“Look, you should go ask the other blacksmiths in town,” the foreman argued with me from where he stood atop the gazebo at Thornley’s work site. “My men wouldn’t—”
“And neither would the town smiths,” I interrupted him. “So, if I don’t find anything out here, I’ll go talk to them next. You can rest easy on that.” He looked as if he might want to continue to complain but I rolled my eyes and turned Neeker away. “The sooner I get this done, the sooner I stop bothering your men.”
I nudged the horse into a plodding walk toward one of the forges set up on the work site. The man standing beside it glanced up at me with curiosity before going back to his work. I decided to move past him and talk to the farthest smith first. Something about the man I passed on the way made my intuition rustle.
The smith looked confused and nodded at his work. “I work on tools and nails, ” he explained with a slight shake of his head. “I’ve never been good with weapons. I wouldn’t know what to do with one other than accidentally cut off a limb.”
I wanted to point out how that didn’t mean he didn’t steal anything to sell it later, but I relented. He honestly looked like he had little to no idea what I was talking about and that settled it for me. After all, I could always come back if it turned out I was wrong. I had other ways of getting information out of people.
I finally circled back around toward the first smith I had passed on my way inside. I had felt his gaze on me as I spoke with the others. Now, he tried to play off my presence as if I hadn’t been doing so and he hadn’t been growing more anxious about it. “Good…” I squinted up at the sky and grunted softly. “Afternoon, it looks like,” I said as I realized the time. My stomach growled against my will so that he looked up at me, and up a bit farther given I still sat astride Neeker, at the sound. “Who am I speaking with?”
“Good afternoon,” he replied with a baffled expression that he attempted to hide. Apparently, the growl was much louder than I expected. “My… my name is Kenton. Kenton Thistleway.”
I cleared my throat. “My name is Morchandir. Let me get straight to the point. A dwarf friend of Chief Watcher Grimbriar has had a sword stolen.” I motioned around. “You haven’t seen anyone here with a weapon they didn’t have before, have you?”
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a man break into a cold sweat and want to physically crawl into a hole to hide, before. “What? A stolen sword?” he replied quickly. “Stolen from a Dwarf?” He shifted his gaze away with a little laugh that sounded too high-pitched and forced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turned back to his forge. “Please, go away, I don’t know anything about it,” he finished desperately.
I watched him lift his tools and narrowed my eyes behind the mask. Leaning down onto the pommel of the saddle with my forearms, I regarded him with a slow smirk. “Really? Because it sounds to me like maybe you do and don’t want to tell me.” He straightened noticeably and my smile grew wider and sharper. I knew I had him. “I think maybe you know who took it,” I continued with a hint of glee for his discomfort. I might have been a burglar but at least I knew how to burgle things and not get caught at it – and how to make sure the ones who did weren’t able to alert anyone, after. “Was it that man?” I asked, pointing to a random worker. “Or the overseer?” I asked, pointing to the man in the gazebo currently yelling at another worker.
The man tugged out a kerchief and wiped at his brow. “Absolutely not,” he muttered. “Run along, very scary tall man.”
Relentlessly, I told him, “Or perhaps you were the one who took it?” I made sure to point my gloved finger right at him as I said it as he took a peek up at me again. Startled, he swallowed heavily, and I saw his eyes widen.
He broke. “Yes, yes, I admit it! I took it.” He set his tools down near the forge again and turned to stare up at me. “Please, don’t tell the constable! Please!” he begged, hands clasped in front of his chest.
I remained in my leisurely position leaning against the saddle horn. “Depends on what I’m offered.”
He shook his head at me. “I did it to save my family!” he protested. “See, a brigand named Nate, he told me that he would hurt my family, unless I made a sword for their captain, Blake.” He flailed his hands around wildly. “But I didn’t have the iron to forge one, and I was desperate to save my family, so I took the dwarf’s sword!” I frowned, and he must have sensed it or seen it from his lower vantage point from beneath my mask. “Nate said that before he gave the sword to Blake, he was going to test the blade against the workers at the site of Thornley’s silo, just before the graveyard and the boar-hollow.” It was my turn to straighten sharply. I might not like getting involved for the most part – there but for the grace of Eru go I and all – but I knew if Grimbriar found out I hadn’t stopped it from happening, I would be in deep trouble. The idea that some man wanted to blood his blade on a bunch of innocent people didn’t sit well with me. At least I wasn’t depraved enough to go hunting innocents just to kill them. “Now, I want to set matters right.” He seemed to think I might not believe him. “I do!” he insisted. “And maybe you can help do that? If you find him there, maybe you can convince him to return Lofar’s sword and leave my family alone,” Kenton hurriedly added. “What do you say?” He sounded hopeful.
I wanted to tell him he was disgusting for being so worried about himself rather than these people who might get murdered, but I knew I would be lying. I’d met plenty of people like him, before. I was a person like him, in the end. “The silo near the cemetery and boar-hollow. Where is it?” I growled.
Kenton pointed southeast with a shaking hand at my tone. “If you don’t tell the foreman about this, I will,” I informed him before kicking Neeker into a gallop out of the work site. I had to get to the silo and hope the nearby graveyard wasn’t already packed with new inhabitants.
I followed the road back toward Bree until a path ran east from it and I saw the beginning of a silo or other construction in the near distance. Something felt off as soon as I laid eyes on the area, however. I slowed my gelding to a halt. Neeker pranced nervously and I knew why: I could smell the scent of boar from where I sat on him. The silo loomed ahead without any sign of the workers Nate had said he would murder. This isn’t good, I told myself with the first stirrings of frustration. I didn’t see corpses strewn around, but I also didn’t see Nate.
Or at least, not at first. My gaze fell to a dark mass on the ground near one of the wooden supports at the entry to the site. Already knowing what I would find, but not knowing who it might be, I swung down from Neeker and led him to the body. Turning it over, I found myself staring into the cold, dead eyes of a dark-dressed man who didn’t look at all like the workers at the other site. Nate, then, I decided. The amount of blood on the ground matched his wounds and I could see a trail of it leading away toward the hollow beyond along with hoof tracks. He had been dead for some time.
I had to pry the hilt of a broken sword out of his hand. The weapon looked too fine to be affordable to a brigand. That said, it seemed to be shattered beyond repair and I had no idea where the blade might be. Probably still stuck inside the boar that killed him, I mused. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow,” I assured him as I stood up – after rifling through his clothes for his belongings, of course. He didn’t need them any longer, after all.
Kenton didn’t seem as happy about the situation as I would have thought. “What?” he nearly shrieked, his face going white. “The blade broke, and Nate is dead?” He shook his head rapidly and paced a little. “Oh this is bad… very, very bad.” He halted and turned back to me. “What if Blake comes looking for his sword? I won’t have one to give him, and they’ll do something terrible to my family!”
“I thought Nate was giving him the sword?” I asked with confusion. “Won’t he just think Nate took it for himself instead?”
Kenton shook his head and I knew a moment later that it wouldn’t work. Blake, whoever he was, would only demand another one to replace it. “I need a sword to give him! If only I had another blade to give them.” He wailed the last, hands flying toward the sky, as he turned back to me. Slowly, though, they came to rest on top of his head. I could see he had thought of something. This should be hilarious, I told myself, dreading what was about to come out of this man’s mouth. “Wait, do you think Lofar would make another, if you explained the situation to him?”
I snorted and nearly swallowed my tongue at the shock I felt. “You’re a bold one,” I replied with a cough. “You steal his sword and now ask him to make another one for you that you basically mean to steal with his approval this time?”
He pleaded with me again. “My family is in danger! Could you please ask him?” He then added, “It’s the only thing left I can think of, Morchandir.”
I sighed. “Are you sure you even want another weapon from this dwarf? I mean, the first one broke in its first fight. I don’t trust the craftsmanship.”
Kenton shrugged at me with a helpless expression. “If it saves my family, I’ll do whatever I have to.”
“Fine, fine,” I relented. “Let me go ask him. If this Blake person shows up, keep him occupied, though. I doubt Lofar can forge another in a few minutes.” I rode off as Kenton called out his thanks over the sound of Neeker’s retreating hoofbeats.
Lofar looked excited as I returned. “Have you found my sword yet?” he asked before I’d even brought my gelding to a complete stop. “It was one of the workers there, wasn’t it?”
I fished out the broken hilt and offered it to the dwarf after dismounting. I doubted he would appreciate bad news on top of having to stand on something just to retrieve what I needed to hand over. He took it and stared at it, turning it over and over in his hands in obvious disbelief. “B… this… this is preposterous!” he blustered at last with every red hair on his thick beard standing on end.
“The man who took it, Kenton Thistleway, did so because his family is being threatened by brigands,” I explained to Lofar quickly. “The man he gave it to worked for someone called Blake, who wanted the sword in the first place. Unfortunately, that lieutenant decided to blood it on some innocent workers at another part of the site and wound up mauled to death by the boars in the area.” I nodded at the hilt. “That was in his hand.”
Lofar looked ready to throw the hilt in his rage. “It gets better,” I continued. He looked back at me and I said, “The worker who stole it is still in danger. Blake is still coming for his weapon.”
“And?” the dwarf responded gruffly, still seething, as he tossed the remnants of his weapon aside. “I hope he gets his teeth knocked in!” He crossed his arms at his chest.
I took a slow breath in. “And,” I finished, “he wants you to forge another sword for him to give to Blake so that he can save his family.”
I worried for a moment that the dwarf would burst something internally and fall over instantly dead. “Another blade,” he spluttered. “He cannot be serious!”
“That’s what I said,” I agreed with a vehement nod.
Lofar violently waved both hands around. “I am already behind on other work, and now I must forge a new blade in time to fill the order this broken sword was meant for.”
“Might have been a good idea to test it before giving it to the buyer, all considered,” I muttered.
He didn’t hear me. “‘Time is precious, don’t give it away for nothing,’ my father used to say….” He trailed off abruptly and then looked at the hilt on the ground. His furious expression eased and a curiously sad one took its place for a few long, silent moments. He stirred again with a grunt. “Actually lost my father to brigands a few years back,” he said. “Wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
I didn’t know what to say in response. For all intents and purposes, I was a brigand, too, or had behaved as one. I felt awkward standing there unable to say anything that might help him. I had never been good with sympathetic overtures. Sympathy would get you killed, where and how I grew up, even with guardians to balance out that ruthlessness.
He rolled his eyes and moved forward. Bending down, he swept up the hilt with a rough, “Bah! Give me that hilt!” He ran one thick thumb over it as he brooded over it. “I must be going soft. I’ll do it to keep his family safe, but he’s going to have to do something in exchange!” He shook the hilt at me as if I were the one asking him to make it instead of Kenton. “I have two conditions!”
I lifted my hands. “I’ll let him know. Just tell me.” And don’t stab me with the broken blade, I added as I warily kept my eye on the frustrated dwarf.
He nodded at me. “First one is that if that brigand don’t come around, looking for the sword, I get it back.”
“I don’t think he’ll have a problem with that one,” I agreed as I lowered my hands.
He made a growling noise. “Second, Thistleway gives me a hand and does some of the simpler work I’ve got piling up around here, while I forge the new blade.” Lofar turned and began to gather up several items as he spoke.
I shrugged slightly. “Well, he does need to make up for that first theft and for your time helping him…”
He turned back to me with both arms cradling things in need of repair so that I had to accept them. “Here, take these things over to him to work on,” he instructed. Once I had them, he pointed at each one and told me what needed to be done so that I could pass on the information appropriately. “The axe needs a new haft, the bellows need new leather, and the helm needs to be reshaped and reinforced.” I moved back to Neeker’s saddle to secure them to it for travel. “Take that over to Kenton and tell him if he gets it done, and I’m happy with the work, we’ll call it even on the cost of the two swords. My assistance comes with a price.” He flapped his hands at me. “Now off with you, I’ve got to get to work on this new blade.”
I tightened some of the leather I had used to secure the helm to the saddle. “Aren’t you afraid a rushed job will produce something terrible in quality?”
He spat to the side of the cabin. “Do we have any choice at this point? If he’d waited to steal it after it had cooled, it wouldn’t have broken in the first place!”
I’m sure, I replied silently. I bade him farewell as he moved off to get to work and rode back toward the work site. All the riding to and fro had begun to grate on my nerves. Why are you doing this? I asked myself. Why are you helping these people so much? This isn’t like you.
“Morchandir!” Kenton called out excitedly as I reined in Neeker. “You’re back so quickly! With good tidings, I hope?”
I slipped from the saddle and landed softly on the ground. “Lofar is willing to help on the condition you help him,” I said without preamble. “He’s sent along some things for you to work on while he’s forging another sword.” I turned to the saddle to loosen the helm, bellows, and axe haft.
He nodded quickly. “Of course I’ll do this work for the dwarf. Here, let me see what he has sent…” He moved toward me and I tensed unconsciously as he walked up from behind to stand at my side. He had no idea how dangerous it was to do that and I wasn’t going to tell him. You never walked behind a horse or a trained killer without warning them. The reason was the same in either case.
I handed Kenton each of the three items for his examination. It didn’t take long for him to make his verdict. “All of these can be easily repaired, but I don’t have the materials to do it.” He looked up at me and I knew what he was about to ask. I was already sighing as he did it. “I hate to ask this, but could you help me gather what I need?”
“I’ve come this far,” I conceded. “Why not?”
He smiled at me uncertainly before telling me what he needed: iron straps from the foreman, flawless boar hides, and trinkets from what was probably the graveyard just a bit away. “Why can’t you ask your foreman for the straps?” I asked with a frown.
I watched his eyes shift slightly. “He… might… be tired of me asking for things.”
I shook my head. “Fine, but why flawless boar hides? How am I supposed to kill them without putting holes and cuts in them?”
“The leather I can make from them needs to be as smooth and intact as possible,” he explained avidly. “Otherwise, the air will escape from inside through the mended areas and make the bellows worthless.”
I climbed up onto Neeker. “And the bloody grave-robbing?” I growled. Not again, I said to myself. I’d rather dive into the lake headfirst.
He shrugged slightly. “It may not be. It may be an old trash heap area. It’s in the boar hollow and not the graveyard, and the mounds are small. Everything I’ve found there has had little jewels on them, but the trinkets are never expensive looking.”
I eyed him just the same. “Have you ever seen anything dead walking around there?” I asked warily. Please say no. Please say no…
His frown accompanied rapid blinks. Baffled, he replied, “Why would dead things go walking? They’re dead.”
My relief must have confused him even further. “You sweet summer child.” I turned Neeker back toward the general area where the silo and Nate’s corpse still lay.
“Sir, I was born in the spring,” he protested as I rode off once again.
I rode past the foreman to save him for last when I returned. I found Nate’s body had vanished as I approached the silo site again and moved on. I had seen plenty of bear and wolves in the area who would be interested in the scent of blood. Down into the hollow I went to get that errand done first, knowing the second might well happen too given the stench of wild pigs I could make out.
I kept my eyes open for the boars while I found each small mound of debris to rummage through. Pulling out several small trinkets, I wondered why so many were buried in this one place if it wasn’t a cemetery. Then why have the bodies not risen as they have in the Barrow-downs? I contemplated as I moved as silently and invisibly as possible through the area. Perhaps it’s still too far away for the dark power that’s affected it to reach? It comforted me at least a little, although I had lost my taste for robbing graves after my escapades to the southwest finding Andraste.
Enough, I decided as I secured the last trinket in my carrying pouch and turned my attention to the surroundings. I could hear the squeal of young piglets somewhere close by. I didn’t want to tangle with a mother boar defending them. That was probably how Nate met his end, if I had to guess. Instead, I made my way cautiously up to where I had left Neeker hidden at the rim of the hollow. A nice, big male would probably do the trick, provided I could kill it without ruining its hide.
I wasn’t a Hunter. That was almost certainly why the boar screamed at me from where it burst from its hiding place in some bushes in an aggressive, threatening manner without me realizing it. The sound had me jerking back and pulling my long knives free instantly. The thing was huge and angry. It had to be the biggest boar I had seen in my life. “You’ll make a fine set of bellows and dinner,” I told it as I stood my ground.
With another roaring sound, the boar charged me. I had to avoid its long tusks by diving to the side. It was faster than I thought, though: unlike a bull, who had to skid to a halt and turn around, the boar wheeled back with a slash of its head to keep going. I had to keep jumping around to avoid getting gored to death by the thing. This won’t work, I realized. It will wear you down long before you get a death blow on its throat. It was the only way I knew I could kill it without ruining the hide. If it stayed still for long enough, I might could put a throwing knife into its chest or neck from the side…
Legs, I decided. If you want to slow it down, you have to cripple it at its legs. Hamstring it.
I set a nearby tree in my range of sight. I needed to get behind the pig. It might take a bit of agility, but surely I had that after years of burglary? I took off running toward the large oak with the sound of the boar’s hooves beating the ground behind me. It would overtake me quickly, as fast as it was – far faster than any human, at least – which was why I had gotten as close to the oak as I could before darting for it. I didn’t know how much pain I was about to put myself through by attempting this move, but I wanted to risk it. Pulling a muscle would be better than dying out here thanks to a bloodthirsty holiday meal on the hoof.
When I came up to the trunk, I jumped, full speed, toward it and pushed off of it with one foot. I wanted to flip backward over the boar, land, and hopefully cause it to have to stop or ram the tree. Meanwhile, I could take out its back legs. It seemed like a good idea at the time to my fevered, frantic brain, given I had no plan in place. Place a trap, dispose of the boar – that was what I had meant to do before the thing showed up out of nowhere.
Instead, I found myself woefully unable to flip enough to master the move I had begun. Instead, I pushed up and off of the trunk, flailed, twisted my body instinctively….
… and landed on the back of the boar with my head near its terrible, horrifically dirty haunches.
The sound of its high-pitched screech of terrified rage mimicked my own, much lower one as I realized what had happened. Though it wasn’t so big that I could have saddled it as a mount, it wasn’t small enough for me to simply crush it into the ground with my size. I didn’t even have time to plunge my knives into it or cut its tendons before it spun in a circle and took off with me on its back. All I could do is wrap my arms around and under its body and try not to let it bite and slash at my booted legs. If I survived the encounter, I would almost certainly hurt tomorrow morning.
The boar’s hips and back repeatedly punched my face and jaw as I loudly, at the top of my lungs, cursed it in every manner that I had picked up in my life as a soldier, guard, and scoundrel. Finally getting hold of myself, I pulled one arm up and used the knife in it to sever the tendons and muscles as best I could on the hind leg matching that side. The beast’s sound of pain bordered on ear-splitting as it once again tried vainly to wheel in circles to get at me. It took me a moment before I could risk pulling the other arm up to do the same for its other leg. Once I had them cut amidst a spray of blood, the boar’s legs gave out under my weight. I fell off of it and rolled to the side, but had to keep rolling a ways in a dizzy scramble to keep the enraged creature from dragging itself over to me even then.
I finally managed to dispatch it, blood it, and looked around for Neeker. The boar hadn’t run far, at least, with me on its back to weigh it down. I cleaned and sheathed my blades before hefting the creatures back legs up to pull it behind me toward my gelding. I heard another low, threatening grunt from a smaller version of the one I had with me and simply snarled at it, “Don’t even think about it or you’re next, hamhock.”
I secured the heavy creature across Neeker, who seemed none too pleased by the proceedings, and walked him back to Thornley’s work site. Along the way, I stopped at the gazebo where the foreman stood and asked him for what Kenton still needed.
“Bah, he wants iron straps?” the man sneered. “Kenton always needs something. He is straining the cost of this project. We have no straps in our stores.”
I leveled a look at him. “That sounds like a personal problem to me. One man can’t run your costs up. Brigands do, though, I’m sure.”
Rosethorn eyed me for the comment. Turning away from me, he rummaged through a pile of odds and ends that looked to be scrap metal, trimmings, and other discarded pieces of larger projects. “Here, take this old iron pot. He can make some straps out of that.”
Flies buzzed around the boar’s corpse on Neeker’s back just behind me as I took the pot. “And I brought you all this fine boar for dinner. Now, you have nothing to cook the meat in. Whatever shall you do?” I led the gelding away and waved the pot around, calling out in as heraldic a voice as I could manage, “Oye, oye! The foreman has given away his last pot to make iron straps! Prepare yourselves for certain doom and starvation!”
Kenton just stared at me as I halted at his forge with Neeker in tow. “Are you always this way?” he asked with concern.
I lifted my shoulders in a brief shrug. “I’m being more polite than usual right now. I’m too tired and hurt to really give it my best.” I offered the pot to him.
He brushed it off hurriedly. “It’s good you’ve returned! Here, give me those things!” He took the pot from me and I freed the pouch with the trinkets inside. “While you were away, something terrible happened!”
“You’re telling me,” I grunted as I moved to work at getting the boar off Neeker’s back.
“Please, I need your help!” Kenton pleaded. “It’s terrible! Blake came and told me he knew Nate was dead and that he knew I had something to do with it!” I hefted the boar across my shoulders and settled it there.
“Yes, horrible. Tell me where to put this thing,” I grunted in exertion. Turn about is fair play, I mused privately. You were just on it and now it’s taking its revenge ride on you.
Kenton stared and shook himself as he hustled over to a stone structure about waist high. He motioned at it and continued as I followed him. “I tried to tell him I didn’t, that I would have another sword for him soon, but he wouldn’t listen.” I dumped the boar off of my shoulders and straightened with a deep breath in and a heavy sigh out. I would need another bath tonight and a good wash of my clothes to handle the stench left behind. “He said he’s taken my daughter, Maribell! If I don’t give him another sword, and soon, he’ll kill her!”
I swiveled around to regard him. “He… did what, now?” I asked slowly. Did this just turn into a rescue mission?
“You must save her! Please! Get the sword from Lofar, then go to Blake’s camp. It’s in the Bree-fields, up north of Bree. I’m sure he’ll release my daughter when he has the sword.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Do I really look like the type who goes around saving innocent young girls from evil villains?”
Kenton shook his head. “Morchandir! Please hurry! I don’t know what I’ll do if they harm her…” He squeezed his hands together. “You’re the only hope I have left.”
“Yes, yes…” I grumbled as I walked back toward Neeker. I could say that I had been mistaken for a hero because of the people who caught me returning the shade’s ring to his brother and letting them rest again. This, however, would be a direct act of heroism that no amount of explanations would deflect. I mounted my horse and rode out toward Lofar for what I hoped was the last time, uncertain of how I felt about being suddenly thrust into the role of champion, but also wondering if Kenton’s daughter was pretty at the same time.
“Idiot,” I muttered to myself aloud. “Don’t get any fool ideas. You don’t even own any shining armor.”
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