The Tavern
The patrons were getting rowdy again. It was that time of night. The ale was flowing and the tavern was full of battle-worn soldiers, rough-looking sells-words, and mysterious travelers in dark cloaks.
“How much for a night with you, then?”
Auriel rolled her eyes and turned around to face what was sure to be another drunken patron at the tavern bar. She put her elbows on the counter and looked into the hazy eyes of a soldier with wavy black hair.
“I’m not on the menu,” she said, and managed a wry smile. After six years serving ale, she knew how to flirt her way into an extra coin while still keeping the men at bay.
The soldier scoffed and flipped a coin onto the bartop.
“Fill ’er up then.” She grabbed his mug and stooped at the barrel behind the counter to refill it.
Brown ale fizzed and sloshed around in the mug as she handed it back to him, and he sidled off to a table in the back of the dark tavern to reunite with four other soldiers who were completely knackered. They had just returned from a long campaign and had lots of choice words about their thick-witted prince who had sent them on a fool’s errand to recapture the Gidian Stronghold to the south. Many of their brothers in arms had fallen, never to return to the village and their families.
Now, they drank away their sorrows and sang their sad songs in the back of Auriel’s tavern.
The ramshackle tavern had been Auriel’s father’s, and when he had fallen ill six years ago and died, it passed to her. But she had worked in the dimly lit wooden structure since she was ten years old, getting to know the repeat patrons and hearing their wild tales of the lands outside the village. She had always loved hearing their fantastical stories of witches, monsters, handsome knights, and bloody battles. She had often wondered what it was like out there, beyond the village. But she was destined to remain here — to work this tavern and serve adventurous souls for all her days, never daring to see any adventures herself.
The village existed in the shadow of Castle Lanoch — home to King Arold and Prince Fabian. From the stories she heard from the soldiers who frequented the tavern, the king was practically on his death bed and the prince called the shots. And the shots he called led to the death of many — from high taxes that starved out the poorest on his lands, to sending his fighting men off to battles they couldn’t possibly win, dooming the poor young men to gruesome deaths in faraway lands. He sounded like a right prick, Auriel thought.
But tonight, as she did every night, she wiped a bit of sweat off her brow and ran her fingers through her long wavy brown hair. She looked out the window up at the many dazzling lights of Castle Lanoch and wondered as she often did what it was like to live there, to be waited on hand and foot by people like her, to never toil away in a sweaty dark tavern serving those who could never possibly respect her or understand her.
“Ahem,” an impatient old man with a long gray beard brought her back to reality, waving his empty mug at her.
“Sorry, Aymond.” She grabbed the old man’s mug and refilled it. Aymond practically lived in this tavern and didn’t seem to know one night from the next, thanks to the heavy drunken stupor in which he liked to reside.
The man huffed and flipped a coin at her before staggering back to a table near the door. Auriel sighed, grabbed a washing rag, and began scrubbing the wooden bartop, listening to the cacophony of rugged voices echoing through the little dining room.
