“We’re from Ravensburg,” answered Erik. “It’s just been a while since we’ve been there and in the darkness we weren’t sure which town this was.”
“Bring us some wine, please,” asked Roo, “then supper.” The meal was filling, if not memorable, and the wine better than expected; it clearly had a style and finish familiar to both Roo and Erik. It was the common wine of Ravensburg, but compared to what they had been drinking the last year and more, this seemed a bottle fit for the King’s table. Both young men fell into a quiet mood, anticipating the homecoming the next day.
For Roo it was nothing much to do with his past; his immediate family was his father, Tom Avery, a drunken teamster whose only legacy to Roo had been beatings and teaching him to drive a team of horses. Roo was much more interested in seeking out some minor wine merchants he knew and arranging what he hoped would be the start of his rise to riches.
For Erik it was coming home to his mother and the shattered dream of his youth: a blacksmith’s forge and a family. He had served old Tyndal the smith for years before Tyndal’s death, then a year and more with Nathan, who had been the closest thing to a father he had known. But life took its own course, and nothing seemed to be as he had hoped it would, when he was a child in Ravensburg.
“What are you thinking?” asked Roo. “You’ve been quiet a long time.”
“You haven’t exactly been bending my ear,” replied Erik, a smile on his face. “Just about home and what it was like before.”
He didn’t have to say before what. Roo knew: before a struggle with Erik’s half brother Stefan ended up with Roo’s dagger driven into Stefan’s chest as Erik held him. After that they had fled Ravensburg and had not seen friend or family since.
Roo said, “I wonder if anyone told them we live?”
Erik laughed. “If they didn’t, our arrival tomorrow will be something of a surprise.”
The door opened and the howl of the wind caused the two young men to turn. Four soldiers in the garb of the barony entered, cursing the night’s foul weather.
“Innkeeper!” shouted the corporal as he removed his sopping great cloak. “Hot food and mulled wine!” He glanced around the room, then his gaze returned to Roo and Erik. His eyes widened.
“Von Darkmoor!” he blurted. The other three soldiers fanned out, not quite sure why their corporal had called out their Baron’s name, but clearly alerted to trouble by his tone.
Erik and Roo stood, and the two merchants moved away from their chairs before the fireplace, hugging the wall. The only other person in the room, the swordsman, looked on with interest, but didn’t move.
The corporal had his sword out, and as Roo made to draw his own, Erik motioned for him to return it to its scabbard. “We’re not looking for trouble, Corporal.”
The corporal said, “We heard you’d been hung. I don’t know how you and your scrawny friend escaped, but we’ll soon put that right. Seize them.”
Roo said, “Wait a minute—”
The men moved quickly, but Erik and Roo were both quicker, and the first two soldiers who laid hands upon them found themselves on the floor, their heads ringing from swift blows. The two merchants spied a pathway past the trouble and beat a hasty exit from the room, running outside into the rain without their hats or coats. The man at the table laughed. “Well done!” he shouted.
The corporal leveled his sword and thrust, but Erik slipped aside and had him by the wrist before he could react. One of the strongest men Roo had ever seen, Erik also had been trained in bare-handed combat, and his iron grip wrung the corporal’s sword from his fingers as he gasped in pain.
Roo simply thrust with his hand, palm out, fingers extended, and delivered a sharp blow with the heel of his hand upward to the chin of the other standing soldier, who went down in a stunned heap.
“Wait a minute!” commanded Erik in the voice he had developed as Robert de Loungville’s corporal on their return from Novindus. The other two soldiers, who were slowly standing, hesitated, and Erik shouted his command: “Hold, damn you!”
He released the corporal’s wrist while kicking aside his sword so he couldn’t reach for it easily, then showed that his hands were empty of weapons. “I have a paper.” He reached slowly inside his tunic, removed the document given him the day before by an officer in the office of the Knight-Marshal of Krondor, and handed it to the corporal.
The man took it and glanced it over. “Got the seal of Krondor at the bottom,” he grudgingly admitted, while still sitting on the floor. Then his eyes lowered as he said, “Can’t read.”