Library: Traveller of night

Trander was having a normal, boring day. Endless days cleaning rooms in his uncles inn. His parents had died long time ago, when he was still a small lad. So his uncle, Grogger, adopted him. Atleast adopted is the word that most of the people used.. Trander had his own opinion. He was slaved! According to his own memories he was cleaning the inn, Drooling boar, even before he could walk. On the other hand he didn't remember it too often that he got paid from the job he made, not much, but still. The excitement in Drooling boar was pretty much limited to occasional fights between few customers after too many beers. The inn was located in small town and the roads that passed it wasn't in too heavy usage. Rooms were used mostly when people of the town was getting married or were having a birthday and relatives from far away wanted to stay over night. Lonely travellers were rather rare sight in there. The normal, boring day was in late autumn, when the days were short and nights were long and dark. The nights were probably even darker than in the winter since there were no snow on the ground yet. The day had been cloudy but it was already dark when it started to rain. Trander was cleaning the rooms that had been unused for some time. When the rain started temperature dropped and Trander had enough. He could clean up the remining five rooms on the next day and as an reward of five clean rooms he went to warm himself in the bar. As he arrived to the bar Grogger nailed his eyes on him but after a while he smiled and said: "Oh well, you'll have plenty of time to do the last;rooms tomorrow.. and I suppose the season is over anyway." Trander couldn't believe his ears but nevertheless used this weak moment of Groggers by grapping a beer and sitting by the fireplace. There were the regular seven customers spending their evening, witnessing the mentioned rare sight. It was few hours before midnight when he arrived. The traveller was big, so tall that he had to bend when he step in and shoulders as wide as two smaller men would be. He was covered with dark green robe and the hood was up. For a short moment traveller just stood at the door and stared at the people inside. Then he closed the door and pulled the hood down. Then he headed to Grogger, not minding about nine pairs of eyes staring at his every move. He ordered a room, beer and place for his horse. As usuall it ended up as Tranders job to look after the horse. It didn't take too long to take care of the horse but when he got back in the traveller was already left to his room. He heard that the traveller had told the others an story, a real good one. And when he asked about the story, everybody just said that he couldn't tell it as well as the traveller. After few hours and not a single word from the story later customers finally left and Grogger closed the bar. The morning brightened up with heavy mist. When Trander got up and into inn, the traveller was already gone. So much for that excitement thought Trander and continued cleaning the rooms. He cleaned up the remaining five rooms faster than the previous five one he cleaned yesterday. He was about to reward himself with beer and warmth of fireplace when he remembered that the traveller had stayed in one of the clean rooms. Brogger would never let him stay in bar if he hasn't cleaned it up. So he went to room number 1, the room where the traveller has been night in. The room was clean, only thing that Trander noticed was that the bed was used. He decided to go the easiest way and only make the bed again. As he was changing the sheets he found a dagger that was rolled in thick leather. The blade was decorated with runes that didn't make any sence to Trander and there was deep red ruby in the hilt. He tracked the runes on blade and grapped it by the hilt to test its balance. It felt just like it would have been made for him. He decided to try its sharpness by cutting his left hand a bit. As he was doing the cut the blade cut much more than he was planned to. He watched with amaze when the drops of blood didn't drop down, the blade seemd to suck every drop to itself. Then the ruby started to glow and Tranders vision went red. He woke up. He was lying on the bed. As he looked around he recognized it as the healers house. He tried to get up but a burning pain hit him in the right shoulder. As he looked at the shoulder he noticed that the right arm was missing. As he stared at the missing limb the traveller walked in. As he noticed Trander was awake his arm dropped to the hilt of his sword but a smile appeared to his face. After the normal "How are you feeling?" questions traveller introduced himself as Sir Vanamoth, one of the legendary ten knights of king Redeck II. After this introducing Vanamoth started to ask questions about past week, since it really had been seven days ago when he stayed over night in the Drooling boar. After a while Trander could gather his thoughts and the last thing he remembered was the moment where he cut his own hand to test the sharpness. After that it was all blurred until the recent awakening. Vanamoth made few questions and soon become sure that Trander was telling the truth. Vanamoth told what really happened after hearing Trander. He had arrived to the bar when it was already dark, so none didn't actually pay attention to him. The regular seven customers were in with Brogger. He walked right to the first customer and stabbed him to death. At this point the others did pay quite a bit of attention to him. They all said that his eyes and the runes in dagger were burning in red. He stabbed the second customer while the people were just staring at him. After this they tried to force the dagger out from him but he seemd to have strength of ten men. Another customer got killed while trying. At that point Vanamoth arrived. Together they tried few more times to get the dagger but the result was injured customer and Brogger. Vanamoth was forced to draw his sword and cut his arm from the wrist. As the dagger fell from his grip Trander fall on the ground. Since then he had been unconscious. The arm was cut off from the shoulder later on because the dagger had affected to a bigger part of the hand than just palm. What would the result have been without arm-cutting, Vanamoth didn't comment. He didn't tell anything more about the dagger either. He promiced to help in all other kinds of ways, because he was the one that had forgot the dagger there. After that beeing said he left and was seen in town atleast four times a year. Brogger recovered and changed the name of the inn to Crying dagger. After many years customers could hear his telling the story of G'rraagh, cursed dagger.. the same story that he had heard from Vanamoth. But thats an other story.

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Library: Traveller of night