Free Falconfar 01-Dark Lord by Ed Greenwood Page B

after sunrise.
    "So," Taeauna said, as they reached a moot where cobbled streets of close-crowded stone-and-thatch homes and shops opened out all around them, and men hurrying to get indoors cast them suspicious looks. "Behold The Two Drowned Knights. Old sir, do you again bide silent, and let me talk and pay."
    She tapped a purse heavy with takings from Highcrag, and cast a level look at Rod, who nodded silently. Men gazed eagerly upon the Aumrarr, and seemed happy to get her attention and converse with her; whereas he could have been a dusty piece of familiar furniture, too broken-down to use, and too immobile to need noticing.
    Taeauna strode across the street as if she lived in Arbridge, and Rod hastened to follow.
    The inn was a tall, square, ugly stone fortress of a building, its ground floor lacking any windows that Rod could see. The Aumrarr thrust open its front door and shouldered her way past several muttering local men, into warmth and feeble lantern light. They fell abruptly silent at the sight of the severed stubs of her wings; Rod shouldered through that silence in her wake, meeting the gaze of no one.
    The common room was as dimly lit as Rod had expected, and crowded with dark and massive furniture. It wasn't crowded with patrons, though; only a few folk were seated dining and drinking.
    Spiced ale, salty broth, or mulled wine: it all came in the same tall, battered metal tankard, and with the same hand-loaves of coarse, dark rallow-bread. Taeauna ordered the wine for herself and the broth for Rod, and they shared them, passing the tankards back and forth like husband and wife.
    Not that any of the locals—almost all of them men in leather and homespun, weary after a day's work—cared if the Aumrarr and the old man were a couple or otherwise. They were too busy leaning forward over their own tankards and excitedly impressing a handful of peddlers and traveling wagon merchants with tales of the latest peril to afflict Arbridge.
    The Wolfheads, it seemed, had come to Arvale. And the Snakefaces, too.
    As the winter past had begun, ran their talk, Dark Helms had suddenly infested Arbridge. Raiding every few days, searching every barn and cottage and swording everyone who didn't flee fast enough, the Helms had scoured the vale from one end to the other, even appearing in Tabbrar Castle. Always they came "from nowhere," apparently melting out of empty air, menacing crofter and lord alike.
    In spring the Dark Helms had suddenly stopped coming. The fear they'd brought, however, hadn't faded one whit. For no sooner had the dark-armored warriors ceased to be seen in Arvale, then a new menace appeared: snake-and wolf-headed men who wore masks of living flesh to appear human, and posed as traders by day, but let slip their masks to prowl the vale and murder Arfolk by night.
    For years Arbridge had known few visitors from afar, but the Snakefaces were hidden among a flood of unfamiliar wagon merchants from distant holds and kingdoms, who were suddenly everywhere in Arbridge and Galath, and Tauren and Sardray beyond, too. These merchants sold mirrors, cast metal ewers and decanters, well-made coffers and kegs, saws and hasps and nails, daggers and buckles and cheeses and all manner of things useful and exotic, and bought hides and smoked joints of meat from Arbren.
    There had been mages among the traders, too. Not spell-tyrants like the fabled Dooms, but more ordinary folk, both old and young. Bony and fat, I hey worked little charms and wardings, and sold potions to heal the sick and make the uncaring fall in love.
    "None of them lasted long," one drover said darkly from nearby, wrapping both of his large and hairy hands around his tankard as if it were a wizard's neck. "The Vengeful saw to that."
    Vengeful? Nothing he'd created, Rod was certain. Taeauna was also listening with that slight frown that meant, he was increasingly sure, that she was encountering something new. And troublesome.
    "The who?" a wagon merchant