Gold In the Wood, Prologue
Cairn Campaign Realplay Adaptation
Prologue
Borrid could not help but put his hammer down when he saw what was coming over the hill. When he raised his hand to shield his eye from the midday sun, Borrid was able to make out a cart, but he couldn’t see anyone at the reins. Whatever was pulling it was clearly not a pack animal. It was too small, and taking frequent stops.
Borrid’s anvil was growing cold by the time the cart and the individual hauling it had pulled even with his place on the dirt road. A diminutive figure was laboriously transported the cart by alternating pushing with outstretched arms and then flipping over to throw her back against the pullbar. It looked exhausting.
The cart was not weighed down by a typical load like grain or wood and it jumped and rattled each time the brigand heaved it over a stone or rut of dry mud. As it bounced, the cart emitted a vaguely melodic noise, like wind chimes if a child violently banging them with a spoon.
Borrid was far past curious. He laughed raspily, his first in recent memory.
“Can I help you?” spat the soldier with a glower, for, now that they were closer, Borrid could see that she wore the chain shirt of the Rutnean patrol. He dropped his gaze, skin prickling. A vision of looming detainment and eventual emaciation flashed in his mind. “This is what you get for displaying mirth,” he thought to himself ruefully.
But when he gathered the nerve to glance up once more at the traveler gasping in the road, he realized that she didn’t look much like a Rutnean guard at all. The chain shirt fit poorly, the gloves and boots did not match, and she lacked the scaly gambeson favored by the rangers in the Northern Reach.
“My apologies,” intoned Borrid cautiously, then ventured, “Is there something going on with your wagon? I’ve never heard it make a sound like that before.”
The traveler sighed and the malice drained from her face. Borrid could tell that she was acting stern on purpose.
“It’s a handpan,” muttered the mismatched soldier. Sweat sprung from under her short frizzy hair and ran down her brow. It was hot for the middle of fall, even this far north. It looked she had been toiling all morning, and possibly through the night before.
“Did you travel here from Fort Lune?” continued Borrid.
“The road don’t go nowhere else”, replied the soldier with a tired shrug.
“This road goes westward to the Wood and beyond the Fort to Rutne proper,” said Borrid, pointing first in the direction the soldier was headed, then in the direction from which she had come. Borrid always spoke with a sort of dogged precision, as if his words were the strikes of a hammer on a miniature anvil in his throat.
“You can be obtuse if you’d like,” retorted the soldier, still completing the process of catching her breath. Her face went through a sequence of cryptic expressions before landing on an apologetic smile. “Of course I came that way.” She straightened up, glancing quickly over the covered workshop with its bare shelves and empty hooks.
“You’re a blacksmith?” she inquired, and pointed hastily to her chest. “Can you melt down this chain shirt?”
This time it was Borrid’s turn to glower. “Bad luck, I’m retired”, he replied thornily.
“Then what’s that?” She pointed indignantly at the metal object lying on the anvil.
“It’s a sword.”
“Who’s it for?”
“It’s mine.”
“So you’re a self-employed blacksmith then, is that right? Sounds like maybe you’re not very good”, laughed the brigand.
“I’m the best”, retorted Borrid with conviction. “But I can’t make a living at the anvil anymore. Look. Here is the rest of my metal,” he spoke bitterly, gesturing to the sword. “Even the bits and nuts, and the iron from my smithing tools as well. All in there. No going back now,” he said with finality.
Borrid was on edge. Reveal your anger, betray your weakness, his old master would have said.
Borrid sighed. “It’s not done yet,” he added sheepishly.
The traveling soldier was too exhausted to press further, instead turning to the row of white olive trees lining the back of the yard. “Alright Sir former blacksmith, can I at least rest my cart in the shade over there?”, she inquired, “Before you ask, I have my own food.”
The traveler faced the blacksmith and the blacksmith faced the traveler. The leaves rustled in the crisp breeze, the moment tense, and then finally Borrid nodded stiffly. He watched as the traveler dragged the handcart under the trees behind his yard to collapse in the shade with vigorous groan. One of the wheels was sticking in the axel. Borrid turned back to his sword, ready for more tempering. He became engrossed in his work once again, and did not look up again until the next visitors were already upon his stoop.