Free The Hammer and the Blade by Paul S. Kemp

and Morra smiled sweetly over her shoulder.
      Loud laughter sounded from one of the corner tables, where a group of teamsters in tell-tale green guild armbands huddled over their beers. The fattest of them gesticulated wildly with his pipe as he made a point about this or that.
      In the dim corner near the raised stage sat the four hireswords. They were just sitting down, speaking quietly among themselves, the mouthy one wearing a sour expression and patting at his cloak. Perhaps he realized he'd "dropped" his coinpurse somewhere. Morra set the ales down before them and danced away to another table.
      "I need a drink," Egil said.
      Nix's eyes went to the curved bar, behind which Gadd ruled. To Nix's knowledge, the willow-thin, tattooed tapkeep spoke but a few words of Realm Common, but his subjects – tankards, cups, jiggers, and hogsheads – obeyed his every command.
      Two more of Tesha's girls, Lis and Kiir, leaned suggestively on the bar. Nix nodded at Kiir, a lithe, red-haired lass whose pale skin reminded him of polished ivory. Both girls smiled at Egil and Nix.
      "Kiir is pleasing to view, not so?"
      "Aye," Egil said. "Strong girl, to look at her."
      "Indeed."
      "I wager she could take you in a grapple."
      Nix grinned as the thought played out in his imagination. "I think I should like to find out one day."
      Morra breezed by them again, this time with an empty platter.
      "But maybe not today, yeah?" Egil said. "Today we drink. Come."
      Egil pulled Nix toward the bar, but Nix held his ground a moment longer. "Wait."
      "Wait what? I thirst."
      "Gods, man! Look about you. This place is ours now! What are your thoughts?"
      The priest looked around, stroked his beard, and said, "I think we bought the worst tavern in Dur Follin."
      "You what?"
      "I blame you," Egil said matter-of-factly, and walked toward the bar. "Gadd, a draft! A big one!"
      "Here, too!" called one of the hireswords. "And quicklike!"
      "Coming, loves!" Morra called to the hireswords.
      One of the teamsters spilled his beer and loosed a stream of swearing, much to the amusement of his comrades.
      "For a man with a mystic eye tattooed on his scalp," Nix said, trailing Egil across the common room, "I fear you're not seeing the potential here. We can turn the place around, pretty it up."
      Again Egil harrumphed. "Pretty it up? Putting a dress on an orlog, more like."
      "Gods, you're in a mood tonight."
      They bellied up to the bar, bookended by Kiir and Lis.
      Gadd, his thin arms covered in a sleeve of patterned tattoos depicting mythological creatures from Vathar, filled a metal tankard from the tapped hogshead behind the bar and placed it before Egil.
      "Make that two, yeah?" Nix said to Gadd. To Kiir, he said, "Anything for you, milady?"
      She smiled shyly. "No, my lord."
      Gadd grunted an acknowledgment and nodded with a vigor that made his waist-length topknot dance. The long-stemmed wood pipe he smoked, filled with fragrant leaf from the east, burned in a clay tray atop the bar. The smell of the blue smoke curling up from its bowl made Nix lightheaded. Gadd soon had a tankard of ale foaming before Nix.
      "Here too, I said!" called the hiresword again, presumably to Morra. "Over here, you cow! I thirst!"
      "Someone best take that slubber a beer before his voice irritates me further," Egil said.
      Nix read the creases in Egil's brow the way an oracle read chicken entrails, and they told him the priest's ire was up. He really was in a mood.
      Not good.
      "Come now," Nix said. "Are you really that mad about buying this place? We agreed it was a good idea."
      Egil merely harrumphed again.
      "Something else, then?"
      "A beer!" the hiresword called.
      The lines in Egil's forehead deepened, Ebenor's eye in a squint.
      Nix didn't see Morra so he grabbed a tankard of ale from Gadd and asked Lis, "Would you mind taking this to that oaf?"
      "I'm