The large northerner sat quietly within the tavern, eyes peering into a flame with such ferocity that one might wonder if he had lost himself within. But as he glared upon the crackling fire he was far from lost and his simple mind far from vacant. In fact, it stormed with an intense dissatisfaction as he ran himself through aging memories, again, and again, his temperament growing fowler and more morose with each passing thought. He had been betrayed and robbed.
The tavern was alive. A group of men were on their way out as a hooded lad walked in with a sure-footed step only for his gaze to meet the northerner’s and the northerner’s to meet his. They knew of each other, and were once brothers. The squire knew with conviction evident upon his young, frightened features that he had come upon a grave misfortune. While the northerner, the oath breaker, slowly stood, his dull, empty gaze and stern, emotionless features conveyed no message at all. The silence wound like a thick fog between the two, though it had always been, and soon the northerner’s hand slowly fell to his recently forged axe, lightly touching upon its spiked head as he drew it forward from his belt.
The squire, clad in the white tabard so indicative of his uselessness, panicked, his worried eyes shifting about the room in search of desperate escape. He would try to leave, but as he turned to make flight one of the rough men pushed him forward and laughed, nodding to the silent northerner with approval and chuckling forward a few jovial, cruel words. The squire upon a sword as he stumbled forward, but it would be futile as the large northerner caught his wrist in a sizeable, calloused hand and shoved his axe’s spiked tip forward remorselessly.
The squire screamed. He was loud at first, but as the northerner drew back his axe and stabbed forward with a sickeningly calm repetition the lad grew quiet. Bile and blood soon splattered upon the floor, forming a pool that the squire soon joined. After a long hesitation the northerner’s boots were stained by the foul pool as well. The axe rose and plummeted in an executioner’s arc that split bone and flesh, freeing the squire of his head.
The northerner gathered the squire’s tabard and wrapped the head, the killer had no wish to peer upon its bloodied end or matted gory hair, as too often did it seem that the dead would peer back. The northerner left the corpse behind and slowly, somberly made his way to the Ildician Order’s fort which he had spent so much time, a year or more, he couldn’t remember. Though he remembered that he hated them, and they carved a message into his arm so that he might never forget. As he approached the fort’s ruined bridge he stopped, and threw the tabard wrapped head forward. It landed in the grass across the river, rolled, and came to rest at the foot of the fort.
He would never forget.