The Builder (The Young Ancients) (15 page)

Damn, he couldn't even walk out of his room unseen for a minute! Did the woman even sleep?

Morning lessons went well, no one commenting on his having been gone the day before, so Rolph must have gotten the word around for him. That was friendship there.

Tor wouldn't even know who to go to if he had to do the same thing for Rolph. Wensa probably, which would be a laugh if nothing else.

Lunch was awkward, and left him feeling uneasy, since a lot of people were staring at him. Some pointing slightly and nudging each other. Petra from the combat training section just smiled at him. It wasn't sinister looking or anything, but she nudged the girl next to her, a familiar sword swinger that had beaten him several times herself, which got both of them to look towards him. Then they started giggling at him. Giggling freaking girl giants. Bleh. Tor had to fight shaking his head at them. Going for a wry grin instead.

He got that he was a joke to them.

On the good side Wensa had decided to skip the meal at least. The older woman made him feel like he was about to die at any second. If she crept up on him from behind, his shield wouldn't help at all, it had to be activated to work and that took an act of conscious will, no matter how small. He'd have to get used to either being way more careful or having it turned on all the time.

He shrugged.

Everyone had probably heard that he and Wensa were an item now or something, which was laugh worthy at least. The idea didn't thrill him, everyone thinking that, but it beat his only other dating rumor, which hadn't been one at all, just public humiliation without a date being attached. As scary as Captain Wensa was, at least she'd been more polite to him publicly than Maria had been. Way more polite. Given his track record with women, maybe he should send her flowers or something. That would probably get her to run away and not look back.

Slowly Tor trudged to the practice field and found the square filled with an extra twenty or so people, about half of them instructors. Rolph, Sara and Trice stood next to the old man from the other day and oddly Wensa, who didn't seem happy to see him alive at all. Her hand at pocket as if she wanted to use whatever weapon she had there. Badly.

Kolb smiled at him and put his hand out towards him slowly.

“Ready to test your new field? You have a few days yet, about a week actually...”

“Yeah, but if it's not ready I probably won't live that long. Not with Wensa there plotting to kill me or whatever. Might as well try it now.”

Kolb looked shocked at what he said, but didn't comment on it. He did stare a little at Wensa whose hand moved all the way in to her pocket. Everyone else started to look at the woman too, except Tor, who took the chance to slap the shield medallion he had on under his shirt. It took an act of will to activate his fields, not physical contact, so a bit of cloth wouldn't stop that. As if in unison with the motion, Wensa pulled out a piece of metal and pointed it at him. Nothing in particular happened, so she triggered it again and again.

Then, baffled, she pointed it at the new pell and triggered the device once more. The thick wooden log exploded. The only saving grace was that all the pieces flew away from the crowd not just all over the place like some explosives did. Part of the gray stone wall behind it buckled, bowing outward, even as it held its basic wall shape. Everyone stood in shocked silence for a minute. Except Wensa, who put that weapon away and pulled another one, a simple cutter it looked like, from the way she used it, sweeping it back and forth over him.

“Alright then...” She murmured, and pulled a third weapon. No one moved as she did. It was a good thing too, because fire covered him. It didn't spray towards him; it sprang up around him, hanging in the air itself. He held his breath. The shield held against the heat and even the living flame, but he hadn't been able to figure out how to keep the air vital while it burned like that. The fuel this burned was the air itself, or something in the air that he didn't know about, a hot white flame. If she held it on him long enough, he'd suffocate.

Thankfully, after nearly a minute, about the time when he would have had to try and gasp for breath no matter what else was going on, she stopped. Taking a deep, but slow breath, Tor waited for whatever she had in store next. Oddly it wasn't her that moved, but Kolb. Picking up a practice sword from the low rack with a shrug and a grin, he charged and slammed it across the juncture of neck and shoulder as hard as he could. The ground gave off a much louder crack than Rolph had managed. Then he repeated it for a good twenty minutes, when he stopped he wasn't even breathing too hard, though sweat glistened on his bald head in thick drops.

“Well, that more than satisfies the requirements for the test except for time on the cutting field, I suppose we can take turns beating you for a while... But I think your design proves out. Especially since the original test was to take place on the pell and not Tor at all... and it was really just supposed to hold against sword blows and cutters, as I believed you knew Wensa? To my knowledge there are no shields that have been made that can do all of this yet. Even asking for physical protection and cutters was pushing it a bit.” The large man stepped back and regarded her closely.

Wensa smiled at the man and nodded.

“I knew the field would hold. Besides, anyone making something like this they wouldn't trust their life with, doesn't deserve to live.”

Trice walked up and threw more of the white powder in his face from about five or six feet back, without warning. It hung in the air and sifted to the ground, not touching him at all. He was able to keep breathing the whole time at least. When it all settled the girl slowly put her hand on his cheek, which, because of the soft and gentle movement made contact.

She leaned in as if to kiss him, which, he knew, had to be a trick. Because no one ever tried to kiss him. He hopped back just as the knife would have stabbed him in the stomach, causing her to lurch and the knife to stop as she pushed too hard. It could have cut him if it came slow and soft, but the design of the field let him move away from the blade even as it did. A flaw in the shield he knew, but one that he hoped could be worked around.

It was his advisor, Frank Gear, who suggested they pick him up and toss him in the low pond; to see if he'd found a way to breathe underwater. The idea made him wince, but it turned out that even working together they couldn't pick him up. Five of the larger people, including Kolb, tried. Tor could walk, even run full speed, but any large, or fast, outside force directed at him was absorbed by the ground. To lift him they'd have to shift about five tons of earth underneath him too.

Kolb and the older man both smiled. The gray beard walked towards him and stopped about ten feet away; his smile seemed genuine at least. Tor wondered what he was going to hit him with, but the gentleman just kept looking happy and spoke in pleased tones.

“Congratulations, this is... impressive hardly covers it. Do you think you can duplicate the field?” The man looked politely interested and stroked his beard sagely. It was an awesome piece of facial hair, white and down to the front of his collar.

“Oh sure. This is a copy. I have the original template and nine more of these back in my room. I didn't want to come out here with one made of wood. It just seemed tacky.” He smiled and hoped that no one would make fun of him for the obvious holes in the whole thing. Trice had gone right through his field. If she'd tried to choke him instead of stab he'd probably be unconscious already.

The man nodded and looked at the weapons instructor.

“Try to sweet talk him into lending us some of those, eh?” He turned to Tor and winked, smoothing his black tunic with his right hand. “You've already made ten copies? Incredible. I won't insist, they're yours after all, but the school can't really afford something of that quality for practice. I don't know, but I think the military might not have shields of this quality for the most part. Certainly not covering so many different potential combat aspects. A lot of people will benefit if you're willing to perhaps, lend us some?”

The man didn't stand around waiting for a yes or no; instead he walked over to Wensa, whispered something in her ear with a smile and gestured towards the gate. The woman, for the first time that Tor could remember, laughed out loud and turned to leave, an actual smile on her face. She nodded towards him as she walked past. Probably her way of telling him that he'd better be ready for her. It wasn't lost on him that almost everything she'd just tried on him was outside what the test was supposed to entail.

Crap. Well, at least he had some ideas of what he had to fix.

Sara ran up to him excitedly and bounced on the balls of her feet, her eyes going wide.

“So, do we have the same deal on these as for the clothes drying device? Oh, the food dryer too?” Her voice was excited and breathless. He shrugged. Would anyone want a shield like this? Oh, soldiers maybe, and him, as protection against the evil Wensa, but who else needed something like this? Still, the food dryers might be useful, so they could sell. Dried fruit took a lot of prep time, because big pieces or whole fruit didn't air dry well, they rotted and mildewed. With what he'd come up with – what he and Rolph had come up with, he corrected – whole fruits, even large ones, and vegetables could be processed within minutes, right out in the field.

He nodded and grinned at the blond.

“Sure. Ten percent of any sales you set up.”

The girl turned half to the side, looking at him strangely. If he'd been back in his own village he would have thought she was being coy. Here it was probably something else. Like she wanted something from him. Trice pushed her on the shoulder to move the girl out of the way; looking down at him the dark haired girl cleared her throat.

“It's like this Tor. Sara has some connections in manufacturing, and if you're willing to part with the templates for these fields, she can set up having a lot of them made. You don't get as much money from each one, but silvers add up too. Plus it's a lot less work for you in the long run. Still, you make these things pretty fast, so it's something to think about. I think it comes down to how many other ideas you want to work on. If you want to hang with these, you get more gold making them yourself as fast as you can. If you want to do other devices, its worth more to free up the time and let other people do the copies for you.” The girl didn't shrug; instead she nodded as if trying to get him to just agree with her.

Of course he already knew about using templates in manufacturing. It was kind of the point of novel building, at least if you weren't making a one up. You wanted copies and ideally you set up the templates to be easy to do up by anyone that had the talent. Tor had, on all the templates he'd built. It took hours of extra work, but it was potentially worth it. It was part of the reason he could make batches of ten at once in the copying process. Not every builder used the multiple copy idea, but about half were now.

“Sure, that should work. Let me get some run up here first, for our own use and for sale or whatever. Um, is anyone going to be interested in these things though? I mean a clothes drying device is handy, but how many people can afford ten or eleven gold for something like that? The food dryers, well those should make money, but may take some time to catch on. Shields... Well, same thing really. We could probably make enough right here given what people will want, right?”

For some reason everyone started laughing at him, he looked around to see if someone had put a sign on his back when he wasn't looking, but Rolph shook his head.

“Nah, look Tor, you're thinking on a village scale, but Sara and her people can take this across the land. Maybe even into other lands eventually. A lot of people will want some of these things.”

Laughing Tor waved that away, since it didn't sound likely at all, but told them that they could do whatever they wanted. Sure, he'd like some coin from it, who wouldn't? But what did he really need? As a kid he'd dreamed of making a lot, like a hundred golds per year. Past that... What would he do with it anyway? Buy a bunch of things he didn't need? With that much money he could build the fields he wanted and not have to worry about going hungry or losing his home. Even have some left for savings and luxuries as long as he didn't go crazy with it.

He'd leave the money part to his friends. After all, school had to come first. Of course that meant surviving long enough. Wensa... What was he going to do about her anyway? He couldn't kill her. A Royal Guard was protected from most prosecution and their death treated the same as killing a noble almost. His family might survive, but they'd all be dispossessed of worldly goods after his execution. Count Lairdgren would see to that no doubt. So it was right out. He couldn't run, because that would make him look guilty. Tor had the shield, but he needed to fix the problems and gaps in it. She was too smart not to have noticed those. She may be evil, but she wasn't teaching economics because it was the world's most simple class. She had to know what she was talking about there too, on top of being a Royal Guard.