The little dining room was nearly full and loud with the raucous conversation and laughter of the rough locals. All eyes followed Aidan and Dobro as they pushed their way to an empty table in the back.
After they were seated, a rough voice from two tables away called in their direction. “You boys hiked in from the south, didn’t you?”
Aidan nodded his head.
“Sinking Canyons?” the man asked.
Aidan craned his neck to see if the innkeeper were coming.
“’Course Sinking Canyons, you half-wit,” shouted a walleyed man at another table. “Coming from the south. Where else would they be coming from?”
“Must be a couple of Aidanites,” another man observed. “Say, when you boys figure to march on Tambluff Castle?”
The walleyed man snorted. “They better march on it soon if they don’t want to find Pyrthens when they get there!”
“Don’t matter to me who lives in Tambluff Castle,” the first man declared. “Long as they leave me alone, I mean to leave them alone. Tambluff’s a long way from Ryelan.”
“Say,” said the walleyed man, directing his attention back to Aidan and Dobro, “I reckon you boys has seen this Aidan Errolson?”
Aidan and Dobro looked down at the table, trying to pretend they hadn’t heard the man.
“I’m talking to you boys,” the man repeated a little more loudly, refusing to be ignored. “I asked if you boys has seen Aidan Errolson.”
“You know, the Wilderking,” said another.
“Watch for the Wilderking!” boomed another with false portentousness.
“Yes, we’ve seen him,” Aidan finally answered, hoping to avoid trouble.
“I wouldn’t mind getting a look at that feller,” said the walleyed man, getting a look at the feller even as he said it. “I hear he goes around with a whole gang of mean-looking feechies. Is that true?”
Dobro drew his hand over his mouth, trying to stifle a smile of pleasure at his inflated reputation.
“No,” Aidan answered. “It’s just one feechie, a scrawny rat of a fellow, acts like he doesn’t have good sense half the time.”
A man in the far corner shouted across the room, “If you Aidanites think a Wilderking is any different from a King Darrow or a Pyrthen king-or a feechie king, for that matter-then you Aidanites is a pack of fools.”
His opinion was met with hoots of agreement and support from across the crowded room.
Ma Pearl, the innkeeper, finally arrived at the table. She was a stout, jolly-faced woman, and she wiped her hands on her apron as she said, “Fools or no, them Aidanites has sure been good for business. You want lunch, sugar?”
Aidan and Dobro both nodded their heads.
“I got bacon, collard greens, and sweet potatoes.”
“Bring us two,” Aidan said. “And some water if you don’t mind. And could you tell me where I could find a horse trader?”
Ma Pearl directed him to a stable on the other side of the dusty street, and Aidan, eager to keep their visit to Ryelan as short as possible, left Dobro waiting at the table while he went out to buy their horses.
“Remember,” he whispered in Dobro’s ear before he left, “no talking. No fighting. No grinning.”
It wasn’t long at all before Ma Pearl brought the plates to Dobro’s table. And Dobro, figuring that Aidan probably wouldn’t want him to wait, dug in. Like tooth brushing, eating with utensils was one of those civilizer niceties Dobro hadn’t yet embraced. He had just shoved a fistful of collard greens into his mouth when a big farmhand sat down across from him in Aidan’s chair. “Say, stranger,” he said, “where you come from anyway?”
Remembering what Aidan had said, Dobro just looked blankly at the man. He didn’t speak. He didn’t smile. A drop of green pot liquor dripped from his chin and back onto the pile of collard greens from which it had come.
“What’s a matter with you, boy?” the big Ryelanite asked. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Get after him, Lumley,” one of the diners urged.
“Come on, Lum,” yelled another.
Dobro just shrugged and thumbed a glob of sweet potato into his mouth.
“You stuck up or what?” Lumley leaned across the table and put his face just inches from Dobro’s. Dobro remembered Aidan’s warning about breathing on the locals, so he put up a hand to shield his mouth and nose.
“Oh, so my breath stinks, does it?” Lumley was yelling now, and everybody in the place was watching intently to see what would happen next.
“Well, stranger,” Lumley continued, “I ’bout had it with outsiders coming here and looking down their noses at us Ryelan folks.”
Dobro looked down at his plate. There was no stopping the big field hand now. “I may not be from Tambluff or Middenmarsh or whatever fancy place you come from, stranger, but I mean for you to know that Ryelanites is as good as anybody. You gonna howdy me and be neighborly, or I’m gonna find out why.”
Lumley was off his chair now, looming over Dobro with a fist drawn back. “Am I gonna have to learn you manners the hard way?”
Dobro’s shrug and close-lipped little smile was more than Lumley could tolerate. He roared like a bear as his left fist rocketed toward Dobro’s right ear. But Dobro was much quicker than any big field hand’s fist. He easily ducked under it, and Lumley’s knuckles cracked against the timber that held up the roof above them. He screamed with pain and lunged at Dobro with a sweeping right. Dobro dodged that, too, and Lumley’s momentum sent the table crashing to the ground.
Dobro leaped onto the nearest table and headed for the door, dodging from tabletop to tabletop as the diners dove for him and grabbed at his ankles. Food, crockery, forks, and knives tumbled to the floor with a crash and a clatter. Tables tipped, and people slipped on the smashed sweet potatoes and greasy collard greens that littered the floor.
When Dobro reached the door, he found it to be guarded by three very large Ryelanites. Dobro felt confident he could whip them, but he had orders not to fight, so he jumped from a tabletop to one of the exposed rafters above. He pulled himself up and ran from rafter to rafter, dodging broken plates and mugs the diners were hurling at him.
By this time, Ma Pearl had waded into the fray, swinging her black iron skillet like a battle ax, trying to subdue the rowdies who were tearing her public house apart. Big men fell like mown wheat under Pearl’s skillet; their thick heads rang like gongs.
Dobro, meanwhile, found a way out onto the thatched roof. Aidan was coming around from the stable leading two horses. His face was a mask of horror when he heard the uproar coming from Ma Pearl’s inn. The very walls were shaking.
“Aidan!” Dobro shouted. “Time to leave these neighborhoods!” Aidan led the horses across to the eave where Dobro was waiting for him. Dobro dropped onto the horse’s haunches, and they took off at a mad gallop as angry Ryelanites came boiling out the front door of Ma Pearl’s.
Aidan rode easy in the saddle as his horse weaved through the villagers who came into the street to see what the ruckus was. His horsemanship returned naturally after so many years. Dobro, on the other hand, rode standing up like a circus rider. As the village receded in the distance, he waved his thanks to Ma Pearl, who was still brandishing her black skillet.
“I told you not to get into any fights,” Aidan yelled when they were out of immediate danger.
“I wasn’t fighting,” Dobro said. “I was just running away from the fight. But that only seemed to make them more angrified.”
“What did you say to those people?” Aidan asked hotly.
“I didn’t say a word the whole time I was there,” Dobro insisted. Then he confessed, “But, Aidan, when them old boys was chasin’ me acrost the tabletops, I did grin a little bit. I just couldn’t help it.”
Chapter Seventeen
