Chapter Fifteen

A Steady Metallic Beat

My first sight of the city-state capitol of Kreuzhain were the pockets of tents and lines of desperate masses being held from the city’s massive blackbrick walls by huge, heavily armoured erdvolk men. The contrast between pointed, iron spires of forge smokeshafts and crenelated turrets to the dozens of different races of peoples without shelter nor comfort was striking. While some reached for the heavens, it seemed others rested on the dirt.

“How are we going to get in?” I asked Vaelora, as we shuffled slowly towards the city’s eastern gate. From what we were able to observe, only Kreuzhainers, supply caravans, and merchants with the proper documents were passed on through the gate and into the city by the erdvolkers.

“Leave the talking to me,” she said. “That’s why I’m here, right? Accompanying a wealthy Heimat houseman.”

We inched further and further to the east gate. The guards wore a crest of a tall bastion protected by two turrets on their thick leather gambesons, and I couldn’t help but notice that each and every one of them were both stout and especially tall, even for an erdvolker.

The famine, it seems, had not reached the borderguards of Kreuzhain, and they seemed proud of it. Banners and tapestries boasting their crest and artistic renditions of the border guards over the centuries covered the eastern watch tower, hanging over windows and over its arches. It took me a moment before I spotted even one banner flying the colors of Kreuzhain without any mention of the border.

“A pretty arrogant group of people, then, don’t you think?” Vaelora said, having followed my gaze towards the heavily decorated watch tower. “They remind me of the minstrels from my college, except with a much worse sense for style.”

“These people are obviously very happy about the fact that they can keep people out of their walls. What of dragons and siege engines, I wonder?”

“Keep your voice down,” Vaelora hissed at me. “Words like that won’t help our passage through.”

I grunted in acknowledgment. She was right, of course, and I knew that, but still, I felt pangs of envy and jealousy stir within me as I thought of all the Kreuzhainers who had never known what it felt like to be forced out of their home. Who, instead of nourishing Jatta for the better with their excess, chose to use those spoils to raise their walls and deepen their footing.

When I was a child, whenever my father would return with a handful of pearls that he had quarried, he would share our evening broth with the neighbors — because as those who had more than enough, it was our responsibility to help those who did not. That was what he taught me.

“We all do our part, Houseman,” the burly, broad-shouldered border guard greeted us as we took a step towards him.

“We all do our part,” Vaelora answered on my behalf. I was lost in thought, and her tongue was just naturally quicker. “You’re keeping a long line here. Rather inefficient, no? Have you considered sending for another pair of guards for help?”

The burly man was obviously taken aback. “I…I’ll be the one asking questions here. For example, your strong accent. What is a Lainian girl doing here with a Houseman?”

Vaelora swung her lyre from her side to her front and plucked three strings slowly, playing a simple harmony. Then, she flipped the lyre and brandished her Free City Badge, just as she did to me. “Everyone knows where to look if you want someone to carry a tune for a party. The House sent for me. Matthias here,” Vaelora said, as she pulled at my sleeve, “was the lucky houseman chosen to come fetch me.”

The borderguard gave me an inquisitive look. “And would you have your house papers, Matthias?”

Answering him would be problematic. Avengard and Kreuzhain shared the same tongue in Commonspeak, but my accent was far from that of a noble houseman. Not answering him, however, would be equally problematic.

“Are you asking a houseman for his papers?” Vaelora began. “Are you blind, or have you lost all respect for the Heimats? I’ll-“

“You’ve blocked the port holes from the tower with your banners, guardling,” I said as sternly as I could muster. “Whichever stonemason wasted the sweat and effort to build that tower designed it so that the guardlings inside could see. There, there, and there,” I said as I pointed out each visibility port with a view obstructed by cloth and tapestry.

“A minor offense,” the guard conceded. He didn’t seem to notice the accent. Too busy defending himself.

“Perhaps. And a layman on the street might think that the error’s on account of your loyalty. Or of your pride. But I’m no layman, guardling, I hail from the Heimats, and I understand how turning brick and mortar into a city works. It must be as dark as night in there with all the ports blocked. You expect me to believe you and your friends are so proud as to bother with torchsmoke in the middle of the day? Just to show off your colors?” I scoffed. “No, you’ve put up those banners to hide yourselves from the world in that tower. How many guards in that tower are being paid for their shift right now? And what sorts of extortion have you pulled behind those shuttered windows?”

“Messr, I assure you, I have no idea what it is you speak of,” the guard said urgently through grit teeth. “But please, move along. You’re holding up the queue, and I’d like to do my job.”

“Do not delay a Heimat houseman again,” I told him, pointing a finger in his direction, as Vaelora urged us both along.

“We all do our part!” she yelled over her shoulder to the guard, the pair of us already two steps into the city. With the guard out of earshot, Vaelora whispered to me, “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you are a good liar.”

“No,” I answered. “I only know how to build things.”

—

For the first time, Kreuzhain loomed before me, and perhaps part of me began to understand just how it is that the likes of Kazador and his ilk grew to become so arrogant and prideful of their home.

The walls of Kreuzhain rose like imposing cliffsides flanking a valleyed highway. They were made of granite and local blackbrick, and reinforced further with riveted steel and iron. Many buildings, those that I presumed to be factories, forges, and fabricators, had their facades augmented by twisting, creaking, turning brass gears, part of some larger mechanism that must have taken teams of masons to design.

Vaelora stifled a fit of coughs into her sleeve. The air was poor. In the brightest time of the day, it felt as if it were dawn, with gas-lamp lanterns strewn across the street already lit. Overhead, we were below two cloud ceilings. One mass of grey cloud cover over the heavens, and one of black floating soot directly underneath. “Charming place,” she remarked.

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Around us, erdvolker men and coal-streaked dwarves made their way up and down the stone-cobbled streets. Each and every one of them walked with purpose. The center of the paths, however, were dominated by long twin iron rails that lined the city. Then, a horseless carriage made of iron carrying a large wooden barrel pushed up the street, riding the rails, with passengers in expensive-looking clothing inside. Impressive. In the War College, we weren’t even allowed to read the schematics for the rail.

Across the horizon, we saw one brightly lit spire that dominated the skyline. We made our way towards that spire; it was as good a direction as any. I quickly realized that that spire could not have been anything but the smokestack of the Grand Forge of Kreuzhain, the crown jewel of industry and machinery. Even from afar, we could see the bright glint of flowing molten lava being redirected from the tower into its forges and hearths. This was the heart of the war effort, if there could only be one spot in Jatta. There, almost every Free City spearhead, arrow tip, and breastplate found its origin in one way or another.

We turned a corner, and on that corner stood an iron bloomery, meant for refining and smelting raw iron ore from its base oxides into usable smithery ingots. A team of five laborers, each equipped with heavy leather aprons, tinted goggles, and protective gloves, took turns retrieving refined ingots from the pit and letting it fall onto a cast steel shelf.

Clank! Clank! Clank! Each ingot retrieved from the pit contributed to a steady metallic beat of superheated metal, and each worker committed themselves to keeping that beat steady. A consistent stream of quality metal, to then be worked on by an equally efficient and competent team of Kreuzhainer smiths.

Suddenly, a wooden carriage pulled by two pack mules parks itself by the bloomery, and a team of workers disembark, each carrying sacks of raw ore. More fuel for the Kreuzhain machine.

It seemed like everything in this city was built with much purpose. I suppose that they didn’t see much purpose, then, in the lines of humanity that they kept at bay outside the walls.

“No need to look so grim now, Scipio,” Vaelora said, digging at my side with her elbow. “We’ll be out of here soon enough. Just need to find the right caravan.”

“All of the skill and expertise in the world, and I don’t believe I’ve seen a bleaker place,” I remarked.

“Just a bit of patience now, Scipio.”

We spotted a tavern that seemed to be just as good as any. The Metal Bear would have been considered a fairly sizable establishment in most cities, even in Avengard, at three storeys in height, but it looked as if it were the most humble structure on the stretch of path it was built on. The sign was made of pure metal, from what I could tell, most likely an iron plate treated with a sheen of copper, and engraved with the name and the visage of a bear wielding a smith’s hammer atop an anvil.

Inside, the ground floor was somewhat smaller than I had anticipated. There were only ten or so tables, but at least fifty patrons crammed in, with more than half of them smoking tabac through either pipe or paper. As a result, the air was heavily tinged with the earth grunge of smoked tabac, and I could barely keep my eyes open. It was hard to tell if the air was worse off inside the tavern or out in the city.

“Vaelora, you should know that I’m still wary of your intentions in traveling with me, but you should know this: I’ve never exactly set foot in a tavern before,” I whispered to her.

“Scipio, thank you again for making your distrust clear. But this time - for real this time! - perhaps you can leave the talking to me.”

I nodded stiffly. Brushing shoulders with towering erdvolkers and stout, heavy-set dwarves smoking tabac and drinking laced beer intimidated me just as much as being sized up by the border guards, if not more. In such a tight space, I kept a hand on my satchel. The last thing I wanted was for the hand cannon to slip out and end up in the hands of a drunk with an idea.

The tavern itself was decorated as if it were a hunting lodge out in the Southern Mountain Range. Two animal heads were mounted above a stone hearth - one of a bear, and one of a quazir. Above the barkeep and his array of tanks and rows of spirits was the barrel of the cannon, though its breech and vent field looked to be filled with sand and smelted unusable. By the looks of it, the design seemed to be half a century old. The tables, stools and benches in The Metal Bear seemed to be just about the same age as well.

“We all do our part, barkeep,” Vaelora called at the pot-bellied man pouring beer into two wooden tankards he held in one big meaty hand.

He raised the other in acknowledgment, and answered, “We all do our part, and I’ll do mine once you give me a moment, yeah?” He glanced over his shoulder to give us a look and a nod, then went back to pouring the two beers, before whisking them off to a group of barrel-chested men on the opposite end of the bar.

“Typical tavern troll behaviour,” Vaelora spoke to me in a low voice. “Always spoiling their regulars. Every ‘keep in Roses was the same.”

It was not the barkeep that approached us next, but three men from the group that he had just served. The lead one of the three, the shortest of them and with unpleasant looking warts over his neck and jaw, placed a heavy, unwelcome hand on my shoulder, and in a heavy accent, said, “You’re naught but rust in my gear in a place like this.”

“What was that?” Vaelora asked, turning to face the three. “I didn’t understand a single word your friend here just said.”

“He said that he doesn’t like either of you,” the tallest of the three answered. His breath smelled of beer, spirit, and a venomous distrust of strangers. “And I don’t like either of you either.”

“Okay then, I suppose you don’t have to like us. My friend and I are just here for a beer, and then we’ll be off,” I said as I attempted to nudge the short man’s hand off my shoulder, to no avail.

“We’ll take your heads off for you,” the third man threatened us. “We don’t like the Heimats around here.”

“Your tongue sounds like it was hammered in the wrong forge,” the short man said. “Why do you speak like that, Houseman?”

“Diplomats to Fleur d’Lain speak as they wish,” Vaelora interjected. “So leave the two of us to our business, and go on your way, then.”

“A diplomat?” the tall one echoed. “To ‘Lain? I knew it. You Heimats are selling the whole forge then, eh? Bringing them in, dropping the gates? Soot-ridden dogs!” he screamed as he swung a wild left hand at me, catching me right in the jaw. Suddenly, the ground rose up to meet me, and I fell face-first into the filthy wooden planks on The Metal Bear’s floor.

“You thugs!” Vaelora yelled, as she took a back-step, just in time to dodge another swing from the tall, drunken man. In reply, she swiped at a half-full tankard from another patron and threw it at him, drenching him in laced beer.

“He’s already drunk, you’re only going to make it worse!” I shouted, struggling to speak through a fractured jaw and struggling to regain my footing.

Neither of the man’s two friends liked that, and the shorter of the two heaved a wooden stool up as if he were Avenor wielding his warhammer, and he brought it crashing down onto me.

My vision flashed white, and waves of excruciating pain throbbed throughout my skull. Already, I could feel a hot, wet stream of blood begin to leak down my hairline over my ear.

Vaelora ate a swing to the stomach as well, but swiped away at two more wild attempts for her. “We get it, we’re leaving, we’re leaving!”

“The flames you’re not!” the tall man screamed, as more men from his group across the bar joined the trio. The short man raised the stool yet again, still wet with blood, eyes set on Vaelora with murderous intent.

I slipped the hand cannon out of my satchel and raised it, and prepared to snap my fingers to activate the Flintstrike Gloves…

An arm clad in an iron gauntlet pounded on the stool as the drunkard held it overhead, then twisted it in such a way that it came crashing down on him and most of his friends. Then, that man, wearing a suit of half-plate armour, pushed him away, creating space for Vaelora and myself to breathe and make our exit.

One of the drunkards swung for him. The plated man caught his swing, and carried the momentum, throwing the drunkard over the counter, flailing into a tankard of beer. Another threw a plate at him, which he deflected with his gauntlet.

“What are you waiting for, Scipio? Leave!” he bellowed, before he shoved another man off his feet. He was expertly using the clumsiness and drunkenness of our assailants against them, constantly keeping a barricade of men with unsteady footing as a barrier from each fresh new attack.

“Quixada?” I recognized him, finally.

“We’ll catch up outside, lad,” Quixada replied, blocking another blow with his gauntlet. In my confusion, I still had my eyes on the middle aged man, defending himself against a group of five, as Vaelora pulled me by sleeves all the way out the door.