21: Pistols and Paella

Hi mum, this is what we did for the rest of the day in Altdorf. We had sold all the wool from Boegenhafen, which I have told you about, so now we needed to find a new cargo to take to Nuln, or wherever we were going. Did I mention, we needed to go to Gruenberg to drop off Renate before Blume strangles her, and I wanted to go to Grissenwald because I have a feeling that the nefarious is there.

I was looking around for a likely cargo. To be honest I wasn’t looking very hard because I don’t really understand all this trading stuff, and when someone tries to explain it to me, it just gets boring. Anyway, I went past a gun shop and in the window, it had a brace of the finest pistols you’ve even seen. They had silver bits and mother of pearl handles, and they were being sold for thirty-two crowns for the pair. That was a lot of money, of course, but we had just got more than twice that for the wool.

Meanwhile, Willow had gone to see Aunt Amanita up in Haffenstadt to give her the family letter. And Guido went with her to look after her because Dreamy didn’t want to leave the boat because he was on the wanted posters. On the way up Willow warned Guido not to look Amanita in the eyes because she was scary and can see weakness. But I’m not sure how true that is, and I don’t know whether Guido looked her in the eyes, in any case (It is true, and he didn’t – Willow).

I think Amanita may have been in a bad mood when they got there. She was a bit more friendly once she recognised Willow but she was still quite suspicious of Guido. A lot of the houses in Haffenstadt are proper halfling homes, and some are big houses that have been converted to more convenient size for halflings. This meant Guido had to crouch down to even get in her house. And as a pipeweed seller, Amanita’s house was full of different pipeweed plants growing all over the place. And Amanita said that Willow could have a load of fuggleweed for free.

Amanita wanted to know where Dreamy was, or Hartpetal, as she called him (I’m not really sure why Dreamy stopped being Hartpetal and became Dreamy but I expect I will hear about it sooner or later), and Willow explained about the wanted posters, so Amanita said she would get the other halflings to tear down any poster that they saw.

And after Willow told her all about our travels and told her a bit about Guido, Amanita asked him about Estalian food. Guido talked about Paella, but I think we all thought he was talking about Pie-Ella, like the pies Ella makes. And so Amanita insisted that Guido make her some Paella. Guido said something about needing special pans with holes in them to make it, and that she didn’t have any pans with holes in, so he couldn’t. But we later found out that Guido just said that to get out of cooking. I don’t think pans with holes in them would ever be much use.

Willow told Amanita about all the medical things she had helped with on our journey and all the things she had learned and showed her her satisfaction survey. But Amanita criticised the size of the smiles on the survey and that upset Willow a bit. I think Amanita was just one of these people who are a bit negative, sometimes, without even thinking about it (But she is quite positive sometimes, too – Willow).

When Willow told Amanita about Blume, Amanita was worried that Blume had been bullying her and threatened to sort her out with her rolling pin, but Guido assured Amanita that Blume’s heart was in the right place, and they thought that it was just that her parents didn’t love her. And then they had to explain all about Blume shooting Willow because of the octopus man again, which is a difficult thing to explain and we still don’t know whether Blume did the right thing or not.

And then Amanita threatened Guido that if he didn’t  look after Willow properly he would feel her rolling pin, which didn’t sound too bad until Willow explained that Amanita had been married five times and four of her husbands had felt the rolling pin up their arse. Again, I’m not sure this is true (That’s what I was told – Willow). And so Guido swore he would do everything he could to keep all the halflings safe.

Anyway, Amanita had been slaving away for days making pies for Willow because she had been expecting Willow to come a couple of weeks ago. In that time she had managed to make a good number of pies. So Willow brought a load of the pies back to Das Moot with her, which was nice because we had been eating fish soup for a long time, and I didn’t want to risk doing any fishing in Altdorf harbour.

Amanita told Willow to leave town and not hurry back as the whole town was going down the plughole. She said that Candy’s hair had changed colour for no reason, going from red to black and Willow told her about how her hat had change colour, too. And as they were leaving, Amanita pinched Guido’s arse, and I’m not sure the scriptures of Myrmidia say anything about defending against that sort of tactical move.

Meanwhile, back on Das Moot, I told Blume about the pistols in the shop, and it occurred to us that with eighty crowns on the boat, we could afford a brace each. We wondered where Dreamy had put the money but decided that he hadn’t had time to put it anywhere, yet, and so we needed to ask him about it. I’m not sure what our plan was exactly, but it involved us getting hold of those lovely pistols.

Dreamy told us that if we spent the money on pistols then we wouldn’t be able to spend it on cargo and make more money taking it to Nuln. And, although I don’t really understand that much about trading, I had to agree he had a point. He told us we could have our share of the cargo money, which would be sixteen crowns each, and we could do whatever we wanted with that, but then we wouldn’t be able to share in the boat’s profits. And Blume realised that is she bought a pistol she wouldn’t be able to afford powder and shot for it. She said she wanted the money to buy a pistol and still retain a stake in the ship’s cargo but Dreamy wouldn’t let her.

I think she was about to have a tantrum because she couldn’t get what she wanted and so I told her I agreed with Dreamy. The she got mad again and stormed off. And she made out that it had all been my idea about the pistols and that I’d chickened out, which was probably true, but I denied it anyway.

Blume did go off to the gun shop but only to buy some powder and small shot for her blunderbuss. And even then she managed to get into an argument with the shopkeeper because she wanted twice as much as she could afford.

Meanwhile, Willow and Guido were on their way to the temple of Myrmidia Incazzata in Hammerpfad. Guido suggested that when they were in the temple, Willow could speak a bit more quietly and respectfully and not to be so open about starting conversations with people. I don’t think Willow knew what he was referring to, but when he described it as her bedside manner, I think she understood a bit better (Yes, I think sometimes my bedside manner could do with a bit more consideration – Willow). And he suggested she call everyone there father, as a mark of respect, but not dad.

Guido found the priest captain of the temple in the training ground working on the fighting techniques of some of the recruits. And explained to him that he had come all the way from Estalia and asked for an audience. And so the priest captain invited him to his office. He left Willow on her own but was happy she was probably in the safest place in the entire city, despite all the fighting going on around her.

Guido explained to the captain all about his visions and how they guided him to Boegenhafen, and became more specific the closer he got, and how he managed to identify the halflings from his visions. He told him that he still didn’t know why Myrmidia had sent him these visions, but it was plain that they (that’s us) were unusual halflings and they had survived things many people would not survive. He said if they weren’t destined for greatness, then at least they must be destined to interfere with great events. And he knew he was on the right track to follow Myrmidia as she had granted him the vision, and now, powers of prayer.

And Guido told him that being with the halflings was difficult and not what he was used to as a Myrmidian. The captain said that it was easy to be a disciplined soldier among the ranks of hundreds of other disciplines soldiers, and much harder when you are the only one. He told Guido to obey the cult’s structures and when the time was right, he would know what Myrmidia wanted from him. And the captain said he would send a letter back to the captain of Guido’s temple in Estalia telling him Guido had reached Altdorf. So I think Guido was satisfied with his business in Altdorf and how he had been received there, but he didn’t say much about it.

Then he found Willow sitting on a helmet and said he would introduce her to one of the surgeons of the temple so she could learn a bit about battlefield medicine. The surgeon was good enough to answer some of Willow’s questions and showed her how to make a tourniquet for bleeding wounds. The surgeon told Willow that being brave wasn’t about not being afraid, but it was about doing the right thing, even when you were afraid.

Back in the boat we were all eating Aunt Amanita’s pies, which were very good, although a little bit pipeweedy. Guido told us about going to the temple and talking about his halfling dreams. Blume asked him if any others of us were in his dreams, and Guido did say that he had recently had a dream about Renate, but it was a confusing dream, and he didn’t think it had been sent by Myrmidia. And for some reason this annoyed Blume and she stormed off to the hold. I think she went into Renate’s things and took one of her knitting needles and hid it in a crack in the floor, just to annoy her. Blume’s a bit like that with all of us, but she is especially like that with Renate. Still if everything goes to plan, we will be dropping Renate off in Gruenberg in a few days.

Then we got to discussing the money. I wasn’t really that interested in the subtleties of trade, and I don’t think Guido was that interested in any sort of money, but Dreamy reckoned if we all had two crowns each, and put ten crowns in our travel fund, then we would have sixty crowns to buy a new cargo. Having all that money was a bit of a worry, really. I have to say it’s good to have a bit of money so you can buy food and things, but it seems like a big headache to have lots of money. I was kind of feeling sorry for the nobles who have more money than they know what to do with, as it must be very worrying for them.

Dreamy had to convince Blume to add her share to the cargo fund, and then we sent Willow, Blume, and Guido off to the wood merchants because we knew that there was a bit of a market for proper northern construction wood in the south where they don’t have as many forests, and they don’t have the same sorts of trees.

Now, Willow has a seemingly terrible haggling technique. I don’t think she would be able to haggle me down on anything at all. It might be because she seems so bad at it that she lulls her victims into a false sense of security, or it might be that her naivety is disarming, or she might just be good at putting people at their ease, or bigs might just be really bad at haggling, but she definitely gets results (Guido said I was very good at it, too - Willow). In any case, she managed to get an extra twenty per cent bonus wood thrown in, so we ended up with enough wood to almost fill Das Moot, for our sixty crowns, and the merchant agreed to help us load the boat if we docked there first thing in the morning.

While they were there, Blume did her ear-finger signal thing to the wood merchant to see if she could get a better deal but he was plainly not one of those purple cultists, or whatever they are.

While they were gone, Renate brought a couple of crowns to Dreamy telling him she had found them under the hammocks, when she had been looking for a missing knitting needle. Dreamy knew the money was Blume’s and I think t was very honest of Renate to hand it over. I think I would have probably put it in my pocket and then forgotten all about it until I needed to buy something.

And when Blume got back from the merchant’s she noticed her money was missing and got very angry, accusing Renate of stealing it. But then when Dreamy revealed that she had handed it to him, Blume got a bit embarrassed and kind of apologised, and kind of didn’t. But Renate was very good about it, saying that sometimes you just have to be the bigger person, and that she was the bigger person, which probably made Blume feel even smaller.

Then we got talking about paella and Guido said there was probably somewhere in Altdorf, where the Estalians lived, where they could get a genuine paella. We all thought this was  a good idea but I thought they were talking about Ella’s pies. But it turns out paella has nothing to do with pies, so I didn’t bother going and stayed behind to keep Dreamy company. It can’t be much fun being in the biggest city in the Empire, with countless things to do and see and buy and eat but having to hide on your boat.

So Guido took Willow, Renate, and Blume to the restaurant. He spoke Estalian to the waiter, which is probably easy for him because he is Estalian, but then Blume started speaking Classical to show off her language skills, even though no one speaks Classical anymore. And she showed off her knowledge of Estalian wines and corrected Guido’s pronunciation on every wine she could think of. And to  get in on the wine appreciation, Willow told Renate the story of the Grape Kids. To be honest I don’t think the mix of them would make the best company and I think I’m glad I didn’t go. They even managed to argue about how to split the bill. Willow brought us back a doggy bag, anyway, and it turns out paella is just fishy rice (It was nice fishy rice – Willow).

So, although we managed to buy a cargo, not much else happened that day in Altdorf. Even though we have paid for three days on the docks, I’d be inclined to leave as soon as possible. I’m sure Dreamy would like to leave as soon what with him being on all the wanted posters. I think Guido has done what he came here to do. Willow and Dreamy delivered their letter, at the second time of asking, and Auntie Amanita said we should get out, anyway, because of all the strangeness going on.

It seems a shame to leave Altdorf so soon, but now we’re proper boatmen we need to move our cargo as fast as we can to maximise profits, or something. And, if you’re worried about it, mum, Renate did find her knitting needle, in the end. I’ll probably write again after we leave Altdorf.