‘What trouble? Why do you have to leave?’
Erris asked, still unbelieving. ‘Where will I go for books
now?’
‘I am sorry child, more sorry than you can
know,’ the bookkeeper said with another sigh. ‘If you do not know
yet of the trouble coming, then it is not my place to tell you. Ask
your father, if he is here with you. If he does not know yet, he
will before the day is out.’
As Erris stared at him, uncomprehending, the
bookkeeper poked the sack on the ground with his cane.
‘As for friends, here. These are for you. I
did not let you see them before, nor did I intend to show you them
so soon, but you will enjoy them. And they are not welcome where I
am going. I was going to leave them at the tavern for you or your
father, but this is better.’ The old man looked at her again, and
she could feel how serious he was. ‘Just be careful with them,
girl. These books are priceless; show them to no-one. Keep them
away from the church, they would not understand, or
appreciate.’
Erris knelt down slowly and opened the burlap
sack, confused. ‘Why would the church hate books?’ she thought,
then she remembered Dom. He had burned one of her books; maybe
these were the same. Inside the sack were a good dozen or so small,
leather-bound books. As Erris looked up, trying to stammer out
confused thanks, the old man turned and started quickly back
towards his wagon, waving his cane at the two youths who had
apparently taken the time out from under his watchful eye to
rest.
As she stood in the middle of the road,
holding the bag and watching the departing bookkeeper, still
confused, Erris realized that, after knowing him for years, Erris
had never learned his name. He had always been the old man, or the
bookkeeper, to her. Now she knew she would never see him again, and
she hadn’t even said goodbye.
She still could of course. He stood only a
few paces away, waving his cane wildly in the air. But for some
reason she felt she shouldn’t. Maybe she was getting older, but she
thought the old man seemed sad when he said goodbye, sad enough
that going back to him now would be worse.
As she turned and slowly walked, blank faced,
back towards the tavern, Erris found herself feeling
soul-crushingly lonely. Once again she ignored the cobblestone
streets with their boarded up houses. She missed the overgrown
gardens which had seemingly been left to grow wild for weeks. She
missed that the streets were empty, and that no smokestack showed
signs of use. Not that she could be blamed, not really, not after
what had just happened. The day had just turned into one of the
worst ever.
***
The tavern was not empty when Erris walked
in, but the only member of her family there yet was Johan, who sat
alone in a corner nursing a mug of ale till Erris joined him.
Johan nodded to her as she sat next to him,
and Erris shrugged absently in response to his raised, questioning
eyebrow when he saw the glass of wine she brought to the table. The
innkeeper hadn’t questioned when she asked for it; a raised eyebrow
was the extent of the communication between them. The coppers she
would have spent on books no longer could be, and wine was as good
as anything else. After that they sat, drank slowly, and watched
the tavern.
The tavern was dark, as taverns are wont to
be, lit only by candles on each table and several lanterns around
the walls. The floor was clean-swept, the tables and chairs well
polished, but it was much emptier than she had ever seen it before.
The innkeeper stood at the bar by the door, slowly polishing mugs,
absently looking over the floor in front of him, but there was no
sign of the large guard who had stood at the door the last time
Erris was in.
Large wooden tables dotted the taverns floor,
all made of dark, polished wood, stained and scratched from years
of use. There was a rise at the center of the front hall where
musicians normally played but, just like the rest of the tavern, it
was empty. The smells of cooking came from the back of the tavern
behind the bar, as they should, but the tavern itself still seemed
wrong. It exuded a dark, uncomfortable air, as if the tavern itself
was grim and contemplative.
The tavern was by no means crowded, but it
was also not very quiet. There were several men at the bar who
looked like regulars; their heads down, they concentrated on the
food or beer in front of them, and on ignoring each other and the
rest of the tavern. But those men were quiet.
What noise there was came from a group of ten
or so young soldiers who had pulled together two tables in the
center of the tavern floor, and were drinking, singing
boisterously, and telling loud, off-colour jokes. Normally Erris
would have been intrigued by them, her eyes drawn to their tight
breeches and fine, gold buttoned red jackets, but the noise and
general lack of decorum or professionalism that they sported turned
her off from the start, helped in no small part by her dark
mood.
They were big, Erris saw as she glanced at
them uninterestedly, but not nearly as big as her father and
brothers. They were also older. These were not the sixteen year old
recruits who did the rounds of the farms and small towns, giving
out news and keeping the peace, these soldiers were all older, more
experienced than that. But they weren’t grizzled old veterans
either. The soldiers in the tavern seemed to be in their mid
twenties, young enough to have kept their youthful exuberance, not
yet old enough to have gained wisdom.
Before too long, the rest of the family made
it to the tavern as well, and they ate, but it was a somber group
that sat at the table. None of them had enjoyed what they’d found
in Oortain’s Copse it seemed, and even the children kept quiet.
There seemed something wrong with the atmosphere, Erris thought,
that the soldiers should still be drinking loudly, while her family
sat so gloomily, and on her birthday no less. Something was clearly
wrong in the world, she felt, she just couldn’t tell what. Her eyes
slightly glazed and her movements sluggish, she wondered if more
wine might help her solve the problem; identify what it was that
felt so wrong. Or maybe it was the three glasses of wine she had
already drunk that was making it so hard to think, she couldn’t
quite tell.
‘Right,’ her father said abruptly, and Erris’
vision swam slightly as she quickly snapped her eyes up towards him
from the table she had been staring at, half asleep.
‘We need to talk.’ Johan senior said,
standing, and Erris could tell he was serious, though he shook his
head as she started to try to rise. ‘Girls, stay here and watch the
children.’ He said, looking at Yolan, Serah and Erris, then he
motioned with his head to a corner of the tavern away from both
their table, and the soldiers. The rest of the family stood and
followed him, and left Erris, her sisters, and Boll sitting or
sleeping at the table.
Yolan and Serah both looked concerned as they
glanced steadily towards the rest of the family, who now stood
huddled in a close circle, listening as Jayke talked animatedly.
Erris didn’t know what they knew, what they had heard or figured
out, but it was certainly more than she had.
‘The bookkeeper is leaving’ Erris said to
no-one, and no-one listened. Joahn and Boll were asleep, Yolan and
Serah caught up in their own thoughts. Everyone at the table was
much more invested in something else, and the air of general
melancholy continued unabated.
Several minutes passed, the three sisters
trying in vain to understand what was happening, what the rest of
the family could be talking about. The two children, Joahn and
Boll, young and innocent, slept, blissfully unaware. They wouldn’t
know there was something wrong, they couldn’t. They had eaten, were
happy, and now slept. Even Erris, who had trouble following what
was happening, knew more than them; knew that something was wrong.
At that moment, she envied their sleeping forms.
Dusk had fallen, the quickly retreating sun
casting shadows on the world outside, and between the long day of
travel and a glass of wine each during supper, Joahn and Boll both
sat with their backs against the tavern wall, their heads resting
against each other as they slept. Erris was tempted to join
them.
Erris had just decided to roll herself up
along one of the tavern benches; she could learn nothing watching
the discussion in the corner, and sleep was calling so sweetly,
when the thick silence at the table was noisily broken.
Chairs dragged and the table shifted as three
of the young, red uniformed soldiers from the center tables got up
and sat at her table, two to the right of Yolan and one on Erris’
left, accompanied by laughter and jeers from the other soldiers
still seated at their tables.
The three were clearly intoxicated; their
eyes were glazed and their speech slurred as the soldier closest to
Yolan put his arm around her and started to speak.
‘What’re you preddy ladies doing all alone’
he said as he tried to stroke Yolan’s auburn hair. Yolan recoiled
sharply from his touch, and likely the alcohol on his breath as
well.
All three soldiers were young, possibly the
youngest of the ten in the tavern, but tall and well-muscled. While
the short, straight swords sheathed at their hips glittered
menacingly, their once pristine red uniforms were splotched and
stained from beer and food.
Unfortunately the soldiers were not so drunk
as to be easily fended off, and the soldier with his arm around
Yolan easily held onto her as she tried to squirm away, simply
shifting his chair closer, and his arm tighter around her in the
process.
Erris was even more surprised as the soldier
next to her slid an arm around her shoulder as well, grabbing her
left wrist tightly in his other hand to keep her from twisting
away.
His eyes were half closed, and very bloodshot
as he squinted at her, as if weighing something. He grabbed her
chin hard with the rough hand that was draped around her shoulder
as she tried to turn away, forcing her to face him.
Erris’ world spun as his face filled her
vision. The soldier was young, eighteen at most, with unkempt hair,
a pimpled face, and a good week’s stubble growing in sparse patches
on his chin. It was not till he opened his mouth though that she
realized why her head was spinning.
The sickeningly cloying smell of decay,
combined with the smell of too much alcohol, washed over her as he
started to speak, and she could see that at least one of his teeth
was black, and close to rotting out as she tried to keep herself
from vomiting.
‘Your really predty too’ he slurred as he let
go of her chin, apparently finished with his unwanted
appraisal.
Erris turned her head away quickly as she
fought for air, happy to be free from the soldiers’ rough grasp
till she looked back to the table and saw the third soldier leaning
over the table towards Serah, squinting hard.
‘You’re pretty ugly,’ he said, leaning back,
‘Why aren’t you pretty like th’other two? Hey Fraen, I want a
pretty one too. Share yours.’ He shoved at the soldier holding
Yolan, who laughed and batted his hand away absently. The second
soldier was still grabbing at Yolan, who continued to struggle
futilely.
Erris stood quickly, too quickly for the
soldier beside her to catch, and slammed her balled fists furiously
against the table.
‘Leave her alone!’ she shouted, and all
laughter at the soldiers’ tables stopped for a second, until she
was grabbed roughly from behind.
The soldier behind her had reached around her
waist with his left arm, and he forced her to sit on his lap as he
slung his right arm over her shoulder again.
‘Shut it, bitch’ he said, and Erris started
to squirm as he began to slide his right hand down the front of her
dress.
She was saved by a distraction at the other
side of the table. Jayke had arrived, she didn’t know when or where
from, she didn’t care, all she knew was he was there, and his face
had turned beet-red in anger.
He said not a word, just grabbed the soldier
who had his arm wrapped around Yolan by the front of his uniform,
and lifted him two feet in the air. Two of the soldiers polished
brass buttons popping off in the process, dropping with dull pings
as they hit the wooden table, rolling slightly. Erris wasn’t sure
why she noticed the buttons out of everything else happening. They
just stood out to her for some reason.
Jayke stood for a second, veins on his neck
and arms bulging, his eyes wide as he glared murder at the soldier
held above him. The soldier seemed frightened. His legs kicked
vainly in the air below him, and he grabbed at Jayke’s arms in a
weak attempt at freeing himself. Jayke held him there a moment,
staring at the soldier as if judging something, then he grunted and
his arms strained as he hurled the soldier bodily towards the
tables at the center of the room.
The tavern was silent for a fraction of a
second, then the grating of chairs on the wooden floor filled it as
the rest of the soldiers stood en-masse. Blessedly, the soldier
that had been grabbing at Erris stood as well, dropping her to the
table as his attention shifted to her brother.
Jayke stood facing the soldier he had thrown,
who was scrambling quickly to his feet, but the rest of the
soldiers stood facing him, all laughter gone from their faces, and
their hands on sword-hilts.
It was the thrown soldier who drew first, and
Yolan screamed as the short sword rasped free of its leather
sheath, swinging up, glittering in the tavern firelight, to point
waveringly at her husband.
‘You’re gonna be sorry, bastard’ the soldier
growled as he swung his arm slowly back over his shoulder and made
to strike.
Yolan and someone else, Erris couldn’t tell
who, screamed again as Erris half lay, motionless, her arms holding
her up against the table where the soldier had dropped her,
watching and wondering where her father was, and why he wasn’t
saving them.