The Tragedy of Elmston

Time had obscured much of Elmston in Aldred’s memory, but on the whole, the town remained strikingly unchanged. The cobblestone was still slippery with black muck, and the lamplights burnt ever dim, flickering suddenly with the undulating wind.

The deserted thoroughfare was more unseemly in the aftermath of the harvest celebration. The townsfolk tended to overindulge during the customary occasion, often too tired to clean up the havoc afterwards. 

Yet, the mindless revelry continued, and Aldred traced the din to the crooked door of the town tavern. His fingers bristled at the touch of the cold handle as he shoved the rotting door inwards. The contrast between the life within and the dearth beyond was dire. In the corner of the tightly packed room, a musician strummed furiously on a lyre, croaking along to some unidentifiable tune while the boisterous ruckus of the patrons struggled for dominance. The tavern stank of wine, and sweat and piss on wood. Even with Aldred’s mask, he fought the urge to pinch his nose.  

He shook his head at the collective oblivion and nudged the door close with his foot. 

Even in his ostentatious garments, Aldred moved practically unnoticed through the thin aisle dividing the tavern in an uneven half. Effortlessly, he sidestepped a pair of brawlers as they slammed each other into the ground, eliciting a riot of cheers from the patrons.

Old Hilda manned the bar as she always had, a heavyset woman whose unfortunate appearance was used to incite fear and regret in young troublemakers. Stay out too late again and Old Hilda will get you. When she wasn’t out pigging out on the recalcitrant youth, she served lukewarm rum to their fathers.

“Pardon,” Aldred said when within earshot of the woman. 

Hilda turned around, scowling, wiping her dirty hands with a dirty cloth. She scanned Aldred briefly, her one lazy eye straying behind before she landed on his face. “Get your coins out if you want a pint,” she said, her accent little more than slurred words and intermittent exclamations.

“I’m not here for drink,” Aldred raised his voice above the ruckus, “point me to the Eldorman, please.”

“What was that?” Hilda leaned in, ripples forming in the skin between her eyes as the pushed her thick eyebrows together.

“The Eldorman, who is he?” 

“Well if you can’t take that thing off your face to talk, then you won’t be wasting any more of my time,” Hilda huffed, looking rather annoyed.

Aldred considered, searching each flushed face in the tavern, looking for a shred of cognisance. The identity of a Hunter was always best concealed, especially now that the Order seemed to have more enemies among men, and for Aldred, it was doubly important to avoid being recognised by anyone. 

Yet, with stakes so high, he had no choice but to run the risk. Sacrificiorum officia.

Releasing an anxious breath, Aldred pulled the cloth mask below his chin. The old woman expressed curiosity but nothing else. 

“I need to speak to the Eldorman, right away.”

“Oh, Herr Garrick,” Hilda immediately looked unimpressed, her voice an octave lower, “that’s him right there,” she pointed a beefy arm to the farthest table in the room where similarly dressed men sat crammed into the benches. Watchmen. They raucously echoed the song of the lyre, cheering on a deeply inebriated man as he danced precariously on the table. Dread filled Aldred’s heart as he realised he was looking at the leader of this community. 

Were these people already doomed? 

He lifted his mask back over his face and nodded thanks to Hilda. 

Just then, the dreaded vague cognisance came over her face, “do I know you from somewhere, Hunter?” 

“No,” Aldred said sharply, knocking shoulders against a barmaid as he hurried towards the Eldorman. 

He reached the table just as Herr Garrick lost his footing, kicking violently against the table as he flailed for purchase, before slipping on a dish and slamming face-first into the wood. There was a collective wince from the crowd as the Eldorman was rolled off the table by his subordinates. Then there was laughter, and the merriment commenced in full swing. 

“Wake up,” Aldred came around the Eldorman and nudged him in the side with renewed urgency. This one embarrassing instant wasn’t any proper insight into the man, but Aldred was appalled by the thought that Herr Garrick was the best choice for his role. 

The old man mumbled incoherently in response to Aldred's demands and turned away shutting his eyes and curling himself into a sleeping position.  

“Wake up! We don’t have time for this!” Aldred huffed and yanked Garrick up by the arm, shaking vigorously. 

“Oy,” barked one of the soldiers suddenly, a scowl set deep in his fleshy, rotund features, “what’s going on over there?”

If only this idiot would wake up, they would all know soon enough. Aldred gave Herr Garrick another hard shake but once again, the man barely responded. 

“Oy,” the plump soldier boomed, enraged, “you’re deaf, are you?” 

Slowly, the noise in the tavern quietened and all eyes came to be on Aldred. He swallowed hard, a strange, uncomfortable warmth spreading over his skin as he took in the inquisitive faces surrounding him. 

“What’s he doing with the Eldorman?” someone asked, a watchman with yellow teeth stuffed in a wide mouth.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” his burly compatriot replied, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Aldred exhaled, straightening to his full height and letting the Eldorman fall back to the ground. He supposed it was unavoidable now, some kind of public address and he willed his frayed nerves calm as he summoned the rehearsed speech to mind.

“I was sent here by the order of Hunters to warn you all,” Aldred looked around the room, hoping he came off as poignant and not afraid, “your lives are in danger.”

A small welter of mumbling grew from the crowd, dubious speculations.

“From what?” the yellow-teethed soldier demanded, “aren’t you hunters supposed to take care of the monsters and such?”

“These are not monsters; men. A band of rebels. They march on the capital and Elmston is in their path. They do not intend to simply walk through.”

“So we’ll kill them all then,” the plump soldier bellowed with a proud grin, inciting rowdy support from his brethren. 

“This force is four times larger than even the king’s army,” Aldred cut through the noise with a surprisingly steady voice, “you could arm every living creature in this town and the rebels would be through with you in mere moments.”

“So what, do you want us to run?” The expected remark came from a massive man at the head of the soldier’s table with thick red hair and a plaited red beard.

His comment sparked outrage amongst the soldiers and soon, every other patron was swearing to their pride as a fearless citizen of Elmston. 

“Listen to me!” Aldred commanded, but he had lost whatever hold he had on the crowd. Once again, his doubts began to resurface. The townsfolk were typically unreceptive to strangers. Was this expedition already doomed to fail? Aldred certainly had no lingering sentiments for this place, and the town’s downfall would be no great loss to the kingdom. But his sacred duty took precedence, and the guilt of failure was not one he could live with.

“Silence!” a voice suddenly boomed, immediately quelling the uproar. The Eldorman groaned as he rose from unconsciousness, looking around the room before his hooded, bloodshot eyes settled on Aldred, his brow lifted and his head tilted, “do I know you from somewhere? You look rather familiar.” 

Aldred’s blood pulsed in his ears as his heart plummeted. He touched his face to find it naked, his mask hanging loose around his neck. He now stood completely exposed before the crowd and retroactively redoing the vizard felt utterly pointless.

“I was thinking just that, wasn’t I?” Hilda remarked from the bar. 

“We don’t have time for this-”

“Isn’t that crest of the Alodie clan?” a surprisingly astute yellow-teeth said, squinting to get a better look of the silver broach on Aldred’s cloak.

He swiped the offending object off his lapel, “you are mistaken-”

“Didn’t they all die in the King’s War?” someone chimed in. Suddenly short of breath, Aldred swivelled his head around the room, each look of scrutiny like pinpricks against his skin. 

“There was young Pock,” Hilda inputted again, scratching her grey hair, “too young to go to war, I remember.”

“Young Pock!” Redbeard bellowed with sudden elation, slamming his pint into the table as he threw his head back with a burst of laughter.

“That poor lad,” said yellow-teeth, with a growing smile, “he disappeared five years ago after he pissed himself at the spring festival.”

There was a collective cognisance in the room as a burst of distorted, unified laughter ignited in the space. Sickness rose in the tight walls of Aldred’s throat, the world in every direction as he swivelled his head towards each hysterical expression. The cursed memories flooded to the fore of his mind, and his skin burnt with the same embarrassment from five years ago. 

“He didn’t just piss himself, did he?” someone croaked through bouts of snickering, “he emptied his guts all over Herr Magnus’ daughter as well.”

A more intense wave of mirth rippled through the crowd.

“The last son of the greatest Hunters, what a joke!”

Aldred leaned on a beam for support. Since leaving this town, he had done everything in his power to reinvent himself and erase the perception of weakness that defined his youth. In a moment, the fabric of his identity came undone. Surely, there was no difference between the present Aldred and the young Pock of the past who, so sickened by the death of his whole clan, could only lose control of his organs when he was engaged.  

Sweet Alvina and her insulted kindness. 

“My God,” an unidentified voice forced out, “it is him! Just – just as red in the face as he was that day!”

Suddenly, the lyreman picked up his instrument and began strumming to the familiar tune of Pock, son of Byron, The Tragedy of Elmston.

“That’s enough!” a shrill voice cut through the crowd, at which point Aldred was prepared to abandon Elmston to her fate. 

His, and every other pair of eyes in the room turned to the diminutive woman standing near the bar, young, pretty, an apron around her waist. 

“You’re all being stupid,” she wrung her hands together, her eyes to the ground.

“What was that?” the belligerent burly soldier demanded. 

“I said you’re being stupid,” the girl spoke firmer, her fierceness returning like a rekindled fire.

Her dark hair rolled smoothly off her shoulder as she turned to Aldred, her eyes familiar when they met his. 

“He’s come to warn us. Rebels are coming, and all you can do is laugh at something irrelevant from the past. If you all choose to waste your lives on a battle you cannot win, do so after ensuring your children’s safety. Your fathers, your mothers - lives you are responsible for. For once, you idiots need to take a moment to actually think.”

A resounding silence settled in the room. The wind knocked a shutter against the wall. A cat meowed some distance away. They all looked on the bar wench with a mix of emotions and expressions, some no doubt hostile. Some men would do her harm for the perceived impudence, but she had managed to say to them what Aldred couldn’t. 

“Well, go then!” the sparked again, reminding the folk they were supposed to be doing something. 

Redbeard got up first, and in his wake, the rest of the patrons noisily filed out of the tavern until it was just Aldred and the girl left. 

“You’re Alvina, aren’t you?” he asked tentatively, as they stared at each other. 

“You’ve changed, Pock,” Alvina teased with a small smile, “welcome home.”