An Experiment, Part 2 – The Inn
1 vote each for the river and the road, but 2 for the inn.
By the time you come within sight of the inn, the sun has fully set. You gratefully open the door to find a largely empty common-room, lit by scattered gas-lamps and a crackling fire in the hearth set into the far wall. The walls are decorated with antique weapons, tarnished shields and old axes and swords, and even an enormous pike hung over the bar. There are a few tables, though only one of them has an occupant and he has the look of the sort of regular who is essentially part of the furniture. From behind the broad, oak-topped bar, the innkeeper offers you a weary smile. It is late, after all.
“What can I get you?”
You negotiate a bed for the night, the last of the inn’s lukewarm pot of stew and a satisfyingly full tankard, and retreat to a corner table, comfortably near the hearth. A server emerges from the kitchens and brings your food and drink over a few minutes later, offering another weary smile. You return one of your own, feeling slightly guilty to impose on their hospitality at such an hour. But the guilt is immediately erased when you smell the food, the first hot meal you have seen in days.
It is a relief just to sit down in a real chair, let alone to be warmed by the fire from without and the food and ale from within. You have been walking for a long time. The thought of the bed that awaits you above is like a siren’s lure, for all that it has cost you more than half of what remains in your purse. You may have to seek an odd job or two in Whetstone when you reach it.
None of the staff nor the lone regular seem particularly interested in conversation, which suits you perfectly. Explaining exactly what you’re travelling beyond the forest to do would take a long time – and might not make you many friends in the telling. But you do need to know where you are, so you can figure out what to do tomorrow, and so you stand to ask the innkeeper if he has a map.
As you do, somebody kicks the inn’s door in.
It is in fact three somebodies: two men and a woman in rough leathers and scraps of mail, large and belligerent and all carrying an assortment of nail-studded clubs and knives. They fan out across the common-room with practiced speed – this is not the first time they have done this. One kicks the chair out from underneath the drunken regular, sending him sprawling and flailing to the floor. The second menaces the server as she drops the plates she had been clearing, forced back against the wall next to the fireplace. The third, the woman, makes for the bar, holding her weapons high so they glint in the firelight.
“Money,” she snaps. “Now.” It is not a request.
The innkeeper snarls, pulling out a long cudgel from beneath the bar and hefting it with the ease of long experience – but he is one man against three, and the server is at knifepoint now.
But you, in your shadowed corner, have been forgotten by everyone.
You are sitting just a few feet from the door that leads to the kitchens – at best, there will be a cook or someone else you can fetch for help; at worst, there will be somewhere to hide.
Alternatively, you could simply make a break for the door behind the intruders – out into the cold night, alone. This is not your fight – or it does not have to be.
Above your head hangs one of the old swords – it is long, and heavy, and though it may not be sharp, the thugs at the bar do not know that. The innkeeper cannot fight back without help – and the man holding the server hostage has his back to you.
This, you think, is not my day.
What will you do?
Leave your choices in the comments. I’ll tot up the votes, and any that might come from Twitter, next Saturday – and then we’ll see what happens next…
