The sound of the hard working anvil and hammer sang throughout the shop and echoed down the bustling city street for another solid minute before its cause paused to cool the work in the water barrel. About a minute later, there was another roaring of the furnace, then more banging. When Stephen heard the silence after the second set of banging, he looked up to check his compatriot's work. Noting the smithy's long gaze, Aleksei turned the developing blade in the daylight as though he himself needed more time to figure out his next move.
"I am thinking it needs maybe little more heating," he admitted with a strangely sheepish tone.
"Yup," the smithy agreed, catching the observant hazel eye just seconds before turning back to his workbench.
And on the other side of the anvil, the Dragonborn moved back to the forge, which began to growl and hiss as he pulled the cord that controlled the air supply. Stephen, after briefly rotating his hammering wrist, put down the breastplate he had been working on and picked up one of the other two shields that had been returned to him earlier that morning, due to having been so badly dented.
"Anyway, we were all surprised," he continued. "He'd never thrown a punch in his life, but there he went, off to the basics. I was angry- thought my blind-proud father had sacrificed him because I couldn't leave the forge."
"But he is alive to return to you in the season that your other brother is becoming preacher," Aleksei answered as he tugged at the bellows' cord just once more before sticking the sword into the resultant blaze. "Either he is not seeing battle, or indeed he is able to throw a punch."
"If it weren't for his commanding officer, none of us would've known either way," Stephen laughed as he spun his hammer in the palm of his hand before getting to work on the first dent. "Now, understand that it's normal for all of Aaron's women to try to make him more social. This one took him up when he was just a deck swabber. At first, all she noticed was his talent, and she made him her 'tactical assistant,' or some such nonsense- probably some fool white beard agreed because he wanted her under male control. Anyway, some years ago, he got some rank of his own, but now they've grown fond of each other. Can't tell what he does for her, other than the obvious, but she makes him write to Ielena and I. I can tell she means to stick around- and maybe she'll give me a nephew or niece, if she can go on tolerating that one-carriage road in his head."
"This is strange saying," Aleksei pronounced, turning the sword to have a look at his own progress. "Why is everyone expecting him to make family when it seems he is not much wishing to do so?"
"He's got nothing against family, Al, that's not the problem. Problem is- good instinct, man, go on and heat that steel again- problem is he sees a woman he likes, sets to her until he gets her, and then promptly moves on to some other matter as though she didn't exist. A body used to have to remind him that Human women rather like to have attention paid to them every now and again- and that body was usually me."
"He is strange man," the Dragonborn said, turning quickly to put the blade back into the flame. "Once some men are finding women, they are then needing reminder that other things also need attention."
"One carriage-way," Stephen laughed, striking the metal in front of him as he spoke. "The man's goal oriented- to an absolute fault. This woman- Taricia, her name is- is apparently the most demanding, vicious nag under the sun. She managed to get Ronny to be only a few weeks late to write a congratulations to Leena on her first born by beginning to worry him about it four months before the baby was even born. He came home to see Iona's bitch because she sent him home; wouldn't let him sail another inch with her until he'd seen what we all thought would be his future sister-in-law with his own two eyes. I told him that sounded horrible, but he was grateful for it. He thought the harpy was brilliant- and still does. Nearly ten years now."
"Truly this Taricia is already wife to him," Aleksei laughed, pulling the sword out of the forge and readying the borrowed hammer. "They are not needing any more ceremony. They are one person."
Stephen moved an eye of appraisal over the shield before him, then turned around to notice the Dragonborn's work for a moment before returning to his own. "You're good- I thought you said you were a goat herder. In what field does a shepherd learn to work steel?"
"I also have a sister whose name is Yelena," Aleksei answered with a smile as he plunged the sword into the water barrel on his other side. "It is maybe little different, the saying of her name, and I am calling her Yashka. She is second-born of my mother's first mating, and that mate is coming from very different place, where dragons are being served as gods. Already everyone is suspicious of my mother because she will worship none but Io, but then she is giving her mate Yelena. Yelena is not able to speak, and does not hear well. Her father is teaching her everything he knows of metalwork, because he is knowing that never will she mate, or even see battle, although she is very strong. Many years after this, Yelena is teaching me what she can by what she does, because she is knowing that my father and brothers will not."
Stephen stopped pounding at the shield and turned over his shoulder to look at the Dragonborn. "I don't see why she could never be married."
"It is strange to have problem speaking or hearing," Aleksei shrugged, moving to the grindstone with the sword. "Yelena is suddenly having problem with both things at one time. And so all of the clan is much fearing that either there is curse or sickness in her, and they do not wish her problems to go farther into the blood of the clan."
"Huh; something about that name, maybe," Stephen grunted, noticing the tinge of emotion in Aleksei's tone. He got back to work, hammering at the dent nearly absentmindedly. "My Ielena may as well be mute, for how much she ever spoke. Somehow caught herself a man quiet as she, but nearly as big as me- Finn. He's a logger. They're out in the Tunlands, gods save them, with two children. 'Prattling boys,' she wrote me, although she probably means they say more than one word per day. She's got a trade as well- tapestries. Spends months on each one. She sent us one when she heard I got the commissioning of the Dragons. Radiant purple, with the family crest worked into the middle with grey, green, and black threading. Perfectly done. Not a single uneven stitch anywhere."
"That is all her words to you," Aleksei mused, putting the blade upon which he'd been working into the water barrel and looking over the crowded work table. "It is as my mother is saying of her first daughter, that every piece she touches makes singing worthy to ring in the ears of the gods themselves."
"Suze said something like that," Stephen said again, pausing his motion to consider his work. He shifted the shield a bit and began hammering again at another spot. "Said that she'd have felt Leena's excitement and blessing upon us even though she'd not written a word to go with it. When she held it, she cried, she was that moved. I folded it up and put it at our family shrine, because I felt there must be something divine about it. I don't know much about that sort of thing, but I watch Suze, and she notices stuff like that for me."
"It is because you also are one person with her," Aleksei nodded as he picked up a terribly bent sword. "This one needs taking apart all the way and then bending back. It's spine stretches up like a cat."
"What?" Stephen asked, looking up briefly before turning back to his workbench to finish up the last few strikes on the shield before him. "Oh, I know that guy; chuck that in the dry barrel and make him a new one. Inch point, double straight edge, no guard, full tang, and screw that pommel down very tight. Don't waste too much time on it; that man's utterly inept, and will only ruin your work."
"Da, ser," the Dragonborn agreed, placing the sword that he held into the indicated barrel and moving toward Stephen's cache of steel ingots. He considered each one closely, picking them up, turning them in the light, and even sniffing one of them before deciding upon it. Stephen, who looked up only in time to see the chosen one get smelled, chuckled to himself and looked at the pieces left on the wooden table just in front of Aleksei.
"I swear, if I weren't commissioned- now, this piece with the sharpened bone- this one's yours, gotta be," he stated, crossing his arms. "Commoners don't get pieces like that- what was your rank?"
Aleksei paused with the ingot in his right hand, and considered both it and the limb holding it with some distant emotion that Stephen found he couldn't quite name.
"Three hundred children of Arkhosia are at one time obeying my voice above all others they are hearing. Is there a man or woman in Cormyr like this?"
"Almost," Stephen said as he truly looked at Aleksei's green scale patches. "An ornrion- gender doesn't matter- commands about two hundred fifty. That guttersnipe who had all the mouth for Lady Ranclyffe and my brother? That's his rank."
"The ornrion of this Cormyr is then closest to the kapitan of Arkhosia," Aleksei sighed as he turned to find the tongs. "My own sword is leaving me a few years ago, and I am taking this one because I am much missing her. But I do not miss the war, or my rank, at all."
"I'd miss such a blade too, if I were you," Stephen insisted. "On the other side of the- yup, you found 'em. Your sister made this?"
"Nyet," Aleksei chuckled sadly, shaking his head. "I carry nothing of my true family with me."
"Eh? You're a shit liar," the smithy snorted, watching the ingot get fitted snugly into the tongs. "Their blood is in your veins, their memory in your mind, and their love in your heart. And mark; even if a body drained you dry and charmed you stupid, they couldn't take that last piece."
The Dragonborn nodded slowly, easing the ingot into the fire. "Thank you, Tevya; you are waking me."
"You betcha." Stephen, satisfied, looked back down at the table. "Take care of it yourself, when you're done building that one."
"I am not having reason not to trust you," Aleksei replied simply as he tugged at the air supply cord. "If she speaks to you, answer her."
The commissioned smith carefully took hold of the leather-wrapped hilt and tested the weight of the weapon just an inch above the table before truly removing it. "Steel-work like I haven't seen, I'll tell you that much. Different weight. Wicked back edge, heavy curved point, entire piece curved in like a cutlass- is there a name for this style?"
"Kilij," Aleksei answered easily, even though his eye never left the reddening metal. "There is none like it for your people?"
"Scimitars, maybe, but there's no back edge on those," Stephen mused quietly. "What's the bone for, taking the tongues or eyes out after?"
Aleksei laughed, turning the left side of his face over his shoulder as though he could have seen Stephen with the eyeless socket there. "It is not what it taking this one, but yes, it is seeing this use many times. You are with this much sounding like someone who has seen some fight."
"Pfft, I don't know about that," Stephen answered, putting Aleksei's sword down and picking out a short sword whose tip had been bent. "I certainly sent enough pieces of mine out to the front, but like I said before, I never went myself."
"Now it is you lying to me," Aleksei corrected, finally putting the metal into the fire to heat. "Every time a piece of yours is drawing blood in the field, you also are there."
"Funny you say that," Stephen sighed as he considered simply making another short sword instead of trying to make the one he held usable again. "Leena, Ronny, and Suze all said the exact same thing."
"Is it many times one must confess to your god in order to truly receive forgiveness?" Aleksei asked innocently, not pausing or turning around.
"Just once," Stephen shot back knowingly. "But you know how it is, trying to actually accept it, eh?"
Aleksei only grunted in response, making a show of checking whether the metal he held in the tongs were hot enough to work with or not.
Stephen rolled his shoulders to get some weariness out of them, then decided to go ahead and straighten the sword. "Anyway, about the rest of us. Iona refused to join any of the Dragons, Purple, Blue or else, claiming that his place was with his monastery, and that the damnation of the gods would fall on us all if he left. Our father couldn't give a rat's ass about the gods, but as of the age of fourteen, Iona was considered a man, and could do and say whatsoever he wished. So no enlistment for him. Adassa told Aaron that she wanted to on tour with him, because she was getting restless and annoyed at home- he left saying that he'd send her word back. Now, this is how we all found out about Taricia, because on Ronny's description of her blade wielding ability alone, she pushed a drafting order up the ranks and recommended placement on some huge galleon, to protect the shipments and reinforcements, or whatever. Well, my father sent the order back with a parental denial, which was his right, because Adassa was still his property."
"I am not understanding this," Aleksei interrupted, pulling the hot metal out in order to begin shaping. "Why for boy it is age that makes him a man, when for girl it is marriage that makes her a woman? Are there not old women who are still being girls because of this?"
Stephen stopped pushing at the sword long enough to tip his head sharply to the side with a shrug of admission. "They're called 'aldermaidens,' yeah," he agreed. "It's idiot, actually, but damned if there aren't hundreds of generations built on the idea of aldermaidens, and how terrible they are. Pfft."
"Adessa is angry at your father's denial, yes?" Aleksei encouraged over the sound of hammering metal.
"Adassa, or 'Sassy Dassy'," Stephen corrected. "And oh yes, she packed her things and left, just like Iona, only in the night, so she wouldn't get caught and dragged back home. When I got what basically was her run away letter, I was blind angry again. Mother wrote me that I had to come home, but I ignored her. Anyway, Iordi wound up the only one left in the house. The Dragons started sending drafting papers for him, and as I'm told, our father intended to send him as a swordsman, which would most assuredly have gotten him killed, so Mother said that she'd had a vision that he was going to be a priest of Lathander, or something. The boy goes way up north- to Arabel, I think- joins up with the Order of the Bow, and the whole war goes by without him hearing a stray breath about it. Now, I don't know what else our mother, or maybe Suze, did- but for some reason, about that same time, everybody decided that I was the patriarch of the family. I had Saul and Sarai already, with Salone just born, but I'm still acting the idiot every night in the taverns with any lively woman that I want. Well, suddenly, everything that ought to go to Papa Raibeart starts coming to me, and Suze said I
had to start acting like it. She said she'd leave me, and take my children with her, if I didn't. Dry eyed too, like she was of a mind to pack her things that very night."
"That is serious threat," Aleksei interjected, pausing his work and watching the sword tip finally pull straight again in his Human companion's grip. "If women in this place are not being women without having husbands, she is not having safe place to go without you."
"Exactly, and that's what scared me," Stephen replied, unconcernedly tossing the semi-repaired sword into a barrel of rejected weapons. "The thought of her swabbing tavern tables, or begging, or whoring out in the streets, with my children? Better to me than the threat of death itself. I cleaned up. Terrifying stuff, at first. Sick every day, trembled like I had plague- but after about a month, I strengthened back up. The Dragons suddenly dropped the commission in my lap, and I started making gold like I've never dreamed of. And I started getting really used to being Papa Raibeart. I'm a father, right? And I've got this wife, and these kids who love me, instead of fear me. Felt pretty damned good. So Leena's in the mountains, Ronny's on the sea, Iordi's in the wood, and Iona's actually a traveling preacher with his fellow monks. Half year ago, I get this letter from him that he'd seen a suspiciously familiar woman come in answer to a desperate call for help from a town that his brothers had decided to aid after most of it had been burned, salted, and looted. This creature's a monster, he says. Half shaven head. Tattoos everywhere. Drinks, belches, curses, and fights like an old pirate. Commands this horrifying two-handed, double edged sword with a pommel in the shape of a skull. The men of the town- them what she isn't dragging off to fuck, anyway- run from her shadow. I read this to Suze, and we're both crying with laughter. We take everything with a pinch of salt, mind you, because Iona thinks every woman should be in her husband's house, absolutely silent, with maybe eight children, a prayer book, and a modesty veil. He thinks Leena's wicked for having a trade of her own, and that Suze talks and leaves the house too much."
"But is not your Yelena in her house making tapestries, and is not Susanna refusing to have trade?" Aleksei asked, confused. "It is very good for him that he is not having wife. He is maybe expecting too many strange things of women."
"None of us are good husband material, honestly," Stephen admitted as he considered the table of damaged pieces again. "But Iordi's different- he's never taken up with a woman at all. We're wondering if he prefers men."
Aleksei tried not to laugh, but failed. "I do not much think this. In very short time after he is meeting Rasha, he is thinking she is very pretty, even though he is not feeling well."
"As I hear it, your Silveredge is practically a witch, grabbing the fancy of any man she likes," Stephen shrugged, picking out a helmet that had been nearly crushed in. "How is the man who wore this even still alive? Bent like this, there should be blood on the inside of it, but no. Probably got smashed during some training exercise, or just stepped on by some horse."
"This saying about Rasha is not true," Aleksei disagreed. "Many times she is also having the fancy from men she does not like."
Stephen took his turn at attempting not to laugh at the way Aleksei had worded his rebuttal, but failed just as miserably as the Dragonborn had. He chucked the helmet into the bucket along with the sword and the other assorted woe-be-gone pieces and mulled over the contents of the table between himself and the Dragonborn again.
"Anyway, I wrote Iona back, told him Adassa had left home years ago, so one fine night he stops this beast of a woman just as she's leaving the pub. And to his utter mortification, it's her. Little 'Sassy Dassy,' who ran out of the house in her night dress with one of my swords, her stuffed bear, and her sewing things, found some hellion mercenary crew and grew up to be a beer-swilling, blood-loving, blade-toting killer-for-hire. Gets paid well, too; she dropped something to the tune of 100 lions out of her own purse, to get the monastery back to business. Misses us, and intends to visit, Iona wrote. Still loves us all well enough. Just loves her freedom more."
"But she must be careful, because still she is not having husband," Aleksei grunted as he pushed the metal bar back into the fire to heat. "Your father is losing all his children while they live, and this is very sad for him. It is terrible thing to lose all the whole clan, only from not wishing to see what it is that it is."
"Mother seems to suspect that he's been going quietly mad since he came back from the war the second time," Stephen said. He decided on a dirk that had somehow lost its pommel, and turned toward the barrel of ruined weapons to see if he had one that could easily become a substitute. "I think she's right, but the others weren't old enough to remember. He was a different man, an entirely different man, and for a while, I- well. What about you- you have a woman, or children somewhere, Al?"
"Nyet," the Dragonborn answered simply.
The fact that there was a simple denial, without any explanation, made Stephen pause, but not for long.
"One day, big guy," the armorer said confidently, finally fishing out a broken dagger whose pommel was still tacked on tightly. "Maybe you'll find a warrior woman- some huge, buxom, hearty bitch that can take it tough as you probably give it. Give you another generation of kids that ain't made for shepherding."
Aleksei hummed thoughtfully, looking into the fire at the reddening metal.
"I do not know this, Tevya. But if the gods will do this, then I will be content with it."
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