Chapter 32

Wraine’s in the left corner of the shop checking out the longswords hanging from the wall while I’m on the right side of the smithy, taking a look at the wooden shields stacked on top of each other and leaning against the wall. When we got back to the inn, Quinn was already at our table drinking and when we asked him if he knew a good blacksmith around, he directed us here. Nestor the blacksmith was just about to close up shop when we arrived but when we told him Quinn sent us, he sighed and cursed under his breath before opening back up. It’s good to know people in this city, huh? Although I say I’m taking a look at the shields here, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to look for. I’ve only ever held two shields and one of them I robbed from a corpse while the other one I had Kapri there to help me pick out. We also have to keep in mind we only have 29 silver and 7 copper left after paying for our meals and renting out a bed at the inn. Well, we have to take into consideration our meals and lodging for tonight as well which leaves us with… 28 silver and 85 copper we can spend according to Wraine. Fuck this, I don’t even know why I’m browsing these shields like I know what I’m looking for. “Excuse me, Nestor? Can I get your help in picking out a shield?” Hearing him growling, I can tell he’s not pleased.

Nestor is a stocky middle aged man and going by his bronze skin and enormous muscular arms, he’s definitely a blacksmith with experience. He has short brown hair with matching stubble on his face and it seems like he was a perpetual frown on his face. Well, that’s not fair. We did stop him from closing up for the day and he’s very generously giving us his time right now. I’m sure he has a great smile at any other time but now. Stomping over to me, he picks up a random shield and has me hold onto its handle before he lets go of the shield without saying a word. When my hand drops down from the sudden weight, he grunts and takes back the shield, stacking it back into its pile. He repeats the process a few times until we find one that only slightly pulls down my arm when its weight is released. It looks like an ordinary wooden round shield quite similar to the one Kapri sold me. Only this shield has a black iron boss, which I learned from Kapri meant the jutting piece of wood or metal on the front center of shields, on the front of it rather than a wooden boss like my last one. Once it looks like I’m satisfied with the shield, Nestor holds out his hand in front of me and grunts out, “3 silver.” I hand him the coins from my pocket and I’m about to head over to the shortswords when something catches my eye.

In the right corner of Nestor’s smithy is a wooden pedestal and right on top of that pedestal is a crossbow. Huh. I’ve seen one of these before. Where was it? Ahh, I remember Sir Wilmar the Ratface who was always lugging around a crossbow too heavy for him. Walking over to it, I’m about to grab it to get a closer look but I hear Nestor’s angriest grunt of the day. Stopping myself, I look over at him and he says, “15 silver, no touching.” Drawing in a breath through my teeth, hearing that number physically caused me pain. But a crossbow… this could be exactly what we need.

“I can pay for it, but I’ll only buy it if I can use it. I need to know whatever I’m purchasing works after all.” Rolling his eyes, Nestor walks over to the crossbow, grabs it, and walks toward the back door of his smithy while gesturing for me to follow him. Wraine still hasn't decided on a sword yet and puts back the one in his hand before following us outside. It looks like this is a personal backyard for Nestor’s smithy because there’s straw dummies hanging from wooden posts all over the yard and there’s broken arrows littering the ground. Some of the dummies look like they were used to test the sharpness of Nestor’s blades while others look like they were used for target practice. Walking over to a wooden table covered with an assortment of junk, Nestor pulls a crossbow arrow from the junk and puts it into the crossbow. He raises the crossbow up to his eye level and rests it against his shoulder while taking aim, he looses the arrow at a target a few yards away and it lodges itself into the dummy’s chest with a thud.

“Crossbow’s 15 silver and a quiver of 20 bolts is 1 silver and 50 copper. Quiver itself is 2 silver. You buying it or not?” Taking a look at Wraine, he responds back with a shrug and tells me it’s up to me. After we talk for a few seconds about how many coins we still have and what we still need, I take another look at the crossbow in Nestor’s hands.

Sighing, I try to convince myself if we have a ranged weapon for tomorrow, our chances of success will skyrocket. Taking another look at the dummy with the crossbow bolt, not arrow, lodged deep into its chest, I imagine the dummy is the blond bandit instead and the image looks beyond enticing. “Alright, we’ll take it. We can’t afford the quiver though. We’ll take the crossbow and a quiver’s worth of bolts. We’ll figure out how to carry them back.”

Grunting, Nestor hands me the crossbow and spends a few minutes to teach me how to prep it, load it, and shoot it. Apparently this is considered an outdated lightweight model that still uses the hand span method. To pull the drawstring into the trigger point, I need to put the crossbow’s stock against my belly and then pull the string as hard as I can with both arms until it gets caught in the nut. Once the string’s in the nut, all I need to do is put a bolt into the groove in the center of the crossbow and it’s ready to fire as soon as I pull the trigger. He even lets us use the bolts on the table for practice. I’m able to hit the target dummy three times out of my five tries. Nestor tells me this particular crossbow has a draw weight of 150 pounds and has an effective range of 40 to 50 yards. But since both of us were novices, our effective range was no more than 30 to 35 yards. Seeing the empty looks on our faces, he harrumphs and gestures with his hands that where we’re standing and where the target’s standing is about 15 yards, half of our range, before heading back into his shop.

Since we took longer than he expected, Nestor quickly helps Wraine pick out a longsword for 4 silver and hands me a shortsword for 3 silver. We also have him pick out two woodcutting axes for 60 copper each and two shovels for 50 copper each. If we’re doing this, we need to be as prepared as possible, even if we only have 9 copper coins left, not counting the 22 copper we’ll need to pay to Farland later. Once we pay for everything and have everything in hand except for the bolts, Nestor comes out of his backroom with our bolts wrapped up in a linen bundle. It’s tied nice and neatly and I’ll only need to hold the top knot to carry the whole thing. It doesn’t even jostle when I lift it up. Would you look at that, Nestor really is a good guy. He waves us goodbye from his shop as we’re headed back to the inn. Looking at the people around us as we’re walking down the road, I ask, “You know, we look mighty suspicious right now right?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. One night when I got back to the city while you were still finishing up in the mine, I watched a man carrying a black linen bag over his shoulder walk past me on the main street. You might not think a black bag seems suspicious by itself but the one he was carrying was thrashing around. There was a person in it and no one seemed to care. It just seemed like any other day to them. That’s the type of city Midriver is. No one’s going to look at us and give us a second thought, they’ll just think we’re new members of one of the city’s gangs on their way to bury some poor bastard.”

When we get back to the inn, we notice Quinn’s not at his usual seat. We shove our new purchases under our usual bed and ask if Farland can keep his eye on them. He tells us it’s our responsibility to protect our own belongings and he’s right. Instead, we head back to the bed and grab our weapons before taking a seat. Farland gives us a nod and serves us two bowls of pottage. This really is the last of our money. Not much we can do with 9 copper. Though I wouldn’t mind spending a night or two in the forests, just like the old days. When we’re finished, we head straight for bed because we’ll need to be up even earlier than today if we have to make more than one trip to carry all our tools. Right before I fell asleep, I thought to myself a little bit. Whether what we were going to do was justified or not. Is it right or wrong? I don’t really know. I don’t think I really care either. As long as I can feel normal again, morality be damned.

...

I dreamt of the man in the mine again. But it’s different this time. Instead of lying on my back on the hard stone floor with a pickaxe jammed into my side, this time I’m the one standing over the man in the mine. Although a little morbid, when it’s not me on the receiving end of the pain and torment, it seems like a little play. A play the man in the mine and I are actors in and one that’s destined to repeat forever until my death. But that’s alright. As long as I’m not always the one on the receiving end. That’s why I did it in the first place, so that I wouldn’t be the one on the receiving end in reality. When the man starts hurling insults and screaming obscenities, I know it’s about time this little play of ours wrapped up. I swing the pickaxe down onto his face and his body violently explodes into motion, convulsing, twitching, and it jerks back and forth. When it stops, I know that we’re finished here for tonight and I look forward to our next meeting. Hopefully I’ll be the one swinging the pickaxe again.

...

I’m the first to wake up today and I shake Wraine out of his dreams. He wakes with a start and reaches for his sword right under his side of the bed but stops when he realizes it’s me. Hey, that wasn’t a bad response. If we’re ever in another situation like what happened with Gregory, at least I know he’ll be better next time. The sky outside is still dark and once we’re finished at the well, we grab everything under our bed and although it’ll be cumbersome, we think we’ll be able to bring everything in one trip. We don’t even have enough coins for food for both of us and we’re too nervous to eat anything right now. We just want to get there and maybe start preparing as soon as possible. Before stepping out of the dormitory, I look at Wraine one last time and take a deep breath. He does the same and when he opens his eyes, he looks ready. Nodding to him, we walked into the dining hall. Quinn’s sitting at our usual table but there’s no mugs around him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him up this early before. I’ve only ever seen him in the evening when he starts to drink. Giving him a nod, we walk past him and when I open the door, he shouts after us, “See you boys later.” My paranoia these past few days has been getting out of control and I can’t help but suspect Quinn knows exactly where we’re going and what we’re doing. But if he does, why isn’t he stopping us?