"There should still be wine and cups near the fire," Bors said as he heard Owain adding logs to the fire and working the bellows to stoke the embers back to life. "I had Gilander fetch a few bottles from the reserve in the cellars. No reason to save them any more," he said, fighting back the cough that wracked his body and grimacing at the icy, stabbing pain from the old wound in his side that flared up every time he coughed.
"No, I suppose there isn't," Owain agreed, turning away from the rekindled fire to find an expensive bottle that had come all the way from the Emerald Kingdom across the sea. That bottle, along with several others, still had wax around the cork, waiting for the day it would finally be opened, but more than a dozen bottles stood empty or nearly so, and one or two lay on their sides, having spilled half their contents across the floor when they were knocked over before coming to a rest wherever they rolled to.
