Though he would have liked to watch the warknight more for the novelty of his presence, or maybe to see if the imp would talk to him again, Rathi fell back into the rhythm of his duties. The falling snow tapered away as the afternoon gave way to evening, and many of the inn patrons took to the road again as new arrivals appeared to take their places at the tables. By then the warknight had vanished to his room upstairs, taking sword and imp with him, but the gossip continued even in his absence.
It could have been just another ordinary night, but when the last of sunset’s colors had faded from the sky, trouble came to the Crown. Rathi was once again wiping down a table, gathering dirty dishes that had been abandoned by customers retired to bed, when a ragtag-looking group of men shouldered through the door. The arrival of large groups meant nothing particularly unusual, nor was it uncommon in this stretch of the world for people to look so wild and unkempt, but the way they gathered just inside the door as each one stepped in quickly brought the ambient chatter to a halt.
Rathi slowly put both wipe-rag and his stack of plates down, ducking until only his eyes and the top of his head showed over the table in front of him.
A woman stood at the head of the group, which looked to number ten or so. They all had the filthy, weather-beaten look of people with little care for city life, though the woman still had a fierce-looking beauty beneath the grime. Her hands were set cockily on her hips, but the others all held to various weapons. Rathi spotted clubs, daggers, and even crossbows.
“Evenin’, sirs!” the woman greeted the room, cheerfully tipping nods at the wary looks turned her way. “You just get back to your drinkin’ and gossipin’. We’ll only have trouble here if one of you tries to start it.”
She started towards the bar and two of the men — plainly her men — fell in behind her. The rest remained arranged like a barricade before the door, while torchlight outside the windows suggested they had even more friends still outside. Rathi and all the rest of the customers watched silently as she swung herself onto a barstool and turned towards the barkeep on the opposite side of the bar. His face had gone pale.
“Hello, love, remember me?” she asked with mock-sweetness, one gloved hand toying with the hilt of the sword at her waist. “Bet you forgot all about me, with that blizzard keepin’ us away last year. A little insultin’, really. Oh, and those poor fellows you had standin’ out in the snow? Were down before they even saw us comin’. Won’t have to worry about their pay tonight. Just mine.”
Two angry spots of color rose on the innkeeper’s grizzled face as he regarded the bandit with mixed fear and indignation. He glanced about at his customers, but they were all casual travelers or merchants, and no aid appeared to be forthcoming from any of them. He looked at the woman again, as she smiled and regarded him patiently.
“You… you choose a bad night to try and shake me down,” the man finally managed. “There’s a warknight upstairs who’ll wipe the floor with the lot of you if you think you can make trouble tonight.”
“Oh, a warknight,” she repeated with wide eyes, pressing the fingers of one hand to her lips. Her men chuckled amongst each other. “Do tell. All shiny like a fresh-scrubbed chamber pot and all? My, you’ve made friends in high places since last I came ‘round. Let’s have a look at him, then!”
The innkeeper hesitated, taking a single halting step towards the stairs at the side of the room, then hurrying the rest of the way when all the woman did was wave her hand impatiently at him. He froze at the bottom, however, with one hand upon the rail, as a heavy tread revealed Jerek was already on his way down.
The warknight looked even more imposing on his feet, taller than most men of Liune ever got, despite not being in plate armor. The lack of it, in fact, when the breadth of his shoulders suggested such garb would weigh as nothing to him, rather made him more frightening to regard in Rathi’s eyes — as if he was such a capable soldier that he forewent armor at all.
His scowl was unchanged as he stepped to the ground floor, dark eyes sweeping across the common room and its unwelcome guests in apparent annoyance. His imp cowered low on his shoulder, eyes wide and wary, but the knight himself might have only been looking upon something distasteful that he’d scraped from his boot. Seeing him from the front for the first time, Rathi noted what he wore beneath the green cloak around his shoulders: battered leather armor, queerly at odds with the bright gleam of a bronze medallion around his neck.
The bandit leader turned on her seat, examining the arrival. Her expression, which had been wary at first, quickly melted to amusement. “Oh, well now. I’ll grant you he’s quite the specimen, though he don’t look much like a ‘warknight’ to me—but even if he is, I note there’s only one of him, and quite a few more of us.”
“Only takes one warknight to deal with the likes of the lot of you,” the innkeeper retorted, his attempt at the threat rather ruined by the creak of his voice at the end.
With a purpose to the movement that almost struck Rathi as theatric, Jerek reached over his shoulder and grabbed the hilt of his sword. Whether or not it was truly impossible for a sword of that size to be drawn from a scabbard on the back, draw it he did. The bandits all came on alert as the full length of the weapon was revealed to them, while everyone else dove to the floor or even underneath the tables — little Rathi included. Only the woman seemed entirely un-bothered, at least until the sword spoke.
“I say!” it cheered, with a glee quite unlike the sneering tones Rathi had heard from it before. Rathi couldn’t see its eyes from a distance, but he imagined they had gone wide and eager on both of its sides. “Doesn’t this look like it could be a slaughter!”
The bandits’ leader was on her feet now, staring at Jerek with newfound respect and wariness, her own sword drawn and held out. “Bodhi-chalak,” she observed, calling the warknight’s demon-sword by its proper name. “So you really did get a warknight under your roof. …But,” she observed, after a long moment of silence in which no one moved, “He’s still only one.”
With long, heavy steps, Jerek moved away from the stairs, towards the larger gathering of bandits by the door. The mismatched armor they all wore creaked and jangled as they readied themselves, weapons drawn, their eyes jumping from warknight to demon-sword and back again. Though the warknight’s weapon was nearly as tall as a man, he carried it casually and as if it weighed no more than a child’s toy blade, and the confidence of his stride and his grim expression appeared to make the bandits afraid to make the first move against him.
Jerek stopped when he reached the line of them, taller than every one of the rogues and looking down at them in scorn. He was no more groomed or put together than they were, but his posture and carriage still set him worlds apart from the would-be robbers.
The warknight’s voice did not fit his rough appearance. Though it was deep, befitting his size, he had the sort of smooth, pleasant tone Rathi would have more expected from a cleric or a diplomat.
“Move.”
The rogue he had stopped directly in front of, a brute of foul countenance, looked back at the warknight uncomprehendingly. “Uh… whuh?”
“Move. Before I move you.”
The bandit blinked, exchanged a few uncertain glances with his fellows to either side, but finally the group of them split apart, clearing the way to the door and eying Jerek warily, as if they suspected some kind of trick. The warknight looked up and down the line of them in turn, then sheathed his sword in a movement just as smooth as the one he’d used to draw it in the first place. Without a single glance back, Jerek opened the door and stepped out into the night.
Only the sword’s voice drifted back in before the door shut again: “What, no slaughter?”
When the door fell shut again upon its own weight, the sound of it was heavy and final. Every eye in the room stared towards where the warknight had departed and the silence hung like a shroud, disturbed only by the crackling fireplace.
Finally, at the back of the room, the woman-bandit began to laugh. Her men were slow to join her, but nervous chuckles did at last turn to amazed, disbelieving mirth. Eventually, though, their leader’s voice rose above the din.
“Well!” she exclaimed in delight. “So much for your ‘warknight’!”
She turned towards the stairwell, where the innkeeper still stood, now trembling and entirely sheet-pale. The smile she gave him was far from kind.
“I guess I get my fun after all… and I’ll have to make sure I’m memorable this time. As entertainin’ as it was to watch your bluff backfire… you really should’ve known better.”