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As Ferethor was not one to revel in such trifle as beer in the line of his duty, he naturally failed to accompany the others who were asking for beer at the bar. Taking a quick survey of the dilapidated and grimy inn with some distaste and aversion, though Ferethor had seen much worse, he sank uneasily on one of the wooden stools to wait.
He was somewhat apprehensive and restless, if only because of the villager’s casual remark about Maen’s vivid curls of molten-gold. Indeed she was easily recognizable, and if someone should… Ferethor sighed and wondered when he would stop in his habit of presuming the worst. Not in the near future, it seemed.
Maybe it was because he had almost been expecting something like this that Ferethor was less surprised than the others, when Maen leaped to her feet with a cry of startled amaze at beholding a seeming wayfarer who called for her by her birth-name.
Ferethor it was who instantaneously rose also, his slender blade already unsheathed and gleaming in the dim torchlight as he cried, “It would be only a common courtesy if the stranger introduces himself first. Who are you, and what errands have you to Lady Maen of our company?”
Ferethor’s ashen-grey eyes that usually sparkled with twilight-shadow radiance were dimmed in earnest distrust, harsh and hard as iron and steel as he glared with open hostility at the foreigner. Lady Maen was his charge at least until they captured Il Galoth the Renegade, and while he lived he would not fail in his duty. His challenging gaze was locked for a moment with that of the man's uncowed gaze, a shade of midnight blue of the high firmament starlit.
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