Fourteen Days Left
When he woke up, Skelmu was poking around the Jacques loom, looking amazed. The dwarf was not very talkative usually.
"You are trying to set the pattern with the cards," the dwarf said when he walked over. "I see it. The cards are set in a grid. Holes mean stitches, no holes mean no stitches. You make the design on the card and the loom repeats it endlessly." He looked amazed.
Harry rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned, tugging the boom arm up. "Yeah. That's the idea. But I can't get all the hooks to catch on the ridges of the frame, and the cycle keeps getting away from me. The whole thing has to be powered by rotation. One turn, one full cycle, one thread."
Skelmu squinted at the current crankshaft. Jacques had been relatively patient with Harry, but his loom was seriously complicated. Harry didn't doubt he'd be able to figure it out eventually, but eventually was far too long a time. He had two weeks, generously.
"You could have a weaver put their foot down to switch the weft."
Harry shook his head. "No people involved. The only human input should be feeding the threads and setting up the punch card." He waved his hand at the loom and duplicated a hundred of them in a long row. "Unless you're keen on finding a hundred weavers who want to sit here twenty-four hours a day."
Skelmu understood. "You could put every weaver in Alagaesia out of business with these, a turnstile, and a couple of horses."
"Or a river," Harry said. "Or a motor and a generator, or fuel, or just–" he snapped his fingers, causing the mechanism to start turning. "-magic."
A dozen needles caught at once and the loom ground to a halt with a shriek. Harry cursed and ended the animation charm, following it with a reparo. "That is, if we can get it working. I don't need to put every weaver out of business, I just need thirty thousand gambeson outers in two weeks."
The dwarf's eyes lit up in understanding. "Aye. Then we'd better figure this out."
"Exactly. Now, the punch card is active when the machine puts it here so it can block the needles. The wider the punch card, the more depth I have to add to the loom, but the more depth there can be on a pattern. But, it wouldn't be a problem if I could get this to work." Harry indicated a wheel of punch cards. "The idea here is a full pattern can be as many cards thick as you like, you just put them in sequence and the loom cycles them in after the rows of the card in the machine are done."
Skelmu shook his head in amazement. "You could thread the edges of the card on twine and have the drum turn a loop of them around the working surface."
"They have to bend all the way up over the needles then," Harry pointed out. "Below and they'll get in the way of the weave."
"What if you had gaps between the cards to let the needles through?"
"Wouldn't there be times when the gap was over the needle hole? It'd ruin the pattern, let all the needles through."
"Aye, but you can have the drum of punch cards only advance every eighth cycle with a one-to-eight gear and a catch that runs for one cycle, turns the drum, then falls off the catch until the next eighth cycle."
"Brilliant," Harry realized. He took a moment to fix the idea in his mind before conjuring pieces.
"No no no," Skelmu said. "Like two concentric circles, the large one has a diameter eight times the size. Or you could do two and four. Barzûl, I will draw it. Get me something to draw with."
Harry fetched a sheet of paper for the dwarf and handed him a ballpoint pen. Skelmu spent a few moments enraptured by clicking the cap before sketching out a diagram. Harry put his ideas into the world and they tested the design.
By lunch that day, the loom was working. Skelmu fetched some apples and a bag of potatoes from the farms. He chatted in dwarvish with Shrrg for a moment before heading back to the apartments for ten minutes, giving Harry instructions not to eat until he came back.
Misha returned while Skelmu was away, hardly stopping to speak with Harry before heading out to visit his mother. Harry caught up with him right before he left.
"Is something wrong? I can help if you need it," he offered.
The big, blonde guy shook his head. "No." He seemed nervous. "It's my mother. She's just old. I don't think she plans on going with the evacuation. I am spending all the time I can with her, while I can, and convince her to go."
Harry nodded. "Anything you need, just ask."
"You are very generous, Harry. But the Varden needs you here." Misha headed out then, leaving Harry's mood downtrodden.
As he left, someone else came into the workshop to visit.
"Arya!" Harry called.
The elf gazed awestruck at the colossal room, eyes drawn to the massive farm. She wandered over to Harry, hardly watching where she put her feet as she took in everything.
"What brings you up here?"
"I had free time," Arya murmured. "I wanted to see what you've done." She glanced down at the loom, clacking away as a ribbon of woven fabric emerged, rolling around a drum at the output. The design was simple; the protection rune Fred had described over and over again. She peered at the machine, amazed. The needles raised and lowered, the punch cards cycled, the weft boom clacked.
It did not take Arya much examination to figure out how the machine worked. "I can hear the weeping of every human, dwarven, and Urgal weaver," she murmured, the faintest smile touching her lips. "All at once, a profession goes out of business."
Harry pointed to the layer farm. "Farmers, too."
Arya glanced back at it. "Aye, them too."
Skelmu came trotting across the workshop floor with a plate of loaded baked potatoes. He stopped at the sight of Arya. Harry wondered if it was the first time the dwarf had seen an elf. Skelmu bowed halfway before realizing that if he bowed any further, he'd plant his beard in the plate of food in his hands.
Arya greeted him in Dwarvish. Surprised, Skelmu responded in kind. They had a brief conversation before he switched to English. "Your magic can make tables and chairs, right?"
Harry took the hint and produced the requested furniture and table settings. Skelmu offered Arya a potato. She peered into it, then politely refused. Harry rolled his eyes.
"You aren't saving the pig who gave the bacon," Harry said in exasperation. "You may as well honor its sacrifice."
She shook her head. "When you experience death as an animal does through their mind, you will understand why elves find eating meat intolerable."
"Don't plants die too?" Harry wondered. "I know you can interface with them."
"Theirs is a soft, flat glow fading into darkness, rather than the abrupt and violent cessation of a vibrant and complex life," Arya rejected. "I have no doubt many elves would not eat plants either if it did not mean their deaths."
Skelmu kept his head down, but his expression said he thought elves were daft.
"To what end did you build your weaving machine?" Arya asked while they ate.
Harry summoned a sample ribbon and showed her the runes. "The idea was to shield the Varden's soldiers from magic. I knew a couple guys who had done something similar with garments that stopped basic attacks. This is the symbol they used."
Pinching the ribbon between his fingers, Harry sent vague protection magic into the fabric. The runes glowed white against the green ribbon. "Try to attack it?" Harry offered, setting the fabric in front of Arya.
She knit her brows and pointed. "Brisingr."
Fire danced over the ribbon, bright and hot yet unable to consume the fabric. Arya ended the spell. "Kverst."
No luck.
A few more basic spells slipped off the ribbon before Arya really focused, her face etched with concentration. "Hvass." She drew her finger across the fabric, apparently meeting serious resistance, but finally managing to part the ribbon.
Arya sat back, holding up the two halves, breathing heavily. She glanced between Harry and the ribbon, then between the ribbon, Skelmu, and the loom, which now had a drum of the same impervious ribbon spooled up. The pieces fit together in her mind, a smile creeping over her lips.
"I think Ajihad will grow to be very glad he trusted you, Harry," she said slowly. "Very glad indeed."
Arya had to leave soon after that. Harry wasn't sure what she was doing all day, but he supposed it had to be something. What did ambassadors do most of the time? It couldn't possibly be a full-time job, Arya used to cavort across the continent all the time with Saphira's egg, and the important people she might be talking with had things to do besides talk to her.
Nevertheless, she left with words of praise for what they were doing at the workshop and a promise to visit again if she could get away from her duties.
Skelmu spoke with Shrrg after lunch. Harry scribbled out a list of things to source and sent the dwarf off with a big sack of gold to make it happen.
He needed a bit of each color of dye to use refilling charms on, wagon loads of wool or thread, whichever was cheaper or easier to cart up to the workshop. A sample of the Varden's crest, and a few sets of good armor. Harry made note to create an alternate route for the dwarf to bring in carts of goods; hauling everything up a bunch of stairs wasn't going to cut it.
"I don't know if he has one yet," Harry said to Shrrg. "Any of them. Eragon, Brom, Murtagh, Arya, and I. We all need fitted plate armor. As soon as you confirm it fits them, bring the sets up to me for enchanting."
Shrrg accepted the list. "It will be done."
Harry went back to working on the loom with Skelmu. Now that they had mastered making the mechanism actually work, they had to scale it up to the width of a whole bolt of fabric with a series of punch cards long enough to write out a more meaningful protection than a single rune, alongside, Harry hoped, the Varden's crest.
The seamstress he'd asked Ajihad for arrived later that day and after gaping at all the stuff in the workshop (a reaction Harry was growing accustomed to), Maria immediately fell in love with the loom and got to work designing a series of cards to render the Varden's crest on the fabric every sixty inches.
When Shrrg returned with bales of wool, Harry magicked up a series of spindles to turn the wool to thread, then used the refill charm to fill vats with the dyes the dwarf brought up, coloring the threads.
There was an energy in the workshop, an electric feeling in the air that Harry was addicted to. That moment in a project where the team turns the last bend and suddenly the end is in sight, and all that's left to do is run that final sprint.
Skelmu fed the dyed threads into the loom. Harry adapted the refill charm to keep the spools of the warp threads constantly full. The base cloth would be made from conjured thread. The weave, or the detailwork, the runes, and the crest all used real dyed thread. He suspected only the thread of the runes themselves needed to be woven from true thread to work well.
By dinnertime, the first auto loom was clacking away, printing out an endless series of rich, patterned wool fabric. The Varden's crest every waistline circumference, surrounded by a repeating series of protection runes, hidden among knotwork worked into the pattern.
When the spool behind the loom began filling with finished product, Harry cast geminio on the loom and they set another one up. That one took an hour to do. The third one took half an hour, and thereafter, they got it down to ten minutes. By the time Skelmu, Harry, and Maria were exhausted, sixteen looms ran in sequence, a cacophony of clacks and clinks as magic drove them all to run tirelessly, slowly spooling up the finished pattern on the drum behind.
Harry fell back into his chair and mopped his forehead. "It works," he marveled.
"Weaving will never be the same," Maria professed. "What an honor, to be the first of my craft to use these."
Harry waved his arm limply, silencing the looms. The workshop fell into blessed silence. Skelmu relaxed a bit at that.
"Tomorrow," Harry said, glancing at Maria, "You've got to figure out how to sew these things onto thirty-thousand gambesons by the Friday after next."
Harry showed Maria to an empty apartment for her. "You can obviously take whatever food you want from the silos, but if you don't want to cook, somebody usually makes loads extra for whoever wants it. There's a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and lounge in your apartment. Just in case you don't want to make the trek home at night."
Maria was a bit overwhelmed by it all. "Generous accommodations," she said.
He shrugged, a bit self conscious. "You're all helping me loads. It's the least I can do. If you need anything else, if somebody's sick or something really important broke or your house burned down or something– just, I can help with that too. I'll pay you, of course."
"Of course," Maria echoed faintly. "Thank you, Harry. This will be fine. More than fine."
He nodded. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."
Harry headed back to his desk yawning. He checked the mailboxes, still no word from Oromis. How long would a reply take? The wards around Ellesmera were rather large, it would take a runner a while to get to the edge and back and then back again for a reply. Unless Islanzadi intercepted the letter. But that paranoia felt worthy of Moody. Islanzadi would not endanger the war effort for anything. At least, that was the impression he got from her.
He sorted through Ursa's reports and Ajihad's letters, then wrote out what he needed to get done tomorrow. Ajihad wanted supplies to go with the refugees and had handpicked another trustworthy agent to be the one in the know about where the food came from.
Harry admitted it, he'd gotten the man all wrong. Ajihad was not the sort to play games, at least no more than he had to for his job. He was direct, honest, and thoughtful. Harry wasn't used to just how thoughtful he was. And the standards for behavior were different here. That didn't mean he was going to conform to them, but he acknowledged he could be aggravating. Snape certainly thought so.
Since their first meeting, Ajihad had proven easy to work with, wise, canny, and level headed. Harry understood why he was so accustomed to respect; when given the chance to earn it, he absolutely deserved it. Ajihad found Harry trustworthy helpers and experts whenever he asked for them, and was not annoyed by Harry's insistence that he hand-pick people to keep Harry's abilities top secret. He wasn't sure if it was Ajihad's edict or if people were just used to obeying magicians, but generally, wherever Harry went and whatever he asked people to do, they did without question.
It was perhaps not surprising; Harry immediately proved his worth with the food issue, and never asked for gold in helping with his pet projects. Ajihad had only received the benefit of the food, but Harry had kept him updated on the racks of potions (very good for wounded soldiers) and the steady stream of intel from Misha's flybys probably helped prove Harry was the real deal.
Faced with the potential benefit of an army immune to massive spells, a handful of trustworthy men and women and a bit of attention was a trivial price to pay.
As the time ticked down to the day the Urgals would arrive, Ajihad proved his ability. Harry knew first-hand how things fell apart without a leader. As soon as Dumbledore died, the Order of the Phoenix drifted apart. The last solid objective they managed was getting Harry out of Privet Drive. Holding people together, reminding them of their purpose, and managing to get everybody pointed the right way to keep the whole operation moving, it was no easy thing.
Harry scraped up the stuff on his desk and stuffed it in his locked drawer before heading into the secret office to commune with the dead.
Thirteen Days Left
"What inspired these?" Maria asked, pushing a gambeson under the needle of the sewing machine, fixing the woven vest cut over the plain leather outer. The seamstress had mastered the machine basically from the moment she sat down.
Harry sat across from her doing the same work, though much more sloppily. He hoped he'd make up for it by pushing extra hard empowering the runes.
"They have them where I come from. I've become a bit of a mechanist now."
"Something?" Maria laughed. "What other talents do you hide?"
Harry switched to the other cuff. Maria tossed out her finished gambeson and grabbed the next. Her pile was quadruple the size of his. "All sorts. And I'm getting bloody good at picking up new skills. What about you? Where'd you learn to sew?"
"Ages and ages ago," Maria said, tipping her head back in remembrance. "I was born and raised in the Varden. I wanted to contribute when I was young, I found an old lady willing to let me watch her work and answer questions. I became her helper, then eventually I mastered my craft. Where did you learn your magic?"
Harry smiled fondly. "Hogwarts. A great big castle full of witches and wizards."
"There are more like you?" Maria asked.
Harry sighed. "We're very far from there. We're so far away that you can't measure the distance in miles. I don't even know how far away we are. And I was the only one to come here. So yes, they're somewhere. But I bet I'm all you've got."
"Is it lonely?" She asked.
"Sometimes," Harry admitted. "But I've made new friends. What about you?"
Maria shook her head. "I have a family. My husband is an archer, our two daughters are going with a friend of mine to evacuate into the valleys. Elessari asked for me, and one does not turn down a personal request by a member of the Council of Elders. Some secret project, even she did not know. Only that Ajihad had asked for a seamstress whose loyalty was beyond doubt, and that they should be literate."
"Ajihad has been brilliant," Harry agreed. "Where I'm from, basically everybody can read and write. It's just easier to ask for literacy and not have to worry someone won't be able to read a note or instruction manual I leave them, or miss a warning and die to a machine. As far as I've seen, people only learn it if they need it around here. Is that true?"
Maria tossed the next gambeson on her pile. Harry finished up the waistline on his. "Maybe on a farm or in a village. The Varden is not rich, but you can't learn to read without a library, and the dwarves make theirs available to us. I learned from Agnes, the woman who taught me sewing."
The conversation lapsed while Harry focused on finishing his gambeson. He tossed it on his pile (of four) and sat back.
"This will never be enough," he announced.
Maria raised an eyebrow, tossing another gambeson on her pile. She'd done probably more than thirty. "What is the solution then? I cannot imagine a machine making this any easier."
"No," Harry agreed. "A machine can't do it. But maybe," he flicked his hand at the sewing machine, imagining it to be like the pots and pans in Molly Weasley's kitchen. Work. Come alive.
Haltingly, the next unfinished gambeson floated off the starting pile, met by the next trimmed woven outer. Clumsily, the sewing machine began putting the clothing together.
Once she got over her amazement at the magic, Maria giggled. "It sews as well as you do."
Harry suspected that was the problem. He rubbed his chin and gestured for Maria to stand up. "Let me do yours."
"You think mine learned better?" she asked, as if the notion was ridiculous.
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Up. Come on."
Maria finished her gambeson and stood, backing away. Harry animated hers, insisting that it use her skill. It went much, much quicker, sewing as deftly as Maria had. "I guess it did," Maria said, impressed. "What now?"
Harry cracked his knuckles and waved his hand, duplicating a hundred sewing machines. "Now, you get to teach a hundred sewing machines how to sew."
By dinnertime, nearly the whole thing was automated. There were a few chores to manage; someone had to dye and refill the red thread on the looms for the runes, someone had to take the rolls of finished woven material and bring it over to the cutting stations where animated scissors cut the roll into the vest shapes which were then collected and deposited by the bank of sewing machines to fix to the gambesons.
They were fortunate that the Varden had not yet distributed armor to its soldiers; it would have been much harder to get every gambeson out of the hands of the troops before returning it. As it stood, the slowest part of the process was carting wheelbarrows of product back and forth. They had nine trustworthy people who could take the shortcuts. Shrrg managed to negotiate a few helpers down at the armory to prepare the wheelbarrows, but it was still a slow process.
Someone must have brought a finished uniform to Ajihad, because Harry's mailbox pinged with a letter from the man.
Harry,
Good work.
Ajihad.
He laughed and put the note away. Shrrg came up to his desk with a pile of armor and a bag of gold a good deal lighter than it had been when Harry gave it to him.
"How much did they cost?" Harry wondered.
"Much," Shrrg said, his English thickly accented. "But it's good work. Durgrimst Ingeitum's. Harry spared a moment to wonder if he should have made the sets himself with steel from the arc furnaces, but he didn't know the first thing about making armor. All he had was really, really good steel.
"Thanks."
Shrrg nodded. "Anything else you need me for?"
Harry blew a breath through his lips and flipped through his notes. "Not today, thank you. I'd like to start getting some rare metals for alloys. I wrote the names I know them by, as well as their descriptions. Molybdenum, chromium, vanadium, gallium, stuff like that. And if you can buy a bit of silver too, that'd be perfect." He handed the dwarf the list.
"Whenever you get around to it. Doesn't have to be straight away."
"My thanks," Shrrg said gruffly, accepting the list and a much larger sack.
"If you can't bring it all yourself, arrange pickup and I can go or send a few people." Harry pushed back his chair to look at the short dwarf. "I wanted to discuss your pay."
Shrrg froze.
"...is it enough?" Harry asked.
There was a moment of petrified silence before the dwarf burst out laughing. "Is it enough?" he asked. "Master artisans wish to make so much. Yes, it is enough. You are very generous. With time as well. I will see you tomorrow. With some of these." he waved the list. "Not all. I am not that fast."
Harry laughed. "Have a good night, Shrrg."
"You as well, Harry."
Harry helped out with dinner that night. He reshaped the hallway to the apartments around a large hall and set in furniture. A fireplace here, a rug there, a few couches, a billiards table (for Hèroult) and a chess set. Communal kitchens, and a table big enough for everybody.
Bjorn was the chef, a younger man with long dark hair, narrow features, and an intense gaze. He delighted in having access to ingredients not available under Tronjheim. Nothing grew under the mountain, so all the food was imported from the valleys. The dwarves could grow some mushrooms, but food was largely meat – less volume was required to feed everybody, and it could be salted to keep for longer. Fresh greens were something not even King Hrothgar could get his hands on. The fastest food could get from the farms in the valleys to Tronjheim was about a week.
Communal dinner seemed like the right thing to do. They didn't have long together before the invasion came, and the days before its arrival were precious. Harry wanted to build some sense of camaraderie within the team before the invasion hit. Pointless, painful, maybe, getting attached before everybody might die, but it brought back bittersweet memories.
As frustrating as fifth year had been, Harry looked back on the second half of his summer fondly as the last real time he got to spend with Sirius. He'd enjoyed sitting at the dinner table in Grimmauld Place with the rest of the Order. He had not been allowed in the meetings, but he expected holding them around a dinner table built connections.
Harry cursed himself for Shrrg being gone, both for his company and hopefully, for his ability to track down some wine or something. Leif was nearly done cooking; Harry went around inviting his people to eat.
Maria, Ursa, Torstyn, Anika, Leif, and Skelmu accepted. Harry made lemonade in lieu of wine and poured everyone a glass.
"I, er, wanted to thank you all for your help," Harry started, standing up and holding his glass. He pushed through the discomfort of everybody's attention. Once he got started, the nerves faded.
"The new armor is going to save a lot of lives, and I couldn't have done it without all of you. Even if you weren't directly working on the project, Ursa and Torstyn, I know you're keeping the food headed to the evacuees, Bjorn is helping with the potions for whatever mess is left after the battle, and Leif has been brilliant at helping me navigate weapons, armor, and fortifications, Annika has been teaching me with how the Varden's healers are trained. It's a team effort. Misha, and Shrrg aren't here tonight, but we appreciate all they do as well. As the invasion gets closer, I want to thank all of you."
Harry raised his glass. "To a resounding victory against the Urgals, few casualties, and hopefully, to continuing to be a boon to the Varden in knocking Galbatorix's crown off his greasy head."
"Hear hear," they echoed.
At the beginning of the meal, conversation was a bit stilted and awkward. Harry's fault, probably. Hard to speak candidly around one's boss. Nevertheless, Annika cracked a joke to Maria. The giggling broke the ice and the murmur of conversation started.
"Two weeks," Leif sighed. "I've worn clothes longer without washing."
"Aye, but we are lucky to have any time at all," Ursa said, spearing a strawberry from her plate. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. "Things could be worse."
Maria nodded. "There is time for an evacuation. The Varden will not end if we fail."
Ursa nodded at that, conflicted. "Your family is safe?"
"My husband and two daughters," Maria smiled. "My husband is an archer, so I have hope he will not be in harm's way in this battle."
"Remind me to make some refilling quivers before the battle," Harry noted. "Do the rest of you have loved ones sitting out the battle?"
Everybody bowed their heads at that.
"Do you, Harry?" Annika asked, half teasingly. "A special someone?"
Harry made the mistake of showing his embarrassment. The women all instantly spotted it. "There is," Ursa insisted, grinning. "Who?"
"She will be fighting," Harry said.
Torstyn snapped his fingers. "Arya. The elf."
Harry shrugged, trying to keep the blush down. "We're friends," he managed.
Maria scoffed. "You may be a wizard of godly power, but you're as human as every other man, Harry. I know that face."
Harry frowned a bit. "I like her," he admitted, a bit seriously, "but she's recently out of a relationship and I don't want to mess up our friendship by being an idiot. I'm waiting for her to make the first move."
"How chivalrous," Ursa said. Harry tipped his head to the side. "Be careful that she does not think the same thing."
"Who's your special someone?" Harry asked her. It was Ursa's turn to blush, but there was something more in her expression. Nerves, worry.
"It doesn't matter," she said quickly. "Torstyn?"
"It seems a cruel commitment to make when I may not live to the other side of this battle," the man said, folding his napkin. "I had a life before the Varden. I was a scholar before I came here; I lived in Feinster. I got caught with a banned book and had to flee. The Varden made me a quartermaster. I did not get to say many farewells. Uprooting a plant always leaves bits of your roots behind."
Harry nodded. "I hear you."
Skelmu spoke next, poking food around his plate and looking down as he spoke. "Mine kin live in the tunnels," he spoke into the table. He had a habit of speaking not to people, but to things. "I like making things with my hands. I used to make interesting things from wood and sell them for gold for my family. I am Durgrimst Ebardac. Somebody noticed, and wanted to hire me. King Hrothgar wanted me to help with things like that. Gate mechanisms, lift pulley systems, articulated armor pieces. Things that fit together. Two weeks ago, King Hrothgar asks for me again, asks if I want to do unusual, secret work." He shrugged. "I said yes."
Story finished, he looked up again and gauged people's reactions. "Thank Merlin," Harry grinned. "Don't let the weavers know."
Skelmu's lips twitched. "Durgrimst Feldunost will curse our names."
The glasses and drinks were everfull and though nobody was getting drunk, good food and good company made merry memories.
Ursa opened up later on, when the food was mostly eaten and people were sitting back against their chairs, full of food. She had tried unsuccessfully to start several business ventures. People never took her seriously enough as a woman to make much headway. She'd floated in the low echelons of profitability, but had to contend with scammers and chauvinists constantly. The effort was a drag, so when Ajihad offered her a top secret role solving unusual problems, she'd figured she had nothing to lose.
"I don't know why I bothered," Ursa admitted, sipping lemonade. "You pay me more in a week than I've made working my whole life."
That sentiment seemed shared around the table.
"I can, er, pay you less, if you like?" Harry tried, fighting a smile. "Or more. We have as much gold as we need. I just don't want to spend so much that it causes inflation. I figure at the end of this war, we're probably going to be the nine richest people in Alagaesia."
Ursa was the only one who didn't react to that. "I thought so," she admitted. "I wasn't sure to presume you would share the profits."
Harry frowned. "It's only fair. I don't need gold at all. And you all deserve not just to be paid for your time, but to share the profits of the stuff we make here together."
"But the richest in Alagaesia?" Annika doubted.
Harry and Ursa opened their mouths at the same time. Harry stopped and gestured for her to continue. Ursa smiled and explained. "You don't need to be an economist to grasp the power of the loom alone. What one does in a day would take ten expert weavers like Maria to match. Experts aren't cheap. We might hire one or two to make designs and let the looms do the work of thousands. We can sell woven fabric cheaper than any weaver can afford to and still make outrageous profits."
"The farms are a similar story. Torstyn and I are not farmers. The two of us act as traders, getting produce to market. Perhaps one or two farmers might be useful to monitor the soil, change out the plants on market demand, oversee the whole thing. That is four salaries paid to do the work of a hundred thousand men."
Ursa drummed her fingers on the stem of her glass. "Whatever work we do, we will have to scale to outfit the Varden's thirty-thousand men. By necessity, we will solve the problems of creating enterprises for every venture we pursue. If Ajihad asks us for swords, we will not forge thirty-thousand swords with hammer and anvil. It would be a waste of Harry's time. We will find some other way. The arc furnaces, the metal rollers, something must be invented to scale up our production. Do you understand the import of this?"
Ursa looked around the table. "We are replacing entire industries every time we act. Do you think common folk will walk or take horses or wagons to travel between cities weeks at a time, when planes exist? Harry invented them; he will own the travel market for decades after the war."
Stunned silence stretched on after her.
"If we win the war," Leif pointed out.
"Right," Ursa echoed. "If we win the war."
Ten Days Left
"What's the point if he's not even here to instruct us?" Eragon panted, blocking a loopy strike from his half-brother.
"We'll sharpen each other," Murtagh said, leaning out of the way of a crosscut.
"I don't know how many of these I've got in me," Eragon said. Murtagh was getting exhausted too. Decisive victories were rare; their duels usually went by a couple touches. And since they tired at the same rate, the spars were grueling marathons that left both of them panting on their backs until they were recovered enough for another go.
"I know," Murtagh panted. He lunged, Eragon batted the sword down and tried to push in, but Murtagh managed to nearly trip him with a leg. The half second it took for him to get his balance was enough for Murtagh to recover from his lunge.
By a hair, Murtagh squeaked the win, touching Eragon in the shoulder with his magically dulled sword. In a real fight, armor would have caught the strike. It was far from a decisive blow, but the two of them simply were too evenly matched to give each other those sorts of openings.
Murtagh crossed to the slate by Eragon's stuff in the dragonhold and chalked another tally under the 'M' column. It put him ahead 2, 46-44. Eragon would do better next time. It was hard to fight when he was tired at the start from casting wards with Brom in the morning.
"Has anyone spoken to you since the announcement?" Eragon asked. It was only a couple days ago Ajihad introduced the rumor to the Varden, with all the right spin on it: Morzan's son Murtagh had rejected his father and the Empire to fight for the Varden.
"I avoid going much lower than my floor to avoid that," Murtagh admitted. "The dwarves who bring me books give me nasty looks, and I get the feeling that under their veils, the purple dwarves look like they want to kill me. Nothing I am not used to. Do you get any nasty looks for carrying that sword?" he nodded to the red blade Eragon was stripping the dulling spell from and sheathing.
"A couple," Eragon said. "Fredric, the weapons master knew it, Ajihad knew it, I think a few others, but I can't always tell if they're mad at me or the sword. My scabbard covers the colored blade, so it's not obvious unless it's out. I'm sure the Varden's tune will change after the invasion. Hard to be mad at someone who's fought by your side, right?"
Murtagh huffed. He didn't look convinced. "How long until they get here?"
"Two weeks, according to Harry's last estimate." The wizard updated Ajihad every day, and Eragon heard it through Brom.
"This place is very different from Uru'baen, yet oddly the same," Murtagh mused.
"How so?"
Murtagh mopped his forehead, sniffed his armpit, and made a face. Eragon toweled the sweat from his own hair. "It's weird; I have to hide my face around here and I can't be seen anywhere near the Varden's councils and meetings, yet I'm far closer to the decision making than I ever was in Uru'baen. I was extended an open invitation to court since I could sit still and be quiet, yet I have been a spectator my whole life."
"What was it like?" Eragon was morbidly curious. They were two sides of the same coin; Eragon was curious how things might have been if it had landed tails. "Growing up, I mean."
Murtagh's expression closed off for a moment. "I was too young to remember much of Morzan. Just a few brief, vague memories of terror and pain." He turned and hoisted the back of his shirt up to display a long, ropey scar that crossed diagonally over his back.
"From when he threw Zar'roc at me in a drunken rage, or so my nurse told me." he nodded to where the sword in question was sheathed, on the ground in the middle of the dragonhold.
Eragon's already dismal opinion of Morzan fell even further.
"In Uru'baen, I suppose I lived as most privileged nobles did." Morzan patted his shirt back down and stretched. "I had tutors teach me reading and writing, maths, natural philosophy, Galbatorix's favored flavor of history. I had a swordmaster, Tornac–"
"He must have been incredible," Eragon muttered, rubbing his shoulder.
Murtagh smiled forlornly. "Aye, he was. That's where I learned to fight. And he was a better father than any else I knew. The nurses that raised me in Morzan's castle were old and died not long after we moved to Uru'baen. Since then, I mostly kept to myself, reading, learning swordplay, attending court, watching the fights in the fighting pits, bickering with the other young nobles. It was only when Galbatorix asked to speak with me that my life became truly interesting. What was it like growing up on a farm?"
Eragon gulped fresh, cool water from his canteen and offered it to Murtagh, who did the same. "If you think growing up in the King's court was boring, you will be bored to tears by my youth. My mother's brother raised me, Garrow and his wife Marian. Marian died when my cousin and I were young. The life of a farmer is working and waiting. In the spring we'd go through a frenzy of tilling and planting, then we'd weed all summer long, then came the harvest and selling to the market in the autumn and early winter. In winter, I played with my cousin and the boys in the village, hunted with my bow in the Spine, and wondered who my parents were."
"What did you have to do for work every day?" Murtagh wondered.
"Well," Eragon said, "every day the cows have to be milked. They only make milk as long as they're being milked, so you can never ever miss a day, or you might not get milk until the cow gives birth again. So I wake up at the crack of dawn and head over to the barn, even in the dead of winter when it's so cold that your breath fogs and it burns to breathe through your nose, you have to bundle up and hurry through the snow to make sure to milk the cow, put feed and water in the troughs for the horse, the chickens, the pigs if we have any that year, and muck out the stables. I bring the milk back to the house and then we do whatever is up for the day."
"In the spring its leading Birka, our draft horse, in slow rows up and down to till the soil and plant the fields for the year. In the early summer, it's getting on my knees and weeding all day in the hot sun. In autumn, we've got to harvest everything, thresh the wheat, and get it into the village to sell." Eragon thought fondly of the many days he'd spent helping coax food from the earth to feed the family. "It's simple, but rewarding. Nothing tastes as good as a potato you've only just pulled out of the ground and brushed the dirt off of, especially one you planted and weeded and watered for months."
Murtagh's face was bittersweet. "Do you miss it?" he asked.
Eragon sighed. Did he? "I miss Roran and Garrow, Horst and his sons, Baldor and Albreich. I miss the villagers, I miss not having to make decisions that could mean life or death. Sometimes I miss a quiet day, waking up and milking the cows, collecting the eggs, doing my chores in the early morning, and stopping on the way back to the house to watch the sunrise over the fields. Sometimes I miss playing games with the other boys or messing with the Empire's soldiers when they come to our village. But I could never go back."
Murtagh raised a brow.
"It's just too boring," Eragon admitted. "Something as stupid as who is courting who is the only thing anybody would talk about for months on end. Big news was a neighbor's dog dying, or somebody breaking their arm. And the older I got, the more I understood how repetitive it all was. Every year, year after year, the same; till the soil, plant the seeds, weed the fields, harvest the plants, over and over. Nothing ever changes, no surprises."
"Meeting Saphira, learning magic, learning swordplay, traveling the Empire, the decisions are harder, the consequences are harder, but every day is a new challenge. And I have something to fight for, something other than making sure my belly is full in the coming winter. I wouldn't give this up for anything."
"I understand," Murtagh said. They both slumped into chairs at the table in the middle of the dragonhold. "Your father is an insightful man. He accused me of being much the same. He was right. I didn't want to come to the Varden. I thought for sure they'd kill me. Brom called my bluff. He was right; I would not have been happy to live on a farm in Surda for the rest of my life. When even the King's court is boring, there's nothing like a revolution to make certain you live in interesting times."
They exchanged a grin.
Eragon went exploring after their spars. Murtagh made his excuses, Eragon knew he did not want to be seen, so he didn't push. As vibrant and busy as the lower levels had been (at least before the evacuation started), the upper levels were quiet as a tomb.
He made a sort of game of imagining one of those times Domina Abr Wyrda had mentioned, where the whole dwarven race had fled to Tronjheim and the city was actually at capacity for some time. He imagined the empty rooms full of families from all across the Beors. Maybe they were worried about whatever drove them into Farthen Dûr, maybe they also enjoyed the sense of community of having neighbors from a different clan and a different region, dwarves they'd never seen before.
He imagined dwarf children running between rooms in the upper hallways, deliverydwarves managing the immense logistics of feeding a nation at once, adults scolding their children for wandering too far, the tension of a disaster outside, yet the sense of unity that came from a community weathering a storm together.
Then his imagination faltered and he saw empty room after empty room, swept clean and quiet as a grave.
So when he caught a hint of motion out of the corner of his eye, Eragon perked up and followed the flash of tawny fur around the corner ahead. He left Zar'roc in the dragonhold, but he was not concerned. A magician was never unarmed.
Their chase took Eragon around several corners and down two flights of stairs. He never got a clear view of the creature he was chasing; it was always at the next corner by the time he caught up with the last.
At last, Eragon caught the flash of fur not at a far corner, but pausing for half a moment at a doorway. In an empty hall on an empty level of the mostly empty city of Tronjheim, a single room was occupied. Warily, he approached and knocked.
"Come in," a bright woman's voice said. It was familiar.
Eragon rounded the doorframe and blinked. "Angela?"
"I do go by that name," the herbalist agreed. She was in the midst of a veritable jungle of cauldrons, bags, vases, and boxes of ingredients.
"What are you doing here? Don't you live in Teirm?" Eragon asked.
Angela beamed. "Well I did, but then I heard snatches of a very interesting story. Dragon Riders, Urgal migration, Shades stabbing at nothing, and the Beors were at the center of it all. So I figured I'd come and see for myself."
"You like living in interesting times," Eragon echoed.
"Exactly!" Angela beamed. "There's not as much to do when not much is happening. Teirm's gossip is interesting, but not as interesting as an invasion spearheaded by a Shade."
"I don't suppose you went through the Twins," Eragon thought. He knew almost nothing about this crazy old woman, except that she couldn't be the spy, since she was in Teirm when Jeod had already been under suspicion by the Empire as a Varden agent. And that he couldn't imagine her letting anyone root through her head.
Angela laughed. "Those bastards? They'd love nothing more than to pry into my secrets, but they'd never dare venture into my mind, for fear of what I'd do to them."
Eragon took a step back.
"Not to worry," Angela reassured him. "You've got to be a very nasty person to merit that sort of treatment. And Solembum likes you." Eragon glanced at the tawny cat, slinking between the legs of the cauldrons.
"They still trust you here?" Eragon asked. "Harry made no friends bullying us past the Twins' examinations."
"I was helping the Varden before they started doing their silly little examinations," Angela confided.
Eragon wondered what the herbalist was doing hiding away with half an apothecary on an abandoned level of the dwarven city, and asked as much of her.
"How funny is time?" Angela answered instead. "Sometimes I imagine it like a great big cauldron. Yet all the same ingredients that make for a wonderful outcome, put them in the wrong order and you get foul poison. I suppose I'm brewing the best outcome I can for the coming battle."
He glanced at the cauldrons questioningly. Angela just smiled cryptically. "I feel as though somebody spilled some ingredients into Alagaesia haphazardly. Only time will tell if the new brew is good or nasty."
Twice Eragon had spoken with Angela now, and he still had no idea if the herbalist was a brilliant woman or the barmiest weirdo he'd ever encountered.
Why not both? Saphira observed sleepily.
"If you're interested in the interesting, you might ask Harry what he's up to," Eragon offered. "He's around here somewhere."
The herbalist smiled. "In good time. He and I are very odd ingredients. To extend the metaphor, I'm not sure what we'd make." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Though maybe that's not metaphorical."
Eragon stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to come up with something else to say. Where previously when he thought of Angela he had a million questions, standing in front of the woman, his mind was blank.
"Are you going to disappear after the battle, or will we speak again?" he settled on.
Angela looked bemused. "I'm not going anywhere. You'll be the one to disappear, I'm sure."
Was that threatening? Her delivery was so cheery, Eragon was bewildered as to the true message. The frisson of irritation reminded him of something that had irritated him back in Teirm.
"You said Brom's fate was something of a joke among fortune tellers," he remembered. "What was it?"
Solembum slunk in front of Angela's shins. She scratched his back fondly. "I shouldn't have laughed, it was in poor taste to be amused by a man's dismal fortune. Or Mis-fortune, you might say. His doom is to fail at everything he tries. All but one thing."
Eragon leaned against the doorframe and rubbed his forehead. "Did he know this?"
"Aye," Angela bobbed her head. "You cannot tell someone's fortune without telling them."
He wondered if that was why Brom never tried to be his father. He was doomed to fail at that as well. But then, Eragon thought, Brom actually ended up failing as a father in practice by never trying.
"I can think of a few things he succeeded at," Eragon mused. "He killed Morzan. He recovered Saphira's egg. He founded the Varden." A thought occurred to him, a piece of wisdom from Harry. "Harry said prophecy is a matter of perspective."
Angela was impressed. "Did he? Then he is very wise. Or maybe he is a purveyor of cheap wisdom; everything can be said to be a matter of perspective. Only that observation isn't very useful."
Eragon rolled his eyes. "I'm sure Brom might consider Morzan a failure of his friendship; they were friends when both of them were young." Something told him Angela was better informed than she looked, and that this was no surprise to her. "Any ordinary person would see Brom killing Morzan as his one great triumph. Maybe Brom saw it as closing the book on a century-old failure."
"Maybe," Angela agreed easily. "Do you think Brom's single triumph is yet ahead of him?"
Eragon blew out a sigh. It would be a dismal life to think there was nothing but failure ahead of him for the rest of his life. "I sure hope so. Maybe Brom needs to take that perspective too."
"Maybe you ought to tell him that," Angela smiled. "I think it's something that'd be good for him to hear."
Eragon bade the herbalist farewell and headed all the way down the lifts to the ground floor. He was tempted to try out Vol Turin, but it would be a pretty stupid way to die, so he decided to do it later out of respect for his tombstone reading something dignified.
Then again, hadn't Angela said he'd have a very long or eternal life? Maybe that meant he could take Vol Turin with impunity, knowing he was safe in the hands of fate.
The whole business of fortune telling seemed half useless, half counterproductive, half reflective.
Your mathematics needs work, Saphira mused.
Eragon snorted and headed into the tunnels, careful to follow the same route Harry had taken him down exactly the first time he'd visited. A whispered word gave him light for the journey. The heavy iron doors opened for him without keys or magic, merely swinging open at his touch. He climbed the stairs and pushed through the revolving door at the top.
He made a mental note to write a letter when he got back, then pushed the large doors open to the workshop.
It was quite a bit more full than it had been when he'd last been there. Rows of strange machines whirred and clacked away, churning out clothes without so much as a single human's oversight.
A woman sat at a table sketching designs onto paper while a woman checked off wheelbarrows that carried themselves without someone to lift them, full of produce. A dwarf was hammering gold into grooves in a fantastic breastplate half-covered in baggy white plastic wrap.
Eragon wandered in, headed towards a cubby that looked designed to take some punishment. He flinched as a man with long blonde hair hurled an axe at the dummy in the middle of the cubby wearing a gambeson with a beautiful new surface sewn on, sporting the Varden's crest in the middle of the chest. Judging by the soot and discarded weapons and arrows laying around the mannequin, this had been going on for some time. The gambeson hadn't a scratch on it, not even the woven fabric.
The axe simply missed, striking the far wall and falling to the ground. The man picked up another and hurled it. Either he was horribly unlucky or not a very good shot, he still hadn't managed to do more than graze it.
On the ninth axe, he finally connected a solid blow to the middle of the chest. Eragon gaped. The axe merely bounced off.
"Wow," he said. The man turned around, eyes wide at the sight of him.
"The Rider," he said, surprised. "Eragon, right? I'm Leif." He shook hands.
"Well met. What's this?" Eragon asked, pointing to the gambeson.
Leif grinned. "Harry's doing. Enchanted armor to outfit the whole Varden. We're about halfway through the order now. I'm testing to see exactly how good it is. Harry asked for Arya to come up and do her own tests later, so we'll see how good it is against magic. Pretty good against axes so far."
Eragon raised a brow and pointed to the many axes on the ground behind the dummy.
Leif laughed. "Not the greatest testimony of my skill. It's damn hard to get an axe to hit at all, and impossible for it to get through. Something about the magic, I'd bet. You have to hit it perfectly straight on or the axe will veer off. Same with arrows and knives."
"How about melee?" Eragon wondered.
Leif picked up a sword and demonstrated a few slashes that failed to cut even the woolen vest on the outside. A thrust managed to do better, pushing the padding in under the point, but never managed to pierce the gambeson.
"Blunt damage?"
Leif struck the dummy with a warhammer. "Harder to tell if it's helping," the man admitted. "We've been putting balloons full of glue under the armor and seeing if they burst. They usually don't. You've got to really smash it to pop them."
Eragon was suitably impressed. "Do you know where Harry is?"
Leif turned and scanned the room before pointing at a figure by the great big machines near the furnaces and forges. "Over there. Well met, Eragon."
"You too," Eragon said distractedly, wandering over.
Harry had an apron and mask on and was working with a strange oven-looking contraption. Inside the oven was another breastplate, similarly covered in plastic bags. He pressed a button and a thin tongue of lightning struck the plate in the ceiling of the oven. Eragon watched mesmerized as the plastic bag covered breastplate began to color a bright red.
"What's that for?" Eragon asked.
Harry did not open the oven right away. He toggled a valve and waited a moment before lowering the door and taking out the breastplate. He tore off the plastic and showed it to Eragon, grinning.
He gasped. It was the most beautiful piece of metalwork Eragon had ever seen. The breastplate was matte steel with faint, sky blue fleurs-de-lis somehow colored onto the metal. The collar and shoulder holes were lined with hammered gold knotwork that gleamed in the fluorescent lights of the workshop.
But it was the centerpiece that truly stole the show. The Varden's standard was rendered boldly across the chest, a white dragon curling nearly from shoulder to shoulder over a sword pointing down on a purple field. The white dragon clutched in its talons a brilliant, shiny metallic red rose.
"No magic," Harry announced proudly.
"How?" Eragon murmured.
Harry indicated the oven. "I had experimented with vacuum deposition already, it's how I made our mirrors. This is physical vapor deposition, or PVD. The arc knocks molecules of the target source loose into the vacuum chamber, that material is electrically attracted to the steel on the breastplate where they form an even harder protective layer. This thing is never going to rust or corrode until the outer layer is chipped off. And with the runes and spells inscribed in it, that's never going to happen."
He picked up the pile of plastic bags. "Different materials make different colors. The red there was zirconium nitrate. Cover everything but the part you want coated with plastic bags and voila: one beautiful breastplate."
Harry handed the piece over to Eragon. Eragon was almost nervous to touch it. It was a kingly piece of armor, the sort of thing only legendary blacksmiths could hope to produce. A true masterwork. He feared he'd put his dirty fingerprints on it, or smudge the coloring.
Eragon held it close to his face to try and read the tiny, tiny lettering scratched inside the borders of the fleurs-de-lis, picked out in the thinnest spun gold. Though his eyes strained, he could read bits. It read almost like a prayer of protection, declaring the wearer be protected from magic, from heat, from fire, from cold, from sharp edges and blunt forces, to be stronger and faster, on and on it went, outlining some sort of demigod who might wear it into battle, and announcing that demigod be untouchable.
And as he touched it, Eragon could feel it. There was something seriously, seriously special about the armor in his hands. It almost seemed alive in his hands, thrumming with power, waiting for him to put it on.
Harry showed him to a curtained off booth. He swept the curtain aside and gestured, watching Eragon's reaction closely with a smile.
The mannequin wore the rest of the set. Boots with metal shin guards, thigh and groin protection, articulated shoulder pads and plate armor for his arms and forearms, gauntlets with metal backings for even his fingers, a low cut gorget and a full helmet with a sapphire plume mohawk jutting from the crest. The same faded blue cape hung on gleaming golden fastenings around the mannequin's shoulders. Its grey chest was bare.
Eragon reached forward and stuck it onto the mannequin to complete the look.
The mannequin looked like a hero. Like something out of a legend.
"I figured you'd be a pretty big target on Saphira's back," Harry said. "No point in hiding up there. Might as well make them fear you. Everything's real. No conjured anything. The straps are polyurethane coated aramid, the steel is high carbon spring steel we made in the arc furnace. It's real gold, real PVD coating, real everything. And it's all enchanted to the gills. Maybe a Rider's sword could scratch it. I doubt anything else will. Do you want to try it on?"
The armor was intimidating. It did not feel like the sort of thing a farm boy wore. Eragon had a hard time visualizing himself in it. He had a hard time envisioning himself as the kind of person who would wear it.
Put it on.
Saphira's voice echoed in his head. Put it on, and then come stand before me, so I might see the unseen side of you the wizard has revealed.
Eragon began strapping on pieces, stripping them off the mannequin and fixing them onto his body. The backplate had a design on it that ran on a ridged groove up the spine, exactly like a spine. Gold inlay formed a symbol that repeated over and over up the back. "What does it mean?" Eragon asked, tightening the side straps.
"It's an old rune," Harry described, eyes unfocused. "From my world. It means protect."
"It'll be covered by the cape," Eragon pointed out.
"I don't know if you have to wear that into battle," Harry chuckled. "Might be impractical. Even if it can't be seen, that's fine. It's for you, not them. No cheap shots."
Eragon slung the cape over his shoulders. The gold fasteners snapped onto spots beneath the center sides of the shoulders. He fitted on the helmet and strapped on the mandible. Harry conjured a floor length mirror for him.
For a minute, Eragon gazed at the man before him. The warrior. Harry handed him a conjured sword and stepped back. He whispered something and an invisible breeze picked up his cape, sending it and the plume on his helmet fluttering.
"Wow," Harry managed. "You look amazing."
"Saphira wants to see," Eragon told him.
Harry mustered some control over his features and smiled. "Then you'd better go see her."
In the halls on the way back to the dragonhold, Eragon garnered looks. Everybody in eyeshot stopped to look. Dwarves and humans alike bowed to him as he passed. It was a very odd feeling. Even the purple-veiled ones showed some deference.
He took the lifts to avoid the gawking, stretching on the platform in the darkness, testing his range of motion. It wasn't as free as when he wore no armor, but it impeded him far less than he'd expected.
When he stepped up the last turn of Vol Turin, Murtagh's jaw dropped.
"Your majesty," he said only half jokingly. "Where did you get that?"
"Harry made it," Eragon said. He picked up Zar'roc and buckled it onto his belt.
Murtagh whistled. "Somehow I doubt even the Riders looked as impressive."
Eragon had never seen them, he wouldn't know. He sat down to write that letter, and gave special instructions to the clay bird.
Angela,
If you need to reach any of us, just tell the bird and give it a letter.
Eragon.
Eight Days Left
"Enter," Ajihad said.
King Hrothgar came in, leaving his guards outside. Ajihad matched the courtesy by dismissing his own.
"Harry says the last of the stragglers are seven days out," Ajihad told him. He took out a folder and slid an imprint across his desk. The date and location were scrawled in black marker across the top. "This is from this morning. Careful when you touch it. The first time can be vivid."
The dwarven king extended a wary finger and placed it on the aerial image. His eyes widened and he cocked his head.
"By Helzvog," he murmured. "The wizard's doing?"
"Of course," Ajihad inclined his head. "Most anything remarkable that happens around here is his." He gestured to one of the new uniform gambesons Harry had been producing.
"I saw," King Hrothgar admitted. "We are fortunate to know the exact size of their force. Fortunate to know, very unfortunate for its size."
"I am cautiously optimistic," Ajihad admitted. The armor was nothing short of miraculous, nobody had seen the extent to which Harry himself could fight (though if this was any indication, it would be a sight to behold), they had a Dragon Rider, home territory advantage, advanced warning, and they were backed by supplies for a siege.
"Do you give him gold?" King Hrothgar asked suddenly.
"Harry? No," Ajihad frowned. "Do you?"
"No," Hrothgar said. "He must have his own. Shrrg of Durgrimst Ingeitum comes to the market every day with a new sack of gold to buy the most exotic things."
"I would have given him gold if he asked for it," Ajihad said. There was no doubt it would be a worthwhile investment.
King Hrothgar laughed. "As would I, now that I have seen what he can do. If you are not giving him gold, he is making it or finding it himself, or has a cache already. I have seen the gold Shrrg pays with. Half in Galbatorix's coinage, a quarter blank discs, a quarter plain ingots."
"Fortunate, then, that he has a modicum of sense not to spread it too widely," Ajihad mused. The last thing he needed was for the value of gold to drop in wonky ways because someone was spending it like water.
"More than a modicum of sense," King Hrothgar agreed. "Shrrg tells me they only hand out as much food as they do, 'out of respect for dwarf farmers.' And I have heard of the volume of steel they make, and the magic loom."
"Does Harry know they report to you?"
The dwarf king smiled. "I am sure of it. As he made it clear to you, he does not seem to mind others knowing, he wants to be certain Galbatorix doesn't. They report directly to me, as I'm sure yours do to you."
Ajihad blinked. "Harry reports to me himself," he said. He gestured to the mailbox on his desk. "His notes appear in there. Mine appear in his."
"Elegant," Hrothgar remarked. "I am curious to see how he fights."
Ajihad rubbed his forehead. "You may not be able to sate your curiosity. He agreed to work for me under the condition that he not have to fight. He is unsure how his magic stacks up to ours."
"A valid concern," Hrothgar admitted. "Still disappointing. Ironic, that I was so concerned about this invasion not two weeks ago, and now it seems but a sure thing, does it not?"
Ajihad bowed his head. "I would not abandon caution just yet." But Hrothgar voiced a sentiment he agreed with. Invincible foot soldiers, for the most part immune to magic, their two best spellcasters returned to them, advanced warning, unexpected supplies, and a Dragon Rider on top, it was hard to imagine a scenario where the Urgals won. He had no doubt there would be casualties, but now even the evacuation seemed heavy-handed. There was simply no way the Urgals won a fair fight.
"Never," King Hrothgar agreed. "But we may breathe a bit easier than before. The main north and west tunnels are all barricaded, all side routes are closed and barred. I will send Orik the moment I hear anything from my scouts in the tunnels. We are as prepared as we can be without knowing their avenue of attack. It is a waiting game."
Ajihad's lips twisted. "I suspect the biggest change, if any, will come from the wizard."
King Hrothgar chuckled. "Aye. At least his surprises tend to be nice ones."
Three Days Left
"I will wear my usual armor."
Harry gave her an unimpressed look. "If you want to sell this whole 'pragmatic warrior' image, this is the practical option. You'll be basically invincible, even stronger than normal, and immune to all but the most concentrated magical attack. Be a bit stupid to turn that down 'cause you don't like the color scheme."
Arya crossed her arms. "You never met Rhunön, did you? She would cringe at the sight of this."
Harry sighed. She was being dramatic. "The decoration is there to hide the runes. And magic works better with drama and artistry."
"It's probably visible from miles away," Arya said. "And it is gaudy."
Harry put his palm over his face. "Talk to Maria, then. Sketch something out that's more to your taste."
"I have armor," Arya insisted.
Harry shrugged. "Fine. Wear your normal leather armor. Actually, you should have another go at Eragon while he's wearing his own armor. See how your strength holds up to his enchantments, and then imagine what you'd be able to do if your strength was augmented even further."
"I will wear the gauntlets," Arya amended.
Harry supposed that was the best he was going to get. "I don't want you to get hurt."
Arya regarded him with a raised brow. "I am in my eighties, I have trained as a warrior my whole life–"
"I knew a guy like that," Harry interrupted. "His name was Moody, and he was killed. You don't get to control how a fight happens. It happens, and you do your best to survive. I can't help you then, but I can help you now. Please, wear the armor, or let me make another that looks nice enough for you to wear."
Arya's expression softened. "I understand your reluctance. But I have trained and fought countless battles in light, flexible armor. I would not learn to fight anew on the eve of battle."
Harry nodded.
"You are taking that as a challenge," Arya recognized.
Guiltily, Harry nodded again.
She threw up her hands, but she was smiling. "Don't waste too much time. Your duties are more important."
Harry fell into the chair at his desk. The gambesons were done, Eragon's armor was done, Harry had made himself a set of robes woven with protection focused towards magic alone. For arrows, he'd made a thin steel breastplate with enchantments that would hopefully catch shots even to the rest of his body.
He felt restless. There had to be something he could do. He did not do well with waiting.
Some part of him wished the Urgals would get here now, so he could stop worrying and start fighting. Except he wouldn't be fighting. Not unless things got desperate. Where at first he thought Ajihad might think he was a coward for not wanting to be in combat, Harry thought he understood; Harry was too valuable to the Varden to waste on battle.
Arya noticed it. "The waiting before battle is the worst tension in life. A distant second is the moment before a baby's first breath."
It was the evening three days before the schedule became uncertain. The last Urgal troops were two days away, Harry had factored in one more for regrouping, and then the attack could come at any time. He raked his hands through his hair. "Want to fight, one last time? Just in case I can win back the wand?"
Arya gave him an assessing look. "I do not think anything has changed, I do not want you injured on the eve of battle, and I think if the wand is as intelligent as you suggest, groveling and desperation are hardly going to sway it."
She didn't understand. All the Elder Wand cared about was winners. Right?
Except hadn't Dumbledore said he was not permitted to kill with it? That had to be a self-imposed rule. Harry rested his chin on his palm. Arya circled around to the other side of the desk and took a seat, fastening on the enchanted gauntlets. She looked fucking hot in leather armor. Harry was trying very hard to resist distraction.
"Is there nothing else you can think of to do?" Arya asked.
Harry glowered at the mailbox to Ellesmera. "The one thing I'd like to do, I can't. Oromis still hasn't replied, and I can't fly over there myself. Do you want to?"
Arya sighed. She bit the leather strap and pulled tight the vambrance on her right forearm. "I don't trust my skills to fly at all, let alone take off from your death trap of a runway. And I worry for my mother. She acted…irrational. I fear she'd try to keep me from returning to fight. And if Durza is present in this battle, I will be needed."
Some part of her expression looked eager. Harry guessed she was first in line for revenge against the Shade. They'd won fairly easily last time, but that was with every advantage while Durza was caught completely off guard and Arya was invisible. In a fairer fight, Harry had no idea who had the upper hand.
"Excited to have another crack at him?" Harry asked.
Her red lips had a vicious twist to them. "Very."
Harry groaned. "Chess? Blackjack? Arm wrestling? Connect Four?"
"Have you explored Tronjheim?" Arya wondered.
He shook his head. "A bit, but it's not like Hogwarts. It's too sensible. Once you've seen one empty floor, you get the gist of the other thousand."
"Aye," Arya smiled wryly. "Some would be impressed by the grandeur alone. There are other sights to see. The library, the great drums, the markets."
"People gawk," Harry said, annoyed at the mere thought of them. "They used to do it endlessly back home. Everywhere I went. Finally, for like a week, nobody in Carvahall batted an eye at me. Well, they thought I was a stranger and that I dressed weird, but they didn't gawp like I was a Martian or a demigod."
"Such is the price of being exceptional," Arya said. She wiggled her fingers in the air, testing her range of motion. Harry conjured her a ball of stainless steel and rolled it across the desk.
The elf picked up the ball and hefted it. That alone was impressive. Harry could hardly have picked the thing up with two hands. She stood, wound up, and hurled the solid steel ball as hard as she could down the room.
The air thrummed as it hurtled from her hand, zipping away at terrifying speeds. It took a full second before the rubbly sound of the ball's collision reached them, echoing off the stone floor.
Harry whistled. "Is that further than normal?"
Arya gave him a strange look. "Of course." She glanced down at the gauntlets. "Make thirty thousand of these, and Galbatorix's army will be swept aside."
Harry huffed. "It's fitted, and it's a little more complicated than just stamping metal." But in his mind, he was already working on solving those problems. There had to be a fitting charm, and if not, shrinking or engorgement charms could work the same way. The whole thing couldn't be made at once with metal stamping, but the vambrance plate could be, and the back of the hand cover could be as well. He imagined metal stamping in the strength runes and then using a leather inner to cover the ridges from digging into the wearer's skin. He just needed to find the right source of steel–
He shook himself from the train of thought. "Maybe," he allowed. "Aren't you just a little bit curious what the rest of the armor can do?"
"A bit," Arya admitted.
Two Days Left
"Can you stay a bit longer today?" Harry asked. Misha blinked.
"May I ask why?"
"I want to get everyone together before the invasion." Harry picked up a framed canvas he'd prepared. "Just in case. I asked Shrrg to stay, too."
Misha seemed torn. "Fine," he said finally.
The day ended. They were at the end of most of their projects, days were usually just chores and then everybody tinkering and brainstorming the next idea. Nobody wanted to start anything two days from the invasion.
After dinner, Harry gathered everybody up in the front of the workshop and conjured a ladder to stand on, bringing up the blank frame with him. He propped it up facing down on the team, repositioning a bit to get as much in the background as possible.
Then he rejoined them and prepared to mentally cast the imprint spell.
"Smile," he suggested.
The painting went up over the mantle in the lounge. Harry had begun dimming the lights in the workshop at night, just bright enough to navigate by. It helped delineate between night and day beneath the mountain. Those who lived in their apartments at the workshop had gone to bed, Shrrg had headed out, yet Misha had stayed behind.
He was bent over his rarely used desk, scratching away at a sheet of paper under his desk lamp.
Harry sidled up to him. Misha looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Harry understood the feeling. If the fate of Alagaesia did not rest on his back, that did not mean his own world wasn't falling on him. He felt a pang of sympathy.
"Are you doing okay?"
Misha redoubled his focus on his work, a map of the northeast border of the Beors. Compasses, rulers, protractors, and all sorts of tools were scattered across the great big sheet of thick paper.
"Fine," he muttered.
Harry ran his fingers through his hair. Was this how Ron and Hermione and – well, everyone, really – was this how they felt when he said that?
"Your mother, right?" Harry asked. He rested a couple fingers on the edge of Misha's desk.
Misha said nothing. Harry noted his pencil strokes getting deeper, the corners of his eyes tightening. Flecks of graphite spilled off the tip of the lead, scattering on the paper.
He drew up a chair for himself out of thin air. "She's old, you said."
Jerkily, Misha nodded.
Harry sighed. This would never come up, would it Morgan? Curing old age, put that on the back cauldron, right?
"How old is she?" Harry assessed Misha. The man couldn't be older than forty, he had no wrinkles or grey hairs at all.
"Sixty seven," Misha muttered.
Harry blinked. "Then she's not dying of old age."
Misha's jaw clenched. "Oh?"
"People don't die of natural causes in their sixties," Harry said gently. "People don't die of 'old age' at all. Something goes wrong. You don't just run out of juice at eighty and fade away like an old photo in the sun. They have a stroke or a heart attack or an aneurysm, or their muscles decay until they can't breathe for themselves, or something."
"It does not matter if she dies of a– 'heart attack' or a sword through the heart, dead is dead." Misha's pencil slipped, ripping a hole in the paper of the map. Harry reached over and rubbed his finger along the rip, repairing the paper behind it.
That only made Misha angrier. He turned to look up at Harry. "Is that what you will do? Fix her, like a broken thing?"
Harry was caught off guard. He withdrew his hand. "I'm sorry. I thought–"
Misha calmed himself. "You cannot fix her," he said with certainty. He repeated himself in a whisper. "You cannot fix her."
He tossed down his pencil and stood up, turning to walk away.
Harry caught his hand. "Misha. I can try, if you let me."
The blonde man was startled by the gesture. He looked so miserable, so conflicted and wretched, Harry was too startled to resist him pulling his hand back, striding away. He hunched his shoulders and shook his head, then vanished through the main door.
Harry was left feeling very alone. He rubbed his ring. There had to be a way to heal her, and if he did not know a spell for it, he knew what could heal any damage to the body.
He had used his last dose, but maybe, maybe not the last dose.
One Day Left
"Have you ever fought in a true battle?"
Harry's lips twitched. "Isn't it a little late to be asking that?"
Arya shrugged. They were in the commons off the workshop. Apparently, her role as an ambassador had become less important than her role as a superhuman warrior. She had a lot more free time to spend. She reached for a sugar cube to drop into her tea. Harry wasn't great at brewing it; if anybody found out his British Card would be revoked.
Harry considered. "Depends what you mean. I've been in a few bad spots. Only two real 'battles' back home." The Ministry and The Battle of Hogwarts came to mind. He didn't think anything else counted; it was usually otherwise one versus one. Him against Snape, Him against Voldemort, and so on.
"How do your people fight?" Arya asked.
"Didn't you already ask this?"
"I asked how wizards fought," Arya corrected. "What does a pitched battle look like?"
Harry thought back to Hogwarts, the last day of his life. "Mad."
It was the first word that came to mind. "There's a lot more to magic than I've been doing. People are hurling jinxes and curses all over the place, throwing whatever they can find at each other. You use what you've got, y'know? I remember Professor Trelawney chucking crystal balls onto Death Eaters' heads, Professor Sprout had her killer plants run around attacking them. Not many of us were real fighters, not like the other guys. Me and my friends all knew a few good hexes. Others stayed to fight however they could."
Harry couldn't recall a crystal clear picture of it all. There was too much happening. He remembered the battle in frozen moments, frames of reality, a handful of seconds so vivid they hadn't faded at all.
Trelawney on the balcony with the crystal balls, the acromantulas, fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement, Fred's–
He shut his eyes and wrenched his mind onto a different track. A different, even more vivid memory resurfaced. The gates of Gil'ead, twenty men barring his way, the lot of them falling apart like so many pieces of a Mr. Potato set. The exact same spell that had killed Fred.
Arya grasped his hand. It was smooth, and still warm from cupping her teacup. Harry felt his heart flutter. How annoying was it that all she had to do was touch him and his entire train of thought was derailed?
"It's so chaotic," Harry said around a lump in his throat. "It's how magic works. There are explosions and fireballs, but sometimes a brain jumps out of a vat and tries to strangle your best mate, or someone's head gets stuffed into a jar that reverses time. Sometimes somebody gets hit with a weird jinx that switches their hands and feet and they have to try to hold their wand in their toes, or someone falls off the bell tower 'cause they got hit with a momentum-reversing jinx. You can't hold battle lines or anything; wizards can apparate through or fly on broomsticks or sneak past with a disillusionment charm."
"You've just got to know who your friends are and who you're fighting, and take whatever openings you find."
Arya was quiet for a while.
"I better understand why you fight the way you do in our spars," she said.
Harry shrugged and sipped his tea. He had to work not to spit it out. In a morbid way, he missed it. Getting to just fight. The only unblockable spell he had to worry about was bright green, and its incantation was etched onto his soul. He missed being able to show up to a battle without having to make plans and prepare for a month. He missed the adrenaline, the perfect crystal clarity of mortal danger. He missed every heightened sense, his eyes and heart and mind going a thousand miles per hour, snatching bits of sense from the chaos.
Knowing every second could mean his death, nothing but battle made him so alive.
AN: Well I said I'd be done by Christmas, and only two days late is actually pretty good for me, so Merry Christmas everybody. The third day is FFN's fault, it went down literally as I was in the middle of uploading the chapters. There are 5 chapters (though this is definitely the longest), and I'll post them once a day.