[center][h3][color=c93636]Hasdrubal Hjort[/color][/h3][/center][hr]Hasdrubal waited patiently as the human at the counter slid each coin one-by-one into a waiting hand. That wasn't necessarily the common practice here in Alula, but much like Hasdrubal himself, the innkeeper seemed to be a recent arrival in the village--presumably one of the wave of Havenite immigrants who had seen opportunity in the army's southern expansion. Dru hadn't asked, but the signs were fairly obvious; the building sat lower to the ground than any of the other available lodgings, and the interior decoration was full of metalwork and tapestries woven on the workshop-sized looms of the cities, rather than the hand-crafted, naturalistic style typical of villages in Faenwick.

Frankly, Hasdrubal found the innkeeper himself somewhat offputting, but he was willing to put up with that in order to minimize how much he dealt with the god-botherers running the other establishments. Watching the man deliberately count his money was a damn sight less rage-inducing than being yelled at to wash his feet, or scatter ground nut-shells across the threshold, or whatever ritual the other innkeepers might think the local faint deity demanded of their guests. 

And besides, he was already finished. The human nodded as he dropped the coins into a purse below the counter, then turned his eyes up to meet the soldier's.

"Yes, that's plenty. The room is yours until the next day-week. Meals are served in the common room here, at..." The inkeeper's voice trailed off as he looked up at his guest's face.

Hasdrubal wasn't fazed; it happened often enough. (Personally, he thought it was the eyes; giants never really had any issue with it, but two-eyed people never seemed to know which of his two good eyes to look at.) He simply nodded back and reached over to grab the room key. 

[color=c93636]"My thanks,"[/color], he rumbled. The innkeeper just nodded instead of resuming his thought, and Hasdrubal turned and walked back out the front door. 

He stopped at the railing in front of the building, planted his hands, and scowled. The primary reason was that from his lofty perch, he could see the pair of riding animals that he and his young charge had rode in on. Their riding packs were still slung on the creatures--he hadn't really thought theft was a concern anyway--but they were also approximately twenty feet down. The big man snorted. Another reason he had chosen this inn--the owner had sprung for stairs, rather than just a ladder--or, corpse of the serpent, bare braided vines.

His eyes then tracked up, sweeping over the rest of the building suspended among the trees. The young mage he'd been tasked to guard was somewhere out there; he couldn't see her, but he at least had a vague idea of where she had run off to. The rational part of his mind told him that there was only so much trouble she could find so long as she stayed in the village, but he couldn't help but remember how she had almost gotten herself eaten by the flora on their way in, and besides--the whole sense of the place set his teeth a little on edge. The last time he had been in a place like this had been as part of a squad of soldiers, and the visit had been significantly less friendly.

Well. Hopefully there would be no cause for anything like that.