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On other days, the man had bags of treasure on him, gathered in all the caves and ruins him and his sister would delve into. Today, all he had was a mug of ale and his lyre. It was not his first mug of the evening, but he was still able to stand on a table without toppling over and sing notes reasonably close to the actual ones, and that was all he needed.
“Do you want to hear a tale?”
It took a few seconds for the lively chatter to subside. Even then, a murmur kept rumbling through the crowd slowly shifting their attention to the stranger.
“Do you want to hear the tale of a man who was ever boastful but, like we all, had to learn his lesson?”
A single high voice led the cheer. Others soon joined her as the man cleared his throat and struck a chord.
There once was a hero named Ragnar the Red, who came riding to Whiterun from ole Rorikstead!
The cheering slowly ebbed out and gave way to a tense silence.
And the braggart did swagger and brandish his blade, as he told of bold battles and gold he had made!
The bard pressed every word, freely swinging his voice as if he himself was this boastful man who knows no restraint. The plucking of his strings struggled to shine through against the force of his half-spoken, half-sung recital.
But then he went quiet, did Ragnar the Red, when he met the shieldmaiden Matilda who said…
A brief but tense pause followed. The one mentioned looked up from her handiwork. For all she could remember, this was the first time her brother cared to include her in one of his songs.
"Oh, you talk and you lie and you drink all our mead! Now I think it's high time that you lie down and bleed!"
Oh, she thought. It was one of those songs.
And so then came the clashing and slashing of steel, as the brave lass Matilda charged in full of zeal!
Each consonant hit like a clash of swords. Then the bard’s voice suddenly dropped. Leaning excitedly towards the crowd, he sang in a near-whisper:
And the braggart named Ragnar was boastful no moooooree…
He took a deep breath.
When his ugly red head rolled around on the floor!
A moment of shocked silence, then the crowd started cheering. On the other side of the room, Matilda was slowly shaking her head. Ragnar has always had a thing for drama, that much was certain.