Breakfast was blessedly uneventful. Broo Fane Tane gradually stopped sulking and even pushed back his hood. I held my breath then, because it caused another round of uproarious -- and, I think, now forced -- laughter from the table behind us. The woman who had dumped his breakfast on his head was clearly disappointed by his reaction -- or lack thereof -- and still hoped to goad him into action. I glared at her and she stuck our her tongue at me.
"Bones of Barnok," I muttered. "What is the matter with people?"
"I believe it's a combination of boredom and base deviltry," Seymuhr said, surprising me. "It afflicts us all." After all the time we had spent together, I didn't expect much for an answer and wisdom, any wisdom, from him was like finding a fish in a tree.
"You may be right about that," I nodded, half-grudgingly. Certainly, Broo Fang Tane attracted that deviltry. I wondered, not for the first time, why the Optimist Monks had chosen such an ill-suited missionary to spread their message of good cheer and patience.
We left the tavern to see the sun had already climbed above the city walls, throwing long shadows over the cobblestone streets. The nearby merchants had their doors propped open or leaned out their windows, calling to passersby. We fell into step with the crowd, shuffling like the dead, until we were closer to the stables, where our mounts and provisions awaited.
I climbed awkwardly into the saddle and checked my bags, ensuring I had a good assortment of writing implements and parchment. The book I had taken from the ghost ship was there, too, settled at the bottom and nearly forgotten. It was hard to believe that we had encountered it just a few short weeks ago, before our fight with the mountain witch. I had scarcely glanced at it since.
Tane wanted to walk -- his order did not believe in subjugating animals -- but I had managed to convinced him that if he didn't take a mount, someone else would and that other person would be by far heavier and, most likely, more cruel to the beast than he ever would be. That was probably true, too, even though it was a bit self-serving. Broo Fang Tane, for all his battle prowess, was lithe and thin. He looked like a reed but hit like a brick, kicked like a mule and could snap a neck or bone easily.
Tane fought with precision, even when he was enraged by some harmless prank or bit of mischief. Seymurh was just a brute. Shorter than either Tane or me, he possessed a prodigious strength that I suspected I had not fully seen on display.
He walked past the horses, rubbing a hand over his bald head, and soon emerged from the shadows with a rather strange-looking beast. Low to the ground like he was, with massive shoulder, an unwieldy gait, a triangle of long, wispy hair hanging from an moving jaw and two long, ringed horns that curved gracefully away from its forehead.
"What kind of goat is that?" I asked. Even more bizarre, Seymuhr had saddled it.
He shrugged. "I hope it's a fast one."
I didn't know how to respond to that. Seymuhr clambered up on to the beast, which swayed slightly under his weight, and gave me a crooked smile.
"Bones of Barnok," I muttered again. I turned my mount and headed to the southern city gate. We were on the way, at last.
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