My Tavern Was Bankrupt Until A Broken Fugitive Begged For A Room — Then The King’s Guard Arrived
Part 2
Captain Miller stepped heavily to the front of the room.
He was an older man, his face scarred, his eyes carrying the weary, ruthless calculation of a veteran soldier.
He slammed his heavy iron gauntlets onto my scarred bar top.
He announced that they were conducting a search of the premises by order of the crown.
He stared at me, his gaze entirely devoid of human warmth.
He said they were looking for a man of tall stature and dark hair.
He specifically described him as bearing the aristocratic features of the southern houses.
I let out a dry, harsh laugh.
I tossed my rag onto the counter.
I asked him if he really thought aristocrats came to my tavern.
I told him my cheapest ale tasted like copper runoff and my mattresses were stuffed with hay.
I insisted the only lords that came through here were the ones who got lost on their way to the brothel in the next county.
He didn’t blink.
He pressed closer, his eyes narrowing.
He informed me the fugitive was spotted in this sector.
He also mentioned the local magistrate claimed I was harboring a stranger.
I shot a look of pure, unadulterated venom at Craig, who cowered behind the guards.
I said Craig claimed a lot of things, mostly that I owed him money I didn’t have.
I admitted I took on a new cellar rat to haul firewood.
I told the captain he could help himself and gestured lazily toward the back window.
I said my new laborer was out back fixing the pigsty.
The captain nodded to his subordinate.
The younger guard walked heavily across the floorboards.
He reached out to pull back the thick woolen curtain that covered the kitchen window.
My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought the iron-clad men could hear it.
My mind raced with the terrifying reality of what was happening outside.
Would the guards look out the back window and recognize the aristocratic fugitive hiding in the mud of my pigpen?
Part 3
Grease permanently stained the cuffs of Brenda’s apron, carrying the heavy scent of burnt rye and sour cider.
She was tallying sticky copper coins when a man darkened her doorway, dripping freezing mud onto her warped floorboards.
Lowering his bruised face, he quietly begged for her dankest cellar cot.
Instead, driven by a dormant spiteful pity, she handed this broken aristocrat the key to her finest room.
Grease.
It coated everything.
No matter how hard Brenda scrubbed the scarred oak of the tavern tables, a thin slick film always remained, trapping the smells of burnt mutton and spilled ale.
She leaned her weight into the coarse bristled brush, her shoulders protesting with a dull familiar ache.
It was past midnight.
The hearth fire had burned down to a sullen orange eye, casting long wavering shadows against the plaster walls of Stewart’s Rest.
Brenda paused, dragging the back of her forearm across her forehead.
Her skin was gritty with hearth ash and dried sweat.
She was tallying the day’s meager copper in her head, barely enough to cover the grain delivery on Tuesday, certainly not enough to pay off the magistrate’s latest arbitrary fee, when the front door’s hinges shrieked.
A gust of damp night air invaded the room, bringing with it the sharp scent of decaying leaves and wet earth.
Brenda didn’t look up immediately.
She methodically wrung her rag out over a wooden bucket, the dirty water splashing softly.
Kitchen’s closed.
She said, her voice flat, raspy from inhaling smoke all evening.
Beds are four coppers.
Two if you don’t mind sharing with a snoring wool merchant.
I require a room.
The voice was low, raw at the edges, like vocal chords rubbed raw by silence or shouting.
The cheapest you have.
A cellar cot will do.
A corner in the stables.
Brenda finally looked up.
He stood just inside the threshold water pooling around his boots.
They were calfskin, she noted instantly.
Ruined, caked in yellow mud, but custom stitched.
The coat he wore was dark navy wool, heavy and sodden clinging to a broad frame that seemed to be actively folding in on itself.
He was shivering though he tried to mask it by clenching his jaw.
His hair was plastered to his forehead, dark and dripping.
He didn’t look like a vagrant.
He looked like money that had been thrown out a window.
I don’t rent the stables to people.
The horses get nervous.
Brenda said, wiping her hands on her stained apron.
She walked behind the wooden counter, her eyes narrowing as she assessed him.
And the cellar is flooded.
You have coin, or are you just tracking mud onto my floors for the sport of it?
He didn’t argue.
He didn’t puff up his chest and demand respect, which was what wealthy men usually did when she spoke to them with anything less than a curtsy.
It chimed heavily.
Brenda stared at the silver.
It was a royal mint stamped with the king’s profile.
It could buy her in for a month.
I don’t have change for that, she said, her tone hardening.
Wealthy men with silver pieces who wanted to sleep in cellars brought trouble.
They brought men with swords looking for them.
They brought pregnant daughters or stolen horses or political treason.
Brenda didn’t have the energy for treason.
She had bread to bake at dawn.
“I don’t want change,” he said.
His eyes finally met hers.
They were bloodshot, surrounded by bruised purple skin.
There was a hollow emptiness in his gaze that made Brenda’s stomach twist, an uncomfortable sudden lurch of pity that she instantly resented.
“Just a door that locks.”
She looked from the coin to his ruined face.
Practicality warred with a stupid dormant instinct to care.
If she put him in the damp storeroom, he’d likely catch a fever and die.
A corpse would mean dealing with the local guard.
A corpse meant paperwork.
A corpse meant shutting down the taproom.
She snatched the silver piece off the counter.
It felt cold and heavy in her palm.
Brenda reached up to the iron board behind her and pulled down a heavy brass key.
It belonged to room four.
The room at the end of the hall, the one with the thickest walls, the down mattress, and the window that faced the woods instead of the road.
“Top of the stairs, last door on the left,” she muttered, tossing the key onto the counter.
It clattered sharply.
He looked at the key, then up at her.
“I asked for the cheapest room.” “And I gave you the only one available.”
Brenda lied, her face entirely blank.
“Don’t bleed on the linens.
If you puke, aim for the chamber pot, or I’m keeping your boots.”
He stared at her for a long second.
A flicker of something, confusion perhaps, or merely the slow processing of a mind deadened by exhaustion, crossed his features.
He didn’t thank her.
Brenda watched him go.
His gait was uneven, heavy.
She listened to his boots thump against the wooden treads, a slow rhythmic drumbeat, until a door opened and clicked shut on the floor above.
She looked at the silver piece in her hand.
She slipped it into the deep pocket of her skirt, picked up her scrub brush, and went back to the grease.
Dawn at Stewart’s Rest did not break.
It seeped.
Gray light filtered through the cracked glass of the kitchen windows, illuminating dust motes dancing over the massive stone hearth.
Brenda had been awake for 2 hours.
Her knuckles were stiff and swollen, a sharp reminder of the damp chill that had settled into her bones over the last 5 years.
She was violently kneading dough on the floured wooden block, punishing the mixture of rye and cheap wheat.
The inn was quiet.
The wool merchant had left before sunrise, grumbling about the price of oats.
That left only the man in room four.
She expected him to be gone.
Men running from their lives usually left before the sun could expose them.
The stairs groaned.
Brenda didn’t stop kneading.
She heard the soft scuff of boots, not the heavy clump of a farmer, but the measured, deliberate step of someone who had been taught how to walk in drawing rooms.
He appeared in the kitchen archway.
The next morning, the fragility of their peace was tested.
Brenda’s head snapped toward the building.
Her stomach dropped.
She hurried past Greg pushing through the kitchen and out into the taproom.
Standing in the center of her floor was Craig.
Craig was the local magistrate’s son, a man who wore his petty authority like a suffocating perfume.
He was draped in a velvet cloak that looked ridiculous in the rustic inn, and he smelled of cheap wine and stale cloves.
Brenda, my sweet, Craig purred turning to face her.
His eyes swept over her with a familiar greasy entitlement.
You’ve missed your quarterly tax payment.
Again.
It’s due on the 15th, Craig.
Brenda said her voice tight keeping her distance.
It’s the 12th.
The books were adjusted.
Craig smiled a thin cruel stretching of his lips.
He took a step closer, his boots loud on the floorboards.
I’m here to collect.
10 silver.
Brenda’s voice cracked.
It was five last quarter.
I don’t have 10 silver.
Then we will have to collateralize.
Craig said softly, closing the distance between them.
He reached out his gloved fingers clamping down hard on Brenda’s wrist.
She flinched trying to pull back, but his grip was like a vice.
Perhaps the inn itself, or perhaps we can work out an alternative arrangement.
Brenda’s heart hammered against her ribs.
She was calculating her odds of driving a kitchen knife into his thigh and surviving the guards when a voice cut through the room.
Release her.
The words were spoken softly.
They weren’t a shout.
They didn’t echo, but they carried an absolute undeniable authority that froze the air in the room.
Brenda turned her head.
Greg was standing in the archway of the kitchen.
He was still wearing his stained shirt.
His hands were bleeding.
But his posture had entirely changed.
He was no longer the broken man who had stumbled into her inn.
He stared at the magistrate not with rage, but with the chilling indifference of a man squashing an insect.
Craig blinked dropping Brenda’s wrist as if it had burned him.
He turned to Greg puffing his chest out.
Who in the hell’s are you?
This is official municipal business.
Greg walked forward.
He moved with a slow predatory grace.
He didn’t look at the guards.
He stopped two feet from Craig.
My name is of no consequence to a clerk.
Greg said his voice dropping to a silken dangerous register.
But if you do not leave this immediately, I will ensure that the governor of this province, who owes me a considerable favor, has you reassigned to a border outpost so desolate you will forget what a warm fire feels like.
The taproom was dead silent.
Craig opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at Greg’s eyes.
Whatever he saw there, the utter lack of bluff, the absolute certainty of power, made the color drain from the magistrate’s face.
He took a step back.
The 15th.
Craig stammered, wrapping his cloak tighter around himself.
I will return on the 15th.
He signaled his guards and hurried out the door, pulling it shut with a rattle of glass.
Greg let out a slow breath, his rigid posture deflating slightly.
He turned to Brenda, offering a small reassuring nod.
Are you unharmed?
Brenda stared at him.
She rubbed her wrist where Craig had grabbed her.
Then a hot white fury bubbled up in her chest.
She marched up to Greg, grabbed the front of his stained linen shirt, and shoved him backward.
He stumbled, caught off guard, hitting the edge of a table.
What is wrong with you?
She hissed, her voice vibrating with rage.
Greg looked bewildered.
I was assisting you.
He was going to You just painted a target on my back.
Brenda shouted, not caring who heard.
He thinks you’re a threat.
Which means he’s going to find out who you are.
I handled him.
Greg argued, his own temper flaring, a flush rising in his cheeks.
You handled him like a lord.
Brenda snapped, pointing a shaking finger at his chest.
You don’t just threaten a magistrate and expect him to bow.
You offended his pride.
In my world, pride gets people killed.
You didn’t save me, Greg.
You just guaranteed he comes back with a torch.
Greg stared at her, his jaw locked.
He looked down at her finger, then up at her furious, exhausted face.
The silence stretched between them raw and vibrating with a hundred unsaid accusations.
He didn’t know her world.
She didn’t know his.
I Greg started, his voice suddenly small, the aristocratic armor cracking.
I did not think No, Brenda said bitterly, turning away from him.
Your kind rarely do.
Wash your hands.
You’re bleeding on my floor.
Morning arrived with the scent of damp wool and old grease thick and suffocating.
The fragile peace lasted only until Tuesday afternoon.
Tuesday afternoon had brought a biting crosswind that rattled the tavern’s warped windowpanes.
But the sound of the front door being kicked open cut through the draft entirely.
Ozone and unwashed bodies.
That was the immediate scent that rolled into the taproom, overpowering the familiar aroma of Brenda’s baking bread.
Brenda froze, a damp rag half clenched in her raw hands.
Three men stood in her doorway.
They were not miners seeking a midday pint.
They wore mismatched boiled leather, their knuckles heavily calloused, their faces carrying the flat, deadened expressions of men who hurt people for a daily wage.
Behind them, stepping carefully over the threshold so as not to scuff his polished riding boots, was Craig.
I told you, Brenda.
Craig said.
His voice was a reedy nasal whine that grated against the silence of the empty room.
The 15th.
We are here for the municipal tax.
10 silver pieces.
Brenda’s stomach plummeted, a cold heavy stone dropping into her pelvis.
She wiped her hands on her apron, her mind frantically cataloging the makeshift weapons behind the bar.
A heavy wooden mallet for tapping kegs, a cast iron skillet, a rusted paring knife.
I don’t have 10 silver, Craig.
I told you that.
She said.
Her voice was remarkably steady, betraying none of the frantic calculation happening behind her eyes.
Then we collateralize.
Craig smiled a thin satisfied stretching of his lips.
He gestured lazily to the largest of the three men, a towering brute with a missing front tooth, and a nose that had been broken and reset off center.
Tyler.
Take the good oak chairs.
Smash the rest so she understands the gravity of delinquency.
Tyler grunted, stepping forward.
He reached for a heavy high-backed chair near the window, one of the few pieces Brenda’s father had carved by hand before the sickness took him.
Don’t touch that.
Brenda snapped her hand, dropping below the bar to wrap around the handle of the wooden mallet.
Tyler ignored her.
His thick fingers closed around the polished oak spine of the chair.
Before he could lift it, a sound sliced through the room.
It was the sharp metallic shink of a blade being drawn from a scabbard.
Craig jumped, letting out a wholly undignified squeak.
Greg stepped out of the kitchen archway.
He held no sword.
In his right hand gripped with a terrifying loose familiarity was the long wicked iron poker from the hearth.
The tip still glowed a dull angry orange from the coals.
He didn’t wear his ruined coat.
His linen shirt was stained with soot and grease.
His sleeves rolled up his bandaged hands gripping the iron tight.
He didn’t look like a tavern boy.
He looked like a soldier who had found himself on the wrong end of a siege and decided he didn’t care if he survived it so long as he took someone with him.
Leave the chair.
Greg said.
His voice didn’t rise.
It was a flat dead calm that sent a shiver down Brenda’s spine.
Tallon retreated behind his men pointing a trembling gloved finger at Greg.
You.
You’re the vagrant who threatened me.
Tyler, break his legs.
Then take the chairs.
Tyler dropped the chair.
It hit the floorboards with a heavy thud.
He drew a short heavy cudgel from his belt and charged.
Greg didn’t brace for impact.
He stepped off the center line moving with a fluid terrifying grace that belonged on a dueling piece, not a sticky tavern floor.
As Tyler barreled past driven by his own momentum, Greg swung the heavy iron poker.
He didn’t aim for the head.
He brought the shaft down hard a vicious targeted strike against the back of Tyler’ knee.
Bone crunched.
Tyler roared a wet guttural sound of agony and collapsed sideways crashing through a small side table and splintering the pine into a dozen jagged pieces.
The other two men didn’t hesitate.
They rushed Greg simultaneously.
What followed was not a heroic choreographed dance.
It was brutal, sloppy, and desperate.
Greg caught the first man across the jaw with the heavy iron handle of the poker, snapping the man’s head back with a sickening crack.
But the second man tackled him around the waist.
They hit the floor hard.
The poker clattered away, sliding under the bar.
Greg grunted, all the air leaving his lungs in a violent rush.
The mercenary was heavy, smelling of stale onions and sweat, throwing short, vicious punches into Greg’s ribs.
Greg’s hands were bandaged and raw, but he drove an elbow up, catching the man in the throat.
Brenda didn’t scream.
She didn’t cower.
She vaulted the low side of the bar, her boots hitting the floorboards with a heavy thud, the wooden tapping mallet clenched in her fist.
The first man recovering from the blow to his jaw drew a long hunting knife and lunged toward Greg’s exposed back.
Brenda swung.
She put her shoulders, her hips, and 5 years of bitter, suffocating resentment into the motion.
The wooden mallet connected squarely with the side of the mercenary’s head.
The impact vibrated up her arm, jarring her elbow.
The man’s eyes rolled back, and he crumpled like a sack of wet grain.
Greg shoved the gasping man off his chest, scrambling to his knees.
He grabbed the mercenary by the collar of his boiled leather vest and drove a bare, bandaged fist into his nose.
Blood sprayed hot and bright across the floorboards.
The man went entirely limp.
Silence slammed back into the room, deafening in its suddenness.
Greg remained on his knees, his chest heaving, pulling air into his lungs in ragged, tearing gasps.
He pressed a hand to his ribs, wincing sharply.
Brenda stood over the unconscious man, her chest rising and falling, the heavy wooden mallet dangling from her trembling fingers.
She looked at the wreckage.
Smashed pine, splintered wood.
A puddle of dark blood staining the floorboards she had scrubbed on her hands and knees just yesterday.
She turned her head slowly.
Craig was standing in the open doorway.
His face was the color of spoiled milk.
He looked at the three broken men on the floor, then at Greg, who was slowly pushing himself to his feet.
His eyes locked on the magistrate with a promise of absolute violence.
Craig turned and ran.
He didn’t say a word.
He just fled, his boots slipping in the mud outside.
Brenda dropped the mallet.
It hit the floor with a hollow, useless sound.
She looked at her shattered tables.
She looked at the blood.
Her livelihood, already hanging by a frayed thread, had just been snapped entirely.
Shattered glass crunched under foot loud as pistol shots in the dead quiet of the taproom.
It was 2 hours past sundown.
They had dragged the groaning men out to the muddy road, leaving them for the night watch to find.
Brenda swept the broken pine into a pile near the hearth.
Her movements were robotic, jerky, fueled by a potent cocktail of adrenaline and despair.
She hadn’t spoken since Craig ran.
There was nothing to say.
Words wouldn’t rebuild the tables.
Words wouldn’t pay the ironmonger for new hinges.
Greg sat on the one remaining stool by the bar.
Brenda.
He whispered the fight suddenly draining out of him, leaving a raw, terrifying vulnerability.
I am a dead man.
I have been a dead man since the night I walked through your door.
Please, let me leave before I pull you into the grave with me.
No.
She said, her voice cracking.
She stepped closer, invading his space.
Her chin tilted up fiercely.
You owe me a door hinge, Greg.
And you haven’t fixed it yet.
Metal hit wood with a resounding crash.
Craig hardwood kicked the front door of Stewart’s Rest open, stepping into the taproom with a smug, triumphant sneer.
Behind him walked two men who made Tyler and his mercenaries look like schoolyard bullies.
They wore the heavy polished plate armor of the King’s Guard, blue cloaks pinned at their shoulders with silver medallions.
The taproom was empty of patrons.
Brenda stood behind the bar methodically wiping down a pristine mug with a rag.
She didn’t flinch at the noise.
Good afternoon Craig.
She said, her voice dripping with bored irritation.
Still haven’t learned how to use a doorknob.
Craig sneered, stepping aside to let the captain of the guard approach the bar.
The captain was an older man, his face scarred, his eyes carrying the weary, ruthless calculation of a veteran soldier.
We are conducting a search of the premises.
The captain said, his heavy gauntlets resting on the bar.
By order of the crown.
We are looking for a man of tall stature, dark hair bearing the aristocratic features of the southern houses.
Brenda let out a dry, harsh laugh.
She tossed the rag onto the counter.
Aristocrats?
Here, captain, my cheapest ale tastes like copper runoff, and my mattresses are stuffed with hay.
The only lords that come through here are the ones who got lost on their way to the brothel in the next county.
He was spotted in this sector.
The captain pressed, his eyes narrowing.
A dangerous fugitive, and the magistrate here claims you’ve been harboring a stranger.
Brenda shot Craig a look of pure, unadulterated venom.
Craig claims a lot of things, mostly that I owe him money I don’t have.
I took on a new cellar rat to haul firewood.
That’s it.
Produce him.
The captain ordered.
Help yourself.
Brenda gestured lazily toward the back window.
He’s out back fixing the pigsty.
The younger guard walked heavily across the floorboards, pulling back the thick woolen curtain that covered the kitchen window.
Outside in the freezing mud, a man was waist-deep in a collapsed wooden pen.
He wore a filthy, torn canvas tunic, his face smeared with brown muck and soot.
He was violently wrestling a massive, squealing sow away from a broken fence post, shouting curses in coarse, guttersnipe slang.
His hands were brutalized, thick with calluses, gripping a heavy wooden mallet.
The guard watched for a moment, his nose wrinkling in disgust at the sight and the implied smell.
He let the curtain drop and turned back to his captain.
“Just a common laborer, sir.”
The guard reported.
“Up to his knees in shit.”
The captain studied Brenda’s face for a long silent moment.
Brenda stared back, her expression perfectly masked in cynical blue-collar irritation.
She looked bored.
She looked exactly like a woman whose biggest problem was a broken pigpen.
“Search the rooms.”
The captain commanded.
They tore the inn apart.
They overturned mattresses, kicked open wardrobes, and smashed several ceramic jugs in the cellar.
Through it all, Brenda stood behind the bar tallying the cost of the damages in her head, projecting an aura of furious impatience.
30 minutes later, the guards returned empty-handed.
“If you see a man matching the description, you will report it.” the captain said, throwing a silver coin onto the bar to cover the broken pottery.
“If he pays in silver, I’ll rent him a room.
If he doesn’t, I’ll point him down the road.”
Brenda replied, coolly pocketing the coin.
Craig looked furious, his face blotchy with red rage.
He opened his mouth to argue, but the captain shoved him toward the door.
“Move, Craig.
We have three more miles to cover before nightfall.”
The door slammed shut.
Brenda didn’t move for 10 full minutes.
She waited until the heavy thud of the horses’ hooves faded entirely into the wind.
Then her knees buckled.
She caught herself on the edge of the bar, her breath leaving her lungs in a shaky, violent gasp.
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, her whole body trembling with the delayed shock of adrenaline.
The back door hinges creaked softly.
Afron walked into the kitchen.
He was covered in mud and manure, smelling atrociously.
He carried the heavy wooden mallet in his scarred hand.
He walked through the archway and stopped behind the bar.
He looked at the wreckage the guards had left.
Then he looked at Brenda.
She lowered her hands.
Her eyes were red, her chest heaving.
She stared at him taking in the mud, the ruined tunic, the absolute degradation he had willingly subjected himself to just to sell a lie to a soldier.
He didn’t look like a duke.
He looked like Greg.
“The sow bit me.”
He said, his voice deadly serious.
A laugh caught in Brenda’s throat.
It was a jagged, ugly sound that tore out of her half sob and half relief.
She covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking, leaning back against the wooden shelves.
Greg closed the distance between them.
He dropped the mallet.
It clattered against the floorboards.
He didn’t care about the mud, and he didn’t care about the filth.
He reached out his rough, scarred hands framing her face.
His thumbs gently wiping away a stray tear that had escaped her hardened facade.
“You stayed.”
She whispered, her voice fractured.
“I am never leaving, Brenda.”
He murmured, his forehead resting heavily against hers.
The smell of mud and cold wind surrounded them.
But beneath it all was the steady, solid heat of his presence.
“You owe me a silver coin, and I intend to collect on the interest.”
Brenda closed her eyes, leaning into the calloused heat of his palms.
The inn was shattered, the town was hostile, and winter was entirely unforgiving.
But as she stood in the wreckage, grounded by the steady beating of his heart, Brenda realized she wasn’t drowning anymore.
THE END
Tell us what you think about this story, and share it with your friends. It might inspire them and brighten their day.
If you enjoyed this story, read this one: My Boss Fired Me And Ruined My Life — Then I Gave Her My Last $20
Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
