The Dreaming Mark and the Vessel of Fools

Samael and Teah - The family business

The door to Teah's smithy-wagon opens. On the other side is a tall man, thick with the kind of muscle that comes from honest labor. He turns sideways to fit through the door, careful to avoid banging into the doorway with the oversized hunk of metal that is strapped to his back. Once through, he looks forward to greet the wagon's resident. "Oh," he says, as if surprised at who is inside. "Teah. Haven't seen you since your father..."

"Oh, indeed," says Teah, the traveling caravan's official blacksmith, hanging up her pair of crucible tongs next to her little portable forge and reaching to reduce the heat. "Been about a year since then, hasn't it, Samael?"

"Feels like it." He isn't comfortable with the small talk.

"How's your dad's old farm?"

"The farm hasn't survived, despite my efforts," replies the musclebound man before her, bearing quite a lot of dirt, and a few scars she hasn't seen on him before. "Much as I tried to put out the fires and keep the fighting away from the crops, there's not much left but ash and bloodstains. But I'm glad help arrived when it did, or there'd be even less."

"I suppose this last attack was what did it, huh?" Teah sits on a stool next to the forge and reaches to pull up another, but Samael shakes his head at it.

"The attack before this one, really," he sighs. "I had tried to press on. Hoped at least some of the land was still fertile. But blood doesn't do the crops much good. So...I'm afraid I spent the last week undoing some of your work." He unslings the huge, metallic... thing?... from his back, and balances it on the unused stool.

Teah stares at it for several seconds. It resembles an enormous butcher's cleaver, tied together with strips of scrap leather. She wonders what she ever had to do with something so slipshod, before it occurs to her. "Wait a--isn't that your plow? The one I made for you last year?" The blade certainly looks as if it was one, at some point; there are a few distinctive shapes in it, where it was intended to be attached to a towing hitch strapped to a beast of burden, and it doesn't look particularly sharp, but where it was once cast and bent and meticulously angled into a plowshare, it has now been crudely pounded flat, and pieces of the hitch have been beaten straight and lashed to it to serve as a handle. The entire thing is far too large and heavy to be practical... for anybody but the absolute bear that is Samael.

"It was my plow," is all Samael says back.

"I spent so long melting down all of your father's swords after our King's mandate to disarm..."

"An effort that does not go unappreciated. Father always did want to be useful to his people. If he could fight no longer, then it might as well have been through his old things."

"So what happened? Why is it a sword now? ...again?"

"People wouldn't leave well enough alone. There's been another movement to kill the King, to assume power and amass an army again. Last night's raid was but another chapter of many, since you left. The insurgents and those who haven't the stomach for change... they believe our kind were not meant to settle and build. That we must continue to wander, to fight for our way of life. They would deliver their message in blood, theirs or otherwise."

"That's still going on? Gods damn it all... Riga can't go two years without a power struggle, can it?"

"It's not like we've done very well at staying put. Farms and infrastructure are nice when the people want them to work, but enough Rigans are content with living off the land and pitching their tents wherever they fall..."

"Suppose you'd be the one to know, given how hard you've tried towards the contrary."

"Enough about politics though... I came to have this looked at. Is it safe to keep using?"

Teah glances back at the blade. "Its condition doesn't look too bad for a one-week hack job. The metal's starting to crack in places, but for as damn huge as this thing got, maybe that's why it hasn't shattered yet."

"It was the best I could do with the tools and time I had. At least I got it into enough shape to fight with."

"If I hadn't taken off to work for the caravan... if Dad were still around to smith for the settlement..."

"Don't be too harsh with yourself, Teah. You couldn't have known how it'd go down." Samael had only been here to ask about his weapon, but seeing a friend from his youth in such a state compels him to stay and try to comfort the young blacksmith. He takes one step towards her side, and lays one of his large palms on her back. "What I can tell you is that your plow helped bring life and beauty to my little plot of farmland, for as long as it was able. It has been a good plow. Now, as the times change, so do the needs. And as it happens, Riga has need of able-bodied fighters once more. And so, your plow continues its service, just as its wielder does."

Teah finds the basso of Samael's voice comforting, but it does not relax her. Rather, she feels like crying. "I only joined the caravan because I agreed with the King's decision to disarm. My father didn't, but he supported me despite how I felt. It's been... peaceful, out here, in a way. Fixing wheels and axles is honest work. But Dad saw it differently."

"I remember what he said that day," Samael says. "That weaponry acts as a deterrent. Without a blade at hand, anybody else could act on that and be unopposed."

"I recall that's what your dad said, too. The day he surrendered his swords. It was only me that did it because my dad didn't want to. Both of them kept saying it was a big mistake we were making." She kept trying to let the tears come, but it was just too warm and dry. "The day they both died... I guess they got what they wanted, huh? It proved they were right."

Samael patted Teah on the back again. "If it is any comfort... we still have time to help. We may not be able to return our fathers to life, but to act in service of the justice they both deserve, we still have the chance. You were not trained to fix wheels and axles. You were trained on weapons, armor. There is no better successor to your father's smithy."

She looks at the cobbled plow-sword again. Despite the cracks, the crude fittings, the fact that Samael is even standing here is thanks to this oversized beast of a weapon. "This thing... still bears the spirits of the swords in it. I think I can take it just that bit further and turn it into a real instrument of justice."