Tales of Travellers - Peter Edgell (miss read books txt) 📗

pride, a blush. But on that night it was his bladder that erupted and he crashed out of bed and, skidding across the floor, dashed for the bucket in the corner of the room. At some point during this emergency he realized that the other side of the bed was empty. His wife was missing. Softly, so as not to wake the guests, he tip-toed along the corridor, down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the inn proper. Again and again, he whispered her name,
- Jakki? Jakki?
No answer came so he returned to the bedroom to try and think the mystery through. At the top of the stairs his world fell apart. His wife, clutching her half opened nightgown, was slipping out of a guest’s room. To this day people swear that Big Bellamy’s cry could be heard at the edges of the village, perhaps beyond. He dragged his wife back to their bedroom, threatening all sorts of murder to come and then pounded back along the corridor. He burst through the door to the guest’s room with such ferocity that its top hinge broke away. There he stood, his knuckles cracking and his teeth grinding with fury. The room was empty, the window open. There was only one place that the fiend could have gone that would offer any form of safety. With another huge howl Big Bellamy rushed back down the stairs and through the kitchen, sending pots, pans and anything else that could make a loud noise, crashing. Grabbing his largest kitchen knife he ran, heading for the stables.

Tomas knew all the signals. He had almost been caught so many times before! Certain the blacksmith had found him out, he leapt from Eloise’s side and with incredible agility, grabbed his saddle and slung it over his horse’s back. Knowing exactly where his horse and possessions were was a precise science that Tomas had long since mastered. With a gallant wave, a smile and a lie he mounted and, spurring his horse forward, made it out of the stables. Only to meet the lover of the innkeeper’s wife coming the other way.

Caught up in the panic, the darkness and confusion, the horse reared. No matter that Tomas was an expert horseman, the suddenness of the action unseated him. The lover, hotly pursued by the raging Big Bellamy, realized that he would never get to his own horse in time to escape. So, taking the opportunity that fate had presented, he scrambled up onto Tomas’s horse and rode for his life. Big Bellamy, blind behind the red mist now covering his eyes, threw the knife. It turned in the air, a long lazy swallow dive and, missing the escaping lover, the horse and the blacksmith’s daughter, it sliced along Tomas’s neck from Adam’s apple to ear.


II.

Two months passed and Eloise’s mother was beginning to get suspicious. The blacksmith’s family took Tomas in and, with the help of the doctor who travelled and practiced between three local villages, slowly nursed him back to health. In return, he did light work for the blacksmith and earned some coin – which he insisted on paying towards his keep - at the inn, serving ale whenever Big Bellamy felt the urge to run random spot checks on his wife. Apart from the kitchen, she had not been out of their private quarters since the ‘incident’ , as Big Bellamy had taken to calling the night’s events.

Eloise decided that the scar suited her future husband. It made him look mysterious and, somehow, romantic. Of course, no-one knew that Tomas was to be her husband. Even Tomas! But he half-guessed her intention because the sly country girl had not explained the night in the barn to anyone, other than to say that she had run out to see what the commotion was. Just as he had. After all, his horse was his most prized possession. In fact, it was his only possession. No-one had thought to ask how they had managed to reach the stable before either Big Bellamy or his wife’s ex-lover. Which was just as well because, of course, it was the one question to which they had no believable answer.

Most days the daughter went out early to help with the milking at Old Poslow’s farm. Her payment was free milk which came as a to boon to the family. But recently she had been leaving earlier than normal and looking quite pasty-faced, almost on the verge of being sick. When she returned though, her cheeks were always glowing, she seemed happier than ever and she was eating heartily. Even her father had remarked on her appetite. But she was a dumpy girl and it was difficult to gauge whether or not she was actually gaining weight.

Ever since the night of the ‘incident’ all the women in the village had suffered for the innkeeper’s wife’s indiscretion. They were all suspects. They were all watched, no matter how unlikely or even impossible it was for them to drift off the moral rails. The men were all innocent, of course, unable to even think of straying...
Under that general air, Eloise’s mother watched her daughter carefully and slowly became more and more convinced that her suspicions were correct. The way her face changed, softening whenever she looked at Tomas. The way her eyelashes played games and those long quiet sighs. At first she was sure and then absolutely certain that Eloise was putting on weight. The parents, of course, had taken great care never to leave the couple alone. After all, who was this Tomas, really? He could be anyone, anything. A thief, a murderer...? But one morning as she was scrubbing the pots out, a light flashed and she thought of the question that Tomas and Eloise did not want to answer. Why were they both by the stables? And everything fell into place.

If fate does play dice, then Tomas rolled two sixes at that moment. He happened to glance at the mother’s face and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had worked it out. The question was, did he want to settle down to village life with Eloise and children and a shrew of a mother-in-law and forget the world he had come to know and love? Worse, as far as he was concerned, was the thought that the thief who had stolen his horse would get away with it. It may be difficult for people who have never owned a horse to understand but the big stallion had become his rock, his only true friend. But these questions were really just clouds, smoke. He knew the answers as he slipped out the back of the house, hurried to the stables and quickly saddled up the horse that belonged to the man who had stolen his own. As he rode slowly away, so as not to attract attention, he saw the blacksmith’s wife hurrying towards her husband. She was shouting and Tomas knew exactly what she was shouting! He spurred the horse on. It was a poor mare but in his hands it became a champion. He knew, without a doubt, that no-one would catch him.

As he felt the breath of travel brushing his face once more, he pushed all thoughts of Eloise’s tears away. Tomas was a lover, pure and simple. He knew it and assumed that every woman he dallied with knew it as well, that they would never tie him down. It was all part of the game. This time however Tomas realized that the game had gone a step too far. Eloise was pregnant. But as wayward as he might be, Tomas was not without some measure of moral responsibility. He determined that when he reached the city of Ravinia he would do the best he could, if only for their financial welfare. For the moment, however, all regrets needed to be put aside. He had to reach Ravinia first.

Sunset found him leading the tired horse to the bank of a stream. He covered himself with his waterproof cape and an hour later, having passed through the dreams of the innocent, was simply sleeping.

Completely unaware that, come dawn, he was being watched.

Strands

I.

Fleck was a conundrum. It was rumoured his aim was so accurate that one of his arrows could skewer a fly in flight at twenty paces. During battles in the Ikon War, he was the man you most wanted at your side. At the following celebration feast, however, he was the least desired. When people are courting friendship they expect a reasonably quick response to their early overtures and, perhaps, this was Fleck’s problem. He rarely spoke and this made people uncomfortable in his presence. But people are so quickly selfish that no-one bothered to consider why this might be. Anyway, in their line of business no-one had time to culture a real friendship.
If Fleck ever wondered about this he gave no sign. He could count the number of his true friends on one finger. Could have counted. His brother was long dead. Stabbed in the back during some pointless drunken brawl. The roads Fleck took and the battles he fought in, were all part of his quest for the killer, one Marco Danesh, another mercenary. They were all practice for the sweet moment when he finally tracked the man down, faced him and watched him die. Apart from night following day, the only other thing Fleck was sure of was that Danesh would die.

There is a grubby little inn on the outskirts of the village of Markswood. A simple watering hole for travellers because nobody in their right mind would want to stay there. Certainly no longer than the night it takes to fill a belly, ease bones and rest a horse ready for another day’s journey. The innkeeper was grateful for any business so to have two paying guests at the same time was a real treat. Even as strange as they were.
The first, a slippery little man, with his plain face and thin brown hair could have faded into any corner or any group of men. Except for his annoying habit of complaining. He was a born whinger. Nothing was right. The ale was almost rancid, the bread was hard, the soup was cool and the serving maid had a surly look about her. Apart from that, the weather was foul, the countryside boring and... The list went on, all the time made worse by the tone of his high-pitched nasal voice. So it was a great relief when the second man appeared. He was tall, with a saturnine complexion and lank brown hair that constantly seemed to fall down over his eyes. But the relief did not last long. He was the opposite of the first man, who had given his name as Harry. He asked for a room and a meal but refused a drink. Apart from that he offered nothing, not a word. But the longbow he leant against the wall beside him served to quieten Harry’s moaning, if only for a short while. He gave no sign of listening, of hearing a single word and when his meal was finished he retired at once to his painfully small room. The cold atmosphere that seemed to have radiated around him disappeared almost immediately and Harry took to moaning again. About other people not being friendly. Finally, to the innkeeper’s relief, he too retired.

At dawn, the two men were in the stables, readying their horses for another day’s journey.
“Which way are you going?” asked Harry. He eyed the longbow carefully. It was the kind of weapon that only a master archer could use. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
The archer paused before