“More. I need more,” Emeral beckoned, waving his hand briskly to Colin who huffed the bellows faster for the blacksmith. “Good. You’re getting the hang of it.”
The muscular man lifted the reddish white strip of iron aloft from the coals. It clanked down on the black block of metal and began hammering with his hammer. Slowly, the point of the fat rod flattened into a thin strip.
Colin left the bellows and stepped closer to watch the man attack the iron. Little by little the rod flattened and became a dark sinister red. Emeral lifted the half flattened rod and dropped it back into the pit of red, burning coals. “Gettin’ there,” the man said in a deep, melodic voice. “More.”
Once again, Colin lifted the wood handles of the pointed leather pouch that blew air under the coal pit. Heat exploded into the dark thatched hut, filling it with the heavy odor of burning iron, ash, singed thatch and body sweat. He began breathing in time with the leather lungs until the black sooted man lifted the burning metal from the white coals. Then the thatched hut rang with the sound of clanking iron on iron. Slowly, the round rod flattened to a smooth surface that bore no blemish of the hammer. Then, the sharp sizzle pierceed tha air as Emeral plunged the hot iron into the water-filled trough and settled back on his hip and dragged sweat from his forehead, spreading a black sooty streak across it.
“How’d you learn to work iron?” Colin asked his new friend as he settled back on the wood rack that held more iron rods to be flattened.
“My Da,” Emeral answered, flexing his iron hard shoulders and arms before reaching into the water for the half flattened rod. “His pride and joy was makin’ a man his sword.” His green eyes flickered back through the darkness of the hut. “Never a man could beat iron as smooth and deadly. I’ve almost got it.” Emeral leaned back on the central support post and crossed his foot over the other ankle. “His blades took the best edge too.”
Colin looked around the hut for a sword other than his own hidden beneath the two sleeping hounds. “Don’t you make any?”
“Swords?” Emeral asked with a sick grin. Colin nodded. “Yes.”
“I don’t see any.”
“And you won’t see any,” Emeral quipped. “It’d be a quick trip to the quarries for me and starvation for my family,” Emeral shoved off the post and retrieved the rod from its water burial. “Romans won’t let us keep ‘em.”
“You let your father’s sword go to a Roman?” Colin asked. “I figure you have his, don’t you?”
The rod hesitated above the hot coals as the bright green eyes laughed. “Start the coals.”
Colin stood and began pumping the leather lungs. The rod turned over and was shoved deeper into the coals. “Yes,” Emeral said. “But, I still have my da’s sword and mine.” A chuckle escaped the man holding a hammer beside his thigh. “They got an old practice sword I made.”
Colin grinned. “I figured that. But, didn’t they figure that too?”
The man grinned and nodded. “They’d be dammed if they found mine and I’d be dead. Oh, they tried all right. Tore up my hut like a she-bear, but all they found was my practice weapons.” The rod took a vicious blow from the hammer and kept its imprint.
“Why didn’t your tribe fight back? I mean, why’d you let the Romans take over here?” Colin asked. Already his gall was rising at the thought of his father coming after him
“Learned from the other’s mistakes, we did. Where they did fight back, the Romans destroyed everything and took everyone away as slaves. Families were split up, I guess never to see each other again.” The rod nestled back into the coals and Colin was back to the lungs before Emeral nodded. Sweat broke and ran down between Colin’s shoulders as he pressed air through the pit. The rod clamored back onto the metal and Colin resettled on the rack. The rod began to stretch into a flat thick strip of iron. The same piercing scream of steam filled the hut when the strip was plunged into the trough. “Where the tribes didn’t resist, only the weapons were taken. Families kept their own. They chose who was taken hostage and only part of the cattle was taken.”
“You weren’t take as hostage?”
“No,” Emeral answered as he leaned back on the post again. “Like I said the families kept their own and I had a family.” He shrugged. “I’m too old anyway. They want young lumps like you.” He threw a nod at Colin.
Brit and Enen jerked their heads up from their paws and looked toward the sound of other dogs barking. Emeral looked over his shoulder and saw a group of auxiliary soldiers stopping by the distant hut to chat with the man standing in the doorway. Colin noted the blue war skirt and blue cape. They laid their oval shields on the ground against their legs. Three wore chain mail armor and two wore the metal stripped lorica. One pulled off the familiar helmet Colin had grown accustomed to seeing as leaves on trees. Only the man blazed with bright red hair and he could see the freckles from where he sat on the rack. “Who are they?” Colin asked. “They’re not Roman?”
“Oh yes they are,” Emeral answered, adjusting himself on the pole to note the soldiers. “Auxiliary soldiers. Ya haven’t seen the likes of them?”
“A few maybe but not like those,” Colin answered. “That one looks like one of our people.”
“He is…or was,” Emeral answered then cleared his throat and hawked phlegm toward the visited hut. “They all came from Cortonii tribes. That one’s been in a while causes he’s got rank. See them torcs on his armor?”
Colin looked closer and noted the two circular bracelet of his people attached to the shoulder armor. “How could they turn on their own kind?” Colin asked.
“Who cares now? They’re too Roman now for my blood.” Emeral hawked more phlegm in the same direction and retrieved the flattened strip. “They’re headed this way. Keep you’re mouth shut and let me talk otherwise they’ll know you’re not from around here and start asking questions. The less they know the better.” Colin nodded and returned to the dark area behind the coal pit but he could still make out the five soldiers sauntering toward Emeral’s hut.
“Hey, Emeral,” the red head called out. He was built like the others,short and tightly compact, but the others had the dark hair and features of their country. As they drew closer he noted the same dark eyes and full mustaches barely hidden behind tied cheek guards. Four stopped a pace behind the red haired one and slouched facing in all directions. Their eyes scanned the area as the red haired soldier stepped under the wood overhang. “About got those—“ The dark eyes caught sight of the man behind the fire pit. “Whose he?” he asked with a nod.
“My cousin down from the north country. Don’t ask him anything. He can’t talk. Took a kick to his neck from a cow,” Emeral answered, shoving a new rod deep into the hot coals.
“You, step out here,” the soldier called in a mild order. The remaining four directed their attention inside the hut. Colin dropped his gaze and stepped toward the wooden rack. “Can’t talk huh?’ Colin nodded timidly and shrugged. “Let me see your neck.”
Colin looked up at the burned thatch and exposed his neck and thanked the gods for the branch that had slapped him in the neck a few days ago. It had felt like a cow had kicked him. The man’s finger poked at the yellow bruise, sending a bolt of pain coursing his body. He flinched, opened his mouth to yell but held the sound back. The worse pain was refusing his hands to coil into fists to strike the man. “Took quite a blow. Lost it permanently?” Colin shrugged with diffidence.
“Don’t know yet,” Emeral answered, drawing the soldier’s attention back to him. Brit and Enen growled from their mat. Colin waved them silent as the soldier wandered closer.
“Nice dogs. Bet they can hunt,” he commented toward Colin who nodded. “Could use a dog like that.”
Colin shot a desperate glance toward Emeral. “I know where there’s a bitch with pups like ‘em,” he stated quickly. “He’ll be need ‘em when he head back north if his words don’t return.”
“I’d be interested in a pup; not one of those any—“
“Da?” a sweet voice beckoned timidly around one of the door frame poles. All eyes turned to the melodious call. A delicately featured girl with the black hair of her father’s clung closely to the wood pole as if it would protect her—separate her from the gazes of the soldiers.
“Reanna?” Emeral gasped, “what are you doing coming here?”
“Momma needs to know when you’ll be in to eat?” The dark eyes flinched about the dark area and quickly past the observing soldier.
“Soon. Now go,” Emeral commanded. Reanna disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. Colin noticed beads of sweat break on the man’s face even though the coals had cooled considerably.
“Uh yes, the pups,” the soldier recalled, obviously bringing his mind back to the moment. He turned to Colin. “They easy to train?” he asked.
The words formed instantly on his lips but he caught them and gurgled a miserable noise from his throat. He appeared to struggle then coughed as if the effort had choked him then nodded.
The soldier seemed satisfied enough but a strange curiosity had formed in his eyes. Struggling sounds of a girl made their way into the hut. Emeral started for the door when all eyes discovered only three soldiers waiting outside his hut. “Stay here,” the soldier ordered bluntly. The order was complete and chilling, stopping the taunt blacksmith in his tracks. “I’ll tend to this.” The soldier disappeared around the doorway with two soldiers following him. The single soldier gripped his gladius and focused on the two men waiting tenuously at the doorway posts.
“I only kissed her,” a voice barked.
“Kissed her?. You’ll see what the governor has waiting for you if that happens again.” A hard thud on metal clamored. “It won’t be this gentle. Don’t let that happen again, fool.”
Colin witness a wounded soldier racing from the side of the hut. Blood spewed down his chin to his chain mail even though he tried to wipe it away with his fist. Dark angry eyes flashed around the perimeter then he headed disappeared in the direction they had come. The red haired soldier returned, wiping blood on his blue cape. “Fool. That’s twice. Once more and he’ll answer to the governor,” the soldier rattled. “Your daughter is fine and is under escort to your hut.”
The word governor almost broke Colin’s silence but a desperate glance toward Emeral made his plea. “Answer to the governor? What’ll he do?”
The red head jolted upright and winced. “Three assaults on women of a client tribe and one testicle is removed. Four and you become a eunuch.”
“Eunuch?” Emeral asked, obviously as curious as Colin.
“Ya loose it all and pee like a woman,” the soldier stated with a wise grin. “Saw one once.” He was obviously enjoying the discomfort of his listners. “Sprays like a cat too,” he added with a shiver of misery.
“The governor ordered this?”
Disgust flooded the soldier’s face. “Who else could make such a demand? He says nothing riles cooperative tribes more than ruining their women and unfair taxes.” Colin chuckled which caught the soldier’s attention. He drew closer to Colin and looked at his face then gazed at his hair. “He’s your cousin?” he asked.
Emeral swallowed then nodded. One foot began stabbing at the dirt by the post. “Yeah.” He glanced at Colin. “His ma was a bastard baby of a Roman. That’s where he gets that skin.” His eyes glanced nervously back at his hut where the two soldiers were walking from. Colin looked away from his friend and met the soldier’s penetrating gaze. The dark eyes calmly moved down over his body, prickling his tattooed arms. The gaze scanned his hair again then returned back to Colin’s face.
“When you headin’ back north?” the soldier asked. Colin shrugged. “Better get a pass,” he warned with a civil nod then looked at Emeral. “Keep that girl outta sight. She’s a pretty one.” He turned to leave. “Oh, I’ll send someone for those wheel braces.”
Emeral waved as they left. “They’ll be ready in three days.”
As the two men turned back into the hut, Colin overheard one of the soldiers remark, “Kinda reminds ya of the governor, don’t he, Fionn?”
“My thoughts too.”
“Think we outta go back and get him?”
“No. But we know where he is.” Fionn answered. “No sense in starting anymore trouble.”
“More. I need more,” Emeral beckoned, waving his hand briskly to Colin who huffed the bellows faster for the blacksmith. “Good. You’re getting the hang of it.” The muscular man lifted the reddish white strip of iron aloft from the coals. It clanked down on the black block of metal and began hammering with his hammer. Slowly, the point of the fat rod flattened into a thin strip. Colin left the bellows and stepped closer to watch the man attack the iron. Little by little the rod flattened and became a dark sinister red. Emeral lifted the half flattened rod and dropped it back into the pit of red, burning coals. “Gettin’ there,” the man said in a deep, melodic voice. “More.”
Once again, Colin lifted the wood handles of the pointed leather pouch that blew air under the coal pit. Heat exploded into the dark thatched hut, filling it with the heavy odor of burning iron, ash, singed thatch and body sweat. Colin began breathing in time with the leather lungs until the black sooted man lifted the burning metal from the white coals then the webbed walls rang with the sound of clanking iron on iron. Colin was mesmerized with the man’s movements and skill. Slowly the round rod flattened to a smooth surface that bore no blemish of the hammer. Then he heard the sharp sizzle pierce as Emeral plunged the hot iron into the water-filled trough and settled back on his hip while it cooled. His arm rose and dragged sweat from his forehead, spreading a black sooty streak across it.
“How’d you learn to work iron?” Colin asked his new friend as he settled back on the wood rack that held more iron rods to be flattened.
“My Da,” Emeral answered, flexing his iron hard shoulders and arms before reaching into the water for the half flattened rod. “His pride and joy was makin’ a man his sword.” The large green eyes flickered back through the darkness of the hut. “Never a man could beat iron as smooth and deadly. I’ve almost got it.” Emeral leaned back on the central support post and crossed his foot over the other ankle. “His blades took the best edge too.”
Colin looked around the hut for a sword other than his own hidden beneath the two sleeping hounds. “Don’t you make any?”
“Swords?” Emeral asked with a sick grin. Colin nodded. “Yes.”
“I don’t see any.”
“And you won’t see any,” Emeral quipped.
“Why?” Colin asked.
“It’d be a quick trip to the quarries for me and starvation for my family,” Emeral answered, shoving off the post and retrieving the rod from its water burial. “Romans won’t let us keep ‘em.”
“You let your father’s sword go to a Roman?” Colin asked. “I figure you have his, don’t you?”
The rod hesitated above the hot coals as the bright green eyes laughed. “Start the coals.” Colin stood and began pumping the leather lungs. Their eyes absorbed across the hot pit as if to read something from the other’s mind. The rod turned over and was shoved deeper. Finally Emeral looked down to the heating rod and pulled it up for inspection. Colin watched the huge man think, send his thought to burn in the coals. The green eyes lifted before the rod was retrieved. “Yes,” he said. “I still have my da’s sword and mine.” The rod fell onto the metal block and began to feel the hot wrath of its abuser. Colin moved back to the rack and stared at his foot dangling innocently until the hammer stopped and a chuckle escaped the man holding a hammer beside his thigh. “They got an old practice sword I made.”
Colin grinned. “I figured that. But didn’t they figure that too?”
The man grinned and nodded. “They’d be dammed if they found mine and I’d be dead. Oh, they tried all right. Tore up my hut like a she-bear, but all they found was my practice weapons.” The rod took a vicious blow from the hammer and kept its imprint.
“Why didn’t your tribe fight back? I mean, why’d you let the Romans take over here?” Colin asked. Already his gall was rising at the thought of being so helpless.
“Learned from the other’s mistakes, we did. Where they did fight back, the Romans destroyed everything and took everyone away as slaves. Families were split up, I guess never to see each other again.” The rod nestled back into the coals and Colin was back to the lungs before Emeral nodded. Sweat broke and ran down between Colin’s shoulders as he pressed air through the pit. The rod clamored back onto the metal and Colin resettled on the rack. The rod began to stretch into a flat thick strip of iron. The same piercing scream of steam filled the hut when the strip was plunged into the trough. “Where the tribes didn’t resist, only the weapons were taken. Families kept their own. They chose who was taken hostage and only part of the cattle was taken.”
“You weren’t take as hostage?”
“No,” Emeral answered as he leaned back on the post again. “Like I said the families kept their own and I had a family.” He shrugged. “I’m too old anyway. They want young lumps like you.” He threw a nod at Colin.
Brit and Enen jerked their heads up from their paws and looked toward the sound of other dogs barking. Emeral looked over his shoulder and saw a group of auxiliary soldiers stopping by the distant hut to chat with the man standing in the doorway. Colin noted the blue war skirt and blue cape. They laid their oval shields on the ground against their legs. Three wore chain mail armor and two wore the metal stripped lorica. One pulled off the familiar helmet Colin had grown accustomed to seeing as leaves on trees. Only the man blazed with bright red hair and he could see the freckles from where he sat on the rack. “Who are they?” Colin asked. “They’re not Roman?”
“Oh yes they are,” Emeral answered, adjusting himself on the pole to note the soldiers. “Auxiliary soldiers. Ya haven’t seen the likes of them?”
“A few maybe but not like those,” Colin answered. “That one looks like one of our people.”
“He is…or was,” Emeral answered then cleared his throat and hawked phlegm toward the visited hut. “They all came from Cortonii tribes. That one’s been in a while causes he’s got rank. See them torcs on his armor?”
Colin looked closer and noted the two circular bracelet of his people attached to the shoulder armor. “How could they turn on their own kind?” Colin asked.
“Who cares now? They’re too Roman now for my blood.” Emeral hawked more phlegm in the same direction and retrieved the flattened strip. “They’re headed this way. Keep you’re mouth shut and let me talk otherwise they’ll know you’re not from around here and start asking questions. The less they know the better.” Colin nodded and returned to the dark area behind the coal pit but he could still make out the five soldiers sauntering toward Emeral’s hut.
“Hey, Emeral,” the red head called out. He was built like the others,short and tightly compact, but the others had the dark hair and features of their country. As they drew closer he noted the same dark eyes and full mustaches barely hidden behind tied cheek guards. Four stopped a pace behind the red haired one and slouched facing in all directions. Their eyes scanned the area as the red haired soldier stepped under the wood overhang. “About got those—“ The dark eyes caught sight of the man behind the fire pit. “Whose he?” he asked with a nod.
“My cousin down from the north country. Don’t ask him anything. He can’t talk. Took a kick to his neck from a cow,” Emeral answered, shoving a new rod deep into the hot coals.
“You, step out here,” the soldier called in a mild order. The remaining four directed their attention inside the hut. Colin dropped his gaze and stepped toward the wooden rack. “Can’t talk huh?’ Colin nodded timidly and shrugged. “Let me see your neck.”
Colin looked up at the burned thatch and exposed his neck and thanked the gods for the branch that had slapped him in the neck a few days ago. It had felt like a cow had kicked him. The man’s finger poked at the yellow bruise, sending a bolt of pain coursing his body. He flinched, opened his mouth to yell but held the sound back. The worse pain was refusing his hands to coil into fists to strike the man. “Took quite a blow. Lost it permanently?” Colin shrugged with diffidence.
“Don’t know yet,” Emeral answered, drawing the soldier’s attention back to him. Brit and Enen growled from their mat. Colin waved them silent as the soldier wandered closer.
“Nice dogs. Bet they can hunt,” he commented toward Colin who nodded. “Could use a dog like that.”
Colin shot a desperate glance toward Emeral. “I know where there’s a bitch with pups like ‘em,” he stated quickly. “He’ll be need ‘em when he head back north if his words don’t return.”
“I’d be interested in a pup; not one of those any—“
“Da?” a sweet voice beckoned timidly around one of the door frame poles. All eyes turned to the melodious call. A delicately featured girl with the black hair of her father’s clung closely to the wood pole as if it would protect her—separate her from the gazes of the soldiers.
“Reanna?” Emeral gasped, “what are you doing coming here?”
“Momma needs to know when you’ll be in to eat?” The dark eyes flinched about the dark area and quickly past the observing soldier.
“Soon. Now go,” Emeral commanded. Reanna disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. Colin noticed beads of sweat break on the man’s face even though the coals had cooled considerably.
“Uh yes, the pups,” the soldier recalled, obviously bringing his mind back to the moment. He turned to Colin. “They easy to train?” he asked.
The words formed instantly on his lips but he caught them and gurgled a miserable noise from his throat. He appeared to struggle then coughed as if the effort had choked him then nodded.
The soldier seemed satisfied enough but a strange curiosity had formed in his eyes. Struggling sounds of a girl made their way into the hut. Emeral started for the door when all eyes discovered only three soldiers waiting outside his hut. “Stay here,” the soldier ordered bluntly. The order was complete and chilling, stopping the taunt blacksmith in his tracks. “I’ll tend to this.” The soldier disappeared around the doorway with two soldiers following him. The single soldier gripped his gladius and focused on the two men waiting tenuously at the doorway posts.
“I only kissed her,” a voice barked.
“Kissed her?. You’ll see what the governor has waiting for you if that happens again.” A hard thud on metal clamored. “It won’t be this gentle. Don’t let that happen again, fool.”
Colin witness a wounded soldier racing from the side of the hut. Blood spewed down his chin to his chain mail even though he tried to wipe it away with his fist. Dark angry eyes flashed around the perimeter then he headed disappeared in the direction they had come. The red haired soldier returned, wiping blood on his blue cape. “Fool. That’s twice. Once more and he’ll answer to the governor,” the soldier rattled. “Your daughter is fine and is under escort to your hut.”
The word governor almost broke Colin’s silence but a desperate glance toward Emeral made his plea. “Answer to the governor? What’ll he do?”
The red head jolted upright and winced. “Three assaults on women of a client tribe and one testicle is removed. Four and you become a eunuch.”
“Eunuch?” Emeral asked, obviously as curious as Colin.
“Ya loose it all and pee like a woman,” the soldier stated with a wise grin. “Saw one once.” He was obviously enjoying the discomfort of his listners. “Sprays like a cat too,” he added with a shiver of misery.
“The governor ordered this?”
Disgust flooded the soldier’s face. “Who else could make such a demand? He says nothing riles cooperative tribes more than ruining their women and unfair taxes.” Colin chuckled which caught the soldier’s attention. He drew closer to Colin and looked at his face then gazed at his hair. “He’s your cousin?” he asked.
Emeral swallowed then nodded. One foot began stabbing at the dirt by the post. “Yeah.” He glanced at Colin. “His ma was a bastard baby of a Roman. That’s where he gets that skin.” His eyes glanced nervously back at his hut where the two soldiers were walking from. Colin looked away from his friend and met the soldier’s penetrating gaze. The dark eyes calmly moved down over his body, prickling his tattooed arms. The gaze scanned his hair again then returned back to Colin’s face.
“When you headin’ back north?” the soldier asked. Colin shrugged. “Better get a pass,” he warned with a civil nod then looked at Emeral. “Keep that girl outta sight. She’s a pretty one.” He turned to leave. “Oh, I’ll send someone for those wheel braces.”
Emeral waved as they left. “They’ll be ready in three days.”
As the two men turned back into the hut, Colin overheard one of the soldiers remark, “Kinda reminds ya of the governor, don’t he, Fionn?”
“My thoughts too.”
“Think we outta go back and get him?”
“No. But we know where he is.” Fionn answered. “No sense in starting anymore trouble.”
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