The next day dawned grey and damp, a typical Reach morning. In the smithy, Jorvan was pacing back and forth like a caged bear, his mood as foul as the weather.
A daunting pile of work lay before him: a stack of broken picks and shovels from the mines, three spears from the guard needing new heads, and two new sword orders from wealthy merchants. It was a mountain of metal, and he was expected to move it.
And that damned Orc, Ghorza, was nowhere to be seen. Where in Oblivion had she gone? He'd be sure to scold her within an inch of her life and dock her pay for a month when she finally slunk back. But for now, with no one to browbeat into doing the actual work, he had no choice.
He had to lift a hammer himself. Something he hadn't done in earnest for a long time. The thought made his soft palms sweat.
With a groan of pure resentment, he rolled up his sleeves and tied on his apron, its leather stained more from spilled ale than forge soot.
He stared at the cold forge, the un-pumped bellows, the pristine anvil, feeling a profound sense of unfairness. Just as he was resigning himself to the fact that the day couldn't possibly get any worse, it did.
The sound of heavy, purposeful footsteps on the stone terrace made him look up. It was the young man from yesterday. The Companion. And he was holding his shield.
Or what was left of it.
The once-sturdy piece of equipment was a disaster. Torin marched straight up to him, and before Jorvan could muster a greeting or an excuse, the boy shoved the mangled shield into his chest, the impact making him grunt.
"I brought the shield," Torin stated, his voice flat and demanding. "Fix it. Quickly. I need to leave Markarth in two hours."
Jorvan bit back a torrent of curses that threatened to bubble up from his gut. Forcing a strained, professional smile, he took the shield and began to examine it, his heart sinking with every detail.
It was a catastrophe. The steel reinforcement bands that framed the wood were all bent and twisted grotesquely, some kinked into shapes that defied physics.
One was snapped clean through. The layered wood planks beneath weren't just scratched; they were deeply dented, and one critical plank was split right down the middle, as if struck by a falling boulder.
By the Eight, what did this little savage fight, a giant? he thought wildly. But that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that this damage was clearly, obviously, beyond his skill to fix. Some of those bindings would need to be completely replaced, forged new.
He had no idea how to work steel that thin and strong without it warping or cracking. The broken plank would require precise carving and fitting he hadn't done since his own half-remembered apprenticeship.
He was holding a ruin, and a very impatient customer was staring him down.
If that damned Orc were here, she might have been able to salvage this. She had a brute's knack for metal. But she wasn't. And Jorvan could not, under any circumstances, admit his own profound incompetence. His entire livelihood depended on the illusion of skill.
He cleared his throat, adopting a tone of grave, professional concern. "My young friend, I'm afraid two hours is simply not possible. Not with the shield being in such a severe state of disrep—"
"Nonsense."
The word cut him off like a knife. Torin's expression was one of cold disdain. "Eorlund Gray-Mane, the smith at the Skyforge, would need no more than twenty minutes to make it battle-ready again."
He took a step closer, his gaze boring into Jorvan's. "I don't expect you to be half the blacksmith he is. Which is why I came two hours early."
The insult was delivered as a simple fact.
"I came yesterday and told you about the shield, so you could prepare. There shouldn't be any problem, even if you have to prioritize my request over the others. A Companion's shield is a matter of life and death."
Again, Jorvan felt the hot, sour urge to curse this arrogant whelp to the deepest pits of Oblivion. Again, he had to bite it back, his face flushing a dangerous red.
He squeezed out another smile, tighter than the last. "Even with prioritization, young sir, two hours is a bit… optimistic for work of this… delicate nature…"
This time, Torin didn't just interrupt. He got right in Jorvan's face, close enough that the smith could see the cold, calculating fury in the boy's eyes.
"So what then, you bastard?!" Torin's voice rose, sharp and carrying over the rush of the waterfall. "You expect me to go out and fight brigands without my shield, eh?!"
He took another step, forcing Jorvan to take one back. "Or what? Do you expect me to just sit on my hands and not take any contracts? Who will pay me then, huh? You? You got five hundred septims just lying around to cover my lost wages?!"
His voice was a ringing accusation in the open-air smithy. Heads were turning. Miners on their way to work paused. Guards on a break wandered closer, curious about the commotion. A small crowd was beginning to gather.
Jorvan felt a cold sweat break out under his arms. This boy barely came up to his neck, but in that moment, he seemed to tower. There was something truly frightening in those eyes—not the hot rage of a Nord, but something colder, more deliberate.
It was the look of a predator who had just cornered his prey and was enjoying the moment before the strike. Jorvan, for the first time in his comfortable, fraudulent life, felt a genuine, stomach-churning urge to cry.
Just as the floundering smith was starting to desperately weigh his options—could he somehow pay the brat off? Claim the shield was unfixable from the start?—his salvation seemed to arrive in the form of a Markarth guard.
The man was off-duty, his helmet tucked under his arm, but his uniform and bearing carried all the authority of the law.
"Alright, what's going on here?" the guard asked, his voice a bored rumble as he pushed through the gathering onlookers. "Is this a private dispute, or do we need to involve the watch?"
Before Jorvan could open his mouth to spin a tale of unreasonable demands and pre-existing damage, Torin spoke. His voice was clear, firm, and dripping with the righteous indignation of a wronged customer.
"This fool," Torin said, pointing a firm finger at Jorvan, "assured me yesterday he could fix my shield. I took him at his word as a master smith of Markarth. Based on that assurance, I accepted a dangerous contract outside the city. I must leave to fulfill it in two hours, and now he's telling me he can't do the work. He's leaving me to face bandits with a broken arm."
The guard's gaze shifted from Torin's furious face to Jorvan's sweating, panicked one. "Is this true?"
Jorvan's eyes instantly glinted with a sliver of hope. Technically, he'd said he could fix it, but the context was different! The boy was twisting his words... not that it mattered.
Still, who was to say Jorvan was lying if he denied it now? It would be the Companion's word against his, but he himself was a respected, well-established craftsman of the city. He would not be so easily dismissed.
A grin began to spread across Jorvan's face as he prepared to deliver his denial.
He never got the chance.
"It is."
A new voice, low and gravelly, cut through the tense silence from within the crowd. Everyone turned. Ghorza was pushing her way through the spectators, her expression grim and unreadable. She stopped beside the guard, folding her muscular arms over her chest.
"I was there when it happened," she stated flatly, her dark eyes fixed on Jorvan. "He assured the young Companion he could mend the shield. I heard it clearly."
Jorvan's hopeful grin vanished, replaced by a look of pure, venomous hatred. He sent a murderous glare her way, a promise of retribution.
It didn't even seem to register.
She merely stared back, her own gaze like a physical weight. It was a look that said she'd break every bone in his body without breaking a sweat.
Jorvan flinched, unconsciously taking a stumbling step backward, the crowd murmuring at his reaction.
This situation was far from ideal, but not entirely unsalvageable. The damned Orc was here now. Fine. He'd just order her to do the parts he couldn't manage. She was his assistant, after all. She'd fix the shield, he'd take the credit and the coin, and he'd deal with her insubordination later.
A sly, desperate grin quickly returned to Jorvan's face. He rubbed his soft hands together, the picture of a reasonable man caught in a minor scheduling conflict. "This is all a simple misunderstanding! A tragic lack of communication that can be easily resolved."
He chuckled weakly. "I didn't say I would not fix the shield, nor that I could not. I simply stated that I, alone, could not complete such extensive repairs in only two hours."
He gestured expansively toward Ghorza, who stood like a stone statue. "But now that my… tardy assistant is finally here, the work will be quite manageable. She will handle the complex parts under my supervision, of course."
Torin let out a derisive snort loud enough for the whole crowd to hear. "The same assistant who, by your own admission yesterday, couldn't even forge a proper pickaxe without it snapping? You expect me to trust my life to her hammer? I might as well fight empty-handed."
He took another step forward, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl meant only for Jorvan and the nearby guard. "You looked me in the eye and assured me that you would mend my shield personally. That is the agreement. And that is exactly what you will do. Unless you'd prefer I hold you to a different kind of accountability."
The unspoken threat of violence hung in the air, cold and sharp.
The guard raised an eyebrow at the blatant threat, but he didn't bother to rebuke Torin. He was a Companion. His life literally depended on his gear. In the guard's eyes, the smith's negligence was tantamount to attempted murder. Still, something about this entire affair was starting to feel staged. It was all a little too convenient.
He turned his questioning gaze to Ghorza. The Orc woman met his eyes and gave a single, firm nod, silently affirming Torin's version of events.
Almost as if on cue, another voice piped up from the heart of the crowd.
"It's all true!"
The miner from the day before pushed his way to the front, his face still smudged with dirt, the broken pickaxe held aloft like a banner. "Jorvan himself said it! Right here, yesterday! He said my pickaxe broke because of the orc's shoddy work!"
The guard turned back to Jorvan.
The smith's eyes were no longer glinting with cunning, but wide with a dawning, horrified realization. He looked at the guard like a drowning man seeing a rope—a rope that was being held just out of reach.
The guard just shook his head, his expression turning from curious to dismissive. "Nothing more needs to be said, then." He gestured at the ruined shield. "A Nord is only as good as his word. You gave yours, Jorvan, so get to work."
...
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