The Heart Grows

"I just got used to the break-action rifles and now you're changing it again?" Tammy worked the mechanism of the new rifle. Raising the bolt handle, pulling it back, and sighting down into the magazine. "Ten rounds?"

"Ten!" Anichka grabbed up Tinpot from the stool he stood on at his desk and hugged him. "Ten rounds with my choice of ammo. Wait, I'd have to shoot them in order, right? Could I get one of these without the storage in it?"

Laughing, Tinpot pointed to another rifle on his desk. "If you put me back down, I can show you one."

Entirely too excited to see what he'd made, Anichka did just that. They finished up getting instructions and headed back out of the dungeon, thanking Tinpot and Travis himself repeatedly. When they returned to the late morning of Northridge, each looked at the other and laughed.

"We got lucky," Tammy said. "And nothing to do with shooting. Just winding up here of all places."

With a heavy rifle over her right shoulder, Anichka still managed to get her left arm around Tammy and squeeze her. "Don't I know it. Hey, want to get food somewhere? I heard there's a new bar run by an adventurer that does a good roast."

The walk wasn't far. Tammy had grown used to carrying a king's ransom in weapons with her, even if Travis never made a big deal of it. The long guns were comfortably wrapped in oilskin bags; the intricate new designs out of sight of anyone who'd be stupid enough to try to take them.

"I think this is it," Anichka said. The building looked like it'd had repairs done since the fires that raged during the siege. A sign hanging over the door showed an image of a rather busty woman throwing a pair of dice.

"Keep your money out of sight, I'd say, but it looks like the right place." Tammy opened the door and stepped inside. The wash of scents hit her first, like a wave of spice and meat, with a little "people" mixed in. It was, she considered, a huge improvement over the barracks.

What looked a little odd, though, was several tables stacked to one side that looked to have markings on them for card games.Tammy took mental note that of the patrons, none were playing dice like the sign foretold.

Ogmera glanced at the door and smiled. "A couple of heroes looking for food, drink, or a game?" she asked Anichka and Tammy.

Tammy nodded in reply and added, "Lunch. We heard you have a good roast?"

"We sure do. Find yourselves a table and I'll bring... two plates of the roast?" Ogmera was proud of her cooking, but prouder still to hear that folks were talking about it.

"Two plates, yeah, thanks. And a couple of mugs of short beer. We're on duty later today and can't afford to face the Baron drunk." Tammy located a table that looked freshly cleaned and sturdy enough they could lean their rifles against it. As she sat down, she tested her theory and was relieved that the table didn't fall over.

Anichka found her own seat at the table, sat down, and set her rifle down too. "The Baron'll want to see what these can do."

"Yeah," Tammy said, "he likes to know what the others will be getting soon. You know, he said that there will be a time when we have guns that can fire multiple bullets as long as you pull the trigger."

"Captain Windchime?"

"Huh? No, Tinpot. He said everything's working up to those, but he needs more precision with his tools to make the pistons in them." Tammy wasn't sure why pistons were important, but apparently they were. Ogmera approached their table with two mugs and a plate with bread on that was covered in steaming cheese. Her sharp nose could detect the herbs baked into the bread, making her mouth start to water a little. "Wow, that smells good."

Anichka picked up her mug and took a long sip. She was too used to bars mixing their water with cheap beer and finding something that tasted good and hoppy, if watered down, made her want to return to sample it when she didn't have to work. "That's a good ale."

"Thanks! I've been getting it from a friend in the capital, but he's helping me brew my own that I hope to have up to the same quality within a year." Despite all the things that could have gone wrong, and with perhaps a little help from her luck, she'd managed to open her bar. "Let me know if you like the bread rolls."

When Ogmera walked off, Anichka leaned a bit closer to Tammy to her right. "She hasn't said anything about money."

"Do you think she's running some kind of game?" Tammy's ears perked up at the sound of Ogmera approaching. She looked over to see the woman with two plates heaped high with vegetables, meat, and gravy. "That looks great."

Ogmera almost preened at the compliment. "You're welcome. What with Breeze providing so much, and me happening to have three big roasting ovens in back, I figured Northridge needed somewhere to have a nice, hearty meal whenever they wanted."

"Not adventuring anymore?" Anichka asked, letting Tammy have a moment to attack her meal.

Feeling it was an invitation into a conversation, Ogmera slumped down into a chair. "Yes and no. Travis won't stop paying me to be 'on call', he called it, as a witch to provide any services I can, but he relented and downgraded that from a possible combat role. Don't get me wrong, I've been helping out with providing other delvers, but the writing's on the wall.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"Delving isn't so required anymore. Not with the resources Travis is providing. I don't know if you've been to the capital lately, but it's in a frenzy."

"We passed through on our way back from West Reaches," Tammy said. "It seemed busy, but we weren't exactly hanging around."

"I hear we'll have our own siege again in the spring. You ladies wouldn't know anything about that?" Ogmera asked.

"All we know is they're going to be here with at least twenty times the numbers they had last time. That's why the new wall is getting all the love our masons can put into it and why we're also covering every inch of it with cannons and rifles when they're done." Tammy soaked up a hunk of the soft, cheesy bread with gravy and spread it with a few smooshed up potatoes from her plate. "And the last part they're going to shore up is the entrance to the North. That'll be the only way in or out of the castle when the new wall is done, excluding the doorways to the capital and Polfay."

"And," Anichka said, to finish the rousing speech up, "if I so much as see one of their commanders from the wall…" She finished up by patting the bag at her side.

Ogmera nodded to that. "Word is around Northridge you can thread a needle with a long gun. I remember you doing so with that Northern commander."

Unable to help herself, Anichka pulled her latest weapon from its cover. Laying the rifle on the table, she actuated the bolt. "Ten shots, one after the other, fired with a tighter grouping than you'll ever see. The gunsmith working in Travis is a master of his craft, and a gift to our defense." She showed specifically that the weapon was unloaded before sliding it back into the bag—trying to ignore Tammy's droll look.

Tilting her head to the side a little, Ogmera squeezed her lips into a lop-sided moue. "It's a fine weapon, but I think I have just the thing to make it amazing." Digging around in a pocket, she pulled out a small golden coin. To her own senses, it boiled over with luck. "Show me the stock of your gun again."

A little concerned, though overcome with curiosity, Anichka lifted out the bolt-action rifle and set it on the table where it wouldn't be near their food. "What's that coin?"

"This coin is a reservoir of luck. It siphons tiny amounts of luck from those around it until a fate-defining moment requires more than its fair share—at which point it releases all it has." Ogmera touched the stock of the rifle with her finger, softening the wood with a touch of magic and then pressed the coin into it. "The only thing I can promise is if you aim this gun at the person responsible for a siege of Northridge, it will hit them."

Anichka and Tammy both stared as the wood solidified around the gold coin, clinging to the metal and making it part of the weapon.

"How much?" Tammy asked.

Shaking her head, Ogmera leaned back in her chair. "There is no price on luck like this. I had meant to give this to my husband, but wouldn't you know it, the one thing I have been singularly unlucky in is love?" Tossing out another gold coin, Ogmera flicked it between her fingers in a quick pattern. This one was empty to her senses, a blank slate of fate that was worth only the value printed on it. "But despite that, it feels like you might need it more than I do."

It was a tragedy that played out in taverns all across the kingdom, Tammy acknowledged. "Hold that thought for six hours and we'll be back to share a proper drink with you."

It was Anichka's turn to shoot Tammy a curious look. She didn't get a visible tell back, but felt Tammy's tail swish and thwap against her back. "For sure," Anichka said, "the moment we're off for the day, we'll be back here."

Having finished their meal and insisting on paying for it, the pair walked back across Northridge with their rifles slung on their backs. Neither spoke until they were almost at the main guardhouse. "So…" Anichka began, with the intent that Tammy would continue.

"Look, I'm a sucker for people in that situation. You know that. She was obviously caught up in something one-sided, and still holds a flame for the guy. She gave you the magic trinket she was going to give the idiot!" Tammy gestured at Anichka's back. "We can't just let her deal with that alone—even if it costs me half my wages in drinks."

"You're a woman of principles, Tam."

"That's why you stick by me," Tammy replied.

"No. I stick by you because you're my best friend and I'd be nothing without you." Reaching an arm around Tammy, Anichka pulled her close and hugged tight, then sighed happily when Tammy hugged her back.

After an afternoon spent demonstrating the new rifles to Brolly Windchime and the other training sergeants, and talking up how delicious their lunch was, Tammy and Anichka stowed them in the guardhouse armory and walked back across town to Ogmera's tavern.

Inside, they found the building abuzz with patrons. Almost every table had at least three people seated at it, and of them a good half looked to be guards. With Ogmera looking busy, the pair stuck to eating their dinner and having a single drink along with it. As things quieted down, and folks were done with their meals and thinning out, they found Ogmera returning to their table.

"About that offer of drinks?" Ogmera asked. "Sam has the bar for the rest of the night, and I've got a lot to forget."

Tammy looked over at the bar and nodded to Sam, an older woman who looked like she knew how to handle a bar and a few boozy patrons. "So, wanna talk about him or everything but him?"

"The second one. Any cute guys in the guard that don't want anything complicated? There were a few in tonight, but I was too busy to spend any time hunting." Lifting her mug up, Ogmera took a long sip of her ale and savored the sharp bite and heavy flavor that followed.

"It's weird, but a lot of the guys in the guard are spoken for—by others already in the guard. Do adventurers do that too?" Tammy asked.

"All the time. It's an unspoken—and sometimes shouted—rule that you don't date anyone from your own party, but almost everyone has done it at one point or another." Ogmera's thoughts strayed to the men in her party. "Nathaniel was cute, but he had this thing about money—like all Golden One priests. Then there was Stratus and Tom. I've never met two guys so into each other, yet so focused on never making it an official thing." In gossip was relief, and the subject was as far away from him that Ogmera could forget about the man, at least for a while.

Available at: https://www.royalroad.com/profile/220350/fictions

This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.