blueteamnovel Chapter 14: Settling In
Chapter 14: Settling In
Chapter 14: Settling In
Chapter 14 Settling In
Waking up in my own bed was nice, especially on a mattress and not a hard floor. I needed to confront the parents today. I could already hear Freya talking to my mother at the other end of the house. Shit. I forgot to tell her I was going to that myself at breakfast. I remained in my room as the house came to life and breakfast was prepared. Even if they said no, I would still be going. Hoping it will go well. I left my room to face the music.
I entered the kitchen. Breakfast was on the table, with buckwheat porridge and candied nuts to mask the heavy blandness. The nuts were local and common but had a bitter aftertaste that the candying did not mask well. Ok, the day was not starting well. Mother asked, “So Freya said you have a big announcement?” Well, she hadn’t broken the news yet, at least. Father stopped spooning the porridge into his mouth and looked at me. Pascal took the opportunity to pour half the remaining nuts into his bowl and then stopped to look as well.
“Yes, um. You know I was working for Callem, I mean Captain Callem, the last few days. Well, he sort of recruited, no, um, asked us if we...that is Gareth and me, if we wanted to work his farm and train on his farm,” My speech went from halting to fast-paced suddenly, “It would just be for five days a week. I would be back for the 6th and 7th days. And we will learn more than just fighting and tending his fields. And he is paying us and feeding us. It is ok, right.” I breathed deeply, unsure how I had become winded from those few words, but my pulse raced, and my aether core hummed and burned, responding to my anxiety.
Father was the first to speak, “Captain Callem is going to train you himself?” The words were cold and questioning, sounding doubtful. I just nodded, thinking he was upset, but then his face broke into the biggest-toothed smile I had ever seen from the man. “Alurha, we are going to have a master swordsman for a son!” He was soon up and hugging me. I was keenly paying attention to everyone to gauge their reaction, Freya was smiling, and my mother had a small grin, but that was apparently at seeing father happy as she was eying him more than me. Pascal had stormy resentful eyes and a darker facial expression. Well, 3 out of 4 was good, right?
Instead of going to work today, my mother started helping me pack. She put everything in my bedroom except one set of clothes in a crate and asked if I needed anything else. I said pillows and explained how it was hard to sleep when my body was so sore. She went out and bought me nine new super fluffy feather pillows! She explained that since she didn’t have to feed me, she would have extra coin, and spending it a little early on me was just common sense.
She also gave me a drying rack for clothes, detergent, three newish towels, some old dishes and pots, two of my dad’s old jackets, a needle and thread, and six sweet rolls wrapped in paper. I could see she was both proud and worried about me. Freya confirmed that I would be back for her birthday and to take her to see the traveling show in the city on her special day. Pascal was nowhere to be seen, clearly jealous I was training with Callem. I made sure my mother never saw my collection of mage books. It was not something I wanted to reveal yet.
Eventually, I had two large crates outside storing most of my worldly possessions inside them, and I found Gareth with a single overstuffed backpack walking toward me later in the day. His eyebrow rose in question at the crates, and I just shrugged, “Gareth, you remember when I said I would buy a cart so you could pull me? Well, that time has come!” I laughed my most evil supervillain laugh, and he actually edged away from me. Well, it ended up just being a large two-wheeled wheelbarrow. Gareth did, in fact, push it most of the way, and the one time I jumped in, he just stopped until I paid him a large silver, then he pushed me a few hundred feet before demanding another. I started walking, exclaiming, “Good and honest help is hard to find in these woods!”
It was late in the day when we did get to Callem’s farm and were shocked to find a new building opposite the training yard from the farmhouse. It was not very big, just 16 feet by 32 feet. It was stone, and we entered to find a common room and kitchen with ladders on each side leading up to sleeping lofts. The kitchen was fully furnished, and the common room had two plush chairs and a small dining table with four chairs. We investigated both of the doors. One led to a tiny washroom, and the other had stairs down to a fully stocked larder. The larder was very cold, and I noticed the runic markings on a stone in the center. Looking around, there was enough food to feed us for a year! Callem descended the stairs as we gawked at all the food on the stone shelves.
“Boys, good to see you are back. Called in a favor,” Callem winked at me, “From an earth mage to get this outbuilding done. We can’t have you two sleeping on the floor with the type of training we will be doing. The furnishings I retrieved from my storage unit in the capital.” He muttered under his breath, “I haven’t visited those memories in a while.” He recomposed himself, “The larder down here,” he hesitated, thinking what to say, “...well, you two need to learn how to cook your own food. I said I would feed you, not cook for you.”
Gareth excitedly butted in, “Storme is the best cook in Hen’s Hollow...” his voice died as I gave him a death stare. The last thing I wanted to be doing after working myself to exhaustion every day was to cook for three hungry men.
“Is that so?” Callem responded with a smirk and eyed me deviously. I swear he could read minds. “Well, I will prepare breakfast every morning, and you will eat in the house with me. Mid-day meal will be from the larder here, prepared by both of you. The evening meal will be a hearty stew that I will put on in the morning to cook all day and will be eaten here as well. You will clean all the dishes from each meal here.” Yeah, I would be preparing the mid-day meal by myself as Gareth was a terrible cook. He could make a baked potato taste awful. I surveyed the larder, making mental notes and putting together meals in my head.
Gareth splashed into the water a few seconds after me. It had been a productive week, as I reflected. I let the cold water numb my poor body. The bend in the stream here was shaded, and the natural sandy-bottomed pool here was perfect for us. It was actually the only place deep enough to submerge in the nearby stream. Tonight’s stew was a meat and bean chili with sweet peppers. It was the second time I had made it this week at Callem’s request. Callem had eaten over half of the first batch himself.
The man loved my cooking, and I couldn’t believe how much he ate. I had already scaled up my stew twice. I was now using the biggest pot Callem had in his kitchen. There was one good thing that came from cooking dinner and preparing lunch. I didn’t have to do the dishes! Callem and Gareth did all the day’s dishes together while discussing sword mastery after dinner. Gareth was outpacing me in learning the art of combat. It seemed I would only master one blade to his 23, but I was fine with that.
I was actually a decent archer when Callem had us practice with the bows. Gareth was better, of course, but only by a slight margin, and Callem could usually find and correct my faults. Just a few comments from him had me improving swiftly. We were working with smaller bows with low draw weight for now. And Callem had us making our own arrows as well. I was actually better than Gareth at fletching. It had absolutely nothing to do with me using my metal shaping skill to fit the arrowheads. Yep, that had nothing to do with it. Gareth wasn’t training us to be fletchers just to be competent enough to make arrows if we needed to.
The obstacle course, or the ‘course of ultimate pain’ as I liked to call it, was fun at first. Then Callem added weighted vests, shot arrows capped with leather balls at us, had moving obstacles on pendulums, and secretly changed the obstacles during the night to trip us up, and I mean literally trip us up. He said it was the first phase of teaching a soldier to be aware of everything in combat and expect the unexpected. He was definitely having more fun than us. Gareth was having fun because he seemed to recover three times as fast as me. Callem withheld salves and potions, saying I needed to train my body’s healing processes. Yeah, at least the cold water felt good as it sapped away the heat from my muscles.
The best part of the last five days was my aether core training. I had gotten all 23 exercises down and practiced them each night until I passed out from fatigue. I also never forgot to add to my growing horde of gold coins. To my surprise, the number of gold coins had increased to 14. I also felt, no, I knew, I was extremely close to being able to make just a single gold coin at a time which would mean I was close to making my first platinum.
“Stormy?” Gareth asked to see if I was paying attention.
“Yeah, bud, what’s cooking in your head tonight?” The cold water soaks had served as a time of reflection for us, but we usually relaxed and just talked nonsense. “You have a meal request?”
He let out a sigh, “No, I was just thinking I wanted to become an adventurer.” I was quiet, so he continued. “I want to see more than just Skyholme. I actually don’t think I want to live here, in Skyholme, that is.” This was Callem’s fault. He had revealed the corruption of politics within the capital in our nightly lessons. A fairly naïve boy like Gareth had not taken it well, but he worshiped Callem, so Gareth took everything he said literally during lessons.
“Gareth, we are 12.” I said emphatically, “It is too early to think about these things. Can we revisit this conversation after our first year of the academy?” I hadn’t soured on spending my life in Skyholme. I was sure I would find the old adage, ‘power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’ would hold true anywhere I went within the sphere.
The mood mellowed, and soon we were walking back to the house, a little gimpy but clean. We talked about going home tomorrow and planning what to do for Freya’s birthday. Basically, we planned to escort her to all the various acts from the traveling troupe coming to the city.
At dinner, Callem ate so much chili I couldn’t believe he didn’t burst. I showed him to take the spiciness off the chili with a slice of yellow cheddar cheese and buttered bread. He ignored it and just ate the chili as if reveling in the spicy heat. I could only thank our fortune that we would not have to sleep in the same room as him tonight.
That night lying in my bed, something amazing happened. After my exercises and getting close to falling asleep, I decided to take another shot at making platinum before making the gold coins. I made two platinum coins and half of a third!