“But everyone knows you’re the best blacksmith in Tregallon, even if your shop is the smallest.”
“Oh, we’ll still have plenty of jobs, but I hate to give Tungel and Asmyrin a chance to gloat.”
Tungel and Asmyrin, thought Mark. The other two smiths.
Mark saw his chance. “Maybe I can help,” he said in a loud enough voice to catch their attention.
The smith looked at Mark standing thirty feet away. “And who are you?”
“Name’s Mark Kaldwel, and I’m looking for blacksmith work.”
The smith’s face lit up. “You’ve experience? Where?”
Here we go, thought Mark.
“No. I’ve never worked at blacksmithing before.”
The man’s face fell. “Then you’re no good to me.”
“What I lack in experience I might be able to help with in strength and hard work. I heard you say you needed another man to help with this welding. If it’s just a matter of holding the metal still, I can do that.”
“Hrumph. You look solid enough, but the piece you’d hold weighs over a hundred pounds, and we’d have to hold them steady and press hard together long enough for the metal to merge.”
“Doesn’t seem like you’re having success as it is. Give me a try.”
The man sighed and waved a hand to the left. “See this anvil. Pick it up, and then we’ll talk.”
Mark eyed the solid metal object sitting on the ground. Jesus. Thing must weight three hundred pounds, he thought.
He shrugged and decided, I’ll give it a shot—short of getting a hernia or slipped disc.
He walked over and stood above the anvil, eyeing it. A snicker from the younger worker indicated his expectation of success.
Oh, well, here goes, Mark thought.
He crouched, conscious of keeping his back straight, put both arms around the two protruding ends of the anvil, and with a grunt . . . he didn’t think he’d moved the lump of metal an atom’s width.
The smith snorted, the young worker laughed, and it was the older worker’s time to snicker.
Damn! Mark thought. Maybe it’s more like four hundred pounds. Maybe more. Maybe I’m an idiot.
He either had to lift the anvil or change his plans. He also grated at being laughed at. As a pudgy high school freshman, he’d been ridiculed for insisting on trying out for the varsity football team, instead of the one for freshmen. The laughter stopped the first time he’d driven a senior starting lineman into the ground, helped by an adrenaline rush of anger.
He tried channeling that same feeling and remembering a weight-lifting technique for the standing press and snatch lift. His first try had been to check the possibility of lifting the weight. This time, he focused on assuming he could lift it.
Crouching again next to the anvil, arms in place, he took two deep breaths and ordered leg, arm, and shoulder muscles to make whatever effort it took. A fraction of a second before reality impinged, he felt the anvil move incrementally to one side. Encouraged, he exerted even more effort and, with a shout, straightened to a full upright position.
“God’s mercy,” yelled the youngster, accompanied by the other worker’s “I don’t believe it.” The smith was silent.
Mark set the anvil down sharply, missing his foot by only half an inch. Every muscle wanted him to collapse on the ground, but his brain overruled, and he suppressed the quivering muscles and stood straight to face the smith.
“Wasn’t so bad once I got the feel of the weight.”
The smith frowned, then laughed and slapped Mark on the shoulder. “Caught in my own trap, was I? I’ve used the test of lifting that anvil for twenty years as a way to get rid of men with experience blacksmithing but who I didn’t want to take on. I’ll also confess my vanity because I’m the only person who’s ever lifted it alone, although not for some years. What’s your name again?”
“Kaldwel. Mark Kaldwel.”
“Well, Kaldwel, I’m Sumik Hamston, and let’s see if we can weld this plow blade. I made it originally, but the farmer tried to use it on a rocky field that hadn’t been cleared or plowed before. I told him not to, but you know farmers. He tried to tell me the blade was faulty and I should fix it for no charge. Hah! No chance of that. I told him to go to Tungel or Asmyrin’s shop if he didn’t trust my work.
Two hours later, the smith made his decision.
“All right, Kaldwel. I think you’ll be able to help with enough tasks that I’ll hire you at half apprentice wages and only as long as you prove better than having no additional help. I’ll be honest with you. If I had other choices, I’d hire them over you, but Palon leaving has put me in a difficult position. That’s a problem with having a small shop and taking on more work than I should have. Not that I blame Palon. His father died. They hadn’t gotten along for many years, and he’d left Chumwell, that’s a town about a hundred miles toward Brawsea, to get away and finish blacksmith training elsewhere. However, the father’s blacksmith shop is without a proprietor, and Palon returned to his family to take up their shop and help support his mother and three younger siblings. It’s all good for him, but bad for me.
“Anyone else I hired from Tregallon wouldn’t have enough experience to make a difference between them and you for the kind of work we do, so we’ll see how it goes.”
Mark knew he was in the best shape of his life, even counting the years at the Naval Academy, with its required physical conditioning and being active on the football and wrestling teams. Whatever the aliens had done to him was a contributing factor, as were the months of labor working for Haral. Thus, he was unprepared for the aches and soreness of the first month of working for Hamston.
The smith used him as declared—as muscle and a gofer. When he wasn’t moving heavy objects, he was a power-extension of Felamer Kykes, the fourteen-year-old apprentice. Tasks that Felamer couldn’t do on his own were assigned to the pair with Mark doing the heavy lifting and the most intense hammer work. The first few days, Mark was embarrassed enough at being given orders by a boy less than half his size that he almost stalked off. By the end of the fourth day, he ruefully admitted to himself that Felamer knew most of the blacksmith trade and was only held back by having to wait to grow into physical maturity.
Mark used muscles in different ways than he ever had before, but by the end of that first month, he put in long days without difficulty. By the end of the second month, he thought he’d learned all the principles of blacksmithing. What he didn’t have were the years of experience that melded with principles to qualify even as a journeyman blacksmith.
“Nonsense!” said Hamston to a discouraged Mark after the smith’s evaluation of his attempt to make a trivet.
“Yes, it’s a disaster of a trivet, but considering how new you are at this, it’s surprisingly good. Just melt it down and try again. However, I think we’ll keep you doing more brute force work and the simplest projects when you’re working alone.”
One evening, Hamston invited his three workers for a beer after a long day of making nails—something Hamston’s shop didn’t normally do because the other two smithies had cheaper workers for such simple jobs. The town’s mayor, as Mark translated the title of the local political leader, was a long-time friend of Hamston’s. When the mayor decided to build a new house, he wanted every part to be the best available and had prevailed on Hamston to supply all the metal parts, which included nails, spikes, hooks, door latches, fireplace tools, andirons, and on and on. Hamston was not enthused but told his three workers the house construction wouldn’t start for several months. For efficiency, they concentrated on single items at a time for the mayor’s house, interspersed with other orders.
For two days they did nails. These were the first finished items Mark produced on his own, and he fully realized he was no more than a beginning apprentice. It was noon of the first day before more than half his nails were acceptable to Hamston. By the end of the second day, almost all his nails were approved, though he produced only a third as ma
ny as each of the other three workers. Even Vermun, with only one good arm and the hand of his broken arm, outproduced Mark.
A sixday later, after the end of a day working on railings for the mayor’s house, Hamston appeared in an effusive mood and invited all three workers to his favorite pub, the Blue Murvor. It was apparently named after an Anyarian flying creature that twice a year migrated south through Frangel in enormous flocks to breeding grounds when the weather warmed and north to escape winter. Mark assumed a similar explanation as for birds on Earth, except that the directions were the reverse in North America because the Drilmar continent lay in the planet’s southern hemisphere.
When they arrived, all the tables were filled, but Hamston elbowed space at a bar running along two sides of the main room. The smith ordered four steins of beer, three full and one half full for Felamer, the apprentice and occasional supervisor of Mark. There was no minimum age on alcohol consumption, but Hamston was the de facto guardian of Felamer during his apprenticeship.
Five minutes later, Mark picked up his half-full stein when a voice shouted behind them.
“So, Hamston, we hear you’ve got another apprentice. Or should we say an apprentice to an apprentice.”
Mark turned to see a cluster of five men facing them. From their clothing, robust builds, and evidence of the kind of work they did on clothing and skin, he could have deduced they were blacksmith workers. However, he didn’t need to deduce because he recognized the owner of the first and largest smithy operation where Mark had been rudely ushered away—Tungel. He thought he also recognized two of the other men.
“Are you getting so hard pressed to find men to work for you, or is the new man simple-minded and you’re taking pity on him?”
Mark’s arms ached from swinging a heavy hammer while Hamston had rotated red-hot rods. Yet he also had the beginnings of a buzz from quickly drinking half his beer, and he remembered the laughter that followed him as he left the first smithy. In sum, he didn’t feel like taking shit off anyone.
He turned back to the bar and spoke to Hamston. “Can’t a man have a beer in peace without a bunch of assholes bothering him?”
Hamston had just enough time to grin before one of Tungel’s men made the mistake of grabbing Mark’s shoulder and spinning him around. Mark had excelled in wrestling in high school and on the Naval Academy team in both folkstyle (U.S.) and freestyle (international). He had a passing acquaintance with karate from ages eight to thirteen before football and wrestling took up his time. In addition, he had dabbled with judo and boxing at the academy, though he knew he was hardly expert in any of them.
Thus, grabbing Mark and not expecting an immediate response should have been contraindicated, as the owner of the grabbing hand found out. Mark clutched the offending arm, rotated his body, rolled the man over his hip, and threw him on the pub floor. Mark jumped back upright to face the other four men still processing what they had seen.
“See what happens, Tungel, when rudeness overcomes normal courtesy to colleagues?” said Hamston, cackling.
Tungel held out two arms, as men next to him stepped toward Mark. “Whoa. We can’t start anything serious, or Runmen will ban all of us from his pub. Hamston, your man seems to handle himself. What say we settle this disagreement with a match? Your man against one of ours. I’m sure Runmen would allow it, as long as no damage is done to the pub. Plus, the other customers will love it.”
“Grand idea, Tungel, and to make it even more interesting, how about a little wager? Say . . . I’ll put up a large gold that Mark here wins.”
Tungel flushed. “Fine,” he growled and called out, “Runmen! Over here.”
Within seconds, a middle-forties man with a splayed black beard appeared. “What’s happening? You know the rules. No fighting that damages anything.”
“Nothing like that, Runmen,” said Hamston. “We are proposing a friendly match between our two blacksmith shops. We’ll do it right here with your permission.”
“All right. Give us a minute to clear a space.”
The owner shouted and began ordering patrons around. As soon as he announced a match coming, patrons jumped to their feet and started moving tables and chairs toward the two walls without bars, as if it weren’t an unusual event.
Mark hadn’t followed all the rapid-fire talk but enough to suspect he had been set up. He turned to Hamston after Tungel’s group stomped off.
“You didn’t invite us here because we worked so hard these last two days, did you?”
“Partly. Oh, the three of you worked hard to finish those nails. I realize it’s a boring project like we don’t usually do, but I couldn’t say no to the mayor.” Hamston gave Mark what he categorized as a “shit-eating” grin. “Of course, it did occur to me that we might run into some of Tungel’s men. They’re often obnoxious to me and my people, so I wondered about your reaction if we ran into them. It’s an added pleasure that Tungel himself is here tonight. Of course, I didn’t plan on a bout of you against his man until I saw you throw down the one that grabbed you.”
“What if I don’t want to fight some yahoo?”
“I don’t know what ‘yahoo’ means, but I assume it’s Tungel’s men. If you don’t fight, the bet is off, although I’ll lose some face, and Tungel will brag for months. It’s up to you, Mark. Since I instigated this, it’s my problem, not yours.”
Mark’s blood was still up, but he didn’t feel a need to engage in whatever type of fight was being foisted on him.
“What are we talking about here? What kind of fight? What rules?”
“Goes until one man can’t continue or quits. No biting, gouging, or hitting the private parts of the opponent. Anything else is allowed. Of course, if this was a serious fight, it might involve knives, clubs, or whatever the two men agree on. Have to be careful with those cases, though, because the town magistrates would have to be present to sanction the fight. This won’t be like that.”
So, Mark thought, a general brawl combination of anything goes, except the three no-nos. But the rest? Knives or whatever else? Duels? Tells me I need to be even more careful than I thought and not rile the wrong person.
He had a sobering revelation that fights could lead to serious injury or death in this society. Only months later did Hamston admit he’d been joking that night.
“If I agree to this, I’m not going to keep fighting if I’m getting my ass kicked. As soon as I know I can’t win, I’ll give up.
Hamston grinned. “Oh, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Also, to be fair, I’ll prove my confidence in you by giving you half my winnings.”
“That’s if I win,” said Mark, “and I’m not putting up half the large gold to cover the bet.”
“Just to show you how confident I am,” said Hamston, “you don’t have to put up any coin to win half a large gold.”
“All right. As long as we understand the conditions. Now, where is this person I’m supposed to brawl with?”
Hamston didn’t have to answer. Tungel returned with the original four men, now joined by an ogre. Okay, not a real ogre, but that was Mark’s first impression. The man’s eyes and face didn’t exactly radiate intelligence, but out-thinking an opponent didn’t seem his likely forte.
“This is Little Bomlyn,” said Tungel, smiling. “He’ll represent my smithy.”
Mark eyed the man, which meant he had to look slightly up to meet the man’s eyes. Mark’s six foot three was a good four to five inches lower than Bomlyn—Mark did away with the “Little” part as too cute. Mark’s time in the Hamston smithy had put more muscle on him. He estimated he weighed around 240 pounds, very little of it fat. That meant Bomlyn probably outweighed him upward of 100 pounds, albeit perhaps 50 or more pounds appeared to be lard.
Mark figured that even if his opponent was as dim-witted as his expression indicated, he couldn’t risk the guy either getting in a lucky blow or putting Mark in a clench he couldn’t escape from.
The patrons finished clearing the cen
ter of the pub, and Bomlyn was getting instructions from Tungel.
Mark turned to Hamston. “Just checking again. Do I understand correctly what the rules are here?”
“No biting, gouging, or groin blows,” replied the smith. “As I told you before.”
“So, kicking and fist blows are allowed?”
“Yeah. Along with head butting, elbows, knees, or any other part of your body you care to use. Don’t let me down. I’ve got a large gold riding on you.”
The largest Frangelese coin was about the value of a prime cow, so Mark knew Hamston had put up several sixdays’ earnings. However, it sounded like crowing rights were more important to the two blacksmiths.
With space cleared, the two parties gathered on opposite sides.
“You can take him, Mark,” said Felamer. “I’ve bet two large silvers on you.”
Mark hadn’t noticed, but lively betting had ensued among the patrons. He looked down at the boy’s eager face. He wanted to chastise the boy for betting what must have been a large part of any savings he had, but why say anything if the bet was already laid on?
Well, if I lose, I won’t worry about Hamston, Mark thought, but now I’ll feel guilty about Felamer.
He looked across the cleared space. Bomlyn hadn’t gotten any smaller.
Geez! Look at the size of those hands, and he’s got plenty of muscle in those arms. I can’t let him get a good grip on me.
There didn’t seem to be a dress code, so Mark stripped off his shirt and would have oiled himself if there had been something appropriate handy. He wanted to minimize anything his opponent could grab onto.
When he glanced back across the space, he saw Tungel staring at him, eyes roving over Mark’s torso and arms, and frowning.
Mark grinned back. Maybe having some second thoughts, asshole?
Tungel said something to Bomlyn, who looked back confused. Tungel barked something louder—Mark couldn’t tell what—and Bomlyn followed Mark’s shirt shedding.
Passages Page 6
