The inn seemed busier than normal but that was to be expected when there would be meat served.
Penn, Clara, and Tom walked up to the stairs near the bar towards the balcony up above. There was quite a few people standing around talking, Penn recognized the mayor, the captain of the guard, Clara's father, gil miller. Even the towns weapons master, bridget was there.
Penn realized he may not get a chance to talk to Dawn in private with so many people there, so he found him while wasn't busy and told Dawn he had a business proposition and he would like to talk to him about in private later.
Penn had sold him information before so Dawn agreed to meet him out on the porch after the important people left.
There was a wooden clapping noise to signal the food was almost ready and everybody started to walk towards their places at the big table. Penn was sitting near the end with Clara and Tom. Suddenly Penn could smell the pork, everyone here was excited for this, it wasn't often people got to eat meat and it was usually small game when they did. Humans could hit apart rabbits and the like just as easily as the coyotes did, but that was alot harder to do with boars or cows or sheep.
There were too many people at the table to have a skull on it, but they were in the inn and the inn had a large cows skull over the front door. the captain of the guard was there and he wanted to say a word.
The captain stood up and said "i want to thank the hunters who brought us these boars today. the caravan guard had been attacked the previous week by these boars and we lost two of our people, now we have taken two of them."
"These boars are getting too smart for thier own good, I am going to put out a bounty. every person who kills a boar and can deliver proof to the guards office will earn two silver peices per head and may keep or sell the carcass as they wish. As thanks I will present the hunters who killed these two with three silver pieces each."
Everyone at the table clapped, Noone else had anything to say so every raised their hands against the skull over the door, gestured over thier chest, rested thier arms on their laps, and then picked up their wooden utensils to dig in, everyone had thier own stone knives to cut the pork with.
Seeing everyone's stone knives was interesting, most knives were knapped chert or flint, there were a few knives that were ground and polished into a good shape, the mayor actually had a sharpened ceramic knife that looked like it may have been porcelain. The most interesting however was the knife the captain of the guard carried.
The captains knife was a sharp he had harvested himself many years ago. It was a mutated protrusion that grew off of a hawks wing. The hawk had been killed by a mutated wolf. they had seen it happen while their were escorting a noble through the area. The noble killed the wolf and kept the wolfs body, he couldnt find the hawk, although he had definitely wanted it. He was sure the wolf would have broken some of the bones for the marrow.
The captain returned a few days later after handing the noble off at the next town. He never found the hawks body but he did find one bone. it just happened to be sharp that looked like it had broken off the hawk, he ate the marrow from that bone and was kept the husk of it.
The Sharp was broken and he had eaten the marrow so it couldn't be used as a weapon against the Bones but it was still hard enough to cut flesh and be used for carving wood. The captain treasured that knife.