Chapter  6      The Forge 

 

The wet cooper, maker of tight barrels for holding liquids, a finer craftsman than the dry cooper whose products only had to hold grain and flour, gingerly placed his hands on the small of his back, set his mouth in a thin line and leaned backward.  He grimaced, pausing in mid motion for a few seconds, then shut his eyes, and began winding his body front and back, left and right.  The ritual was well known to all craftsman on the row.  Just as the cock's crow signaled day's beginning, Cooper's pain relieving exercise signaled day's end.  Summer or winter, when Cooper's back gave out, everyone began putting away his tools and wares, and the buyers tucked away their purses and proceeded homeward.

"Cooper," called Edward the smith from the door of his forge, across from the cooperage, "Do you wind yourself up one day and unwind the next, or are you going one way all the time?  Careful your feet do not spin loose from the ground in front of customers!"

Cooper halted his contortions and slowly fastened his steady black eyes on Edward.  His brows cranked down.  His thin, tightly muscled arms, bent akimbo like vestigial wings, stopped moving.  His thin beak of a nose flared.  The woodwright and his apprentices, the leather workers and theirs, the tinkers, weavers, candle makers, and copper smiths all paused in their cleanup to watch Cooper's response.  This, too, was part of the evening ritual.

Cooper regarded Edward for some time before making a reply.  Edward stood under the massive oak lintel of his shop, head cocked, waiting, with an expression of concerned, yet scientific, curiosity.  He glanced at Cooper's feet as if to watch the unwinding.

"Smith," said Cooper at last, "I dare not unwind because that would be going widdershins, and last time I did that, this village had very bad luck.  You came the very next day.  No, I dare not unwind again.  Twice such luck is more than we could weather."  He never cracked a smile.

Eyes shifted to Edward.

The smith quickly replied, appealing to the audience, "What great unwinding conjured up Cooper?  Does anyone remember that far back?"

Cooper flicked some imaginary offal at Edward and called for his two apprentices, manning a pit saw, to quit for the day.  Smiles and murmurs of laughter drifted between the shops.  Though Edward and Cooper were both masters, neither acknowledged the other's ability; however, the close observer would notice the Cooper using saws and planes made by Edward, and Edward quenching his swords in barrels made by Cooper.

Edward shook his head in exaggerated perplexity and returned to the forge.

"Dell," he said to his young apprentice, "fetch me that small ingot of wootz.  When you bank the coals tonight, we will put the ingot right on top.  Let it get used to the heat.  I feel like making a sword tomorrow."

Dell stole a glance at the remains of a quenching barrel in a gloomy corner of the forge.  It had met a premature end several months before by way of a powerful hammer blow which split one of the beechwood staves like a broom straw.

"I have been thinking about it," announced Edward.  "The trick has to be in the quenching or the tempering.  One of the two, for sure.  For the life of me, I can not think of a way to swage or fuller the stuff any way I have not tried before."

Dell tried to avoid the conversation, but the heavy silence told him Edward wished him to speak.  Of course, the smith did not really value any opinion other than his own, but he did expect others to provide the opportunity for him to give it.  Dell cleared his throat of the charcoal fumes rising from the coals he banked, and said, "I do not know."  The smith wanted something more, so he said, "You have tried everything.  Water, oil, brine."  He paused, "Ox blood."   He remembered that last item especially.  The forge looked like the floor of a slaughter house.  It had take two full barrels of sawdust to soak it all up.  The whole episode had been so outrageous, even Cooper declined to joke of it.

"I have heard the Vikings, when they wanted a really strong temper, would thrust a red hot sword into the belly of a Christian."  Edward rolled a speculative eye toward his apprentice.  "You are a Christian, are you not, Dell?"

Dell unconsciously reached for his stomach.  "I wish you would not joke like that," he said.  "It makes me squeamish."

"Maybe we will save that for next time.  What do you say to milk?"

"Milk?"

"Why not?"  Edward peered keenly at the young man, who looked uncomfortable.  "Do not worry, Dell.  You are too skinny to quench anything bigger than a lady's dagger.  Anyway, I have already bought most of tomorrow morning's milk from our milk monger.  That should be enough to fill the thin barrel."

Dell eyed the thin barrel and imagined it with a hole in its side and a spreading pool of milk flowing over the clay floor.  It was empty now.  Why could not it just stay that way?  In two days, the milk he could not sop up would start stinking like rotting calf manure!  "God!" he muttered, and immediately regretting his minor blasphemy, hurriedly made the sign of the cross.

"What was that?"

"I said, I will bank the coals."

The smith grunted, then set about straightening his tools while Dell arranged coals around the brickwork tuyere, the forge's blowhole.

A massive brick chimney, which sometimes drew and sometimes did not, depending on the wind, rose behind the tuyere, the orifice at the base of the coals where air from the bellows exhaled.  Dell had heard old timers talking about the days before chimneys when the forge building would fill with sulphurous fumes which lingered in the lungs and refused to vent through the roof traps.  Having spent some cruel days in the forge when the wind seemed to force down the chimney rather than draw up, he was thankful for the chimney.

He continually wondered why his father had insisted he learn the trade of sword smithing.  He looked at his fore arms.  After nearly a year, he still lacked the muscle the smith seemed to have in abundance.  Smith's arms were a series of hard, heavy veined lumps which could pick up a hammer at dawn and not put it down 'til sunset.  His own arms, by contrast, screamed for rest after only a few hours.  His father had made a mistake.  He was not suited for this work.  The mailmaker had more appropriate offerings for his muscular endowments.

He started out of his thoughts as if Edward had overheard one of them.  He looked about in alarm, but smith was far away, kicking the ragged boot soles of a sleeping lounger reclined against the outside door.

"Wake up!"  Edward bellowed.  "Heave your mangy carcass out of here!"

The recipient of these abuses opened his eye -- he had but one, and it was profoundly bloodshot -- and peered up at Edward vacantly.

"Pick it up.  Sweep it out," said the smith, giving the boots another nudge.

The one-eyed man opened his mouth.  Four teeth could be counted, if one were interested.

"You closin' shop?" slurred the mouth.

"You have slept through another one."

"You got anythin' extra?"

Edward looked at Dell scornfully.  "He wants food for a day's sleep!  You have anything you want to give him?"

Dell shook his head.  Smith had asked only for effect.

"Not today," announced the smith.  "Try the cooper across the way.  He's of a kind heart!"

"He never gives me even a stale crust," muttered the old man, unmoved from his position.

"At least roll outside so I can shut the door."

"I not goin'."

"You are going, all right!  Dell!  Fetch me that hot poker."

Dell paused.  Did Edward have it in him to brand an old derelict for lounging?  He could not say for certain.  The smith was unpredictable, sometimes displaying overly generous charity, the next instant, completely outraged and capable of certain violence.  In any case, he did not have a choice.  Dell gingerly plucked the glowing poker from the coals and moved toward the door.

The old man fixed his eye on the poker as it approached, then on Edward's unreadable face.  The smith's heavy black beard was pocked and singed by hot sparks and flame.  His face was smeared a sweaty black with iron scale and charcoal.  The effect contained no kindness.

Edward reached for the poker, his eyes still on the beggar.  Dell had a momentary desire to place the glowing end in the smith's open hand, but fear of the thought alone, forbade it.

"Give me the poker," said the smith evenly, flexing his fingers with impatience.

Dell placed the handle in the smith's hand and watched the scarred fingers close over it.  Edward slowly brought the poker around.  The acrid odor of hot steel spiced the air a few inches from the beggar's eyes.

"Let me open your ears for you, beggar," said Edward, dispassionately moving the poker toward the man's left ear.  A few wisps of the man's hair touch the steel and melted, offering another odor.  Smith looked implacable.

"Keep your poker," the old man said abruptly.  "I am goin'."  He edged outside on his hands and knees, slowly drawing himself up on his haunches, and from there to his feet.

"Good as any dog can do," said the smith, and shut the door.  The light inside immediately fell to a cloistered gloom, relieved only by light from the small window and the remains of the fire.  Edward threw the door bolt, then moved absent-mindedly back to the forge.  The poker still glowed red in the dim light.

Edward struck the poker on the anvil, the only tool in the entire shop the smith had not made himself.  A few incandescent flakes of scale flew onto the clay floor and hissed into obscurity.  He struck the anvil twice more.

"That is to keep the Devil out of the anvil, Dell.  Have you ever heard that before?"

"Not for anvils."

"Some smiths do it every night, even during the day when they have to leave the forge to take a piss.  Do you know why?"

Dell shook his head.

"Iron is the Devil's own metal, lad."  The smith smiled strangely.

Dell looked at the poker with rekindled interest.  That might explain why the smith was so rough.

"Now why would anyone want to keep the Devil out of his own metal?" continued Edward.  "Bound to weaken it."

Dell peered into the smith's dark eyes, looking for a hint of humor, but he encountered only twin wells.  They were dark mirrors reflecting embers from the hearth, but revealed nothing of the soul within.  Or, perhaps they did.  He felt a chill.  Edward's talk frightened him, and his instincts told him he should distance himself from the crazy old man before God or the Church brought him to judgment.  But how can one leave?  The bond fee was high and time was the only coin he had with which to pay it off.

Edward seemed to tire of waiting for an answer.  "Have you finished your work in here?" he asked.

"The coals are banked, but I have not put the wootz ingot on."

"Just as well.  I will place it, myself."

"Should I wait?"

Edward shambled toward the disks of wootz and lifted the first ingot with one hand, as if weighing its potential.  "Go. Help Mary with dinner.  I will be up shortly."

Dell backed away, untying his leather apron and hanging it on the door hook.  Anything was preferable to waiting with the smith in a darkened forge.  Where, but a forge, would the Dark One find a setting so close to home?  Dell burst through the door into the common room.

The atmosphere there lay a world apart.  Thick fabric with painted animals, birds and trees, poor man's tapestries, hung from every wall.  Two tallow candles burned brightly on a trestle table.  The herbs mixed with the tallow gave the room a companionable odor.  An open shutter allowed smoke to exit when it had a mind to.  Places were already set at the table.  Plates, spoons, knives, and a clay goblet apiece.  No pot or hock, yet, and no sign of Mary, the master's wife.

Dell moved quickly to the back stair and descended into the yard behind the forge to wash.  The shallow well yielded up a bucket of cold water with little effort, and in a moment, Dell had his shirt peeled off and the water draining down his head, neck, back and wetting his braies where they tied with a roll of cloth at the waist.  He scrubbed the black soot and iron scale from his skin and hair, and used the lice comb, hanging by a cord from the well post, to rake the smaller bits of grit from his head.  By the light of middle twilight, he discovered he had also removed a few nits.  They disgusted him.  It seemed that no sooner had he got rid of lice, then they were back again.  But these eggs would never hatch.  He took satisfaction in brushing them from the comb into the mud. 

Inside the forge, Edward lit an oil lamp and sat down at a table facing a lattice of wooden cubbyholes.  Each cubbyhole bore a series of angular marks, like runic letters.  These marks were letters in the Ogham alphabet, an ancient Irish way of writing words which could be seen on certain old grave markers and nowhere else.  Edward could not read English or French or Latin, but he could read and write Ogham, as his father had taught him, and his father's father had taught his father.  Edward had Irish in him, but much of his blood flowed from Viking ancestors.

Edward reached into one of the cubicles and drew out four plates of metal, each about the size of a man's finger and as thick as a file.  He picked out one of the plates and carefully placed it on the table in front of him.  From a battered drawer with a blackened leather handle, he took a whet stone and a container of linseed oil.  He placed a drop of oil on the whet stone and watched it spread and flatten.  It reflected its surroundings.  It was fascinating to watch the reflections of the lantern and his own face distort as the drop explored the limits of the stone.

Mary would leave him a pot of something on the hearth ring.  When he did not show for dinner, she would not question.  Such was Mary.

With knitted brow, he laid the plate on the stone and began making rhythmic motions in the form of a figure eight.  A hundred times around, two hundred, adding oil as the film dissipated.  Slowly, the metal became smooth.  He switched to a finer stone and repeated the motion.  The metal ground against the oiled stone with a constant swishing sound.  Time passed, and a third stone took the metal, this time with a reddish powder added to the oil.  Edward's movements were tireless and deliberate, not at all the fiendish brute Dell perceived.

Thoughts of his new apprentice brought a frown.

The boy's heart was not in the work.  Hell's Great Pit!  The priesthood fitted him better.  Anyone could see that.  He could make the sign of the cross faster than a whore could spit and under less provocation.  If he had not been the fourth son of the Sheriff, he never would have agreed to take the boy on.  But what did it matter?  The boy would not last.  His muscle never seemed to acquire the necessary bulk.  Mary fed him more beef and chicken, and no one could accuse him of not laying on the work.

Still, Dell's arm looked like a rake handle.  Add the listless tenor of his eyes, and you could tell.  No masterpiece would ever emerge from beneath those -- Edward thought a moment -- those priest's hands!

The metal moved over the stone in tune with his thoughts, sometimes with rapidity, sometimes with deliberation, sometimes haltingly.  As the metal approached a shiny finish, his attention focused tighter on the work.  At last, the plate began to feel sticky against the stone.  He picked it up, wiped it smooth, and saw it reflect the guarded hope in his eyes.

Edward bent to a lower drawer and took from it a glass vial, one third filled with a thick yellow liquid.  Carefully, he loosened the beeswax stopper and dipped in a straw.  A drop of liquid clung to the straw like oil.

He raised the straw out of the vial and placed the drop on the upturned face of the metal.  He watched the drop intently.  It spread a little, but maintained a domed surface.  At first, nothing happened, then he began to see tiny bubbles forming on the metal surface under the liquid.  The bubbles grew until they stretched away from the metal and tumbled to the top of the drop.  He could hear a faint crackling as they rose to the surface and broke.  A sharp odor emerged.  Dark blotches appeared on the polished surface.  The metal was being etched.

He looked at his hands.  They were rough, calloused, streaked with burn scars and soot.  The skin looked thick, cracked, like dry leather.  They used to be young and smooth, ready to hold a war axe or a woman.  He laughed to himself.  Better both at the same time!  That is what he and his comrades had shouted to each other an eon ago.  And now, time ate away at him like the acid attacked the metal.

Nothing lasted.  Men burnt down like candles.  All bent before the persuasive voice, the pretty face, the belly's hunger, or a great purpose that could make a beggar feel like a king.  Monkeys on thrones.

He had become drunk on the currents of a great purpose once.  King Richard and the others.  A Crusade of Kings.  He remembered sick friends dying in their tents, Arab women shrieking over the beheaded bodies of their husbands, cheers from gory assemblages of knights, screaming challenges at the Arab leader Saladin across a gorge at Acre.  A few moments of high ideal and chivalry, but mostly sand, sickness, and starvation.  And the blood.  He still remembered the peculiar darkness of spilled blood on the sand, more like a misplaced shadow than anything else he could think of.  The desert drank everything, a slosh of wine, a splash of ale.  Water, blood, even a stream of golden urine behind the tent.  The sand accepted it all, then waited for more.  Mostly, though, it drank blood.  There was lots of that.  And all under the shadow and sanction of the Holy Cross.  Deus vult!

Smith twitched his head to throw off the memories.  It was difficult to trust any purpose larger than the chunk of steel in his hands.

He gingerly picked up the metal and flushed it off with a pitcher of water.  The water collected into sooty puddles on the clay floor.  Edward brought the metal to the lantern and tilted it first one way, then another, peering intently at the surface where the acid had rested.  It looked dull compared to the surrounding metal, with irregular flecks and pits.  The smith sighed.  From a cubby hole at the top of the shelves, he drew out another chunk of metal, this one larger than the block he had been working with.  It glistened with the sheen of oil, and as he tilted it into the light, he saw thousands of wavy lines shimmering across the surface, almost like tree rings on some hard, slow-growing oak.  The magic metal from Damascus.  It was very rare, even among the Turks.  Edward placed one corner of the metal against his own and scratched a line.

"Iron," he said quietly, "where are you?"

He had failed yet again, as he knew he would.  The lines would not come with age, as with his hands, but in the tempering, in a flash!  He was sure of it, now.

After carefully replacing the magic metal in its compartment, he marked another compartment with Ogham runes using a thin strip of lead, and placed his failed chunk in it.

Sooner or later, he would get it.  He kept records.  He did not make the same mistake twice, but there were just so many damned possibilities!  He cursed and threatened himself liberally.  At last, satisfied with having made an emphatic statement of determination, he tapped the ingot of wootz resting on the banked coals of the hearth so it would settle properly, blew out the lantern, and climbed the narrow stairs to find what Mary had left for him in the pot.

That night, he barely slept.  He could hear the bugs in the walls.  Fresh straw in his mattress crackled and the temperature was all wrong.  Mary's soft breathing became as annoying as a cricket's chirrup.

Just before dawn, he got to his feet, attended himself at the pot, and descended into the forge.  The banked coals had settled into a soft heap of gray ash.  He pulled the ingot of wootz away to stoke the hearth with fresh coal.  He added only enough kindling to urge the coal into flame, then watched until he felt satisfied with the result.

He selected a set of heavy tongs and two heavy hammers from the tool table.  He opened the door and glanced toward the east, looking for an orange glow.  It was there.  The door even admitted thin slices of light onto the forge floor.

Time for the household to be up!  He slammed a plate of iron across the anvil and gave it six rapid, ringing concussions.  Shortly, Dell appeared at the forge door, looking half asleep and hopelessly disheveled.  That was one of the boy's problems.  When he stood still, there was no motion about him, no eagerness or impatience.  He stood like an old milk cow that had just had her udders relieved.  It would be a wonder if he ever sired an offspring.

"Get down here, lad", cried the smith.  "We are working today!" 

Dell blinked and stared at the bellows and hammers, and more so, at the portentous ingot of wootz.  Work today?  The old man said it as if the previous day had been a holiday.  Since they had returned from the coast with the iron, they had made ten axe heads and some dagger blanks.

"Do not just stand there.  Get moving on that bellows!  I want a glowing bed.  Even and smooth.  No lumps."

"Yes, sir," said Dell.  He moved the hearth rake across the coals, pulling out clinkers and cinders.  He spread a thick bed of old embers and thumb-sized new coal, and began working the bellows.  The only thing Master Edward never complained of about him was his fire building.  That, he did well, but as well as that pleased the smith, everything else displeased him.

"Tell me when you have got it," ordered the smith.

Dell nodded and continued working the big paddles of the bellows with steady strokes.  The bellows sounded like a big animal breathing.  The smith dragged his heavy anvil to the center of the forge, brushed the surface clean of scale, and turned to his hammers, examining the faces minutely.  He stoned one until it met his standards for smoothness.  Next came the narrow barrel.  This was dragged to a position next to the forge.  Dell could already see the sheen of sweat forming on the smith's hairy arms.  He was a beast of burden in human form.

The smith pulled his ancient leather apron from the peg by the door and wrapped it around his waist, crossing the belt cords behind his back, and tying them in the front.  The apron split to provide cover for each leg, with individual ties at mid thigh.  As he finished tying the waist, the big doors facing the street rattled.

"That will be my milk!" he roared, as if in mid argument with someone.  He strode to the doors and threw them open in one explosive gesture.

"Milk monger," he said.

"Fill that barrel to a palm width of the top.  Show him the barrel, Dell."

Dell pointed to the barrel.

The milk monger nodded and sprang to the top of his wagon.  He slid a planked cover off the nearest barrel and scooped in two wooden pails.  Like a rat on the run from a cat, the man sprang down from the cart at a trot, not spilling a drop, and scuttled to the middle of the forge where the hearth and barrel stood.  He carefully dumped his buckets, and repeated the process three times more, until the narrow barrel was filled.  Steam rose from the barrel.

The milk monger then planted himself in front of the smith and opened his belt pouch to receive his compensation.  The milk monger looked over the smith's left shoulder, as if the smith were standing a half pace to the left.  Dell could plainly see the smith's irritation as he handed over two half pennies.  The smith liked--no, demanded--directness and forthrightness, and when he dealt with people who failed in his steady gaze but who were not under his influence, he boiled inside.  The monger, however, appeared oblivious to the smith's displeasure and took the money in a blur.  Before a man could clap twice, the little man had the coins squirreled away in his pouch and was picking up the handle of his wagon.  Presumably, the smith's negotiations for milk the day before had been typically overpowering and the milk monger had felt ill used.  Dell shook his head.  The little milk monger belonged to a very large society.

Before the monger had moved six feet, his business sense asserted itself, and he turned to the smith.

"How are you fixed for cheese?" he asked in a reedy voice.

"Perfectly."

The smith closed the door with a bang and threw the drawbar for emphasis.  Dell heard the milk monger's wheels roll away, crushing fallen leaves.  Rooks rattled in the trees outside, and somewhere in the distance, a dog started barking.  The smith preferred people who were like iron, strong but malleable under his hand.

"Is that bed ready?"

Dell checked the embers.  They glowed with each puff of the bellows, but quickly formed a coat of gray ash if left alone.  The coals lay as well arranged as he had ever made them.

"They are ready, Master Edward," he said, in hopes of redirecting the smith's brooding displeasure.

"That milk is not sour, is it?"

Dell dipped his finger in and tasted it.  It was still warm from the cow and only partly skimmed.  Bits of butter fat floated on the top.  They tasted heavenly.  He dipped his finger in again, this time crooking up a sizeable glob of butter.  Unless the smith relaxed, that might be his only breakfast.

"Do not drink it all!  I just wanted to know if that blasted little dwarf cheated me!"

"No," said Dell, licking his finger clean.  "It is sweet and warm."

The smith turned to his tools, this time seething because the milk was good and he had nothing to complain about.

The smith turned to the hearth and peered into the tuyere, where breaths of the air from the bellows burst into the coals with a spray of sparks.

"Some of those damned merchants in village want all the smiths and anyone else who uses a hearth to move outside the wall."  The smith now peered into Dell's eyes for a response.

Dell strained to return the smith's flashing gaze.  The smith's eyes bored through him like those of a fearless old rat he once encountered.  Dell noticed for the first time how bloodshot the eyes were.  The smith must have been up all night.  All hopes of a moderating temper vanished.  As hard to live with as he usually was, when sleepy, you stood almost no chance of getting through the day without an argument.  Somehow, he held the gaze and nodded encouragingly.

"Who do those pious, soft-fingered sheep think they are trying to put me outside the wall like I was a leper?"

They were doing it because people were building houses so close together that the dry thatch caught the hearth sparks and burnt down.  It made sense, but that is not what the smith wanted to hear.

Dell shook his head.

"Deus vult!" the smith shouted, thrusting the poker into the coals with a martial looking twist.  "The lot of them are not worth a puddle of cat piss."

The smith pushed needlessly at the coals for a few seconds, then caught hold of his original purpose.  He lifted the wootz with heavy tongs and placed it fully on the coal bed.  He scooped more coals around it.

Dell pumped the bellows.  Sparks flew into the chimney with each puff.  He increased his speed of pumping, and presently, the coals remained bright yellow between bursts of air.  The wootz cooked, an exaggerated black spot against the incandescent coals.

Dell sneaked glances at the smith, watching his face and beard as they caught the light.  He was a strange man, mad at heaven and earth and everything in between.  He stared pensively into the hearth, keeping his poker ready to move a coal a finger width to the right or left as his imagination held best.  A perfectionist of the worst sort, he produced the finest steel within three day's ride, but his temper ran harder than the weapons he forged.

Around them, axe heads hung from nails driven in the timbers.  Sword blades, minus guards, grips, and pommels, filled several barrels of oil like arrows in an archer's quiver.  A basket of pommels from Normandy rested half empty on the back shelf, along with rolls of carefully worked square section wire, bronze sheeting, tin and lead solder strips, plain and twisted quillion guards from Germany, flame-hardened ash for grips and handles, and half-finished scabbards of all styles.  Master Edward lived and worked amidst an arsenal of his own making, and fought and lost wars within himself without benefit of any of them.  He was a mean old man, too strong and too short tempered for comfort, but nevertheless, a craftsman of rare ability.

Dell pumped the  bellows.  It made rapid breathing sounds, like a cow trying to drop a calf.  The smith stood frozen as the bottom of the wootz began to glow a dull red.  When it reached the right hue, he gripped the ingot with the tongs and flipped it on its back.  He dusted the top with a handful of powdered lime.

"Keep up the pace," he said.  "Do not let it burn."

Dell redoubled his efforts.

"And do not blow a hole in it either!"

Dell eased his stroke.  Already, his shoulders were beginning to ache.

Time passed slowly, as the red glow around the base of the wootz steadily crept up the sides of the ingot and swelled its center, until it shone with a bright orange light.  The smith watched the color minutely.  Abruptly, he reached in with his tongs and grabbed the ingot with a quick thrust.  He pulled it from its bed of coals and held it close enough to singe his hair, staring, as if into the secret depths of the metal.

Dell let the bellows board fall flat.  A last, half-hearted breath gasped into the hearth, then the bellows beast lay silent.  The building was quiet.  The smith frowned horribly, the glow of the ingot illuminating his face like the light of Hades.  What did he see in there?  The Devil?  Dell shivered and moved toward the anvil.

"Fix the cutoff," said the smith quietly.  His voice murmured far beneath its normal volume, powerful, and menacing, like a wolf's growl.

Dell placed a heavy, upturned wedge over the anvil and picked up a thick square of leather.  He folded the leather double.

"Hold the tongs.  You know how to do it."

Dell nodded and wrapped the leather over the long tong handles.  He gripped the wootz with the tongs.

Edward centered the ingot on the wedge before relinquishing its weight.  The ingot sparkled as flecks of scale snapped from its surface and arced into oblivion.  It crackled and hissed.

"Hold it solid!"

The smith picked up his heavy cutoff hammer and with a practiced continuance of motion, prescribed a swinging arc toward the wootz.  Just before the hammer struck the far edge of the ingot, he pulled his arm back and the hammer developed more speed, slamming onto the top of the ingot with an earth-pounding clang.  The ingot erupted a plume of sparks and split halfway through its thickness.

"Another!" commanded the smith and helped Dell position the ingot.

"Hold tight."  The hammer swept up, then down, making the same movement as before.  Clang!  More sparks, and now the ingot had a narrow trough across its diameter and halfway through its thickness.

"Over it," said the smith, helping Dell turn the ingot up-side-down on the wedge.  The hammer snapped onto the ingot in rapid succession now, the smith guiding the ingot over the wedge with his left hand on the tong handles and hammering with his right.  Dell supplied the strength for the tongs, sweating as much from the effort as from the stress of waiting for Master Edward to indicate where he wanted the ingot positioned.

The disk of wootz acquired a folded, butterfly appearance, as the two halves of the ingot moved apart.  The bright orange color faded, becoming a firmer orange, more toward the red.

"I do not want to heat it again for cutoff.  Hold steady."

Dell braced himself.  As the metal cooled, more and more of the force from the hammer blows shivered up the tong's iron handles to jar his teeth and bones, but he did as he was told.

The smith pounded tirelessly, and first one side of the ingot separated, then after a quick repositioning of the metal over the wedge, the other side fell away also.  A half-moon of glowing iron fell sizzling to the floor.  The other half hung in Dell's tongs.

"Back to the hearth with your piece," said the smith.  "Pump it to a glow."

Dell moved back to the hearth at a trot.  The smith said if you had time to stroll, you need not bother to do it in his forge.  So, Dell moved quickly.

Smith took a coal tong and picked up the fallen half of the ingot, placing it carefully on a platform of fired brick as if it were a fragile piece of porcelain.  He left it there with a wistful glance.

"Let it breathe a summer sun," he said, sounding almost paternal.

Dell continued working the bellows.  The paternal tones, he knew from experience, were directed at the metal, not him.

The half-moon of iron quickly returned to the bright orange of a summer sun, and again, the tongs darted in and withdrew with the ingot, like a wild dog fighting for a scrap.  The cut off routine repeated itself until the half moon split parallel with the previous cut, leaving the smith with a thick rectangle of metal about as big as a horse's canon bone, more than enough to shape into a hand-and-a-half blade.  The smith grinned as he placed the chunk of iron into the coals, a secret joke, perhaps.  Or maybe he was just crazy.

The bar heated to a bright orange after, mercifully, only a few dozen breaths from the bellows.

"Fix swage," cried the smith, and Dell removed the cutoff wedge and replaced it with a heavy slab of steel with a carefully worked hollow running its length, like a gutter.  After seating the swage, Dell picked up another slab of metal, similarly shaped, but mounted on a stout wooden handle.

"Ready?" asked the smith.

"Yes, sir," answered Dell, though he dreaded the ear ringing pounding that was to come.  He grimaced.

"Grind your teeth all you like, boy, but if you let that swage slip, you will wear it to church!"

Dell more than half believed him.  If the smith had not reached the age where he was parting company with his hair, Dell would have been concerned that the unruly black locks concealed the nubs of horn.  And though he smiled inwardly at his own little joke, he could not bring himself to look for long into the smith's black eyes.  You could not count on charity from those eyes.

"Wake up, boy!"

The smith had placed the bar in the gutter of the fixed swage.  Dell quickly placed his tool similarly over the bar.  The thick bar protruded beyond the gutter on all sides, and it cringed eerily against the cold iron.  Dell's skin crawled at the unearthly sound.  He would never grow accustomed to such a noise.  It was unnatural.

"Steady on!" shouted the smith, and brought down a heavy, two handled hammer onto the mushroomed striker of Dell's tool.  The tool rebounded, ringing, and a formidable spray of sparks flashed out on all sides.  The smell of burnt metal stung the air.

"Put it back!  Work your way north!"

Dell positioned the swage farther down the bar, half overlapping the mark of the previous impact.  Clang!  The hammer fell again and again.  Smith turned the bar, now visibly cooling, a quarter turn.  Clang!  Clang!  Clang!

"Back to the hearth!  Pump it back bright!"

Dell hurried back to the hearth with the hateful, precious chunk of steel from the hills of Damascus.  He bedded the chunk and moved to the bellows.  Smith strolled over to watch.

I would like to see you trot around here like a little dog, Dell thought to himself.  The bellows began to heave great draughts of air through the tuyere.

"Keep it smooth, Dell," said smith.  "Slow and steady.  We have all day."

Dell took a deep breath and moderated his stroke.  He was still a young man.  People sometimes changed their professions.  Even his father should be able to understand he had not the raw energy needed to be a blacksmith.  The monastery at Gravechon seemed far more appealing.  Yes, he would ask his father!

"Keep your mind here while you are working for me!" the smith said with sudden force, as if he had been listening to Dell's thoughts.  "Your thinking is as orderly as plucked feathers!"

Dell stared into the coals and continued to work the bellows.  His father would have to understand.

"That is it.  A couple more strokes."