It was a dismal day.
The rain had started early, and continued through the early hours of the morning. It was neither heavy nor warm. It was a soft, dreary drizzle that continued without surcease into the evening, until even the normal riffraff and cutthroats decided it was too miserable to spend any time outside robbing people or killing them or any of the other hundred occupations for the lowlife criminal scum of the great city of Alliria. Winter was coming, and this was but her first breath, the clearing of the throat that came before the full performance.
The man in black stood at the threshold to one of the many establishments in the Shallows, looking down the muddy street at the poor and misbegotten souls that lived here. This dive was one of the many where the poorest went to drown their sorrows in what one could, if one was exceptionally charitable, call beer. It was not the kind of place that had hard spirits, because even the most rot-gut of liquor was too expensive for the sort that frequented the place. It was, in fact, a place where many a terminal drunk went to die, and many a poor dockman spent the majority of his pitiful pay in the pursuit of forgetting their life.
There was no purpose to being here. The weather suited the mood this fine evening, arms aching from working at a forge from sunup to sundown. He was no master of the craft, but he could hammer iron into the shapes required and, unlike other avenues, it was honest work. Honest work was hard to come by for a many like him; he could find all the work and more for the trade in which he had been born to, were it his desire.
It wasn't. Not anymore, anyway.
Stepping into the seedy establishment, the dark figure shivered to shake off the water. He wore a black hood that he had pulled as far over his face as he could, shadowing everything above a mouth framed at the top with a moustache that was graying at the ends. He was not an imposing man; of average height, of a slightly above average build, he would have blended into any crowd without effort. He wore a simple shirt and trousers, dark enough to be mistaken for black even though they were not really black.
Of particular note, two heavy bladed knives hung at his waist. They were workman's tools, steel that was neither polished nor dull, edges maintained with care and leather-wrapped handles that had been worn smooth more than once, and had to be roughed up occasionally to maintain a good grip.
They weighed his hips down like anchors, but he could not cast them aside. Not willingly, not yet and perhaps not ever.
He made his way to a table in the back, one that was not occupied by anyone else. Other tables were lightly populated at this hour; a handful of men from the docks, burly and wearing workman's clothes. A few other random souls who looked to be drinking themselves slowly to death without much by way of pleasure, and looks on their faces like they would rather not inspect their wooden mugs too closely lest what they were drinking look back at them.
His table. This was his table, and had been for a year at least. The woman working behind the makeshift bar - a pair of rough planks tossed over emptied barrels of the piss they served here - looked up from snatching coins from the splintery wood, and saw him. Unreadable eyes surveyed him, and then she shook her head to bustle off and draw a pint.
For his part, the man settled back, and looked to the ceiling, smoke-stained and bearing many water-stains from past leaks. When the lass delivered his drink, he did not even look to it.
In a year, he had yet to take a single sip...and for a year, he had come in here every night, regular as clockwork, to sit and stare into the middle distance or look at the villainous, foul-smelling liquid with something strange on his face. He had never spoken of what it was, and no one had ever asked.
Until tonight, that was.
The rain had started early, and continued through the early hours of the morning. It was neither heavy nor warm. It was a soft, dreary drizzle that continued without surcease into the evening, until even the normal riffraff and cutthroats decided it was too miserable to spend any time outside robbing people or killing them or any of the other hundred occupations for the lowlife criminal scum of the great city of Alliria. Winter was coming, and this was but her first breath, the clearing of the throat that came before the full performance.
The man in black stood at the threshold to one of the many establishments in the Shallows, looking down the muddy street at the poor and misbegotten souls that lived here. This dive was one of the many where the poorest went to drown their sorrows in what one could, if one was exceptionally charitable, call beer. It was not the kind of place that had hard spirits, because even the most rot-gut of liquor was too expensive for the sort that frequented the place. It was, in fact, a place where many a terminal drunk went to die, and many a poor dockman spent the majority of his pitiful pay in the pursuit of forgetting their life.
There was no purpose to being here. The weather suited the mood this fine evening, arms aching from working at a forge from sunup to sundown. He was no master of the craft, but he could hammer iron into the shapes required and, unlike other avenues, it was honest work. Honest work was hard to come by for a many like him; he could find all the work and more for the trade in which he had been born to, were it his desire.
It wasn't. Not anymore, anyway.
Stepping into the seedy establishment, the dark figure shivered to shake off the water. He wore a black hood that he had pulled as far over his face as he could, shadowing everything above a mouth framed at the top with a moustache that was graying at the ends. He was not an imposing man; of average height, of a slightly above average build, he would have blended into any crowd without effort. He wore a simple shirt and trousers, dark enough to be mistaken for black even though they were not really black.
Of particular note, two heavy bladed knives hung at his waist. They were workman's tools, steel that was neither polished nor dull, edges maintained with care and leather-wrapped handles that had been worn smooth more than once, and had to be roughed up occasionally to maintain a good grip.
They weighed his hips down like anchors, but he could not cast them aside. Not willingly, not yet and perhaps not ever.
He made his way to a table in the back, one that was not occupied by anyone else. Other tables were lightly populated at this hour; a handful of men from the docks, burly and wearing workman's clothes. A few other random souls who looked to be drinking themselves slowly to death without much by way of pleasure, and looks on their faces like they would rather not inspect their wooden mugs too closely lest what they were drinking look back at them.
His table. This was his table, and had been for a year at least. The woman working behind the makeshift bar - a pair of rough planks tossed over emptied barrels of the piss they served here - looked up from snatching coins from the splintery wood, and saw him. Unreadable eyes surveyed him, and then she shook her head to bustle off and draw a pint.
For his part, the man settled back, and looked to the ceiling, smoke-stained and bearing many water-stains from past leaks. When the lass delivered his drink, he did not even look to it.
In a year, he had yet to take a single sip...and for a year, he had come in here every night, regular as clockwork, to sit and stare into the middle distance or look at the villainous, foul-smelling liquid with something strange on his face. He had never spoken of what it was, and no one had ever asked.
Until tonight, that was.
