Peter's adventures are also another installment of a literary tradition older than ''The Pilgrim's Progress'' and newer than ''On the Road,'' in which a naïve but fast-learning young man travels through an enlightening land of surprises. This misapprehension is the origin of a rumor of metamorphosis - the boy who sprang from a dead buck - that will follow Peter throughout the book. The first person he meets in the woods is a hunter with a smoking gun, who fears the boy is a supernatural spirit rising from the blood-spattered deer he has just shot.
Peter takes with him his father's coat (which later magically saves his life) and sets off even before the burial, simply by walking in the direction his mother has pointed. But I was deeply in trouble – and I knew it.Ī blade probed out of nowhere and burned along my jaw before I could block it, and I wondered how much longer I could keep the mob at bay.All this has the makings of a fairy tale - or a footnote in one of Joseph Campbell's studies of the folk hero.
#Tavern keeper men of mayhem cracked
I took a knife cut to my unprotected ribs, on the cracked left side, but managed to drop one man with a dagger-punch to the belly, and, as he wheeled away screaming, I took the hand of another man, hacking it clean off at the wrist with my sword. Blades were slicing, cutting, spearing at me from three sides, and I was moving as fast as I could, blocking, dodging, parrying, striking out wildly just to stay alive. I blocked Tom’s cut with a semi-circular sweep of my sword, knocking his blade down and away, and I would have followed on with a hard thrust from the misericorde, but a man to my left swung an axe at my legs and I had to jump to save my ankles – and from then on it was sheer bloody mayhem. It was Tom who began this deadly dance, with a mighty over-hand hack at my head this served as the signal for all his confederates to pile in. I took a pace forward and took up the high guard position, my long blade held in my right hand vertically, the hilt in front of my face, the point lancing towards the star-speckled sky I had the misericorde held low and to the side in my left hand. It was clear Tom wanted revenge for the thrashing I’d handed him – and this time he’d brought a sword and all his friends to the party. No words were spoken, and none needed to be said. He had evidently neither forgotten nor forgiven our bout.
#Tavern keeper men of mayhem full
In the middle of the crowd, clearly visible in the light from the full moon, I could make out the looming form of Tom, the man I had fought on my last visit to this God-cursed drinking den.
I counted eleven of them and then gave up, but I could see that they were far too many to fight one man with any efficiency – but who needed efficiency? Even if I managed to down three or four of them, they had no lack of men to take their places. They came at me without a sound, spreading out into a semi-circle to envelop me, surround me and cut me down, but I was already moving to the left, keeping my back to the wall of the tavern and forcing the oncoming men to crowd each other and change the shape of their attack.
At these odds, I just had time to think, I am a dead man.Ī snake of ice slithered in my belly and I realized that I was afraid. In one smooth movement I drew my weapon and prepared to sell my life as dearly as possible. I could see perhaps a dozen figures, moving purposefully out of the gloom from the far side of the street, twenty yards away, grey shapes against the blackness, and the cold wink of steel blades in the moonlight.Īs fortune would have it, though I had no more protection for my body than a tunic and short cloak, I was wearing my sword. A beautiful night …Īnd I became aware that I was not alone. I hummed a little music to myself while I waited for Sir Nicholas to finish his business my head was light but I was enjoying the feel of the cool air on my face. I stared up at the starry sky and the bright full moon that hung like a fresh cheese above the rooftops. It was well past midnight when we staggered from the tavern and into the street outside, and while the sleepy tavern-keeper locked and barred the door behind us, complaining about customers who kept him from his warm bed, Nicholas muttered something about relieving himself and wandered around the corner, where he began to piss like a war horse. After my reluctant acquiescence to his suggestion that I join Prince John, Nicholas had insisted that we drink a good deal more, and the talk had passed on to more congenial subjects. Past curfew and the streets were silent and deserted.
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