The Pelts on the Wall
The inn had gone quiet in the way it does after midnight.
Not empty. Just… settled. Voices low, cups half-finished, no one in a hurry to start something new.
The fire burned steady. Smoke clung to the beams. Now and then the wind came in off the water and rattled the shutters hard enough to remind you where you were.
Above the hearth hung two pelts.
One bear.
One wolf.
They hadn’t been cut down or softened into anything useful. They hung heavy, full weight still in them. The heads were gone, but the skulls had been fixed back in place—wired in rough, teeth still there. The bear’s skull was split along the top. The wolf’s jaw sat a little crooked.
They weren’t there to look good.
A traveler stood under them longer than most.
“You leave those up on purpose?” he asked.
Behind the bar, the innkeeper didn’t look up right away. Big man. Older, but not slow anywhere.
“Those?” he said. “My trophies.”
The traveler gave a small laugh. “From what? Hunting?”
The man set the cup down.
“War.”
A few people shifted at that.
The traveler glanced around, then back. “You fought for the king, then?”
The man wiped his hands on a rag and stepped out from behind the bar.
“Bron,” he said. “Dark Klug.”
That took the humor out of the room.
“Yandorsford?” someone asked.
Bron nodded once and walked to the hearth.
“Aye,” he said. “That one.”
He stood under the wolf pelt and tapped the skull lightly.
“This one came through fast. No yelling. No wasted movement. Just cut his way forward. Anyone in front of him went down or got out of the way.”
He dropped his hand, then glanced at the bear.
“And that one followed.”
He shook his head once.
“Biggest man I’ve ever seen. Took hits and kept coming. Didn’t hurry. Didn’t need to.”
The room had gone still now.
“They weren’t together,” Bron said. “Not like you’d think. Didn’t look at each other. Didn’t move as a pair. But they were headed the same place.”
“The king,” the traveler said.
Bron looked at him.
“Where else?”
He leaned one shoulder against the beam.
“By then the fight was broken. No lines left. Just men swinging at whatever was close. You don’t see much in that. You just try not to be the one who slips.”
He paused.
“Then these two start cutting through it. Straight line. Didn’t slow. Didn’t turn.”
“How close?” someone asked.
Bron took a breath.
“Close enough,” he said. “Closer than anyone else got.”
The traveler didn’t look away from the pelts.
“What happened?” he asked.
“The wolf hit us first,” Bron said. “Slipped between two of ours before we closed. Fast. Clean. Knew where to put the blade.”
Bron’s hand moved to his side without him noticing.
“I got him there,” he said. “Took more than it should have.”
“And the bear?”
Bron looked up at it again.
“Didn’t slow,” he said. “Stepped past him like he wasn’t even there.”
He let that sit a moment.
“We all took that one. Had to. No one man was stopping him.”
The fire popped, sending a brief flash of light across the skull.
“And even then,” Bron said quietly, “he got too close.”
No one spoke.
“In the end, he fell,” Bron went on. “Same as any other man. Just took more of us to make it happen.”
The traveler swallowed.
“So all that talk,” he said. “Bear-warriors. Wolf-warriors. Something else…”
Bron let out a short breath.
“They were men,” he said.
Then, after a moment:
“That’s the worst part of it.”
He turned back to the bar, picked up the same cup, and went back to drying it.
No one stood under the pelts after that.