We hide in a back alley house. Bruce started to say “Sorry you guys get involved.” I said to him “ An explanation would be nice” Bruce “Eva here works for me, we were putting a front, so we can kill the thugs from black ax without raising suspicion. As far as people are concerned, thugs get killed by a talented villager with a bleeding conscience.” And I said “So you didn’t need our help at all” He said “Actually no, this is the third time I have done this, so they started to wise up, there weren't supposed to be that many.” I said “And you're doing all this because?” He said “Look, Baron Alfred Herch is a leech to us all, but that can be ended. We need to undermine his rule one step at a time. Black ax had given a chance to change sides but they didn't agree. Now me and my colleagues are swiftly reducing their numbers. Now we can replace them with our members and capture their zones in Baldenburg city. But that is just a start. When we replace black ax, we the iron dagger gang will be in a good position to make a move against the villain." I know a recruitment speech when I heard one and this is one, he wanted to gain us for his cause. But I am not interested in naive noble crap from him. I said " Just cut the facade, who are you working for? Another noble, merchants guild? Who?" He suddenly gets serious " Ok, I understand you are not naive, ok we have political backing and some strong people want to replace Alfred" I smiled and thought to myself  'They want to replace Alfred but not Herch family. So behind all this there is another Herch.'  I said “Look, I understand your cause is noble and you want a change, defeat the villain and all that. But sir Bruce, I am here for something much more simple, gold.” He smiled “You look like someone who can handle a dagger, we can't have bigger weapons in the city, unless we want to be easily detected. You and your elder brother can be of great help for our cause, I can offer you two gold each every month plus food and a place to stay” I was surprised how much he paid, a farm hand earned two to three gold plus food for six months of hard labor. I know this was probably because the person who he paid got very good quickly or he wouldn’t need to pay him for long. Thank god I didn’t need to be a cannon fodder in some war for now. I pointed at my crate “I wasn’t talking about selling my services as a hired blade, I was talking about that” He looked at my crate and said “I am not interested in stale apples…” I just pushed the crate with my foot, apple's slide to the side and a lot of knives appeared. He looked at my craft with a rather impressed expression.

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Apparently he knows good steel when he sees it. Normally in medieval smiting there would be a lot of impurities in metal which make it brittle and weak. But because of me smelting my metal under very high temperatures with a good amount of carbon and some sand to collect the impurities, it was extremely impressive. Nobody except him noticed until now. “Nobody in this kingdom can produce a steel this high of a quality” he said. “Who you work for” I looked at him and said “He wants to be secretive about his identity, as you can guess.” He looked at me. He said “So I want to buy every knife you have, I can pay you a gold for each one” Ahh I had to start the bargain. “Look, you are going to need a secretive weapons craftsman for yourselves and We need some secretive customers. We can have a gainfull relationship for both sides. But as you can guess being secretive is costly. And if you guys don't have a secretive weapon source Alfred eventually cut your weapon supplies unless he is a total dolt." He scratched his jaw and said, Ok one gold 25 silver each. I said "one fifty or I can't guarantee my master will be willing to work with you. He is a firm believer in good  quality deserving right price." He said. " Only if you agree produce 200 spearheads with this quality steel in three months time” I was perfectly capable doing that, but why gain some more things “Ok I will make the deal than, Master going to make 200 simple spearheads with his good quality steel, but we have two conditions, first 2 gold each and second you need to pay 200 gold upfront for material cost and you can pay rest when we do delivery.” He didn’t even try to bargain, he just said “Yes” I shouldn’t be surprised but I was, normally no blacksmith would produce this amount of weapon especially for a non legitimate organisation. Bruce sent Eva. A couple hours later I had my large sack of gold.

I had a total of 261 gold on me. Tim got to the market and bought his ropes, I paid 3 golds for 3 sheets of paper size of A3 paper and paid 3 more for some ink and a quill. In the middle ages paper was a real luxury after all. After that we were on the road in the evening.