Free The Ravens’ Banquet by Clifford Beal

forehead, already relenting my harsh words.
    “Enough, Samuel!” I said. “This business goes too far and the booze speaks for us both.”
    He spat at my feet. “By Christ’s Blood, you will see the truth, I swear it.” And before I could discover his meaning, he had dashed away into the gloom. I resumed my seat at table, shaken and troubled. I took a long drink. My comrades babbled on but it was distant to my ears. After some time, I heard Christoph tell us to drag our arses out to the street as the provost marshals would be lurking soon to roust us.
    Balthazar grumbled and wiped the beer that had soaked his grey-flecked beard. We arrived at our cramped and crooked inn and made our way inside, bouncing off the walls and falling up the stairs. Some of the regiment were in this house, others were scattered about in others. Stepping over and upon our slumbering fellows, I bade a good night to Balthazar (the others had already disappeared) and stumbled into one of the rooms.
    Somehow I found a space on the floor not yet occupied, sat myself down, and pulled off my boots. I stripped off what I could manage and laid out my doublet next to me. And then, rolling up my boots for a pillow, I curled up like a dog, thinking upon the evening’s events and of Samuel, and waited for blessed sleep to overtake me. It was not easy in coming. Yet finally, I dropped off, the beer in my head quickening things.
    Before very long, or so it seemed, I was kicked into wakefulness by a rising neighbour. My body ached. I could feel that my armpits were bruised from chafing against my breastplate and the back of my skull was sore from the whack I had taken the previous morning upon the field. As I rubbed my breast, my hand touched upon Anya’s talisman. I had forgotten the little amulet that I now held between my fingers. Had her magic kept me safe outside Nienburg’s walls?
    Without many words, we all slowly rigged and made our way downstairs to find food and drink. I decided that it would be foolish to carry my treasure purse on me all the time and there was nowhere to hide it safely. Giving it to Samuel for safekeeping would be as good as throwing it into the river. It occurred to me though that I could kill two birds by visiting the moneychanger whose name Herr Hoffman had written down for me in Hamburg. I could leave the money with this fellow and make my introduction for future advances on my father’s credit.
    But search as I might, I could not find the scrap of paper that Hoffman had given me. Worse, I had not even read the name on the paper and so, would never be able to discover the man without finding the note. I reached deeply into the concealed pocket of my doublet and then ripped apart my snapsack too, but to no avail. The goddess Fortuna had given with one hand and taken away with the other.
    The square reverberated with the sound of drum and horn and the rumble of troopers recovering their mounts from the hands of stablemen or apprentice boys who had been paid to watch over them. Many burghers crowded in windows facing the square to see the spectacle of an army preparing to go forth, banners flying. They hung out from every floor: lords and ladies, servants and children, even a few whores who shook their bare tits to tempt soldiers back to their rooms.
    There was so much confusion about that I reasoned I had a maybe a few moments to search for Samuel. And I found him not long later. He was in the sutlers’ train along with the attendant band of beggars and other hangers-on. He spied me as I drew near to the wagons and watched me as I approached. What struck me first off were his new breeches: dark green brocade with buttons on the sides. More to, his hole-shot stockings and mean shoes were now replaced with a fine pair of brown funnel-tops boots, a thing not likely to be acquired through the contents of his own purse.
    “Master Treadwell, what brings you here to the baggage?” he said, leaning his backside against a