Inn 55

"Yeah, I don't make a convincing card sharp, do I?" Ferrl breezed, taking a swig of beer. "I'm a horse hand. And a soldier."

In that order. She had her pride.

"How about you, desert walker?"

"Oh, this and that. Soldiering only if I can't avoid it. Too many commanding officers end up wanting to kill me." Her narrow-eyed smile at that was incongruously complacent. "Name's Nico, by the way."

"Nico, eh? That sounds Soprone, but I'm guessing you're not," Ferrl said, with a questioning look.

"I'm Ferrl. Hey, and I got this job by mouthing off to a C.O. Of course, I didn't know he was a C.O.... and I was drunk at the time."

Nico shook her head at Ferrl's question. The short description did catch her interest. "Ah? As punishment, or did the C.O. like what you had to say?"

"Heh. Well, he explained in detail why I was wrong. I was bone stupid about strategy back then. I suppose he likes independent thinkers, or maybe the booze I'd been sharing with him was just that good. I got promoted not long after, anyway.

"That being said, it's not a method I'd recommend. So, you got in trouble a lot, did you?"

"Mh, sometimes. Sometimes I have trouble keeping my mouth shut, even when sober, more often than something like your luck with superiors." She didn't really want to talk about details.
"What is this fabulous job exactly?"

"Fabulous? My job? Hardly that, even if the commander's better than - I should say different from most." Ferrl had already made sure to check if he was in the room. See, she could learn after all!

"It's a living, and one that comes easily when every opponent is shorter than you."

"Particularly if you wear boots or greaves high enough we can't bite you in the knees," Nico answered without missing a beat.

"Ouch. Imagine the friction burns I'd get from the sand," Ferrl nodded.

Nico sighed. "I don't need to imagine."

It belatedly occurred to Ferrl that:

"You know, they have a bath upstairs. Hot water and everything."

There was the grin back again. "Ah, thanks, I was going to ask about that next." A twitch of the head towards the bar indicated she'd meant to ask the staff rather than Ferrl. "And laundry. And a bed. But anyway, what is your job? Taking care of your commander's horses?" Nico poured herself the rest of her thankfully not hot drinking water and went for the half-eaten pastry.

"Nah, he has people for that. Different people, that is. I mostly hack people to pieces, sometimes skewer 'em, occasionally even bellow at recruits."

Ferrl lifted up her beer glass as though keeping it safe from something. A moment later, a large dog passed behind her chair. The tail end of the dog swished past where her brew had been.

Nico nodded, her smile turning wistful. "I wondered, 'cause you said 'horse hand' before 'soldier'." She followed the dog with her eyes, but had other things on her mind. "So, then... is there any direction to go from here that I should avoid, if I would rather not run into a war?"

"It's the aftermath you should avoid more than the battles," Ferrl said. "And I don't know. What you'll find is, if a place is easy to get to, the Flaggies will already be there polishing their swords and laying their rails."

Her beer tasted sour now.

"Flaggies?" That word's sound seemed weird in context. "Like 'flag'?"

"Yeah. You want to keep away from the Flag," Ferrl told her firmly. Having finished her drink, she picked up the glass and stood to head for the bar.

"Right, thanks." Nico got up, too, to take the pitcher and glass back to the counter, and asked Ferrls on the way, "Er, that is a particular flag? Does every nation not have its own around here?"

Ferrl blinked. "Not a flag -- the empire's called the Iron Flag. They're crazy bastards, the lot of them. Invade anything they come across."

"Ah, that makes more sense," Nico remarked, happy that misunderstanding was cleared up.