The Battlemage by Taran Matharu

Author:Taran Matharu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

CHAPTER

32

THERE WERE CELEBRATIONS THAT NIGHT. The Anvil Tavern had opened once again, the boards on the windows piled up and burned in the fireplace, and rickety tables brought from the basement and covered with food and beer.

Most of the guests were the dwarven recruits, having sneaked away from their camp outside of Corcillum. It was hard to tell how many had crammed themselves into the building, and Fletcher found himself huddled beside a low table of swarthy dwarven men, resisting the temptation to sample the jugs of beer they generously offered him every few minutes.

They all knew who he was, knew what he and his friends had done for the dwarves. He had more tankards of beer in front of him than he knew what to do with. Uhtred had spent most of the past few days in deep conversation with the recruits. It was he who was responsible for their performance that day—though it had been touch and go for a while.

Dwarven songs were being sung simultaneously on different sides of the room, with each group trying to drown out the others in a cacophony of deep voices. Sylva and Cress had been adopted by an opposite table, and their sweet voices trilled above it all, much to the encouragement of the men around them. A strange instrument that looked like a mix of a bagpipe and a trumpet was playing a tune that somehow managed to be the only one that nobody was singing to.

The entire Thorsager family was busy behind the bar, the happy reunion between Othello and the male members of his family swiftly superseded by the need to cater for their scores of hungry guests. Traditional dwarven food was being rushed out of the small kitchenette in the back at an impressive rate and disappearing down throats just as quickly.

Fletcher gave the hungry soldiers a run for their money though, reveling in the variety of the food and mouthwatering flavors. Soft, honeyed bread studded with nuts and fruit was hand-torn away in hunks, an appetizer to the piles of steaming dumplings stuffed with garlic and pork. Baskets of crispy root vegetables seemed the most popular—parsnips, yams and cassava that had been thin sliced and seasoned with rock salt, all of it still sizzling and golden fried.

It was only just beginning to dawn on Fletcher that his immediate troubles were over, and for the first time in a long while he found his mind wandering to Pelt, his old home. But Pelt was gone. Berdon—that was what home meant to him.

Worse of all, he had no way of knowing where his surrogate father and fellow villagers were. The journey from Pelt down to Raleighshire was a dangerous one, patrolled by brigands and con men.

He was already planning to fly out in the morning, scan the main roads for their passage. His own route had been in the back of a sheep cart, which as far as he knew could have taken many detours along its way down.

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