Tavern Brawl

“Hey, Bastard!”

Such is your life when your name is Jack Bastard. Random idiots calling your parentage into question in dark smoky taverns where a look can get you killed.

I finish my drink. Anyone who’s going to yell my name across a crowded bar can good and fornicating wait. When I’m done I set down the tankard and turn to face the idiot.

He’s big and stupid. I see that right away. He’s not slow - got some muscle tone under that fat. He’s right in front of me and calls me by my patronymic again.

“Yes?” I ask patiently. Maybe he’s here to give me some money I’m owed for some job I did. The likeliness of this is incredibly remote but I choose to fill my life with eternal, ever-present hope.

And yet, I am so often disappointed. There are some who say this is the source of my surly attitude. Never more than once, mind you.

“Yer name really Bastard?” the oaf laughs. He has friends, this oaf. I observe them and dismiss them as cowards and cretins both. When this comes to the end I have already foreseen, these cretinous cowards will not be a hindrance or impediment to me. The oaf has my full attention.

“It is.”

“Pretty rotten name, Bastard.”

“It serves.”

“Bet you get laughed at a lot,” the oaf laughs again. His cretinous friends join in. Some bystanders to this event are smiling as well. The smarter ones have noted my stance and the way I carry my sword at my hip, and are not smiling. They are making themselves small, and turning their attention to their drinks. The smartest of these witnesses have already begun making motions to leave.

“Not for very long,” I answer.

“Yeah?” the oaf says, stepping closer to poke me in the chest with a finger. “Why’s that?”

I look at the finger.

“I have no quarrel with you,” I explain. “And yet you choose to assault me verbally with your inane chatter, and olfactorily with your barnyard stench. Step back and leave me in peace and you will outlive this night.”

He leans in close, pushing harder with his finger.

“Make me,” he says.

I smile, just for the briefest of moments.

I step back and the sword is out and his finger goes flying. The tankard flies into the face of one cretin who had registered as a possible threat, breaking his nose. The newly nine-fingered oaf screams once and takes a swing at me. I duck under and feel the breeze of the passage of his fist. He is big, but fast for his size. Tavern brawling isn’t exactly the most refined school of duelling, but it serves him well enough. Keeping my sword between us, I toy with him long enough for his anger to overcome him.
A bellow, a charge, a flash of silver, a pool of blood under a fresh corpse.

Such is your life when your name is Jack Bastard.