"Hello?" Adam called hesitantly - even though it wasn't the most elegant place, shouting didn't seem appropriate to him.
"Hello? Is someone there!?" The mage tried again, this time louder.
"I'm coming!" A hurried, female voice called out from behind the door.
A moment later, a woman in an orderly green dress and leather apron walked out of the backrooms. She had long brown hair, tied in a bun over her head. A few strands fell out and rested on her tanned face.
"Hello! How can I help you?" She asked from behind the counter.
"Hi, I would like to order food for eight men- no, make it twelve - we haven't eaten since the morning..." Adam started.
"That's a lot so it will take some time... can you wait an hour or two?... It mainly depends on the type of dish, but two hours should be enough time to expect, even for such a big order." The woman walked over to a shelf hanging from the wall and picked up a few pieces of paper. Then, she had chosen one from seven of them and returned to the counter.
"We don't have anything to do today, anyway, so time shouldn't be a big issue. Though I would be lying if I said that guys would be happy to wait two hours for a meal." Adam explained with a grimace on his face. He too, didn't like the idea of waiting so long.
The woman nodded solemnly and set the piece of paper on the counter.
"Here is what we are preparing today,... personally I would choose the stew, Dad is very good at making those, and it will be especially delicious today - we refilled our stock of ingredients just yesterday." She pointed at the scribble at the top of the page.
"No, sorry but we will have to pass - stews are no-go." Adam refused instead of his companions, who would unanimously agree, that they had enough stews for the rest of the month - at least.
-------------------------
Adam was sitting by one of the biggest tables alone - waiting for his company to come after taking care of the horses and leaving their luggage in the rooms.
The table was near fire, and that was Adam's point of interest at the moment.
He stared into the dancing embers, linking the bricks surrounding the hearth and thought about various things. Future, the current journey and his next steps on the road of magic, inter alia.
Only when a burly man, who stealthily sat beside the mage, tapped him on the shoulder, did Adam escape the world of his thoughts.
"Hello, boy. I haven't seen you here before - what's the reason for your visit?" The man asked in a calm, almost eerie voice.
"Me - and my companions are just passing by, you won't see us here tomorrow," Adam assured, unsure about the man's intentions.
His interlocutor was tall, burly and muscular - which along with his near-fully shaved hair gave him a scary, nearly ferocious look.
"Travleller's huh? It's quite rare to see the likes of yours these days, especially someone as young as you... Aren't you scared of being recruited?" The man asked in confusion - as if he couldn't believe he was asking such a question.
One might think that it was stupid of him to ask that - after all, almost all young men were scared of going to the army, and the answer was seemingly obvious - but in this situation, it was different.
In the man's eyes, Adam was a reckless brat who wandered far from his hometown - where there may be someone who might guard him against being recruited. New city or town every day, meeting new guards and new officials, and most importantly - new officers, wasn't the smart strategy of staying out of the recruiter's reach.
"Scared? -Not really. I've come to terms with the danger, it's more of an unnerving sensation, as if I was a defenceless pig, in a forest filled with monsters - who despite being in the line of sight, never attacked." Adam made up some bullshit as fast as he could. He consulted general guidelines of what to say to the locals with Fenfallal and others, but speculations and daydreams were way different than an actual conversation with a wolf-like local man.
"You aren't an officer by chance, I assume?" He joked, at the end - to divert the burly man's attention from whatever suspicious things he might have said.
"Ha ha! No - of course not... You choose a good establishment. It seems the luck is on your side, you will have a hard time finding someone remotely associated with the army here, though, a bruise might find you here easily." Finishing, he pulled his shirt aside - letting Adam's eyes wander on a heavily bruised shoulder. It's good he did it now, not when the food arrived.
"Ouch, That must have hurt..." Adam expressed his pity.
Then looked around the tavern's floor again, this time more carefully.
"Nah, normal stuff. I had worse, this one will need at most two, three more days to heal." The guy babbled, looking at his injured arm with something akin to amused curiosity.
Adam looked around, his eyes wandering between the counter - and the pretty innkeeper's daughter, and the guests sitting by the tables. occasionally focusing on some point in between while the nameless man drank from his half-filled mug of light beer.
"Say - you claim there are many brawls here, yet I have seen none until now, and the room is quite good looking - no signs of destruction, a big one anyway... So, are you making a fool out of me?" Adam turned towards the guy, his face wasn't accusing, but curious.
Wolf-like man - Wolfie for short - looked the young mage in the eyes, and laughed.
"Ha ha, hihihi... Ehh.. you might have caught my bluff - but I didn't lie entirely." He stopped for a moment and pointed at his shoulder. "This was made here - and there are many with similar marks around this room. It's just that when we fight, we step outside most of the time - those few signs of fighting around here were left by a handful of stupid people, who will not return here again." He finished with a smile, his pupils dilated as he reminisced in a daze.
"Banned, or dead?" Adam expressed his curiosity.
"Huh??? Of course banned, who do you take us for? Northern Barbarians?" Wolfie exclaimed loudly, clearly offended.
He didn't know though, that a northern barbarian was sitting across him, by the same table. I wonder what would he do if he knew such a bloodthirst beast was active nearby.
"Well, you never know - just a few days ago, my companions murdered the owner of the inn we were staying at at the time. Which is quite unusual for most of us…" Adam shared - he started to get comfortable around Wolfie, of course not enough to kiss him or something, just the usual taking stuff.
"Huh?? A wait, what do you mean by 'most'???" Wolfie asked in shock - and straightened his back.
Adam waved his hand dismissively and continued his tale. "You see, they all ordered some kind of vegetable stew, with meat mixed in between - which I completely don't understand, who would want to willingly eat flaccid vegetables? It's disgusting to destroy perfectly good plants like that…
Anyway, I've gone off-topic. That damned stew of theirs didn't quite meat their expectations…
Hehe, - you see what I did there?" Adam laughed at his terrible joke - maybe the beer he drank affected him more than he thought.
Wolfie seemed to catch the joke, but didn't express himself with anything more than a chuckle - he definitely wasn't a father.
"So, that stew - it wasn't very good, in fact, it was so disgusting that we had to spend the next day in the town despite our best wishes - fortunately, the innkeeper paid for our stay, that may have been his saving grace." Adam ended his speech with a big gulp out of his mug.
Wolfie just stared at him with a stagnant expression, probably still amazed by our mage's fantastic joke.
"Now, that I did a summary of the background for the very near future - tell me. What happened with your shoulder, exactly? I just can't hold in my curiosity.."
"Ehh.. Nothing serious - some douchebag was calling the war a joke, a pointless conflict that must have been orchestrated by the nobles to keep us, commoners in check." Wolfie made a sour expression and prepared himself to spit to the side, but decided otherwise at the last moment - noticing the innkeeper's daughter staring at him intently. just waiting for him to do something. He gulped, then continued.
"When he got too loud and started to insult the royals - Melly asked us to escort him out. The guy proved to be quite the fighter, really - he was at least an intermediate warrior, maybe even an advanced one - though he didn't use any aura against us. Even then we were beaten like children. That fucker..." The wolf-like man clenched his fists in anger.
"Uuu, tough luck - you never know who you stumble into. Let's assume he was Advanced, how about it?" Adam stood up and sat on the other side of the table, next to Wolfie - then wrapped his arm around him, in an attempt to console the huge man's pride.
"Auch - don't touch there... better yet, don't touch me anywhere." Wolfie moved away from Adam on the bench after the man in question touched his hurt shoulder. Between slides, he grabbed the incognito mage's mug, moving it far from its owner. "No more beer for you, just return to staring at the fire. In that, I will accompany you."
Thus, the great staring started.
Adam and the guy, who rudely never mentioned his name, sat before the fire, which unter their gaze - turned a shade redder, Adam could swear.
-----------------------------
Eventually, the innkeap[er returned with the company of warriors - and one misfit.
The warriors returned wearing more comfortable clothing than their usual armour. They must have felt a great deal of relief, after walking a few steps without the additional weight, with clothes that didn't squeeze them as much as the armour straps. Algier though, remained unchanged.
"Ahhh, what a relief to sit down at last," Algier said dramatically while falling on the bench, with a loud thud of his ass hitting the wood.
"When will the food arrive?" Asked Fenfallal, who announced himself with a thud even louder than Algier's.
"In about half an hour." Answered Wolfie, without taking his eyes off the flaming embers.
Fenfallal looked in his direction with confusion.
"And who are you?" The swordmaster asked, this time in Adam's direction, which to be fair wasn't far from the unknown man.
"Wolfie," Adam answered simply, rotating on the bench in his companion's direction at the same time.
"Wolfie??? I'm no-"
"Yes you are, don't elaborate - it fucks up your mysteriousness." Adams shut the only local at the table down before he could reveal his identity.
It was quite satirical, you see - now everyone at the table was hiding their true identity. But it was the only person who didn't need to hide, whose name was unknown.
"Bu-"
"Shut up, Wolfie." Drunk Adam seemed quite bold while drunk - in the span of an hour, the dynamic between him and Wolfie changed drastically.
Fenfallal watched it all with amusement - a boy, barely 15 and a half was ordering a grown man around. True, they were both drunk, nevertheless, it was funny to watch.
"What did you order, by the way?" He asked, still amused.
Adam looked into The Swordmaster's eyes with the greatest seriousness he could muster, staring at the golden-coloured pupils as if trying to gaze at his soul.
"A stew." This short answer awoke a deep fear in the hearts of the warriors. Past trauma surfaced, stirring the before-still waters of their souls and erecting massive waves in all directions with its ascent.
Fenfallal's eyes nearly popped out, his face contorted in disgust, and then - an uncontrollable spasm shook his body. Making his head fly dangerously close to the hardwood table.
Someone at the end of the table didn't have this good though.
A warrior, seasoned in battles and hardships of life willed with war and death - puked on the floor, barely missing his shoes in the process.
Fenfallal managed to gather himself.
"YOU F..."