A Song Of Steel (The Light of the North saga Book 1)

by James Duncan

  He put his tools and apron away – he would receive a verbal or perhaps even physical thrashing for leaving his equipment carelessly discarded – and headed out of the forge compound doors, grunting to the man who would stay behind and watch the place that night. He would be back. An orphan since his ninth year with no other home to go to, he lived in the forge that he had joined as a floor sweeper a decade ago. But this evening he was set on a purpose. He couldn’t resist a smile as he strode down the gently sloping dirt path, skirting the edge of the main part of town. He was looking forward to tonight.

  The patch was really just that. An area of flat, beaten earth between a washhouse and the back of a cheap alehouse on the outskirts of town, an uneven shape about thirty paces long and twenty wide with a huge rock the size of a horse in one corner. Once a week, when the sun had set, the town’s youth would gather there to drink and fight by firelight. The weekly patch fight was older than any of the participants, but the reason it had started was still known to them. The previous alehouse owner had been sick of the constant fights in his alehouse and one night banished the participants to the waste ground behind the alehouse to finish and cool off. What started as a punishment became a habit and then a tradition.

  The fights were a chance to let off steam, to establish dominance and settle scores, perhaps to impress a girl when they were there. The rules were simple: no weapons, no breaking legs or arms, no dangerous blows to the eyes, throat or balls, no carrying on when one person yielded. The rules were enforced by the whacker, who wielded a long, rusty iron rod that someone had stolen from somewhere years ago. The rules were not broken often; getting hit by the whacker was not worth it.

  Ordulf arrived at the patch and perked up when he saw there was a large crowd tonight, drinking cheap ale and eating bread and the stringy meat stew that the alehouse served in wooden bowls. There were at least a dozen nervous, hyped-up boys and young men there, posturing and trying to look tough. Ordulf could always tell who was there to fight and who just to watch, and he started sizing up his potential opponents.

  He strolled into the crowd and was met with the usual mix of displeasure and wariness from the other participants and the usual excitement from the watchers. He was almost always the biggest man there, and he almost never lost. He was fun to watch and horrible to fight. Sometimes no one would even agree to take him on.

  ‘You fighting tonight, Ordulf?’ asked the baker’s son with a wide smile. Arnold was not a fighter. He spent a little too much time eating his own products to fight anything other than the waistband of his trousers.

  ‘Well, I didn’t come for the food or your company, Arnold,’ Ordulf replied lightly, getting a chitter of laughter from the group, which parted to let him through. Ordulf didn’t see Arnold’s hurt reaction or much care – he had spotted a newcomer. The young man was a beast, perhaps as big as him, not as tall but wider, older, bristling with aggression. Perhaps that was why no one was in the patch yet. If you wanted to fight, you entered the patch. And then anyone could join you. If you refused to fight whoever came out to you, you would be jeered out of the patch and couldn’t enter it again that night. A few had refused Ordulf, but not many, and he was a genial enough man if he wasn’t throwing you to the ground. This lad opposite him, though, had an air about him that exuded malice. The designated whacker for the evening was standing by the rock, nervously fiddling with the bar and eyeing the newcomer.

  ‘Who is he, then?’ asked Ordulf to a group standing next to him and watching the man. He had seen Ordulf now and was eyeballing him while he stripped off his tunic so that he stood only in his trousers, the mark of a fighter. Clothes could be used as a weapon against you by an opponent who could grip them and seek to control you with them.

  ‘A farmhand. Came for the market from a fair few miles away, I think. Never seen him before. You gonna fight him? No one else dares.’ Said one of the boys.

  ‘I might if a proper challenger doesn’t show up. I didn’t know we let oxen fight.’ Ordulf was making sure he could be heard across the small patch, and the farmhand snorted in anger and slapped his hand into his fist. He strode into the centre of the patch, muscles popping under his unusually hairy torso and sun-browned arms. Ordulf eyed him with unaccustomed nerves. This one might be difficult.

  ‘Any of you lazy town girls got enough balls to come and face me?’ The brute was talking loud enough for everyone to hear, but his eyes were fixed on Ordulf. ‘I heard about your little fights. I was expecting it to be between men, not a bunch of frightened washerwomen.’

  All eyes in the group were now on Ordulf and the farmhand. Ordulf smiled and stepped out into the patch, guts knotted with excitement and fear, casually flexing his arms, trying to hide the stiffness and discomfort across his back from a long day hunched over steel.

  ‘Easy, friend. We aren’t scared of you – we just aren’t used to wrestling farm animals here. Has anyone got a halter I can put on this thing?’ He looked around at the crowd behind him quizzically, putting out an ease he did not feel, trying to goad his massive opponent into a rage that would cloud his judgement. It was one of the fundamentals of the patch that you learned with time. Stay cool. Make your opponent angry. Angry people make mistakes. Not many people in the crowd laughed; the atmosphere was foreboding. Well, it was worth a try.

  The farmhand bristled with anger at the insult but did not react. Guess I will have to do this the hard way.

  ‘Has the whacker told you the rules yet?’ he asked the farmhand, gesturing at the nervous lad holding the iron bar.

  ‘Rules?’ said the farmhand with contempt. ‘You little girls have rules?’ He looked round at the whacker and his bar. ‘What are the rules, pup?’

  The whacker swallowed nervously and listed the rules.

  ‘I see. Don’t want me to hurt your lover’s precious face, is that it? And what if I break the rules and his face?’ said the brute with scorn in his voice.

  The whacker looked around dumbly, as if searching for support, while Ordulf sighed to himself at the display. For God’s sake, look like you mean it. Who let this guy be the whacker?

  ‘Um…’ The whacker looked at the bar sheepishly and hefted it a bit before letting his hand sag back down, shrugging slightly, almost apologetically.

  The farmhand roared with laughter. ‘You gonna hit me with that little stick?’ He slapped his hand on his stomach in mirth. ‘Kid, if you hit me with that twig, I will take it from you and take your maidenhead with it. You understand me?’ He smiled a vicious smile at the whacker, who was half his size, and the poor kid just nodded and backed away, bumping into the rock and dropping the rod in nervous surprise. Ordulf sighed and closed his eyes at the embarrassment of the situation. This was not how it usually went. Yes, often the fights got out of hand or became vicious, but they never usually included someone this aggressive. No one in the crowd was jeering or cheering; everyone could feel the tension and the potential for serious violence.

  The farmhand turned his vicious grin back to Ordulf. ‘You finished throwing words, little man? Or do you need a while longer to find your courage? I can wait.’

  Ordulf had lost the game of words, he knew that, and he pressed his lips together and nodded. He could already tell this was going to be awful, but he wasn’t about to back down.

  Ordulf reflected, as he was slammed to the ground for the third time, that he had been wrong in thinking it would be an awful fight. It was horrendous. The farmhand was at least as strong as him, and heavier, bigger in the chest. Ordulf had longer arms and a powerful punch that was mostly saving him from taking too many nasty blows from those rocks of fists, but any time they got too close, he was just overpowered.

  He had tried all his usual tricks: he had gone for the man’s legs, tried to bait him into a charge so that he could trip or roll him, tried to feint for the eyes to unbalance him so he could get a solid punch to the gut. Nothing was working well enough. When he did get a solid blow to the man’s cheek, he simply shook it off
. Even Ordulf’s fist screamed in pain; it was like punching a tree.

  He gazed up from the ground, trying to decide if he really wanted to get up again. The first time he had gone down, he had expected a hail of blows, or for the man to kneel on him and force him to yield. But the brute had just stood there, watching and smiling, waiting for Ordulf to get up. This time, he came over and proffered a hand and a wicked grin. ‘You need some help or are you done, little man?’

  Who the fuck are you calling little man, you dressed-up donkey? Ordulf was always the biggest, always the strongest. This was grating hard on his pride. No one here had ever seen him beaten like this. No one had ever beaten him like this. He was angry and humiliated, completely unaware that this was how he usually made others feel. He growled at the offered hand, refusing to take it. The brute shrugged and backed up a step as Ordulf tried to spring up and get a surprise punch in, but he was too tired and too slow, and the big lad simply took a step back to avoid it completely. Then he mimicked a yawn. That was too much. Ordulf snapped and charged, swinging wildly.

  The sheer aggression of the charge, and the farmhand’s play-acting, caught him off guard and slowed his response, so Ordulf landed a handful of heavy blows with his fists and knee; he heard and felt the other man grunt in pain. But Ordulf was angry and out of control, and the farmhand absorbed the blows, covering and retreating, forcing Ordulf to follow, unbalanced and tiring. As Ordulf threw a huge, arcing fist at the other man, the brute ducked with astonishing grace and returned a straight punch that Ordulf barely had time to see, let alone block.

  Oh shit.

  Ordulf woke to a splash of cold water that smacked him in the face. He spluttered and grabbed in front of him, trying to find his attacker. His hands closed on empty air. He opened his eyes and wiped the water from them, confused. He could see stars. He tried closing his eyes and shaking his head to clear his vision and opened his eyes again. Oh, those are actual stars. He looked around and found he was on the ground in the middle of the patch. Off to his left, the farmhand was getting thumps on the back and laughs from his companions, and the rest of the crowd were looking on in shock or talked excitedly among themselves.

  ‘What… Who?’ Ordulf’s mind was fuzzy, and he tried to focus on the dark figure above him. It resolved as the whacker, rod long abandoned. ‘Uh, you lost,’ the boy said lamely. And then reached down to help him up. Ordulf levered himself to his feet, a wave of nausea washing over him suddenly, and he vomited, helplessly, onto the dusty ground.

  ‘Woah there, you alright?’ Ordulf looked up to find the farmhand walking over and smiling. ‘Sorry about putting you down so hard, but you hurt me, and I really needed you to stop.’ The brute had entirely lost his air of malice, and even the smile was friendly, no longer laced with a sneer. He now just looked like a big, genial man. A huge, muscular, hairy ox of a man but with a look about as threatening as a puppy.

  Ordulf felt even more sick. ‘You tricked me?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘The whole thing was an act.’

  ‘Yup, did it to scare you? You are a big fucker, and I needed the advantage. Did it work?’ The man seemed earnest, even a little nervous.

  Ordulf was stunned. He always thought he had the measure of his opponent. He had got this one completely wrong. ‘Uh, yes. I guess it did.’

  ‘Excellent!’ The man came over and offered a hand to the unsteady Ordulf. ‘My name is Leuter. Good to meet you, Ordulf. Great fight – you hit like a horse. And I would know!’ Ordulf’s new companion guffawed and led the dumbfounded, stumbling smith out of the patch for some well-earned ale.

  There were a few more fights that evening now that the two biggest men were finished. One fight per person per night, that was the system. It was a system made to stop Ordulf or any other winning fighter occupying the patch all night and simply thumping everyone in turn. Ordulf barely watched; the audience barely watched. No one had got over the shock and excitement of the big farmhand, Leuter, and his fight with Ordulf. Ordulf sat on a rough plank bench against the back wall of the alehouse and chatted to the farmhands. It turned out they were all the sons and nephews of a single farmer. Ordulf couldn’t remember who was who, but they were all very friendly, increasingly drunk and talked much too much. He got the impression they didn’t meet new people often.

  Ordulf’s thoughts were still fuzzy, and his head hurt like hell – something the cheap ale was making worse – but something else was bothering him. He finally worked out what it was. He turned to Leuter. ‘You knew my name.’

  ‘Uh, what?’

  ‘When you came to help me up, you introduced yourself, and you knew my name. How did you know my name?’

  The big man looked sheepish. ‘Oh, yes. Well, at the market today I talked to the trader we were delivering to. Said we were sleeping the night and asked if there was anything fun to do.’ Ordulf frowned at the long-winded explanation. ‘He asked if any of us were fighters and, if so, to go to the patch and try and beat Ordulf. He said you were the big one, the one to beat.’

  Ordulf was shocked. ‘So you came here tonight just to beat me?’

  ‘Yeah. My pa, he is a fighter, and he trains me sometimes. He told me the best way to learn is always to try and fight the best, not someone easy to beat. Makes sense to me.’ Leuter smiled and shrugged.

  Ordulf nodded and chewed this over. Leuter seemed like a simple enough lad, but he had made Ordulf feel stupid twice now in a night. It bothered him. ‘Yeah, makes sense. Why is your dad a fighter?’

  Leuter visibly glowed with pride as he answered. ‘He’s a soldier, a man in the lord’s guard, a chosen man, goes with him on all his campaigns. A great fighter, so everyone says.’ He poked himself in the chest. ‘I’m to join the guard myself when I’m not working on the farm. I’m going to go on the great crusade next year with the lord. So I’m getting as much practice as I can.’

  Ordulf looked at him, confused. ‘But you will be fighting with weapons, not fists. Why does this help?’

  ‘Pa says that fighting with weapons is much the same as without. You learn to do one, you can learn to do the other pretty quick. Fast hands are fast hands; a good eye is a good eye. Let your enemy make a mistake and then hit him. Same as fist fighting. Makes sense to me.’

  Ordulf felt stupid for the third time that night. ‘Wise man, your pa,’ he said, smiling back at his new friend.

  ‘He is that, my pa. A smart man.’

  The next morning, Ordulf shook his still-aching body awake and prepared for the day’s work. He felt pretty bad, but today was an important day. The customer would come to inspect the sword. Important as it was, it was not what Ordulf loved, fussing around with the finished work. Ordulf lived to swing a hammer, long arms burning with the effort, huge shoulders straining with the rhythm of the swing. He lived to feel the heat of the forge, to see the sparks fly and feel the steel move beneath his hand. The wind of the bellows was his music, the strike of the hammer his heartbeat.

  Being a journeyman made him the lead hammer in the hammer team and more responsible for shaping the blades. The two or three apprentices helping just followed his strokes, all under the careful gaze of the master, who held the blade steady in tongs and called the directions and pace with an odd series of grunts, whistles and foot taps. For lesser blades or finishing work that only required a single smith, Ordulf was now allowed to work alone and forge his own work from scratch, sometimes even with an apprentice to assist.

  Ordulf didn’t just have huge strength and stamina. He was gifted with the eye. The eye that could pick out just the right colour in the steel being heated in the forge. The eye that could read the lumps and bulges in rough forged steel and know exactly where to place a blow to shape it, to move the glowing metal into place, to spot potential weaknesses and correct them, to look down a line and spot the tiniest inconsistency.

  God, did he love forging. Almost as much as he hated polishing. He returned to the room to inspect the blade, to check for any imperfec
tions he might have missed. He found none. Setting the now-finished blade aside for the moment, Ordulf gently rested it in a notch in the cradle made specifically for that purpose. He arched his back in a broad stretch, still trying to remove the tension of the day and the night before, and stood up. The customer should be here, or would be arriving soon, and he went out to check with the master if anything else needed doing. He ducked his tall frame out of the door from the back room where he had been working all week and stepped out into the forge yard.

  On his left, the forge itself was half-open to the central yard, with a broad, sloped roof over it and walls on three sides, which were covered in racks of tools and materials. More equipment hung from the rafters. The open side of the forge had two sets of huge folding doors that swung closed at night and could be locked with massive iron bolts. The apprentices took it in turns to sleep in the forge, hammers at hand, to deter thieves. The outer yard doors were secured with huge bolts of their own smithing, but you could never be too careful.

  Across from the forge was the main building where the master lived and kept his shop, which was open to the main street beyond it. To his right was the bunkhouse where Ordulf slept, the storerooms and a low, open structure with the grinding wheels and workbenches. It was overall a mid-sized smithy, but for a town the size of Minden it was impressive, the largest for a day’s ride in any direction.

  The master was indeed in the main room of the shop area with the customer, the son of a great local lord sent to get his first proper sword. He was younger than Ordulf, perhaps fifteen, just old enough to have a full-sized sword for training. He exuded an air of arrogance, from his bizarre and uncomfortable stance, one leg thrust forward as if he were about to make a speech to a crowd, to his casual holding of his current undersized and scabbarded sword’s hilt. He was standing with it ready to hand, as if an enemy might appear and strike him at any moment.