“Favourite drink?” Ira asked, smiling. She leaned on her hand, with her elbow resting on the bar. The Down Dunrall barkeeper had already served her a glass of rye whiskey, while Renado had just asked for ale.
“I like a good cider,” Ren replied.
Ira gave him a humorously raised eyebrow and started to smirk. “Cider,” she muttered flatly, then took a swig of her whiskey.
Renado shrugged defensively. “I’ve never been a real heavy drinker. I suppose more so over the course of the last year, on account of everything that had happened.” He took a gulp of his ale, as though to prove he could handle it.
Ira only laughed and patted his arm. Virn, seated to Arn’s left, sighed and emptied his cup down his throat. One of Urro’s crew, Kalikus—or Kal as he preferred—bartered with the chef over the price of stew.
Then the hubbub of conversing voices was interrupted by a shout. Over the echo in the Dunrall common room, Ren couldn’t make out what was said. Nonetheless, he turned on his bar stool to watch a random drunkard shove another of the crew away from a window table. The bodily shove sent the sailor reeling, knocking aside a chair and spilling another man’s drink. While the latter rose, angrily shaking drips of liquor from his jerkin, Captain Urro himself stood up from a card table and decked the drunk that had pushed his man.
The drunk’s friends came to his defence, striking Urro on the shoulder, scalp, and ribs as the barroom fell into chaos. The first sailor found himself fending off the whiskey-doused man against whom he had fallen. Urro was fighting two men, while other crewmen fended off the initial drunk and more of his friends.
“Ten coins on Urro,” Ren mumbled, relaxing against the bar again. If he sent Virn in to break up the fight, there was the risk of scattering limbs around the tavern—hardly a desirable outcome. After staking his bet, Ren glanced at his friends.
Virn watched the fight passively, but Kal grinned. He waved off the gamble nonetheless. It was Ira, to Ren’s delight, who said, “I’ll take that bet. Maybe if this was a harbour tavern—but we’re landlocked.” She winked and then leaned forward to watch the fight.
“We’ll see,” Ren said, smiling.
The initial sailor was knocked clean out across a tabletop by the soaked patron, but Urro had finished with his first two opponents and threw into the offended man. The initial pusher had long since slumped against a wall, but his friends still fought. When the liquor-drenched man shoved Urro into a wall, ramming punches into the Captain’s ribs, Ren began to fear he might lose the bet after all. But then, Urro wrapped his arm around the opponent’s forearm, tilted the man’s shoulder back, and stunned him with a headbutt. The man snorted up blood and stumbled back from Urro’s unexpected maneuver. Urro advanced, grabbing the man by the beard to drive his knuckles into the man’s temple. The man collapsed to the floor, soaked with drink and red.
After that, the fight fell apart. The friends of the man who had started the fight knew they wouldn’t win after seeing Urro’s ferocity. They grabbed their barely lucid comrade and hauled him through the front door of the Down Dunrall.
As Urro patted himself off, other crewmen grabbed their fallen comrade from a messy tabletop. Urro offered a few coins to the affected patrons and then headed toward the bar.
Kal grinned and looked across the bar to Ira. “Never bet against Captain Urro,” he said, amused.
Ira started to count out coins from a small white satchel, but Ren shook his hand toward her. “You can pay me later,” he said with a grin.
She laughed and put away her coin purse. Then she took a sip of her whiskey and said, “Just say when.”
Virn sighed loudly and ordered another beer.