Chapter 38 - the Foundling IV
Shan did not know that his mother and father were keenly observing his progress learning to fight. They trusted the two older sons, Gareen and Mekall to perform their job on that duty. When Shan was not around to overhear, they would report in detail to the parents how it was going. After several weeks, Gareen and Mekall were satisfied that the boy was "more than prepared" for his first public outing demonstrating his seemingly new prowess.
Shan had learned that fighting was much like any other gardening activity, in that it was a lifelong course of study. As long as he was around Gareen and Mekall, his older brothers would attend to his education on those matters. Practicing fighting in the future was both to stay sharp and to learn new tricks from any other that had one to share.
The older brothers tried their best, to give him advice on who to share tricks with, who to not share tricks with. What tricks could be shared, and which were all but "family secrets"… and those tricks were only to be shown or used in actual battle.
Ryeamund took Shan on long walks, and they would have idle time as his father showed him the basics of woodcutting. Woodcutting that would be more useful to a group of men doing it all day for a living, not just around the small family farm. How many trees to cut. How many more to leave be. To mark trees to be cut, and to ensure there was room for ax swings. How to properly "score" the bark to make standing timbers to be harvested next year. Shan had taken a liking to one of Ryeamund's smaller two handed axes. The three brothers and the father had long already considered "ax tricks" on the family farm a fun idle activity.
Having a father that had once considered professional woodcutting a profession obviously made the task much shorter and easier.
Ryeamund and his three sons would go out and simply cut firewood regularly and they had way more than they could possibly use. All his three sons had been raised the same way. Eira was in on the sweetbread with her husband Ryeamund on this sly plan. She would smile when Ryeamund had his two strapping teenagers and tiny brother tagging along… going out to simply cut and haul back timbers. They certainly did not need any more outbuildings. The father just liked doing it, and it made his sons into the biggest and strongest men they could possibly be, without them even knowing it.
They would season, and notch, and lock together the bigger and bigger timbers as the boys grew up. Labored and cut stone for the foundations the four of them dug out. They made barns and sheds they practically had little to no real use for. Ryeamund started stockpiling things for the village in some of them, in case some rare disaster struck. A bad long winter following a bad crop year. Extra firewood if aged villagers needed it. More handle hard wood than anyone could ever use.
In the back of the main barn, Ryeamund always did have a small forge set up. Nothing large, nothing ridiculous. A small and simple setup. It was more than suitable for making and reshaping and hardening axes and other farm tools.
The roof was as strong as the main barn roof, although this was a mere outbuilding attached to the main barn. The large timbers that were the uprights to the three walls, had notches that led to thick grooves. Stacks of identical length saplings could easily be pushed in at the notch between two timbers, and slid down the long groove. This made the walls optional, and you could select the height and the opening left at the top for ventilation to let the intense heat out.
Shan had grown up seeing his older brothers helping father in the forge room. Shan was allowed to work the bellows when young. Ryeamund would smile broadly, as his wee one would insist on working the bellows then stopping while the two older boys swung the larger hammers in time, that would flatten or thicken the red hot now-malleable metal. Ryeamund would always give a running documentary of the color he was looking for, and the quality of the "ring" the cooling metal gave, when to reheat it or when to stop and get back to hammering and reshaping.
The little one would mainly work the bellows at the right time when reheating metal. Stop bellowing when it was time, so as not to waste charcoal during hammering. Restart it when the red metal was approaching a dull cherry and the metal began to ring.
For errors in his apprentice work, Ryeamund would yell and swear and march around gesticulating his arms. The older boys would laugh, and tell little Shan to watch out, father was soon going to chase him around with the big hammer, and all but "squash him as a bug". Eventually it would happen again, and Ryeamund would "chase" little Shan around the small home smith shop, and out and around the outside and back in. Little Shan would laugh and run around avoiding father.
The brothers taught him, if he was to be allowed to help in the forging? He always had to have one eye out at all times, for all three of their hammers. If any of the three of them had a hammer in their hands? He was liable to get chased or squashed.
By the time Shan understood mother's and indeed the whole family's sweetbread game, he quickly puzzled out that this was another sweetbread game. It was just a more masculine version of the sweetbread game. Until Shan had known better, his older brothers had taken idle winter time telling him tall tales of father "almost" getting them with the hammer, and how he had best watch out… for father had many more sons, and where were they? They had been hammered for bellows errors!
Mekall was always full of these extra tall tales. When very tiny, Mekall had shown him how father had once cut his very thumb off, for cutting the wrong trees down. He then showed him! Why, the thumb had barely fit back on. It was why now Mekall could, with effort mind you, wrench his thumb off and shove it back on. Mekall's face showed the effort of wrenching the now loose thumb off, and once again, the effort required to shove it back into place, so he had at least some use of his thumb. If mother had not been a practical healer? He wouldn't even have a thumb.
Gareen claimed a little boy that annoyed the parents staying up far too late in the winters, ran the risk of being carried away by the fairies, never to be seen again. When tiny Shan had asked Mekall about the fairies? He showed him the "fairy water" in father and mother's own personal bath house. What was the sign for, after all. Why didn't the fairies carry father and mother away? Father was too big and too muscular, obviously. Mother was too fierce with her edged weapons. The fairies feared the both of them.
Shan was a certain young age, before he figured out for himself there were no fairies. As much time as he spent trying to get away with the sweetbread, he spent as much trying to hide and see the fairies sprinkle the magic dust in father and mother's bath water. Eira could barely stand up so hard was she laughing, when one day the little seedling asked if the salt she put in the bath water was indeed fairy dust. She had to make him taste it, to see it was only simple salt.
Shan didn't understand that his father didn't have to cut and shape his own wood for the small family farm, nor make his own tools. It was not a matter of saved coin any longer at this stage of Ryeamund's life, it was more of something that he simply enjoyed. With more time no longer spent gardening profusely, Shan was quite keen on picking up ever more woodcutting and basic blacksmith work off of his father.
Ryeamund knew that the skills were useful to any farmer or fighter or woodcutter, and simply a great convenience and time saver. Ryeamund no longer needed to save coin by these labors, he did it to keep his hand in what had once been jobs he enjoyed. The fact that Ryeamund never could successfully pass a fine smith's examination did not really bother him. He simply enjoyed making his own small hand axes and shovels and chisels and saws and the like.
Shan didn't really notice when his muscles started to ever so slowly enlarge. He was taller than his father by a good amount, yet it was looking as if he would never see the width of his father's musculature. Ryeamund always told him that it did not really matter much. It was more important that he develop a strong grip, and the ability to labor longer and longer hours, slowly over time.
Eira had noticed the look of contentment on Ryeamund's face, when he would observe Shan heating and re-heating a work piece. Getting used to the hot sparks. Becoming more concerned with the work, and ignoring the labor which was quickly becoming much easier. Shan had the basic skills needed to shape and reshape little hand axes, until he found them a perfect fit for his hand. Both for regular work, and for "tricks" his father and brothers played games to develop.
Because Shan now understood that he already had been taught to fight with weapons his whole life, and that Gareen and Mekall had simply "flipped the switch" by beginning to switch out the sticks for metal sticks… well, when the two brothers now claimed that Shan already knew how to hunt, he believed them. The two older brothers after switching him over to edged weapons for several weeks? Took him scouting and hunting for game.
Games with the family farm's bows and crossbows and spears they did for idle fun his whole life, transferred over perfectly to hunting on the game trails up in the hills. All the follow the leader games, watching for the hand signals of the "leader"? Allowed Shan to be no burden to his older brothers when they took him out on his first real hunt. After three days staying in the woods, Shan had been allowed to be the point man. His brothers drove a decent size stag to where he was in position up in the tree, and shot all but straight down into the stag's back, between the shoulders.
Naturally, this was just like the sudden fighting practice. Shan was to keep it "under his helmet". Allow no one to know, until it was time.