Thrain - Part 13
Chapter 5 - Tylen gets to know Torp a little better...or at least learns he has a lot of stories
Need a recap? Chapter summaries
Torp pushed the door in, then held it open for Tylen. The lights in the square had been a welcoming change to the dark of the alley, and the tavern was past that like a warm blanket of comforting glow. He did glance about, however, noting with suspicion anyone who looked like they might crouch in dark alleys, and stared at soldiers wondering if they eyed his bag.
“Sit there again, I will be right back.”
Remarkably, Torp’s jacket still hung on the back of the chair, and no one else had taken it or the table.
He sat, still holding the Crestguard emblem in his left hand. Opening his clenched fist and feeling the sudden ache in his stiff fingers, he switched it to his right hand so he could stretch out. Now conscious that people, and not always nice ones, took notice of things, he placed both the yarn and emblem into his pant pocket. It was deep, and rather tight against the leg, so while they might be visible, he would know if anyone tried to get at them.
Torp returned, again with a large pint of something, this time much darker. He had one for himself too, plus another glass of water.
“Drink the water first, kid. Likely as not you’ll be rattling around the anvil in the morning anyways, but it will help.” Tylen stared at him blankly, and Torp grinned like he had made some joke.
“So.” He took as large a swig as Tylen had ever heard from the stories, and looked like he enjoyed it. “Where are you staying?”
Taking a drink from his own handle, he nearly spat it out again. The other drink had only just begun to taste good as he reached the end, this one attacked him with renewed vigor.
Torp snorted. “Water first, then that. You’ll enjoy it, I promise.”
He was now even less sure about his own preference ever agreeing, but the old man had been right about the first drink. Drinking the water, he cleared his throat. “The barracks let recruits stay before the muster, uh…Torp. So, I figured I would go there.”
By the look on Torp’s face, he couldn’t have said anything across the whole of Aath which would have been more surprising.
“Makes sense. You don’t come into things halfway, do you?”
Tylen drank more of the water. “I don’t…think so? What’s wrong with the barracks?”
“Bah.” He waved a hand and drank further, seriously denting the substantial volume he’d had before him not that long ago. “The Barracks are a nightmare during conscription. In the days before a muster, soldiers relax their guard. Too many men looking like they don’t belong but they do, or the opposite.”
He took another large swallow, and having finished his water, Tylen followed suit. It still took effort to get it down, but he did notice how much faster the warmth spread through him, and by extension, how much less the taste seemed to matter.
“A long time ago they did more about it, but found it worked to help weed people out.”
“So they…do what to you?”
Torp eyed his chest, and Tylen realized he was eyeing the pack strap. “They steal, for one.” He must have seen how his eyes widened at that. “Don’t worry kid, you can stay with me. I’ve got a place, we can go on the final day.”
“Oh -- thank you s--Torp.” The words were oddly hard to get out cleanly, all of a sudden.
“Bah, it’s nothing. What good would getting your pack have done if I let you stay in the Barracks next?” He finished his beer, then eyed the bar for a moment. Sighing, he stood and put on his jacket. “I think it’s best we get going, kid.”
Tylen nodded, then viewed the large amount of dark beer still in front of him, like one looked at a slightly too-tall fence right before they tried to jump it. He needed to be like the stories, needed to be more than a kid getting his pack stolen. He chugged it.
Torp looked at him with a lopsided smile appearing on his face. “Never halfway at all…” He trailed off, the sight seeming to recall some distant memory.
Leaving the tavern, they navigated the initially straight streets of Ildris proper, but soon came to turns and twists as buildings jockeyed for positions on time-ordained roads. The Runes etched on different stones played a soft and lovely, but faintly haunting sound. Only the two of them, it whispered like a distant ghost in their ears.
Tylen had never seen so much brick and stone used in the houses, even ramshackle huts and unscrupulous places would have held kings back in Eldan's Hearth. Seeing it all had become quite difficult however, the world seemed to spin and run, at times stretching away from him and then slamming back into his vision and making him stumble.
After one particular near-fall, he glanced towards the old recruit. “Torp--”
“You’re drunk.”
Oh. Of course. He’d forgotten that bit about drinking, most of the stories he was told did not include that part. “I, er, had two though.” He had heard at least that most drunks had many drinks.
Torp shrugged. “You are small, and have never had one before, I’ll guess. It won’t keep going for too long.”
True to his word, although it felt powerfully strong while they walked, by the time they reached Torp’s home it had begun to fade. When they entered, Tylen at first thought it was another bar, although with far fewer people and a better smell. After passing the open area entirely though, he realized they were headed up stairs. It was an inn.
“Torp?”
“I suppose I am.” He pulled a key from some pocket and fitted it to a wooden door they had reached.
“Um. I thought you lived here.”
Something shifted slightly in his demeanor, but he wasn’t sure what. “What did you think that for?”
Tylen considered, which was still a little tougher than normal. “You knew the bar man… You knew about the soldiers and those thieves, and where to go.”
“Who doesn’t know Ildris?” He said it sadly. “But no, you are right. It is a long story. I did once live here.”
Tylen waited for him to continue, but he did not. Instead, he told him where to get extra blankets, pointed him to a cot, and said they would be up early in the morning.
The space was small, little more than the bedroom, and the table in front of what looked to be a kitchen, though he didn’t understand it. No kiln or flame could possibly be used to heat things, and he saw no place to keep water. There was also an odd stone basin, which might have been useful for water but it had a hole in it at the center.
“If you need water, use the sink, it’s drinkable.”
“The sink?” He could see Torp looking at the basin, which must have been what that was called, but he didn’t know the word.
“Never seen one before?”
He shook his head.
Then, Torp practically jumped to it, and a wider smile than Tylen had yet seen lit his face. His eyes had a joyful dance in them, and he beckoned him over.
“Grab that handle and start turning it.”
He looked at it dubiously, but grasped it and began to turn it. A faint noise echoed from further below than he expected, but gradually became muffled. He did not have to turn it too much longer before water suddenly shot from a strange protrusion above the stone basin. It was clear and cold, and sloshed around the stone before draining into the hole he had noted earlier. He stepped back, expecting it to pool at his feet, but then saw that a strange enclosing linked to the hole, and carried the water elsewhere.
Tylen grinned and gapped in wonder. “How…what is that? Is it Runewriting?”
Torp laughed. “Only in richer noble homes, kid. What you turned brought the water up from the Inn’s reservoir. These are all over in bigger cities, but especially here, in Ildris.”
He began turning it again, feeling no less a sense of wonder for knowing how it worked.
Torp left him to it, and went into the bedroom. Tylen heard him taking his boots off, and preparing to sleep. The sounds made him realize how exhausted he was, all at once, and he sagged where he stood as the long day caught him. With surprise, he realized only that morning he had been walking in the forest.
Getting ready himself, he soon lay down on the padded floor, which was a marked improvement from the twigs, leaves, and dirt of the night before.
“Torp?” A question came to his mind and he was already asking it before deciding if it was prudent.
“Probably.”
“Why are you helping me?”
For a moment it was only silence that answered. Then he heard a shift and ruffling of sheets. “That is also a story, maybe the longest one.”
“Oh.”
It seemed that Torp realized how often he had said that, for after a long sigh he gave a real answer.
“You remind me of me, kid.”
Torp could not fall asleep for some time. No one slept near him recently, but that did not bother him. In three days, he would hear nineteen other snores close by, and he did not dread that. In fact, it would be quite familiar to him.
Fitful and turning, he felt his back speaking in angry clenches; he felt the pull of his large gut. This too, he wanted to blame, but the pains of growing older had not stopped him from rest the night before. When he thought they would, he drank.
He stilled at last as blaming the drink came to his mind; a ludicrous thing to think. No, above all, that was far from what he felt demanding a name before release. Though he drank little tonight, he could feel it running warmly through his veins in a familiar, comforting way.
Tylen did remind him of his younger self. At that thought, an ocean of memories promised to whisk him off, and he fought them away. They would only distract him, though they came closer to the mark of what ailed him. The kid was naive, headstrong… and honest. Honest to a bloody fault. When he declared that, a flood of memories he could not stop overwhelmed him, and only then did he turn and face what so gripped him.
Fear.
He shuddered, and clamped his eyes shut hard. His face spasmed as old memory and emotion attacked him, yet he soldiered on through them. To each, he answered. He knew they were not by any stretch irrefutable; in fact by reason of evidence his answers held up like wet paper under hammer and anvil. He gave it all the same.
He would not let Tylen die.
