Bronn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Tales found Bronn in the back room of the inn and told him a bard was selling a story across Briarholm. The story said Tales stole his tales from dead men. Tales said it in one sentence, the way he said most things. Then he set a coin on the table for the road and went back to his hat and his suit and his quiet work. Bronn put two men he trusted on the door before he left. He took his iron club and his orders and walked out into the rain. The tavern keeper owed Tales a favor and paid it in a name and a direction. The bard was working a festival two towns over. Three of his men were drinking in the corner, fat with coin, telling the same lie about dead men and a thief in a top hat. Bronn watched them from the bar long enough to be sure. Then he crossed the room. The first man went down under the club. The second got an arm up and the club broke his arm and then broke itself on the post behind him. The iron head spun across the floor. Bronn finished the third with his fists. When the room was quiet he went through their packs. He found a thick ledger stamped with forged transaction lines, pages stained brown to look old, every entry naming Tales as a buyer of stories from men in graves. He found a curved falchion in a wrapped bundle under the bench, the leather grip darkened by long use. He took both. He walked the road through the night with the falchion across his back. By morning he reached the festival ground. The bard had set a wooden stage at the edge of the square, painted panels along the front, carved railings around the top, a crowd already gathering for the noon show. Behind the stage stood a traveling wagon. Guitars, a violin, and a horn were strapped to its sides. Two armed men sat on the bench. A third leaned in the wagon's shade. The bard did not travel alone. Bronn did not climb the stage. He went around behind the painted panels and waited in the gap between the wagon and the boards. The bard came down the back steps between songs to drink. Bronn put one hand over his mouth and the falchion across his throat and walked him three steps into the shadow of the wagon. It was done before the next song started. Bronn laid him under the bench and dropped the forged ledger on his chest so the men who found him would read what he had been selling. Then he climbed onto the wagon, took the reins, and drove it out the back of the square at a walk. The instruments knocked softly against the wood. The crowd kept clapping for a stage that had gone quiet. Bronn turned the wagon toward the road home, the falchion beside him on the bench.