Rusted Memory: A Wanderer's Tale Read online

  “You’ve got to be bloody kidding me?”

  He’s a smug, sarcastic bastard, cynical in all the ways that make a man hard on the outside, but soft on the inside. I can tell this much about him as I watch him stroke fingers through the short, bristled cut of his bright red beard and the smile he tries to hide beneath his mustache.

  But I will not be bated by a stranger’s cheap attempt to belittle my emotions.

  They are as real to me as my memories, and there is naught that I can do to change them. She was the only woman I ever loved, the only one to touch my heart and leave the prints of her fingers behind. The disgruntled tightening in the muscles of my face does not, however, deter him from going on.

  “There are thousands of women out there, mate.” He lifts a hand toward the tavern door, as if inviting those women in to entice me, then leans back smugly in his chair. “I had three in my bed just this week. One in every town I’ve bedded down for the night. A man gets lonely…”

  Tell me about it.

  “…and there is nothing wrong with filling that emptiness with another woman or, in my case, three.”

  I don’t suppose he’d be inclined to believe me if I confess to him I had three just last night, two of them at the same time. Most men don’t like to hear how many women I take into my bed. They live only for the details of those women’s bodies as I regal them with tales of my exploits.

  The size and curve of her backside, the cup of her breasts in the palm of my hand, the tightness of her…

  “Anyway, how long has she been dead?” For a moment his voice seems to have lost its harshness. There’s respect in his tone, understanding, genuine curiosity and I wonder if he’s lost someone too along the way. “I mean, there is a certain amount of time you should allot to grieving her, sure, but eventually you’re going to have to move on. Stop looking for her in other women’s eyes.”

  He’s speaking directly to me, referencing the braggart’s tale I just spun about the woman who woke up beside me this morning and left my rented room in tears when I confessed there was no place for her in my future. Callous, perhaps, but a man with my affliction can’t afford to get attached—even if she is pleasant enough to look at that she promises to age the way fine wine will do if kept in the dark.

  Besides, I hardly think he will believe me if I tell the truth about Illavia. Thousands upon thousands of years sounds like an even bigger boast than having three women the night before, a touch of sarcasm to accentuate the never ending line of grief that’s drawn me through those years one after the other.

  Instead, I confess with as much honesty as I can muster, “A long, long time.”

  “A long time then.” He lifts his tankard to his lips and takes a drink. Cup still poised at his mouth, his words echo through the emptiness of the cup when he says, “I think she’d want you to let her go.”

  “Let her go?”

  That’s madness. Pure, unadulterated madness.

  I hardly think a man like him could possibly understand.

  Maybe he lost someone once, a cute little dark-haired minx with a quaint button of a nose, swollen breasts and wide, breeding hips. I bet she even gave him sons, that somewhere in this world there are children with her eyes, his fiery hair and endless curiosity about the man who fathered them.

  I could be wrong, but I rarely am.

  Nevertheless, it’s easier for those who’ve lost love of their own accord to ask how it is I’ve never gotten over mine.

  I curl my fingers around the cup in front of me and lean into the table. Part of me wants to ask him outright who in the seven hells he thinks he is, but the other part of me is not so stupid. He might very well be of the seven hells, for all I know. A curse sent from their fires to mock me in my plight for peace.

  I size him up, wondering if it will come to a brawl if I protest his urgings and whether or not I will walk away from it in one piece if it does.

  He’s got to be at least twice my size, broad shoulders across a barreled chest and thick biceps. The fisted way he holds his cup shows calloused knuckles I am fairly certain have pounded the flesh of several faces, but he’s not a warrior. There is no sword leaning against the table, no scabbard looped through his belt. There is the briefest flash of steel, however, hidden in the open fold of his leather.

  He’s too amicable to be an assassin, too large and clumsy to be a thief. A common thug, perhaps, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous, especially as he’s been drinking at this table since I stumbled down the steps this afternoon.

  Master Regulus used to say, “The quill is mightier than the sword. Win your battles with words, Morovio.”

  I was never quite sure how many actual fights the good master had actually been in while he was my teacher. The man never left the bard’s athenaeum in Grenavier while I was there, so my best guess would be zero, which makes him the last person one should take advice from in the event of a brawl.

  Besides, I’m a lover, not a fighter… unless she’s got a husband, and even then I’m more likely to run than fight because there’s no man more dangerous than the one who’s caught his wife with another man.

  Though I digress, and as I laugh at him, I lean even further into the table and say, “Let her go? Does the sun let go the moons?”

  “Every night for about ten hours, depending on the season. Fifteen hours if it’s a long winter’s night.”

  To that he lifts his mug again, one eye brow quirked with mischievous satisfaction and triumph, and then he drinks. He drops the empty cup onto the table with a sigh that mimics relief, and signals to the barmaid on the other side of the tavern.

  “Another!” he announces, the soft curve of his palm connecting with her backside as she sweeps through to take his cup. “And one for my friend, the bard.”

  Now we are friends.

  I suppose this is a relief, as it means he won’t be pounding those fists of his into my face anytime soon, and as I lean back in my chair I think it funny how easily that happens between men as they share drink and intimate detail of casual dalliance.

  From what I’ve gathered it is not such with women, who seem to take far longer to warm to one another and establish a bond of trust before divulging the details of their secret affairs.

  I suspect, in some way, men are to blame for the rivalries between women, but even after all this time I’ve yet to figure that out.

  For a man who’s walked the world lifetime after lifetime, whose life’s work is comprised of their very essence and beauty, there’s a lot I don’t know or understand about women.

  I just don’t let on about it.

  I sing of women. I sing of war. I sing of wars that start over women. I sing of distant lands and the women who brighten their shores. I sing of the stars and the women who lose themselves in the brilliant patterns they make across the sky. Women, women, women.

  In the end, it is always women, and as the busty barmaid with braided hair like streams of honey and eyes the color of a cold winter’s day plunks two over-full cups onto the dirty table in front of us, I lift mine to my new friend.

  “To women,” I say.

  “To women,” he agrees, and we touch our cups with an almost feverish delight and drink.

  The ale is thick and dark, the frothing foam raising almost half a finger length above the rim. It’s near sour, but I’ve been drinking since I staggered out of bed this afternoon and I can barely even taste the acidity anymore. It’s warm as piss, and I swallow several gulps before lowering my cup in thought.

  “Have you ever lost a woman?” I pose.

  Before he can answer an argument breaks out over my shoulder and we both turn toward the raising of voices.

  The barmaid’s is involved and she’s shrieking now, all three voices rising as bodies start to shift and stand to ready themselves for the inevitable fight that will follow. One by one, they begin to take sides in the battle, slowly shuffling inward to back the man they support in the matter.


  The shoving begins, the rising voices growling into bellows as the tension tightens around the tavern like a fist.

  It’s about to get out of control, which is usually my cue to leave because it’s only a matter of time before someone remembers I rolled his sister through the hay.

  My broad-shouldered, ham-fisted, nameless friend ducks a look over my shoulder again, his brow half-cocked and a leering itch to join the fight flashing in his dark eyes.

  He takes another swig and says, “Probably woman troubles.”

  “Isn’t it always?” I laugh.

  He snickers, gulping down the last of his drink and plunking the tankard onto the tabletop.

  The honey-haired barmaid is threatening to go for someone called The Bruise, and I know just the man she means. I also know I’d rather not be there when The Bruise makes his appearance and starts swinging meaty fists into the fray.

  “I think it’s time I’m on my way,” I announce quietly. I finish my drink in two long gulps, toss a silver coin onto the table top and rise slinging my pack and my lute over my shoulder.

  “Are you leaving this town, friend?”

  “Seems as good a time as any,” I shrug.

  Disturbances like the one about to erupt always escalate, and more often than not I somehow wind up in the middle of them. The tarnished honor of someone’s wife or sister, sometimes his mother, gets brought into things, and as I said before, I’m a lover not a fighter.

  I’m no coward, but Master Regulus was wrong. There’s not much damage a quill can do against a swift left hook unless you have time to jam said quill into the swinger’s eye. And if he hits you hard enough, chances are you won’t remember to write about the fight later.

  “I’ve seen my share of Lothanslur,” he tells me, rising slowly from his chair. “Mind too terribly if I tag along?”

  “Company is always welcome on the long road. Where do you head?”

  “Home,” he tells me.

  I nod once, and the two of us make quietly for the back door just as the fists start to fly. We don’t even bother closing it behind us, and we can hear the sound of shattering glass, sloshing ale and beer as it splashes to the floor and the cringe-worthy sound of a tightened fist cracking across bone.

  THREE

  Over the Horizon