The Namesake – Chapter 13

*Scene 01* 9:46 (The Kinship & The Stone)

Disquiet lingered in the mind of the Xarmnian king.  He had walked the parapet of the palace for half the night.  The dew of the early morning had soaked his bed clothes and chilled his body, but he could not return to his bed chamber.

To do so would bring the dreams again.  And the memories.

The spectre of his father haunted him.  The kingdom was under threat.  His wealth and authority was under threat.  He legitimacy was, again, under threat.

The latter threat was the most painful.  The reason why he had insisted on changing his name to the title “Son of Xarm.”

There was a deep, dark secret.  A family secret.  A secret that his birth mother had exposed by giving him his birth name–Moab.  A name that had a dark history and a meaning that could be discovered by anyone who might have read the accursed texts that had been transcribed from the face of that accursed stone.

That was why he had ordered all transcriptions of those hateful letters to be banished, and anyone caught with any part of the Ancient Text in their possession to be executed and hung publicly from the ramparts.

No one knew the truth.  He wasn’t just a bastard.  He was a child of incest.  A man whose father had disowned him, until all of the other sons born to him in his profligate lifestyle were dead.  Moab was the last living child with any of his father’s blood left in him, and his father had been grudgingly forced to acknowledge him as his own, because of his own obsession with having a line that survived him.  The pride of progeny.  His father’s pride.  It was the one tenuous hold and claim he had on the paternity of his father, his identity as the man’s son.  He was never to mention, that his mother was actually his father’s daughter.  He had been warned to never reveal the truth.  A hidden palace assassin was personally charged to see to it that Moab never indicated otherwise.  She was just a palace concubine and nothing more.  All records of anything different were expunged from the annuals.

Three verses from the Ancient Text terrifed him.  These passages had appeared upon the face of The Marker Stone one for each or the three times he had dared visit the old country to the east.  Three times in which he had departed angrily from the site and had denied the personal message.

The first…

“…the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul.” [Luke 2:35 NLT]

The second…

“The time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all.” [Luke 12:2 NLT]

The third and final straw…

“But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself. For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” [Romans 2:5 NLT]

The final passage terrified him, and from that moment he had determined to destroy the stone, and failing that, he had had it entombed, buried in bones and skulls with no jawbones.  No one would reveal his secrets.  No one. Living or dead.  He had made a vow to his father.  A father whose memory he worshipped.

But now, Xarm’s own treasury had been tapped and violated.

Twice.

Once by a seemingly worthless old beggar woman.

And shortly thereafter, by a supernatural force acting upon a hidden stone of power, pilfered by the tribal families from the site of the mysterious monolith residing on a hilltop to the east.

Twelve stones, there were.  One taken by each of the original families.  Stones which had the ability to make an object weightless and able to be carried effortlessly by a single bearer.  Even a child could wield the stone.

But now, the treasury room within the vaunted halls of Xarm City was no longer secure.  And that worried the Son of Xarm to no end.

It had been twenty-one years since the powerful stone they had used to clear and build the massive city of Xarm ceased to be moved.  It had anchored itself to the pedestal upon which it was kept so securely, that even the pedestal could not be moved.  Something had happened within the Mid-World.  Some kind of sorcery that kept it held within the chamber, but no longer useful for the purposes for which it had been taken.  It was as if the monstrous combined weight of ever monolith it had so easily moved, returned to it and was imbued within the builder stone itself.  Spies were send out to the other tribal groups, and it was eventually learned that all twelve of the builder stones had suddenly anchored themselves upon the last place they had been layed down.

But now…  Suddenly, the immovable stone began to move on its own.  A quality it did not possess before.  Drawn towards some mysterious destination by an irresistable force that nothing could deny or prevent.

The hanging of suspected traitors did little to abate his wrath.  It served as mere cover for the venting of his frustrations.  The public deaths of vague suspects could not address the true source of his disquiet–his inner terror.  The stones were somehow signifying the coming end of his reign. His day of reckoning and accounting for all of the abuses and licenses he had taken as king.

His father had warned him the day would come, and that the approach of it would be attended with mysterious signs and troubling wonders.  The signets of power would return to the source from which they arose.  The ancient stone buried upon a hill in the eastern lands.

A detachment of soldiers had cordoned off the area where the treasury wall had been breached.  The resting place of the builder stone had been crushed, as if tremendous force had bore down upon it.  The pillar had been pressed to powder, crumbling under the weight of the mysterious and hand-sized conical stone.

Upon reaching the floor, the conical builder stone had moved laterally, penetrating the wall, fracturing the lower foundational stones and causing the upper wall to sag and buckle.  Braces of iron and steel bars cold not impede it.  They bent under its determined course and then eventual fell away or were driven into the stone wall.

The builder stone had eventually crossed the outer courtyard, had pushed through an iron gate, forcing the barricade partially off its anchored hinges.

For days the mysterious stone moved through the city in a straight course, passing through buildings, houses, gardens, stables, marketyards, always shielded and concealed by palace guards until it reached the outer city walls.  For hours it was lost, pushing inward and through the thick city wall, until it ruptured the outer battlements, crumbling granite before it’s juggernaut path.

Once outside of the city wall, soldiers attempted to further conceal its determined progress by covering it in military field tents.  But nothing could conceal the damage it had done.  Nothing could impede it.  No one could raise it from the furrow it cut along the ground as it continued to plow inexplicably forward.

Within a week’s time, the builder stone had gained the outer fields.  Xarmnian soldiers covered its movements with what appeared to be field exercises and drills, anything to distract onlookers from the discovery of the stone’s mysterious progress, but to no avail.

From the point at which it had lain motionless in the treasury to the course through the city and out onto the field a line of clear direction could easily be drawn.

There was no longer any doubt in the Son of Xarm’s mind.  The builder stone was returning to The Marker Stone.  Whatever was happening at that accursed place was causing this presentl calamity and his growing unease and inability to sleep, eat or think, much less control his flashes of angry tirades.

That was why he had sent his most dangerous warrior hunters out more than a week ago, to find out what might be going on with this present sorcery.  To kill whoever or whatever was causing these things.

He was certain, that the news of the oculus, appearing on the shore of the eastern sea, had something to do with it.  And he was sure that, though they had buried The Marker Stone in the filth of bones of those who once served and believed in it’s promises.  The Stone was still very much a living thing that would ultimately bring him to ruin.

*Scene 02* 3:35 (Backsliding)

The rain came hard upon the three who had parted ways with the group–A deluge that seeming to roar over the crest of the hill and plunge downward, carving torrential grooves and streams in the hillside.  A wash of dirt and grime met their efforts to climb the brow covering them with mud, grit and misery.

“Are you sure we made the right decision?” the middle-aged man growled at the older.  “Shut up!” the older snapped, “You’ll thank me when we get back into the Inn and get a fire started to warm us all up.”

The young woman slipped and muddy water poured over her, causing her to slide down into the rain-eroded chute. She grappled with the sharp rocks and managed to slow her descent, wedging herself against a rock.

“A little help, guys!” she cried.

The younger man turned and worked his way back down to her and was able to catch her arm and pull her back out of the flume stream.

Her jeans, shirt and shoes were caked in mudd and clay.  She was soaked through and shivering.  Bone cold and wet she wept and could barely get back to her feet.  “He doesn’t really care about us.”

“I get that,” the younger man said, leaning under the woman’s arm, helping her rise. “Hold on to me.  We’ll get over that rise and it should be easier.”

The older man crested the summit amid thunder and flashes of lightning.  Below the hill the screen of showers and windgusts, hid the barnyard tableau under a miasma of rising steam.  The roof tops of the barn, stables, and Inn were barely visible, but still anchored below the driving wet.

The older man’s voice rose but was swallowed by the noise of the rain storm and winds.  Eventually the younger woman and younger man joined him at the summit.  The scouring wind threatened to push them back down the hill, but they leaned against it and grappled their way forward, from scrub brushes to buried rocks, sliding down from time to time on the wet scree, and muddied earth.  The wind pounding them in their slow progress.

Thirty feet down they could see the strobing sky reflecting in scintillations off of the large puddles covering the wagonyard.  A figure and ghostly shape moved under the staccato, like a black Rorshach image stuttering across a projecting screen.  A few more feet down and they could see a rider on horseback, barely clinging to the mount.  It moved across the yard and up onto the road as a glimmer of light shone from the Inn and three large dark shapes emerged into the storm, moving swiftly towards the barn and stable.

They pause about halfway across the puddled yard and pointed, up toward the hillside.  A few beats passed, and the figures moved swiftly toward the barn and emerged again, on large black horses.

Realization struck.  The older man’s voice had risen in pitch and volume.  He was screaming something.  Two heartbeats passed, before the young man and woman realized what he was saying.

“Run! Run!”

*Scene 03* 4:43 (Going to The Granary)

The very wet drive from the Hill of Skulls to the gradually rising highland plain plateau was uneventful.  In route, the rain eventually lessened and then abated.  The land beyond the thinning curtain of wet was stepped, cleared for fields and pastureland, but then descended precipitously on down towards a larger valley and forested lands below.  Beyond were the looming and majestic mountains, some gray and formidable stone giants blanketed with ermine coverings of snow, some heavily forested in persistent greens, some charred in fire-touched blacks and browns.  In the silvered distance, jagged cuts of rock chiseled against the gray-blue sky, framing the horizon–an ominous reminder of the missing lower jaw of the skulls of the martyrs moldering in the Hill of entombment, they had just quitted.

Each successive layer of distant climatic regions made it seem like the very land postured for dominance under the fissured heavens.  Silently crying out to the heavens for justice in the belief and hope for which they had been brutally slain and savagely disarticulated.

I groaned within my spirit.  The calling to find and carry the virtue stones to the golden crown within the crown of stone could not end here.  Not just for my sake alone, but for theirs, for all of those suffering within the Mid-World and for those in my present company who did not yet know that a part of them lived here too.  For all the blood shed in the belief that Excavatia could be found again.  For the truth to be made evident that those seeking Excavatia and hoping for the king’s return did not die in vain.

On the drive, Begglar told me a little about the granary that serviced the area fields.  The granary was built into a raised hillock, with three levels where the winds assisted the treading, threshing, winnowing floors.  A limestone channel had been naturally cutting through the hillock by the powerful winds that roared across the highland plains and cut an eroded notch into the hillock top that was deepened and layered with grooved trusses and crossbeams around a central spindle core, balastered by massive slabs of stone.  During the harvest, the cut sheaves of grain were loaded and pitched into the treading floor where a team of horses trampled the wheat and grain stalks so that the heads and kernels of grain fell through the grooves in the floor.  When the initial trampling and treading were done, a stone wheel press was lowered onto the trampling deck and drawn by the team, pressing the final bits of grain down through the grooves into the lower floor.  A sliding door was opened allowing the winds to blow out the crushed stalks between the grooved channel.  The upper floor was then raked and cleaned of all remaining stalks and vines and collected and baled for hay, loaded on wagons, and carted away to feedlots for the stabled stock.

The hillock had a low rise slope that came up to the top level deck even with the surface of the hillock plateau, but along the sides were various carved roads that allowed access to the second and third levels of the granary and gristmill operation.

The lowest section of the hillock granary was the sealed grain bins, where the final husked and winnowed grain was stored and sealed in dry stone slanted pits.  A stone furnace warmed and dried the lower grain bins built and arranged in a circular floral pattern around the lower end of the upper spindle.

The mill just below the end of the tel, beyond the granary had a sluice system fed from an underground spring that allowed the workers the ability to wash and gather water for malting grains for ale-making.  Large, sealed stone jars held ground and powdered grain mixes of wheat and rye for both bread making and malting for sweet ales and beers.

A riverbed, that used to be fed by the spring in the upper tel, was now only a dried shallow channel lined with trees.

As we drew nearer to the spot where we aligned, I was certain I saw something gleam within that arboreal corridor.  Something that looked strangely like a sword, standing point downward.  Driven into the shallow riverbed, among the twisted roots of the surrounding trees.

*Scene 04* 6:24 (Fall of The Nameless)

The rain pelted and punished Christie as she hugged and clutched the neck and reins of her mount. The horse fought for purchase as its hooves alternately slipped and dug into the flow of sucking mud sloughing off the hillside. A torrent of rain poured down the incline, flowing over buried stones, rinsing and peeling the ground away, pooling into the resulting grooves and twin streams of flooded wagon ruts.

Christie rode up and into the alternating skeins of wet and wind hoping they obscured her fleeing ascent as much as they seemed to fade the scene of the inn and barnyard below.

In the dimming, she turned and saw three men emerge from the inn as she gained the summit of the hill. Terror spurred both her and her horse away from the scene, riding hard through the swirling rain, but hiding her from the progress of her would-be pursuers.

Xarmnians.  No doubt the brutal owners of the horses she’d seen quartered in Begglar’s stable.

To her left, she thought she heard desperate shouting, mewling cries of terror, as three on foot attempted to scramble up the hillside. She could not tell who they were, but could not risk waiting to find out.

Moments later, the three men she had seen crossing the barnyard below, crested the hill coming fast upon the black horses she had encountered in the stable below. They were armed with long spears.

She kicked her horse’s flanks into a more urgent gallop trying to create as much distance between her and her pursuers as she possibly could.

Her pulse pounded in her ears. Her respiration siphoned the air from around the downpour.

She rocketed down the hill descending into a declivity, horse hooves clapping across flowstone and splashing through streams of water. Another furtive glance over her shoulder revealed the three dark horsemen cresting the hillside summit.  She stilfed a cry of terror, smothering it under her tongue, swallowing the sound before it could break free of her lips and betray her position amid the harried cries of the upper winds. 

Instead of racing towards her, the three warriors turned onto the ridgeline riding away from her secluded position.  A quick flash of light revealed their intended course of pursuit.

There were three people on foot–stumbling and fleeing, as the large horses matched pace, canting and angling towards them.  The distant shouting and cries of pursuit barely rose above the snared hiss of the falling rain. 

The horsemen brandished large spears, raised bolts of piercing lightning honed to teardrop bladed points at the end of long javelin poles.  The deadly poles bounced in a rhythmic pumping, balanced upon the gimbals of the bearer’s gloved and raised fists as the horses stamped down the slope.  The horses’ hooves clapped the rocks and wet gravel, adding further percussion to the storm’s symphony of impending slaughter.

One of the spearmen launched his lance, thrusting it downward impaling one of the runners, arresting his victim’s movement into the cold wet.  The horse and rider mercilessly rode over the body of the fallen, not merely satisfied with the brutality of his kill alone.

Another, with galloping speed, hurled his raised rod through the wash of the angry storm, striking another, felling the fleeing victim in a similar fashion.  The second Xarmnian, swung out of the saddle, planting his feet against the slope to keep from sliding.  He retrieved his spear, jerking it violently from the small back of his victim.  He knelt for a closer look and realize that his quarry was a woman.

Christie almost vomited.  She turned away from the distant scene, unable to watch any further.  The three had been members of their company.  Fellow travellers, whom she did not know personally, but had neverless journeyed with up until this point.  For the life of her, she could not remember if she had ever been told their names.  There was a third horseman she could no longer see, but she had no doubt that wherever he might be, the other victim would meet a similar end.

She closed her eyes and wept blindly, masked by the downpour of the rain.  The growl of the thunder drown out all other sounds except one still voice that somehow returned to her in the deep throes of her sorrow and terror.

“For one who has ears to hear, let them hear.“

She felt she was overhearing a repeated conversation she had been a part of…

“…my name is Christie.”

“Courage has a name, and today it goes by Christie. I am very pleased and honored to meet you, Christie.  Your name is fitting.  Reminds me of another name.”

The inner voice spoke again, “For one who has eyes to see, let them see.“

Suddenly, she felt her horse turn and angle toward the northwest. Gradually, she opened her eyes. The overhead rain was lessening, though the wind continued to persist. Something was happening. Something she had no words to explain, but a feeling arose within her.

The air around her swirled with moisture. A soft blue beam illumined a hill to the north, emanating from a mountain range barely visible in the far, far distance.

The soft blue glow calmed and reassured her.  There was meaning in the light. An ineffable feeling that drew her.  Beseeching her and assuring her that she was meant to be part of something. Something bigger and more important than she could imagine.

Her horse seemed to sense it too.

She had a purpose for being here. For enduring even the terrors of whatever this strange world might hold. A purpose for which she had been specifically called…by name.

The inner voice concluded, “The nameless will fall. But those called by name will stand.“

*Scene 05* 8:01 (Beneath the Threshing Floor)

At last, we arrived at the northern end of the granary slope, a large flat area where the winds begin to howl around us and blow downward toward the lower valleys.  Begglar slowed and halted the team just shy of crossing the threshing floor–the area where grains of wheat, alfalfa, millet, and sorghum were separated from the chaff and grated into the catcher pits for bagging and storage.

Just down from the hillock granary ran the copse of trees I had noticed upon arrival. The copse line was clean and ranked, as if the trees were planted in military precision and uniformity standing regimentally along a dried creek bed, strewn with fallen leaves. From a distance, the central creek bed was obscured by the trees, and it wasn’t until we gathered along the edge of the granary that we clearly saw the hollow tunnel within.

While the trees did form a sort of windbreak, a strong breeze rustled the peeled sheets of the channeled bed, rousing dead detritus, creating the faux-effect of stirring water whispering and shushing down the gulley along the treed corridor.

It gave the illusion of an arboreal throat, undulating, and contracting with each swallowed surge of the wind. The line of tall trees, white-barked birch and aspen among their ranks, stood as both sentry and the de facto canopy over the hollowed watercourse. Almost as if these were the backs of tall teeth lining the mouth that descended into a shadowy stomach below.

The land slightly sloped toward the west, and the creek’s original source of water appeared to have come from someplace near the granary, as if it had its source emerging from beneath the hill where the granary now lay. No other trees stood out on the sloping grassy plain, but this line of trees seemed to branch out equally at a juncture point where the creek had originally formed a central pool, before spilling over towards its central course, to run down the hill into deepening shadow.

As I looked down the throat of the tree-lined tunnel, toward the horizontal juncture, I was startled to see again the gleam of something thin and metallic planted vertically in the heart of the creek bed, rising from a web of twisted and revealed roots that would have extended into and under the waterline of the creek, had it still ran wet from its underground springs.

The sword.

“What is that?” I asked Begglar quietly, starting to point, but he caught my hand before I could draw attention to it. “Not now,” he arrested me with his gaze, even as he clamped his large paw over my arm. “We must speak in private first.”

The rain had ceased, but the winds stirred and buffeted the wagon sheets, popping loudly. Dominic held the horses stead as Begglar and I clamored out of the wagon.

Begglar and I went down to the lower area entryway on a stone stairway that ran beneath the threshing floor, to a wooden structure beneath the grated floor that was locked against entry.  This was the area called the Catcher Room– where all of the grain was stored underground in large bins and to bagged and loaded onto wagons to feed the lower occupied lands in the cities ahead.

Once inside, he led me alone to a simple storeroom chamber, insisting that the others remain outside for the time being.  He had something further to tell me which could only be done with absolute certainty of privacy.

“Be careful, what you speak of, O’Brian,” he said, not looking at me, or making himself heard above a whisper.  “I can’t be certain, yet, but I believe we have a monster hidden among us.”

“How do you know this? And what is a sword doing, standing in that dried riverbed? What has been going on here?”

“Much more than you know.” Begglar said.

“I was given a dream about seven years after you left. A dream of The Stone and others. A dream of your return, and something of the preparations that would need to be made for it.”

“I didn’t know what to make of it at first. I didn’t know if the dream was just an odd jumble of those things which trouble me in the waking hours. But that sword is a sign that this wasn’t just a dream to discount. It was a dream given to me for the purpose and an assurance that you would be drawn back here.”

“The sword was brought here in the fourteenth year after you left. A stranger whom no one knew, rode up onto the highlands and left it in the creek bed. Drove it into the root system there and soon the river dried up around it. Since then the creek bed has been dry. Water no longer flows from the rock-based spring that used to feed the lower end of the granary hillock. Water had to be carried in. The beers and ales could no longer be easily made here. Because of that, Xarmni has lost primary interest in this granary. In its production value. They view that sword with suspicion. Many have tried to rid the creek of it, and failed. It is an omen. I believe it is a symbol of something to come, and your return further confirms that for me. The sword is an Honor Sword. A symbolic sword of a city in the old traditions. For a time these were just ornamental swords serving to represent their founders and the convenant charters where a site was consecrated. But this one is different. This one had seen battle. It bears the covenant sash in the ancient traditions. Its presence here signifies both a curse and a challenge. It threatens the posterity of whoever rules these lands, and right now that is the Xarmnians. The highland has been a source for rich grains, but lately the crops have suffered blight and disease and harsher weather conditions. This place represents both food and drink. Bread and ale. But it also represents sifting and winnowing. Threshing and separation of chaff from grains. It is here where I believe we are to find out who it is that will join this journey in service to The Marker Stone. But it is also here where we need to find out who must be separated from us before we go forward. Five have left of their own accord. I fear for them, but they chose to go. Perhaps, Christie and Laura may return, but we have no assurance of that. Two others are under suspicion, but their motives are unclear as yet. One is among us that seems to be already creating dissention. A disruptor. It is disturbing to think so, but there is something we must do to test them. It believe you know to what I am referring.”

“The Shibboleth?”

“Yes. It is the only way to be certain. And that sword presents us with the best opportunity for it. Especially if it is a portent sword and even more so if it is an Honor Sword. But there is something else I was recently made aware of that impacts the entire of the Mid-World lands.”

“What is that?”

“It involves the Builder Stones, and because of them, we could be facing a war that involves all of the Mid-Worlder kingdoms who once held charge over them.”

“What do you mean who ‘once held charge over them’?”

“They are leaving the strongholds. Drawn by some mysterious force out from the possessions of the kingdoms which took them long ago. They will be followed. And when they converge…”

“Old enemies will meet again on the battlefield,” I finished.

*Scene 06* 3:43 (Seems to Be)

The threshing floor was both a place of separation and revelation.  Like kernels of grain pressed out of a husk, the others pressed and piled out of the back of the wagon.

“Why is it that we always seem to get wet following Mister O’Brian?” one of the young men complained as he and the others clamored out onto the grooved stone floor. “First the plunge into the sea, now traipsing through the rain, and riding in the back of that drafty wet wagon. Maybe the three who left us had the right idea.”

“Yeah, but notice how they too had to slog back up that hill in the rain,” another responded, following the former complaintant through the looped canvas and down the opened gate.

Dominic rolled his eyes, trying to ignore the jab about his father’s wagon.

“At least they’ll probably sleep in a warm bed tonight. Maybe find something there in the inn to eat. I am already hungry and we’ve barely even set out on this journey. I could almost kill for some hot chocolate and a blanket by the fire.”

Nell had followed, and met her son’s eyes as she stepped down.

“Is this how its going to be the whole trip?” Dominic muttered.

A teen girl offered to help the younger ones out, but Miray was having none of it. She ignored the girl’s proffered hand and scrambled down from the back and huffed, “Everybody keeps treating me like a baby! I can do this myself!”

“Let her be,” Nell counseled, putting an arm around the teen, giving her a short but patient smile. “She’s upset, but not at you.”

Nell had tried her best to keep Miray calm during the ride up to the granary hillock, but Miray wanted to pommel Becca. She stood with fists balled, arms trembling with tension. Becca had refused to look at her. Nell had interposed herself between the two girls, and spoke softly to Miray until, at last, Miray moved to the siderail.

There was something to the strange vibe she was picking up from the little girl that was so troubled. Old feelings of perception Nell had dismissed too many times until they had dulled in her repeated refusals to give them weight or place. Now there was no longer any way to ignore them.

Becca had an unexplainable cruelty about her, evidenced by her seeming intent on provoking Miray, insinuating there was something perverse in her relationship with Mister O’Brian, name calling, dismissing Miray’s assertions about the blue light gleam coming from the far mountains on the horizon imaginary. On one hand, she had claimed that Miray had been her friend and they shared a past connection, even feigned remorse over Miray’s memory loss. But on the other she had tried to jolt Miray off the wagon, and had insinuated that there was something nefarious going on between O’Brian and her “friend”. It could be jealousy, she reasoned, but that did not comport with Miray’s troubled dreams, or her aversion to being paired with her at night.

There was in fact a coldness about the little girl, and a name that Miray had whispered that seem to carry its own chill when spoken. Both she and Begglar had overheard Miray’s unconscious revelation about Beccas in her fevered dream. Perhaps, Becca was not truly who she presented herself to be.

*Scene 07* 4:59 (Battered Witness)

The Xarmnian bruel stood before an old man bound to a chair in the dining hall of the Inn. Within the last twenty minutes, the man had been pursued by a rider on horseback, brutally snatched from behind, lifted bodily by his collar, thrown across the hard horn of a saddle, carried back over the hill, and flung down into the wet muddy barnyard turnabout. He’d been kicked in the side and arms, forced to rise and crawl into the main entrance to the Inn, where the door hung oddly canted on its hinges.

Slogging into the area where earlier that morning he’d received a much more pleasant reception replete with the aromas of breakfast breads, buttered eggs, and crisp, pan-fried bacon, he now unloaded the half-digested remainder of that meal on the wet wooden planked floor. A large powerful man had seized him by the hair, and dragged him through his own vomit only to force him up into a chair.

At an angle to the large wooden service bar, he spied a spilled tankard of frothy ale, dripping wetly down the front of the bar, under flickering candlelight.

Just beyond the oaken counter, where the tapped barrels were shelved, he fearfully eyed the seeping pool of dark crimson coming from the floor pit area behind the bar and the soft white forearm and pitiable hand lying cupped and supine in the viscous wet that extended out from behind it.

He gasped recognizing by the visible part alone it must be that of the servant woman who had cheerfully worked with her mistress that morning to lay out the sumptuous fare on the long tables for their weary and awakening traveling party.

A hard leather strap with a braided knot struck him hard across the forehead.

Again and again, it fell, stinging and bruising him, lashing his cheek and brow, the top and sides of his head, and burning his swollen ears until the interior dining hall faded into watery blackness.

The old man felt himself descending into a tunnel that burned with invisible flame. Sounds were buried under a liquid susurration. Every muscle ached.

A harsh command barked loud, startled him, and brought him back.

The man with the leather strap stood over him. Big, powerful, and scarred. Leather leggings, and straps, pulled hardened hide against his body. An oiled cloak clung to his shoulders, his arms wrapped in hardened hide as well, with a leather jerkin and strapped brigandine, covering his broad chest. Above it a black tangled beard grew wild, and within the brambles, a severe mouth of yellowed teeth, mustaches parted by a thick hawkish nose, and fierce black eyes under the shadowy cowl of bush-blackened eyebrows, creating caves in which the gleaming eyes darkled. The man reeked of road sweat and exuded a breath that smelled akin to soured milk.

“There were two others with you,” he growled.

“Two…” the old man squinted, his head lolled, trying to make sense of where he was and what was happening to him. The grizzled man-beast before him grabbed a fist full of the man’s hair and leaned in, the fierce black eyes stabbing into him, the breath causing him to gag and wince.

“The two who were with you! Give me their names!”

“I can’t. I-I barely know them.”

The fist turned, pulling the hair up and out, the old man could feel it tearing away from his head, warm blood and sweat seeping into his scalp.

“Names!”

“I don’t know their names,” he cried, “I only know the name of the man who brought us from the beach. His name is…well…they call him…O’Brian. Mister O’Brian. That’s all I know… and the Inn Keeper. Bug-something. No. Burglar. Something like Burglar.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all I know. There was a woman, but I don’t remember her name.”

Three other similarly outfitted men, with hands on their swordhilts, carrying long leaf-point spears stepped up alongside the cowering man.

“Shall we kill him too?” one of the spearmen asks the interrogator.

The monstrous, gat-wielding man looked down at the old man, a snarl of contempt on his face as he spat.

“Not yet. He will lead us to the others. He may yet be of some use.”