans.
They travelled a long distance over the span of months after the event until they found themselves at a tavern located on the outskirts of Ardin, the capital city of the kingdom. There, they settled into a tavern and Ezril was glad for the presence of people.
Ezril sat at a simple table. In front of him was a cup of milk given alongside a plate of roasted venison. Urden sat across the table from him. A cup of some alcoholic substance rested in his hands. The cup foamed at the mouth and the priest sipped it at intervals. The cup was made of clay, molded in a hurry and tossed to the side for use. Clearly, the creator had no great expectations of it; a cup made with the expectation of being broken.
Olnic had a lot of those at The Plank.
Still, it was a perfect representation of the tavern. On the outside, it was riddled with holes in its walls. Scars the length of a man spoke of sword fights where at least one man had been more than eager to cut his opponent in half. The dried blood that presented themselves as spatters accompanying most of the marks said a few men had found success in their endeavors. The wooden sign hanging from a metal pole at the entrance had been so weathered and aged that Ezril had been unable to discern what it said. But whatever it was, he believed it to be the name of the tavern.
Inside, the tavern was filled with a crowd that threatened to pull down the already almost crumbling building with their bellows and laughter. The air was wretched with the smell of body odor and vomit, and the presence of so many warm bodies banished the cold of the night. These were men tired from a day’s work who’d returned to waste away their lives and punish their bowels with whatever they could fit inside it, before lumbering their way back into the world for another piss poor adventure the next day.
The men in the tavern were scarier than any Ezril had ever seen in his small home of Green Horn. Each bore scars on one part of their bodies or the other that made Urden’s and Hunmar’s look like needle marks.
One end of the room was a table hosting six men of varying sizes. Each one carried a cup of their own, and on the table between them stood a massive jug which they were having replaced at the moment for the third time.
On the opposite end of the room, at a table right beside the door sat two men, and where the room was noisy, these two easily bellowed over everyone else. Even seated, Ezril knew them to be the tallest men in the room, and perhaps the biggest.
While everyone wore cloths that did a good job of covering them, these men wore scant clothing, baring their chests and arms with the only cloth worn over their torn trousers being a jacket made of what could or could not have been wolf’s pelt. Their brown beards, braided at odd angles, outgrew the hair on their heads and could have probably swallowed Ezril’s fore arm.
The length of the tavern was crowded. Tables were filled with customers the kinds of which Ezril had never seen during his time in the underbelly. There were at least two customers on each table but most held three, and though most harbored only men, there were a noticeable few where women mingled with the men.
Ezril could almost smell the ferocity of each person seeping into the hot putrid air. He didn’t think the weapons they all carried was the cause of it.
The tavern girls—for Olnic had taught him calling them whores was impolite—waited at the stairs that led to what could only be believed to be a more conducive part of the tavern. Each one bore a look that dictated their urge to do business, as well as their urge to stay alive and in one piece. The burden of the men, they could take. The brunt of the drunk men wielding weapons, however, was a different discussion to be tabled.
Ezril finished his third cup of milk. His meal had taken him a while to go through but he finished it in good time. Now he drank from a cup of water. While it was a clearly terrible idea to bring a child his age to such a place, Ezril kept his objections to Urden’s actions to himself. Like every other thing Urden had done during their journey to wherever the seminary was located, he knew the man expected him to learn something from their stay here. So, learn, he would. Whatever it was he was supposed to.
As Ezril watched, he noted the absence of men in the service of the customers. Only ladies carried the trays and the jugs, making their way through the ruckus with an ease that proved the place more their home than it was any other’s.
The two men Ezril had noted with the conspicuous dressing and the need for a shave with a butcher’s knife rather than a simple razor soon abandoned their table to join one where a woman sat accompanied by two men. They took their jug with them as an offering of good will or perhaps a sign that they had every intention of getting their money’s worth. Moving with a swagger induced by the contents of their cups, they shrugged their way onto their new seats and birthed a new burst of merriments with their new friends.
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The smaller of both men cracked jokes between drinks and laughs while the bigger one was more interested in the woman he had chosen to sit beside. He whispered sweet nonsense into her ears as he took more conserved sips from his cups and refilled hers each time it ran dry. Watching both men, Ezril failed to ascertain which of them drank more. Them, or their beards.
“… cold?” the smaller of the two men was saying. He took a swig of the contents of his cup, spilling more onto his beard than he did in his mouth and towering over his new companions. “Your winter is like normal night. If your people spend one night of winter in Skrragoh you would… how you say…” he snapped his fingers at his partner who was too busy flexing his muscles to the pleasure of the woman to attend him. “Fancy words you people use,” he continued to think. A moment after, his beards split in a concealed smile. “Ah, keel over.” Then his attention returned to his companion. “Brother! Listen when I talk to you.”
The other man took his eyes off the woman for the first time since they’d sat down. “I’m listening, Agda.”
Their voices were deep, deeper even than most men Ezril had heard speak, and each time they spoke, their words seemed like a rumble. It called a respect, or rather, demanded it.
“No you are not,” Agda disagreed. He took another gulp, making sure not to spill the contents this time, then wiped his mouth with his hand. “I tell you, Njord. Woman is not everything.”
“Of course not.” Njord’s voice was good humored. He raised his hand and began counting off his fingers. “There’s also drinking, fighting, pillaging, eating, fucking, pillaging.” He paused and offered his brother a wide grin. “Have I said pillaging?”
It seemed his Alduin was better than his brother’s.
They continued in their conversation for a while longer and Ezril continued to eavesdrop. Agda told tales of conquests in snowy mountains and how he’d fought of a small army in the dead of winter. His brother continued to evolve his acquaintance with the woman who up till now Ezril couldn’t gain a decent view of.
It was while he was struggling for a better view that a scuttle broke out at one of the tables. Two men held a shoving match while a frightened woman seemingly caught in the middle inched herself away from the chaos. Her disheveled hair and the nature of the dress she wore, abridged and gravely revealing, had Ezril convinced her place between both men was less a coincidence and more a product of circumstance. Besides, when he looked closer, he easily identified her from amongst the women previously at the stairs.
“… I saw her first,” the man with a patchwork of a beard was saying.
The other man, tired of shoving, and not caring to say much, pulled a knife from his pocket. “Care to die first, then?”
The knife was portable, small and easy to conceal but was certain to leave significant puncture wounds if allowed. This left his opponent without leverage to retrieve the longsword strapped to his hip without finding retribution at the end of a small knife. Still, he seemed unwilling to let whatever they argued over go without a fight. So as time seemed to still between both men, Ezril watched. He wondered if the man was beginning to consider the farcicality of actually engaging his opponent unarmed.
The man with the knife grinned, understanding his opponent’s predicament. “You can have her after I’m done,” he said, satisfied with his victory.
In the underbelly men never killed in The Plank. Ezril had always thought it an unspoken rule in all taverns. But the look in the man’s eyes told him that he would take his opponent’s life as quickly as he had drawn his knife. Yet everyone else went about their business as if a man was not about to be stabbed over a quick shag.
“You know you should sit, boy.” Agda rose from his seat, voice rumbling over the noise and interrupting whatever decision the unarmed combatant would’ve made.
Even as the smaller of the brothers, he stood head and shoulders above both men even from a distance.
“Patch-work over there clearly saw woman first,” he continued. “And I don’t like how you are scaring woman.”
“You best mind your business Northman,” the man snarled, “or I’ll gut you, too.”
The Northman sighed. He reached a hand behind him. “You Alduins are so petty with your tiny weapon. That is not knife, boy,” his hand returned with a knife of his own from where Ezril could not see. “This is knife.”
The weapon was massive. Its blade was longer than any knife’s Ezril had ever set his eyes on. The Northman brandished it in style. He twirled it deftly in his grip and pinned it to the table where it stayed embedded with a thud that caused the single cup on the table to bounce at the impact, spilling its contents. Where the man’s knife was for stabbing, the Northman had produced something that could gut a bull in one blow.
“And this…” Agda hefted his battle axe from its place on his back, holding it in one hand, and bringing Ezril to a confusion as to how he hadn’t noticed it, “…is weapon. Not needle you have on your waist. So you best sit.”
The man with the small knife frowned. He seemed to consider his options briefly. Then he put his knife away. Returning it to its place in his shirt, he took his seat and reached for his cup to drown whatever complaints he had to make.
The fellow with the patchwork of a beard grinned his unfought victory and went for the girl, only for her to take a step away from his reach. The man frowned at the rejection. He spared the Northman who was still standing a cautious glance, contemplating his next course of action.
Deciding against whatever bravado the alcohol in his body whispered into his mind, he returned to his seat with a scowl, imitating the actions of his once opponent. Meanwhile, the girl scurried back to the stairs where she let out an audible sigh of relief.
Agda who had watched everything play out, retrieved his knife from the table. The owner of the cup still on the table snatched it up with one of the jugs while the other man took the jug the Northman had brought. The table left the floor with the knife by at least an inch in defiance before the knife’s point slipped from the wood. The table fell back down unceremoniously. Then Agda replaced both weapons before sitting down. Again, Ezril could not see where the massive knife went.
The Northman poured himself another cup. “You Alduins are funny. You fight over things as petty as whores with weapons for sewing and think you men.”
Njord laughed into the neck of the woman at the man’s words where he’d been burrowing since the scuttle began. She seemed to be enjoying it, squeezing his biceps as if intent on ripping the skin off while moaning her pleasure. The Northman growled in satisfaction as she arched her back, presenting more of her neck to him. Within the space of a blink, his free hand vanished beneath the table.
“But your god,” Agda continued ignoring his brother’s actions. “He has the interesting servants. The ones you call priests belong to him, correct?”
The man beside Njord nodded.
“Your god has himself good warriors,” Agda went on. “Me and my brother fight one a long time ago. It is why we come here, to Alduin.”
He drank again, and this time it was straight from the jug.
“How did you escape?” the woman mumbled between moans.
Agda laughed. “Who say we escaped?”
Njord lifted his head with a groan and turned to his brother. “If we had not escaped, we’d have lost our heads, brother.” Scratching his beard, he added: “Tell them about this priest, and his funny clothes.”
Agda wiped wine stains from his bearded mouth. “He took both our blows head on, that one. First time I ever see a man take the both of us together. Small man… just about your size, Venmer. Fast and strong. Broke skull crusher in pieces, too.” His voice saddened. “I loved that axe.”
Venmer, the man sharing a side of the table with Njord and the woman, nodded but asked again, “So how did you escape?”
For a man beside two frolicking adults, he did a good job of ignoring them.
“Oh.” Agda shook the sadness from his voice. “I hold him down while that one there ran.” Njord wasn’t the least perturbed by his brother’s words as Agda continued. “He let me go after that. Said we Northmen were interesting folk.”
Venmer stopped his cup before it came to his mouth. “That reminds me. Did you hear what happened in Green Horn?”
Ezril’s ears perked up at the sound of his home. It had been two months since he’d heard any news of the place. He wondered how Alphons and Dorni and Fren were doing.
He wondered how aunt Teneri was faring. Was she taking care of herself?
“Yeah, I heard of it,” the man sitting beside Agda who’d barely said a word before now said. “They say a priest took a boy. They say ‘e was an orphan. No father or mother.” He shook his head solemnly. “Not so rare, though. They do it sometimes.”
Venmer shook his head. “Not this one. Heard he took the boy from the city. Adopted him.” He abandoned his mug and scratched his neck. “Poor kid. First time I ever heard of such. To be the child of a priest. What could be worse?”
Ezril continued eavesdropping, listening to the conversation when Njord frowned.
“What you looking at?” Njord growled suddenly, distracted from his adventuring of the woman’s neck.
It took Ezril a moment to notice the Northman had ceased his business with the woman and was now looking at him.
“Your pa never teach you not to stare?!” he snarled, rising from his seat. He stalked towards Ezril and Urden.
Ezril found himself under a new kind of fear that threatened to release his hold on his bladder. When he opened his mouth to speak, apologize or at least dissuade the misunderstanding somehow, the words refused to come out.
“Hey, you!” Njord turned his attention on Urden. “Fathers pay for the crimes of their children where I come from… You hear me?”
Whenever they came upon a city that was conducive enough to spend time in Urden always swapped his cassock for something more casual. Something that would help him blend in as nothing but a simple sell-sword.
Right now, he wore a grey shirt of cotton with long sleeves. A slit at the center of the collar was held not too far apart by a lattice of threadwork. He wore the shirt over a trouser of the poorest brown. It was a combination he wore so well, to Ezril’s continued surprise. His swords remained sheathed and strapped behind him, its shape concealed in abounding wraps of fabric so much so that its shape and true length was almost indiscernible. And while he pulled of this look almost too well, he never associated with anyone they came by more than he needed to. It told Ezril that such detours were perhaps made for the sake of his comfort more than any other reason.
The Northman reached for Urden. “I said—”
Urden moved as suddenly as the man’s change of attitude.
He slid his cup over to Ezril. It glided across the table as he rose to meet the Northman. His movements were fluid and quick. He grabbed Njord’s arm and propelled himself forward. He rose to his feet, quick as a snake. He was smaller than Njord yet he met him, undaunted. When he closed the distance, his pull destabilizing Njord for the quickest moment, Urden swept Njord’s forward leg out from under him with a quick kick. It staggered Njord, and the Northman came crashing down on the table. Urden grabbed the back of his head on his descent and drove his face into the table. Njord’s head came down with a weighty thud, bounced off the wood and he dropped to the ground like a discarded rag.
He laid there, unmoving, and silence announced his defeat.
He won’t be going upstairs, Ezril observed. At least not tonight.
Ignoring the unconscious Northman, Urden took his cup from Ezril and returned to his seat. He placed the cup on the table with a delicacy contrary to the fatality he’d just displayed. Njord’s unconscious body remained as Urden turned his attention to his companions. Ezril found them watching with wide eyes. But while the others displayed shock, the woman’s mixed with something he didn’t recognize, Agda seemed more impressed than anything else.
“I say we let him sleep this one off,” Urden suggested.
“I agree,” Agda said. “My little brother has already had too much to drink for one night.”
Agda burst into a fit of laughter a moment later, and the entire room Ezril had just noticed had fallen silent, resumed its conversations. The tension dissipated from the atmosphere as the whole tavern burst back to life.
Urden turned to Ezril.
“What did you learn?” he asked.
“Size is not everything,” Ezril answered after a moment’s thought.
“True,” Urden agreed and took a sip from his cup. “But what you should’ve learned was never to pick a fight when drunk.”