Ironhelm sat next to him, banging away at a stone about the size of a man’s head with a little chisel. The dwarf worked quickly, banging the chisel with a small hammer and turning it a different angle with every blow. Finally, he put the tools aside. He wiped the dust away from the stone and placed it atop the grave. Carved into the stone were the words “Maximinus Stormbearer” in simple lettering. The dwarf shoved the tools back into his pack, shrugging.
“The laddie deserved a marker,” he said. “Aye, tis true.”
Next to the grave lay a cask of wine which the Vandorian had packed that morning. Jorn uncorked it and raised it to his lips. It wasn’t too awful, he decided, at least for wine. He drank deeply and passed it over to the dwarf.
“To Max,” Jorn said.
Ironhelm nodded, drinking deeply. The dwarf grimaced, shaking his head and wondering what Stormbearer and Braemorgan saw in the sour stuff, and passed the cask over to Willock. The woodsman drank, and passed it on to Ailric who also drank. He turned to pass the cask on to Ronias, but the elf had wandered off down the trail.
Ironhelm scanned the sky. It was still at least an hour till nightfall.
“We should move as soon as it’s dark,” he said. “Aye.”
“I know a path to the ferry,” Willock said.
“The challenge will be the crossing,” Jorn added. “They’ll be waiting for us on the far side. If they’ve more archers -”
“We’ll not cross the river at the ferry,” Ironhelm announced. “Aye, we’ll head north instead for Barter’s Crossing. Tha’ we will. There’s another ferry there.”
Ronias walked back to the group, standing there silently and listening.
“Barter’s Crossing?” Jorn said. “Why there?”
“We need another trapbreaker, laddie, don’t we?” Ironhelm said, glancing at the grave.
“There are more than a few in Barter’s Crossing, that much is certain,” Willock said.
“I’ve a trapbreaker already in mind, laddie. Aye, the best in all the Southlands,” Ironhelm said. “He’s a gnome by the name of Flatfoot and he knows more about traps than anyone alive, he does. Aye, tis true.”
“Why wouldn’t Braemorgan enlist this gnome if he’s as good as you say?” Ailric said. “Perhaps we should catch up with the wizard and consult with him.”
“No need for tha’, laddie,” Ironhelm said. “Braemorgan and Flatfoot have quarreled in the past, tha’s why the wizard didn’t choose him. Besides, Braemorgan is already across the Tam in Brithborea by now and riding north. Aye, tis true.”
“Very well,” Ailric said, frowning. “But what if he refuses to join us?”
“One way or another, he’ll come,” Ironhelm said. “Aye. If we have to tie him up and drag him off into the night, he’ll be coming with us.”
Fourteen
Flatfoot stepped back from the chest and nodded, smiling with satisfaction.
Flatfoot’s senior carpenter had done well. He had to admit, considered overall, it was an excellent piece of craftsmanship which now stood before him.
True, the chest looked mundane to the untrained eye. Yet it was, to the expert, a masterpiece. It had two locks, both linked to concealed traps crafted to deter even the most-determined thief. A double-poison dart trap would be triggered by anyone attempting to pick the first lock. A pair of spring traps would shoot poison-tipped quarrels at anyone trying to improperly open the second lock. Finally, the acid-spray trap would foil anyone prying open the chest with a crowbar.
“You’ve done well,” Flatfoot said at last. “Make it ready for delivery.”
Flatfoot patted the carpenter on the shoulder and continued his pre-breakfast look around the workshop. It was a busy, noisy place with long workbenches lining both walls and the endless din of hammering, sanding, and sawing even at that early hour. Over a dozen gnomes clad in heavy leather aprons worked on several projects at once, some carefully shaping pieces of wood while others assembled complex mechanisms in another section of the huge workshop. A trio of burly humans in chain mail with long swords at their waists stood at the far end of the shop, Flatfoot’s trusted bodyguards.
The master of all he surveyed, Flatfoot let nothing escape his gaze. As he strolled along, his eye fell upon one of his younger apprentices installing the lock on a half-completed chest.
Flatfoot walked over and stood close by, watching the boy work. The gnomeling worked with the methodical care typical of many gnomes, a study in precise concentration. Flatfoot watched him for several minutes, saying nothing. The boy ignored his master’s close presence, used to such scrutiny.
“You’ve a fine touch,” Flatfoot said at last.
“Thank you, Master Flatfoot,” the boy said, trying to hold back a satisfied grin but failing.
"You’ve observed the installation of many locks since you first came here, haven’t you?" Flatfoot said. He pointed to the chest. "This chest you’ve been working on for over two weeks is an exceedingly valuable item, you know. The miserly son of a bitch who commissioned it will be paying no less than five hundred guilders for it. Think of it! Five hundred guilders! Let me ask you a question. How much do you think the average skilled artisan in this town, a chandler or a master cooper or even a whitesmith, makes in a year?"
"Um," the boy said. "A couple of hundred guilders?"
"If he’s lucky!" Flatfoot said, laughing. "Or damned bloody good at his craft! This shop takes in an average of over fifteen thousand gold crowns per year, my boy! That’s fifteen thousand, not hundred! It employs twelve skilled craftsmen who each make between three and four hundred guilders per year. They work fewer hours than the average independent artisan, enjoy more comfortable conditions during those hours, and make quite a bit more money. All with fewer worries, I can assure you. That's because I only hire the best, and pay accordingly. My hope is you, too, will be worthy to work here when your apprenticeship is done. Look upon this chest as an example of the high standards we expect. It is the most theft-proof chest one can possibly design, a true thing of beauty to be proud of.”
Flatfoot’s hands ran over the chest, admiring the smoothness of the wood.
“I’ve devoted my life to studying traps and theft prevention,” he went on. “Time was, as you well know, I was a professional trapbreaker myself, and spent my energies bypassing such devices. I never robbed the living, mind you, unlike so many of my former brethren. I always thought it unethical to steal from hardworking merchants and the like. So I robbed the dead, disarming the traps guarding tombs and ruined catacombs from one end of Pallinore to the other. Robbing the dead is no immoral act, you must agree. Their gold is just sitting there in the dark, contributing nothing and doing nothing to aid the growth of the local economy. I took the gold from them and I put it to work. Better than leaving it to molder in the dark, wouldn’t you agree?
“As the years went by and I learned more and more about the disarming of traps I decided I’d had enough of tomb-raiding. I’d beaten the odds and survived the many risks inherent in the profession of trapbreaking - and it is a profession, I must affirm! The time to move away from such a wayward existence had arrived. I was wealthy from trapbreaking, but too young to simply retire to some country estate and wait for death.”
A few of the more seasoned workers glanced over at Flatfoot and grinned. They never tired of The Speech, no matter how many times they heard it. Flatfoot winked at them and went on.
"Yes, it was an exciting life," he said. "No doubt you’ve heard of many of my exploits." He was speaking louder now, one of his hands gesturing dramatically as he tucked the other into his bright green waistcoat. "There are riches out there, my boy, riches beyond the wildest dreams your mind can conceive of. There are golden cups and scepters, bejeweled with diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies. Why, I once found an amulet embedded with a blue topaz the size of your fist! You've seen my house across the street. Go on, tour its many rooms! You’re more than welcome, any time you like! Examine the historic artifacts on di
splay, or stroll through the gardens around back. Sample of my wine cellar, if you please! Sail on my sloop up and down the river! I am one of the richest residents of Barter’s Crossing, if not all northern Llangellan!”
"How did I get so bloody wealthy, you are no doubt wondering? It’s simple, really. I studied all manner of traps and pitfalls over the decades until I found myself the world’s foremost expert on the subject. I documented all I learned in my notebooks, making careful schematic drawings of every trap I ever disarmed. Eventually, I achieved a knowledge of traps perhaps unsurpassed in all history. That is when it struck me, my Singular Idea, the key to all the happiness and prosperity I currently enjoy. It occurred to me that, instead of using my expertise to hunt for scraps of treasure in the most ungodly of places, I could use that knowledge to construct traps myself. I could take the traps I'd observed and disarmed, and improve them. And I could sell them to a thief-wary cliental."
“Who better to thwart a thief than a thief?” the apprentice said.
"Exactly! You catch on quick, my boy. And so I embarked on my current profession of theft prevention. I now have as much wealth and happiness as any gnome could ever want. In a few more years, I shall retire to my books, my wine, and my gardens. I shall hand all this over to one of you to manage while I spend my remaining years in quiet reflection. You’d like to be the one I hand this shop over to, wouldn’t you? Then you must understand the key to all my wealth.” Flatfoot gestured towards the chest. “Look at it! It’s just a chest, but a chest no one but its owner - or me - could ever open. There are three locks, as well as a trio of dials. If all three dials are not first set to their correct combinations before inserting one’s key, a poison gas trap will spew deadly fumes into the air. A normal gas trap - and here is what separates one of my traps from a normal one - has several holes from which the gas can escape should the trap be sprung. A little wax or clay is all any thief needs to jam into the holes to keep the gas from escaping. People pay small fortunes for such cheap traps which any third-rate pilferer can easily overcome. On this chest, these metal plates flip up and the gas emitted. A thief might just tape down the flaps, you say? Perhaps he might, if he knew what they were. Most of the time, a thief will examine the chest for the tell-tale holes he knows he will need to gum up.”
“Now, you’ll note I’ve included a few tiny holes which look exactly like those on a mediocre chest. The would-be thief is likely to just plug these up and move on. And so he will not examine these metal joints any further, thinking he has disarmed the defenses on an everyday chest. But a Flatfoot chest is hardly an everyday thing. These flaps look like normal decorations, but they conceal the actual trap. Furthermore, the gas is stored under exceptionally high pressure using a secret process of my own design. No bit of wax will do, for the force of the gas will blow right through the wax seal.”
“But that is not all. Even if the thief gets by all three traps and opens the lid on the chest, he encounters yet another lid. A six-digit combination must then be entered before this second lid can be opened. If entered incorrectly, there are more poison darts to deal with. If, by some miracle, a thief could somehow detect and disarm all of these traps it would take many hours of work. And there you have the final obstacle to opening this chest, and the most effective theft deterrent there is. Do you know what that it?”
The boy shrugged his shoulders.
“Time,” Flatfoot said.
The boy looked confused and Flatfoot smiled.
“Time, you see,” he began. “Is a luxury thieves rarely have. A thief might have fifteen minutes, perhaps even an hour to work, but rarely more than that. No matter how skilled he may be, no thief could get into this chest in less than five or six hours. Even I couldn’t do it any quicker and I designed the bloody thing!”
“Your task is to learn how all of these traps and hindrances work, as well as how they fit together as part of a larger system of traps. Each trap must complement all of the others, and operate according to a single unifying system. In this case, the strategy is to slow the thief down to the point where he cannot complete his task in time. It is a difficult thing to design, I grant you, but when done correctly we do not have merely an impenetrable chest. We have a work of art. The best part of all is there is a practical and a profitable side to it all. The wealthy merchant who commissioned this massive edifice can now protect his heaps of treasure. But he will have to pay to do so, and dearly. Do you want a piece of that? Then keep your eyes open and learn! This is the opportunity of a lifetime. Take advantage of it, my boy."
“What of your own riches, Master Flatfoot,” the boy asked. “What traps safeguard those?”
Flatfoot laughed. This gnomling asked good questions.
“Most of my wealth can fit in no chest, my boy. No chest in the world,” he said, laughing and turning away.
To be sure, Flatfoot had plenty of gold and jewels in both his home across the street as well as at his country estate a dozen miles to the west. There was a great deal of wealth secreted beneath each building, and all of it well-protected. Flatfoot designed the vaults himself, careful not to store too much wealth in any one of them.
Under his house across the street were three separate small vaults instead of one large one. That was what he often called Flatfoot’s First Rule: Never put all your treasure in one place. A thief who got into one of his vaults under cover of night could never get through all three before being discovered by his guards on their hourly rounds.
That assumed they even found the vaults, of course. The vaults were right across from a trio of completely empty, false vaults. Only Flatfoot knew which vaults were empty and which contained riches, so a would-be thief thus had an even chance of wasting all his efforts breaking into an empty room. Ultimately, of course, each of Flatfoot’s vaults could be opened by a highly skilled thief given enough time. It might take a full day or more to do so, however. It was all ridiculously elaborate, he knew, but it comported well with Flatfoot’s Second Rule: Paranoids are never caught off-guard.
Yet all the treasure locked up underneath his homes was a tiny fraction of his total wealth. That was in keeping with Flatfoot’s Third Rule: Own stuff a thief can’t steal, unless he’s the king.
Flatfoot’s wealth was in his tavern and his general store. It was in his apple orchard, his brewery, his vineyard, and his warehouse. It was in the vast tracts of farmland he owned in both Llangellan and Brithborea which drew enormous revenue from his many tenant farmers.
The key, as he saw it, was to keep a low-enough profile and so prevent the local monarch from taking notice of him. Kings were the biggest thieves of all, and no cleverly-designed vault could ever hinder them or their insatiable greed. That was why Flatfoot’s land holdings were on both sides of the River Tam. Even if one king seized his lands, he would still be a rich gnome. If both did so, he still had his holdings back home in Faerfachen. Those lands he judged most secure, as gnomes had no king and so no one likely to go about seizing lands. Faerfachen did have democracy, however, which presented its own set of worries to him. It brought to mind Flatfoot’s Fourth Rule: Never trust any government, especially the ones with the highest-minded ideals.
Flatfoot had even grander plans for the future, planning to purchase his first sea-going schooners and so expand his interests into overseas trade. The thought of it warmed his heart. He daydreamed of ships he would own unloading the tea and the nutmeg of Shandorr onto the docks of Barter’s Crossing. He’d acquired a stretch of property along the docks, a seedy row of filthy boardinghouses. Soon they would be swept away to make room for a second warehouse and a massive new pier.
Life was progressing precisely as it should, Flatfoot told himself daily. He’d enjoyed the risk-taking and wandering of his youth, scouring ruins and tombs for treasure. He’d always cherish those memories, but he enjoyed his current comfort and prosperity far more than the reckless ramblings of his younger days. There was nothing from that prior existence which could lure him away from hi
s comforts or derail the perfect happiness he’d found at Barter’s Crossing.
______
Ironhelm hated Barter’s Crossing.
It was worse than almost any other human city the dwarf ever passed through, and he’d passed through plenty. The whole stinking placed seemed to him little more than a filthy tangle of whores, drunkards, thieves, mercenaries, and murderers. Every town official had his hand held out for a bribe. There was no beauty of any kind to be found anywhere inside its walls, either, only the smell of shit and stale vomit emanating from every narrow, twisting alleyway. There was nothing to be found but a teeming mass of brothels, bars, and beggars, scores of pigs and goats underfoot everywhere.
Ironhelm and the others passed through the south gate into the city soon after dawn. Hungover guards in chain mail hauberks and shields painted with the orange and blue colors of the city stood on either side of the just-opened gate. The guards barely glanced at the strange group as they rode into the city. Three well-armed men, an elf, and a dwarven warrior all traveling together didn’t raise their curiosity in the least. They looked like a fat and lazy bunch to the dwarf, just the type of guards willing to look the other way on practically anything for a few silver pennies. Barter’s Crossing personified.
It’d been a long night on the Dragon’s Back. They’d decided it was best to wait until a few hours prior to dawn before heading out for Barter’s Crossing. If they were lucky, the Saurians might have given up and left. So they set up camp in a small cleft near the summit where they could keep out of the wind yet still watch the path up the mountain.
As the sun went down it grew cold. They pitched a pair of tents and hoped to get what rest they could. Jorn, Willock, and Ironhelm would crowd into one tent while Ailric and Ronias took the other. Ronias was annoyed at the prospect of sharing at all, and vowed to purchase his own tent in Barter’s Crossing the next day. He mumbled something about the cold, picking up stones.
Child Of Storms (Volume 1) Page 27