V3(ish): Lodina

	Drawing water up from the well with rope and bucket, Lodina studied the old fort squatting on the rise above her village. Past the high chimney of the smithy, opposite the stream turning the great wheel of the mill, like an old lord peering down from his high dais in some story. Ten years ago, it had seemed such a solid thing. Now, without a sitting lord to see to the maintenance, the walls and towers showed signs of predation by man and nature alike. Ivy climbed the stony face, winding through gaps in the crenelation where locals had picked away stones for their homes.

Ten years ago, when everything had gone so wrong. Baron Xavier had ridden off with half the soldiers and half the men of the village, answering the call to aid Glockenbaltz against a barbarian invasion. Though well outside the risk of any but the most desperate probe, the village was also too far from the city to expect support if the war went poorly. Her husband had gone with them, citing his experience as a trader and tavern keeper to gain a position as quartermaster for the Baron’s retinue.

	“Two months, maybe three,” he had said, confident words reassuring a young, uncertain wife. “I’ll keep them in bread and beer while the guns hammer those yellow-eyed bastards, and when I’m back we’ll have all the money we’ll ever need to make those expansions you want to the inn.”

	It had taken six months for what was left of the Baron’s force to return, a paltry number of men nursing their wounds. Their stories, full of names and places Lodina could only half imagine, confirmed what rumors had reached the village. While the army gathered around the Watch’s hard core had succeeded in turning back the Lakelander horde, the cost had been high. After Baron Xavier’s death in a foolhardy charge straight into a storm of arrows, the remainder of his men had joined a battalion of odds and ends like themselves, still willing to fight but without the leadership to be effective. Their campaign of defense and counter-attack had run on until the barbarians withdrew back beyond the Spill, stalled but undefeated. Of her husband, there was no conclusive word. Some said he had fallen in one of the many raids upon their camp, but none of those could remember exactly when it might have happened. Others had held out that he had simply become separated in the war’s confusion, and would be making his way home as they had.

	That last was a reasonable faith to keep after a year, a foolish hope after two. After ten, with their daughter grown to adulthood in his absence and a son by which to remember their last days of youthful bliss, it was no hope at all. In all that span of time, Lodina had run the tavern herself, raised the children with the help of her friends, and shielded herself from the advances of men with the mantle of a widow.

	Looking down into the bucket, an action which required a hand across her bosom to flatten it out of the way, she examined the face looking back at her with a critical eye. High cheekbones and a strong chin, softened by the gentle curve of full lips and a slender nose that had just the slightest hint of a snub to it. All that framed by the curling locks which had escaped the nigh-unmanageable pile of nearly white blonde hair wound up atop her head. It was a good face by most accounts, only vaguely marked by lines of stress and laughter around eyes and mouth, neither unhealthily pale nor weathered by the sun. It had taken time, but through the concerted effort of her friends she had finally been convinced that the expression she saw in her reflection was the cool certainty of experience, and not the bitchy scowl of an old hag.

	Damning the well silently for being so deep that it gave her wandering mind time to dwell on such things, she filled her basin with water and used the last of it to clean her hands and dampen her cheeks and neck. Balancing the basin on her hip, she left the bucket and rope on the well’s edge for whoever might need it next. It was a short walk from the water source in the village square to her front door on the corner, the rambling two-story inn eternally in the process of jostling the potter’s shop to one side through some accident of architecture. Friends and neighbors hailed as they passed each other on the street, pausing to chat briefly about some recent drama of the last six months or so. It was that sort of town, where there was always work to be done but there always seemed time to do it in. Only the year’s autumn harvest drove the locals into a frenzy of activity, and that was months away yet.

Summer lay heavy across the land, and she halfheartedly damned the season for good measure, not only for its oppressive heat but also for its long days with too much idle time for her sanity. Business was steady at all times of year, and summer was relatively easy for the farmers who made up the bulk of the village’s population. Even so, most of them made themselves busy until the long shadows of evening signaled an end to the day. Travelers were scarce enough on this road to nowhere, though there was rumor that a new expedition was being planned to prospect the mountains to the west. If it went through, her trade would pick up sharply from the miners and teamsters, maybe even permanently should the project be fruitful.

	Windows thrown wide to catch the faint breeze, the main floor of the inn was pleasantly cool and dim compared to the sunny heat outdoors. Sunlight slanted in across sturdy tables and chairs, reflecting from the shelves of glassware arrayed behind the bar. Kneeling by the high hearth where hardwood boards met flagstones, Odd was still at work with all the haphazard enthusiasm unique to a ten year old boy making a chore into a game. According to his muttered dialogue, in which he took both parts, the soapy suds were an advancing army of righteousness come to conquer the sooty soldiers of evil. From the black streaks on his face and arms, Lodina had to wonder which side was having the most success at the moment. It being Odd, who never missed a chance to pester anyone for a story, the forces of good and purity would undoubtedly prevail in the end.

	Behind the bar, Rognfrid sorted fresh linens between a row of wicker baskets, one for each of the five upstairs rooms. Most travelers preferred the cheap lodgings of the stables, but every now and then a relatively wealthy entrepreneur came through expecting a real bed with clean sheets. After a hot meal and a refreshing bath, of course. Those strangers to this far-flung town often mistook Lodina’s daughter for her younger, wilder sister. She had the same sharp features, the pale blonde hair and prodigious bust, but lacking her mother’s practiced elegance preferred an exuberant and gregarious demeanor. She took her time with the task, fingering each length of cloth as she folded and piled as though every sheet and towel brought a new sensation.

	Setting the basin of water on the bar’s glossy reddish surface, Lodina turned to examine her home and business once more. It was the culmination of years, one day at a time spent in hard work and careful planning, supplemented by the occasional flight of spurring opportunity. Much like her children in that respect, or perhaps an eldest child who had become reliable and predictable in adulthood. These days, she wondered if Odd would find himself carried off on an adventure like one of the heroes he adored so much, or more likely, whether Rognfrid would become bored with her quiet country life and travel to the city in search of better prospects. Most of the young men in town had tried to win her affections, each in their own uniquely clumsy way, and every one had been turned away with varying degrees of tact.

	Maternal worries, the old with the edges rounded off by time and the new still fresh and sharp, were interrupted by the glazed cup set by her elbow on the bar.

	“Surveying the demense, m’lady?” Rognfrid met her mother’s eye with a twinkle and a grin, corking the bottle and setting it back with its fellows.

	“Checking under the bed for monsters,” Lodina said, raising the cup to her lips. Sweet apple cider, the kind they served to children on special occasions or else froze in winter snows to be distilled into a harder beverage. “I know they’re there, but I like to count the eyes and feelers.”

	“You would, too.” Wrinkling her pert nose, the younger woman pushed the whole row of baskets from one side, sliding them down the bar until they were closest to the stairs leading up. “And you’d have them out looking for work to pay the rent.”

	“No free rides here,” Lodina affirmed, toasting for good measure before taking another sip. “That goes for girls as well as gobbins, you well know. Go on, hustle! Never know when we’ll get busy.”

	“Pffft!” Her rude noise trailing into a trill of laughter, Rognfrid carried her first load up with a light step, taking the stairs two at a time. She was diligent enough in her own lackadaisical manner, or at least charming enough to be forgiven for her domestic shortcomings.

	Finishing her drink, Lodina moved behind the bar to wash her glass and return it to its place with the others, then set about disassembling and cleaning her taps. It would be a slow night with another early start for most of the town tomorrow, what she thought of as a ‘beer night’. Holidays and harvests meant a ‘whiskey night’, but reaping was a ways to go and there were no recent deaths for which to hold a wake. No weddings either, with the younger men coming in to raise a parting glass to their ‘fallen’ fellow. Just the usual lot in, mostly bachelors with more interest in the common pot and a kind word from the proprietress than greeting the rising sun with a headache and a rough tongue. Were she a more mercenary sort, Lodina often thought, she and Rognfrid could probably drive most of the town to hard drink without too much effort.

	Lost in thought once again, she hardly noticed the absence of Odd’s brush rasping over the hearthstones until the light abruptly changed, bringing her head up to focus her eyes on the front door. Silhouetted by the sun without, a tall frame with broad shoulders cast a unnaturally misshapen shadow across the inn. Passing inside, it resolved into the form of a man bearing a polished case as tall as himself, dark wood held tight by blackened metal clasps. By his height, Lodina took him for an older man until her practiced eye and the soft light penetrated the pale patina of powdered rock, as well as the weariness born of acquiring it over many miles.

	“Come by the southern road, goodman?” Without looking down, she brought up a tall glass from behind the bar and set it in front of herself, filling it from a jug of wine-cut water. Sliding it forward with one finger against the base, she added, “Whistle-wetter’s on the house for travelin’ folk.”

	His reaction immediately set her nerves on edge, drawing her mind fully out of its habitual funk to focus on him entirely. One slow blink as he regarded her seemed to adjust his eyes to the window-lit glow of the inn. Then they snapped down to the drink, across to Odd where he knelt on the floor half-turned to observe the stranger, then to the highest visible point of the stairs, all assisted by the smallest movements of his head. It was not the casual glance at one’s surroundings, nor the studied appraisal of the itinerant connoisseur. Once her thoughts caught up to the sudden heavy beat of her heart, Lodina realized she had no idea what it was; only that he moved... strangely.

	With a slight turn of his body that suggested he was about to step towards the fireplace and her son, the man suddenly took a few steps that brought him to the bar. Setting one end of his case on the floor, he leaned it up with care before letting his fingers slide away from it to raise the glass. Draining the drink in one long go, he brought it down with a soft thunk and slid it back. Raising his left hand from out of her sight behind the bar, he jingled a cord of copper rings large enough for a grown man to wear around his biceps against the bar.

	“I can pay. Still thirsty.”

	Mouth tugging down in a disappointed frown, Lodina refilled the glass with one eye on the rings. “Copper won’t get you far, I warn you... freeman. Not much call for bronze work these days with so much iron on the market. You’re fine for the wetter, but if it’s a bath and a bed you’re needing...”

	One grunt of understanding turned into a dry, rumbling cough, and he took a short drink before his hand swept the rings away and returned as a closed fist. Shuffling fingers gave rise to a rasping clink as he looked into his palm, then dumped out half a handful of stamped silver coins; one side showed a merchant’s scales, the other a burning torch.

	Lodina, eyes fixed on the stranger with renewed interest, said, “Odd, run fetch hot water for the man’s bath, and tell your sister there’s a guest for the first room tonight.”

	Apparently unconcerned by his display of wealth, the freeman tapped his glass with a calloused fingertip as the boy scampered away. “Does this mean I get another drink?”