Chương 8: Silent Delivery

The next morning, the sun was nothing more than a pale coin behind the grey clouds. Jack stood in the courtyard of his castle, leaning heavily on his cane. Every breath he took was still cold, but the sharp pain in his lungs had subsided into a manageable ache. The medicine and the active use of his core had done wonders for his breathing.

"Are you sure you should be walking, My Lord?" Karen asked, hovering anxiously beside him.

"The wind is biting today. Your nose... it only stopped bleeding a few hours ago."

"The movement is good for my joints, Karen," Jack said, his voice quiet but steady.

"If I sit in that chair any longer, my legs will turn to stone. I am going down to the village."

"But—""I need to speak with Barnaby," Jack interrupted gently, giving her a reassuring nod.

"We have carriage wheels to reinforce if we are to haul the coal I promised. I won't be long." The walk down the winding path was a reminder of his physical limitations. Jack had to concentrate on every single step, planting the tip of his cane firmly just so that it doesn't slip and make him fall. It took him nearly three times longer than it would have taken a healthy man, but he refused to stop. By the time he reached the outskirts of the village, his thighs were trembling with fatigue, but his mind was sharp.

The village was dead quiet. The villagers who were outside moved like ghosts, their heads bowed against the wind, their faces hollow with hunger. They didn't look at Jack as he passed. They only saw a sickly lord walking toward his own grave. He stopped in front of a low, sturdy stone building with a massive soot-stained chimney. The blacksmith shop. The forge's large wooden double doors were shut tight to keep out the wind. No smoke rose from the chimney.

The iron anvil that usually sat outside on a massive stump was covered in a neat layer of fresh snow. Jack raised his cane and knocked heavily on the wood of the door. A muffled grunt came from inside, followed by the scraping sound of a wooden latch sliding back. The door swung open, revealing a man who looked as though he had been carved directly from the mountain bedrock. Barnaby the Blacksmith was massive.

He had shoulders as wide as a doorway, a thick, bushy beard that was currently white with frost, and forearms covered in old burn scars. He was wrapped in a woolen blanket, his massive hands tucked tightly into his armpits to keep them warm.

"Lord Jack," Barnaby said. He looked down at the young lord, his brow furrowing.

"You shouldn't be out in this wind. If you freeze to death on my porch, Giles will have my head."

"May I come in, Barnaby?" Jack asked, his breath misting heavily in the cold. The blacksmith grunted and stepped aside, allowing Jack to hobble into the freezing shop. The interior of the forge was silent and bitterly cold. The great stone hearth, which should have been roaring with heat, was empty and grey, filled with nothing but cold cinders. Racks of iron bars, hammers, and tongs hung neatly on the walls. Barnaby walked over and sat down directly on his anvil, wrapping his blanket tighter around himself.

"If you're here about the iron brackets for the castle gates, My Lord, I can't help you. My fingers are so stiff I can't even grip my master hammer, and I haven't had a lump of coal to feed the hearth in weeks."

"I am actually here about the carriage wheels," Jack said, leaning his hip against a sturdy wooden workbench to relieve the pressure on his shaking legs.

"I need them reinforced with iron bands. The mountain paths are rough, and we will be hauling heavy loads soon." Barnaby let out a short, mocking snort, a plume of steam escaping his thick mustache.

"Hauling what? Giles tells me you promised the village a miracle. High-grade fuel in two days, he said."

"I did."

"With all due respect, Lord Jack, you're dreaming," Barnaby said, shaking his head.

"The old coal mine collapsed years ago. The deep shafts are filled with choke-damp. If a man goes down there, he doesn't come back up. Unless you have a secret vault of imperial gold to buy coal from the merchants, we've got nothing to burn but our own roof-beams."

"The Frost-Grip family has resources you do not know of, Barnaby," Jack said smoothly, his face entirely expressionless.

"I only need you to prepare the iron bands. Can you do it?" Barnaby stared at Jack, his dark eyes studying the young lord's pale, determined face. He looked at the thin, trembling hands gripping the brass cane, and then at the dark circles beneath Jack's eyes.

"I can work iron, Lord Jack. I've been doing it since I was a lad," Barnaby said softly, his voice losing some of its rough edge.

"But iron doesn't bend for free. It needs heat. Real heat. Wet pine wood doesn't get hot enough to soften a nail, let alone a carriage band. I need high-grade coal. Without it, my hammer stays on the rack, and my forge stays dead." Jack smiled faintly.

"Then I suggest you clear your anvil, Barnaby. You might find the wind bringing you some luck tonight." Barnaby frowned, looking suspicious.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Just be ready to work tomorrow," Jack said, turning back toward the door.

"Keep your shop unlocked." The walk back up to the castle was even more grueling, but Jack's mind was racing. He had established the contact. Now, he had to deliver. Night fell over the valley. The blizzard had returned with a vengeance, the wind screaming through the mountain crevasses and rattling the wooden shutters of Jack's bedroom. Inside, the small fire Karen had built had already died down to a few glowing orange embers, leaving the room dark.

Jack closed his eyes and focused on the three grey threads in his chest. Deep below, in the subterranean vault, Rusty, Dusty, and Bones stood perfectly still. Beside them, on the stone floor of the crypt, lay two massive, bulging burlap sacks. They had been salvaged from the old grain storage, and they were now packed to the brim with gleaming lumps of high-grade coal. Each sack weighed nearly eighty pounds—far too heavy for Jack's frail body to even lift, but to the skeletons, the weight was nothing at all.

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"Rusty. Dusty," Jack commanded mentally, his thoughts traveling down the spiritual links.

"Take the sacks. We are going to the village." Through the connection, Jack felt the skeletons stir. Bones, the giant, stepped back into the shadows of the tomb to remain on guard. Rusty and Dusty stepped forward, their hands gripping the burlap of the heavy sacks. With a synchronized clack of their knee joints, they lifted the heavy loads onto their shoulders. Jack took a deep breath, settling deeper into his wooden chair.

To ensure this delivery went perfectly without any mistakes, he was going to do something highly taxing: he was going to take direct, manual control of their bodies. Which was one of the powers in necromancy domain. He closed his eyes and pushed his mind through the grey threads. The transition was jarring. For a second, Jack felt a wave of intense vertigo. His physical senses faded—the warmth of his small hearth, the sound of his own shallow breathing, and the feeling of his heavy woolen cloak vanished.

Suddenly, he was seeing through two separate, ghostly perspectives. He could see the dark stone of the crypt vault. He could feel the hard texture of the stone steps beneath Rusty's bare skeletal feet. He could feel the heavy weight of the burlap sack pressing down on Dusty's ivory collarbones, though there was no physical pain or fatigue associated with it.

"This is... bizarre," Jack thought, his mind split between two skeletal bodies. It felt like trying to play a piano with his hands and a flute with his feet at the same time. Every step required a conscious, deliberate command. He guided the two skeletons toward the cellar staircase. They didn't use the main castle doors.

Instead, they navigated through the lower, drafty cellars where Gary's grain had been stored, eventually reaching an old, half-collapsed coal-chute that led directly to the side of the castle near the stables. The iron grate of the chute was rusted and choked, but Jack had Bones—who was still connected passively—give it a gentle, heavy push from below. SCREEECH. The rusted grate popped open with a low, scraping shriek that was instantly swallowed by the howling wind outside.

Rusty and Dusty scrambled out of the narrow opening, dragging the heavy sacks into the deep snow of the courtyard. The cold was absolute, but the skeletons did not shiver. The raging wind tore at their bare bones, but they felt no discomfort. Jack focused entirely on the path ahead, guiding them down the mountain slope. The journey was a masterclass in concentration. Because he was controlling two bodies at once, Jack had to constantly alternate his focus.

"Right foot, Rusty."

"Left foot, Dusty."

"Watch the ice, Dusty—" Dusty's foot slipped on a patch of black ice. Through the link, Jack felt a phantom jolt of panic in his own hip. He frantically commanded Dusty to throw his weight forward. The skeleton stumbled, his thin arms flailing wildly as he managed to plant his feet, the heavy sack of coal wobbling dangerously on his shoulder before stabilizing.

"Careful," Jack muttered to himself in his bedroom, his brow covered in a fine sheet of sweat. They reached the outskirts of the village. The snow was falling so thickly that visibility was less than ten feet, which was perfect for their cover. As they rounded the corner near the village well, a low, guttural growl echoed from beneath a ruined porch. Jack froze the skeletons instantly. A scrawny stray dog emerged from the shadows.

Its ribs were visible beneath its matted grey fur, and its eyes gleamed with a desperate, half-starved aggression. It sniffed the air, its black nose twitching as it approached Rusty. The dog was confused. It could see two figures standing in the dark, but it couldn't smell any living meat. There was no scent of blood, no warmth of skin. The dog let out a suspicious bark.

"No, no, no," Jack panicked mentally.

"Don't bark!" If the dog kept making noise, some shivering villager might peer through their shutters. Jack immediately ordered Dusty and Rusty to go into 'statue mode.' Skeletons had no muscles to tire and no lungs to breathe; they could maintain perfect stillness indefinitely. The two skeletons froze, becoming nothing more than two strange statues holding heavy sacks in the middle of a blizzard. The dog crept closer, its tail tucked tightly between its legs. It sniffed Dusty's white bone.

It gave the dry marrow a tentative lick, realized it tasted like stone rather than food, and let out a disappointed whine. Finding nothing of interest, the shivering beast turned and trotted back under its porch, curling up in a tight, miserable ball to escape the wind. Jack let out a mental sigh of relief.

"Move," he commanded, releasing them from the freeze. They glided through the deep snow, silent as ghosts, until they reached the low stone building of Barnaby's forge. The porch was covered in a fresh drift of snow, and the wooden door was closed, just as it had been when Jack had made his visit. Jack had Rusty step forward first. The average-sized skeleton carefully bent its knees, lowering its heavy sack onto the wooden planks of the porch.

It did so with precision, the heavy sack landing with a soft, muffled thump that was completely drowned out by the wind.

"Now you, Dusty," Jack directed, turning his attention to the crooked-necked skeleton.

"Set it down next to Rusty's sack. Slowly." Dusty marched forward, his crooked neck tilting as he prepared to lower his sack. Dusty lifted his right leg, but his heel landed directly on the rim of a frozen, rusty iron washbucket that Barnaby had left near the rain-barrel, which Jack had missed due to blizzard. CLANG! The iron bucket flipped, hitting the stone steps with a metallic ring that sounded like a church bell in the quiet street. It rattled loudly, bouncing down the wooden stairs— CLINK, CLATTER, CLANG!

—before rolling into the middle of the road. Jack's mental link nearly snapped from the sheer shock.

"You clumsy idiot!" Jack screamed in his mind. Inside the stone shop, a loud, startled roar echoed instantly.

"Who's there?!" Barnaby's voice boomed through the wooden door.

"Show yourself!" The iron bolt of the shop door began to slide back with a frantic scrape.

"Hide! Hide behind the snowdrift!" Jack gave several commands at the same time. Rusty and Dusty scrambled. They dove off the porch, throwing their bodies over a four-foot-tall snowdrift that had accumulated against the side of the blacksmith shop. The shop door flew open with a bang. Barnaby stepped out onto the porch.

"I heard you!" Barnaby roared into the storm, raising the iron poker high.

"Giles? Is that you trying to steal my scrap metal again? I'll cave your skull in, you giant ox!" Barnaby took a step down the porch, his eyes scanning the road where the iron bucket lay. But as he looked down, his boots clipped something soft. He paused, looking down, as his eyes caught the dark weave of the two massive burlap sacks sitting directly on his porch. Barnaby froze. He lowered his poker, his brow furrowing in deep confusion.

He knelt in the snow, his hands reaching out to untie the rough hemp rope binding the top of the first sack. He parted the burlap and reached inside. He pulled out a single, large lump of coal. Even in the dim light of the storm, the coal was different. It wasn't the dull, dusty grey of common low-grade coal. It was a deep, glassy black, its sharp edges catching the faint light like a dark diamond.

"No..." Barnaby whispered, his deep voice trembling. His eyes widened as he stared at the lump in his hand.

"This... this is pure high-grade coal, Just like before the mines collapsed" He quickly turned to the second sack, ripping the top open. It was filled with the exact same gleaming black coal.

"How..." Barnaby looked up, staring into the howling, empty darkness of the blizzard.

"Who brought this?" His eyes swept the street again, lingering for a fraction of a second on the massive snowdrift against his wall. The falling snow was so thick, and the wind was blowing so violently, that the frozen bones of Dusty's pelvis looked like nothing more than a weirdly shaped pile of frozen firewood covered in frost. Barnaby didn't investigate. He didn't seem to care.

With a frantic, heavy grunt, the blacksmith grabbed the first eighty-pound sack of coal, hoisting it onto his shoulder as if it were a bag of feathers. He dragged it inside his shop, closed the door, and then rushed back out a second later to drag the second sack inside. The door of the forge closed, and the iron lock clicked shut. Back in the castle, Jack let out a long, shuddering breath. He reached up, wiping a fresh bead of cold sweat and a faint smudge of black soot from his forehead.

His head was throbbing with an ache, but a genuine, triumphant smile touched his pale lips.

"We did it," Jack whispered to the quiet room. He reached out to the links, guiding the two skeletons back up the mountain path through the raging storm. He leaned his head back against the chair, a new problem already forming in his tired mind. The village had their miracle, but they would have questions.

"Now," Jack muttered to himself, listening to the wind outside, "I'll need to find a way to explain all this to the people without revealing the necromancy."