Farron of the North

A renowned knight of the Inner World sits in a tavern...

            Farron of the North, once conqueror of the Western Mounts, Leader of the Northern Warriors, right hand of Valiant Sir Charlie the Blessed, slayer of the Horrendous Serpent of the Eastern Isles, and world renowned purveyor of justice and peace, now spent his days and nights in the smoky, sticky gloom of small village taverns in the Midlands.
            He sat at the bar counter and brought his mug of strong ale to his lips. He didn’t know the name of the place, could barely remember the name of the village or how he got there. That was how he liked it. All the better if he could forget everything. The gods, however, didn’t seem that merciful.
            Ale dribbled down Farron’s unkempt beard and soaked into his burlap shirt, another stain to the countless others inhabiting the rough fabric. He continued, to gulp down the beverage, unnoticing of the mess he was making nor of the stares the other tavern patrons cast his way. The only thing Farron noticed was the slightly out of tune piano being played in the corner and the smells of ale, tobacco, and, very faint, the stench of trick weed. It was the same in all the taverns throughout the Midlands: the sounds and smells of weakness and disorder and despair. Farron never thought he’d be a part of such things, but now, in the middle of it, he found it to be right.
            “… Farron of the North?”
Farron’s ear, like always, picked up the whispers throughout the tavern.
            “…Heard he went mad…” “Defended the Northern Gates, why is he here?” “…His daughter…” “…cut off the Horrendous Serpent’s head…” “…Came out, bloody sword raised, screaming…” “...Coward…”
            Farron gulped the last of his heavy ale and pounded the mug onto the bar counter, the resounding CLAP it made silencing the tavern. He put his face into his calloused, hard hands and spoke softly.
            “Call me a coward, eh?”
Silence met his query.
            “Aye, I suppose so,” he breathed, throat quivering against his words. “Suppose so.”
A hand touched his arm and the bartender said, sympathetically, “Relax, my friend, I don’t want to throw no one out.”
            Farron pushed the bartender’s hand away as he stood, facing the staring tavern patrons.
            “I suppose I am a coward,” he shrugged, wiping ale from his beard and neck. “And I suppose yer all chipper, brave men? Aye, must be. The glasses and that smoke clouding yer faces �" masking your identities �" and that ale and trick weed in your gullets, all that gives you a sense of gods-damned bravery, when all it does is make you invisible.”
            “Oh, so the big drunken knight o’ the north is giving us lessons now, is he?”
The voice came slurred from somewhere in the back of the tavern, where the haze was thickest.
            “ ‘Least none a’us ever killed our daughters in cold blood, ya furking worm!”
            “AY!” The bartender exclaimed. “Shut yer toothless maw! This man ‘ere, he’s the one who saved the Eastern Isles from the Horrendous Serpent! Blasted thing could’ve been coming fer here next! I’ll not have ya besmirching his name in my establishment with two cent lies!”
            Farron turned toward the counter and the look in his eyes, a morbidly eternal depressed stare, was all that it took to tell the bartender that no lies had been told in his establishment.
            “My gods,” the fat man breathed as his bar towel fell to the floor from his suddenly limp hand.
            “Aye,” vocalized the voice from the haze. “Farron o’ the North cut down his daughter with his sword, the baby killer. Mother should’ve used the doctor’s stick on ‘er womb before he climbed out.”
            This time there was no defense from the bartender, only silence throughout the tavern.
“Yer probably right,” Farron nodded slowly. “Would’ve been better for the world, had she.”
            “Ya should use that sword on yer own throat!”
            “Nay, my shrouded brethren, I would never do such as that.”
            “Why not? Ya said yerself ya shouldn’t a’been birthed.”
            “Aye, I did,” Farron felt into his shirt and brought out the medallion that had hung around his neck for decades. He ran his rough thumb over the sot, intricately adorned alabaster portrait, tears welling in his eyes.
            “I did say I should never have been  born,” He said. “Yet the gods granted me life. Some say that the gods not only grant birth and death, but also guide us through life, much as a father leads his daughter through a village square, hand in hand. Some say that the gods have set the events of our lives in place before, even, they have set us upon the lands to experience them. Some say even our wives and husbands are preordained and are ours from the beginning of time.”
            “Sounds like crop grower t’me,” the voice in the haze scoffed with a laugh. “They feed ya that s**t in the North?”
            “Nay, they too find that to be nonsense. Nay, I learned of this idea after I slew my dearest daughter. Learnt it piece by piece from traveling monasteries and from more of our shrouded brothers, those who find bravery ‘hind the smoke and drink of places like this. As I learned more from these people the more convinced of it I became. I would never, under my self-will, kill an innocent babe, let alone one that I planted on this earth with my seed. Nay, the gods, for whatever reason they’d have, controlled the swing of my blade and slashed it against my sweet daughter’s throat. They had it written long before I, myself, was planted upon this land.”
            “If ya say that,” a new voice, closer than the other, said softly. “They what say ya of yer deeds before ya slew yer babe?”
            Farron breathed deeply and answered.
“Everything was set before I was born. The slaying of the Horrendous Serpent in the Eastern Isles, the knighting by Valiant Sir Charlie the Blessed, the victory against the Mounts of the West, everything. The gods might’ve chosen you or the one who belatedly suggested the doctor’s stick on my mother, or this fat bartender as easily as I to be the doer of those deeds. The fact is, they chose me just as they chose me to kill my own seed ‘fore she could even toddle. And that is why, my invisible brethren, I will not strike against myself with my blade. The gods saw it fit to scratch all good I’ve done with a single blow, and I am sure they see it fit to have me continue through this life with heartache and sorrow.”
            A heavy silence fell unto the tavern and somewhere outside a riding c**k crowed in a stable, ending the night and introducing another day.
            “And if yer wrong?” The first, malicious shrouded tavern patron asked. In his voice was small sympathy. “And if the gods only birth and kill and t’was yer fault yer babe is dead?”
            Looking at the alabaster engraving of his precious daughter when she was not yet a day in the world yet, Farron of the North let the burning tears stream from his eyes and spoke.
            “Then I shall go along this land with heartache and sorrow as my prison for my terrible crime and let my old age death bed be my executioner.”