First Evar

This is going to be my first attempt at writing Fantasy. It' s going to be short and probably bad.

It was an ordinary tavern, about half way up the hill between the city wall and the keep. As the King's Men grouped in front of the stranger it hardly seemed fair. Three of the King's finest against a one drunken, nearly naked stranger. I say, naked because you must consider a threadbare work shirt and sturdy breeches as naked when faced with the fine burnished armor of the King's Men. The stranger did have a sword but it was an enormous 2 handed monstrosity for hewing at horses and the men on their backs. It was not well suited to the parry and riposte of a barroom sword fight.

It was this sword that drew the barkeeps attention when the stranger walked into the tavern. it was wholly out of keeping with the rest of the strangers appearance. Such a sword should accompany a knight in heavy armor on a barded horse, not a workman straight from a day of digging ditches or chopping wood. The barkeeps attentions were mollified by the soundness of the mans coin and he drank copiously and ate sparingly in the tavern for some hours before the King's Men gathered round. Had he looked more closely, his attentions might have brought him to close his establishment before the King's Men became involved.

The King's Men had come to eject a problematic drunkard from a modest establishment, but that had all changed now. This man had made threats on the King's life and impugned his honor with various profane accusations. From the possible demonic parentage of the King's son and daughter to foul acts of cruelty, inhumanity and occult ritual, none of which were permitted in this city of light much less to have occurred in the King's own chambers. For the threats he would be arrested, and for the insults he would be beaten. There they stood, three stout-hearted, stalwart warriors in gleaming armor in a semi-circle around a single drunk whose awkward sword was not even out of its ring yet.

But suddenly it was. The mans drunkenness didn't change the way his head lolled about on his neck as if seeking to escape his shoulders but everything about his stance changed instantly to a hardened brawler spoiling for a fight. He continued spouting his accusations even as the sword appeared almost miraculously in his hands. Even as he drew first blood against the King's Man directly in front of him, he continued his tales of depravity. That blood never reached the floor as it should. It quickly turned from deep red to brown and lightened of its liquid component swirled away in a sudden gust of wind that blew through the tavern as if it had no walls.

The stabbing thrust that pierced the first was followed by a slash to the left that made contact with the seconds knee and then an arc to the right across the face of the third. All three fell to the floor in unison, giving only a single thud. Everyone in the room gasped at the suddenness of the strangers attack and its amazing devastation. None of the wounds should have been fatal, especially to those as familiar with close quarter combat as the King's Men. Yet they all were dead, but not bleeding as is the manner of such wounds. Each place where they had been cut was dry and pulled open, rotting and caving in hideous blacks, greens and purples. One of the witnesses who saw the third fall swears his only injury was a nick across the nose, but by the time he was on the ground with the crowd standing over him there was barely anything recognizable as a face about him.

No one moved as the stranger exited into the dim night with his sword clutched before him and still muttering, indeed they scarcely breathed. If only this good sense had appeared moments earlier. Their gasp in shock at the spectacle of a drunken head on ready body with an improbable weapon easily beating three of the King's best in the space of a mere handful of heartbeats had bought them a dose of the same virulence. Of the fifteen in the tavern that night, seven died of the wasting sickness, four died of pneumonia, three of large and painful tumors in the chest and neck and one had the spectacular fortune to bend over the last smitten man and sniff quickly the wound. He fell over mere minutes afterwards, the most lucky of the patrons for he felt nothing as he rotted away from the inside.

Two nights later the King was dead of a sudden and mysterious illness, and few who lived through the chaos of those days would remember this singular preceding incident.