The Faerie Knight

Chapter One (Part 1)

The Faerie Knight

a novel by MisterVilliers

Chapter One

An Errant Knight

1

Never had the tavern been so full. Villagers crowded around too few tables and insufficient chairs. They stood in the alcoves and sat on the window sills and packed the stairs to the second story, and more were in the upstairs rooms with their ears pressed flat against the floor.

Never had the tavern been so silent.

The townsfolk, whether sitting or standing, were still as statues, their attention commanded by whomever found the courage to address the room, and they took it in turns to speak. This time, it was a grim-faced man in a soot-stained apron, who said, "We have no choice. If we don't run, we'll die."

Numerous voices scoffed. "When you're shoeing the horses, d'you use a hammer or your head? Where could we possibly go where it wouldn't find us?"

The farrier twiddled his thumbs. "The Gloomwood? Surely the faeries would protect the forest—and us, too, should we happen to be in it at the time!"

Several people spat on the floor. Many more made signs of protection as if to ward off evil.

"The faeries don't care for nothing but their own!"

"They'd sooner curse us and laugh as we danced ourselves to death than let a human into their precious wood!"

"And anyway, wood burns, you fool. We'd be worser off, faeries or no."

The farrier, whose chair had been stolen by the lass beside him, reached for his tankard to drown his abashment, but it had been taken also. With a backward step, he vanished into the crowd.

"If we hurried, we could make it to Afallach," proposed another hopeful tavern goer, an ancient, white-bearded gnome named Dimble. He stood only two feet and so many inches high, and he'd been placed upon a table so that he could be seen. He spoke in a high, creaky voice. "It isn't far. Walls, towers, the queens' knights—what safer place is there in all the Duskmeadow?"

"Aye," said another, his tone equally as cynical as old Dimble's had been optimistic. "If ye could make it that far before the beast spots ye from its perch. And what then when it does? Nay. Ye'd be dead in a flash—like that!"

Old Dimble shook his beard at the naysayer in a manner not unlike a large, hairy iguana. "And what of the dozens of families that have already taken to the road? The ones that left at first sight of the beast a fortnight past? What of them? Surely they're safely ensconced in Afallach by now."

"Nay. Dead. The lot of 'em."

"No!"

"Don't leave the village, you say, but we're food for the crows if we do or don't!" cried Halvar, a scrawny reed of a young man who worked as assistant at Dimble's tea and incense shop. "It's a dragon! It'll kill us anywhere, village or road, it cares not!"

"Not if you give it what it wants." A middle-aged woman hobbled out of the crowd and immediately arrested the village's attention. "I am Aoife. I come from Fairefield."

"She lies! Fairefield was burnt to ash not a week ago!"

"Just so," agreed Aoife. "It was all I could do to escape the dragon's wrath. I won this for my trouble." The woman lifted the back of her shirt and pulled aside a stained linen bandage, revealing a wide, blistered, angry burn that claimed her back, the full breadth of it hidden neath the bandage. The crowd hissed and gasped. Then she lifted the hem of her skirt; the burn continued past her waist and down her calf.