The sled glided over the snow, carrying Rian, Hance, and two barrels of steaming hot soup.
Three miles West of Fort Blackiron, the landscape changed. The snow here wasn't white; it was dirty and gray, stained by the smoke of cheap peat fires.
Gray Creek Village.
It was a miserable place. The huts were made of rotting wood and patched with mud. As Rian's sled entered the village, skeletal figures peered out from the cracks in their doors. Children with hollow eyes watched the barrels of food with ravenous hunger.
"My Lord," Hance whispered, pulling his cloak tighter. "This place... it smells of death."
"It smells of neglect," Rian corrected. "Park the sled in the center. Open the barrels."
As the smell of thick wolf-meat stew wafted through the freezing air, the villagers slowly emerged. They didn't beg; they were too weak for that. They just stared.
"Where is Grom?" Rian asked a shivering woman.
She pointed a trembling finger towards a shack at the edge of the woods, separated from the others. "He... he is chopping wood. But be careful, My Lord. He throws his axe at strangers."
The Woodcutter's Shack
Rian walked to the shack alone, signaling his guards to stay back. He held a bottle of liquor in one hand and the heavy Cast Iron Pickaxe he had made in the other.
Thwack. Thwack.
A massive man was splitting logs. He was huge, standing nearly seven feet tall, with arms like tree trunks. His beard was matted with ice and dirt, and his eyes were bloodshot.
Grom. Level 3 Blacksmith.
Grom didn't look up. "Get lost, noble. I paid my taxes last year. I have nothing left."
"I'm not here for taxes," Rian said calmly. "I'm here to offer you a drink."
He placed the bottle of high-grade liquor on a tree stump.
Grom stopped. He sniffed the air. The smell of expensive alcohol was unmistakable.
He slowly turned, wiping his axe with a dirty rag. "You want something. Nobles don't give free drinks."
"I want you to look at this," Rian tossed the Cast Iron Pickaxe towards him.
Grom caught it with one hand effortlessly. He looked at it with disgust.
"Ugly," Grom grunted. "Rough surface. Air bubbles in the handle. Who made this trash? A potter?"
"Yes," Rian smiled. "A potter made it. In a mud tower. Using melted swords and white rocks."
Grom froze. He looked at the pickaxe again. He scraped the metal with his fingernail. He tapped it against his axe. Clang.
The sound was clear.
"This isn't Black Iron," Grom narrowed his eyes. "The sulfur is gone. How? How did a potter remove the impurity without folding the steel a thousand times?"
"Chemistry," Rian replied. "I have the recipe to make the metal pure. But I don't have the hands to shape it. My potter casts it into molds, but as you said... it's ugly. It lacks a soul."
Rian took a step closer.
"I need a Hammer, Grom. I need someone who knows how to temper this metal into High Steel. I need a Master."
Grom scoffed and threw the pickaxe back into the snow. He grabbed the bottle of liquor and popped the cork.
"I don't forge anymore," Grom took a long swig. "Warriors use swords to kill innocents. I forge tools, they melt them into daggers. I am done helping you nobles play your war games."
"Who said anything about war?"
Rian pointed to the village behind them.
"Look at your neighbors, Grom. They are starving. They can't dig through the frozen ground to plant crops because their wooden shovels break. They freeze because they can't cut enough firewood with dull axes."
Rian's voice turned sharp.
"I am building a Greenhouse. I am building heaters. I am trying to feed my people. But I can't do it because I lack tools."
Rian kicked the pickaxe lying in the snow.
"You are hiding here, drinking yourself to death, while the children next door starve. You have the skill to save them, but you choose pity over purpose."
Grom lowered the bottle. His grip tightened on the glass until it almost cracked. The guilt flashed in his eyes.
"You talk big, boy," Grom growled. "But talk doesn't fill bellies."
"No," Rian signaled Hance. "But soup does."
In the village square, Hance began ladling out the stew. The villagers wept as they received the warm food.
Rian looked back at Grom.
"Come to Fort Blackiron. I will give you your own Forge. I will give you unlimited coal and this 'Purified Iron'. You will make tools—plows, saws, hammers. Not swords."
"And in return?" Grom asked, his voice rough.
"In return, I will send a sled of food to this village every week. Your work will feed them."
Grom looked at the starving villagers eating the soup. He looked at his own calloused hands—hands that hadn't held a smithing hammer in two years.
He took one last sip of the liquor, then poured the rest onto the snow.
"The metal..." Grom grunted. "You said you used white rocks to clean it?"
"Limestone," Rian nodded. "I'll teach you."
Grom spat on his palms and grabbed his axe—not to throw it, but to shoulder it.
"I start tomorrow. But if I see you making a torture device, I will melt your throne."
Rian smiled. "Deal."
[Ding! New Subordinate Acquired]
Name: Grom
Role: Master Blacksmith
Loyalty: 30 (Skeptical but Willing)
Rian walked back to the sled. He hadn't just bought a blacksmith. He had secured the engine of his future industry.
End of Chapter 15