Outside, William looked up and saw a detachment of mounted draconians ride out of the castle gate. The leader sent his men in a circular direction around the castle. Good, thought William. That will buy some time. His thinking was calm and collected, he was feeling no fear. His eyes swept ahead.
Then, the wedging timber must have given way, because troops came pouring out of the tunnel. Seeing the flare of their torches, William and his group raced on until they came to the water's edge. There, down by the shore, were a dozen oak-ribbed fishing boats with Balifor oarsmen at the alert.
"Your plan?" asked a surprised William.
"Not much of one," replied the minotaur.
One by one, the boats were loaded and pushed off, until there was a small flotilla of prisoners bobbing on the blue-black waves. The last boat was a smaller one and into it climbed William, Sintk, and Harum El-Halop, who had been defending the rear. But they were in no danger; they were out of earshot by the time the first draconians stumbled to the shore.
A mile out to sea, the small vessels hesitated outside Port Balifor.
"You have a head-start on the patrol boats!" shouted William to Tom the tailor over the crashing waves. "You can make a run for it and, with luck, live elsewhere long and happily and free of chains!"
"What about you?" yelled Tom, cupping his hands.
William did not have to ask Sintk, who was already snoring under a cowhide, or Harum, who was doing the rowing of four men. Drago was dead. They could slip into the harbor and never be suspected.
"Port Balifor is our home!" he shouted into the wind. But he doubted if they heard him, as the string of boats had already moved onward, to the west.
Harum and William let Sintk sleep until they had glided safely into the harbor. The minotaur tied up the boat, and they scrambled to their feet at the end of a small commercial pier. There was frantic activity, fireballs, and shouting from draconian ships at the other end of the harbor, but their dock was practically deserted, and no one was around to pay them any mind.
They slapped each other on the shoulders and Harum hurried away into the fog. Sintk and William kept to the back lanes until the Pig and Whistle hove into view. Sintk continued on to his cobbler's shop.
Inside his inn, William ripped off his mask and tossed the cloth onto a refuse barrel. He hung the sword and scabbard on a wood peg on the wall. Breathing heavily from the night's activities, William went behind the bar and poured himself a tall drink of dwarf spirits.
William came to with a snorting noise. He was sitting on the bartender's stool at his inn. His head ached, and pain was beginning to move deep into his muscles. For an instant, William thought he had caught a case of ague. His thick, short fingers opened and the coin dropped on the bar. The metal was warm to his touch.
What a wonderful dream, he thought. He had been so brave. Sighing heavily, William decided to retire for the night. He pocketed the coin and picked up an oil lamp with a low flame. He yawned as he came around the bar.
Suddenly, a heavy pounding sounded on the front door of the Pig and Whistle. "Open up in the name of the Highlord!" cried a guttural voice.
Shrugging, William headed for the door. Then he stopped, staring in horror.
On a refuse barrel lay a torn black mask..
Love and ale
"An inn," Otik puffed, "is blessed or cursed by its ale." He set the barrow-handles down, noting with approval that the cloth-covered wheel had not marred the lovingly polished Inn floor. "The ale is blessed or cursed by its water and hops."
Tika, staggering in from the kitchen, poured one of her two buckets into the immense brewing tun as Otik pried the top free. "I know, I know. That's why I have to haul fresh spring water up, abucket at a time, instead of using rainwater from the cistern which I wouldn't need to pull up." She showed him the rope-marks in her palms. At fifteen, she lacked the patience for brewing.
"Better a bucket than a barrel." Otik slapped the tun. "The innkeeper before me thought cleaning a brewing tun each time was too much work. He just mixed the hops, malt, and sugar into an alewort inside each keg, prying the lids up and recoopering without ever cleaning." He washed the spring water around the sides, checking for the tiniest dirt or stain.
"Well, if we couldn't do that, couldn't we at least not haul the water up?"
"I've tried other ways myself. My very first batch with this tun I made down below, at the foot of the tree."
"Couldn't we do that?" Tika said wistfully. "We could just roll the empty kegs out the garbage-drop with ropes tied to them so they wouldn't smash on the ground. We wouldn't have to haul any water at all, just pipe it to the foot of the tree." She automatically patted the living vallenwood on which the bar was built. The people of Solace were more aware of growing wood than any folk alive. "Then when the ale was all aged and ready, we could fill the kegs-" Her eyes went wide, and she put a hand to her mouth.
"That's right." Otik was pleased that she understood. "I made abatch at ground level, then had nothing to carry it up in but fifty weight kegs, up forty feet of stairs. Or I could run down a hundred times with empty pitchers, filling the upstairs barrels." He rubbed his back automatically. "I tied safety ropes on the kegs and rolled them up, one at a time. Took the yeast an extra month to settle, and I was in bed for three days with sore muscles."
"Poor Otik." But Tika laughed. "I wish I'd seen it. Nothing exciting happens when we make ale."
"Shame on you, child." He was teasing. "The autumn batch is always exciting. Today, a shipment of hops from the Plains of Abanasinia will arrive. I'm the only innkeeper around who sends far away for rich hops."
"You're the only innkeeper around, in Solace." But she added, "And you'd be the best anyway, if there were a thousand."
"Now, now." Otik was pleased. He patted his belly. "It's a labor of love, and the Inn has loved me back. Now fetch more water."
As if in answer, there came a call from the kitchen. Otik said, "See? The cook has hauled up more for you. That should make you happier."
"I'm ecstatic. Thank Riga for me." And she went.
Otik, carefully not thinking of the long day ahead, went through the necessary preparations as though they were ritual. First he cleaned a ladle thoroughly and dried it over the fire. While it cooled, he set a tallow candle into another ladle, centered in the bowl so as not to drip, and lowered it into the brewing tun, checking the sides for cracks and split seams. Ale leaking out was not so damaging as air leaking in. He did the same with each of the kegs into which he would pour the fully made wort.
Finally he put down his candle and lowered the cooled, dry ladle into the spring water and sipped, then drank deeply. "Ah." Forty feet below, near the base of the tree that held and shaped the Inn of the Last Home, spring water bubbled through lime rock. Some said the lime rock went down many times farther than a man could dig, and the spring channeled through it all. Otik was not a traveled man, but he knew in his heart that nowhere in the world was there water as sweet and pure as this. Finding hops and malt equal to it was difficult.
As Tika struggled back with the buckets, she panted, "Otik? I've never asked why you named the inn-?"
"I didn't name it, child. The Inn of the Last Home was named by-"
"Why the Last Home?"
"I've never told you?" He glanced around, taking in every scar in the wood, every gouge half-polished out of the age-darkened vallenwood. "When the people of Solace built their homes in the trees, they had nowhere left to go. The Cataclysm left no choices; starving marauders, crazed homeless folk, were destroying villages and stealing everything they could. The folk of Solace knew that if they did not defend themselves well, these trees would be their last home."