Planting done, and Sunday services tomorrow means that tonight is a party at the inn. The other hands agreed to drag me along to their weekly ritual of spending most of the weeks' earnings on drinking games that no one remembers. I suppose that is why they continue to do it week after week. Needless to say I did not 'indulge' as much as they did.
I was just about to leave dragging my comrads with me when I heard a conversation that went something like this:
"Dragons!" said a voice that I didn't recognize. "What the..."
At this point several other voices shushed the speaker and stuffed him into a chair. The man stared across the table at none other than Loomis of the giant bats.
Over the next few minutes I worked my way to where I could the conversation.
"You mean to tell me..." said the man who had blasted the previous exclamation, "...that there are dragons living just up the hill from this town right now!? And you are okay with that!?"
"No. no. ------- no." said Loomis. "I mean yes, there are ------- dragons living over in the cliffs, but no, we are not just ------- sitting here ------- being ------- okay with it. I have a ----- ------ -------- plan, and just need a couple extra long lengths of ------ rope."
"So! You want me to give you ten crowns worth of rope that my wife and daughters spent all winter making, so you can go get it burned up chasing dragons!? Why would I do something that stupid?"
"Well first of all I am not ------- going to get them burned up. The dragons ain't old enough to blow -------- flame" said a very self-important and proud-of-his-knowledge farmer Loomis.
"Absolutely not. And I'll tell you another thing." the mans voice began to grow louder as he began to grind his teeth in rage and his face began to turn red. "I promise you that if you don't take care of your -------- -------- -------- dragon problem, you will not see another caravan this side of the tower road."
The last words came out more of a growl than actual words, but the entire party of travellers stood up, and went straight to the inn keeper. As far as I could tell they cancelled their rooms and set out for home that very minute.
I would have thought the nights excitement was over when Loomis was suddenly flat on his back from a right hook that came out of nowhere. With men scrambling in every direction, I dove straight into the chest of the man that had landed the punch in an attempt to avert an all out brawl.
As you can imagine I was a bit shocked when I just bounced of the man, and landed on my knees at his feet. It was the blacksmith, and he pinned poor Loomis to the ground and just started yelling into his face...
"Are you TRYING to drive people out of town!?" there was some sputtering from the floor. "What did you think you were doing; trying to steal from our guests, and senselessly scaring them with stories of dragons that have not even been seen except as distant shadows over the waste? You just lost Jarick three nights lodging, lost me the job of shoeing four horses, and cost Merik a full load of supplies. All of which were already ordered. And to top it all off, those men are going to alert everyone in the region. This road will be shut down entirely if we can't calm them down before they get out of town."
At this point he began to raise his fist preparing a devastating blow. Have you ever seen the arm of a blacksmith? Wow!
"If I EVER hear you speak the word DRAGON again I swear I'll bash you into jelly and feed you to them myself!!!"
Fearing for poor Loomis's life I lept at the blacksmith, but was too late. Lucky for Loomis, the fist slammed through the floorboards less than an inch from his head, and the blacksmith stood up and stamped out.
Everyone in the inn stood in absolute silence as he left. Then a few whispers grew quickly into a riot as the whole town either rushed Loomis or rushed to stop them. In all my years I have not seen a tavern erupt so quickly into a brawl.
I did what I could to drag my fellow farm hands from the inn, but we all ended up pretty scuffed up before we burst into the night air. There was no sign of the travellers, and we were in no condition to go looking. We didn't even say a word all the way back to our bunks.
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