Sword of the Bright Lady (15 page)

Christopher bit his lip. As much as he wanted to warn Dereth that there would be no armor contracts this year, he didn't want to annoy Karl more. Also, he wasn't sure how to explain that the money Dereth would have made had been spent on making him a priest.

“Have you thought about—branching out? For instance, I could use some heavy-cast steel pipe.” It was the best way he could think of to describe a cannon barrel.

“I only work in iron, Pater. For steel you should see the Seniors.”

“I have, but they don't seem to like seeing me.”

Dereth chuckled in commiseration.

“What if I showed you how to make steel?” Christopher pressed. Some half-remembered college professor had felt it necessary to describe the Bessemer process, on the theory that his mechanical engineering students should know where the steel they used came from. It couldn't be that hard to figure out the details, once you knew the secret. And the secret was simple: the right amount of carbon in the iron, neither too much nor too little. Ancient smiths had either burned it off or ignored it altogether; the concept of moderation instead of purity was modern.

“Assuming you could do so without violating any guild secrets, regulations, or laws, what would be the end? No one would buy steel from us. No one would believe that a priest knew how to make steel in the first place.” From the way he said it, Christopher could tell that Dereth numbered himself among that group.

“I'm a priest of War,” Christopher said. “War requires weapons, and weapons require steel. The army will buy our steel.”

“Then you have won over Goodman Karl? A second victory, even more impressive than defeating Horrible Hobilar.”

“Well—not yet. But I'm hoping.”

“You have high hopes, then,” Dereth said. “I will gladly share them. But I must feed my family, as well as my forge.” The smith poked around in the near-empty buckets of charcoal and raw ore. Christopher knew where charcoal came from; cut down a forest and burn it in a hole in the ground. He had an ax, and he knew where to find trees.

“Where does the ore come from?”

“The Old Bog, of course.”

Christopher had been hoping for a mine, with rich veins of easily refined ore. Boiling a bog until it yielded up its red treasure was inefficient—which meant expensive.

Apparently Dereth could read the disappointment on his face.

“It's not so bad as that. I'll be the one digging in it.”

A smith digging his own ore? The concept defined inefficiency.

“Maybe I should take a look at this bog,” Christopher said. Maybe he could work some industrial magic there.

“Just head north, to the edge of town. You can't miss it.”

He almost did, though, because it was so pathetic. A handful of dispirited apprentices mucked about in shallow pits in the ground, breaking up the frozen earth. At first glance he had thought they were gardeners.

“Wouldn't that be easier in summer?” he asked one of them.

“Journeyman says it builds strength,” the young man replied bitterly.

“Ha!” laughed one of the other young men. “Journeyman says stop looking at my daughter, more likely.”

“Bugger off, Trane, you're out here too.”

They weren't working together. Each apprentice was filling his own wheelbarrow. At least the dirt was red, which implied it was higher quality than he had feared.

“What if I wanted to buy some of that?” he asked.

“Don't you have enough dirt?” the one called Trane said with a leer, and the others laughed.

“Haha. But I want this dirt now.”

“Go see Tom, then,” another said. “He'll even dig your night-soil for you, if you pay him.” The apprentice jerked his thumb, pointing farther north, and went back to work.

The bog followed the river up and to the right, and disappointment followed with it. A solitary young man was waist-deep in a hole in the ground, shoveling black shale. He seemed poorer than others, dressed in clothes almost as shabby as Christopher's cast-offs. But he was whistling.

“Greetings, Pater,” he said cheerfully. “Come to dig some more dirt?”

Christopher smiled lamely. “Has everyone heard about my hobby, then?”

“As the only professional digger in the county, I must confess I paid unusual attention to the matter,” the man replied. He was young, a little over twenty or so, and didn't stop shoveling to talk.

“Now that's a profession I haven't encountered yet.”

“I'm a second son,” the young man said. When that didn't seem sufficient, he added, “Of a farmer.” Seeing Christopher's continued blankness, he sighed and explained, “My older brother was graceless enough to survive the draft.”

It finally clicked for Christopher. “So you have no farm to inherit.”

“Now I heard you were a sharp one, but I didn't expect this,” the man said innocently.

Faced with relentless impertinence, Christopher had to laugh. It was nice that wearing a sword didn't intimidate everyone. Actually, so far it hadn't done anything but annoy people. Christopher suspected that was more his fault than the sword's.

“I was told you could sell me some ore.”

Tom glanced at him sharply and chose his next words with care.

“I doubt that very much, Pater. Digging iron ore is a craft secret.”

“Then what are you digging for?”

“Ah, now that's the very question I have often asked myself. Why dig and delve for ungrateful townies? Why muck out their garderobes and stables? They say there's plenty of good land out in the Marches. Farms for the taking, if you don't mind the occasional band of slavering ulvenmen. So what keeps young Tom here, in muck up to his knees, doing dirty jobs for lazy townsmen?”

Christopher wasn't completely clueless. He knew the answer to this one without being told.

“A woman, no doubt.”

Tom stopped shoveling and looked at Christopher with appreciation. “Sharp indeed, Pater. Young Tom Fool, I am. Fool for falling in love with a town girl with a harpy for a mother and an ogre for a father. Pleased to meet you.” He tipped his hat, which was a sorry-looking affair that appeared to be two mangy squirrels locked in a deadly grapple.

“Who owns this—” Christopher couldn't call it a mine, as it was just a bunch of holes in the ground, “—this field?”

“The Saint does, Pater, and the coal's free to all who dig it. It's not valuable, like, say, wood or grass. So I dig when others won't and sell it to smiths who don't feel like punishing their apprentices.”

“Coal?” Of course. Tom's wheelbarrow was loaded with black, not red. “You're digging coal?” Christopher could hardly believe his good luck.

“That I am. Sometimes the smiths will burn it, as it's cheaper than charcoal, though it's a foul choking to do so.”

Christopher scooped up a handful of the soft rock. Poor bituminous, rather than good hard clean Pennsylvania anthracite. It was carbon that made it burn, and sulfur that made it dirty.

Coincidentally, Christopher had need of both.

On impulse he took a gold coin out of his purse and tossed it to the young man.

Tom snatched it out of the air and whistled. “That's a lot of coal. I deliver a wheelbarrow to town for three coppers.”

“I need a barrow delivered to Burseberry village. Will that cover it?”

“A long walk, but Tom Fool isn't a fool for nothing.” He winked and tapped his head with the coin.

Christopher laughed. “You can take your time to deliver it.”

Tom looked a little relieved and then asked carefully, “Only one, Pater?”

“For now. I'll want more coal later, and no, I won't be paying a gold a wheelbarrow then. But I need this one for, um, research.”

“So you're a wizard, then.”

“No,” Christopher corrected him, slightly alarmed. “I'm a priest.”

“You're a man with hard gold and loose pockets,” Tom replied with a good-natured shrug. “You can call yourself the Queen of Niflehiem for all I care.”

Tom dug into his hole with renewed zeal, and Christopher turned back towards town with a more hopeful step. His myriad problems had been reduced to a single vector. Now all he needed was an unlimited supply of gold.

The ride back to Burseberry was discomfiting in its mundanity. The horse snorted and steamed in the cold air; the empty road and snow-covered fields simply plain, a picture postcard of a country lane. Absent people, the world seemed too ordinary. It was momentarily impossible for him to believe that he was on an alien world, surrounded by magic, and fighting for his life.

Only when he saw the smoke from the village, and his stomach rumbled at even the thought of porridge, did the sense of unreality return, gradually fading from conscious awareness as he turned his horse over to one of Fenwick's boys and quick-marched back to the chapel before the stable-master could put in an appearance and ask for the money he was due.

Helga sent him off to the tavern to join Svengusta until dinner with serene confidence, the girlish flirtations entirely vanished. Although her transformation had been coterminous with his increase in status from poor, mute beggar to ranked priest, he didn't think that was the cause. Safely ensconced in the tavern, drink in hand, he brought it up.

“Explain Helga to me.” He interrupted the old man's laughter: “I know, she's a woman, a creature of ineffable mystery and all that, but I don't understand what happened between her and Karl.”

“Good gods, boy, if you don't understand that, I don't know where to begin!” Svengusta laughed so hard beer came out his nose.

Christopher had to wait while the old man sneezed between gales of laughter. “Ha ha. Seriously, I don't understand. Is she in love with him?”

“What woman isn't? He's the bravest of the brave, the best of the best. Doubly tested, you know.”

“Is he going to break her heart?” Christopher pressed.

“How do you mean?” Svengusta asked, genuinely confused.

“Is he going to come back?”

“Probably.” Svengusta laughed. “You seem to have taken his fancy.”

“I mean, is he going to come back to Helga?”

“No, he's not going to marry her. Why would he?”

“But what if she gets pregnant?”

Svengusta put down his beer. “I can see you're truly troubled. Relax, Brother. Haven't you seen Helga lately? She glows. Did you miss that?”

No, Christopher had to admit, she'd been the paragon of happiness.

“Karl made her. She went from being the village orphan to a woman of society in a week. She used to pine to me that the local boys paid her no attention. Now she won't give them the time of day unless they've got a beard. She's had a real man, you see. And a child? A child proves she's fertile. No good man would balk to raise a daughter or two. And if she were to have a son off of Karl, she could have her pick of husbands. Who wouldn't want a whelp of his to call your own?”

“Helga's an orphan? How could she lose her parents if you can bring people from the dead?”

Svengusta shook his head. “Reviving the dead is not done lightly. It consumes a hundred tael with no guarantee of success. Peasants do not expect to be revived. Even knights must be rich or favored by their lord to be brought back. In Helga's case, none of these mattered.”

The old man took a drink of his beer, held up his hand to forestall questions. “Patience, Brother. I need strength for this next part. A decade ago the ulvenmen overran the March of Carrhill. The town stood against their assault until reinforcements drove the monsters off, but the countryside was devastated. Most folk didn't have enough warning to flee. The ulvenmen slaughtered, burned, and took heads. And they took whole bodies, like Helga's parents, for their victuals. Helga was among a train of children captured for provender, being carted back to wherever the fiends come from. She was rescued by our King, the Lady bless him.”

Svengusta stopped to take another drink and steer himself back to the unpleasant topic. “The children were dispersed throughout the realm, to families that could take them. Helga was sent to my village, but she never got along that well with her adopted mother, and so when she turned twelve and my last house-girl got married, she moved in and took over the job.