They followed the woman out of the alley, leaving the silent soldiers to their rest. Taciturn and voiceless, they traversed the empty road, the rolling fog surrounding them. She before them like a ghost in her dark dress led them round corners and up byways, through shadowed corridors and into a pub.
She stood before the door, waiting, and sighed. Finally, she whispered, “Davy.”
“Oh, right,” he grumbled. Walking up to the door, he pulled it open and, giving an exaggerated bow, said, “Your highness,” though his dropping of the H made it sound more like, “ainess.”
“Better,” she observed, stepping over the threshold.
“Come on,” David bid their silent guest.
The Nameless Hero followed suit. Springing up the steps, he walked by David, and nodding, entered the establishment.
David took one last gander out at the befogged streets, and seeing no forms through the mist, went in and closed the door. Inside, he found Andrea, her back to him, standing stiffly, her hand on her hip.
“I’m going to kill her,” she growled.
The pub had been overrun, transformed, in fact, into a sort of soup kitchen. Busily moving from table to table, were not the expected waitresses, but cloistered nuns, and in place of stout were bowls of gruel.
“Mary!” she yelled. One of the nun’s heads popped up.
CHECK OUT THE OTHER PARTS:
By The Sword
Part 1: How it Began
Part 2: Questions
Part 3: The Blackness of the Sea
Part 4: Locks
Part 5: Out of Time
Part 6: Ariesland
Part 7: Shadow of the Sisyphus
Part 8: Swords
Part 9: The Eagle and the Lamb
Part 10: Confession
Part 11: Compiler’s Note
Part 12: Sermon on a Mount
Part 13: The Pier
Part 14: Mist
Part 15: A Job
Part 16: Andrea
Tale Told 