Hawke ignored her. Life was good and he wanted to enjoy it for a bit.
“Well, I’m off to see the Arcane Smith,” he told the Hunter.
“And I’m for home. I will see you for supper. Be there afore sundown, or you will find a closed gate as your only welcome.”
Don’t be late or don’t be there at all, Hawke translated. “I will.”
“And I would offer you a place to stay the night, but not while you’re courting my daughter. You understand, I am sure.”
“Of course.”
They clasped their forearms, the way the locals did with their friends, and the Hunter left. Kinto and him had talked on the way back. Hawke’s feminist sister would have been horrified at the idea of asking a woman’s father for his blessing before asking her out, but that was the way things were done in Gallia Nova. Kinto had agreed to allow him to court his daughter, which meant supervised visits, dinners, and talks. Hawke was happy to follow the rules; he wasn’t trying to reform society, just trying to get to know Tava better.
I’m not just trying to get laid, Hawke said as he walked the streets, looking for the address Kinto had given him. Although he was honest enough to admit that was part of it. He wanted her. And all the fighting and adventuring had left him feeling, well, ready for some action that didn’t involve cutting people with a sword. The thing with Alba had been great, but he wanted more.
We’ll see how it goes, he told the sword.
Getting serious with someone after less than a week in a whole new world was probably a bad idea. But all he had agreed to was to have dinner with her family and get to know her a little better. There was always time to change his mind.
Despite being distracted by his thoughts, Hawke heard the blacksmith’s shop before he saw it. The steady clang of a hammer striking metal was coming from a relatively wide side street; most of the others were too narrow to fit a wagon, but the one leading to the shop had a set of deep wheel ruts in it. Sure enough, he found the brick building half a block in, surrounded by a wide empty space, probably to keep stray sparks from starting a fire in nearby structures. The smithy was a solid brick house with a tile roof, topped by a pair of chimneys from which thick columns of smoke rose up into the sky. As he got closer, Hawke could feel the heat coming from the interior of the workshop.
“That’s a fancy suit of armor you’ve got,” someone said from inside the building. A young man came out to greet Hawke:
Huloh Katres (Human)
Health 13 Mana 11 Endurance 13
The guy had wide shoulders and thick arms; he looked like a younger version of the blacksmith Hawke had spotted at the Copper Kettle. His son, probably.
“What will it be, Your Holiness?” Huloh asked. “You are the Paladin that Sergeant Marko has been talking about, aren’t you? Although he didn’t mention the Black Mithril plate armor, so my apologies if I’m wrong.”
“I acquired the armor recently. In fact, I wanted to see if it could be repaired.”
“Aye, I can see it has more than a few dents, and even a couple of holes that do not bode well for its previous owner. I suppose he won’t be needing it anymore, will he?” Huloh laughed at his own joke.
“That’s right,” Hawke admitted. “I also wanted to look into becoming an Arcane Blacksmith.”
Huloh’s smile vanished. “My father already has a ‘prentice, and you’re looking at him. To take another would be costly in time and materials.”
“I can pay my way.”
The apprentice blacksmith shrugged. “Very well. I will let him know,” he said before heading back into the shop.
The hammering stopped and Huloh and his father exchanged words. Hawke’s helmet blocked enough of his hearing that he couldn’t hear the conversation until the blacksmith shouted:
“Keep the iron hot, and miss not a stroke, fool child of mine, or you will spend the night working beside the forge!”
Nobody spoils their children around these parts, I guess.
Katros Gorges came out of his shop, wiping his hands on a dirty rag. He was stripped to the waist except for a thick leather apron, showing off a set of arms that would have put a weightlifter to shame. He looked Hawke up and down, his eyes narrowing as he took in the armor and the pair of swords sheathed at his waist. Saturnyx’s handles and the Orbs at their ends were visible and clearly magical and rare. One of the problems of having fancy gear was that it was hard to cover up. He could keep the swords in his inventory but Saturnyx had said being inside it felt worse than being in a prison cell. He wasn’t going to make his sword suffer just to keep people from gawking at him.
“Greetings, Hawke Lightseeker. Guard Sergeant Marko speaks very highly of you.”
“He is a good man.”
“May I take a closer look at your ironmongery?” At Hawke’s nod, the blacksmith approached and looked over the elaborate – and banged-up – suit of armor. “Black Mithril indeed, my boy wasn’t lying about that. Been roughly handled. Will take some effort, but I can close the tears and fix the blemishes. Mithril has a good memory, it is said, and always wants to be made whole again. It will take a good deal of Mana, and five, maybe six infusions to undo the damage.”
The smith’s brows furrowed as he did math in his head. “You’re lucky I need no materials, for all the mithril is there, only bent and broken in spots. Still and all, it will be two days and fifteen silver denars to fix it good as new. I can start the day after tomorrow.”
Hawke didn’t like the idea of not having his fancy armor for four days, and paying one and a half gold coins for repairs sounded downright criminal, but Katros was the only Arcane Blacksmith in town, and Kintos had said it was pure luck that a place as small as Orom had even one of them around. Arcane Craftsmen tended to go to cities, where there was enough demand for their services to pay their high wages. Orom was unusual, having both an Arcane Smith and an Arcane Alchemist.
“You got yourself a deal,” he told Katros, and produced two gold coins. “You can keep the change if you’d be willing to teach me about Arcane Blacksmithing,”
“An eager student, eh? It is a rare Adventurer who wishes to learn a trade after venturing so deep into the Path. You have more than enough Mana to join a Craft, that is certain. How strong is your arm?”
“I do okay,” Hawke said, unsure if a Strength in the twenties counted. It would make him superhuman on Earth, but this place was different.
“Here,” Katros said, reaching into a pocket behind his apron. He produced a metal bar and handed it to Hawke. “It’s iron, only a bit of carbon in it to harden it. Can you bend it?”
“Only one way to find out,” Hawke said. As it turned out, he made a ‘U’ out of the straight bar easily enough, and straightened it again.
“Not bad,” the smith said, using the rag in his hands to grab the iron bar. The bending and unbending had heated the metal quite a bit. “You will need to learn the basics, and you might want to speak to someone to learn Arcane Mining, lest you wish to buy all your materials, which will become rather expensive as you go.”
“I can do that. I also have a few metal ingots to start with.”
“Good. Try Dorrham at the Copper Kettle. He did a bit of work digging the earth before he became a soldier. For the lessons, it will be one silver denar a day to watch me work and ask a ques
tion or two. If you are quick-witted, you will know enough to start swinging a hammer in a week or two, and pick the knack to work metals with Mana as well as your strong good arms by the third week. You’ve paid for five days’ lessons with the extra silver you just gave me.”
“Can I start now?”
“I’m doing nothing fancy, but I will show you how it’s done. Let’s get you out of that armor – might even start work on it today – and get you started. Huloh! Keep the fires hot! We got ourselves a new ‘prentice!”
Thirty-Eight
Congratulations! You have learned Basic Blacksmithing 1!
As it turned out, having Unlimited Potential and a high Intelligence allowed Hawke to pick up the basics at an incredibly quick pace. Katros had been working on a plowshare when Hawke had arrived. The simple blade was made out of iron stock that the smith turned into simple steel by sprinkling charcoal dust on the hot metal and beating it with his hammer. He explained what he was doing every few minutes, ignoring the way Huloh fake-yawned when hearing stuff he had already learned. The blacksmith’s son was not happy to have another apprentice to compete with. That didn’t bother Hawke at all; after dealing with Dire Bears and assorted Undead, the enmity of a normie human was nothing to worry about.
After spouting off that bit of wisdom, the sword went quiet while Hawke learned and, later in the afternoon, actually took a couple of turns by the anvil and helped hammer a second piece of iron stock that was meant to become a shovel head. Saturnyx broke her silence only to remind Hawke that it was two hours before sundown and he had a date to prepare for.
“It hasn’t been even half a days’ work,” Katros said when Hawke made his excuses and started to leave. “You learned quickly, however. You’ll still be charged a silver, but I daresay you got your money’s worth.”
“Sounds good to me. See you tomorrow afternoon! I have an appointment with the Prefect in the morning.”
“I will see you when you arrive, and not a moment sooner,” the blacksmith said, not sounding very impressed. Hawke figured he was going to get charged for another full day of training no matter how late he arrived.
Becoming an Arcane Crafter was expensive as hell; Hawke was being charged almost three days’ wages for an unskilled laborer for each day of training. No wonder most people never bothered to even try. Thoughts about the unfairness of it all soon vanished as Hawke made it to the Copper Kettle, spent seven coppers on a new set of clothes from Dorrham’s lost and found, and purchased a hot bath for another three coppers. The new clothes were nothing fancy, just a set of leather leggings and a blue linen shirt, plus what passed for underwear in those parts, but they were better than the stuff he’d gotten during character creation. While he waited for his bath to be prepared, he told Dorrham the good news about the Lair and his meeting with Prefect Felix the next day.
“Yer a blessing from the gods, lad,” the Dwarf said as Hawke went to wash off the grime from days of camping out in the woods and hours sweating his ass off at the blacksmith’s.
The bathtub was small and cramped and the soap had a little too much lye for comfort, but whoever had made it had added some aromatic herbs and he felt halfway human after he was done. Alba brought him a mirror and a straight razor, giggling when Hawke was startled by her unannounced entry. She offered to help scrub his back, “and any other bits you fancy.”
“I would love to,” he told her. “But I can’t. I am courting someone.”
“Until a betrothal, you are free to enjoy anyone’s company, darling,” she told him. “No promises bind you.”
He shrugged. “It wouldn’t feel right to me.”
Alba gave out a chuckle, and if there was a tinge of bitterness to it, he couldn’t blame her. “No surprise, with you being a heroic gentleman and all. Should your mind change course, you can always find Alba Bastardes at the Kettle, as always.” Her smile faded. “Same as always.” She left. Hawke felt bad about the whole thing.
As he dried himself off, he thought about the sorry state of plumbing in town. He had seen an aqueduct that brought water into the town, and had read somewhere that Romans had used lots of piping historically, although they had been made of lead, which was terrible for your health. Here, people threw their crap into ditches along the town streets, and let the rain carry their waste off. The result stunk to high heavens. Hawke decided to do something about it. If he introduced showers, sewers, and flush toilets to the town, he could probably retire in comfort. Maybe he could use his Earth skills for something useful.
The walk to the hunting lodge was much more pleasant than the last one, when he had been worried about the Dire Bear, not to mention going into a Lair full of Undead. He’d conquered those fears in the best way possible, killing the critters that made him afraid. Now all he had to worry about was saying something stupid over dinner and ruining his chances with Tava. That sort of thing might have seemed like a medium-sized deal back on his universe, but in the Realms it seemed like nothing to be concerned about.
Hawke reached the hilltop lodge a few minutes before nightfall. The dogs’ barking alerted Kinto, who came outside; the Hunter pointedly looked toward the setting sun, but said nothing more than “Good eve to you, Paladin.”
“Evening.”
“Well, come in. Food’s getting cold.”
The inside of the main house was a long rectangular space, with an interior door at one end leading to the only separate room in the place. A cast-iron stove and attached kitchen were set against one wall; a long table with six stools was next to it. There was a heap of bedding on the wall opposite the table, which Hawke figured was where Gosto slept; at the end opposite to the interior doorway he noticed a section partitioned by a hanging deerskin curtain, which must be Tava’s bedroom. The partition had been decorated with flowers and a stuffed rabbit made out of the fur of a real rabbit, but with black buttons replacing its eyes. It was very realistic otherwise.
“It’s not much, but we call it home,” Kinto said.
“It’s lovely,” Hawke replied without a trace of sarcasm.
Shelves lined the walls, packed mostly with tools and utensils but also holding a handful of books as well as a statue of a horned man holding a leafed staff that his Lore identified as Cerunnos. The place had a homey quality that made him feel nostalgic for his parents’ place. He’d grown up in that house and still felt he belonged there, despite having been on his own for several years. Hawke understood why Tava wanted to leave home, but was old enough to know she would look back to her life there with fondness and maybe a little regret.
Dinner was deer chunks smothered a creamy sauce over boiled vegetables. It could have used more spices but it was as good a meal as any Hawke had eaten since arriving at the Realms, pizza included. Kinto opened a bottle of wine to go with dinner. Hawke was a beer guy, but the mildly alcoholic grape juice did help relax him a bit. The Hunter mostly listened and let Tava and Gosto do the talking.
The young Druid asked a ton of questions about Hawke: where he had come from, about his family, and life as a Paladin. Tava was interested in the answers, so he did the best he could. He explained he was from a far-off land and had been taken to the Realms by magic, that his father had been a soldier and now a craftsman and his mother a teacher, and that he himself had been in a trade. They understood when he said he worked on pipes and water supply systems.
“You might help fix the town’s water pump,” Gosto said. “One of the main wells will not provide water without it, and the mechanism is old, dates back to the old Empire. Nobody in town knows how to fix it, and the Prefect is too cheap to pay an Arcane Engineer from Akila to repair or replace it.”
“Can’t promise anything,” Hawke replied, having learned his lesson. “But when I have a chance, I’ll take a look at it. Have to speak to the Prefect tomorrow anyhow.”
Kinto nodded and broke his silence: �
�I will go with you. If he is not a fool, he will listen to us.”
“But he is a fool,” Tava said. “Or craven. Perhaps both.”
“How did he become Prefect?” Hawke asked. “I mean, did he get elected by the local voters, inherited it, what?”
He had to explain what he meant about being elected, which got a big laugh from them. Nobody at the Kintes household had a high opinion of democracy.
“No, Felix Pontes got his job from his father, Pontos Pontes,” Kinto explained. “He descends from a long line of Arcane Stewards who have controlled the Town’s Core for generations. We profess loyalty to the Ruby Empire, but Orom hasn’t been part of it since long before my father’s time. You don’t see any Legions marching around these parts, now do you?”
“No, can’t say that I have. So this place is on its own?”
Tava nodded. “No one will come help our valley, not unless we offer to pay them. When I first saw you, I thought you were a mercenary trying his luck with some dumb provincials.” She smiled at him. “I am glad I was wrong.”
“Well, I might be able to get us some help.”
Hawke explained about Dorrham’s request and the possibility of a band of Dwarven adventurers coming to Orom.
“They will want concessions, of course,” Kinto said. “Dwarves aren’t much greedier than anyone else, contrary to the stories fools tell of them, but they don’t risk their lives for free, either. Dorrham has been dreaming of opening up the old mines for quite some time.”
“Well, nobody is using the mines right now. If we can clear out the guy nobody wants to mention by name, we can get them open and the town will benefit.”
“Larger is not always better,” Kinto said. “I have been to many cities, of which Akila is not the largest by far. Loud, filthy places, where everyone will happily cheat you for the chance of an extra copper, or just for a laugh at the expense of some dumb foreigner.”
Twilight Templar (The Eternal Journey Book 1) Page 22
