by Dante King
“Like a hot knife through butter?” Damien said.
Onico shook his head. “No. That’s ridiculous. Metal cannot be likened to butter.”
Damien caught my eye, and we both looked away before we smiled.
Bradley took a set of knives with blackened steel blades, but I had a sneaking suspicion they’d end up helping him out in the kitchen more than on the battlefield.
Within five minutes, all of the fraternity brothers were tooled up.
Onico Mozat did not hang around once we had concluded with our selections. He bundled up and bagged his remaining merchandise, shook everyone’s hands, and then walked out of the room.
I followed him out and opened the front door for him. It had been a fairly subdued meeting, but an undeniably profitable one.
Onico paused on the porch, barely stirring a hair as Ar-undead came to check him out. The guard-zombie decided this was one brain not worth being competently dismembered over and went away.
Onico Mozat turned to me. “One day,” he said, “you will have to learn to wield a blade. Your father was good, but your mother was better. When you are ready, I will be waiting.”
Then the enigmatic bladesmith turned and walked out into the gathering storm.
Chapter Seventeen
My second meeting took place the next day. The gathering storm had remained, and finally broke at lunch time. By the time the dwarven armorer showed up on my porch, the tempest had really rolled up its sleeves and was getting down to business.
As soon as I unlatched the door, the dwarf was bowled through it by a gale force gust of wind. He went sliding across the polished floor of the entranceway. His stout but short form crashed into the far wall with a resounding clang of metal on metal, the enormous backpack on his back thumping down on top of him. He was so wet it looked like he’d swum through the river on his way to the house.
“You alright there, my friend?” I said, latching the door again with an effort and bolting it.
The dwarf struggled out of his backpack and into a sitting position. He parted the thick ginger hair—or it might have been beard—from across his countenance and stared out of the face foliage with beetle black eyes.
“Well, feck me, but she’s blowing all right out there, isn’t she, lad?” he said in a delighted voice. “Feckin’ windier than my ass—my donkey, I should clarify—after she’s got into the cabbage patch!”
For a man who’d just been smashed into a wall, the little guy looked in remarkably good spirits.
He got to his feet and tried to tame his hair, beard, and eyebrows. As far as I could tell, it was all one joined piece of hair. Then he stuck out a small, fat hand—scarred and bruised.
“Heroc Flaskgut, at your service, lad.”
I gripped the offered hand. It was like shaking hands with a packet of cocktail sausages.
“Justin Mauler,” I said.
“Aye, I know who you are, lad, don’t I just,” Heroc said.
The dwarf looked behind him at the dent he had left in the wood of the wall.
“Sorry about your wall, lad,” he said.
“No problem,” I said, “Barry will fix that up in no time. Do you fancy a drink?”
The dwarf’s eyes swam with sudden tears. “Ah, now there’s proper hospitality. A dwarf comes flyin’ into your home and punches a hole in your lovely wall, and you offer him libations! Ah me, but it restores faith. Aye, I could do with a dram of something naughty, lad. I won’t say that I live far out of town, but I had to grease my wagon axles twice afore I hit the main road.”
Unlike the stern and taciturn Onico Mozat, who had visited yesterday morning, Heroc Flaskgut seemed to be all for smalltalk before getting down to business.
Heroc was one of those instantly likeable men that you feel like you’ve known forever after about five minutes of conversation. He was, once you got past the thick thatch of ginger hair, beard, and eyebrows, a rosy-faced dwarf with a nose like a potato and a grin permanently tattooed onto his face. As his name implied, he was a rotund fellow with a gut that strained at his shirt and was only prevented from bursting free by a thick, worn leather belt.
My fraternity brothers and I led Heroc to a seat in front of the fireplace while the storm continued to rage outside. While Damien used a few slow-burning Fireballs to get a decent fire going in the grate, Bradley set a big platter of meats, cheeses, pickles, and breads down on the table. Then he plonked down a massive jug of ale and some horn cups.
Heroc’s eyes shining black eyes lit up as I poured him a foaming cup and slid it over to him. He took the cup between his pudgy, callused fingers and held it up.
“May we get what we want, lads,” he said, “but never what we deserve!”
“Cheers!” we all answered and drained our cups.
I refilled them and sat back in our chairs. Outside, the wind howled like a banshee and the clouds gathered still thick over the town of Nevermoor, black as the inside of a wolf’s belly.
For a little while, no one spoke, and I almost forgot why it was that the dwarf had come in the first place.
Heroc sat contentedly in his chair while the fire began to warm the room.
“Did you say that you had a cart outside?” I asked.
Heroc stopped in the middle of filling his pipe and looked at me. “Aye, I’ve a cart out there right enough. But don’t you worry, lad, my arse is used to the hardships of the road. A bit o’ rain and a wee bit o’ wind will not bother her overmuch.”
I glanced out of the window and watched as forked lightning spread across the sky like cracks on the inside of a bowl. Something that looked like a dog kennel was blown across the backyard and splintered into pieces against a tree.
“Are you sure, Heroc?” I asked. “It’s looking pretty wild out there. If I move our resident zombie, you could put your ass on the porch.”
Heroc waved a hand. “Ah, she’ll be fine, lad.” He drained his cup again and belched outrageously that Nigel, who was sitting across the table from the dwarf, slid across the floor a little on his chair.
“Before we get down to brass tacks,” I said, while the dwarf armorer continued to fill his pipe and tamped it down with a horny thumb, “I have to ask. Flaskgut, is that your real name?”
Heroc snorted amusedly, sending his ginger mustache—which was shot liberally with gray—to fluttering.
“Aye, it might as well be now,” he said. “My mates back in the woods of my home gave it me when we were wee boisterous lads.”
“Why did they give it to you, friend?” Rick asked.
Heroc looked the big man over. “Probably on account o’ me being able to drink every single one of my mates under the table three times over. It takes a fair whack of the good stuff for old Flaskgut to get good and pissed, and about a tavern’s worth o’ grog to have me toilet-hugging, knee-walking hammered.”
Heroc lit his pipe and crossed his stumpy legs at the ankle. He glanced around the room. The kitchen was looking exceptionally warm and homely, with the fire going well in the hearth now and the candles dotted about the place. Bradley was standing over the stove, stirring a pork and green chili stew.
With the storm doing its best to tear the roofs off houses outside, but us warm and dry in here, it seemed that the world was a peaceful place.
“The c-c-cart outside,” Nigel said. “You don’t have it packed with potential stuff for Justin, do you?”
The dwarf laughed heartily, clutching at his substantial gut. He had taken his boots off and stretched his stockinged feet toward the fire. His soaking socks were already beginning to steam.
“Nay, wee stuttery lad,” he said. “I did not take you lads—from what I saw at the Qualifiers—to be the sorts of gents who could be arsed with doing a lot of shopping.” He nudged the massive rucksack propped against the table with one steaming foot. “I’ve everything I think that you’ll be interested in right here.”
“What’s in the rest of the cart, then?” Bradley asked as he added a pinch of
some flaky orange spice to his stew.
Heroc lit his pipe with a match that he struck with his thumbnail.
“Like I said, I live down the road a ways,” the armor told us easily. “So, when I do drag my arse into town, I usually visit all the weapon merchants while I’m at it. Makes… what’s the feckin’ term, I’m looking for?”
“Financial sense?” Nigel offered.
“That’s the one,” the dwarf said.
“Not an easy journey?” Damien asked.
“Bout as easy as pissing up a rope I’d say, lad,” Heroc replied happily.
“So,” I said, spreading a little of the whipped, salted butter that Bradley made onto a slice of bread and cutting myself a wedge of cheese, “I guess that brings us to asking what you have for us?”
Heroc looked around the table. It was almost an apologetic look. He picked up a chunk of ham and posted it through a gap in his mustache. His beard moved rhythmically as he masticated.
“Now look here, lads,” he said, addressing the table at large. “I did nay know that all of you fellows would be such gents. When I watched you at the Qualifiers, I’ll admit that my chief thought was, ‘Flaskgut, that Mauler lad will make a bonny sponsor for your chainmail.’ To me, Justin, you were the leader of the pack and that’s all I was interested in.”
Heroc blew a smoke ring.
“Now, I’ve had a wee chance to sit and chat with you all a bit, I see that I should have brought gear enough for everyone. Alas though, I have not. Not today.”
My fraternity brothers were good guys. Not the sort who thought that they were owed anything by anyone. They took this news on the chin and looked quite unconcerned.
“No worries, Heroc,” Damien said. “We’re all doing pretty good out of the first sponsorship deal anyways.”
“That’s right,” Rick rumbled. “You don’t need to worry about us, friend. We are doing just fine.”
Heroc nodded. He looked somewhat mollified. It was clear he had been genuinely disappointed that he hadn’t been able to play the role of a shorter, possibly fatter, Santa Claus.
“Good on you, lads, good on you,” he said.
He combed his fingers through his beard, dislodging a piece of spiced sausage that had escaped the attention of his mouth somehow, and reached for his rucksack.
“Now, Justin Mauler,” he said. “‘Scuse me for sayin so, boyo, but I have you picked as a man who is not into the ostentatious sort of gear that many young mages go for?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m not one for anything too flash, Heroc,” I admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, if there’s a shield blinged out with eighty-five diamonds the size of sparrow’s eggs, then I’m all for it—so long as it’s the best fucking shield out there and is going to protect me from dragon’s fire or something. If it’s just a shield though, I’d rather go for something understated. Flashy shit will get you hit; that’s something we used to say in high school.”
“Very wise words to be sure,” the dwarf said approvingly. “This bodes well, for I’m not an armorer that specializes in the sort of shiny gear that looks as if it’ll deflect a ballista bolt at ten paces and then turns out to have the protection of a wool vest.”
The dwarf rummaged about in the massive oilskin rucksack for a moment or two, his pipe clamped between his teeth. When he drew his hand out again, he was holding a smallish parcel wrapped in soft brown leather.
“What do we have here, then?” I asked.
“Open it and have a gander, lad,” the dwarf said. He passed me the packet and sat back in his chair with a soft sigh. He looked avidly at me, his eyes twinkling through the veil of pipe smoke wreathing his head.
I unwrapped the leather coverings and pulled out a mail shirt. Honestly, I’d thought I was about to receive the Avalonian version of a mithril coat—a shiny, glittering silver item with a few white gems thrown in to show how dope and magical it was.
What I pulled out was a far more utilitarian chainmail shirt. It was made from blued steel. There was a vaguely tarnished quality to the chainmail, as if it had already been used. It looked tough. It looked working-class and purposeful. The sort of chainmail that’d work hard all day and then go down to the local inn for a pint of strong ale, a game of darts, and maybe a fight.
It looked like it should be heavy.
It was as light as a cotton t-shirt.
The links of the mail were tiny, and the chainmail moved through my fingers like cloth instead of metal. It was bizarre.
“What do you reckon, lad?” Heroc asked.
“I’m guessing that this unassuming mail shirt is impenetrable?” I asked.
“That it is,” the dwarf armorer replied smugly. “That it is, indeed.”
“Bradley,” I said, “can you throw me one of your knives. Better make it one your oldest ones.”
Bradley lobbed a knife over to me, and I caught it by the handle. I lay the mail shirt flat on the table and slammed the knife into it as hard as I could.
There was a crisp spang sound as the knife blade broke. The snapped blade flicked out from off the mail shirt and whizzed across the room, burying itself in a wooden shelf.
I looked up at the dwarf who, judging by the crinkling at the corners of his eyes, was smiling under his beard.
“Well,” I said, “I’m interested. Wearing something like this yesterday, with that crazy-ass Acer Blade chasing me and firing knives, I would have felt a hell of a lot more comfortable. Will it stop even enchanted blades—blades propelled by magic, I mean?”
The dwarf wagged his head. “This here shirt will stop anything metallic, whether it be propelled by hand, string or magic,” he said proudly. “Any blade or arrow, or anything along those lines. However, I’ll tell you now that it won’t stop spells—not pure magic.”
“Still…” Bradley said. “That’s bloody handy, isn’t it?”
“Now, it’s crafted through a process that is known only to my people out in the Broad Wood,” Heroc said, puffing happily at his pipe and slicing himself a bit of cold spiced sausage. “There’ll be none like it in the War Mage Games, nor in these parts at all, I imagine. Now, the real beauty of it, of course, is that it’s light enough and thin enough to wear under your everyday garb, see? Although, if you do that, you’ll want to wear something under it. Not just for the chafing. This steel is always cold. You’ll catch your death or freeze your nips off wearing it straight on your skin.”
“But you’re going to want people to see it, right?” I said.
“Oh, aye, during the Qualifiers and any competitions you fight in, certainly,” Heroc said.
He put down his pipe, spread some black garlic on a heel of bread, and stuffed it into his mouth along with the sausage. He chewed vigorously for a while, then said thickly, “Wear it loud and proud during your battles, boyo. The rest of the time, I’d keep it out of sight if I were you.”
Was it my imagination, or did the dwarf’s eyes twinkle particularly knowingly at that moment?
“Why would I need to make stab-proof armor a part of my daily wardrobe?” I asked.
Heroc licked a thick thumb and smoothed his eyebrows out of the way of his eyes.
“That’s a question only you can answer, lad,” he said.
I grinned at the dwarf. He was a likeable bastard, that was for sure. It was a shame that it sounded like he lived out in the sticks.
“Well, shit, I’m in,” I said, stretching out my hand. “I’m genuinely honored by your patronage, Heroc Flaskgut.”
Heroc shook my hand. “The pleasure is all mine, lad. I look forward to see the looks on the faces of those lasses who gave you such a trying time in the first round, if they get a chance to stick you and have their knives break apart in their hands!”
Rick chuckled, and Damien slapped the table.
“Us t-t-too,” Nigel said.
I raised my horn cup. “To new partnerships!”
“Here’s to beer, song, and women!” countered Heroc. “May none of them ever be flat!�
��
We drained our glasses. Outside, the wind blew the rain sideways.
I reached for the ale jug. “Heroc, can I tempt you with one more before you hit the road?”
“Aye, lad,” the dwarf said, “you can, indeed. And who the feck would I be to deny temptation, eh?”
Chapter Eighteen
The storm had blown itself out by the following morning. I wasn’t expecting any more notes from Madame Xel because I’d already selected two sponsors in Onico Mozat and Heroc Flaskgut, and I had Igor Chaosbane as my third and Zelara Solarphine as my fourth. Apparently, a mage of my level could only have three active sponsors, so I was worried I would have to put someone on the backburner.
I ought not to have worried though, because when I awoke on a much more pleasant day than the previous two, I was surprised to see a note from Madame Xel on my pillow.
I have good news, Justin. You have been granted the right for up to five active sponsors after your display during the egg hunt. The sponsor commission board was understandably impressed with your abilities.
On that front, I have another sponsor who wishes to meet with you.
Tat Croll is a shy and skittish fellow; someone who spends much of his time out in the wilds with only beasts for company. Keeping this in mind, he has told me that he will meet with you at noon on the edge of Nevermoor, by the old well that looks out toward the mountains.
You may not think he sounds promising, but I hear he has an invention that might prove exceedingly useful to you, my dear. He is also, I believe, in desperate need of a client, so you will have the upper hand in any negotiations.
Good luck,
Madame X
The person who might turn out to be my third sponsor—my fifth in total—was a half-orc, and he was already waiting for me when I arrived at the abandoned well at the edge of town.