The fire cracked, the storm outside still roared as strong as when Gerd had first decided to go out, the smell of a new pot filled with water, meat and vegetables filled the air, the old man slowly stirring the steaming soup, his mind divided between the dwindling level of his food supply and the second mouth he had decided to feed, even if temporally
Gerd looked over his shoulder and looked back at the child still lying on the floor, his fever had finally subsided after two hours of treatments and a quarter of his reserves of healing herbs, he'd have to get his hands on more of them, but the winter should have long withered the ones that had not been picked out during the winter
If he hadn't found the child he'd already be food for the vermin out there, maybe foxes, maybe wolves, the thing is that the kid would've been a sweet delicacy to find out there, a shiver ran down his spine, the spoon falling on the pot, he grunted before trying to fish it out using some oversized fork, took him a minute, but he was not on a hurry, not now at least, after all, the kid wasn't going anywhere
The smell of the stew was already rubbing his nose on the best way possible, Gerd took the pot and left it out of the fire pit, he poured some of the pot into the wooden bowl he had used to give the kid the brew and then some more into a second one, he left the pot hanging near the fire pit but away from the fire and started eating, his back to the warmth of the flames and his eyes on the child, with his receded fever and now pink coloured lips he was officially saved, he was yet to awake but that could be just exhaustion
Maybe now he could go back out there and check on the seven traps he had left, the kid would be safe in the cabin as long as he stayed inside, maybe close the door and block it but that would go poorly. After all, he didn't want the kid to stroll into the workshop, he could hurt himself. Taking him was also out of the picture , he had just saved him from the snow, he was not getting him to the storm again.
Most commoner kids didn't learn to read or write properly until they attended the imperial academy so writing a note wasn't an option either. Gerd let out a sigh, maybe he could just start doing some of the commissions he had taken before winter.
Gerd shot one last look at the child sleeping peacefully next to the chimney and walked over to the second door of the room, as he opened it, the smell of the coal filled his lungs and he entered his workshop.
The room was smaller than the main one, a work bench covering two of the four walls, the one with the door had shelves and crates filled with coal and ores, although the ore crates were almost empty at this point, in the center of the room three anvils of different weights, on the fourth and final wall, a forge and a high furnace he used to turn the ores into something useful.
The old man walked up to the workbench, tools resting on its surface and it's pegboard, things that went from chisels to hammers and tongs, wooden rulers and squares, even a little box of chalk and a thick stick with a burnt end. Gerd grabbed a stone tablet with inscriptions on its two surfaces, it was fairly heavy, but nothing he couldn't handle with ease
He had spent all his time in the house treating all the metals he'd need and leaving them on the shelves to have them located when he decided to start working. And now that he needed to take his mind off a certain child sleeping it was the perfect time to start, and the first of the items of his list was… a set of butchering knives for Edgard from Yakka
Gerd walked over to the shelves and grabbed three steel ingots, those had been easy to make, just grab the iron and leave it inside a charcoal mound burning until it fell to its own weight or stopped smoking. He left the ingots on the workbench and after filling the forge with charcoal he grabbed a long wooden tube made of something similar to bamboo
He grabbed a stick a bit longer than the meter long bamboo tube and put some wool-like material on the tip. He'd made it by scrapping planks with a plane, resulting in multiple dry fibers of wood. Putting the mouth of the tube near the charcoal and snapping the long stick forward in a split second he had a small flame fighting to exist
Unsheathing the stick, Gerd blew the flame with the empty tube, helping to keep it alive with his breath. Once the flame was settled and expanding to the rest of the coal, the old man left the tube near the forge and examined the steel ingots, humming a song to measure the time it took it to heat the whole contraption and the workshop it was in
As the song slowed into its end the forge was in prime condition to heat the metal, with thongs taken from the workbench, Gerd grabbed the steel and opened the forge. Fire roared trying to escape it's stone container as the old man inserted the ingot. A new song was whistled by the blacksmith, measuring the metal's increasing temperature
With the last note still hanging on the air, Gerd opened the small metallic door and with speed and precision that only years of experience can give, he grabbed the red hot ingot and carried it to the lightest of his anvils, a hammer awaiting for him there.
With the first strike, the steel creaked against the anvil, sparks flying with the slag shining in the dim lit workshop, One strike at a time, the ingot started taking shape, being drawn out by the precise strikes of the blacksmith the steel started getting thinner and longer, by the time it's red hot colour turned into a dark red, Gerd started hammering it's centre against the border of the anvil until there were two pieces of similar lengths of steel instead of one. The old man let out a sigh as he put one of the pieces into the forge again
The man stretched his arms as he hummed his song again, measuring the metal, but this time, the tempo was faster. Sweat making its way down from his forehead the man repeated the process again, giving the steel form, a spine and a body, with each new strike of his hammer the tip of the long knife started appearing and when he finished, he heated the metal again and left it on one of the anvil
As time moved on, the hammer and the anvil met once and again, every half an hour a new steel form joining the collection on the anvil, cooling down naturally and adding to the queue for the grindstone that rested on the ground at the corner of the workshop.
Once the four knifes were finished, the blacksmith started mounting the grindstone, a stone wheel of half a meter in diamond that was secured to an axis and mounted on a wooden frame. A mechanism tied to a pedal helped the stone spin
After less than ten minutes, the blacksmith moved the grindstone near the second anvil and sat down on a stool, by pressing repeatedly on the pedal, the round grindstone started spinning and Gerd started working on the knives, giving them shape and defining the edges
When the wheel stopped spinning Gerd had all the knives on the anvil again, only hardening and tempering left from the process, maybe he could have time to do that before dinner, after all he had already missed lunch. Such were his thoughts when he met a pair of brown eyes looking at him from the door of the workshop
"Hey kid" Gerd's mind had obviously not been on the child that had been resting on the other room when he had started working in a task such us blacksmithing. Needless to say, his hammering and grinding had eventually woken up the kid who had been watching him work for god knows how much time
The kid was enveloped on one of the pelts he had left him sleeping in, his black hair was in dire need of either a cut or a string to tie it up, its front easily covering his brown eyes and angled features, he didn't look like having missed many meals lately, but still his cheeks weren't as round as you'd expect from a kid his age, same could be said about his age, either he was no older than five or he hadn't grown an inch since
"Not much of a talker I suppose" The blacksmith sighed as he knelt down, meeting the kid's gaze at his height "Are you hungry? I left some stew for you" the child nodded his head affirmatively and the old man stood up, his hand on the shoulder of the kid as he drove him out of the workshop, closing the door behind them