Previously: Sareit retrieves Tyruc from Zifa’s Farm, as well as the militiaman Murth. The discovery that Murth has actually been there at the farm the entire time has the party rushing back to Bodra for fear of a new threat to the town.
Tyruc coasted the steam carriage past the first ring of buildings into Bodra. He followed Sareit’s directions to park near the rear of Gillibrand’s smithy. Tyruc was impressed with himself for not hitting any of the trees or fruit carts dotting the lane until he nearly drifted into the back of the building. He slammed down on the hand break mere inches from disaster, the sudden stop eliciting a thud in the rear of the carriage.
Sareit dragged herself out of the passenger door and raced off for the inn. She moved with the swift and powerful stride of a woman on a mission. Tyruc could imagine what her hurry was; it was her mother who had been left attending to the imposter posing as Murth.
The real Murth staggered out of the back of the carriage, landing on unsteady feet to meet with Tyruc. “I suggest you stick to riding wolves, my friend, or you may find yourself achieving an altogether different kind of fame.”
“We made it, didn’t we?” Tyruc grabbed Thochag’s axe from the back and chased after Sareit, trusting Murth to tag along behind. Do I need to summon your avatar for this, Nirivilo? … Nirivilo?
He grunted in frustration at the lack of an answer and powered through the small crowds between him and the inn.
Townsfolk milled about between the businesses and shops, enjoying a late afternoon of fellowship and fair weather. Many responded with shocked as the duo rushed by, no small number of gasps and whispers following in their wake.
The harvest festival at the front of the inn had all but officially ended. The only stall still standing and stocked with wares was the one belonging to the gold-scaled Armek, situated just to the right of the stone steps leading up to the inn. The drake man waved a clawed hand as they bounded past, and his face drooped into possibly the saddest expression Tyruc had ever seen.
“No time,” Murth barked, shoving Tyruc into the inn. “Allow that gibbering scaleskin a foot in the door, and you’ll be stuck all day exchanging pleasantries and discussing fruit.”
Inside the inn, footsteps on the stairs to the guest rooms led the two of them onward. They stopped their pursuit in the second-floor hallway between Tyruc’s room and the one in which the wounded militiamen had been recuperating.
Sareit stood in the doorway, hands braced against the frame as she stared into the room. She then covered her mouth to stifle a cry and flung herself inside.
“Oh, no,” Tyruc pleaded. But when he went to the doorway, he was greeted not with the grizzly sight for which he had braced himself.
Instead, Sareit sat on the edge of the nearer bed with her arms around the neck of the upright and alert Gillibrand. He sat atop the covers in a long, green smock. His injured, purpled leg was expertly splinted.
The far bed was empty and unmade.
“For flame’s sake, Sareit, pull it together,” the dwarf groused, awkwardly patting her shoulder. “You act like I was dead or something.”
Sareit drew back from him and slapped his shoulder. “You nearly were, you git,” she replied with a stuttering laugh. She caught herself, though, and took his hands in hers with the sobriety of ill news quashing their reunion. “Gilli, we have an awful situation on our hands.”
“You’re telling me,” he commiserated. They spoke over one another, neither able to command the conversation, until they simultaneously said,
“Thochag’s dead.” “Murth’s dead.”
“What?”
Before either could get any further, Murth squeezed around Tyruc into the room to add, “I most certainly am not.”
The three of them launched into cascades of babbling confusion: Gillibrand cursing at Murth’s appearance and demanding explanation, Sareit valiantly attempting to recount the events of Zifa’s Farm in minute detail, and Murth making acerbic comments to them both.
A touching reunion, Nirivilo observed dryly. You should probably encourage them to speak one at a time. Humans are not adept at doing more than one thing at once, especially not talking and listening.
Tyruc rolled eyes and cleared his throat. He escalated to a polite cough. When the three elevated their volume over him, he resorted to shouting, “Enough!” It achieved the desired effect of neatly ending their lively discussion, but it also put all focus suddenly on Tyruc.
“Who the blazes is this fellow?” Gillibrand asked in a subdued voice. His wide eyes and the frazzled hair covering his head and chin put Tyruc in mind of an oddly hairy child, precocious and earnest.
Sareit gave Gillibrand another whack with the back of her hand. “This is Sir Tyruc.” She lowered her voice a fraction and through gritted teeth added, “The Wolf Rider.”
Impossibly, Gillibrand’s eyes grew wider. His hands searched at his sides for the edge of the bedspread he sat atop, possibly in hopes of drawing it up over himself. “Fiery forge and anvil, he’s awake?” he croaked to Sareit as though the rest of the room could not clearly hear him. “And what happened to him? Did he get beat over the head and dragged through a mud pit?”
More or less.
Stop it. “We have more important things to settle, don’t we?” Tyruc posed to the room.
Gillibrand nodded vigorously. “Yessir, of course, uh—Sareit? You said Thochag… is dead?”
She nodded, drawing a shaky breath. “He and Tyruc slayed the creature that attacked you at the settlement, but he was badly injured.”
“And that rat Ronnil left him behind, yeah? Just like he tried to leave me and Murth behind?”
“Technically, he did leave me behind,” Murth quipped.
Gillibrand tossed his hands up. “I don’t understand. Last thing I remember, I’m being flung around by a blazin’ plucked chicken, get dropped on me head nearly a dozen times, and get left to die in the dirt. Then Murth, you tossed me in the back of the steam carriage like I was a sack of taters and passed out on top of me like you’d been poleaxed. Then this morning I wake up with Missus Honeywillow weeping like a loon—sorry, Sareit, but she was—and that skinny forest fellow tells me Murth has gone and died!”
“I haven’t died,” Murth insisted again. “And I’m deeply offended none of you could tell the difference between me and whatever imitator it was the Wolf Rider dragged up here.”
He says that like this is somehow my fault, Tyruc thought aside to Nirivilo. Does this guy have something against me? He recalled Ronnil’s recognition of him turning into immediate ire. Does everyone who knows me from before hate me?
Do you really want me to answer that question?
“Are you paying attention?” Murth asked, his arms folded and his silvery eyebrows arched.
“Sorry, I got distracted.”
“If you can spare us your focus for a moment, we were trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious ‘other me.’ You got the closest look at him. Did you notice anything helpful?”
“Wouldn’t Miss Oliette have more to share than me?” Tyruc countered.
“She was in such a state, she couldn’t get so much as a word out,” said Gillibrand. “Mister Honeywillow took her to lie down, and the healer went to take care of the body.”
Sareit cocked her head. “Wait. Yuill ‘went’ to take care of the body? Meaning it wasn’t here?”
“Not when I woke up, no.”
By this time, Murth had moved to the other bed. The rumpled comforter was bunched up at the foot of the mattress, and the exposed sheets were stained in the center. Tyruc grimaced as Murth calmly touched the stain, rubbed his fingers together, and smelled his hand.
“Wolf Rider,” Murth called. “Where are the clothes you wore when you oh-so-gallantly carried my imposter’s body up here?”
Tyruc’s face flushed. “I’m wearing them. Is that a problem?”
“If you call getting potentially important clues caked in mud and your own blood a problem, then yes.”
“You’re just as filthy as I am,” Tyruc objected. His indignance flared as Murth shook his head with that same smirk he had worn all morning and returned to examining the soiled cot.
Relax, Tyruc, Nirivilo murmured to him.
He’s getting on my nerves.
Then he is getting what he wants. The best way to deal with it is to be unbothered.
But I am bothered!
The aquatic Herald provided no more advice, but Tyruc imagined the otter-like entity snickering at him along with Murth.
“That raises a good point,” Sareit said. “Both of you are a mess, and Sir Tyruc, you look like you sustained some injuries. Murth, do you think we’re in any immediate danger?”
Murth stared at the bed for a few seconds before answering, “No, nothing that we can act upon at the moment anyway. Getting cleaned up and reoriented is probably the best course of action.” He grinned at Tyruc. “By all means, Wolf Rider; you go first.”
Sareit caught Tyruc’s eye before he could stomp away and motioned to meet in his room across the hall. She patted Gillibrand on his uninjured leg, promising to be back. A moment later, she pulled Tyruc’s door closed behind the two of them.
“If I may say so, Murth really knows how to yank your chain,” she said.
Tyruc wondered if it was a joke, but she was not smiling. He flushed again. “I didn’t use to be that easy to read.”
“I’ll talk to him, try to get him off your back.” She then did smile. “Or try to get him to tell me what he knows about you so I can at least be in on it.”
“Your curiosity has no limits, does it?” Tyruc said with a chuckle.
Sareit chuckled, too, but there was not much glee in either of them. With the rush of the ride back and the frenzy of information abating, the weight of the events began its descent on their shoulders. Tyruc still held the axe in his hands, heavy with more than just its own weight.
But there was no time. No time to mourn, no time to think. Events were accelerating and had been ever since Tyruc had awoken. As though his return to the world was the catalyst for something. Something big, unknowable, and altogether frightening.
“Sareit—"
“You should get cleaned up.” She took the axe, considering it before placing it on the long countertop of the bureau. “I’ll try to fill them in on everything since you awoke. Then we need to track down Yuill. Maybe he’ll have some answers for us.”
Sareit slipped from the room as Tyruc thought, I sure hope someone does.
He stepped to the dresser to pull out some clean clothes that had been thoughtfully stocked for him by Oliette. His favorite blue tunic was already ruined after just one outing, but the olive-green garment he chose would be a suitable placeholder until he could get the other one repaired.
He glimpsed himself in the mirror. Mud spiked his hair in a corona around his head; grime covered his face and arms; slashes scored his torn clothing. In retrospect, the townsfolks’ reaction to his appearance had been rather tame.
The lavatory’s warm bathwater seduced Tyruc into a longer soaking than he had intended. Lethargy wrapped its arms around him, attempting to smother his sense of responsibility with the need for sleep. After all, he had not slept in well over a day, and what an exhausting day it had been.
In the end, responsibility won out, but it had been a close battle.
Tyruc did his best to dress his own wounds. The numerous small cuts on his face and torso were inconsequential, but the gash in his arm from Zifa’s hatchet and the holes in his shoulder from the harpy’s talons would need to be addressed by a healer.
Tyruc emerged from the bathroom to find Murth waiting in the lobby, a bundle of towels and fresh clothes in his arms. The nyx man sidled past him into the bathroom and closed the door without acknowledging Tyruc.
Tyruc stiffly rolled his shoulders as he ambled through the inn’s lobby. His neck ached despite the warm bath. He seemed to be wandering from one tense circumstance to another, and it was a wonder that he did not have a knot of stress in every muscle in his body.
He moved toward the tavern, hoping to happen upon Yuill or Dallor. Upon entering, his vision briefly blurred and his head swam as though he was back in the bath’s embrace, plunged beneath the water’s surface. The sensation swept over him, passing quickly but leaving him swaying on his feet.
Once his vision refocused, he found the barroom empty save for a single figure seated at one of the round tables, sipping from a mug. An additional mug and a pitcher sat on the table unattended.
Tyruc recognized the lux woman seated there as a guest at the inn staying with her husband and young son. The family from Torv, was it? I wonder where that is.
Though she wore a simple peasant dress and bodice, the woman’s appearance was striking. Her porcelain skin was complemented by long, dark hair. Her strong features and violet eyes were turned away, staring distantly at the corner of the room.
When her eyes suddenly flicked to Tyruc, he jolted from their intensity. He mumbled a polite greeting and sidled onto a stool at the bar. He felt the woman’s eyes on him still. He nearly jumped out of his skin when she spoke.
“You are the Wolf Rider I keep hearing about?” Her words carried an accent differing from the Bodran natives yet familiar to Tyruc from his sailing days. Somewhere in the Middle Isles, he reasoned.
“That’s what I’ve been told.” Tyruc attempted a friendly smile, but it quivered under her prolonged gaze.
“Hm.” The woman’s head was tilted in a show of curiosity. “I have not had the opportunity to thank you for protecting the town from those beasts.”
“Oh, no thanks necessary. I just tried to do the right thing.”
One of her eyebrows arched. “That is an increasingly uncommon virtue.” She motioned toward the chair opposite her, which pulled away from the table in sync with the wave of her hand. “Care to join me?”
Tyruc moved toward the chair, regarding it with suspicion before lowering himself onto it. “Are you a mage?”
She chuckled in a rich, dark tone. “Not officially. I have always had a knack for magic but never the opportunity for formal training. I am told you have some strong magic yourself.”
“It’s not mine, though. I was never very good at magic until I met—”
“Som?” the woman interjected. She absently waved her hand again, this time at the pitcher and mug on the table. The pitcher lifted as though an invisible hand held it aloft, pouring water into the mug. Once filled, the mug slid across the table to Tyruc.
Tyruc opened his mouth to ask any one of the dozen questions now fighting to be asked, but the woman spoke again.
“Do you like it here in Bodra?”
Tyruc reeled from the non sequitur . He took a sip of the water while contemplating his response. “I’m not sure. I don’t think my impression of it has been too accurate to what it usually is. It seems nice enough. Do you like it here?”
The woman’s smile waned and she looked askance. “No, I cannot say I do.” She said it with no malice, just certainty.
“You’re from Torv, right?” Tyruc fumbled for words to say. “There’s no place like home, is there?”
The woman laughed again, but without humor. Here eyes were lost somewhere far from the Honeycomb Inn. “No, there is not. No place at all.” Her expression twitched. “War is a terrible thing, isn’t it?”
A long silence stretched between them. Tyruc swallowed the lump in his throat and wondered when someone else would come into the tavern. He looked down into his mug. Was she waiting for someone? “Miss? Where are your husband and son?”
“They are asleep,” she said barely above a whisper. “I could not wake them, so I came here.”
The tavern door flapped open.
A lux man stood in the doorway, his sandy-haired son holding his hand. The boy’s free hand rubbed his eyes sleepily.
The woman stood from the table and crossed to them with a renewed smile. “And now they are awake. Thank you for keeping me company,” she said to Tyruc. “I look forward to our next conversation.” She then led her husband and son out to leave Tyruc in the bar alone.
As Tyruc watched the door swing closed, his head and vision swam again. He shook himself and wondered at the interaction, even as its details faded from his memory like ink leached from wet paper.
Next Time: A strategy for dealing with a potential impostor must be made, but Tyruc must first deal with the mounting tension between him and Murth.