The guy slipped, almost hitting his leg, so it was little wonder that he turned and glared at Duncan. He probably would have gotten really angry with him if he hadn’t seen the stranger’s size and the sword on his back.
“About a mile that way.” He pointed with his head.
“Thanks!” Duncan nodded back and started running again.
The town wasn’t much to look at, maybe sixty buildings in all. Most of those wood-planked, single-storied homes with wood shingle roofs and stone chimneys. There were more outbuildings than homes, and on the main street—if you could call it that—there was a livery stable, a small general store, and a bar. The store and bar were, in fact, the only two-storied buildings he saw. Each had a covered wood-planked porch across the front.
He was about to stop and ask a guy coming out of the store if they had a blacksmith when he smelled the familiar smell of sulfur. He walked down the main street towards the smell, and at the very end of the street there sat the town smithy.
It wasn’t much, just four posts and a roof with two wood walls. There was a huge pile of coal, an anvil, a make-shift bellows, and brick forge. Not the best smithy he’d ever seen for sure. It made the one back home in Spurna look like it was state of the art, and he knew from what he’d seen in the city that it wasn’t.
Still in that moment it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
The town blacksmith held a piece of metal in his heavily-leather-gloved left hand, and in his right a big hammer. He pounded the metal lying on the anvil with the hammer, making a sound that Duncan knew well.
The smith was a big man. Though not as big as Duncan, he had huge arms and strong wrists just like the smith in Spurna. He wore a grey flannel shirt that was probably once a lighter color, nearly-blue pants, and a leather apron that went from just under his chin to down past his knees. He was covered in soot from head to toe.
Duncan found he had a bit of a lump in his throat. The only place he’d ever felt the least bit comfortable back home had been at the smithy’s forge. If he said the village smithy had been like a second father to him that would be true. Mostly of course because he also treated Duncan like dog sweat and constantly told him what a worthless screw up he was.
Ah, memories.
The blacksmith saw Duncan standing there and abruptly stopped hammering the metal he was working. “We don’t get many strangers around here and none this close to winter,” was what he said by way of a greeting.
“My boat broke down many miles from here. I left my wife and two kids at the shore, and I’ve been walking for days.” It was the story Mallory had spun for him to tell. The dragon said it might get him sympathy, and he also thought it couldn’t hurt to keep their exact location a secret.
Mallory had trust issues. In fact, as far as Duncan could see Mallory didn’t really trust anyone.
He held up the two pieces of the part and held them together the way they were supposed to be. “I’d like to have a new one made if that would be possible.”
The guy walked over, took the pieces, rolled them around, looked them over, then handed them back to Duncan and said, “Sixty coins.”
“Sixty!” Duncan nearly swallowed his tongue. “Sixty?” He had noticed that while everyone basically used the same size silver coin that some places put a higher value on them than others. Mallory had told him that Austin had more or less robbed him in Tarslick, charging him two coins a week to sleep with the horses. This seemed like a ridiculous price. “How much would it be if you just put the pieces back together?”
“Eighty coins.”
“Wait a minute. That’s even more.”
“It’s harder to put the pieces back together than to make a new piece,” the smith said. Duncan knew enough to know that this was probably true.
“How much would you charge me to rent your forge for a few hours? You give me the metal to work and then I do the work myself.”
“Let’s see some tinkerer…”
“Ah, I’m a licensed professional,” Duncan said quickly.
“Whatever. Let’s see. Some stranger in here using my tools, under my feet for the better part of a day.” He seemed to think about it for a minute and then said, “A hundred coins.”
“Now see here, smith, that’s just not right.”
“I’ve got no shortage of work to do. It’s all about supply and demand, boy. Lots of people need me; I only need a few of them. Either you have my price or you don’t. It’s no sweat off my neck,” the smith said.
“I don’t have that kind of money. All I have to my name is eighteen coins.”
“Son, I don’t pick up my tongs for less than twenty.”
Duncan’s guts turned, remembering the two coins he’d insisted they leave for the turnip thief.
“Seriously, could we maybe come to some agreement? Perhaps I could work off the price?”
“Got half the town working of their debts now.” He laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “I’m not a charity, boy. Now if you don’t mind—and even if you do—you’ve wasted enough of my time.” With that and not another word the smith walked over and put his metal back on the fire.
Duncan thought for a minute about pulling his sword and demanding the guy fix the part. Then he got an image of him tripping over his own sword, his head landing with a thump on the anvil, and the smith beating him to death with his own broken thingy.
“I hope a red-hot ember falls in the front of your pants,” he mumbled as he walked away.
He didn’t know whether he should even bother to go to the store. If the man’s prices were any indication of what his coins were worth here, he might have enough money for a peanut.
He wasn’t good at talking people into stuff. That was what Mallory was good at. Duncan was out of his league.
He went back to the general store he’d seen, walked in, and was happy to see that it was fully stocked. As he closed the door the place was abuzz with people chatting and shopping, but when they saw him the silence fell so hard and so fast not even a bug chirped.
The talking started back up as quickly as it had stopped, but the tone had changed. They were all watching—if not talking about him—which wasn’t necessarily the most comfortable position to be in.
He went right to the wall where the dried beans and flour were and reluctantly looked at the price tags. Then he started really looking at all the price tags, making sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.
The prices he was looking at were as low as the smith’s prices were high. It didn’t make any sense.
He walked up to the thin man with the handlebar mustache behind the counter and asked, “Is there another smith anywhere around close? Your smith is a little steep.”
“A little steep.” The storekeeper laughed. “He’s a crook. Earl is the biggest thief in all of Winterhurst. What did he try to get you for?”
Duncan held up the pieces and told him what he’d said.
“He must have liked your face. He charged me forty coins just to weld my plow,” an old man playing checkers by the window said.
The storekeeper held out his hand to Duncan, “Name’s Sam. Those two old geezers sitting in the window are Mort and Felix.”
“I’m Duncan.” He shook the storekeeper’s hand and smiled and nodded at the two old men. There were three or four people shopping, but Sam didn’t introduce him to them, so he wondered why he’d introduced him to the two old men.
Sam most have read the expression on his face because he leaned in and whispered, “Mort and Felix used to own the store till they decided to retire and sold it to me. They come in every day. They’re waiting when I open up in the morning and they’re the last ones out when I close in the evening. Can’t say as I know why, but they’re sort of a fixture around here.”
Duncan nodded like it made sense. “Is there another blacksmith?” he asked again.
“There’s not another blacksmith around here for a hundred miles,” Mort said.
“Ain’t
no one likes the fool enough to pay those prices if they had any sort of option,” Felix added.
“You have a broken plow, you pay the forty coins he charges or you starve come winter. Horses have to be shoed, tools fixed,” Mort said with a shrug. “He’s got us by our jugs if you know what I mean.”
“Nearly everyone in town owes him money. I don’t think anyone makes a dime in this town that they don’t give part of it to Earl—willingly or not,” Sam said, frowning. “No one likes it, but what you gonna do? He makes sure no one in town who might like to be a blacksmith ever gets enough money together to get the equipment they’d need to start their own shop.”
“Couldn’t you all get together…?”
“And do what?” Mort asked. “He’s not just the blacksmith, he’s also the mayor and the constable.”
“Wait a minute. If no one likes the guy how did he get to be your mayor and your constable?” Duncan didn’t understand at all.
“He’s got three sons your size or better. Everyone in town owes him money, so he buys their votes,” Sam said.
“No one dares to cross him because of those idiot boys of his,” Felix said. “I tell you if I was younger…”
“Who are you kidding?” Mort said. “When you were younger you still weren’t any bigger. You would have done nothing. Nothing I tell you would you have done.”
“And I suppose you would have done something, Mr. Big Shot,” Felix said.
“No, but I never said that I would,” Mort said with a shrug.
The old men got into an argument.
“All day it’s like this,” Sam said with a sigh, pointing towards the two. “So is there anything I can do for you?”
Duncan didn’t really know what to do. He would have liked to been able to ask Mallory, but he couldn’t. He found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to make a decision—which would have been easier if what he chose to do didn’t affect anyone but him.
They couldn’t pay the blacksmith’s fee. That being the case, they were going to have to winter right where they were. The only thing he could do was buy as many supplies as he could with the eighteen coins he had.
The only good news was with the prices being as low as they were he was going to be able to get everything on their list and then some.
So when it came right down to it, he really didn’t have to make much of a decision because he really didn’t have a choice. Surprisingly, this made him feel much better.
“I guess I’d better get as many supplies as I can,” he told Sam.
“Well if you can’t find what you’re looking for just ask me,” Sam said.
The old men quit arguing.
As he shopped Duncan listened closely to the conversation his questions about the blacksmith had started.
The people hated the mayor but hated him more because in this community the fact that he was the blacksmith gave him more power than being the mayor did. Sam had apparently tried to undermine the smith by buying some inexpensive tools from a traveling salesman and passing the savings on to his patrons. Earl had retaliated by building a hog pen next to Sam’s house.
According to Mort and Felix—who seemed never to quite agree on the details of a story, so that the telling took a while because one was constantly interrupting the other to contradict him on such important points as what color shirt someone was wearing—the traveling salesman never came back through. The town gossip ranged from Earl had paid him well not to do business with Sam to—what Mort and Felix did agree on—that Earl’s sons had followed the traveling salesman out of town and killed him.
They believed this because the next day Earl’s youngest son was wearing the same shirt that the traveling salesman had been wearing. The color of which was either red or green depending on whether Mort was color blind or not as Felix screamed at him that he was.
Seemed like everyone had tried to stop the man but had all wound up paying one heavy price or other.
Duncan bought oil and candles, some more fish hooks, a couple of bolts of fabric, some needles and thread, and a thick wool blanket. He spent the rest of the money on food, spices, salt, dried beans, rice, flour, corn meal and baking powder. When he was down to their last coin he stopped shopping. He held on to one coin because he didn’t want them to be broke, even though he knew one coin wouldn’t do much.
The storekeeper seemed thrilled with his purchases. Almost too happy. Like maybe he didn’t sell that much stuff in a week. Duncan filled his pack then stuck the rest in his cloak and tied it closed. He went to pick up the bundle, thinking it would be no problem.
It was all he could do to lift it. It was extremely heavy. In fact, he could get it picked up off the floor, but he couldn’t really move with it. That was good. It meant they had lots of supplies. But it wasn’t good at all because he had no idea how he was going to get it back to where Mallory was.
He was about to ask if he could come back for half of it the next day when Sam said, “Wait a minute there, big fellow.”
The storekeeper walked out from behind the counter and grabbed a well-used wheelbarrow from where it was leaning against a wall. “Take this, no charge. Leroy borrowed this from me some two months ago to bring his purchases home and I hadn’t seen it since. I asked him about it several times, but he had always just forgotten it and was going to bring it in the next time he came. You know how that sort of thing goes. Well today, as luck would have it, he comes in telling some crazy story. Said some huge, blue dragon jumped out of the woods yesterday and chased him down the road. Leroy said he just ran off and left the turnips—wheelbarrow and all—to that varmint. Said he felt bad about leaving my wheelbarrow so he went back.”
“Yeah right,” Felix scoffed. “Leroy and his turnip wine. He’s always drunk.”
“Well there’s enough truth in that statement I guess.” Sam laughed. “Leroy said when he came back the wheelbarrow was still there. All the turnips were gone but there were two coins in the wheelbarrow. Since that was about three times what the turnips were worth he said he was sure it was an omen that he needed to bring the wheelbarrow back.”
“Poppy cock!” Felix snorted.
“Drunk as a skunk no doubt,” Mort added.
Sam seemed to ignore them. “Anyway, it’s one of the ones I let the patrons use anyway, so take it.”
“It could take me longer to get it back to you than it took him. I’m a long ways off,” Duncan said.
“Look, I’ve gone without it all this time, so I must not really need it. You’ve put a lot of money in my till. Go ahead and take it.”
“You believe all that nonsense about a dragon?” Mort asked the shop keep.
“Not for a minute. You know Leroy. He’s always got some story to tell. Course this is the first time he brought something back he borrowed, and the first time he showed me money at the end of it.”
“Bet he just sold his turnips to someone hungry enough to pay that price,” Mort said, waving his hand in the air. “That turnip wine is going to kill him dead one day I tell ya.”
“Ya ever taste it?” Felix asked Sam. “Nastiest stuff I’ve ever had in my mouth, and afterwards I had the worst gas.”
“For days,” Mort said with a chuckle. “Dead of winter we had all the windows and the door open.”
They all had a good laugh as Duncan loaded all his stuff in the wheelbarrow.
“Thank you very much. I’ll try to get it back to you as soon as I can,” Duncan said, and started for the door.
“That’ll probably be spring. My wife’s mother’s wart says there’s a big storm heading this way in a couple of days.”
Duncan thanked the man again, then wheeled his load out the front door and down the front steps.
At the bottom he looked back towards the blacksmith shop, wondering how they were going to get around Earl to fix their thingy.
He started pushing the wheelbarrow down the road. He thought about how much fun it was going to be to tell Mallory that he’d been right about
the wheelbarrow thing. He frowned thinking that would mean that he’d have to tell him that the smith wouldn’t even consider the repair because he was two coins short. Of course he could always leave that part out. After all, the guy still would have wanted more than they’d had.
He cut his intended gloating short when he noticed the shadows were getting long. He had to get back to camp before it got dark. But even in the wheelbarrow that load was heavy, and he’d already had quite a hike that day.
When he had tried to run and push the wheelbarrow he’d almost dumped it and after that…well, he just didn’t even have the energy to walk really fast. By the time he got back to where he’d left Mallory it was dark enough he probably wouldn’t have found the camp if he hadn’t seen the light from the fire.
He barely had the energy left to get the wheelbarrow across the roadside ditch and through the woods.
“Wow! That’s quite a haul,” Mallory said, getting up from where he’d been sitting on a log to help Duncan the last few feet—for which Duncan was glad. “What about the part?”
“Let me,” Duncan huffed, “catch my breath.”
Mallory nodded.
As Duncan plopped down on the log Mallory had been sitting on the dragon handed him a pan of hot tea he’d made from some bark he’d scraped off a tree. He’d done this before. Duncan didn’t know what the tree was, but the tea was good and it was warm, so he drank it.
Mallory opened the cloak bundle, immediately extracted the wool blanket Duncan had bought, and threw it around himself.
“This ought to get us through winter.” He dug around a bit more. He held up the two pieces of the broken part looking a bit defeated. “I guess this means it will have to. No blacksmith?”
“No, it was worse than that. There is a blacksmith, but he’s a crook.” Duncan explained what had happened to him at the blacksmith’s shop between labored breaths and sips of tea.
Mallory stroked his cheek frills. “Sounds like he’s got a racket going.”
“You sound almost like you respect what he’s doing,” Duncan said, glaring across the fire at the dragon.
“Not at all. I hate a bully. But now we know what he is, we might be able to use that against him.”
The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory: The Beginning Page 17
