minutes after that he had a sack of supplies and was on his way on the eastern road towards the capital city. He only had to trot along the lightly traveled road for three hours to be beyond the farthest distance he had ever traveled towards the east. Three hours more beyond that the sky was nearly dark, and Kestrel roused himself from his speculation about the meaning of his kiss with Cheryl as he was passing through a small village, one that he concluded was the logical choice for spending the night.
“I’d like a room for the night,” Kestrel told the innkeeper after he entered a dinghy clapboard building with a green shingle hung outside, displaying a crude painting of an oak tree, the universal sign of hospitality. Inside, the atmosphere seemed less than hospitable, as a local militia group occupied the tavern room, asserting its dominance in a drunken and noisy manner. Alec watched a serving girl hesitate and take a deep breath as she stood in the kitchen doorway with a wooden pitcher of ale. She plunged into the public room with a determined look on her face, shifting her hips to avoid groping hands from certain tables as she poured more drink for the customers and collected their coins.
“I’ve got no rooms left,” the man at the counter said gruffly. Kestrel thought his tone sounded peremptory, as if the man thought he was the final word on the matter, and it rubbed Kestrel the wrong way after traveling so far that day. He had looked forward to the opportunity to rest, especially to taking the sling off his healing arm.
Consequently, Kestrel took his tube and placed it firmly on the countertop, displaying the ribbon prominently. “You can find a room for me, can’t you?” he asked bluntly.
The expression on the proprietor’s face was momentarily inscrutable, then showed a craftiness that made Kestrel uneasy. “You’ll have your room, just like the regulations say,” the man told Kestrel.
“Orris, Captain Orris, come here,” the innkeeper barked loudly into the tavern, causing heads to turn.
A beefy man among the militia group rose and came sauntering over to the counter; he wore a deep red robe over his shoulders. “What is so important that you’d call me away from my ale and men?” he asked with an easy smile.
“The courier here wants to have your room. You’ll need to move your things out so that he can have it,” the innkeeper explained.
“I’m not asking for his room in particular!” Kestrel protested. “I just know the regulations say you have to give me a room.”
Captain Orris was studying Kestrel closely. “What happened to your arm? Did you get hurt in the battle?”
Kestrel blushed, feeling defensive. “No,” he mumbled, “I fell and hurt it.”
“Come on in here and have a drink with my boys before you go up to your room,” Orris wrapped his arm around Alec’s shoulder and directed him into the tavern room. Kestrel wanted to resist, but was at a loss for a polite way to refuse the seemingly friendly overture.
“Boys,” Orris greeted one of the tables as he planted Kestrel among the men, “this important messenger needs to kick me out of my room here at the inn, so he can rest that injured arm he got when he fell down.”
“He’s got awfully rounded ears; is he even an elf?” a militia member across the table asked.
“Why didn’t you fight in the battle, straight eyes?” another member asked.
Kestrel felt a sharp elbow jab his injured arm, causing him to flinch in pain. He stood up abruptly, but Orris placed a ham hand on his shoulder and forced him back down.
“You need to stay and have a drink with us, to show there’s no hard feelings,” the captain said.
Why are your eyebrows so straight?” Orris asked. “Are you mixed blood?”
Here it comes, Kestrel thought to himself, despairing over the manner in which his heritage had arisen to haunt him once again.
“Look at the size of those ears!” an unidentified voice called.
Sensing that he was about to be assaulted while injured and outnumbered, Kestrel felt a sudden sense of outrage at the injustice of the situation, and rashly decided he would manage to inflict some pain on his assailants before they completely overwhelmed him.
The desperate elfling rose with an explosive thrust of his body off the bench, and aimed his head at Orris’s unprepared chin, jarring the commander with a vicious thrust that cracked his jaws together, and tumbled him backwards, unconscious. Kestrel pulled his injured arm in close to his chest, then threw his heavier part-human weight at the guard who sat next to him, the one who had elbowed him seconds before, and knocked the man to the floor, both of them falling. Kestrel landed on top, driving the air from his opponent’s lungs, then rolled quickly to the floor.
In his roll he jarred his arm; he winced in pain as he started to rise to his knees, then saw a booted foot approaching, and turned his head just in time to avoid receiving the kick squarely in his face. After that the only thing he could do was curl up tightly in a defensive ball as kicks and punches rained upon him, drawing blood and leaving bruises until someone took mercy on him and put an end to the lopsided beating.
Several minutes later, Kestrel was unconscious, lying on the floor, and the innkeeper at last had a twinge of concern that he might be guilty of failing to honor his obligation to assist the messenger who carried the tube with the blue ribbon. He ordered two of his stable hands to carry Kestrel upstairs to the room that was rightfully his, where they carelessly threw him on the floor, obeying their instructions to not get blood on the bed, then carried out the belongings of the still unconscious militia captain.
When the beaten messenger awoke the next morning, the sun was well above the horizon, and he listened to the bustle of business on the ground floor below him as he felt every ache and injury he had suffered the night before. He rolled onto his knees, then held that position as waves of pain penetrated his consciousness from every part of his body. He held the position and thought not about the pain, but about the insults he had heard the night before. He’d heard them all before, and heard others as well, more creative ones.
He gave a painful smile as he realized he was judging his assailants by their lack of imagination in the insults they had hurled at him, not by the thrashing they had given him. With effort and groans, he rose to his feet, then spotted his message tube on the floor and groaned again before he painfully bent over and picked it up. He left his room, limping down the hallway and down the stairs, purposefully leaving the door to his room open, then leaving the front door of the inn open as well as he went past the unmanned front desk and back out into the road that would lead him gladly away from the village where his luck had been so dismal.
Kestrel told himself he’d come back and settle the score with the innkeeper and the militia someday. He knew he never would carry out any vengeful deeds, but it felt like a release of his pent-up aggravation to make the promise to himself, and the release of the anger helped him start his legs moving forward at a slow trot, a painful pace that he knew was not going to propel him very far over the course of the day.
After only two hours he stopped in a village and bought three apples from the greengrocer’s shop, then continued his plodding progress throughout the afternoon, passing the scattered traffic that headed west along the deeply shaded road. He stopped before sunset in a village with an inn, both to assure his chances to reserve a room while open rooms were available, and to let his body rest and recover.
“You’ve had a rough journey,” the grandmotherly woman at the inn commented as she assigned him to a room, tossing a key to him.
“More than I expected,” Kestrel agreed.
“There’s a hot spring outside of town where the water helps heal,” the woman offered. “It’s at the foot of the hills south of the village.
“You ought to go there and soak in the water,” she told him bluntly. “You’ll feel better.
“You might even look better,” she added with a wink.
“You really ought to go,” the lady spoke loudly as Kestrel thanked her non-committally, and started to walk towards his room.
There was a force of command in her voice that startled him, and he turned to look at her questioningly. As he glanced at her his eyes widened, and he felt frozen in place, astonished, fearful, and amazed, as he suddenly perceived that the woman at the counter was not what he had thought at all, not simply a village woman peddling local lore — she was Kere, the Elven goddess of fortune, who his mother had taught him to pray to and beware of. He felt guiltily aware of the attention he had paid the human gods, and he hoped that Kere did not know of his religious promiscuity.
“It took you a little longer to realize than it should have, Kestrel,” she told him, as his aching joints painfully obeyed his will and creakingly bowed him down to his knees. “You’re so seduced by the human goddess that you
