P. Power - Knight of the Realm

He handed her the stone and walked away for a moment, relieved that it hadn't killed her outright. It had to work for him, and for Petra for that matter. But it worked for anyone? A general healing field. Just as planned.

He fought a grin. It was a good thing, but going around acting happy when people had lost their homes and wondered where their next meal was coming from would be rude. A minute later, his face schooled, he went back to the woman to collect the stone. She hugged it to her chest and refused to give it back for a moment.

“I'm better now… I mean, everything is better, not just my arm. I can walk, my back is straight again, and nothing hurts. You don't know what that's like, not hurting… Not until you’ve lived with pain for years.” Tor nodded, but held out his hand, reluctantly she gave the device back.

He could make more, he had more on him, and could even afford to give them away for free, but until he got a chance to test it, he wasn't just handing them out. What if they killed every third person or something?

They didn't.

Everyone just healed, including a father that had gone out in the storm early to rescue his daughter, a twelve year old girl that was sitting by him and crying forcefully. A tree had blown into him and crushed his legs and middle, he was bleeding but still alive when Tor and Holly got there, Kolb coming over when he saw them, Swarley trailing behind, looking less cowed around the fighter than Tor, for some inexplicable reason.

Honestly Tor expected the man to die from the healing attempt and told them all that, but the man chuckled almost imperceptibly and said something Tor barely caught at all.

“What the hell?”

Well, that made sense, if you were dead anyway, why not take the risk of the treatment killing you?

The healing worked though, completely, if painfully. The man screamed and hollered for about three minutes. Then he sat up and looked at his lower body, which was nearly healed. They left him with the field for half an hour, but it seemed to hold just fine. No one relapsed later that Tor noticed, so it seemed that field really worked. Yay. Most of the injuries were minor, but it was faster to heal those with magic than treat them otherwise and the people could be put to work within minutes instead of taking days to get healthy, so it was efficient.

The outlying areas were largely better… or massively worse depending on the location. A few full families were dead, their houses washed away or crushed, one just collapsed. But the rest were nearly untouched. The day lasted until after dark, when they decided it was too dangerous to work. Tor and Varley set up four houses which gave everyone on the working team a bed. He shared with Varley, Trice and the red-headed guard woman that had attacked them all the first day.

Yvonne was her name, she told them, a bit warily. Tor didn't mention it, but wondered what she thought they were going to do? Beat her up for spying on them? All she did was sleep, which was really all Tor was up to as well. It occurred to him that the women might have carried a grudge over being stopped like she had been, but apparently that wasn't a huge issue to her. Of course he'd given her pie too, so maybe that had already smoothed things over?

Who didn't like pie?

Varley crawled in next to him, but even though she tried to rouse his interest, he fell asleep anyway. It wasn't as much fun, but he didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Work trance wasn't really sleep, for all it could look similar, and he'd been up for a long time. Too long. Besides, she probably only wanted to sleep with him so she could claim the child was his. Since that didn't matter to him, or likely anyone else, she could save the attempt if that was her game.

Then again, if she wanted to have sex, he wouldn't say no. It was fun. It didn't matter that she was pregnant, not really. He'd marry her like he was supposed to, and do his best to claim the child, even if it was obviously a royal giant or had the wrong hair color. For all he knew that could be why they were trying to marry her off to Peterson. Maybe he looked more like the real father? A funny thought passed through his mind, that the man, best described as fierce, intimidating, and verbally clumsy, may have managed to get the girl into bed. They clung together as they slept.

In the morning Trice looked over and shook her head as they sat up.

“Now I'm jealous. I admit I thought about climbing into bed with you Tor, but I guess I missed that chance… Well, dibs on tonight.” All the girls laughed, which Tor kind of understood, since sleeping alone had to be more comfortable, even on the soft shield material beds.

They all got warm showers and hot breakfasts, since both he and Yvonne could cook. Tor had to run out and make the pots and pans, using an earth compressor, a light tan focus stone here for some reason, compared to what he thought of as the normal red-black color. It was just as strong and heat resistant, so it would work.

That was the pattern for the next two days. The damage finally got fixed and they all returned to town to find that rebuilding was going well, but food was a little scarce. A lot of the fishing boats had gone down when the main dock lost a section that kept things tied in place. On top of that about half the stored food had gotten damp and just started to rot and mildew, before Tor could get a room drier made. Once he was told about the need he had a large batch ready to go inside an hour. No one had even thought to ask.

Tor didn't shake his head, because that made sense. You dried food in the sun, or by letting air run over it. Everyone knew that. The same with the rest of it though, he'd never even seen a fishing boat before, but realized that if he had an example, maybe he could help. It wouldn't hurt to look into it at least, right? No one knew to ask if he could do it though, so they didn’t.

Holly looked at him sadly when he said that, jaw clenching, as if it were an insult she didn't feel she deserved or something. It was one of those baffling things that didn't make a lot of sense to him. How would his helping her people be an insult to Holly? Was he not supposed to help? Or was it that she thought they owed him already or something, and here he was compounding the debt? That…

Tor didn't know how to explain it to her, but that it was an emergency and besides, there were no debts between friends, right? So of course anything that could be done to help would be. Even if it made her mad at him.

Inside her house she had plans and pictures of boats, a lot of them huge, but she assured him that the fishing craft were smaller, and powered by the wind. Tor realized that he could use a similar rudder set up to what was already used and something like the flight field for a cargo lift that would let people move almost the way they were used to in the water now and control their speed on purpose without rigging and sails. Maybe at least. If he didn't just mess it all up.

Later that day they went to the docks and Tor tried to memorize the way the brown wooden ships looked, their rough size and how they worked to collect fish. That part was important. A nifty craft that went where you wanted would be nice, but unless they could use them the way they were used to, people wouldn't. New things were treated with suspicion in most places.

For good reason. New things could have flaws, or dangers you wouldn't know about, since they were, by definition, new.

The boats he came up with were like the houses, not real at all, but they looked and felt right. Solid and correct to the touch, textured exactly like smooth wood. They didn't have sails, instead they had a single lever that controlled speed next, to the big round driver's wheel boat captains used. They gave the first one to a man named Jaime who, spat when he heard the idea, grumbled and groused about the evils of magic and then took off, and went out when no one else could. Hours earlier. Before they got to the end of the wooden peer to look for the next person to test it, three more walked over and asked to try one too. In all Tor handed out twenty that day. By night fall they had enough fish for everyone and a good bit of shellfish and giant reddish insects too.