The wind runner book 10.., p.86
The Wind Runner: Book 10 (The Wandering Inn), page 86
“Impure. Your steel is impure, and your forge only builds in more impurity, for all you clean away by striking it. We will show you true blacksmithing now. But we must have steel to do it. All we have brought is Naq-Alrama steel.”
“So. You’re ready with your little magic circle? Your forge isn’t even hot.”
Daiton pointed at the furnace, which was indeed flameless. Nawal stared at Trey.
“We have our own heat. Steel. Have you any of quality?”
“I have pucks and bars. All ready to be processed. Take your pick of my inferior steel and make me a better blade out of it!”
Daiton growled. Nawal looked at the bars of steel he’d indicated. She went over to some, grabbed one, discarded it, found another, tapped it against the table, listened, shook her head, and found another. It took her five minutes before she came back with eight bars of steel. Daiton’s eyes bulged.
“What are you doing with that? Do you plan on robbing me too?”
Nawal glared at Trey, who glared back. He was getting sick of being the supposed middleman!
“We steal nothing. But we need enough steel. This will do, I suppose. We must fold the steel.”
“What? It’s been folded! That’s good steel right there! We hammered it out of the pucks!”
Nawal gave Daiton a scornful glance before she caught herself.
“You hammered it into shape. But you did not fold it. Did you bend the metal on itself? How many times did you fold it, then? Ten times? Twenty? Sixty?”
“Sixty—you’d get nothing left if you folded steel that many times!”
“Nothing but pure steel.”
Nawal turned. Trey thought Daiton would tear out the rest of his hair, then. He threw up his hands, red-faced, furious.
“Fine! Take the steel! But you’d better have a sword by sundown or I will see you pay for all the steel you’ve wasted! Show me how fast you can make a sword!”
He snatched his hammer and strode away, his apprentices scattering in front of him. Trey found Daiton swearing and striking his hammer on the other side of the shop. The [Blacksmith] turned to him, glaring.
“They’ll never do it. A sword on top of folding all that metal? Never. That girl understands something of the craft, but she’s arrogant by far! I’ll make her tribe pay for all the metal they used, His Majesty’s orders or not.”
Trey feared this would come to Flos’ attention, but he didn’t know how to stop it. And part of him was curious to see if Nawal could back up her big words. He looked back at Nawal, who was laying the metal flat and speaking with Silmak, who was still busy with his magic circle.
“Uh, Master Daiton, what did you mean by folding steel?”
“Oh, that? She was talking about a way to purify the metal. That’s what gets me so angry. The girl, that Nawal’s right that our steel isn’t as pure as it can be. It’s pretty damn strong! But if you took it, heated it, and folded it in on itself, you’d hammer out more of the…eh, what do you call it?”
“Impurity?”
“Yes, that. All the crap in the metal you get from forging it. That’s what folding steel is. It’s an advanced trick not every [Blacksmith] knows about. I shouldn’t be surprised the damn Tannousin clan knows the way of it, though. And the concept’s simple. You fold the steel over. Hit it and hit it until it’s a solid block again. You’re always losing steel that way, you see? The heating and reheating while you strike it—it’s purifying the metal, leaving you with less, but better stuff. But doing it as many times as they claim you need to? They’d waste enough material to make nine swords just to make one! And the effort required!”
Trey glanced at Nawal, then at the sky. The sun was already beginning its decline from the apex in the sky.
“She’s got until sundown to forge the sword?”
“So she claims. That’s, what, eight hours at most? Impossible. Impossible to do. If she has a Skill, she could move the metal fast. But folding the steel and making a sword? In a day? I can make swords this quick because I have a team that takes shifts. By herself, with a Skill? She’d have to take at least two days, probably closer to four or five to do a proper job of it. And she’s not more than a girl. Blacksmithing is hard work on the body!”
Daiton raised his voice. Some of his apprentices were nodding. He turned, perhaps to shout that at the Tannousins. That was when Silmak, standing in the center of the circle he’d drawn, raised his hands up and then clapped them together.
The sound was soft. But the blast of air that burst from the circle was anything but. The sound was like a gunshot of noise, and Trey shielded his face as grit and dust blew throughout the forge. Daiton coughed, swearing.
“What in the blazes was—”
He half-charged Silmak, who was standing in the large circle he’d drawn around the anvil and that stone block, and then staggered as he crossed the boundary of the circle. Trey saw him gasping wordlessly, then stumble out.
“Master Daiton!”
He jumped forwards, afraid the smith had had a stroke or heart attack. But as Trey passed into the magical circle, he felt it too. He couldn’t breathe! Inside the circle there was no air! No oxygen, nothing. A void. Trey clawed at his throat and then stumbled backwards. His lungs reinflated with air, and he gasped a shuddering breath.
“What was—what is—”
He coughed and then saw Silmak step out of the circle. The spellcaster took a long gulp of air and then breathed out slowly.
“The circle is finished. The furnace will burn. My part is done. All that remains is to let the smith forge.”
He stepped away, and Nawal moved forwards. She was holding the bars of metal she’d taken, and she placed them on the anvil before stepping out of the circle to grab her hammer. She took a deep breath before she entered and exited the circle. Trey stared.
“No air?”
Daiton was still gasping for breath. Silmak was concentrating on the stone box now, so the woman, Bezha, spoke. To Trey, again.
“Air burns the metal and adds impurity as you forge. Everyone knows that. That’s part of how the black metal, known as scaling, is produced.”
She pointed to the flakes of black metal lying on the ground. Bezha bent and picked some up to show Trey. It looked like burnt metal, which it was.
“This is the impurity in metal that smiths hammer out. Not just impurity though; the metal itself is always burning thanks to the heat and air. So it hardens.”
She nodded at Daiton’s forge. Trey turned and saw it was true.
As the metal in the forges grew red hot, it also developed that…scaling. Like black spots on the metal as it cooled. It flaked off as the apprentices struck the metal, falling to the ground like ash. Daiton scowled.
“We brush our metal clean of scaling if it gets too much, but it’s an inevitability. So your fancy trick prevents that. So what? You can’t breathe in there. And if there’s no air, there’s no fire!”
He pointed a trembling finger at the magic circle. Trey understood. So the circle was meant to prevent the metal being affected by the air? That was an ingenious solution. But Daiton was right. Basic chemistry meant that no oxygen meant no fire. But then he saw Silmak point at the stone box. The runes inside began to glow, and Trey felt something else blast outwards.
Heat. The stone box was filled with a blazing heat, so much that the air rippled and all the sweat on Trey and Daiton’s bodies dried in an instant. They recoiled and moved out of the way as Silmak, gloves on now, placed two blocks of stone in front of the box, sealing it off. Then the heat wasn’t so bad, but Trey could still feel it coming from the box, as hot, no, hotter than the furnaces.
Bezha smiled mockingly at Trey and Daiton.
“You seek heat, young foreigner? There it is. That is a rune furnace. Silmak’s power fuels it, as does all the magic of the Tannousin Clan. We provide the heat to melt metal.”
“Shaman magic.”
Daiton backed away from the box distrustfully. But now he was staring at Nawal. He’d said she had no heat to melt her metal, but now she did. And the furnace was inside the void of air.
“So the metal gets hot enough to move. And the anvil’s inside the circle, so that means you can heat it and shape it without air touching it. Without getting that, uh, impurity. Scaling.”
Trey looked at Bezha. The woman nodded.
“And the rest will come out as the metal folds. See? It begins.”
Nawal had stepped into the circle again. She opened the rune furnace and put in one of the bars of metal. Trey caught another glimpse of the inside of the box. It was bright. There was no flame, but the rune inside was glowing white, and the small enclosure was built so that the heat only had one way to flow out—and as Nawal placed a brick in front of it, all the openings were sealed.
Daiton shook his head as Nawal stepped outside again and took another deep breath.
“I suppose that’s one way of doing it. But she still can’t breathe. Are you telling me she’ll be taking that thing out and pounding on it without taking so much as a breath? In that clothing? In that heat?”
“Yes.”
Bezha looked at Trey and Daiton. They both stared at her. Nawal was standing outside the circle, breathing deeply and heavily. Daiton stared at her.
“Madness. Unless she’s got a hammer long enough to let her work outside of that circle, she’ll never do it. And I’ve spent long enough staring at cheap tricks! Where’s my sword blank?”
He stomped past Trey to his side of the forge and snatched up his hammer. Trey saw him take out an unfinished sword, a long bar of metal, and begin hammering hard on it. The metal moved at once, and Trey watched as Daiton narrowed one side, forming a handle of sorts. But then he turned back because Nawal had reentered the circle.
The bar of metal glowed as she took it out. The veiled young woman made no sound as she walked back to the anvil, the glowing metal in hand. Her hammer was bright. Polished. And Trey saw the ground, the tongs, even the anvil’s surface itself had been cleaned.
The metal was placed on the surface of the anvil. Nawal raised her hammer. And she brought it down. Her lips were closed. And she wasn’t breathing. But the first strike of her hammer made the anvil and metal thunder in silence. The only sound was the thump through the ground itself. Yet her hammer rose up and down in a single, perfect motion.
It was a simple strike, but the second fell as soon as the hammer rose. And the third hit the metal. Again. Faster. Faster.
The sound was deep without the air to transmit it. A tang of metal on metal, vibrating through the earth on Nawal’s side of the forge. But she was silent. In fact, Trey realized she’d stopped speaking after the circle had been drawn. He stared at her.
Nawal’s eyes were focused on the bright metal beneath her. Her hammer rose and fell. One strike per second. And then two. Heavy blows; Trey could see the weight of each strike make the metal want to jump, but her other hand held the metal still. Nawal kept striking the metal. And Trey realized. She was in the circle. She wasn’t breathing.
“Dead gods. Is that girl actually doing it?”
Daiton had looked up. He was staring at Nawal. She was still there, hammering on the metal. For five seconds. Ten. Then twenty. Forty. Trey counted. On the forty-fourth second, Nawal moved. She let go of the cooling metal and walked out of the circle. He heard a sharp intake of breath. Nawal walked around the edge of the magic circle once, breathing slowly, deeply. Then she took a breath as she entered the circle. She seized both the tongs and hammer and pounded on the metal.
This time, she didn’t last the entire time. But that was because the metal had turned from yellow to orange to a cherry red. Before it cooled, Nawal had strode back towards the rune forge and returned the metal to the container. Then she walked back to the anvil. And swept it with a cloth. A miniscule amount of scaling fell to the ground. Nawal did the same to her hammer, cleaning it of soot. And then she stepped out of the circle. She walked it once and then returned to the center.
The metal was hot. Nawal took it back out. And her hammer struck the metal. Once, twice, three times. So fast that Trey saw her arm blur as the hammer she held rose and fell. Again and again. And she did not breathe.
Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-four—and Nawal walked towards the forge. She replaced the metal to heat and walked outside of the circle. She breathed then, a pained gasp for air. This time, her cycle around the circle was slower. But she’d timed it so that when she returned, the metal was ready to be struck again. She took up the hammer and worked. In a void, without a sound.
Trey had forgotten there was anyone else in the forge. He only turned his head when he heard one of the apprentices utter a word. Daiton’s face was frozen with shock. The old [Smith] stared as Nawal walked out of the circle and took another precious breath of air. He looked away as if tearing himself from the sight and met Trey’s eyes.
“She’s going to burn out. That kind of pace? Without taking a breath?”
But he said nothing of her hammer work. Because there was nothing to say. Nawal struck the metal as fast—no, faster than he did. Like a machine, each blow on the center. And the metal moved as quickly for her as it did for him. As she’d said, she was folding the first bar of steel. Folding and folding it again, producing the black scaling, the impurity which she swept out of the circle.
“She can’t do that for more than a few more tries. Surely. A smith needs air! That girl will hurt herself! You—do you let her work like this all the time?”
Daiton rounded on Bezha. The woman was watching Nawal. All the Tannousin clan were. Some were sitting, others standing. But their eyes were on Nawal as she slowly made a circuit of the magical circle and stepped back in. Metal rang.
“She has a Skill. More importantly, the Tannousin smiths are trained to hold their breaths at a young age. If they do not gain this Skill among others, they are not meant to be smiths. This is a pattern Nawali has learned since she could hold a hammer. Look. She has the pattern set now.”
Bezha replied calmly to Trey. She pointed. And Trey saw Bezha was right. Nawal was tracing a pattern in the ground. He saw how each step, each phase was predetermined.
Hammer the metal for exactly forty-four seconds. Return it to the runic box to heat. Step outside the circle and breathe. Return to the circle, wipe her hammer and anvil once, reclaim the metal. Hammer it again, return to the furnace. Breathe.
It was a pattern. And Nawal kept to it, though she had to work without air. Sweat was already running down her forehead, dripping down her veil. Trey, watching, realized the vacuum must not be completely devoid of air. Just oxygen? Then he noticed how much she was sweating.
“Her clothes.”
They were thick. And that veil couldn’t have helped either. Trey looked around. Bezha’s eyes were steady.
“That is how she must dress.”
“In the forge? But it’s so hot. And the air—can’t she take a break?”
“When she is done, she will rest. Now she forges. This is a competition, is it not? Where is Smith Daiton’s sword?”
Bezha looked at Daiton. The [Blacksmith] looked down and realized his metal had gone cold. He cursed, shoving it back in the furnace.
“That girl’s still folding the steel. This isn’t even the first step if she wants to use all eight bars and make a sword! I’m halfway done—I just have to beat out the shape. This is no fair match.”
But he’d lost some of his confidence in saying it. Bezha just turned her attention back to Nawal. And the girl traced the time in her slow steps. She took the metal, already reduced, out of the runic furnace. Trey saw her take the second bar of metal and place it in the furnace. Nawal began to hammer the first one, lengthening it, turning it into a flat bar of metal. The first of many she’d turn into a solid piece. Into a sword.
Her hammer flashed. She worked in silence, without air. Then she began to speed up.
——
This is how Bealt made a horseshoe. He took a bar of metal, heated it in his furnace until it was bright yellow, and then took it to his anvil. There he placed it against the round horn of the anvil and raised his hammer.
One, two, three! Bealt’s hammer flashed down, and the metal rang. He hammered a bow into the horseshoe. Then, he flipped it and used the round horn of the anvil to bend the rest of the horseshoe into shape.
“So that’s what that pointy thing is for!”
Erin laughed in delight. The Gnoll [Farrier] grinned. From the straight bar of metal, he’d made a ‘U’ shape, almost a horseshoe already! He grinned, and Erin thought he would continue hammering. But the metal was already red, cooling so quickly she couldn’t believe it. So Bealt placed it flat on the hammer and grabbed the odd spike.
“What’s that for?”
“Fullering. That’s what it’s called, Miss. Making holes in the horseshoe, so it can be nailed to the hoof. See the little groove? It’s so the nail heads don’t stick out when hammered in. See? Watch.”
Bealt placed the spike so its narrow tip was on top of the horseshoe’s center. Then he gave it a few powerful blows. Erin saw he’d punched a hole through the metal.
“Oh! I get it!”
So that was how you made holes in a horseshoe? Bealt made two more before the metal had cooled even further. He lifted it.
“Too cold to work. I’d stress the metal. So into the furnace it goes. See?”
He tossed the horseshoe back in, rearranging it so the burning charcoal heated the horseshoe evenly. Erin nodded.
“I get it. But you have to be quick, don’t you?”
Bealt flashed her a pleased grin.
“Ah, well, it depends on the metal. Some things cool quicker than others, but yes! Speed is a virtue, Miss Solstice! Sure, you can take your sweet time, but that’s for delicate stuff. Not [Farrier]’s work! If a horse has thrown a shoe on the road or in a race and the [Messenger] needs to be gone or the [Farmer] at work by sunrise, the [Farrier] must be done!”
He’d raised his voice again. Erin could tell both Pelt and Maughin were listening. They could hardly have missed how she was sitting in Bealt’s forge, listening to him talk about his craft. And there was something impressive in how fast the [Farrier] made his horseshoe.
