*****
”Have ye ever…h seen as be…beautiful woman as…she is?” a very drunken man whispered to another man sitting opposite him at a table, resting his jaw on his arm at a table in a tavern where the two of them had spent the better part of their second day in Salvatágg. The place was to both of their liking; a lively tavern filled with the roar and laughter of people having fun. In a corner a group of hairy dwarfs singing their peculiar songs and drinking, looking for any loose gold that might be quietly relieved from the care of a careless drunkard. Next to them, a group of alchemists were cautiously watching the scene and drinking their potions. There were both noblemen as well as lesser dwellers of Brodérunn, al happily drinking together.
“I mean, look…at th-that skin.” he stuttered, ”…and those breasts! Ah, one could kill for a body like that” he muttered to his companion, who also had kept a keen eye on the figure all evening.
“Yes, Juara, but, I fear she is not such a woman that could appreciate you, my friend.”
The whole evening they had been knocking down large tankards of beer, sitting in the glow of torches hanging from the high walls and closely watching this particularly striking female opposite them a few tables of. They had not actually seen her face at all, for she wore a hood over her face that hid her features. Yet a sort of primordial instinct possessed them like honey attracts bees. A female with such a body simply could not be ordinary and uninteresting. Juara concentrated on uttering words carefully and with pronounced stress like a drunken man would, almost desperately trying to emphasize how he sees things with such elevated degree of interest right then and there. “I feel…I am ab…absolutely drawn to…her, um, ample cleavage” he continued. “Almost as strongly I am partial to this great ale”. But the other man already seemed more interested in the group of half-naked girls dancing by the far wall and paid no great attention to companion’s drunken analysis of the woman.
“Those there are more your class, Juara” he said an nodded at them. There was a gruesome-looking man next to the dancers, clad in studded leather and cursing and pushing aside too enthusiastic onlookers, making sure the girls did their part as required, and the man eyed the guardian as if pondering if he could beat him in a fight.
“And…meh too, I figure” he then continued.
Juara looked at his companion with dull eyes and sighed.
“Well, perhaps some more beer, then?” he then asked. Normally – as a warrior should – he would need his senses to be as sharp as a blade and would not get this drunk. However it was usually quite safe to get properly loaded around these corners. “First more beer, and then…yer harlots, eh?”
“Ye certainly like yer women, ‘tho seems to me they’ve brought nothing but trouble for ye!” the other chuckled. And very true it rang too in Juara’s ears, because the very reason he was lying here drunk as hell with his newfound friend was – once again he might add – due to a woman. Having arrived to Kamatayaport, nearby seafaring city a few weeks earlier, he had first been a little down on his luck and out of lucrative prospects. Out of sheer luck he had however come across a lucrative mission from a very wealthy local merchant. There were plenty of merchants in Kamatayaport, for it was the only large city in the south of Brodérunn with easy access to the Great Sea and all the goods imported from distant lands had to arrive through there.
Juara had already told the gist of the story to the other man; a wealthy merchant’s dear daughter had gone missing, and although he (claimed he had) considered such a task a bit cheap for a warrior of his stature, he had accepted, hoping to improve his financial situation quite considerably. As it had turned out, the wench had actually escaped his father in an effort to avoid an unpleasant marriage, and also had turned out to be quite a piece of work in many other respects too. All of which resulted in him and the merchant’s daughter ‘sort of getting it together’ and then making for parts unknown with a good chunk of daddy’s wealth, which turned out to be rather unfortunate for Juara, for the merchant had not taken the whole affair lightly, especially with the moneys involved, and the warrior had had to make a hasty exit via the desert of Kamatayan, swordsmen hot on his trail. However, he had made it safe, and having arrived to Salvatágg a day before, he had soon befriended a fellow warrior also looking for some good time and strong beer, and – most importantly – was not short of cash nor tight with his purse.
So beer they had drunk; beer had certainly been guzzled down quite a lot. But by now the day had grown dark and amorous sounds began to be heard over the racket of the bar, emanating from the darkened booths around the sides of the large room. Juara began thinking about things other than beer, drooling after the divine fairness they had been eyeing.
“Don’t know ab’ut the beauty, could that kind of…angelic creature be from these realms, but…but… “ He muttered to no-one in particular, struggled and managed to generate a few sober words for his drunken friend’s amusement. “Ye are wrong about class and all…she be perfect for me!”
“Hah! And ye believe she’s game?”
“She will be for me!”
“So, let us see ye go for her?” the other man – not quite as drunk as his friend – bent closer and whispered, awaken from the lure of the dancers still desperately entertaining the crowd. “I mean, she looks quite angry and I bet she is stronger than she looks like…well, I most definitely do want to see this!” he glanced at the woman again. She certainly did seem capable of defending herself. She had managed to sit by herself the whole evening, barely touching her tankard on the black table in front of her. Perhaps this was due to her rigid posture, clearly constantly monitoring the situation in the bar, hooded head bowed down a little, clearly signaling not wanting to be disturbed by either men or beasts.
“Ah, non…sense!”, Juara exclaimed. “I am just what she needs!” and winked, but the other interrupted, suddenly looking worried.
“Juara…there is something… something I ca not explain”, looking at the dark, still figure of the woman.
“Rubbish”, Juara grinned and without further ado promptly stood up and tottered towards the mysterious lady. Her face was still shadowed by her hood, and she remained motionless as a statue at her table as the man approached her, navigating through the crowd.
“Well, are we all right, there, peach?” he begun, leaning over the woman a little, laid his knuckles on the table and concentrated his efforts to act at least a bit sober, if not very respectfully.
“Now, I just know that ye have waited for someone like me the whole evening, and… um, well here I am! At your service and for your enjoyment”, he finished, laughed, and unabashedly tried to slide his hand on those well-proportioned breasts. His hand made maybe twelve inches of her body, when he suddenly realized that he was sprawling on the table, a pint of flat beer being pourn on his face, and the next second he was on the floor on his ass and with a wet face. And the woman was just sitting there again, as if nothing had happened, unfliching.
”What in the name of Th’aro…” Juara glared at her, and she broke her posture and lifted her hood for a fleeing moment, giving him a curl of her lip. ”What? Ye are a…well yeh’re going to pay for this all the same…”, Juara yelled bewildered in his stupor, groping for support from the table and getting up, but suddenly eased off a bit and fell back on his backside and roared with laughter, ”I like them feisty! We will have such a great time, ye and me!” He jumped up and began again to approach the woman, but just at that very moment his intentions were interrupted. Someone near the door screamed a warning that froze everyone’s blood with fright:
”Trolls!”
All Juaras senses flared to life as if he had been poked with a red-hot iron, and he swerved around quick as lightning. He was just in time to see a big, grayish-green troll storm through the wall of the inn with a huge stone ax in its hand, and proceed straight to clawing at the nearest drunk with its hairy, muscular arms, shredding his throat with its long bare nails before anyone had tim
e to react. The victim’s scream of fright was horribly turned into meregarbling as the roar of laughter and music had so suddenly ceased. The troll pushed onward, letting out a truly inhuman scream. Juara, rapidly sobering with a rush of adrenaline in his veins, did not wait for more trolls to push in their ugly heads through the opening, and bounced back to his table to retrieve his steel, shaking his head trying to shake the rest of his drunken stupor away. He eyed around for his friend, but all he saw was the poor man already being torn apart by another troll that had lunged into the tavern right after the first one. Everything turned to completely mayhem in mere moments. Even though he well knew there was nothing to do for his companion anymore, he nevertheless lunged to rescue without second thought. Perhaps he felt a twinge of moral obligation to avenge the poor fellow, too, or maybe his rage was fuelled by his supply of free drinks having been cut short and the unlucky encounter with the mysterious woman. Whatever his reasons to engage in the fight, now it became obvious he was quite skilled a warrior, not just any common man, and the first abominable creature soon lost its arms as his blade whirled into action. An instant later its foul head followed suit. The warrior quickly grabbed a torch from the nearest wall and tossed it on the spastic corpse. It burst on flames and the disgusting smell of burning flesh mingling with the demonic screams of death in the room ringing in his ears made him grin.
“Burn ‘em!” he screamed for the others. “It be the only way to kill the bastards!”
Even as he fought the trolls in the mayhem and panic all around, his sobering head was fervently pondering the situation. There was something wrong about this. Just seconds ago he had been having fun and drinking and now he was thrown in the middle of a living inferno with cries of agony all around. He could not understand why trolls, who seldom had enough courage to get even near towns of this size, so far from the mountains, had all of a sudden attacked the tavern. Where from are they? And there was something else wrong as well, but the veil of beer still hung too heavy on him. More trolls poured in, torches were thrown about and onto them, and more men joined the fight with whatever weapons they carried. Men and trolls fell over each other in a bloody pile. He sliced a troll head in half only to see in the corner of his eye that even more trolls kept pouring in like a flood of greenish, vile flesh. They seemed to be a mix of races and even half-breeds like the one he had just killed, which made things even stranger for him. Juara realized the fight was not favorable to him, unable to shake the weight of beer on him, and he eyed for an exit while continuing fighting like a soldier he had been trained to be. But trolls are very hard to kill indeed. As if proving their relentlessness, a grey mountain troll with half his forehead chopped off lunged at Juara but was left groping for his legs, as he jumped on a table and over to the next, over the head of a desperate inngoer who quickly met with death instead in the hands of the wounded troll.
“Lady!” he shouted aloud, remembering the beautiful figure and wondering about her fate and spun around, but the seat she had occupied by the table was empty. Outside the inn he heard new voices – the city guards joining the battle. He knew they would have torches ready, as only fire was really effective against trolls. The smell of death, blood and fear in the air was almost palpable and he decided to withdraw the fight and leave it for the guards. This was not his battle. He had lost his new friend in a flash of a claw already, and at any rate, he realized he was still too drunk to keep up the fight much longer.
”By The Gods of Two Skies, what are trolls doing in town…it just never happens”, he muttered to himself, cursed again under his breath and ran out of the now all but ruined tavern while more and more city guards were appearing at the scene. No need to hang around here for questions, he thought. He needed to find a place to sober up and decide what to do. He glanced around to see if the mysterious female was anywhere to be seen, but saw nobody but guards running with torches towards the tavern. Her eyes…I need to find out more about her he thought, shook his head and vanished into the night as a ghost. Equally undetected, a small, but cat-like creature creature slipped into the shadows following his trail but a few moments behind.
Amashanae - Book 1 Page 2
