The Keep in the Marsh

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Thomas walked long that first day, wanting to put as much distance between him and the brigands as possible. He followed the queen’s road for the most part, slinking off into the forest whenever he heard fellow travelers. No sense in risking more tax collectors.

The queen’s road was beaten and packed, the fall of wagon wheel, horse shoe, and boot having trampled most of the grass and weeds that survived to punch through the road’s compacted earth. Even with the recent rains, most of the road drained rainwater into the ditches erected here and there throughout the entire road system.

“Gotta love engineers,” Thomas joked, figuring that the runoff ditches were placed where flooding was considered likely centuries before, when the roads were first constructed. Certainly, he encountered enough vernal ponds that appeared to be fed in part by road runoff. That first night after the brigands, Thomas stopped at a creek that ran parallel to the road for maybe half a mile. While not even close to the girth and depth of even the tiniest river, the creek’s shallows still produced two rock bass, which he spent less than an hour fishing from the slow-moving water. Avoiding his mistake from the previous night, Thomas hiked back well away from the road to set camp. Shielded by a dense grove of conifers, Thomas set up his tent before lighting a fire to cook with. Supplemented by a few bites of jerky throughout the day’s journey, the two bass subdued his hunger pains. Thomas determined to fish in the morning to start off with a good meal rather than waiting until day’s end again, when he was exhausted.

That night, the stars sparkled through partly cloudy skies, the constellations his father spoke of reasonably clear. Thomas remembered, the Hunter, the Stag, and the Scythe, but he could not recall the rest, the religion those constellations linked to having died out a millennia before. His father had for a time studied to be a priest, which is where his sire had learned of other faiths and superstitions. Disillusionment and want for a family drove his father from the cloth, which Thomas was thankful for. Like his parents, he believed as others did, in a Supreme Otherness and lesser entities, divine or otherwise, which stalked the world to strengthen or subdue mortals. He didn’t spend much time considering the supernatural. As a smith, he preferred to create from the bounty the visible world provided. Not two days from home, and Thomas’s ears ached for the sound of his hammer pounding into hot iron. He fell asleep that night thinking of the sights, sounds, and scents of a smithy.

“OK, next time I get rid of all the rocks,” Thomas cursed as he dug out the weathered stone he’d rolled on to during the night. His back sore, he emerged from his tent and stretched for a time to work out the kinks in his muscles. Then, after quickly disassembling camp, he hiked to the road and again caught a couple of fish, this time a plump catfish along with another rock bass. He risked a cooking fire at the road’s edge and had his meal cooked and finished in under an hour. Then, the day’s hike began in earnest. Fishing in the morning and camping well away from the road became Thomas’s routine for the next three days, his thoughts seldom far from his parents and his friends who had likewise succumbed to the plague. That last day of travel, as the main street of Glenwood came into view, he realized he was far from letting go of his pain and loss, but he hoped this village would serve as the start of his rejuvenation.

The village itself was larger than his home of Seneca, but not anywhere near the size of the cities his father spoke of to both the north and south. With no money whatsoever, finding work that would pay in copper, silver, or lodging was his first task. A stable located at the near edge of the village proved unsuccessful as they already had two resident smiths tending to every need, from horseshoes to wagon-wheel rivets. Thomas’s visits to the mill, the church, and the village’s main tavern proved equally fruitless as what little needing fixing by a smith was contracted out to the village smithy. It wasn’t until Thomas approached the far eastern stretch of Glenwood that he happened upon an inn in need of minor smith work.

“Horseshoes and other tinkering, indeed,” innkeeper Grier had said when Thomas inquired. “Haven’t had a smith on the premises in three seasons now, and God knows that damned Vaulkner who runs the village smithy robs ya blind with what he charges. I can think of a few things that I could use you for, if you’re OK with getting to sleep in the barn and two free meals a day while you’re working. Does that sound like a fair deal or not?” Grier was a short, stocky fellow with black hair and piercing blue eyes who never gave the hint of a smile when you talked to him. That suited Thomas just fine, given that his goal was just to get a roof over his head and some grub in his stomach. He eagerly accepted the deal.

With but one change of clothes, Thomas was more than thrilled to change out of the getup he’d worn throughout the past several days. Saying he was a bit ripe was an understatement. Getting a hunk of soap from one of Grier’s inn maids, Thomas took a bath in a tub of cold water before soaping up and rinsing his travel clothes. Wanting to impress his new employer, Thomas wasted no time afterwards in lighting the inn’s coal forge, set in a shed just south of the barn. In little time, the forge was blazing and soon thereafter the scents and sounds he loved flooded the shed’s air. The failed work of previous smiths rested in an old barrel; busted ball-peen hammers, broken horseshoes, cracked axes, and a miscellany of metal odds and ends.

For a moment, after lifting his hammer, Thomas closed his eyes and soaked in its weight. Then, grabbing one of the horseshoe fragments from the barrel, he placed it into the fired coals and waited. It didn’t take long for the iron to turn red hot, after which his hammer started to sing. Blow by blow, his hammer pummeled the iron from what had been a mule shoe, and in little time he had forged a hoof pick. As night began to take hold, Thomas moved on, this time taking a larger horseshoe fragment and transforming it into a knife. He smiled as he remembered his mother and father always encouraging him to recycle tools, leftovers from meals, and even stout limbs that fell from trees during wind storms, the latter for use as shovel, hammer and axe handles. It felt good to create again, iron his medium and the fire his art’s lifeline. He smiled after appraising his handiwork. It was then that a glint caught his eye. A splitting axe hung from a peg hammered into one of the shed’s support beams. Just a hunch. He walked over and removed the axe from the beam, and a quick look at the axe’s rusted head showed a c***k in the edge.

“Well now, there’s a thing needs fixin’,” he said as he jammed the axe head into the coals. The axe head gleamed in a range of hues from crimson orange to a brilliant yellow. With every strike of his hammer, the developing edge revealed new facets. As he was reforging an old tool, the axe’s story was beginning a new chapter, as opposed to starting a new life as iron stock. Once it was finished, Thomas whetted the axe, taking his time to get it good and sharp.

“My father’s axe,” Grier said, startling Thomas as he was inspecting the axe’s edge.

“I’m sorry. I just thought to fix…”

“No apologies needed,” Grier said holding out his hand. Thomas handed over the axe, which Grier took in hand. The innkeep smiled revealing crooked teeth yellowed by a lifetime of pipe smoking. “I never thought this would be whole again. You have my thanks.”

“Happy to help, and even happier to have shelter for the night.”

“You should get yourself inside while there’s venison stew left. My wife even baked a fresh batch of corn muffins that are absolutely delicious slavered in butter.” Grier spoke, but he never took his eyes off the axe.

“I’ll get washed up.”