Perhaps, the miner thought, a flagon or two would fill his belly soothe his aches. Supper had been little more than bread and a thin gravy. He waved a calloused finger to signal the barmaid as his thoughts drifted back to hearty meals of lamb pies, more than a man could eat after a day in the mines. In his youth, he and his brothers would gorge themselves until they could barely walk back to their quarters, and the foreman would scold them for oversleeping the following day.
Alas, it had been ages since shepherds of the clan’s eastern settlements had brought such bounty to his city. The miner had heard rumors of robbers in those pastures, but he suspected the shepherds were careless layabouts, ignoring their flocks as the rest of the clan wanted for wool and meat.
The younger barmaid brought tall wooden mugs of cloudy, golden wheat ale to the field hands at the opposite end of the bar. The bread, the whiskey and indeed the ale were fruits of their hard work, and the graybeard nodded their way in approval. They were young as well, tan and dressed in bright blue tunics. One of them will bed this young barmaid, the miner thought.
The miner tugged at the iron brooch that fastened a tattered wool cloak around his neck, the clan’s proud blue long faded to a gray much like his beard. His hair had once been as black as the ore he took from the caverns, and he had once bedded a young barmaid after a substantial haul.
He felt a familiar touch on the back of his arm.
“There you are,” said the older barmaid as she set the large iron flagon in front of him. The miner studied the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes as she smiled at him and tried to remember her face as he had taken her. She still had bosoms fit for a miner’s hands, but had she ever been beautiful? The memory, too, had faded.
At least she had remembered to bring him an iron cup, one of only a few remaining from the year of the great haul, when the clerics brought word from Darrell that the settlement between the quarries and the wheat field would be made into the clan’s first great city.
This was a fine ale, but a wooden cup would sour it. The expertly crafted iron mug was cold to the lips, and it awakened a hint of far-off berries as the miner drank. Too fast, he knew.
The door of the great hall creaked, and the sun’s last light shone through its opening. The field hands hushed as a tall, thin man in cleric’s robes pushed the door closed. The clunk of his boots on the wood floor filled the hall as he approached the bar. His blue hood hung over his eyes as he slid onto the stool next to the miner, but the hood’s opening revealed the clean-shaven mouth of a man no older than those field hands.
Too many children in the hall tonight, the miner thought as he emptied his cup.
“Whiskey,” said the cleric.
“And another ale,” the miner barked.
The young barmaid brought the cleric’s whiskey in a small iron goblet. Without the courtesy of a warm touch, she turned to the miner. “No more ale for you. You’ve had your ration.”
The cleric raised his hand and pointed a long finger at the girl. “The wheat harvest was bountiful. Let every man who comes this night drink his fill.”
“Does Darrell will this, brother?” the barmaid asked.
The cleric hunched his shoulders and wrapped a hand around the goblet. “Aye,” he whispered, and downed the whiskey in a single swallow.
The pretty young barmaid picked up the goblet and the miner’s mug.
“Darrell is kind,” the miner said. “A shame the men of my crew have retired for the night.”
“A man who drinks alone is a man who has lost faith.”
“You look as lonely as I,” the miner said as the barmaid returned with the drinks. He waited until she turned away. “Is that why you lie in the name of your lord?”
“My gift to you and your city, man of iron. Besides, you will not thirst for ale tomorrow.”
The miner shook with a bitter laugh and drank deep from his ale. This boy had never put axe to tree as a lumberjack of the southern settlement. He had never dug clay from the hills, swung scythe in the fields or even shorn a sheep. He could not know how much ale it took to shrink the knot in a miner’s shoulder after a long, dark day with a pickaxe.
A huzzah erupted from the far end of the bar as the old barmaid slid fresh wooden mugs to the field hands. Perhaps one of them would bed her, too, and promise her things. It was a good harvest – a smart man could set aside some grain for himself. At long last, a man would steal her away to the coast where he could trade for lumber, build a house and settle as a free man. Free from the chill of the mines. Free from the clerics and the confounding will of their false lord.
The graybeard did not know if the old barmaid ever believed the promises, but in the dark of her quarters she would trace her finger over a man’s chest as he whispered them to her. She would tell no one of such words, not even if robbers raided and stole everything a man needed to make good on them.
The barmaids poured themselves whiskey in small wooden cups, giggling all the while.
The blue of the elder’s dress was as bright as the color on her counterpart. Was she so old that a man could not get her with child?
“I see the way you look at the barmaid,” the cleric said. “You have wanted for yourself. A sin.”
“I have worked for the tribe.”
The cleric threw back another whiskey. “For the tribe, indeed. But have you worked for Darrell?”
“It is your job to see that the tribe does Darrell’s will, cleric. Mine is to bring you ore to build cities and raise armies.”
“Have you tried this whiskey?” the cleric asked without exposing his eyes. “I believe it is the finest whiskey our tribe has ever tasted. Barmaid! Two whiskeys.”
The old barmaid set two iron cups down and touched the miner’s arm again, lingering a second longer than before. Strong hands, the miner thought, but soft.
For a young cleric, the man knew his whiskey – the miner’s first sip went down smooth and sweet and left a pleasant warmth in his belly.
When the miner looked back, he saw his barmaid touching the arm of one of the field hands. Suddenly, the great hall shook with a clap of thunder and the sound of snapping timbers. The cleric chuckled and downed the rest of his whiskey.
The miner rose from his stool and wobbled for a moment. How much ale? He steadied himself and turned to the cleric, who did not look up from the bar. The field hands shouted at one another as the miner grabbed the cleric by his robes.
“What is happening here?”
“A red tribe has built two great cities on the island’s northern shore. I have heard one even has a library. The tribe has three more settlements inland, and their knights have surpassed ours in number.”
The miner had never thought much of the other tribes. When he was a youth, the clerics had told his settlement that Darrell was at war with the other lords. Darrell needed resources to defeat them, and Darrell would abandon the tribe if the war was lost. Surely the tales were just myths, stories to scare the men into working harder.
The ground shook, and the miner dropped the cleric to the wooden floor. The old barmaid stumbled, spilling ale all over the field hands’ side of the bar. She staggered back, knocking the young girl to the ground. The miner held his footing long enough to reach across the bar and grab his old lover’s arm.
The floor tilted toward him as the whole city seemed to lift away from the earth. He caught the barmaid in his arms as he fell back over his stool and held her as they slid across the floor of the great hall.
He gazed into her face again. The thing was a mess of terror and sweat and deep lines. What kind of man would want this?
The cleric coughed as iron and wood mugs clattered across the floor. The hall shifted again, and the great door swung open wide. A yellow light flooded the hall. The graybeard miner let go his barmaid and stared into it.
For the briefest of moments, he saw the face of a disappointed young man.
Ore by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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