Éogar and I rode into Bree together for the meeting of the council of the guildmasters, which took place in one the back rooms of the Prancing Pony, and he told me to wait until I were called. I stood out in the hall for maybe an hour, and then, I didn't even get to talk to them. Instead, Éogar came out and told me it were already decided, and I didn't got to give my proposal. Didn't much like the look on his face.
Perhaps to soften the blow he started with a smile. "The accounts of those masters who've trained you and worked with you were all positive, even one whose only memory of you is a day you brought a wounded filly to him to be mended. I'd like to hear that story one day."
"Not much to it," I said. "Miss Brynleigh were away, lightning startled one our skittish mares, she hurt herself breaking out of the stall. I got her, tended the wound as I could, then brung her to town to be proper treated."
"Well, he remembered and said you saved the mare's life. But the thing is, it's not even a year since you became an apprentice. Even being a Rohirrim, and growing up on a farm, isn't enough to make up for that. It's just too soon to be considered for a mastership. And besides that, they don't think that someone's plan to build a mead hall, when it's not even built yet, is anywhere near enough promise of business to justify a new mastership to run a new business. Maybe one day, if it grows well enough, but not now, when it's not even built, not even proven."
I must have sagged a bit, because he quickly continued with as reassuring a tone as he could summon up. "What they said is this. If you want to put your coin into it, and you can make an arrangement with the landowner, you can build a stable, and run it. I'd suggest you make that arrangement such that, even if it's on her land, it's your stable. Then, you can run it as a private stable, again under whatever arrangement you make with her. It'd be typical that she'd pay you a salary in exchange for tending the horses of her and the others that will use it. You do still got to have a master overseeing you, or several, but it can be someone what just comes by to check on things every month or so, and is ready to answer questions, because you're still learning. But mostly you'd be running the stable on your own.
"Then, in a year, if all this has happened, and the people of the mead hall will speak well of your service, and so will the master or masters that are overseeing you, and if the stable's amount of business is such that the guild thinks it can be a proper business, then the guild will allow you to buy a mastership for that stable. So the arrangement you make with her will also have to allow for this, because at that point, instead of her paying you a salary, she and the others there will become customers of your stable, and you'll be charging them guild-approved prices for services. Which will mean she will probably want you to either buy the land the stable is on at that time, or start paying her rent for it."
It didn't seem like much, this plan, and as I think on it, it still don't. But it's a way forward. Now I got to talk to Freyga about it, and if we can come to some agreement, then I got to find a master as will be willing to oversee me. I know Éogar would do it, as he wants me to succeed, but the thing is, he's a horse breeder and trainer, not an ostler. It'd be best if I found one as did the kind of work I'd be doing.
There's a lot of risk in this, but it could mean I become a master with my own stable in just two years, so I shouldn't feel so set back. That's a good life to be working towards.
