From: kjc@aramis.rutgers.edu (Kelly J. Cooper)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [MG] Jameson finally in the [storm]
Keywords: Things are gonna change, so fast ...
Date: 17 Apr 93 23:30:09 GMT


"When you gonna make up your mind?
 When you gonna love you as much as I do?"
		-Tori Amos


     In the morning, Jameson rose with the sun and, after a light
breakfast, made her way past the marketplace into the working
district.  The forges were already hot when she got to the smithy,
and had been for some time.  The journeyman, whose name was Kam,
greeted her cheerfully and showed her where she could leave her things
undisturbed.

     "Master Corder will be along shortly, ma'am.  He's off getting
some of the materials you told 'im about yest-tiday."  Still cheerful,
he showed her around the shop, naming tools in his almost
imperceptible accent, both to let her see where and how they kept
things and to test her knowledge of the craft.  Jameson agreeably
startled him a few times and when Corder returned, he found her and
Kam on excellent terms.

     Jameson had in Corder an excellent student, with a quick brain.
Anything he missed, Kam seemed to pick up and Jameson could see why
they worked well together.  Half the day passed by without any of them
noticing the passage of time until their stomachs told them, loudly.
They stopped for a simple meal, made for them by Corder's wife, and
while they ate, Corder lamented that Jameson had never had become a
full-scale smith.

     "'Tis a waste.  You're an artist, girl.  I would pay money for
the things that could come from your forge.  I know some able women,
all right, but ne'er a smithy of 'em.  With the right training, you
coulda be better than more'n half the men I've knowed, even with these
arms.  You'd finesse what you couldn't pound."  He poked roughly at
her right bicep and turned her forearm over to press on the muscles
there, forcing her hand to close.  His skin was dark and hard, and
half resembled leather.  He had the requisite oversized arm, but for
him it was his left and Jameson suddenly realized that much of the
smithy had been modified to handle that.  It interested her, but
Corder deflected her questions smoothly.  Shaking his head, he
muttered "Too late, too late," presumably talking about her.
Presumably.  She smiled at Kam who shrugged and they returned to the
forge.

     Not too much later one of Corder's sons came barrelling into the
smithy, yelling, "Da!  Da!  Come quick!  It's a storm an' the guards'
declared a mergency!"

     Corder, Jameson and Kam stepped out of the dim smithy blinking
like owls.  Jameson realized that she'd been hearing a quiet murmur of
voices for some time -- the streets were abuzz with talk of the storm
as people scurried about taking care of last-minute business, buying
food and boarding up windows.  The three of them waded through the
crowds into the wide lane in front of the smithy and looked up where
various people were pointing.  Dark, angry clouds hung low on the
horizon and Jameson could hear klaxons sounding in the distance.
Criers were walking the streets shouting for the able-bodied to
sandbag the sea walls.

     After standing quietly for a few moments, listening to the
dissonance and murmuring fear, Corder nodded curtly and moved
purposefully back to the smithy.  Jameson and Kam followed.  None of
them spoke.  Jameson nailed boards to the small windows of the smithy
while Corder shut down the forge and Kam secured the chimneys.  They
locked up the tools, to keep them out of the hands of looters and
moved on to work on Corder's house.

     The house was a solid affair.  They bolted the heavy shutters and
secured the few fragile items in the house.  A number of Corder's
nephews and young cousins cycled through the house, begging on behalf
of their parents for Corder's help.  Leaving his wife and children to
to get themselves set in the basement, Corder went out and helped
gather some of his older relatives to weather the storm in his
basement.  Jameson and Kam followed him, tools in hand, and secured
the various houses as best they could.  Few were as well-built as
Corder's own. 

     By the time the storm was strong enough to whip the board from
their hands before they could nail it across a window, both Jameson
and Kam were beyond exhausted.  They were ordered into the basement by
Corder, to maintain peace there and rest themselves.  Corder himself
disappeared back into the storm while his wife sat with their youngest
in her lap.  She did not watch him leave.

     About fifteen of them sat quietly in the basement, listening to
the house above them creak quietly as the wind screamed and furiously
slammed rain and hail against everything exposed.  In the flickering
light of the hurricane lamps, Jameson looked around, noting Kam's pale
and drawn face, Danna Corder's implacable features, and the tired and
scared expressions of her four children.  Then she quietly scrutinized
the various older relatives, mostly aunts and uncles to the Corder
parents.  They seemed weary, beyond complaining.  In answer to her
question, Kam quietly told her that Master Corder's parents had died
in a slavers' raid years ago while Danna's father had passed away in
his sleep two years back.

     A loud banging on the cellar door made them all jump.  The
banging paused, then began again, six rhythmic thumps, pause, six
thumps, pause.  Kam had leapt to his feet when it started, and went
quickly to the door once he recognized the pattern and, with Jameson's
help, heaved the bars up.  The wind flung the door open violently and
the continuous lightning flashes both half-blinded them and
backlighted a hulking outline.  The shadow resolved itself to a wet
and bleeding Corder, carrying the limp form of an old woman.  Danna
made a small noise as Corder stepped numbly into the basement.
Stumbling down the steps behind him were suddenly visible a young
woman, hanging onto Corder's belt and being half supported by a man
behind her.  He, in turn, was carefully holding something that had
been secured to his chest.  Once they were inside, Kam and Jameson
threw their weight into closing the door and barely succeeded and
slamming the bars home.  

     Kam muttered "Danna's mum," and staggered across the room to
where Corder and the old woman were lying upon blankets and being
tended by Danna.  Jameson began to shuffle forward only to catch the
anonymous young woman as she collapsed.  Wincing as she swung the
woman up into her arms, Jameson continued to step very carefully
toward the others.  Kam looked up and his eyes widened.  He grabbed
more blankets from the pile they had brought downstairs and helped
Jameson put the girl down.  Kam began chaffing the girl's arms to
bring back circulation and Jameson turned to the man.  He stood, eyes
glazed, gently rocking the bundle in his arms.  Jameson pushed him
through the older people, away from the door, over toward the
makeshift triage blankets.  

     At a sharp word from Danna, the eldest child ran to the furnace
and began feeding it more wood and stoking it up.  Jameson sat the man
down on a bench and began gently unwrapping him.  He looked at her
sightlessly, and barely resisted.  As she suspected, Jameson found a
baby, less than a year old, cold and blue in the man's arms.  The man
hummed tuneless lullabies, eyes rolling and flickering.  Kam eased him
down beside the woman and stripped them both of some of their wet
clothes, then wrapped them in blankets.  Absently, Jameson noted
Corder had a scalp wound and dozens of cuts all over his body.
Danna's mother's face was badly bruised and her hands were swollen.

     Jameson held the still form of the child in her arms, then set it
down gently on one of the benches.  She checked the child over,
looking for a pulse and finding nothing.  Gently, she lifted it up
again, cradled it on her forearm, and began pushing on its chest in a
steady rhythm.  Every so often she blew softly into its mouth.  The
room was still as each person worked or prayed quietly.  The only
noises were ragged breathing and an angry storm.  In the midst of the
deafening stillness, there was a convulsive gasp and the weak cry of
an unhappy baby.  One of the elders made a holy sign and muttered,
"witch."  The rest were silent.

     At the cry the young couple both sat up, confused and dazed,
unsteady because of the blankets wrapped around them.  Kam quieted
them and settled them back down, while throwing a look of wonder over
his shoulder at Jameson.  She herself didn't notice.  She was quietly
murmuring to the child in her arms as she rocked and bobbed and walked
around, smiling at someone Kam couldn't see.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Kelly J. Cooper         \     *Nigh* invulnerable ...
Tragically Hip Waif      \      Comments appreciated.
...individual at large... \       kjc@cs.rutgers.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------