Dice clanked in Roanan’s cup. Curses grumbled in Anthel’s throat. Jeers chuckled from the men watching them. Boasting strums sounded from the Minstrels’ lutes and lyres.

Roanan flicked the cup up and over his hand in a cocky flourish. The mug smacked on the table top, dice rattling around inside. All the while, Anthel stared at the cup, waiting for it to reveal the bust beneath the veil that he must have been praying for. Roanan merely raised a brow at him and gave a sly smirk. After a silent stalemate, even the once chatty on lookers had dulled down, Anthel raised a dagger-sharp glare to him.

“Reveal. The dice.” He growled with his hoarse voice. For such a dignified man in vibrant clothes of the gentry and hat to match, Anthel was an ugly fiend playing dice. “You cheat! Reveal!”

“Oh!” Roanan leaned back and raised shaking hands, all the while with a smile on his face. “In haste to lose, good man?”

Before Anthel even attempted to mutter a curse the audience roared in laughter. Men slapped their knees. One of the tavern accidentally spilled a bit of ale as she poured a mug. Even the minstrels had tripped up on their notes for a measure.

“Reveal. Those. Dice.” Anthel’s freshly plowed forehead of wrinkles sprouted a weeded patch of a vein. His ire was so potent he could grow a morgen of crop on his face alone. Which only brought a wider smile to Roanan’s stretching lips.

“Sorry, can’t hear you over such a crowd.” The once jubilant onlookers had by then already quieted themselves. So Anthel’s anger grew even greater that the man began to shake. That was until he slammed his hands on the table and shot up to look down on Roanan.

“Reveal your damned dice!” He shouted, thrusting a pointy finger at the cup with ever word. The man heaved with an embarrassingly hot fury that even Roanan felt cheeks grow warm and red.

“If that’s what you wish.” Roanan shrugged while Anthel began shaking once again. Then he set a hand on the cup. The gentry man froze. Roanan tilted the cup back so that only he could see its contents, not that he even cared to look. Then, before Anthel dove over the table, he took the cup away.

“HA! AH-HA! It’s a bust!” Anthel’s fists shot skyward while he sank back into his chair. Yet no one joined in with his cheering.

“Not quite.” Roanan shook one finger at him. All the while, he passed the other hand just before the dice, flittering his finger along the way. “Two, three, four, five, six! That’s another seven-hundred and fifty points, good man.

“And, oh…” He leaned forward a little to check the score, which he was only five hundred from winning. “…it appears I’ve won.”

“You shit-shoveling cheat!.” Anthel launched from his seat, the stool flying back into the tavern wall. Not only did it dent the plaster but so too had it broken one of its legs. “There are two fours, what makes one of them a five?”

“Look closer.” One of the onlookers that stood nearby pointed at the dice. Anthel only gave him the coldest of side eyes any man could ever deliver.

“Don’t be so cross, Anthel.” Roanan leaned back and flashed every tooth he could at the gentry man. “It’ll only make your arse more sore than it already is.”

“You whoreson!” Anthel jumped over the table. To which Roanan let his chair fall and carry him to the floor, letting the rabid man soar right over him and land face first into the edge of another table.

Having caught himself before his back or head smacked the ground, Roanan scurried onto his feet and faced what was likely to be a furious man. However, the nose dive poor Anthel took had knocked him out cold and left everything below his nose a now bloody mess. While many of the tavern patrons tended to the man, Roanan took up all the coins, silver and gold, on their table. He went home that day not only rich, but so too having been the only man who brought Anthel the Cheater to his knees.