by K. J. Parker
‘I’ll have a proper look at that tue-iron later on this week,’ Asburn said quickly. ‘I’m sure it’s not drawing right, and that’s why you’re finding it hard to get a fire in. If you could see your way to just dumping a bit here, where it’s handy to rake in when I need it.’
Poldarn grunted and poured a quarter of the sack out into the forge bed. Odd, he thought, the coal dust and debris in here looks just like the black ash from the volcano. ‘Will that do you?’
‘Oh, that’s absolutely fine,’ Asburn assured him, ‘to be going on with.’ He drew down on the bellows handle, smooth and slow, forcing a terrific blast of air through the heaped-up fire. A great spout of yellow flame burst out of the apex of the heap – again, just like the mountain outside. No wonder they’d called it Polden’s Forge. ‘Now we bung in the material,’ Asburn continued, ‘and heap up the fuel round it like so. There.’ He pulled out the tongs and laid them on the anvil, ready for when he needed them next.
‘Would you like me to do the bellows?’ Poldarn asked.
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ Asburn made it sound like Poldarn had offered to take his place on the gallows. That sort of thing got annoying after a while. ‘That’s it,’ he went on, as Poldarn’s overstretched shoulder muscles registered the effort of pumping the bellows with little fissures of pain. After a long and uncomfortable interval, Asburn fished out the billet, which was now an even sunset orange all the way through, and sprinkled it with his magic dust, which sparkled as it burned on the hot surface. ‘Now,’ he said as he poked it back into the fire, ‘we’ve got to listen out for when it gets hot enough.’
Poldarn frowned. ‘Listen?’
Asburn nodded. ‘It’s a sort of hissy, scratchy sound, when the metal’s just beginning to melt on the outside. You’ll know it when you hear it.’
All Poldarn could hear was the creak of the bellows leather, the squeal of a dry bearing and the huffing of the blast as it aroused the fire. No hissy scratching, unless he’d gone deaf. But Asburn must’ve heard it, because he suddenly darted forward with the tongs and nipped the billet out of the fire, like a buzzard swooping on a rabbit. The metal was white-hot, very slightly glazed and translucent on the surface, and a few white sparkles were dancing in the air around it.
‘All right,’ Asburn said breathlessly, ‘this is the—’ He smacked the billet with his hammer; not particularly hard, but a cascade of incandescent sparks exploded from the point of impact, showering his arms and shoulders. Poldarn could hear them patter to the ground as they cooled and fell.
‘– Good bit,’ Asburn concluded, as he tapped and pecked at the billet, working so fast that Poldarn couldn’t really follow his movements. Instead of ringing on the metal, the hammer made a sort of flat, squidging noise. When the billet had cooled to a bright yellow, Asburn stopped hammering and picked it up in the tongs. ‘There,’ he said, sounding thoroughly surprised, ‘it’s taken, see?’ Poldarn leaned over close, until the heat radiating off the metal started to burn his face, and tried to see what all the fuss was about. Asburn was right: the weld had taken – he could see that by the way the heat was soaked evenly into the sides and edges.
‘You could’ve warned me about the sparks,’ he said. ‘I nearly jumped out of my skin.’
‘Sorry,’ Asburn said, immediately looking the very image of horrified remorse. ‘Are you all right? It didn’t burn you, did it?’
‘No, not at all,’ Poldarn said, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. ‘I’m fine, really. Does it always do that?’
Asburn nodded. ‘If it doesn’t, you haven’t got it hot enough,’ he explained.
‘I see. And then, if it hasn’t taken, you’ve got to go back and do it again.’
‘Well, you can try, certainly,’ Asburn said. ‘But usually, if you don’t get it right first time, chances are it’ll have got all full of clinker and rubbish and you’ll never get it to go. Right,’ he went on, ‘back it goes in the fire, we take a normal working heat and draw it down till it’s about twice the length it is now. Then we fold it and weld again.’
In spite of himself, not to mention the hard work of pumping the bellows and swinging the sledgehammer, Poldarn found he was almost enjoying this; particularly the rain of sparks, like a blizzard of burning snow, each time Asburn welded the folded billet. Quite why, he wasn’t sure, since it was uncomfortably close to the view from the courtyard, and he’d come in here in the first place to get away from that.
‘How many more times have we got to do this?’ he asked, as Asburn put the billet back in the fire after the fourth weld.
‘Depends,’ Asburn replied. ‘Mostly, on what you’re figuring to make out of it. This time it’s just a skinning knife for Raffen, so that’d probably do as it is. On the other hand, a couple more times won’t hurt, and we’ll get a better pattern. Not that I’m planning on anything fancy,’ he added defensively, ‘but if a job’s worth doing, and all that.’
‘Sure,’ Poldarn said. ‘I was just wondering, that’s all. When you’ve done that, what next?’
Asburn shrugged. ‘Just forge it like an ordinary lump of steel,’ he said. ‘You can do it if you like, Raffen doesn’t want anything fussy or complicated.’
Then he’s out of luck isn’t he? Poldarn thought. ‘All right,’ he heard himself say, though why he wanted to volunteer for a job he didn’t have to do he couldn’t quite understand. After all, it’d be a crying shame for Asburn to do all this hard work and then have the result screwed up in the final, easy stage by an incompetent buffoon.
In the event, though, Poldarn made a reasonable job of it – the blade straight, the back very, very nearly level, no dirty lumps of clinker or scale carelessly hammered in, no ugly pits or stretch marks, and it didn’t warp when he tempered it, either. True, compared with the knives he’d seen Asburn make it was ugly, graceless and pedestrian, but if the worst came to the worst and Raffen didn’t have anything else handy to do the job with, it’d probably cut something up without snapping in two or wiping its edge off on a hazel twig. After Poldarn had filed it and burnt on a piece of staghorn for a handle, he let it lie on the bench and looked at it. I made that, he thought; well you can tell, can’t you? Nevertheless.
While he’d been making the knife, Asburn had been up the other end of the building, fussing round a partly made lampstand with chalk and a piece of string. Asburn was capable of spending a whole day just measuring one piece, prodding and fiddling and fidgeting to get an exact fit on something that nobody but him would ever notice or care about. Poldarn had actually asked him once why he bothered; Asburn had replied that maybe right now nobody would be any the wiser if he sent out work that wasn’t just right; but in a hundred years’ time, or two hundred, a smith would come along and know in an instant what he’d done and where he’d gone wrong, and until then he wouldn’t be able to lie still in his grave for fretting about it.
Poldarn reckoned that attitude was too silly for words, but decided not to say so.
All in all, he decided, as he gave the knife blade a few last touches with the stone, he’d had worse days. Which wasn’t to say he was reconciled to this absurd system, whereby he was being politely frogmarched into a life and a line of work that he didn’t like and wasn’t good at; but when he compared this existence with what he’d been through on the other side of the ocean, there wasn’t really any need to stop and think before choosing. Quite apart from the comforts and the security, he hadn’t had to kill anybody since he’d arrived. That was the sort of thing he shouldn’t get into the habit of taking for granted.
‘I think I’m calling it a day,’ Asburn said. ‘How about you?’
‘I think that’ll—’ Poldarn began, and got no further. Three bangs, absurdly loud, shook the floor and filled the air.
‘What the hell—?’ Asburn muttered; but Poldarn knew exactly what it was. Rook had mentioned them last time, he remembered distinctly because he’d been in the forge when they happened, and they’d been drowned out by the sound o
f his hammer. Well, he’d heard them all right this time, no question about that.
‘The mountain,’ Asburn said.
They ran outside and looked over the house roof. The first thing Poldarn noticed was how dark it had become. It took him rather longer to figure out why; the cloud of ash billowing out of the mountain was now so huge and thick that it was blocking out the sun.
‘Not very good,’ Asburn said.
Apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought so; a mob of crows who’d been sitting on the middle-house roof flew up with a chorus of furious screaming and shrieking, and swirled in a barely controlled spiral over the house roofs. They’re lost, Poldarn was shocked to realise, they don’t know where they are or how to get to where they want to be. Somehow, that was almost more worrying than the sight of the volcano itself. He had no idea why they were having such problems, or even whether it was to do with the ash cloud or the mountain at all; but he’d been watching rooks and crows all his life (he could remember watching them) and he’d never seen anything like this before.
‘Bloody stupid birds,’ Asburn said, as a group of six or more sailed right over their heads, almost close enough to reach with a pitchfork or a long rake. ‘It’s like they can’t hear their friends over in the long copse.’
The colony in the long copse was almost certainly where these birds were from; but the copse was an hour and a half away to the west. Then Poldarn realised what Asburn was talking about. Well, he thought; takes one to know one. ‘You think so?’ he said.
‘It fits in with the way they’re carrying on,’ Asburn replied. ‘At least, it’s not the dark, because they fly home at night in darker than this; not the noise, because it’s stopped; could be all the ash and shit in the air, I suppose, but if rain and snow don’t bother ’em particularly, I wouldn’t have thought flying through ash was so totally different as to spook ’em out completely.’ He frowned, wiping black grime off his forehead – something of a waste of time, since he was already black and filthy from the forge’s dust and scale. ‘I think the noise pushed ’em out, and there’s something about the ash that means they’re suddenly out of touch with the others. It’s like the body’s still moving around, but the brain’s dead or asleep or something.’
Poldarn wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy watching the birds, as if he could somehow interpret the crazy patterns they were weaving in the air. He’d been wrong; he had seen them like this once before, years ago, the first time he’d managed to outwit them with his decoys. He’d been proud of the achievement, and rightly so; it was the day when he’d finally identified the scouts, the singletons who go in front of the main mob and check for signs of danger. Instead of opening up on them with his slingshot as soon as they pitched, he’d let them land and strut about on the ground, no more than fifteen feet from where he was lying, until the section leaders got up out of the roost trees and dropped in, putting their wings back, banking into the slight wind to slow themselves down. He’d spared them, too – it was torture, not moving for so long, hardly daring to breathe – and after they’d walked around for a while like they owned the place, in came the rank and file, tens and twenties at a time. And then he’d jumped up and started slinging, handfuls of stones to each release, so that he was killing and stunning them by threes and fours, so closely were they packed in their arrogance. They’d flown up at once, of course; but they couldn’t understand, because there hadn’t been an enemy in sight twenty minutes ago and they hadn’t seen one come up, so there couldn’t be any danger, could there? And while they debated and tried to figure it out, they swooped and circled and turned and banked and braked and fluttered, like drunks in the dark, while he crammed gravel into the pad of his sling and hurled till he felt the tendons in his forearm twang with pain, and each time he let fly it was a victory of unsurpassed sweetness; until quite suddenly the sky was empty, and the ground in front of him was littered with black objects, hopping and thrashing, twitching and fluttering broken wings, somersaulting bodies with brains already dead (it takes them a long time to stop moving after they die), cawing and screaming and struggling in their extreme pain; and black feathers floated in the air like volcanic ash, gradually drifting down to settle on the bare earth.
‘You know,’ Poldarn said, looking at the mountain, ‘you may well be right. Screw this, let’s go indoors.’
But a single crow swung over them, jinked away in terror as it saw what it was flying over, and sailed straight through the forge doorway. ‘Bugger,’ Asburn said. ‘I hate it when that happens.’
‘What?’
Asburn’s shoulders drooped visibly. ‘Bloody birds getting in the forge. They peck at the chimney hood and shit all over the tools and the scrap, and they’re too stupid to leave when you try and shoo ’em out. Panic,’ he explained. ‘Would you mind—?’
Poldarn nodded, and followed Asburn back inside. It was even darker than usual, of course; the only light was red, bleeding out of the subsiding fire. At first there didn’t seem to be any sign of the crow, and Poldarn wondered if it had flown under the hood and straight up the chimney. But no such luck; it had pitched on a cross-beam, and when they walked under it, the stupid creature erupted in a flurry of wingbeats and shot between them before either of them could react.
‘Where the hell did it go?’ Poldarn shouted.
Asburn shrugged. ‘Too quick for me,’ he replied.
And for me, Poldarn admitted, in shame. But it won’t be the next time; he grabbed the poker from the hearth and held it down at his side, like a sheathed sword ready for the draw. Come on, he told himself, I thought this kind of thing was second nature to you.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘You go up that end, I’ll stay here. The thing about crows is, they’re smart as anything, but they can’t count.’
Asburn hesitated, as if he was having extreme difficulty with the idea of being told what to do. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually, ‘I’ll go this way.’ He advanced down the workshop, clapping his hands over his head; and sure enough, the crow materialised as a burst of black movement out of a shadow and accelerated, flapping desperately, like a man learning to swim as he drowns. It passed Poldarn so fast that he didn’t really see it; but the poker in his right hand lashed out, and he felt the shock of impact travelling down it and jarring his hand. He’d hit the crow like it was the ball in a game of stickball; it shot through the air, smashed into the tue-iron and rebounded onto the hearth, wings still pumping but not having any effect. With one long stride Poldarn was onto it. He slammed the poker down diagonally across the bird’s outstretched wings, crushing it into the glowing embers, while his left hand fumbled for the bellows handle. The crow was strong, arching its body, thrusting with legs and neck and wings against the strength of his wrist and hand, but he held it there – as the bellows blasted air into the fire and made it flare up, he could feel the terrible heat frizzing the hair off his arm and scorching his skin, while the stench of cooking meat and burning feathers made him feel sick. Three more pumps on the bellows, as hard and fast as he could work it, and the bird’s feathers were crackling, all full of fire; the force of its body against the poker was wrenching the muscles of his arm, tearing his sinews, but he was past caring about that, all that mattered now was the victory.
Poldarn was shocked at the suddenness of its death. It died in the middle of a frantic shove, and the cessation of resistance against his hand made him stumble forward, almost lose his balance. At the same moment, the remaining feathers ignited in a sudden flare that singed his face and made his eyes smart. He hopped back two steps, dropping the poker on the floor with a clang. Then he was aware of Asburn, staring at him.
‘What did you do that for?’ Asburn asked.
It was as if the man who’d killed the crow had stepped out of his body; he’d gone, and Poldarn couldn’t remember a thing about him, who he’d been or why he’d done what he’d done. It didn’t make sense. He’d never do a thing like that.
‘Bloody thing,’ he answered a
wkwardly, trying to sound like his grandfather hating the mountain, and the blaze of feathers died down, leaving a black cinder in the heart of the fire. ‘Serves it right for coming in here in the first place.’
Asburn looked at him, then looked away without saying a word. Poldarn felt he owed him some kind of explanation, even if it was only a lie, but he couldn’t think of one.
The door opened, and one of the farm boys came in. ‘God almighty,’ he said, ‘what’s that horrible smell?’
‘Broiled crow,’ Poldarn replied. ‘What do you want?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Halder sent me with a message. You wanted to know when Rook got home. Well, he’s back.’
Chapter Six
They found him in the hall of the main house, wrapped in six blankets and shivering helplessly, surrounded by silent, terrified-looking men and women, all keeping their distance as though he had some contagious disease. Two of the farmhands were banking up the fire, making the place uncomfortably hot. Halder was standing next to him, looking— the only word for it was frightened.
‘What happened?’ Poldarn asked. Everyone turned and stared at him, but he was getting used to that.
‘Let him alone,’ someone said. ‘Can’t you see he’s near frozen to death?’
‘All right,’ Poldarn said, and as he walked down the hall he felt like a bridegroom on his wedding day, or the chief mourner at a funeral. ‘Somebody else tell me what happened, I’m not fussy.’
Eyvind, who’d been sitting on the corner of the middle table, jumped up and came to meet him. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘In fact, the Lyatsbridge people are very grateful indeed, you probably saved all their lives.’
Well, Poldarn thought, that’s nice, but I’d rather have some details. ‘Was it a flood, then?’ he ventured.
