July 24th, 2815

When morning rolled around, Master Hughes woke to find Alyn nestled by the remains of the fire. His lip curled and he left her be. He found it challenging to tolerate her company, accustomed to spending much of his time alone. A part of him had hoped, with cynic optimism, that she would have gone in the night. Alas, her burden remained. He dragged his hand over his face and pulled the the bag of coals nearer.

He idly arranged a pile to his satisfaction. With a slosh of alcohol and a spark from his flint and steel, he stoked the fire. All the while, he watched the girl through narrowed eyes. He willed her to remain asleep so that he could eat a meal without her pestilent interference. He willed her to remain asleep so that he could drink his morning coffee and potion in peace and leave her behind.

No such luck.

She woke some time after the blacksmith had put out the fire and covered the pit with sand. He fed hay to Patriot, steaming tin mug in hand.

"Sorry," she mumbled, first thing. She rubbed the dirt off her cheeks.

He peered at her out of the corner of his eye. Alyn couldn't tell if he was angry with her, or if it was a permanently fixed expression. He didn't speak. But, he didn't usually.

"Did I sleep too late?" Was there was reason for him to be angry?

Patriot prodded the master's boot with his hoof and Hughes returned his attention to the horse. He continued to feed him.

Alyn looked to where she had last seen Hughes sitting. The belt of knives was gone. The outer metal of the train had been stripped in areas.

"Were you about to leave?"

Hughes wiped his hay-feeding hand on his trench coat. With sullen gaze, he found her eyes. "Go home."

"Ye're funny, Master Hughes, sir," Alyn snickered. She crossed her legs; a simple task she could never quite get right. Her homemade braces, a contraption made of splintering rulers and frayed duct tape, dug into her hocks. Hidden beneath breeches, her legs were a deformity, like her ears, that she had spent her life concealing. "I'm getting in that wagon with you, Master Hughes. You're s'pposed to teach me blacksmithing, and I'm s'pposed to help you bring down the bad guys. That's how it's s'pposed to go."

Hughes grunted. "Optimistic."

"And look, I swear I won't say a word all day, and I'll drive. Like I said I would. No tricks. Kindness for a kindness."

Hughes scratched his whiskers and sipped his coffee. He frowned back at his horse, who whinnied. "Good. One word and you will be walking back to West Haven without complaint."

Alyn nodded vigorously and tripped to standing. She stilled. "Wait... that ain't fair, sir! That ain't...!"

Hughes shook his head and motioned to the wagon. "Addinburgh isn't getting any closer, girl. You're not getting breakfast, and I won't wait around for you. When my coffee is finished, I will be off, with or without you. And you had better be dead silent, either way."

She scowled and blew loose curls away from her eyes. She muttered a bitter comment and trudged past the blacksmith to the wagon's steering bench. She took hold of the reins, paused, and frowned.

"Wait, but, sir, I don't know how to drive."

"Just hold the reins, stupid girl. Patriot will do the work." He knocked back his coffee, ran his sleeve across his lips, and gave Patriot a pat. He pointed to the near distance. "The road is there. Follow it."

Hughes hoisted himself into the back of the wagon, and Alyn squinted into the dust. The road was packed dirt. It was the very same dirt that stretched for miles, only compacted and slightly darker. It slit through the rippling dry dunes like a cut.

Patriot started moving, unprompted. Alyn, startled, tightened her grip on the reins. While she brought the horse to the unmarked path, or the horse brought her, Hughes drew a book from his satchel and lost himself in its pages. The Fantastic Tales of the Guardians, with paper pages that cost fortunes in their barren world, was an artefact that he had carried for as long as he could remember.

With the shortage of trees, it wasn't practical for companies to continue printing nonessential materials. For startling prices, they occasionally would.

Eyes venturing over memorized words and images, priceless to him, the blacksmith's scowl gradually lifted.

***

Alyn whistled through her two front teeth as loud as she could manage, trying for Hughes' attention. Though her gut nauseatingly tingled with all the words and questions that she had trapped inside, she was pleased to have succeeded in her nearly twelve-hour-long silence, and she refused to slip up. The wagon wheels clattered onto the dirt-covered cobbled streets of Addinburgh.

Master Hughes cut a sheet of leather to strips with one of the knives that he had sharpened the night before, oblivious to her hailing.

Alyn pulled on the reins. Patriot shook his head in annoyance and stopped in the middle of the road. Alyn hopped into the wagon and tugged on Hughes' sleeve.

"What is it, girl?" he growled, gruff. He pulled his sleeve away from her and glanced out the back of the wagon. Seeing for himself the uneven cobblestones, he shoved her back towards the steering bench. "There should be a hill to the right." He pointed to the street corner.

Alyn huffed. She followed his finger for direction and returned to the bench to carry out her orders, despite irritation. She picked up the reins once more and Patriot trotted on for another ten minutes. They passed through rows of poorly repaired old buildings, all grimy and unwelcoming. They had shuttered windows and crumbling edges.

Many words could be used to describe the town of Addinburgh, which was an odd mixture of wealth and poverty. The word that stood out for Alyn was gray. Quite plainly, gray. The cobblestones, the buildings, the alleys, the pavement... even the few people. Everything was washed of color, as though the very light that filtered from the bleak smog above lost its warm hues upon arrival.

The so-called 'hill' at which she stopped the wagon was also gray. Alyn could not see how it could be graced with such a gentle word as hill. Perhaps once upon a time.

Patriot eyed the craggy rock.

Almost immediately after the wagon stilled, Hughes lumbered from the back with an anvil under one arm as though it was no more trouble to carry than a book. His other arm was burdened with a few sheets of metal, and a faded, rust-strained toolbox slung over his shoulder on a thick leather strap. The toolbox hit against his side as he stepped. He dropped everything onto the dusty rock face that stretched, flat, from beneath the jagged overhang of the 'hill' all the way to the cobblestones that marked the edge of Addinburgh.

He pressed his thumbs against his spine and his back let out a startling crack.

"Apprenticing," he grunted, "will not be easy, now that you are stuck with me. I am not in any way like your former master, Octienne. I do not have the patience for failures, nor the tolerance for complaints. You are expected to work hard at the level that I put you at, and if you can't do it, you will repeat in your own time until you can. The tools will always be available to you. If you hurt yourself, I won't be sympathetic. If you waste my materials, you will work to replace them. Scrap metal is not hard to come by."

He frowned at Alyn and tapped his foot. Alyn stared uncertainly. Hughes snapped his fingers to get her gears turning. "Understand? Speak."

"Yes, sir, Master Hughes. I'll be..."

He held out his hand. "That's enough." With surprising grace for his age and size, he tossed back the tails of his worn trench coat and knelt. The tails settled at his ankles. He opened his toolbox and took out a thick pair of dirty, sweaty gloves. He tossed them to Alyn.

She made a face. "They smell!"

"You'll get your own pair in the next town. There is a market, there. For now, you'll just have to suck it up." He rummaged again through the box and laid the most basic tools on the rock surface. "Hand hammer, chisel, brass rule, and that's a punch. That's a drift, and those are tongs. The sledgehammer is in the caravan, but you won't be needing it at this point. There are different sizes and shapes of each smaller tool in the box. You are going to make a blade of whatever length you find most comfortable."

Alyn blinked. "How exactly am I s'pposed to do that?"

Hughes stood and gestured to the pile of metal sheets that he had stripped from the train. During the long trip, he had scraped away all remains of paint and rust. "Take your pick." He thrust a marker at her. "Draw on your guidelines, and when you're ready, I'll bring you to the next step. Be quick about it. It'll be dark in a few hours."

He didn't linger.

Alyn dropped the gloves right away.

"You ruin my gloves, and I'll make sure that you don't get a pair of your own," Hughes growled over his shoulder. "You'll need them on the forge, but by all means, leave them off. Burn yourself for all I care."

With a grunt and a mutter, he disappeared into the wagon. Alyn grumbled and gestured widely at the instruments at her toes. "Ah don't even know what in the blazes these tools are s'pposed to be for!" She glared and raised her voice at the wagon. "Heck of a good job teaching, Master Hughes. I know exactly what I'm doing."

"I don't teach. I guide," came the response. The blacksmith peered out the window that led from the steering bench to the wagon interior. "I get people that already know what they are doing to do better. It isn't my fault that Octienne stuck me with you, who hasn't a clue. Now, I told you. Mark out the guidelines. I'm sure you know what a sword looks like."

Alyn uncapped the marker. "Fine."

She bent over the sheets of metal, which varied in their conditions. Most pieces were curved or dented, a few riddled with holes. Alyn picked out the flattest steel sheet and set it before herself. She lay on her stomach and placed the marker tip to the steel. Master Hughes barked, "Use the ruler, stupid girl," and she startled, making a squiggly mark.

He set down a portable forge—a large bowl on stilts.

Alyn grumbled and reached for the brass rule.

"I have a name, you know."

"I never cared to learn it," Hughes answered apathetically. He picked a few paint chips from his fingerless gloves. "Draw your outline. If you don't have a rough shape cut out by dark, you are going home."

"It's Alyn. Alyn Smythy," Alyn mumbled. "And that's not fair! I was quiet all day, and I drove us here. I'm not goin' nowhere."

"Then you had better have a blade shape cut out before dark, hadn't you?" Master Hughes finalized. He sneered, "Get to work," and slunk out of view around the strangely-shaped hill, abandoning his helpless apprentice to her own devices. Alyn pushed up her sleeves and spat.

***

She found him a mere fifteen minutes later, on the opposite side of the hill. The hill, jagged in some places, with straight vertical faces in others, was much better described as a giant pedestal. Large chunks had been carved away by explosions long ago. Part of it was made up of dirt, and part of it rock.

The early evening light was waning. She lugged her drawn-on metal around the hill, eyes flitting to the sky. She came across a rock overhang similar to the one that she had worked under, by the wagon. Both overhangs—like giant bites chomped out of the rock—gave the hill a striking resemblance to a partially eaten apple, not quite bitten to the core.

Master Hughes slouched on an outcropping on the hillside that jutted from a mound of dirt. His flask was in hand. His eyes opened at the sound of her clumsy approach.

He held a hand out as she neared. "Let's see what kind of mess you've made."

"Hmph." Alyn shoved the metal sheet at him. It was about as wide as his chest, a little longer than his torso.

He held it away from his face and drank from his flask. "No." He laid it on his lap and used his fist to smear the marker at two points. Alyn flinched.

"Marker."

"I left it—"

"Go and get it."

A grouchy rumble sounded from her throat and, fists clenched, she trudged off.

"And the ruler," Master Hughes barked after her. "And pick up your feet, girl! I don't have all night."

When she returned to him with the marker and the brass rule, the hilt that she had drawn (and was quite proud of drawing, too) was completely erased from the metal sheet.

Hughes took the marker and the ruler and fixed the base line of the drawn blade. He didn't draw a hilt. Or rather, if it was a hilt that he was drawing, Alyn very much disapproved. He drew two lines down from the middle of the blade's base.

"Hand here," he ordered, holding out the ruler.

Alyn placed her hand at the '0' mark. Hughes glanced very briefly and pulled the ruler away. He used it to bring the two lines that he had drawn to a length that he deemed suitable, based on the size of Alyn's hand. He connected them at a point.

"What kind of hilt is that?" Alyn whined.

"It isn't a hilt, stupid girl. The hilt goes around it," Hughes testily replied. "That will come later. The rest isn't awful. You can get to the next step."

He pressed the sheet of steel at her and forced the ruler and marker into her hands with it. She fumbled to get a grip on it all.

"Yeah, it isn't awful," she returned, snorting over the sheet. "It isn't awful because it's good."

"It's uneven."

"A word of praise might be nice."

Master Hughes stood and screwed the cap onto his flask. "It will be too dark to work in about three hours. See that task two is done by then. By evening tomorrow, you should have your first sword, if you don't end up walking home tonight, and we will move on to Quales."

Alyn kicked at the dirt and, in the motion, almost dropped what she carried. She stumbled and regained her hold. "Yeah, whatever. I'll get it done." She hurried after him. He had long strides, but they were not fast. "What exactly is task two?"

"You cut out the shape, idiot."

***

By Master Hughes' schedule, Alyn was cutting it close by the time that she had finished separating her blade shape from the excess steel. To make it easier to cut the metal, she had had to reheat the saw blade over the portable forge many times. Hughes had guided her in the building of the forge fire before he had returned to the other side of the rocky hill.

By the time that Hughes reappeared, it was dark enough that Alyn could only effectively see her blade in the proximity of the forge's light. He found her just as she collapsed against the rock overhang, exhausted. Her muscles ached, her lungs raced her heart, and her shirt was warm and wet with perspiration. Her jacket and scarf lay in a heap on the ground.

Hughes picked up the blade that she had spent so long cutting out.

"Rough," he remarked blandly. "Uneven."

"Screw you," Alyn breathed. Despite the clearly disheveled look to the metal, she was proud of her masterpiece. All her energy had gone into making the infernal thing, and that made the blade priceless. It was all her work, and it was perfect— or it would be, when she finished.

Master Hughes regarded her. Panting and limp, she managed to give him a good glare. For all her effort, she refused to take his criticisms.

Slowly, a single thick brow lifted. Half a smile appeared, just long enough for a gruff gasp of a chuckle to escape. "You can have your break now. Get a drink, have some bread and oatmeal, and go to sleep. You'll be fixing this mess," he waved the dull, roughly cut steel blade, "tomorrow."

Alyn spat at his boots. "I'll have a sword tomorrow if it kills me. And it'll be better than that green log that ye're so proud of, you can be sure of that."

Hughes sneered. "As if." He set Alyn's blade on the rock floor. "If you want to eat, you can get something for yourself. You may treat yourself to as much as you would like. I am already sick of this bland traveling food and won't be making anything. Oats, beans, potatoes, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not my tastes."

Alyn nodded her acknowledgement. She took the blade onto her lap and ran her hand over its thick, rough edges. Hughes frowned at her for a moment. After a grunt of disapproval, he ambled to the caravan and disappeared inside.