The Dark Cycle - Chapter One

Chapter 1

The Crooked Arms

The Crooked Arms tavern was, undoubtedly, the worst tavern in the land of Rakker. It was quite conceivably the worst tavern in the world.

The smell hit you when you first sauntered in. The atmosphere possessed the bitter aroma of freshly vomited beer. This was mixed with a distinct perfume of cow dung and burnt meat, which was also a fair description of the food being served. The unfortunate traveler who ordered the standard plate of pottage soon found himself face-to-face with a steaming plate of gelatinous brown ooze that either held its form disgustingly well even when turned upside-down, or was so watery that it ran straight off the plate and the table, as though fleeing from itself. Consequently, the floors were teeming with lice, so that whenever you stepped upon the ground you felt the floorboards skitter beneath you.

If you were unfortunate enough to forego the pottage and choose blackened bread, a meager crust would be delivered to you, alive with weevils. These tiny worms attacked the bread face-first, so that their glossy black bottoms could be seen, wiggling at every half-inch of the bread’s mealy surface. A man who decided to tear open the bread anyway was subject to the ‘cockroach surprise’ that would abruptly fling itself out of the loaf when exposed to the light.

Most who dined there opted not to purchase the use of a bed, but for those brave souls who clamored upstairs after a long night of drinking, the accommodations were far from ideal. The bedclothes were perpetually moist, the walls were slimy and subject to invasion of climbing-vines, and the doors - for some unknown reason - were missing entirely.

Brawling was common. Any caravanner, merchant, or soldier subject to the Crooked Arms’ food and lodgings was already susceptible to a foul mood, and most were spoiling for a fight. The triggers for the brawls were often, therefore, petty: a man squinted at another the wrong way, or laughed at the wrong point in a joke, or stared straight in another man’s eyes when he was trying to pee in the corner.

Some fights had no reason at all. The moist hearth produced a low fog of black smoke that burned men’s eyes and made them crazy. It was not uncommon to hear someone pant through the smog: “I just hate caravanners. I want to kill ‘em all. Dead.”

And, since everyone was hyperventilating with smoke, no one bothered to point out the redundancy of this resolution, and the fight would begin. Mercenary soldiers would roar and rip open their shirts before jumping into the frey. Common peasants from the town would jab their pointy scythes at any eyeball within arm’s reach.

And, in each and every brawl, a local woman known only as ‘Big Agetha’ would cleave a bottle against a table and begin swinging the cragged weapon around with an indifferent aim. She did not care who she hit, but she would pick every penny in an unconscious man’s pockets. It was rumored she worked for the tavern and split her earnings with the Crooked Arm’s keepers, fifty-fifty.

But though the Crooked Arms - for these and other reasons - was, undoubtedly, the worst tavern in the land of Rakker, there was one reason men kept coming to stay there. This was due to the tavern’s position on the main road. Geography, not gracious hospitality, was the reason for the Crooked Arm’s remaining in business.

Here is the explanation: the main road in those days went southward, following the river, from the Free Cities to the Dark Wold. In those days, the Dark Wold was something of a mess. A group of lawless knights, thieves, drifters, and out-of-work soldiers had formed a band of companions who roamed the countryside, practicing thievery and murder wherever they went. They called themselves The Knights of Oblivion, which hit everyone as rather on-the-nose, much like the fabled ‘Lords of Darkness,’ or the ‘Masters of Indiscriminate Rampaging,’ or the ‘Gang of People Who Like to Pillage (a Lot).’

But the Knights of Oblivion proved no laughing matter. They began besieging the ancient castles on the southern coasts.

Eventually, one of the Dark Earls, John d’Ever, hired the Knights to be his personal mercenary army. He even gave them siege equipment and an entire division of horses to form a cavalry. The Knights of Oblivion broke most of the siege equipment and killed the horses within a few months - they liked using the trebuchets to fling horses at each other in a game they called ‘Horse Shuffleboard’ - but John d’Ever’s patronage meant they could now take castles without repercussions.

The north of the kingdom of Rakker - known as the Rim-Rakker - boasted no less than seven great earls, but only one - the Earl of Murdina - was interested in fighting Bloody Jim. The rest of the proper earls and landed nobles did not want to fight the Knights of Oblivion - they ruled in the north, and did not care what happened in the south, even when Bloody Jim began to lay siege to the three Ports of Plenty, which were the three most important trading strongholds on the border of the Dark Wold.

One of the Ports of Plenty, the Iron City, was directly south of the Crooked Arms Tavern, and the siege had cut off a natural stopping point on the road. Therefore, a humble merchant travelling between Eastwold and the Dark Wold, nightfall therefore presented two options: first, try to avoid the besieging Knights of Oblivion in the dark; or, stay at the Crooked Arms Tavern. Most elected the latter option. Better the devil you know, after all.

And, for all of the Crooked Arm’s numerous faults, the stables were clean and well-maintained. The head tavern keeper had once fought in the earls’ calvary, and thought that, in general, horses were superior to people. Therefore, the stables were kept downwind of the stinging black smoke that billowed from the tavern’s hearth and every pack animal was given barley beer for drinking.

On a certain day, during a certain time in Rakker-Spring, when the rains were just beginning to fall over the northern lands, these very stables were visited by two young men dressed in shabby clothing, with nervous appearances and good posture. One was tall and slender, the other childishly chubby and a bit on the short side.

Raeffe and Grey d’Piers were brothers, and that was obvious to anyone who encountered them. This similarity was not necessarily a traditional matching of identical features; on the contrary, sixteen-year-old Raeffe favored his mother: he was like a dainty bird with feathery hair and a light, bony body. Grey, who was two years younger, looked more like their father Daemon d’Piers: crooked teeth, a crop of plentiful brown curls, and a bit of what his father called, ‘a girth’ and his mother teasingly referred to as, ‘the bubble-belly.’

What united Raeffe and Grey, though, and made their fraternity so unmistakable was a rather bewildered way of looking at the world. ‘Bewilderment’ in this case, was not synonymous with ‘confusion’ - they knew their way around well enough, but could not conceal that their minds operated on a different plane than those of the hard-tack, riff-raff that inhabited the rest of the world. Even as he walked down the rows of horses, Raeffe walked lightly and airily enough to leave unbroken the straw beneath his feet.

“You’re not going to find him,” Grey groaned as they went down yet another line of horse-stalls. “Lander is gone - gone with the rest. Gone with everything that we had.”

“Don’t start sniveling,” Raeffe said. “You’re about to start sniveling, I can tell.”

“Am not,” Grey replied, furtively wiping tears away with his hand. “But we need to get out of here! I hate this place.”

“‘This place’ is where we live now - the wide world, the open road,” Raeffe muttered, pausing beside a cream-white stallion. “Best get used to it. Can you help me open the stall?”

“That’s not Lander.”

“I just want to check!” Raeffe snapped. “Sort of looks like him.”

“I hope that is a crazy horse, and it kicks you in the face!” Grey cried, rubbing away more tears, which fell from his eyes in treacherous, hot streams. Ashamed, he jogged down the row of stalls, his breath ragged with emotion.

“Good heavens,” Raeffe muttered. He parted the horse’s mane, hoping to see the pale grey blotch that would identify this as Lander. But even before the search turned up nothing, he knew this was not his father’s horse. Without being able to point to a specific characteristic, it was clear: something in the horse’s manner, the droop of its neck. This was not a noble horse, meant to ride into battle at the head of a company of knights.

But Raeffe’s spirits lifted slightly when he heard Grey call out: “Over here! I think I found him!”

“Lander,” Raeffe whispered, jogging over to the next line of stalls. This time, it was unmistakable: the beautiful, milk-white charger with a sheen of gold wherever the light hit his mane. How could Raeffe have mistaken a cheap half-breed for this magnificent horse? Lander recognized Raeffe, as well: the horse huffed and shook his mane.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Raeffe said, trying to bite down the sting of rising tears. “Fish-sticks, but it’s dusty in here.”

“Raeffe, are you crying?”

“N-n-no! Make yourself useful, and hold open the stall door for me.”

“Now just where do you think you’re going?”

Raeffe turned around to see a big-bellied stable-boy, squeezing himself through the stall gate. He continued his abrasive interrogatory: “and what do you think you’re doing with that horse?”

“I’m taking this horse. He’s mine,” Raeffe explained.

“No you’re not, because you’re not - oof!” The stable-boy finally managed to pop through the gate, his immense girth jiggling. He crossed his arms and blocked the way. “That horse belongs to someone who’s staying at the tavern.”

“Well, that person is a thief.”

The fat boy shrugged. “You look more like a thief to me. Sneaking around in here.”

Raeffe felt fury rise in his throat, until he found himself crying. His relief at finding Lander, mixed with this unforeseen injustice, was brewing a temper-tantrum in Raeffe’s guts. He curled his hands into white-knuckle fists.

“I. Am. Taking. My. HORSE!”

The stable-boy took a step back - startled, no doubt, by the sight of a tall, pink-faced Raeffe, weeping and snarling and looking quite demented.

“I’ll call my father,” the stable-boy said, “if you try and steal that horse. And then you will go to an offshore prison ship, and never be seen again!”

“F-f-f-f-” After several attempts at saying a word, Raeffe was soon just spitting. He paused, took a deep breath, and exhaled: “Fiiiiine.”

He jumped over the stall, gesturing for Grey to follow. The stable-boy shouted: “And don’t come back!”

“This is our property!” Raeffe called back to the stable-boy. “You say the owner is staying at the tavern? He’s a common thief, and I’m going to prove it! Justice will prevail!”

“Oh dear,” Grey murmured, running after Raeffe. “You’re going to do something stupid, aren’t you?”

“Grey, stay here.”

“Raeffe, you can’t start a fight with a horse-thief. You don’t have any weapons. Or muscles.”

“Stay here, Grey!” Raeffe roared, putting out his hands to open both stable doors. But he wasn’t strong enough for this dramatic gesture, and had to throw his body weight into cracking open just one of them. “Not a word out of you! Not. A. Word.”

Raeffe stormed across the courtyard. His heart was slamming against his ribs. He wished he looked more impressive - or even properly attired. His costume had been gathered in flight as Raeffe’s father had ushered him out of their manor. The tunic was huge, borrowed from the village falconer, and it looked like a dress. His too-tight leather gloves had belonged to some greasy lad named Bartholomew, who had a loose affiliation with the manor kitchens. And his shoes had been laced on by the village gravedigger. When Raeffe had asked where these shoes had come from, the gravedigger had only mumbled: “Don’t worry about it.”

In fact, Raeffe d’Piers owned nothing in the world except his underclothes and his dagger. He felt ashamed of his wardrobe, and silly in the oversized tunic and his ineffective cap, which kept sliding off his messy thicket of yellow hair. Whenever the cap tried to make an escape, he pulled it hard about his ears, worried that someone would see the messy state of his golden locks. The entire ensemble was deeply mortifying.

And Raeffe was unused to feeling ashamed about anything. He was the seventh scion of the third brothership in the household d’Piers, one of the richest families in the Kingdom of Rakker. And the lineage went back further, back before the forming of the Wolds, before there was even a Monteford Earl on the throne of the Rim-Rakker. Back then, the family had only been ‘Piers’ without the honorific ‘d,’ but they were a wealthy family all the same.

Raeffe tried to remember this heritage, this nobility, this elite lineage when he burst into the Crooked Arms Tavern, though he knew he looked less like a young nobleman and more like lunatic in a dress. He tried to stand up straight, to lift up his chin, to walk with the gallivanting air that ten years of tutelage had instilled into his bones.

Thus postured, his eyes began to take in the grandiose scene of human wretchedness that was the Crooked Arms Tavern. There, stood a band of mercenaries with strange tattoos; in the corner by the orange-glowing hearth stood an assortment of rogues with notches on their knife-hilts. There was so much Raeffe did not understand about these people and their world - the meanings of the symbols, the jewelry they wore, the longness or shortness of their hair. It was like looking at a page written in a foreign language, and not even knowing where to start.

Except instead of just looking at a page during a language lesson, Raeffe was looking at a bunch of ruffians who were clearly sizing him up. He didn’t understand their appearances and customs but he did understand one thing: if he wasn’t careful, he was about to be robbed, pummeled, and dumped in a ditch.

Raeffe took a deep breath and his eyes did another sweep around the room.

“Dee ye want some ale?” an old tavern-wench asked. When she smiled at Raeffe, he realized she was missing half her teeth, which was why there was a whistley quality to her voice. “It’d be on the house for yeee, dearie.”

“Ugh - em - no, thank you,” Raeffe said, holding his hand in front of his mouth and nose to counter her swampy breath. “I’m looking for someone - ”

“Oh! ...the other young meester,” the wench said, pointing at some stairs in the corner. “Now he’s reeeally a pretty one.”

Raeffe squinted at the person she spoke of, who was half-covered in shadow and sitting on some stairs in the opposite corner of the room. There was something familiar about the tall, mysterious figure, and Raeffe crossed over to him. As he walked, the other young man leaned forward, and some of the light from the hearth splashed across his face.

“You’re the marshall’s son,” Raeffe concluded grandly, putting his hands on both his hips. “Stefan? Stewie?”

Upon hearing Raeffe’s voice, the marshall’s son quickly climbed to his feet. “Yes - I mean, Stephen,” he stammered. “Stephen is my name. Raeffe d’Piers, is that really you?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Raeffe said. “Good. I like to be properly introduced to someone before I punch them in the face.”

“What?”

Before Stephen could react further, Raeffe threw out the best, closed-fisted punch he could muster. His knuckles glancing off Stephen’s chin, barely turning the young man’s head.

“Ow!” Stephen said, though it was more of a surprised exclamation than a hurt one. “What is the matter with you?”

“I’ll tell you what the matter is!” Raeffe growled, putting his arm against Stephen’s throat and pushing the young man against the wall. Raeffe had seen his father’s steward do this to the manor’s page-boys a hundred times. It worked a little less well with Stephen, who had a few inches of height on Raeffe. But Raeffe continued, in the most menacing voice he could manage: “You stole my father’s horse. Thief!”

“Will you cut it out?” Stephen muttered, shoving Raeff away. “Be careful who you call a thief around here. Everyone is watching.”

Raeffe pulled his arm back, readying for another hit.

“You hit me again, and I will hit you back,” Stephen assured him. “Listen. If we could just talk, I can tell you why I took Lander - ”

“How dare you call him by his pet-name, you dirty villain!” Raeffe shouted, throwing himself into another punch.

But this time, Stephen slapped Raeffe’s punch aside, and then countered with a blow of his own. Raeffe’s head turned sideways. He stumbled. A numb pain in his jaw slowly began to spark into a full scream of agony.

He heard the sound of a glass being shattered.

“Tavern brawl!” someone roared.

And in less than ten seconds, the Crooked Arms Tavern went from being a semi-dignified eating establishment to a free-for-all boxing ring. Anyone who had a drink threw it into his neighbor’s face. Blows were exchanged. Chairs were smashed over heads. Serving-wenches got behind the bar and began to take bets.

Raeffe lost track of Stephen Marshall in the chaos. People were crushing around him, wrestling, punching, and biting one another.

He dropped to his knees and was about to crawl under a table, when a beefy man grabbed the table with both hands and hurled it across the room. When his table hit a caravaner in the corner, the man roared with a drunken slur: “I AM THE GOD OF TABLES!”

Raeffe quickly scuttled under another table, quick as a cockroach that had been discovered in the bread. He watched from the floor as the patrons of the Crooked Arms kicked, punched, and bit one another in a building frenzy. One of the mercenaries fell on the ground a few feet away, his face near Raeffe’s boots. The mercenary looked over at Raeffe and groaned.

“I do believe I jest swallowed some of my teeth!”

“Oh!” Raeffe cried, scooting to the far side of his hiding-place. “That’s disgusting!”

The man simply shrugged and stood up again, drawing a knife and getting back into the frey.

Raeffe had hoped the brawl would simmer down quickly, but he realized that things were about to get a lot bloodier before they got better. He put his hand on his dagger’s hilt and slowly rose up from behind his table.

He looked around for Stephen Marshall. But in the chaos, someone had stamped on the hearth-fire and the light was dark and dimming. Raeffe found himself caught up in the movement of the combatants - pushed this way, then that. Someone shoved him from behind and he stumbled forward.

In spite of all his better judgement, Raeffe’s dignified elitism flared and he shouted: “Who dares touch me?”

He was looking around for the culprit when someone else hit him in the face.

Raeffe went reeling into a cluster of a half-dozen rogues who were all in the midst of a bloody showdown over the territorial advantage of the gaming table. One of them grabbed Raeffe by the collar.

“Wait, wait!” one of the rogues hooted to the others. “This one looks...interesting.”

“Unhand me, you - you - you filthy scum,” Raeffe ordered, but his voice had ascended to the heights of a mousy squeak: “I’m warning you, I will have your head for this you…”

The rogue laughed and spat in Raeffe’s face. For some reason, his spit was chunky, and Raeffe barely managed to avoid gagging. The rogue released him with a shove, but several other miscreants were now circling Raeffe, and cutting off any chance of escape.

“You talk all fancy-like,” the rogue said, doing a dainty impression of a courtesy. “I bet he’s a nobleman, gents. A baby nobleman. Let’s rob him for all he has - then maybe hold him for ransom!”

“Fine,” Raeffe said, with a dignified shrug. “If you think you are man enough to kidnap me, then do it!”

He went to draw his dagger, then realized it was gone from its sheath.

“Oh dear,” said Raeffe.

“Get him!” the rogues bellowed.

Raeffe’s only recourse was to make a mad dash for the door, but another rogue blocked his way.

Then suddenly, from out of the flailing, fighting crowd, Stephen Marshall appeared, armed with a plank of wood. In ten seconds, he beamed each of the rogues with the board, hitting them each across the jaw and then again across the back of the head, for good measure.

“Thank you,” said Raeffe, going to claim his knife from the now-unconscious rogue who had taken it. “But I had that under control.”

“Obviously,” Stephen said, rolling his eyes. “Now. Will you come with me?”

“Not until you give me back my horse.”

“I will do that, I promise,” Stephen said, his irritated gaze suddenly melting as he looked at Raeffe. “I swear, I didn’t think you were still alive. I thought I was the only one who survived. I’m - I’m so glad to see you. Actually. I promise, I never meant you any harm. I thought every single one of the d’Piers died when the manor collapsed.”

Raeffe looked back at Stephen, their mutual sorrow suddenly melting the animosity Raeffe had felt just moments before. But he soon stiffened his back and adopted his customary air of superiority.

“Of course I made it out. I’m a trained fighter. I’m only shocked to see you here, but I suppose even servants have survival instincts. AHHH!”

He shrieked as one of the mercenaries bit down, hard, into his shoulder.

“GET OFF OF ME!”

Stephen quickly leveled the mercenary with his board, then looked incredulously at Raeffe.

“Disgusting,” Raeffe said, clearing his throat. “I hate people touching me. Ahem. Carry on! Get me out of here, please.”