The Wyndering

The door opened, creaking noisily. As the sound faded into the miasma of stale ale that pervaded the gloomy interior of the inn, it was followed by that of a glass being knocked over and hastily retrieved. The innkeeper had started violently out of his drowsing vigil at the crude wooden counter. He swore, a little too loudly, and gazed around angrily to indicate to such as might be watching that he had not been asleep but vigorously alert.

His charade evoked no response from the six customers in the drinking room. Two of them were slumped inelegantly across their tables, having succumbed either to the poor ale that was the inn’s speciality, or to the heat that had been oppressing the region for the past weeks. The other four, with varying degrees of suspicion and concern, were doing what the innkeeper was now doing – staring at the figure of a man silhouetted in the doorway, stark and still against the red sky.

For a moment, the figure seemed to the innkeeper to be emerging from a glowing fire; despite the heat in the room, he shivered. A quick and unnecessary rearrangement of several glasses and bottles disguised the reaction.

When he looked up again, the man had not moved though there was an inclination of his head which indicated that he was perhaps examining the interior of the inn before deciding to enter.

The action reassured the innkeeper. Not normally given to thinking about anything other than his own immediate needs, the sudden intrusion of his imagination into his thoughts had unsettled him far more than he would have admitted – not least to himself. Now, however, the surly normality of his life was reasserting itself. The new arrival was exhibiting one of the signs which were typical of a traveller in this area: caution.

Mercenary? the innkeeper thought. Trader? Labourer? Artisan? Miner? It was a game he played whenever a stranger arrived and he flattered himself that he could identify the calling of any newcomer at the merest glance, though he usually announced his success at this retrospectively with a knowing nod to his cronies and, ‘Saw it, as soon as he came in,’ or something similar.