Hunted

Chapter 3

Wren became more and more at ease with each draught he pulled until he was laughing and cavorting with the best of 'em. Hours passed and the quality of the company got poorer and poorer as the patrons became drunker and drunker.

Around two in the morning, the party began winding down as the crowd one by one fell-sometimes literally-asleep. Wren was still sober as a gravedigger-the man knew how to hold his liquor-and Mark never drank much alcohol. Hated though he did to admit it, Mark would be under the table after just one drink.

Mark was about to ask the innkeeper if they had an available room when the door opened and a frigid wind blasted in. The room had quieted excepting the few die-hards who continued to toast to life as the two new-comers entered.

The strangers wore the white winter uniform of members of the Royal Guard from Senri, the border nation to the Southwest. Blue pipping threaded down the sides and across the lapels, and brass buttons winked behind their frost coating. Stamping and shrugging off the snow, the guards trudged to the bar and plunked down two seats from Mark and Wren.

Up close, Mark could see their clothes showed signs off hard traveling in the dirt smears and creased wrinkles. The most telling though was the haggard, even haunted, expressions they wore. They ordered and paid with only a minimal exchange of words. Once they had their ale, their backs hunched and their heads ducked down, clearly dissuading anyone from speaking to them.

Wren either didn't see or didn't care about their disinclination to speak. Leaning over Mark and nearly spilling his drink in the process, Wren asked, all friendly as can be, "Chilly night, ain't it?"

The guards froze and snapped wary eyes at Wren. After a pregnant pause, it was the younger one who spoke. "Aye, it is," he heaved on a sigh. The man couldn't've been past his earlier thirties, yet he stooped like a man under years of pressure. Blue irises set in too-wide eyes kept darting about, never settling on any one spot too long. Even his carrot hair shot out in all different ways, looking just as frazzled as the person.

In comparison, the older man didn't even so much as raise his eyes from the ale he kept swirling idly around. Mark pegged him around forty-five and to be a man of war; his gaze was as sharp as flint and steady as steel. In the style of the old regime, wiry whitening hair was cropped short; at least it had been once but now was beginning to grow out.

"Now who has been sent out on such a night like this?" Mark sat back and silently sipped his drink while Wren pumped for information; in their line of work, it was always good to know where the state of things lay.

"Corporal Smith and Lieutenant Locke," he grunted out with a nod to the younger fellow.

"What's your assignment that's put you out on such a night like this?" Wren asked, ignoring the pinch Mark gave him. Wren's lack of subtlety was smoothed over with charm for the women, but he was shit outta luck with these fellas. Laden silence answered Wren's question. "C'mon now," he wheedled, "Don't be like that. It's already frigid enough out tonight without you two givin' me the cold shoulder." Wren grabbed his chest, affecting a wound to his heart. Still silence.

Wren shook his head and sighed as he leaned back. "And here I thought we were brothers hailing from the same fatherland, comrades in arms in the same service. I was part of the army, too, you know." Well didn't that get their attention, Mark noted with wry interest. Wren had managed to snag both pairs of eyes, at least until the carrot-topped neurotic one had to glance at the table, then the people, then the dust mote, then who knew what else.

Smith kept looking though and asked, slow and steady, "What company?"

"Wren Stramer of the twelfth cavalry," he snapped back with a salute. "First rider," the cheeky bastard added with a grin.