All Roads Lead to the Inn: The Inn at the Crossroads, #1

By Mike DeFrench

The Inn at the Crossroads is a place of legend...
Gabriel is a simple village farmer, until a band of deserters from Duke Kaster's rebel army savaged his village. Now it is his only hope to find his son and get him to safety. The only place he can think of: The Inn at the Crossroads.
But he is wounded. The winter winds are howling. And maybe something worse...
The Inn at the Crossroads saga begins here; a brand new dark fantasy epic is about to unfold.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike DeFrench
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215292730

Mike DeFrench

Mike DeFrench is a horror, fantasy, and science fiction writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. You can follow him on social media @defrenchwriter. Or go to defrenchwriter.com. To read the stories as they come out, and to stay up to date on any news, subscribe at defrenchwriter.substack.com

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Also by Mike DeFrench

Voyeur.exe

The Game We Don’t Play Anymore

Absent Thoughts Dressed in Black

The Queen in Yellow

Requiem for a Black Rose: An Overture of the Nightmare

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used

fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 by Mike DeFrench

All rights reserved.

Mike DeFrench

All Roads Lead to the Inn

One

Another frigid gust bit at the open wound in his side, like a thousand sharp teeth of a necrowolf as he stumbled forward one more step. That was all Gabriel could muster before falling to his knees yet again, the frozen layer of ice atop the snow crunching under the weight of his limp body. The icy air stuck in his throat when he inhaled and he coughed, barely noticing the spouts of blood speckling the air and then falling like tiny red icicles to the ground.

A metallic taste—like he’d just licked the rusted prongs of his pitchfork—spread over his tongue as he swallowed blood. He tried to pace his breathing, to regain a steady rhythm so as to  not to go into another coughing fit. The last one had nearly had him fainting.

The relentless cracking and creaking sounds of the old water mill—the structure which had once given his village its name—stubbornly churning through the frozen caps of ice that floated down the Northern River seemed to him to be mimicking, echoing the pops and cracks of the burning structures that surrounded him.

The perpetual creaking sounds were something that the farmer had heard constantly throughout the years, to the point where he never noticed them. They had become white noise, no more noticeable than the sounds of the river water itself—but now they stood out to him, despite the cracking hisses of so many fires polluting the air, as the only reminder of the life before. The life that in a single afternoon, was utterly destroyed. Butchered. Left for dead. Burned.

The once-quaint farming village of Northwater Mill, his home and the home of his family for generations before him, lay in smoldering ruins all around. What were once standing houses and homesteads were now little more than heaps of charred scrap. The grain silos that were stuffed to capacity from the recent harvest, ensuring that Northwater was well prepared for the winter, now robbed of its riches and likewise burned. Through the smoke Gabriel could barely make out their ruins.

The destruction had come hardly a week after a group of them—he, Charles, and several of the older boys—had taken the bulk of their harvest down south and traded it for supplies and clothing. Had gotten what they needed for the winter—one which old Agath had sensed would be dark and cold. One to endure and tell the kids of many summers from now.

They’d brought back such things as thick furs, magical warming salves and potions, enchanted tinder that could warm a home for a fortnight on a single log. He should’ve traded for steel and iron. Swords. Axes. Spears. Chainmail. But how was he to know this doom would come? Even if the entire village had been properly outfitted, they still were not trained, the few men and boys had never done battle before. They would not have stood a chance against the deserters.

The smell of burning flesh filled the air, mixed with the burnt smell of the blackened and charred houses in the village. The icy howl of the wind as it danced over the snow strewn plains and the occasional pop and crackle of the fires were the only sounds.