Chapter 22: Laying Low
I stumbled down the stairs of the inn towards the main hall. I’d left Asha to sleep in our room as it was not yet light. She was normally an early riser, both the girls were, but the enormity of that first week on the road was finally taking its toll; she was exhausted and her body was claiming its due.
Mine was too. However, with me, it was different. The nightmares, the absolute horror of what I had done, what I was forced to do. My mind had protected me whilst I needed a clear head and it had shut down the worst of the violence and trauma, the feeling of blood under my nails, and the sound of that Knight’s eyes popping as I gouged them out. Mercifully, I didn’t relive any of that on the road.
Not like this. Now that we had found a place to rest, I was endlessly replaying that last week. It would have been simple to deal with the insomnia if the dreams stopped when I woke up, but I saw everything while I was awake as well. The Captain, snarling with derision, the Knights’ bewildered faces when their story ended. Donatu.
That kid—the first life I’d taken. The horror in his eyes as he gasped for breath haunted me. He didn’t need to die. I didn’t understand my strength—I could have pulled that second kick, gone to ground. Wrapped him up and pinned him, waited. I didn’t. Despite his actions, despite his intentions, it was still excessive force.
It was murder.
Manslaughter? Maybe. His dad was right to hate me. He deserved some sort of justice. Some sort of closure. His boy had made mistakes, but I’d killed him. And he wouldn’t be the last. The Knights in the forest deserved death, they were vile men, but the carnage… that… was… I shuddered as I relived the moment I’d impaled a Knight through his breastplate. His face in horror as he couldn’t believe what I’d done. Suddenly his face was my face. I was in his body looking through his eyes at myself as I saw myself full of rage and power. I felt the tightness in my chest. I felt the cold of the blade. I felt the colour draining from my face.
“MATHEW! SON!” came the voice of the innkeeper behind me. It snapped me out of my waking nightmare, as I steadied myself on the banister halfway down the inn’s stairs. The gruff dwarf ran the establishment with a few of his so-called ‘cousins’, all members of his clan. He gripped me by my sweat-drenched shoulder and then stepped below me on the stair to look up into my bloodshot eyes.
“Ah, ye haven't a lick o' sleep since ye arrived, have y’son?” he whispered, concerned, running his hand through his braided beard.
I shook my head slowly as the tears fell to the worn, but well-maintained, wooden step. I quickly took the stairs past him to the ground floor and into the common room. The old Dwarf didn’t speak again, just followed and took the chair opposite me at one of the common room tables as I sank into my own and dropped my head into my hands.
“Sorry.” I muttered. “I’m just dealing… with a lot... I’ll be alright, I just… no-one needs to see me like this. It’s not… I’m… I need to be strong.”
Theran Firespit sat and watched me for a long time. Up close, I noticed the braids in his beard weren’t just ornaments; each ring was stamped with a mark that seemed to increase by ten. I caught sight of one that said 380AW. Another that showed 520AW and more still later. Dozens and dozens of beads. There were more than I could count at a glance. I’d later find out they were decade markers and, with the amount he had, I guessed he’d picked up some semblance of patience over those centuries. As I pulled myself together and sat up again in the barely-lit room, I saw him staring at me with calculated, piercing eyes.
“Horseshit,” he spat. Then he was quiet again for a moment before he spoke softer again. “I’ve seen m’share of fokwits whinging into their beer o’er some tart who’er too goodfer’em anyways. But this aint that. Look, ye can’t hide fresh shit, it stinks too much and th’smell builds up and just leaks through. Ye can’t do anything but clean as much of it up as ye can in the hope that it eventually gets the smell out.”
I looked up at him, confused. “What… what are you…”
Theran got out of his seat and pulled a beer from the tap behind the bar. I hadn’t touched the stuff since I’d arrived. Firstly, I never really drank a lot back on Earth, and beer hadn’t ever been my drink of choice when I did. But secondly, I hadn’t thought it was a wise choice to spend what money we had on non-essentials. But the innkeeper pushed the glass across to me with a gruff instruction to drink and, despite the early hour, I didn’t want to offend him, so I took a mouthful.
Even in my depressed state I could tell this was no ordinary beer. The brew didn’t taste like anything I’d had on Earth. Warmer lagers from the UK, cheap US beers and even the high quality Australian brewery beers I’d had on the rare occasion were nothing compared to this cool ale. It was full and meaty, like I could almost chew it. But soft and light like sweet cider. Tart and tangy and yeasty but not too much. It seemed to be the best aspect of every beer from anywhere. I looked up in astonishment at the golden brew and as I lifted the glass, I saw the bubbles forming the shape of a Dragon, rising over and over again from the bottom of the glass to the head at the top.
“Aye. Dragon Ale,” the innkeeper nodded knowingly. “No’ many can afford tha’, I’ll tell ye. Yer a lucky one, seein’ as I’m feelin’ generous. If yer gonna cry into a pint, might as well make it a gud one.”
“Thank you.” I choked.
“Lad. I’m going to ask you to get it out. You need t’talk about it or you’re gonna lose your head. I know yer runnin. I know ye aint married to that nice elf lass. Them walls be thin an’ ye sure as hell haven’t been knockin boots. A lad like you wouldn’t resist a lass like her unless you got bigger things on yer mind. And I can smell the shit you’ve been through as clear as if I’d stepped in it meself. Ye can’t hide fresh shit. Ye can only clean it up.”
I chuckled sardonically. “You aren’t wrong.” Taking another sip of my beer, I paused as I felt it slide down my insides, relaxing all my muscles as it went. I felt a connection with Theran. It might have been his rough ‘tell-it-how-it-is’ approach, or the fact that he was the first person I’d spent any time with here who was truly older than me. Even Deriostos was about my age. Theran seemed like someone who might have advice borne of experience greater than my own, something that was harder to find the older I got.
“Asha is my… well I don’t know. It could be something, I know she wants it to be, but we aren’t and I don’t think I can…”
Theran cut me off. “Lad yer women troubles aren’t the demons takin ye into nightmares like the one ye were havin on the stairs.”
I don’t know why I told him, but something in his tone made me believe he’d seen a thing or two. “I killed a man. Several men. More than several. I killed many men. They were all bad. They were all trying to kill me or someone else at the time… but… I killed them. And…”
“Ye haven donnat before, ‘av ye lad? Ok, it was yer first time, and that’s enough to mess wit anyone’s head, but that aint all, is it?”
I shook my head. “Their deaths were… visceral.” Theran watched me scrub at my hands, trying to erase the blood only I could feel as the scream of one of the knights in my memory sent a shudder down my spine.
“Aye.” muttered the Dwarf. I looked up from my drink to see the dwarf get a faraway look in his eye and I recognised the signs of someone reliving their own trauma. His hand clutched a pendant of a star, framed in a gold circle, that hung around his neck, and I knew that, whatever he was reliving, it was connected to the necklace somehow.
“Shit. Theran, it’s OK. I can deal with this myself.” I lifted my glass to him. “Cheers Theran, I needed this.”
But, to my surprise, the dwarf snapped his head up and berated me harshly. “Don’t ye dare shift focus ont’me, lad. I beat my demons a century before your grandfather was a boy. I see ye now. Ye been protecting that girl, and anyone else ye can find, t’give yourself something to take your mind offa things. Well, ye need to stop. Ye canna take care of her unless ye got ye own shit sorted out.”
He was right. Of course he was right. I’d given the same council to people back on Earth. I sighed and returned to my beer as the Dwarf chewed on one of the rings that held a beard braid in place. Eventually, he spoke softer.
“Listen lad, there ain’t much to do around here. If I didn’t have me cousins runnin’ the place, I’d hire ye meself—but ye need work. Something that pays, gives ye purpose. Something that will let ye help people.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. Anything in mind?”
The Dwarf shook his head. “Look, ye obviously know how t’handle yeself. And ye young an’ fit, ye could sign on with the Blades of Mondarin an’ see if they’ll take ye’on as hired arm.”
I frowned. “I haven’t had the best experience with organised military groups lately.”
“Aye, or you wouldn’t have been hiding yeself in ye room. The only reasons a young couple ever stays in their room for days on end is to bump uglies or hide from the law. And I’d wager this entire inn ye haven’t laid a’hand on that lass.”
I nodded. “You’re not worried I’m on the run?”
“Lad, if I believed ye were a blight on society I would remove ye from it meself, not hand ye over to Lord Arnias and his goons. The Blades o’ Mondarin are a mercenary company. They pay well, train well and, most importantly, they act on their own authority. They are generally well respected, and happy to stand up to the city watch or those Iron Shield bastards or whoever else as they need. I heard Lord Arnias doesn’t like that they aren’t loyal to ‘im, but ‘e can’t turn them away cause’e literally doesn’t have tha manpower t’run things otherwise.”
I thought carefully about this. “So what, sign up to protect caravans?”
“Aye. What better options do y’have?” Theran replied.
“Well, before all this I studied music… I just don’t have an instrument at the moment.”
The dwarf chewed his beard. “Nah. Bards attract attention. I’d hire ye in a moment if it would help, but the last thing ye need right now is for word to spread that tha’s new bard in town and bring everyone right to ye. Guards a’ignored. Invisible. They become part’a tha furniture. That’s what ye need right now.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes until one of Theran’s cousins came down to start the morning cooking. The old Dwarf got up and laid a hand on my shoulder as he went to start his chores.
“Talk to that sweet lass o’yours,” he said. “A good woman has more than ‘er body to ease a man’s sufferin’. She seems to have a good head on ‘er shoulders. Ye could learn’a thing or two.”
I smiled and drained my glass. “You’re a wise old bastard, Theran.”
“So they tell me,” he chuckled, leaving me to my thoughts.
I looked around the rustic room, still dark in the pre-dawn. I think four days had passed since James Brook. I guess I was so tired and messed up in the head that one day pretty much just blurred into another. We’d ridden hard that evening, after Erica had manifested Bambinae’s voice before that tavern full of witnesses. Lauraphine had driven us through the night and even beyond Westfall, forcing a northern approach so no one would connect us to James Brook. It was then that I’d taken over the preparations.
“We enter in two groups,” I proposed. “We hide the weapons and armour in our sacks except for the bows. We still have the deer skin, hopefully we’ll appear as hunters. Each pair will enter an hour apart. I’ll go with Asha, Laura you go with Erica. Girls, hide your ears behind your hair when we reach the gate. We’ll stay at separate inns to avoid anyone noticing there are twins in the city.”
Laura regarded me with impressed surprise. “That’s good, anyone investigating last night will be looking for a group, and separating the twins will help.”
The twins were less impressed. They understood my reasoning, but they didn’t like the idea of being separated. Asha accepted the plan better, but Erica was unhappy that it wasn’t the other way around.
I pulled her aside and brought her into a hug. “Your safety is more important to me than my happiness. I can’t have the two of you with me all the time, or we might be found out. But once we are inside the city we can assess it from there.”
We held each other for a while as Asha and Laura packed things equally amongst the two pairs of horses. As I consoled her, Erica slowly stopped crying and looked up at me.
“I’ve never been jealous of my sister before, but now I just want it to be me and not her.”
I smiled warmly, unable to look away from those perfect emerald eyes. I could see the fear of rejection there. “I know, and I will make it up to you, Erica. You were brilliant in the Tavern last night, you know that? Absolutely marvellous! I am completely in awe of you!”
Her face shone with adoration. “Then why can’t I be the one to stay with you?”
“Because I want us to know each other first — truly know each other. Mind and soul before body. And Asha, for all her own feelings, understands that. She’ll help me keep my resolve.”
Erica groaned dramatically. “And I won’t. I’d just try to seduce you.” She leaned up to kiss me, playful and defiant. “We could slip away now and find a nice spot—”
“And that’s why you’re coming with me,” Laura chimed in, the packing done. She grabbed Erica gently by the ear and pulled her out of my arms towards their horses. “I’m going to talk some sense into you.”
I let Erica go with a sympathetic glance. “Yes, MUM.” she groaned. Laura eyed her with curiosity. “Well that’s how you’re acting!” the young brunette exclaimed.
“Take it as a compliment.” I chuckled, then turned serious again. “There will be multiple inns, right?”
“For a city of this size, maybe eight to ten thousand residents, there will be plenty.”
That made sense to me. I was trying to remember medieval demographics that I had studied in my previous life. Things that I had been interested in that seemed like useless information at the time.
“Ok… so there will be an inn just inside the north gate, probably, right? So, you take that one. And we’ll take the next nearest to the gate. Let’s lay low for a day or two to rest and meet on the third day in the market? Grab supplies and discuss our next step?”
Laura agreed. “We shouldn’t stay in Westfall long. I’d like as much distance between us and Lord Arnias as possible, but we need to resupply before the trip to Sterya. It’s mostly farming land to the north and east. Not good for hunting and living off the land.”
Truth be told, I wasn’t happy about entering Westfall at all. It seemed like a dangerous move considering everything that had happened. But we were low on supplies, my shoulder was still badly injured and making the journey like that seemed suicidal. We would just need to be careful in the city. It was a risk, but we could evaluate that risk.
No one yet knew about what had happened with the Iron Shield. Revenant Company would simply seem to have vanished after leaving Sterya. By the time anyone pieced together their route—if they did—it would take weeks. Even if they found the battle site, hidden off the main road, they’d see only stripped corpses and assume a bandit ambush. Still, I couldn’t escape one grim truth: I’d killed those men in ways no ordinary bandit could. I’d punched through armour and shields. Sooner or later, someone would notice.
But it wouldn’t be for a month at least. And even then the details would be sketchy at best. Maybe a suspicious man would link the events at James Brook with the disappearance of Revenant Company, but hopefully, by then, we would be long gone.
We headed into the city, confident that our disguise would pass for that of ordinary hunters and traders and hoping that we could restock supplies and join a caravan bound for Sterya, making any further decisions there.
The city itself was much what I had expected for a medieval centre with a few caveats. I had been preparing myself for the smell. I knew it was going to be bad, but nothing could have prepared me for the sledgehammer of odours that assaulted my nostrils. The pigs in the pens by the gate were at least partially to blame. Their enclosure was small and there were far too many of them crammed in together. It looked like a holding pen for counting stock for some sort of import tax, but they were literally wallowing in their own filth. However, that didn’t explain why the smell persisted inside the city. I tried not to think about it.
The city walls weren’t as tall as the castles I’d seen on Earth. I’d seen more impressive walls on some of the medieval ruins. The dark stone widened around the gate to support the intimidating guard towers, but otherwise were just a regular stone wall, slightly thicker at the base to support the height. It spoke of security that hadn’t been tested in years. No-one expected a siege here. The castle that loomed over the city and cast its shadows long in the light of the sunrise was a different matter entirely. The imposing structure was clearly built in an age of conflict and bore none of the decay that age had wrought on the other city buildings. It seemed impenetrable to anything but a decade-long siege. It was clear where Lord Arnias’ priorities lay.
Inside the city, some houses were honest stone, squatting solidly against the wall; others leaned over the street in a drunken half-timber sprawl, upper floors elbowing each other for space. The buildings close to the city perimeter had actually been constructed as additions to the inside of the defensive wall, and these were mainly the stone and brick varieties.
I wrinkled my brow as I looked upon the entrance to the city. The streets were earthen and sunk in the middle where water pooled sporadically down the main thoroughfare. The puddles weren’t just water—they had a skin and every splash sent a muddy, greasy film up onto boots and hems. Flies assaulted every orifice almost immediately and I instantly wished for a scarf to wrap around my head. And, looking around me, men and women in the street had done exactly that, with very few faces uncovered below the eyes. No sewers here; just open gutters that didn’t look like they’d been cleared for years. The perfect haven for cholera, typhoid and dysentery-causing bacteria.
Asha was disgusted.
“What happens when it rains?” she exclaimed, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Don’t eat or drink anything here that hasn’t been cooked or boiled.” I warned.
I asked a stall keeper who was selling some sort of grain where I could find a good inn away from the city gates. The man was incredibly short, and Asha informed me later that he was a gnome. He took the time to help, and gave me some options, for which I gave him a pair of copper coins. He was helpful, but his manner was clipped and fast and he never stopped working through our entire conversation. With our final parting words he wished me well and shook my hand whilst simultaneously weighing out grain on a scale with his other hand. It was just bizarre how tied to his work he was.
Apart from that, the city seemed nice enough. People didn’t seem unfriendly, merely busy. There was a sense of urgency about all the movement in the city. Not chaos, but everyone had somewhere to be, and something to do, all of the time.
Interestingly, when it came to money, I had trusted Laura entirely and only now was I beginning to understand how financially sheltered her life within the Iron Shield had been. I suspected that the wealth disparity between those who lived in the Wizards’ Collective’s capital and the ordinary people of Grixoninia was far greater than I had imagined.
The first sign had come at James Brook. That slimy innkeeper had demanded two gold pieces for a private room—an absurd price, meant to drive us into the common dormitory so that the girls could ‘entertain’ his other patrons. When I paid without protest, the man was shocked; I doubt he had seen that much gold in years. Laura had been outraged at the price, but hadn’t recognised it for a scam. She had obviously paid close to that at some stage, somewhere.
By contrast, the Steel Flagon in Westfall offered a much nicer private room for eight silver. Discreet enquiries with Theran’s ‘cousins’ later confirmed what I had suspected: a fair rate for the room in James Brook would have been a single silver at most. But Laura didn’t seem to know that.
Nowhere was her detachment more apparent than in her sense of the value of food. The prices she had quoted for a single meal could have fed us both for several days here, and the quality was decent. Trail rations aside, it was clear she had been dining well under the Iron Shield’s allowance. It was then that I realised Laura’s understanding of money had been shaped by a life where prices were dictated by quartermasters, not markets.
At the Flagon, a meal cost a single silver and came with either a watered ale or a warm dwarven brew called Khazrun.
That drink proved a small revelation. I had missed coffee and tea; the wild leaf the girls had gathered along the road was pleasant but lacked any stimulant. Khazrun, brewed from its namesake root, filled that void. It carried a mild bite and a faint bitterness that woke the senses. According to Theran, it served the same role among the dwarves that tea and coffee did on Earth. Asha called it Forgeleaf, and said the elves brewed a weaker version from the plant’s leaves for similar effect.
Trust the Dwarves to find the solution. I had chuckled to myself as I finished that first cup.
But realising how much Laura had been wrong about the price of meals and board showed how far removed she was from the world she claimed to protect. For all her good intentions, she’d never had to count coins to survive. And I couldn’t blame her—she was barely twenty-four, raised in privilege and her focus always on her training, not the market. She’d lived a hard life in many respects, still, the lesson was humbling; privilege can make even good people blind to poverty.
Finally, we had one more problem that Laura had completely overlooked. We had around 370 gold pieces worth of currency at face value, but 300 of it was locked away in emerald sovereigns which we couldn’t use. Literally, no regular shopkeeper ever traded in that much gold. Therefore, instead of being flush with coin, we were travelling with enough value to draw unwanted attention, but too much to ever spend.
So, when it came to the third day, when we were all to meet in the market, Laura was already looking confused at the vast difference between her expectations and reality.
“It’s so much cheaper here.” She wondered.
“Yes, but wages are much lower than you expected as well.” I explained carefully. “We need to realise that people in the urban areas are living close to the poverty line or below it.”
I moved closer to Laura to ensure I wasn’t overheard. Her eyes widened at my sudden closeness, but she didn’t move away. “Which means we can’t spend our emerald sovereigns. No-one in the market can change them. We have 70 gold pieces in liquidity, and that’s it.”
Laura sighed in frustration. “So we’re unbelievably wealthy, but can’t spend it?”
“Not without approaching a bank, or a coin exchange. Do you think they have something like that?”
“Oh yes,” Laura replied bitterly. “But they will require identification. None of you have papers, and mine are from the Iron Shield.”
“And a member of the Iron Shield changing that much money would draw attention.” I assumed, to which Laura nodded.
“I’d expect the local quartermaster would be summoned to ensure I had authorisation to proceed with the transaction.”
“Surely not everyone in this city has papers?” I asked, taking into consideration the literacy levels of medieval Earth.
“Of course not, but then, only certain people need them. Like those converting large amounts of money or trying to do something official within the city.”
The four of us watched people come and go at the market, thinking about what we would do next and quietly conceding that the only safe move was to leave before anyone started asking questions. Erica mentioned her father had planned to bring them here to get papers one day, but Laura explained the process required witnesses with spotless records. Not an option for us. So we’d postpone the exchange and buy what we could with the silver and gold we had, joining a caravan north as soon as possible.
So Laura took Asha to make discreet enquiries about any caravans heading to the capital whilst I did a lap of the markets with Erica, who I hadn’t seen for days. She clung to me and lifted her lips up to kiss mine, blushing as she withdrew.
“I’ve missed you, Master,” she purred, then began pulling me along the market stalls to look at all the fantastical produce on display. We laughed and joked for the better part of an hour as, despite the heavy heart I’d had for days, being out of the cramped inn and holding hands with the bright and chirpy young elf had lifted my spirits dramatically. It was nice spending time with Erica properly, like a date I used to have with Sasha, wandering through farmers’ markets and craft stores. I paused as I remembered Sasha, but it was only for a moment; Erica’s bubbly mood was infectious.
And the produce drew my attention as well. I saw apples and citrus fruits and grapes like you’d see on Earth, but also weird purple fruit that looked like a pear had grown too wide and been dipped in ink. I never found out what that was due to the stall owner bagging them all up to hand to a man who had paid with one hand whilst gathering mushrooms into a basket with another. These people seemed like they were all ambidextrous, able to do multiple tasks at once to get more done.
However, they were generally happy here and spoke kindly with us, if quickly. If they weren’t making a sale, the shopkeepers were busy organising produce or making more wares. There was no wasted time, and I considered what that might mean. What did it say about a city when the entirety of a population never stopped working?
There were all the normal problems of course. I spoiled the attempts of four young kids to pick my pockets and saw a few shell games being attempted around the place. But the children I caught simply disappeared with a cheeky smile and the atmosphere was generally positive apart from being constantly active. I was pleasantly surprised, until I looked deeper.
There were City Watch patrolling the market as anyone would expect. But it was clear that they were not respected or trusted and definitely feared. The way the market would clear around the guards was telling, as people would finish their business and disappear as soon as they saw a patrol. Bags would be covered, coin would disappear and eyes would hit the ground and stay there. For the guards’ part, I didn’t see any overt signs of corruption or cruelty and they seemed to ignore the average person completely, but the reactions were clear.
Luckily, there were no incidents and, as we stopped at a stall which was selling some sort of grilled meat on a stick, we met up with Laura and Asha again.
“In two days’ time,” she informed me, taking the food I offered her gratefully. “Most of this market, excepting the local fresh produce, will be packing up and heading back to Sterya. So if we lay low today and all of tomorrow, we can head northeast and be long gone before anyone knows to look for us.”
That was the plan, at any rate. There was no reason why it shouldn’t work, no reason why we would have to stay in the city any longer. Unfortunately, we had made some incorrect assumptions that were about to make our lives very difficult.