by Cyn Bagley
Epilogue
Koenigstadt
Colonel
“Did you buy her story?” asked the young man, who had been taking notes. He was a full mage. They seemed to get younger and younger every year.
The Colonel looked down at the paperwork on his desk. “Hilda is a loyal citizen.”
“But she was a mercenary.” The mage’s voice rose to a squeak.
The Colonel looked at the mage and frowned. “You know that most of our mercenaries were fighting in the Dragon wars. They might not be of the aristocratic class, but they are hard fighters and loyal to a fault.” He didn’t like where this discussion was going.
“So what do you know of her personally?” The mage settled back into his chair.
“Why are you asking?” The Colonel fiddled with the quill pen in his hand. He set it down in its stand and put his full attention on the mage.
The mage shuffled his papers. “Lord Barton has a lot of support in this city.” He looked down and not into the Colonel’s eyes.
“And where do you stand?” asked the Colonel, this time on the offensive.
“With King and country, of course,” said the mage. He looked up and smiled. It seemed just a little insincere. The Colonel didn’t say anything. Soon the mage got bored of baiting him, or so the Colonel assumed.
The mage stood up, pulled on his black cloak, and walked behind the Colonel. The Colonel pulled away from him. The mage put his hand on a board, a panel opened, and he walked through. The panel closed silently behind him. The Colonel knew of the hidden passageways. It made him more cautious to know that there was one that led to his office and that the peephole could look at his papers.
Even more troubling, the young mage had been checking his loyalties. He would have to be careful with the mages. Maybe Hilda was right. Maybe there was a coup in the offing. He could read between the lines.
He cleared his mind, sighed, and grabbed a pen that threatened to role off the desk. He began signing supply orders.
Delhaven
Josephine
Josephine listened to the retired mercenaries who were singing a bawdy song about a love gone wrong. She smiled as she listened to the words. In her hand was a letter.
She read it.
Michael had made it to Koenigstadt. With Hilda, Davi, and Kayla. Soon he would be home. He missed the Inn and her.
She smiled sadly, put the letter in her apron pocket, and walked into the kitchen.
About the Author
Cyn Bagley is a traveler.
When she was in the US Navy, she worked and lived in Japan and Panama. As a contractor with her husband, they spent six years in Germany repairing computers. She was diagnosed with Wegener’s Granulomatosis, a Vasculitis disease, in 2003. She lost her husband in 2014 to cancer and is now living near Las Vegas. When she is not writing, she is walking her mixed Chihuahua-terrier mix.
Other titles by Cyn Bagley
Novels and Novellas
Conjure Man
Erika T. Red
Perchance to Dream
Shira: Hero of Corsindor
Hilda's Inn
Hilda's Inn for Retired Heroes
EJ Hunter
Urban Werewolf
She Called It, Wolf
Billy the Kid
Short Stories and Collections
The Case of the Golden Seed
Ghostly Glimmers
The Green Knight Terraforming Company
Hidden in the Sierras: a were-bear story
I'm a Flasher and Too
Norn's Judgment
Land of Gehenna
Living in the Desert: short story collection
Smoke and Mirrors
Excerpt from "Hilda's Inn for Retired Heroes"
Delhaven, port city
Hilda Brant
J ust before the sun pinked the sky and before the birds began their dawn choruses. Hilda Brant crept down the rickety stairs, trying not to wake her customers lying on the thrushes in the main room before the embers of a dying fire.
She wore a pair of old breeches, and carefully tip-toed around the lice covered snoring bodies. She kicked the soles of Danny’s feet to awaken him. He was leaning against the wall next to the fireplace. His job was to keep the fire going through the night so that the customers were toasty in the morning.
Danny opened his eyes, jerked to his feet, and slipped outside to bring in a load of wood. Later in the day he would split the wood with a small hand ax. With a swing, the ax would hit the wood, and then he would bang it against a hard stump until the small hand ax split through the wood. For hours he would split wood for the fireplace for the next night. Danny was an orphan, one of the bastard sons of her companion who died in her arms. It was Danny’s father’s death that gave her the added incentive to buy her retirement plan.
Soon the cook would be in the kitchen preparing the bread to be served with stew. The warm smell would gently wake the snoring customers.
When she bought the Inn from the previous owner, he had been extremely proud of his hundred year endless stew. He took a small pot of the stew so that he could keep it for the next generation. Good riddance. But, the stew was nourishing. She kept the cook because folks from miles around would come to the Inn to sample it. It was only good business.
In the courtyard, Hilda bent down and stretched until her fingers touched the ground. Then she stretched her heels, legs, and then arms. After the stretch she run a fast pace through the courtyard gate and onto the road that led to the main village. A few years ago she would have done this run carrying her sword, leather jerkin, various knives and other paraphernalia. She had gotten used to running every day as a mercenary. It was always good to know that you could run away in a bad situation even when your body aged.
The younger generation had heard all the war stories and ballads. When they went to war, heck when she went to war the first time, she wasn’t prepared for the stench, the adrenaline, the running, the hitting, and then the sheer tiredness, wondering if you would survive and then wishing you hadn’t.
When it was over, you didn’t feel euphoria, just resignation that the next day you would have to do it all over again. The images would never leave your mind and heart. After a while you could become inured to it. Some of the mercenaries wanted that rush, that feeling of power. When they weren’t at war, they would get into a few bar fights to let off steam.
Hilda knew they were addicted to war and making war. Without Danny’s father as a friend and mentor, she would have also fallen into that category.
A half mile into her run, she slowed to a jog. The dirt gave under her weight. She took a deep breath and felt the cool air spread through her lungs. She blew it out and grinned.
The dawn spread pink and orange fingers across the horizon. She could see the castle above the walled city as it turned the same colors, and then eventually back to gray. It was time to go back. She took another breath of air, turned, and walked back to the Inn.
Her lungs felt tight in her chest and she felt slightly dizzy. She could feel her body aging. Not too long ago she could run all day and only feel tired when she saw her cot. Nowadays when she ran she felt aches and pains. Someday, sooner than she wanted to admit, she would have to give up running. For now she enjoyed the feeling of her expanded lungs and the ache in her muscles.
When she reached the Inn’s courtyard, she could already hear the cook’s shrill voice. The men who slept on the main floor were out in the small courtyard, lighting their first rolled cigarettes for the day. The sounds of morning mumbled and grumbled around her. Some of these men she had known from her mercenary days. Some of these men were way-travelers going to who knows where. Some were hunters.
Hilda walked into the side building that housed the kitchen. It was never a good thing when you could hear the cook from the courtyard.
This little tableau of domestic chaos froze as Hilda came through the door. The cook had a huge rolling pin in her hand and was about to bludgeon o
ne of the drudges. The drudge was another one of Hilda’s charity cases. She had been a camp-follower with the mental capacity of a young
girl. She had brought the drudge with her because it was just too easy to abuse this girl-child.
“What’s going on here?” Hilda said in a cold voice.
“She, she, she,” each time the cook said “she” her voice became shriller and her face reddened. Hilda stared her down until the cook looked at the floor. About that time the cook composed herself and said softly. “The bread is ruined.”
Hilda looked at the drudge who was staring out the door. “Go help Danny,” she told the drudge. The drudge skipped out the door.
“I don’t care what she does,” Hilda said “you don’t hit her.”
The cook’s lips tightened, but she still said yes, madam. Hilda knew that tone of voice. She had used it on many a moron officer in her mercenary days.
Hilda looked at the bread dough. It was flat and thick. She sighed. She didn’t have the money to use more flour; they would have to salvage this lot.
“Camp biscuits, it is.”
The cook and Hilda rolled, cut in round circles, and practically threw the biscuits into the oven. It would have to do. The men waiting for breakfast would be grumbling soon if they didn’t get their stew, bread, and ale. Always something to worry about.
The Alehouse hadn’t delivered the morning ales. She always bought from the alewives in the village outside the city. It was better ale and better priced than the stuff you bought off the merchants. Plus the alewives would send business her way.
The serving wench was already serving drinks when she went into the main room. The thrush had been swept, the tables set out, and the men were drinking the thin ale. It wasn’t more than thirty minutes when the first bowls of stew and biscuits were brought out to the waiting men. Some sighed in satisfaction. “Haven’t seen anything this good, since my last forced march.”
Others would snort, but kept eating. Another disaster diverted.
When Hilda dreamed of owning her own tavern, she had never realized the work involved in keeping her business solvent. It had looked easy when she watched her own parents. In fact the work had seemed so easy and predictable that she had left as soon as she was able to travel. But now after following armies, and killing strange beasts, oh yea, and adventures that young men yearned for, it was time to start the second phase of her life. She wished it was easier though.
Yea, she snorted. A life of ease, comfort, and bludgeoning cooks.
Another shriek. What now. Hilda raced to the kitchen. “It’s burned. It’s scorched.” The cook was yelling and stomping and screaming and throwing dishes that Hilda could not afford to lose at the walls. She grabbed the cook and brought her down the floor. .
“What’s going on?”
“The soup,” she sobbed as Hilda held her down and sat on her. “It is totally ruined… burned… desecrated.” At the last word, her voice went into a high note that hurt Hilda’s ears.
Hilda could smell the cauldron in the corner heating up. It was supposed to only simmer. The pot began to curl and flake off in the outside of the pot. As she looked into the flames that licked and ate at the cast-iron, trying to scorch the soup, she could make out a creature in the middle of the flames. Its tongue flicked out. Hilda hustled the cook out of the kitchen, ran for her new metal pail, it was not something she could afford, but this was an emergency. She grabbed a shovel and scooped the coal with high flames into the pail, hoping that she could get the creature into the pail.
The creature, a salamander, laughed and cavorted in the flames. “Play, play?” It hopped up and down as the flames licked her arm and hand. She raced outside before the flames could taste the wooden table.
“Now Sassy,” she said. “You shouldn’t tease the cook that way.”
The salamander bounced in glee. “Play, play?” Hilda didn’t have time for this, but she shoveled the salamander and coals into a metal bucket and transported it to an enclosed wood-burning stove in the stables.
Fortunately, Sassy liked the stove. Sassy was the other reason why she wasn’t training new recruits as mercenaries. The occult clung to her. Some people are sensitive to the smell and feel of magic. Those that couldn’t still felt a vibration that made them uncomfortable.
Even though Hilda used domestic magic, It still made other mercenaries uncomfortable. She didn’t mind that her fire elemental scared the cook, except the cook would slap and pinch the drudge for the rest of the day.
The salamander hadn’t burned the soup, although it could have. Hilda had learned that fire couldn’t hurt her after the disaster of Shalinmajar. It still gave her shivers, when she thought of that day. It was one of the reasons that mages were feared.
In Shalinmajar, the mages burst fire from their hands, torching unsuspecting soldiers. The screams, the ashes, and the smell of burnt meat followed Hilda in her nightmares. Sassy had saved her that day. She had made a protective wall of fire around Hilda and her squad.
When one of the mages came tried to breach there wall, Hilda lunged, killing him with one blow threw the heart.
Sassy followed Hilda back to camp and had been with Hilda ever since. It was another bit of strangeness that clung to her.
So, putting away the memories, Hilda played and stroked the fire spirit. She shaped fire flies for the spirit to catch. Soon she was making trees and glittery flowers in the fire. Sassy flicked her tongue. Colors of orange, yellow, and black floated around her. When Sassy started to close her eyes and settled into the fire for nap, Hilda left to calm the cook. People still needed to be fed, and horses still needed to be watered.
The day had only started.
