RavensDagger

  Chapter Eleven - A Smith

  51st Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Golden EraShorefarm, Yellowfield, Draya Calyrex

  "Hhhh," Green started, then paused. There were some sounds that were going to take her a while to master, she figured. "Hhhheeello," she said, very slowly.

  o her, Red grunted a greeting of her own, and Blue remained quiet, her head slowly turning as she sed the area around the little bcksmithy and home.

  The bcksmith's brows drew together. "Hello," he replied. "I don't reize the sound of your voice. You mustn't be from Shorefarm."

  "No," Green said.

  The man nodded slowly and solemnly. "I must fess to some joy on hearing that. Wherefrom do you hail, then? What winds brought you to this fair er of the nd, and are they of good tidings or ill?"

  She go the others, but her seemed ready to reply to the man. Without a word spokeween them, she had beeed as their spokesperson. Or spokespuppet, she presumed. "Good," she finally said. "Wat... wat hhhhapp..en?"

  "What happened?" he asked.

  Green hen realized that the man couldn't possibly see it. Still, he seemed to cat.

  "Ah, I don't rightly know. I woke in the dead of night, cramped from toe to fiip, my body wracked with pain the likes of which I'd never felt. But it seems like what I experienced was but a shadow of the suffering of the townsfolk I'd beeing to know. My shop here, it is an old thing, but my presence is new. My name is Tomas Fletchscale, I'm a bcksmith of Fangspire, to the far north a. I moved here a st few years ago, for a quieter sort of living."

  He deposited his hammer onto his anvil with a k and leaned forwards slightly. Calloused hands came to rest on the solid metal. Tomas looked ready to faint.

  "I don't know what disaster has befallen the locals. But I feel that it is something that stretches beyond these fields." He clutched at his chest for a moment. "Vyrwolf... Something has happeo the dy wolf."

  "Sssorry," Green said. "Sorry."

  Tomas shook his head. "No. No, something has befallen our noble home, and I doubt it is you who is to bme, strahe lord of our small town has... I believe he has gone mad with fervour, and the townsfolk follow his lead as the loyal serfs they are. I paid him a tithe in eyes and gold already. I am left with nothing. Perhaps your arrival is a good sign."

  "Yes," Green said. She hoped it was. Maybe this poor man could be moved bato their ship. She wasn't sure about repairing his eyes, but healing him in other ways might be possible.

  Tomas smiled, though it carried little true mirth. Then he raised a hand and picked up his hammer once more. "I must tinue my work, I'm afraid. Tools must be made. The vilge will fet this folly, I hope, when their hunger es calling, and it will be back to the o for a bounty of fish. They'll need my tools then, aing upon my urels will help no one."

  "Thank... you," Green said. She meant it, too. Kindness like this felt precious, and perhaps like something too rarely seen in these parts.

  The bcksmith paused for a moment, then turned his head to look deeper into his little shop. "One moment," he said before he moved back. A few items were shifted aside, and his fingers ran delicately over an array of tongs and tools before he found something aurned. "Here. This will serve me no longer, and I... I feel as though the lord perhaps does not deserve it. Take it, and may it serve you well."

  Green carefully plucked the item resting in Tomas's hand. It was a small wolf-head, made of bed, wrought iron. The head surrounded a metal cage of sorts, and its mouth was hio open. A metal ring ran around the top, for ease of handling, or perhaps to hook it onto something.

  Carefully, Green shifted the item around, then she discovered a csp at the rear. Tugging it down opehe iron wolf's maw and eyes, and from within came a warm yellow light.

  The interior was filled with several small mirrors positioned around a gem the size of a thumb joint. It was crudely cut, but that didn't prevent it from glowing all the same.

  "Light?" she asked.

  "Indeed. A tri from my homend, for precise work in the dead of night without heat or fme. May it light your path, because mine feels quite impossible to see at the moment. Now... I'm afraid that I truly must resume my work."

  "Thank... you," Green said.

  She clicked the little ntern shut, then looked to the others.

  Red shrugged, and Blue stared at the device for a few moments longer before her attention snapped back up to Green. She pointed, a single finger raised up towards the hill cirg around the rise.

  She looked down at the ring oern, then removed her satchel, the oh the pass given to her by Magus Nocthorn. With a bit of finagling, she was able to tie the ring onto the strap so that the ntern hung by her hip.

  It was nearing noon, at the moment, and the sun was warm enough that even the most tenacious remains of the fog that had clouded the region was being burned away.

  "Lighthouse," Blue said.

  Green was taken aback by how fluidly the puppet had said that. It was a single word, certainly, but it ronounced very well sidering the strange at their voices carried.

  "Yes," she agreed.

  Tomas the bcksmith turned his head up, almost as if looking at them. "The lighthouse? Ah... beware. The keepers of the lighthouses along these shores are all devout. They do not appreciate strangers interfering with their work."

  "Thank you," Green replied. She g the others, but there wasn't any reason not to at least go and observe.

  And so they set off. The path to the lighthouse peeled away from the vilge and along a beaten dirt path. There were a ruts, dug in by cart and carriage that moved up a slight ine and then tinued on.

  The path rose the entire way, making each stumbling step somewhat treacherous, but without the ability to feel tired, it was easy to keep a steady pace that didn't throw any of them to the ground.

  Blue eventually stopped and found a bran the ground with which to walk, but Green decided to keep her hands free, just in case.

  They made it to a stretch of thick forest, the road crawling alongside it, and as they rose up and over a hill o the rise on which the lighthouse sat, Green found herself pausing to take in the sight.

  "Look," Green said.

  She pointed below, where Shorefarm y. The vilge was id out below them in the mouth of a wide bay. The ground rose past the vilge, gently sweeping upwards until it reached a hard cliffside where bare stone rose up to a pteau just a little lower than the hill they were on.

  She wished she could squint to see better, or that she carried something to help her see further. Still, it was enough to see the fields of yellow stretg out to the horizon about the pteau.

  A rger toread out at the base of the cliffs. Three times as many homes as the little vilge they'd visited. A paved road led from oo the other, but the rger town was too distant for any precise details to be made out. It did have a small palisade wall about it, however, and few rger buildings in its tre.

  Red made a hen poio something in the distanot in the dire Green had been looking in, but towards the south.

  She turned and stared, then stared longer until the distant form started to make sense.

  It was a ballista. A big crossbow-like o oop of a rge cliffside way, way out in the distahe cliff jutted out of the waters a little, and a rge ptform sat atop it, of stone and brick.

  The ballista was huge. It took a moment for her to realize its scale from so far away, but there were trees around the ptform it sat on, ao those were racks holding spare bolts. The bolts were twice as tall as the tallest tree, and wide enough that Green was certain her armspan was shorter. The ballista itself was likely bigger than the Geidings.

  It pointed out towards the o, as a silent, uhreat, a bolt sitting primed and ready to fire already.

  "Big," Red said.

  "Yes," Green agreed.

  What kind of person would build something like that? And what did it mean, to have it point out across the o? Was it a on? A warning? What would happen to a ship struck by a ber than its main mast?

  "Lighthouse," Blue said, and they all turowards the hill behind them. Up a short path alongside it was the lighthouse. A square-based building with a massive, narrow spire jutting out of it, topped by a gss-walled ntern room.

  She supposed it was about time that they checked it out. If they couldn't clear the town, they could at least clear the lighthouse.

  ***

  RavensDagger