Windpeak is home to miners, loggers, nobles and mercenaries. It is a large mining town run by its sheriff, but he's a lazy drunkard so his deputies do all the work. The miners are here to mine, the loggers to log, the nobles to make a profit off others, and the mercenaries to settle any disputes between the nobles and the mine owners. Sadly, there is no local clergy for people to attend service, but there is a place people go where the food's almost as divine.
The Drunken Sailor Inn is what almost everyone calls home. The place has a homey feel to it, the polished oak floors, a grand stone fireplace at the end of the barroom, the friendly waitresses, but most of all it's innkeeper.
He's a big man, both in height and stomach, he walks with trained ease and surprising agility. Sporting a great grin, he goes from table to table clapping everyone on the back like a father would. He's friendly and kind, but stern about his ways. His name is George Waycot, and if you ask him politely, he'll play his violin.
To hear him play is something else, he can bring tears to hardened mercenaries, or roars of laughter and cheers from the simplest tune. Every night he plays and every night it's something new and different. You can never hear the same tune twice.
Once a stranger passing through town asked to hear a tune over again, and George refused. Finally the drunken stranger drew a sword and threatened the innkeeper. George taught him a lesson in humility.
You see, here in what some people call the worst place in the Empire, where the summers blaze with heat, and the winters freeze everything in sight, is where the greatest swordsman to ever live, lives and calls home. Sir George Waycot, Knight of the Imperial Throne, retired.
Well, he never really retired, or so the rumour goes, the Knight's Council refused his resignation, so he just left.
He may be the worlds greatest swordsman and a world class violinist, but there was nothing George enjoyed more than a good barroom brawl. After pinning the stranger to the floor with the man's own sword, George declared the brawl over. No one argued.
That was last spring, now it's almost fall, and everyone is talking about the innkeeper's announcement: The First Annual Barroom Brawl Competition. The prize: Free ale until the next competition, which is next year, of course.
"Sorry, you must be sixteen winters old to compete," George replied, looking up. "You'll make a fine contestant next year though, laddie." The huge lad who towered well over seven feet tall frowned, and lumbered away sadly.
George heaved a sigh, and turned to a newcomer. The man was about twenty-six to twenty-eight winters old, red hair, bright blue eyes, and wearing a dirt-stained traveling cloak, sheathed at his belt was a large unadorned platinum dagger. He was probably a mercenary, though he carried no other weapons and was wearing no armour what-so-ever. "What's all this talk about a barroom brawl competition?" asked the newcomer.
"I like having good barroom brawls. Now, if I give a prize, which in this case is free ale until the next competition, surely I'll get one heck of a brawl, won't I?" replied the innkeeper with a grin.
The newcomer looked around the barroom skeptically, and turned back to face George. "I'm Pepe. Are you Sir George Waycot?" he asked.
George's eyes widened momentarily in fear, but he quickly hid it by turning the expression into a yawn. He studied the man suspiciously. "Aye, I am," he answered finally.
"The Knight's Council sent me. You are requested to appear before them in the Imperial City of Pavol," said Pepe, with another casual glance around the barroom.
"Is this for real?" George blurted, thinking this was some horrible nightmare.
Pepe took a folded piece of parchment from his belt, carefully unfolded it, and handed it to George. It was signed by the Archknight Marel Trainic, a old friend of George's. There was even Marel's signet symbol of a sphinx clutching a spear. George swore inwardly.
"I'm not going back," George said, barely concealing his anger. In a battle long ago the Knight's oath of honour was used against them, thousands of innocents were massacred, and the oath prevented them from interfering in a war because it simply wasn't their war. George could only watch as the people were slaughtered. The memories of dying children stood out most of all, their screams, their tortured faces, their bloodstained tears.
In the following years he had watched the politicians cause wars and yet the oath still stood in his way. He begged to be freed from his vows, but the Empire's leaders refused to even answer, so blinded by greed and conquest they were.
Finally George had left, and came to the one place they might never look for him, Windpeak. But now, twenty years later, they'd found him. What was he to do? He wouldn't go back and yet he knew they would keep pestering him until he did. Just like that foolish bastard last spring.
"You know I'll keep bothering you until you agree to return to Pavol?" stated Pepe as if reading the knight's mind.
"Aye," George nodded.
"What if we made a wager?" Pepe asked slyly. "You win, I go away and tell the Council you're dead and buried. I win, you have to return to Pavol with me," he explained, raising a speculative eyebrow.
It was too good to be true, and that's what bothered George. "What's the wager?" he asked, suspicious.
"I bet you I can win this competition of yours," Pepe supplied.
George almost laughed. This man was short, slight of frame, and looked almost as if George could snap him like a toothpick, but before he could laugh he saw the twinkle in Pepe's eyes and the clever grin on his face. This was no ordinary young man, something about his confidence just didn't fit. Still, this was probably George's only chance to get rid of the man.
Pepe held out his hand.
George sighed reluctantly and shook it.
"Okay, the rules are like this, everyone must drink the tankard of ale placed before them, when the bell rings the competition will begin. If the bell rings again, everyone is to pause or be disqualified. The winner of the competition is the person left conscious," George paused, and looked across the packed barroom to where Pepe sat already having drank the tankard and actually ordering another. "Good luck to you all," George said, toasting his fellow competitors, and downing the ale in one long pull. "With the exception of Pepe," he muttered under his breath as he set the tankard down.
Most of the competitors drank their ale and waited. Pepe ordered two more tankards, and others took this as a challenge and matched him ale for ale. George smiled briefly. If Pepe thought he was going to win by out drinking everyone else, then their bet would no longer be valid. In that case, what was Pepe up to?
George would soon find out, he'd told one of the waitresses, Telina, to ring the bell as soon as the tea kettle whistled. He heard it's sharp whine coming from the kitchen and quickly set down his tankard. He supposed it wasn't fair that he had a warning, but it didn't really matter. The bell rang a moment later and everyone jumped to their feet, punching the nearest person to them.
Pepe jumped forward, grabbed the legs of a heavy pine table, and heaved. The table fell forward, hitting two battling loggers, who stumbled backwards and were hit over the head by a old mercenary swinging a chair around.
George rolled over his table, kicked a mercenary in the face, and punched another man in the stomach. The merc bent over in pain, falling to his knees as the knight kicked his feet out from under him. The innkeeper came to his feet and kneed the man in the head.
Behind George the other man was getting to his feet when someone threw a chair, hitting him in the head and knocking him out.
Pepe made the mistake of hitting one of three brothers over the head with a broken table leg. The two remaining brother cornered Pepe between an overturned table and a pile of wrestling bodies. Picking up a tankard, he hurled it at one of the two brothers. The man ducked and the tankard hit the old mercenary who was swinging a chair around, knocking him senseless for long enough that a miner could over power him.
But throwing the tankard proved to be a good distraction. Pepe used it to hit one of the brothers over the head and kick the other's leg. One crashed to the floor, his leg no longer able to support him, while the other fell over, never knowing what hit him.
Someone grabbed the young man from behind, and slammed him into the side of the overturned table. Dazed, Pepe groped around, found the arm of his assailant, and yanked on it, at the same time, purposely collapsing his legs. His attacker somersaulted forward, right over top of Pepe, and crashed into the one brother trying to stand on his sore leg.
Satisfied, Pepe looked around for a new opponent.
George braced himself against a table leg, and waited patiently for his opponent to get closer. When the man was close enough, the knight jumped forward, pushing himself away from the table for additional speed. Grabbing the man's leg, he lifted it up, while the man hopped about on one foot, punching George. He swept his leg out and tripped the man's remaining leg.
It was a simple take down, one every novice wrestler learns quickly, but it was effective since the man landed hard on his back, smacking his head against the floor. Wrestling matches usually take place on a cushioned carpet, but since this was a hard oak floor, George's opponent was out cold.
Standing up straight, George received a punch to the face that sent him sprawling. Rough hands caught hold of the knight, steadied him a bit, and suddenly George was flying over the heads of battling opponents. Landing on a pair of struggling loggers, George turned to face the direction he'd come. A noble and his bodyguard were working as a team, the bodyguard would, of course, fake unconsciousness when the time came.
Scrambling under the safety of a table, George watched the pair and tried to develop some semblance of an attack strategy. The seat of a broken stool rolled up beside George, rolled around like a coin and clattered to the floor beside his feet. It distinctly resembled a round shield. Well, how about that? Now all he needed was a sword substitute.
Opportunity presents itself. Pepe landed on his back on top of George's table. Two attackers jumped forward onto a table, punching Pepe in the stomach, knocking the air out of him and making the young man feel like a broken bellows. The table shuddered and creaked. There was a whispered, "Oh, oh," from one of Pepe's opponents, while George grabbed the broken stool seat and rolled out of danger. The table came crashing down, the table legs no longer able to carry the weight of three men. George reached out, and plucked up one of the table legs. A suitable sword, sort of.
Once again distraction had presented itself to Pepe, and once again he made good use of it, knocking one opponent unconscious, and kneeing the other in the groin. He lay there for a moment, catching his breath and listening to his groaning adversary.
A tankard rolled over and bumped into Pepe's cheek. He smiled slightly, grabbed hold of it and clubbed his adversary over the head.
A table leg in one hand, the seat in the other, George waded into a crowd of battling opponents. When he came out the other end, he was only slightly bruised and had a bloody lower lip. A trail of unconscious bodies lay behind him.
He paused in a sort of clearing where there was no fighting, just a few unconscious loggers and nobles. He spotted the noble with the bodyguard, and quickly scooped up a broken tankard and chucked it at him.
The tankard hit the noble on the side of the head. He turned and pointed George out to the bodyguard, and went back to punching his opponent with renewed fervor.
The bodyguard didn't know George and so didn't know what he was up against. George knocked the giant brute's lights out with a shield punch, and barely avoided being pinned under the unconscious body.
A few people had noticed George's idea and picked up table legs of their own. There were a couple fencing which made absolutely no sense to George. Fencing is based almost totally on stabbing, and you can't stab with a table leg!
Unfortunately for George also, everyone had remembered George's prowess and were crowding in on him. It was an unspoken conspiracy, thought George, almost laughing. He picked the biggest of them and jumped forward, kicking the huge brute. The man cried out and almost fled when George clubbed him over the head, but people were crowding in too much so that he couldn't move.
The old knight groaned as every conscious man near him tackled him. His weapons were wrenched from his hands as he fought desperately to stand up. "Okay, I quit! Continue the competition. Everyone knows I want to watch the ending," he yelled. "I'll water down the ale if ye don't!" he added.
Everyone immediately backed off, grabbed the closest competitor to them and the battle resumed.
Getting to his feet, George dusted himself off, and made his way to the bar where he hopped up to sit on the bar beside one of the barmaids, Telina.
"Who do you think will win?" she asked. She was shorter than most of the barmaids, slim, but well proportioned, and she was incredibly strong, which is why George hired her. He was getting too old to carry the ale kegs up the stairs from the basement.
"Depends who's left conscious," George murmured. He honestly didn't know, it took a fair bit of luck to stay conscious in a brawl sometimes.
"Who? I accepted a bet to sleep with the winner," Telina explained. George smiled briefly, the customs of Windpeak and the customs of Pavol were as different as the sun and moon. Here people were very free with who they slept with, but in Pavol such a thing was so unheard of it was considered barbaric. For a high rank to be seen in the same room as a low rank was something to gossip about. George had been thinking about Pavol a lot lately, among other things.
"Which would you choose?" George asked, altering the subject in order to keep his mind off Pavol.
"Him," Telina pointed at a handsome young logger with a mahogany coloured hair and a sun tanned face. There was only one flaw in his almost classic face, a black eye, where he'd been hit just before falling unconscious. "Too bad he isn't going to win," she said sadly.
"Well, whoever said you had to take this bet. No one's forcing you."
"I know, but I think the winner should get some prize other than ale, that just makes ye sick in the morning!" George didn't argue.
"If I had to pick, I'd pick that red headed guy over there," Telina said, pointing at Pepe.
Great, George thought sarcastically. Pepe would never let her, he realized, the young man looked like a purebred Pavolian, right to the roots of his red hair. "Why him?" he asked finally.
"If you hadn't been fighting, you would have noticed he's been locking people out left, right and centre. He even picked a guy up from behind him and threw him," Telina explained. "Look at him, I gave him a total of five ales besides the one he drank for the competition, he's not even tired yet, and I'll bet he hasn't sweat a drop. Besides he has a cute ass and is kind of cute."
George was no judge of cute buttocks, after all, how could he? But he knew when he'd made a mistake. When he shook Pepe's hand, that's when.