The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [77]
Wheeee…eeee…The whinny of the other pony subsided as I let Gairloch take his own time.
Both sniffed the air, while I wanted to sneeze.
In time, I got him in and unsaddled. I quickly stowed the staff in the straw, along with my pack, and searched until I found an old brush. By then, the stableboy, not the collector, was watching.
“Any grain?”
He gave me a wary look, and I produced a copper penny. The boy produced a battered bucket, and I split it between the two, although I gave Gairloch the largest share.
Finally, I felt Gairloch was settled enough for me to chance the inn.
Once inside, the odor of unwashed herders, rancid oils, stale perfumes, and smoke left my eyes stinging. Squinting through the haze, I peered over the crowded tables. Those in the back, toward the narrow but drafty door through which I had entered, were long trestle tables with benches. Beyond them were square tables, of a darker and polished wood. Between the two types of tables ran a flimsy half-wall with three wide openings for the inn’s servers.
Everyone on the road to or from Howlett seemed stranded in the same inn. On my side of the half-wall, men and women were shoulder to shoulder at the trestle tables. A few of the tables for the local gentry, or whoever the privileged ones might be, had vacant chairs around them, but none of the tables were unclaimed.
The Snug Inn, despite its name, was not snugly built.
Uncle Sardit would have listed in detail all the faults in the construction. While I scarcely had his experience, there were some poor design features evident even to me. The outside eaves were not long enough to keep the wind from blowing underneath and into the upstairs rooms. Likewise, the stone facing of the front wall had been built for style and was beginning to pull away from the heavy timbers that framed the side walls. The curves in the rough beams that framed both side and front walls showed that they had not been properly treated or cured.
Inside was worse. The hallway dividers separating the common and gentry sections had been carelessly sawed and nailed together with small spikes, needlessly splitting the wood. After my short tenure with Uncle Sardit, I could have done better and probably done it quicker than whoever had built them. The gentry’s tables were square, sharp-edged, and probably gave the inn’s servants bruises. Again, a few minutes with a plane or even a shaping saw would have produced a better and more serviceable table.
The common tables were green-oak trestles, sawed or split before the wood had cured. With the amount of red oak, black oak, and even maple available in Candar, I wondered why the tables were green oak.
I looked over the mass of people, wincing at the din. Though I had stood there for what seemed a long time, no one even looked at me.
Finally, I made out a space on the bench next to a man in a rough brown coat, halfway across the back of the commons area. I edged toward it.
“Watch it…”
“Young pup…”
“My apologies,” I offered to the man whose elbow I had jostled, even as I ducked past him. He glared over the edge of the chipped ceramic mug he held to his beard-encircled mouth.
“Won’t bring back the mead…worthless time for a storm…Lass! More mead!”
From the smell, whatever mead was, I didn’t have any desire to taste it. Nor did I have much desire to stay in the Snug Inn, except that I was hungry. Since I hadn’t learned how to eat hay or oats, that meant entering the inn.
I looked at the space beside the man in brown, then shrugged and eased myself into place, wishing somehow I had brought the staff, but knowing it was safer in the straw of Gairloch’s stall. I still didn’t like leaving it.
“You?” asked the brown man, bearded and hunched over his mug of steaming cider. From his muscles and his belt, I would have guessed a carpenter.
Of course he didn’t know me. I hadn’t told him. “Lerris, used to be a woodworker before I left