FrostGuardian
Legend
… And once again, here sat the barbarian: a towering, grizzled man, with his cropped mane of reddish hair rivaling the immediate noticeability of the permanent, permeating stench of alcohol and sweat that seemed to billow around him. He is a rather monstrous fellow in that he is a man of monstrous proportions, and that he is a man of monstrous conduct. His long spells of brutish brooding are punctuated by cacophonic climaxes of violent, catastrophic action. That such a barbaric creature exists in the form of a human—ostensibly—must be nothing short of a cosmic coincidence. Only the day before, I witnessed the barbarian slam his tankard into the face of an unfortunate man who had rather foolishly—albeit, in jest—insulted his mother. It has been conveyed to me by those more familiar with the everyday goings of the barbarian that this display is considered a relatively tame outburst, and I must concede that there are worse outcomes than a broken nose and spilt ale, but I nevertheless find the assault troubling.
I watched him now as he rose from his bar stool, no doubt taking notice of my keen interest in him and undertaking his initial, slightly drunken motions to approach me in confrontation. I had mentally prepared myself for this moment as much as I was able—and I appended that terminating qualifier only because of the simple fact of the matter that there is, in truth, no preparing for a man of such unpredictable impulses and inhibitions.
I had picked this moment to observe him more brazenly because the tavern was particularly alive and populated. My reasoning was that the scores of potential witnesses would deter him from undertaking any such drastic actions, and that, in the event that he did attempt an assault on my person, tavern-goers would interfere on my behalf.
Yet, tragically, as I watched the other tavern-goers melt and shy away from him in an unconscious act of self-preservation, I realized I was a fool for predicating my safety on the barbarian possessing even an ounce of rational thinking and on appealing to the altruistic nature of the members of the civic public present here. I was, it seemed, sorely misguided and, perhaps more worryingly, imminently doomed.
Paralyzed by these facts, I made no motion to run or to call for help. Instead, I watched as his monolithic form lumbered towards me, impending like an olifant. He stopped right before my table, looming above me still in my seat, his ragged breathing rushing heavily against my skin.
I felt a warm hand, rough and calloused beneath its sticky sheen of sweat, grab me by my shoulder. I watched as his other hand grabbed my tankard, and I winced in anticipation of my nose’s pending disfigurement. But instead of thrusting the tankard towards my face, the barbarian tilted it back towards his, draining its contents in a harrowingly unhurried matter of seconds. He then belched in my face, slammed the tankard back down, and trudged out of the tavern like a bear satisfied with his recent plunder of honey.
In my disbelief, I silently stared after the barbarian as his massive form vanished around a corner. I became suddenly conscious of my mouth’s agape form and corrected my facial posture sheepishly. A quick glance over the crowd of tavern-goers from which no conclusions could reasonably be derived nevertheless confirmed the comforting notion that perhaps no one was paying attention to my humiliation, or to how I sat there with my mouth wide open like a slobbering infant in anticipation of his next helping of food.
I looked back at the barkeep as if the answers laid somewhere in the furrows of his face, to which his demeanor replied only the information that this was an occurrence they had long grown used to and that I had dodged the proverbial arrow. At that moment I felt I had decoded a flash of the barbarian’s impenetrably chaotic logic and started producing all the coin I had on my person. I looked at the barkeep once again, this time more confidently with gold in my hands and asked, “How much is his tab?”
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