Free The Seventh Friend (Book 1) by Tim Stead

the gallery, a raised area of the floor where musicians had sometimes played, was gone. It looked cleaner than he remembered.
     
    “You have Telan wine?” he asked.
     
    “Telan?” The man behind the bar laughed. “Who’d bother to bring in Telan muck when we have our own fine Avilian wine?”
     
    “Your finest, then,” he said. “You will bring it to the table?”
     
    The man put a bottle and a mug on the bar. “Carry it yourself,” he said. He told Narak the price, and was paid.
     
    Narak selected a table set apart from the others, and sat, surveying the clientele. Even at this early hour there were twenty or so people occupying the tables. It looked as though they too wished to be apart from others. They had spaced themselves out around the room, none too close to another. A couple of groups made social noises, but the majority were solitary drinkers. It was quite unlike the old place that he remembered. Then it had been warm, cheerful, a backslapping, shouting, singing sort of place. The beer had been good, and the wine had been better.
     
    He poured wine into his mug. He wished it were a glass. Between the dark bottle and the pottery mug he could not see the colour. He sniffed it and found the odour unpromising. There was an acid taint to it. One sip confirmed his diagnosis. This was a poor, cheap wine. He threw a look at the landlord, but the man was busy picking dirt from beneath his fingernails, oblivious to his dissatisfaction.
     
    He noticed another man was looking at him, one of a group of three. He was old, grey haired, thin. Narak returned his stare for a moment, and the man looked away. A sour feeling came over him. He had thought to relive old times, to touch the spirit of people he had once known, to drink with their like again, but this was as far from his memories as that time was from this.
     
    He was about to stand, intending to leave, when the door opened and a man came in. He was a big man, broad at the shoulder and heavily muscled. Narak was shocked to recognise him. He was a man that the dog had seen, the man who advocated the beating of wives. He searched for the name. What had it been? Teal? Teral? Tegal? That was it. Tegal. Seen through human eyes he was no more appealing. His face was scarred, brutish, fixed in a permanent sneer. He stood just inside the door and surveyed the clientele, and his eye quickly settled on Narak. He crossed the room and stood before him.
     
    “That’s my table,” he said.
     
    “You’re welcome to it,” Narak said. “I was just leaving.”
     
    The man’s mouth split into an ugly, broken-toothed grin. “Sure you was,” he said. “But the way I’m thinking you owes me rent.”
     
    Narak almost burst out laughing, and could not prevent a smile from surfacing. The man was trying to intimidate him. He leaned back in the chair.
     
    “On the other hand,” he said, “perhaps I’ll stay a little longer.”
     
    Tegal looked surprised. He had expected fear. Narak saw heads come up around the tavern. People were watching.
     
    “A guinea,” Tegal said. “Give me a guinea.”
     
    “No.”
     
    The big man looked puzzled for a moment. Perhaps nobody had ever been unafraid before. His fists were clenched, and Narak could see that they were like hammers, bruised and broken until they were only good for one thing. One of the hammers opened up and the short fingers reached for the front of his tunic.
     
    Tegal was quick for such a big man, but Narak was quicker, much quicker. He caught the man’s wrist and pulled, dragging Tegal forwards, slamming his face violently into the table top. In the next moment he gripped the man’s belt, shifted his other hand to his throat and lifted him high in the air above his head, slamming his back down onto the table.
     
    The table shattered and Tegal lay gasping among the debris and broken glass, winded and shocked. The bottle of cheap wine had not survived the impact. No great loss. He drew both blades and