Rook

It was a calm winter's eve, cold and clear. The moon high above and the stars beyond are the only thing lighting up a deserted road weaving through the countryside. A cloud of steam escapes the nostrils of a horse floats up across the heavily armoured rider's vision, the dull sound of hooves against the dirt road and the shifting of maille under the crimson red surcoat come together into a quiet cacophony in his ears, a noise made only louder by the thick mail coif pulled to cover all but his face.

Thoughts over why he was still pushing on in the darkest of the night was nagging in his mind. Exhaustion made his limbs tingle, or perhaps that was numbness from having sat in the saddle for a full day and night with no time to rest, or perhaps it might be the cold. Were it only that he might change the mind of his King and have the column stop for the night, but far more prestigious men had already tried and failed. None could change the mind of Jarl Eadric once his mind had been made. So there the rider sat atop his tired destrier and continued to sway back and forth, a small retinue of men some distance behind him – a distance just long enough for them to hear if there is trouble afoot.

The knight in red turns to gaze ahead and sighs, his steaming breath clinging to his eyelashes and freezing near instantly. Only some more riding ahead there would be an inn – a most welcome sight for any weary traveller. Oh how he wished to place his head on a pillow. Even one made of straw. Then, a light. A single flicker of a bright orange glow in the dark cold moonlight. Salvation from the never-ending journey.

The closer they rode, the more frequently they could see this small glow from behind the trees – a small lantern hung outside the door of the inn and welcoming travellers within those warm and safe walls.

In the dead of night the ground had begun to freeze, and as the hooves pressed on that hard frozen dirt it crunched and crackled loud enough to muffle the constant cacophony of shifting maille. A mist begins clouding the knight's vision as the air become colder and colder, the knight's warm breath rising up in a steady cloud. A horse neighs somewhere behind him. The knight in red glances back and sees the column of riders following him all wobble in their seats as they push on, having caught up to him after they too saw the lantern swaying in the calm night.

That is to say that all but one of them sways upon their horses. Even in the shadows there is one rider that stands out from the other as a still and proud figure who yet carried on as normal, on his brow a coronet that seemed to glow in the moonlight, a heavy fur cloak placed over his shoulders to envelop him in a soft, warm embrace that was not afforded to his retinue.

It was him that kept the column moving deep into the night. It was him that all the knights in the column had sworn to protect and honour by all their actions. This man, who had killed his own kin for the sake of survival to Sterling, an action that had made him a pariah in the very realm he now claimed to rule. Sooner or later a threat would arise from within his own family and it would be one that none could halt. Such was the way of the Druilochs. Yet these knights of Norwall would do their utmost.

The inn reveals itself as a beacon in the night as the riders continue along on the path, finally emerging from the lightly forested countryside and into cleared hillside that might in the summertime be swathes of excellent farmlands. The column comes to a stop at the edge of the woods and all turn to gaze upon the inn as if it hid within itself a bed made of feathers for each of them. As they sit and look out, something in the sky draws the red knight's attention: a great flash and then a bright light with a tail following it streaks across the night sky. A star falling from the skies. An omen.

A sudden thud and a crash of metal makes the knight jump on his horse and nearly draw his sword, only to calm down as soon as he turns to see where the noise had come from. Another rider towards the back of the column had lost his stability on his mount and had fallen. No doubt he as well was exhausted from the lack of rest and continuous travel. The now riderless horse neighs and turns to it's master, waiting for him to rise from the ground, puffing a great cloud of steam at him to rouse the worn knight. A weary laughter goes through the column and soon dies down. The retinue was close to the inn, none of them had the willingness to revel in the misfortune of one of their own when they might close the distance to the lovely looking inn instead.

A small corral had been built beside the inn to house the few horses left there by others travelling along the road and seeking a warm place to stay for a night. No proper stables had been constructed, but there was an extension of the roof that hung over a pile of hay. A retinue the size of the Jarl's filled the corral to bursting. The inn itself was quiet, at least from the outside, and a smell of pungent manure – a certain mix from both horses and men – punctures the air just outside the building while the knights and their Jarl close in on the entrance.

With a single long creak the door opens. Another creak follows that as the floorboards flex under the red knight's weight. The light of candles fills the main hall, blinding him for a moment with their dull flickering brightness, but a few blinks focuses his sharp eyes on the empty room. A short balding man rushes out from a side room, hobbling as he carries in a large oak barrel that he is forced to hug tightly so it does not slip form his grasp. Nothing else could be seen of him but the top of the head, one of his arms, and his feet that shuffle along, the barrel blocking the rest of his form from the knights' gaze. The floorboards creak some more as the knight in red moves further into the building, approaching the man carrying the barrel. Other knights follow him eagerly into the warm and hospitable main room, all of them ready to get some mead in them before they try to sleep the few hours they might manage. The barrel slams against the ground near the back of the room and the stout man that had been carrying it turns around, only to jump and raise his hands wide open to welcome his guests.

“Welcome! Welcome to my humble inn! How may I best serve you all?”

The innkeeper calls out just as Jarl Eadric enters, then hushed up as his face flushes white. With a brief moment of hesitation he quickly rushes forwards and kneels.

Eadric looks around the empty main room of the inn and frowns. He quite likes the inn and it certainly is warm, but there is something different about it. There is something that makes him hesitate for a moment and look around with a furrowed brow.

One of the riders directly behind the knight in red steps past him and rushes towards the innkeeper, or rather the barrel several paces behind him, the creaking of the floorboards only increasing as the man got closer to the innkeeper. Others began to file in behind him while the red knight stood in place and observed closely his Jarl's apprehensions. His eyes are quickly returned to the innkeeper when the man suddenly clears his throat nervously, and the knight could swear that the bald man visibly shivered. Something was wrong here. Every bone in his body was telling him so.

And then it hit.

As a floorboard shifted under the weight of his fellow riders, the smell of a pile of manure beneath the inn hit him like someone had clubbed him against his face. The stench was horrid and unmistakeably coming from beneath the floor. He could see the innkeeper look up at the Jarl in quick glances while Eadric moved further in from the threshold into the inn. Then the innkeeper's eyes meet those of the knight in red. Both take a hesitant shuffling step backward, the knight towards the man he had been sworn to protect and the innkeeper towards a gap in the floorboards.

A bright spark flicks to sudden life in the bald man's hand. The next moment these is just the tiniest whiff of something burning that replaces the strong scent of manure. Then there is silence pierced by a shrill ringing, darkness pierced by a sudden flash of light, a cold embrace that that feels like it melts his maille.

A puddle of water had formed beneath the red knight's cheek and helped him regain his consciousness quickly after the flash. With the security of his fellow and his Jarl on his mind he forces his eyes open and looks around. A loud shouting bangs against his eardrums, muffled and distorted by a ringing that has overtaken everything and only gotten louder since the volume of shouting goes up. With a groan that reverberates through his entire body the knight shifts, moving his arms up against the ground on either side of his chest before pushing himself up to his knees, then to his feet.

As soon as the knight in the crimson surcoat finds some balance on his feet he loses it again. His knee smashes back against the hard ground, the maille chausses digging through the fabric of his hose and into the skin of his knee, sending a sudden pang of immense pain through his body. A scream of agony escapes his lips, screeching against his ringing ears like a mangled horn. Yet as the pain reverberated through him, the knight's eyes fall upon the structure before him, his eyes finally focusing on the crimson and gold colours flickering against the snowy ground and the night sky. The inn has become a burning wreckage. Several roof beams collapse onto a lone figure trying to crawl away from the blaze right before his eyes, sending the tall helmet of his fellow knight bouncing alone on the cold hard ground. The poor soul. It was horrid. The longer he looked at the scene the more he saw the remains of his fellows, but eventually the heat of the blaze pushes against his bare face and forces him to avert his eyes. The red knight lowers his head in despair.

A shadow crosses the burning wreckage of the inn. Then another. The sound of the shouting became more clear, mixed with the neighing of panicking horses. With a solid kick of his foot the knight rose up once more, now observing the scene around him far more clearly than before. The few men of the retinue that had survived the horrendous explosion were crawling out of the wreckage of the inn, only to be cut down by a group of other men brandishing long axes. They had clearly been laying in wait to make sure none would escape this well-prepared ambush of theirs. The knight had to admit it had been ingenious, although had they not been pushing ahead through day and night the Jarl's column would never had stopped at the inn.

Not far from the knight was a man walking around, pressing his blade through the necks of the helpless men laying against the ground. Blood was dripping from the tip of the blade, a remnant of his meticulous work to make sure the Jarl's guards were in fact dead. It did not take long for this roaming man to notice the knight in red hobbling to his feet. With his sword at the ready and a grin on his face the man walks towards him. The knight in red pulls out his sword so he might meet his assailant, a throbbing in his head causing him to wobble in his stance, keeping him slightly off balance. He watched the sword of his enemy came down only to strike air as the knight stepped aside just enough to dodge it. Again the man struck, this time his blade meeting the knight's horizontally swung sword in a ringing clash. The force of the swing sent the defender to one knee and the attacker wide off kilter. An opening appeared before him as the enemy tried to recover and struggled to pull his blade back, seeking to strike again with the pull. With one solid kick off the ground the red knight was atop his enemy and pushed his own sword against the neck of his assailant, sliding the edge down into the man's neck until the blade punched through into his oesophagus. Blood began flowing like from a fresh spring creek onto the snowy ground beneath them.

With a moment of respite the knight looks up to see his surroundings, his body heaving with heavy breaths while his heart tries its best to pound through his ribs. In the distance the knight can see three men standing by the burning inn, another man kneeling in between them with his head lowered. A silver coronet glows on the icy ground beside the kneeling man, tinted orange now with the glow of the crackling fire.

Two of the men standing begin to circle around, stopping only once they are behind the kneeling man so they can firmly grab his shoulders. The one man left in front hefts an axe in his hand, feeling the weight of the heavy iron head while preparing himself for what is clearly an execution. Slowly he lifts up his arm, axe securely in his hand, preparing for a death blow on who must be the Jarl.

Without thinking of what he should do or what might be the consequences of his next actions, the red knight lunged up and towards the axe-wielding man. He became akin to a panther protecting it's young in both the bellow that emerged from his lungs as well as in the ferociousness of his movement. The men all turn to see him just before the knight comes smashing into the lone figure, the axe knocked away for now, his Jarl safe. Yet the knight does not stop. His momentum is such that he picks up the would-be executioner and carries him to the crumbled wall of the inn. The knight in red can hear the popping of ribs being broken as his shoulder smashes the man against the wall, which then begins to groan and crumble backwards. The man he tackled falls limp against the wall, following the tilting of the wall until the whole structure crashing down into the flames and the corner of the roof above this part of the wall comes crashing down on the poor man.

Time comes to a crawl as the knight in red turns and heaves a deep breath, then gasps when he sees that the men still with the Jarl have sprung into action. The red knight's eyes fall on his Jarl just in time to see the axe coming down, smashing deep into Eadric's skull despite his knight's bravest efforts.