Fred Ironheart's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

The trinkets had won Fred his name. Now that name brought trouble he never planned. Every hero who passed his forge wanted more than blades. They wanted belts, straps, sheaths, and boots. "You're the giant smith," one told him. "You should sell it all." Fred had asked them to bring back pelts so he could make leather too. Piles of hides now sat by his door, raw and stinking, and he had no idea how to tan them. Fred stared at the mess. A blade he understood. A hide he did not. The hair still clung to the skins. Flies gathered in the summer heat. He could forge steel that split stone, but this rot would beat him. A heavy step crossed the yard. Fred turned. An ogre stood among the hides, grey-skinned, one tusk broken clean off. A healed scratch cut across his left eye. Fred knew that face. Alexander Jones had wandered far since their last meeting, but he still walked like a man ready to work. "You always did take jobs too big for you," Alexander said. He picked up a pelt and sniffed it. He made a face. "And you're losing this one." "Heroes want leather," Fred said. "I don't know tanning." Alexander dropped the hide. "I do. My people cured hides before I ever met you." He held out one huge hand. "I'll apprentice under you. No pay. You taught me once. Let me pay it back." Fred gripped the offered hand. The two of them got to work. Alexander built a firepit from a ring of stones and set benches around it. He scraped each hide clean by the flames. Then he showed Fred a sturdy rack fitted with a wide basin. They washed the pelts in the basin and stretched them tight across the bars to dry. By dusk the first hides hung soft and clean. Fred rubbed one between his fingers. Real leather. He could cut sheaths and straps from it now. Alexander wasn't done. "You need to sell it right," he said. He hauled out a market stall, dressed in fine linen with gold trim along the edge. He set it by the road where the old trinket tray had sat. "People buy more when it looks worth buying." Fred laid finished leather goods across the counter. Sheaths, belts, straps. A passing hero stopped and paid coin for a belt on the spot. The coin dropped into Fred's own hand. Not Garrick's. Leather fell outside the contract, same as the trinkets. Fred looked at the coin, then at the stall, then at the heroes gathering on the road. His name now sold more than steel. But word of a busy market stall traveled fast. If travelers spoke of Fred's coin, Garrick would hear it. And Garrick would want his share.