Dust of History Chapter 5: Reminiscing about the past
The moonlight scatters its silvery tenderness to the ground in every possible way, and the grotesque rocky ground no longer looks so sharp under this blessing. Asa leaned on the rock beside the campfire, watching the moon reluctantly to close his eyes.
The moonlight is so beautiful and soft that even the exposed skin can feel the pouring caress. Such a moonlight is absolutely unseen in Karondo. The clouds and soot that hang over the basin all the year round make all those who try to reach the sky hopeless.
It has been more than a month since I left Karondo. But as long as I recalled it, the smell of iron juice and coal immediately revived in my nose, and the sound of the hammer hitting the iron seemed to have disappeared for less than a minute. The night before he left, the image of his father wielding the hammer was so deeply etched in his mind that it almost replaced all the feelings he had lived in Karondo for twenty years.
The rock-like firm and dull face is like a shrine under the radiance of the fire. Muscles are knotted on the arm like tree roots, and every time the hammer strikes, every vibration is transmitted to Asa's hand through the knife. This is the shock from his father. This kind of touch makes him feel for the first time. I have a connection with my father that is different from others.
The shape of the knife gradually became clear, and his father took the knife from his hand and turned it himself. Asa lost the pulsation that resonated with his father, and he understood that the connection with his father would also dissipate with the casting of this knife . What followed spontaneously was a kind of excitement, and this knife also symbolized the beginning of his new life, the beginning of his real life. This expectation also knocked into the knife with the clang of the collisions again and again.
This will be a good knife that even my father's shop doesn't have, and it will be cast from the fine iron ore that Asa has secretly accumulated over the past five years.
He is the most rebellious of the tens of thousands of children in Calendor Basin. He was not mischievous when he was a child, and he was not as frivolous and dissolute as others when he was a teenager, so he will not return to life after getting tired of rebellion like others. He did not rebel in his life, but rebelled against his whole life from the beginning.
Calendo Basin has a centuries-old history of metallurgical casting. The high mountains around the basin are rich in minerals that seem to be inexhaustible, and the dwarves living in the caves are also used to interacting with humans and even come out to mix with them, which makes the level of metallurgy here the highest on the continent. People are also accustomed to this tradition, and have used metallurgical casting as their industry for generations. People here seldom go out. While the basin restricts the footsteps, it also seems to freeze the heart inside. He has lived in the environment of mining, smelting, and forging since he was a child, and he can only inherit and become a part of this environment when he grows up.
Many years of habit have made it an unwritten rule in the basin. When a man reaches the age of 20, he must inherit the craftsmanship of his parents. He must be a farmer, a businessman, or a miner or a blacksmith. Although it is unknown when and from whom this rule was handed down, it has been strictly followed and has become one of the few spiritual signs in this culturally barren basin.
Asa was no different from other children until she was five years old, and grew up surrounded by fire and knocking. At the age of five, he became obsessed with the world outside the basin told by the old adventurer behind the village. Huge flying dragons that can easily grab a cow up into the sky to eat, beautiful mermaids that confuse sailors with their songs, corpses that can move by themselves, clay figurines, various subhumans, countries that believe in natural elements, weird customs , and the infinite blue sky with white clouds floating in it, the mysterious and boundless sea, and the prairie that can't be reached without riding a horse for three days and three nights.
Unlike other children who are just happy to hear and fantasize about these stories. Asa felt that that was the real life, the world that really belonged to him, so he began to learn all the knowledge of the outside world from the old adventurer. How to survive in swamps and deserts, how to identify various plants, various habits of various subhumans, how to fight, and how to set traps. He has traveled all over the most desolate and most uninhabited places in the basin, staying inside for the last month, imagining that it is the magical world outside, and practicing his ability to survive inside. In order to make himself strong enough to fight in front of orcs, he exercises his body every day and fights with people who are much bigger than himself. Go to his village. When he was fifteen years old, he went to the fine iron mine, and as soon as he found good ore, he tried to sneak it out.
Father is taciturn, the owner of a small arms shop, and mother died of illness a long time ago. In Asa's impression, home is just a place to rest, and his father is just an elder who lives together. He has been living in the dream of looking at himself, exercising every day, secretly accumulating ore and indulging in getting closer to his dream step by step.
A week before his twentieth birthday, he handed over all the ore that he secretly hid to his father, asked him to make him a knife, and told his father that he was leaving here.
Father did not stop him, nor did he ask where he was going. It was just that after a long silence, he helped him send the ore to the smelter, and turned the refined iron into a knife. Then, Asa took the knife and left Kalendo with a caravan from outsiders.
Fingers lightly slid over the blade, and this knife was all he had lived for twenty years. With a flick of the fingers, there was a low hum, like a lament in a certain poem, but also like a song of praise.
"Good knife." It was like the unpleasant sound of two blunt knives rubbing against each other. The old soldier by the campfire woke up and looked at Asa with one eye, the firelight reflecting his unlikely face.
Half of the cheek was sunken, and the muscles and broken bones were mixed together, forming a bumpy pit of flesh, which was the mark left by a hammer weapon. The other half of the face was strung together by a deep and long scar from the forehead to the mouth, with a few smaller and shallower scars criss-crossing the left and right, and the facial features were torn apart by the scars in situ. It was a strangely scarred face, but what was even stranger was that the man was still alive with so many injuries.
Asa gave the veteran a friendly smile. This is a veteran who has rolled on the battlefield for decades but has never died. It is said that there are hundreds of injuries all over his body. Because he can't die forever, many people in the army call him 'old and immortal'.
"Where did you do it before?" Seeing that the knife was not standard equipment for regular troops, the veteran thought Asa was a single mercenary.
Asa shook his head. He only joined when he saw troops recruiting mercenaries in Bracada. When he came out of Karondo, he realized that it was not easy to live freely outside. Food, adventure items all need money. When I was almost thinking of going to join bandits or help gangsters fight, I saw that a reconnaissance force was recruiting temporary soldiers, so I immediately signed up.
Half of this 100-strong force was temporarily recruited near Bracada. There are farmers, there are homeless people, and there seems to be a few fugitives mixed in. It is not a rule, but it is lively. And the weirdest-looking veteran was actually a regular soldier.
The veteran probably couldn't sleep, so he struck up a conversation with Asa: "The young man looks good, why do you want to be a soldier?"
"Because I have nothing else to do, I'm actually thinking of becoming a robber." Asa said honestly.
The old soldier let out a chuckle like a smashed pot, and Asa noticed a cut on his throat, which probably injured his vocal cords. "Young man is interesting. In fact, sometimes it is better to be a robber than a soldier. At least there is no danger of being a soldier. A robber will rob if he can beat it, and run away if he can't. If you are a soldier, the officer may call you when you should run away." You rush."
"Then you just don't rush, run away if you have to."
"If you violate the military order, the officer will cut off your head."
"Then the only way is to chop off the chief's head first, and then escape." Asa answered naturally.
The old soldier Caracalla laughed again: "How can there be such a soldier."
"How can there be such a person who knows that he is going to die, but is still directed by others?" Asa didn't understand. "Of course I have to find a way to survive. He told me to die, why didn't he go up and die first and show me?"
The old soldier shook his head, his only remaining one eye showed a dazed look, and his distorted facial features twitched, becoming a distorted expression that no one else could understand. He murmured: "Being a soldier is what it is."
There was a rattling sound, and Asa knew that Captain Saunders was here, and he was the only one who was still patrolling in steel armor.
"Why don't you go to sleep? There are still tasks tomorrow." Captain Sanders is still fully equipped. He is dressed in steel armor, with a steel helmet on his head, a sword on his left waist and a shield on his right waist. These things seem to grow on him, and he has never taken them off. There is a holy cross on the armor and shield. Asa heard that it is the symbol of the Holy Knights, and the Holy Knights are known even in the dull and dull place of his hometown. It is the strongest in the empire. of a troop.
"We are exchanging our experience as a soldier." Asa is still telling the truth.
"Captain, why don't you go to bed? We'll be going to bed right away." The veteran was afraid that Asahu would start talking, so he quickly took up the topic.
Sanders nodded, and said kindly: "Let me take a look." His tone and expression are very easy-going, and even his appearance makes people feel a little inexplicably kind~IndoMTL.com~ This young captain is a regular soldier The prestige in the middle school is very high, and the others hired with Asa are a little bit disapproving.
The common people in the lower class usually have no liking for the nobles, and the lack of dislike has proved that this young man is very friendly. But Asa was quite in awe of him. Although he had never seen him do anything, he could tell that the captain was much stronger than him.
Sanders looked at Asa and asked: "Are you the recruit who defeated four infantrymen during the enlistment?" fighting power. Asa took down several soldiers who were much bigger than him with ease.
"Yes." Asa replied. Sanders nodded, and said in an approving tone: "Your skills are very good. If you work hard, you will definitely be able to do well."
Although Asa had great doubts about the profession of being a soldier after talking with the veteran, he couldn't help but nodded vigorously.
It seems that not all nobles are so arrogant and annoying. Hearing praise always makes people feel very happy, not to mention that Asa has forgotten when was the last time he was praised.
The warning whistle outside the camp suddenly sounded, and the sharp tone tore the silence of the wilderness night into two.