The Hammer and Anvil

“The Hammer and Anvil, so who do I talk to there?” Brenan asked, ignoring Davy’s comment about Red.

“His name’s Ruben,” Davy informed Brenan, keeping the fact that he wasn’t too keen on helping Brenan go up against a band of Veertorian agents to himself. He knew him well enough to know that he could either help him or get out of his way, but that there was no chance of convincing him to merely mind his own business and not get involved.

“Thanks Davy,” Brenan offered his friend a curt nod and then hurried out of his garden, heading towards the Hammer and Anvil.

Ruben the bartender turned out to be a short, portly black man with no hair on his head apart from a thick patch of curly black strands in front of each ear, and he immediately struck Brenan as having a pretty standard sort of personality for a barman, being friendly towards but not too engaged with his customers.

“Yes, there was a group of them seated around one of our tables, and most of them looked civilian enough I guess, but they had a few errand-boys who were asking me questions before they headed out of here, and they just seemed like they were soldiers or something. They talked with the woman who seemed to be in charge of the group like she was their commanding officer; I was a little surprised when they didn’t salute her.” Ruben explained as Brenan took a sip of the beer that he’d ordered.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it was just the way they carried themselves, you know, like they were conducting every movement as fast as they could to avoid being whipped for laziness or something. They were kind of like sailors, but less relaxed.”

“What did they look like?”

“Big and burly, one of them was really big, with thick arms and a large enough belly, he had tawny hair and his skin was tanned like he’d been out to sea for years on end. The other one was similar, but with darker hair and a good couple of inches less in the height department. He looked kind of funny, though you didn’t notice it at first, cause he looked like he’d cut his one ear a couple of times. Not like it had been cut in a fight or anything, but like it was for decoration.”

“Two cuts in his right ear?”

“Uh-huh,” Ruben nodded his head and Brenan cursed to himself. Cuts like that in your ear was a sign that you’d been a soldier or sailor in Veertor’s forces and that you’d been caught carrying out an unsanctioned ****. The punishment wasn’t because of the ****, but because you hadn’t followed orders.

“The woman that they were asking about, did they describe what she looked like?”

“Yeah, she was supposed to be a good-looking redhead who was a bit over twenty years of age and who was supposed to seem lonely and confused. I told them that I hadn’t seen anyone like that.”

“And that’s the truth?” Brenan felt boundlessly relieved that the woman they were looking for wasn’t Red.

“Well, I haven’t seen anyone like that today, so yeah,” Ruben grinned, “But a woman pretty much like that did show up yesterday, asking around for a ship that could give her passage away from this island. She didn’t seem too discriminating about where it might be heading. She didn’t find what she was looking for, though.”

“And the other woman, the one who was leading them?”

“Black, but with lighter skin than me, definitely middle-aged, and there was something almost uncanny about her appearance, though I can’t put my finger on what it was. Still, she didn’t seem like an officer or a captain, but she definitely acted like she was accustomed to telling people what to do.”

“One more thing,” Ruben added after a few seconds of silent thought, “she got a bit upset with her two errand-boys when they started talking about working their way through the waterfront bars right in front of me.”

Brenan nodded. Discussing your plans right in front of people that you’d just questioned wasn’t exactly the calling card of successful and experienced agents, even if it did sound like they were part of a large enough group. Things might get tricky if they had already managed to capture the redhead.

“Thanks for the beer Ruben,” Brenan paid for his drink, leaving Ruben a sizeable tip.

“Any friend of Davy’s…” Ruben replied as Brenan turned round and headed towards the door. While the woman being pursued didn’t have any connection to him as far as he knew, the thought of getting to foil the Veertor Empire’s plans did seem a little too attractive for him to ignore it.