01 - The Price of Talent

Memoirs of a Battle Mage

Book 1: The Price of Talent

By: Peter Whittlesey

Chapter 1.

              People often think that in order to know what motivates a person that you need to know where they came from. Knowing a person’s past can be instructive, but I think it misses the most important part of what makes a person who they are, namely their choices. Background may be instructive, but it is not the whole of the thing. And since the thing we are talking about is me, I hope you don’t assume too much from my fairly humble beginnings.

              Instead, I hope you read this memoir with an eye towards the choices I made and how they led me to where I am today, how they made me who I am. That, and I hope you derive some sort of pleasure from the read. After all, that is half the point of reading any memoir.

              So why don’t we pick up the story of my life just before it became abnormal. While starting at the action might be more exciting, it doesn’t give context to my actions.

              It is also worth noting that I grew up outside Sudchester in Forsburg, where most people live an agrarian lifestyle. I know, too many stories begin with a lad living on a farm, but in this case, it is true.

              My story begins in the year 500 of the third age of man. I was 15 years old and living on the family farm. I was an only child, but living happily with my mom and dad. The sun rose with its usual exuberance to just the right height to find the gap in the curtains. The light that shone into my eyes was like the accusation of an angry god; a god denouncing me for my slothfulness.

              As I sat up, I immediately found me penance in the form of a low hanging book shelf. I found it with the top of my head.

“God damn it!... Ouch!”

              It was at this time my mom popped her head in the doorway saying: “Serves you right for sleeping late and making your father feed the chickens and milk the cows. Also, if you rehung that shelf like I told you, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten a bump on your head.”

“Yes… Thanks mom, very helpful.”

“You know me dear, I’m here to help!”

              Getting dressed involved a certain amount of grumbling and complaining. Fortunately, I had left my clothes out on the floor so they were easy to find. This was often a sore point with my mom who used a variety of tactics like sarcasm, guilt and disdain to get me to clean up my room. It was a pitched battle, one I was sure I would lose one of these days.

As I headed out of my room and down the stairs, my mom added “Your COLD breakfast is waiting for you in the kitchen dear. Once you are done go join your father out in the fields. I’m sure he has no end of chores for you to do.”

“You couldn’t keep it warm for me in the oven?” I asked.

“Breakfast is served at the same time every morning dear. You can’t expect me to waste good wood just to suit your lazy bones.”

“Thanks mom, love you too.”

              Once I consumed my cold meal and returned the dishes to the sink, I trudged out into the field to see what punishments, or chores as he calls them, my father had in store. Nothing good, I thought, considering I had slept through part of the morning.

“Oh look who shows his bright shining face? That can’t be my son, he was supposed to be out here an hour ago”

“Good morning to you too dad.”

“Oh ho! And what is that lump on your head? Did your mother finally tire of waiting for you and throw something at you?”

“No dad, I hit my head on the shelf again.”

“Well if you…”

“Yes I know, ‘If I moved it I wouldn’t hit my head’. You and mom are like parrots, you say the same things.”

“Shows she has good sense, just like that bump on your head shows you do not. Now, how about you get to work?”

“Sure, what’s on the agenda today?”

“Well, because you were such a lazy bones, I think you get to carry the hay bales to the cows, feed the slops to the pigs and muck out ol’ Gerty’s stall.”

“Can I use Gerty to help haul the hay?”

“No, I have another plan for her for this afternoon. I think we will save her strength for that and use yours instead.”

              And with that I got underway. There was no use arguing with him. That would only result in more chores. I found that one out the hard way, today my sluggishness had earned the most onerous of tasks. But the benefit was I could eat what I want and not end up looking like the baker or the baker’s boy. Living with that amount of dough had made their family resemble the round loaves they sold in the market. Not that I could blame them. Fresh baked bread is a hard temptation to resist.

              The labor was hard but the day was nice. The sun was in the sky and the fall colors were on the eastern forest. It was a mild day and once I got started I rather enjoyed myself. The pigs in particular were happy to get their slops, having been kept hungry while I slept in. The cows were as ever, indifferent to me. Though they did shoot me looks with their big eyes that I imagined communicated their displeasure with my lateness.

              I kept the worst for last that morning and only headed over to Gerty’s stall in the barn when it was almost noon.

“Hey old girl, how are you doing on this fine autumn morning?” I said as I entered her stall.

All I got was a harrumph and a swish or two of her tail.

I wasn’t sure how much she ever really understood of what I said to her, but letting her hear my voice tended to soothe her and cut down on horse bites, kicks and purposeful stepping on my feet. You know, all those little things that horses do to amuse themselves and let you know that they don’t particularly like you.

              She also clearly knew I was on my way as the stall was full of fresh… Let’s call them droppings.

              Once I had cleaned the stall, Gerty played her favorite trick of providing me with more… droppings… to clean up. Cleaning that took me till past lunch time.

              I was even later for lunch because mucking out the stalls is dirty work, and I needed to clean up before coming in the door or my mom would not let me in the house. I believe her words on the subject were that if I smelled of the pigs I could eat with them.

              Once clean, I was allowed in, and was treated to a large farmhouse lunch. For those unfamiliar with these things, it was bread, cheese and some chicken left over from the night before. Nothing gets wasted on a farm, you know how long it took to produce the food you were eating, so you appreciated every bite that much more.

              It was during our lunch that my father revealed his special plans for Gerty.

“Son, after you are done with lunch, I want you to hitch up old Gerty to the wagon and head into town to get some more supplies.”

“I get to go to town today?”

It was a rare treat to let me head off to town. Usually such trips were handled by my father. He had a credit account at the town general goods store. Old Bill the owner and my father went way back, and my father provided him with quite a bit of produce and meat from our farm in recompense. It also helped that Old Bill would have a drink or two with my father before he left. A fact my father was happy to take advantage of, because mother did not approve of spirits in her house.

“Yes son, you get to go today. I have some repairs to the barn that need doing, and you are no fine hand with tools” my father replied.

              A fair assessment. The last time I tried to help him with the carpentry, the sort that always needs doing around a working farm, I ended up with not a few bruises and cuts.

“OK, let me know what you need and I will head on out.” I said solicitously.

Nothing like the prospect of heading into town, and a few hours away from farm work, to buy my good behavior. Also, the prospect of Old Bill perhaps sharing some of his special drinks with me was no small incentive either. Dad never let me have any. Privileges of being an old coot and all that, he would say.

              After lunch I headed out to the barn and hitched Gerty to the wagon. My mother had given me a list of goods that she and my father needed for various things around the farm. I must admit I did not look too closely at the list. I was too full of thoughts of town and whether I could get some sarsaparilla or root beer from Old Bill to drink on the road home. And yes, about maybe spiking them with spirits too.

              While I was finishing up my preparations, I started to get a headache. Perhaps it was the sun, or perhaps it was all the work before lunch. Maybe it was the excitement of heading into town. Who knows? But it quickly grew to a pounding headache. I did not let on though as I did not want to give up my trip. Throughout my childhood I had been prone to headaches. My parents’ usual treatment of them was to give me a cold compress and make me lay down in a room with the blinds pulled. While this worked well, it would mean I would miss my trip to town.

“You feeling ok son?” My dad said.

“Yeah, I’m ok, just a slight headache, nothing to be worried about”

“Well if you aren’t feeling up to the trip…”

“NO! No… I’m fine. Just a passing thing really, I’ll be fine.”

“Well, if that’s the case, why don’t you help me load up this grain from the last harvest. Old Bill said he needed some when I was in town last week.”

“OK” I said, with no small amount of trepidation. My headache was really quite bad at that point.

              Still, I wanted to go, and I soldiered through it. I headed over to the barn to pick up one of the barrels of grain. As I walked to the barn, the headache grew worse. Upon arrival, I stumbled over the door sill and fell flat on my face.

“God DAMN IT!” I said.

              It was just at that moment that a barrel of grain exploded.

“Oh great, just great!”

“You ok in there Son?”

“Yeah, fine, just tripped and fell. Also, one of the barrels broke.”

“What?! Barrel broke? I’m going to have words with the cooper about this. That is the second one this month. Well, take one of the others, I will clean this up and transfer the spilled grain to the feed bin.”

              Fortunately, by this time my headache was starting to dissipate. So I put one of the other barrels onto a cart and headed back to the wagon with it.

“Everything loaded up now?” I asked as I was putting the barrel I brought into the wagon next to the other supplies my dad had moved into it already.

“Yeah, that looks like everything. Now you just make sure that you get that list to Old Bill, load up the new supplies and head back. It’s already later than I had hoped, between your sleeping in and dawdling in the barn…”

“Oh yes, dawdling. If that’s what you call tripping, falling and nearly busting my face on the floor…”

“Exactly, you already had your rest break. So get to town, get our supplies and come back. And don’t come home with even a whiff of spirits on your breath or your mom will kill both of us. She already pretends that I don’t get a nip while I am in town, but her patience will be quite strained if you come back smelling like booze.”

“Yes dad, no nips from Old Bill…” A promise I had no intention of keeping, but better to ask for forgiveness and all that.

              And with that, I headed out onto the road.

              The family farm was located north of the town of Forsburg, named for the great eastern forest. Forsburg is a farming village, so essentially it serves as a center for commerce. The milliner, cooper, blacksmith, general goods store and saw mill are all located there. The town is located there because of the river. In order to run a regular mill or a saw mill you need either wind or water power to turn the great gears that cause the grindstones or the saws to turn. Since we were near the great eastern forest which abuts the eastern mountains, we were in a relatively windless zone. That leaves water power as the only means of powering the mills.