"I'm telling you, we'd better get ourselves a new mayor!" Alois rambled over his beer. The four men around him at the tavern table just growled a drunken "Yeeah."
The bartender, a striking woman in red dress and skirt, turned her piercing eyes in their direction and sneered.
"You're always on his case. What is it that you have against him, Alois?"one of the other patrons remarked. "He's like, one of the few folks in here that's ever been out of town, y'know. He visited them cities up in the Baronies, he has. He's like, been places. Knows stuff."
"I mean, he doesn't even tell us what his plan is, it's like he's taking us for sheep," Alois continued. "If I were in his place! Man, I'd already be marching the strong men of the village up the hills to try and find out what it is that's happening!"
"Well, why don't you stop rumbling and just go, you big loudmouth?" the barkeep barked at him, pouring another beer. The group of men around Alois laughed.
"Oh, Marie! What do you know of politics? You gotta have the authority to make people follow you!" Alois replied.
"And why is it that you don't have it, huh?" This remark from Marie provoked another burst of laughter, even stronger, from the folks in the tavern. Alois just curled his lips and shifted his focus to the beer in front of him.
"Quite a woman you got yourself there, huh?" one of his companions told him, almost in a whisper.
"Yea. Quite a catch." Alois replied with an ironic sigh.
"I mean, what chance would we have, anyways?" Another regular at Alois's table returned to the subject at hand. "We don't got no knights or pikemen in here. We're just common folk. And going up in them high mountains, well that in itself is a feat for heroes from folk tales, man."
"Yea. Who knows what might even be there. Lots a'tales about the high Mayestice, man. It's the no man's land. The borderline of the Baronies. We're the last bastion of people and civilization here under them mountains. Though we're not much of a civilization." A burst of laughter ensued.
"So what is you plan, huh?" Alois said, a little quieter this time. "Sit like sheep and let whatever is up there pick us one by one and eat us all up?"
"I'm just saying, what else can we really do?"
The door to the pub suddenly creaked open and the evening chill entered the room. Fanda, the shy, skinny youth that helped pull the destroyed cart, entered the tavern and quickly closed the door behind him. Marie shot her piercing eyes at him. He was not a tavern regular. His overprotective mother was sharply against him drinking, so it was quite a surprise to see him there.
He walked as fast as he could to Alois' group and leaned over the table to tell Alois something in secret. When he was done with the job, he turned and briskly walked out again. Alois rubbed his cheek and looked concerned.
Seeing all this strange commotion, Marie leaned over the bar and parted her hands, gesturing to Alois to tell her what it was all about. He sighed, got up, finished his beer in one gulp and walked over to the bar.
"The wise woman wants to see me." he told Marie.
"Right before closing time? Could you have any lamer excuse to just go and leave all the cleaning up to me?!" she snapped.
"It's so horrible about poor old Lojza." Jarka remarked. Her old voice sounded a bit like the creaking of a worn door as she spoke. "But going through those dangerous mountains every single month, something was bound to happen to him!"
YOU ARE READING
The Hall of Heroes
Fantasy"It is not just a tale." the wise woman said calmly. "The Hall of Heroes exists. It is a tomb built by our ancestors that houses the remains of long dead heroes native to this mountain country. And through a certain ritual, those heroes can be calle...
