Heirs of Prophecy

by M. A. Rothman

  “So it’s basically like the blower we had at home,” Aaron said.

  “Exactly. This one’s old and past its prime, though. Throll ordered a new one, which should be arriving today.”

  “So, as long as we’re using old-fashioned bellows and stuff,” Aaron said, looking excited, “can I make a sword?”

  Jared laughed and tussled his son’s hair.

  Suddenly, they all heard the sound of a wagon approaching.

  Jared led the way out of the smithy and noticed two wagons were approaching, one being pulled by the other, and in the lead wagon sat Ryan with a man he didn’t recognize.

  “Sorry I’m late!” Ryan shouted. “I got… waylaid for a bit.”

  Jared immediately noticed the bandage on Ryan’s arm and rushed toward the wagon. “What happened to your arm?”

  Ryan looked down at the bandage, then shrugged and swung his arm like a windmill. “Oh, this? It’s nothing. Just a little encounter with a slug.” He looked over at Aaron and winked.

  As Ryan unloaded the wagon with Aaron, Dad, Throll, and Itzik, Ryan told the story of his fight with Slug and his friends, and Itzik filled in a few details as well.

  “I’m going to kill him!” Aaron said when Ryan was finished.

  Throll raised a hand. “I am the Protector of Aubgherle,” he said. “It’s my responsibility to mete out justice when necessary. You’ll leave this matter to me.”

  Aaron nodded sheepishly.

  “But Ryan and Itzik,” Throll continued, “I’ll need you both as witnesses.”

  “You just tell me when and where, and I’ll be there,” Itzik said.

  “Actually, Throll,” said Ryan,” I was hoping you could help me in another way. Can you… train me to use a sword?”

  Throll raised an eyebrow. “That is up to your father.”

  Ryan turned to his dad. “Can I?”

  Dad frowned. “I think it’s a fine idea, but I’ll want to discuss it with your mother first. Although it sounds like you did quite well with your martial arts skills today. And after enough time pounding iron in the smithy… well, you’ll be strong enough that you may not need a weapon.”

  As soon as they walked back into the Lancaster house, Mom grabbed Dad’s arm and pulled him back outside and some distance away. Curious, Ryan and Aaron poked their heads through the door to see what was going on.

  First, Mom talked and Dad listened. Then Dad’s eyes widened and he beamed. “Really?” he hollered.

  Mom nodded, grinning.

  Dad fell to his knees and hugged his wife around her tiny waist. After a moment, he slid her shirt up slightly and kissed her bare stomach.

  Finally Dad rose, and they both walked back to the house.

  “Boys,” Mom said, “we’ve got something we’d like to share with you.” She couldn’t stop smiling. “It seems you’ll be getting a new little brother or sister sometime this winter.”

  Ryan and Aaron exchanged a look of shock.

  From behind them both came a shriek of delight, and Gwen pushed her way between them and wrapped Mom in an embrace. “That’s wonderful news!”

  Mom laughed, and Dad’s eyes filled with love and pride.

  Gwen then embraced Dad, and then whirled around and hugged both brothers at once. “You will be the best big brothers!”

  Before they could even react, Gwen bolted into the house, shouting, “Throll! Guess what?”

  “Well. She seems a little excited,” Dad said with a smile.

  As Itzik trundled down the road in his wagon, he found a group of soldiers blocking the path ahead. Soldiers wearing the insignia of Azazel.

  Sighing, he pulled on the reins to slow his horse.

  The leader of the group stepped forward. “What is your name and what is your business here?”

  Itzik knew it was best to cooperate. “My name is Itzik. I make deliveries for my father, Ezra. He is a merchant of general goods. My destination is home, where my wife and dinner await.”

  “And what deliveries have you made today?” the leader inquired.

  Itzik rattled off the list. “Two hundred pounds of chicken feed to the Olmec farm; ten bushels of fresh corn from the Olmec farm to my father’s market stall; two wagonloads of manure for the Pembertons’ northern field, where they are expecting to sow new crops within the week; forty bales of wool to Mrs. Crossrich…”

  “Enough, enough,” the leader interrupted. “Have you had any new customers recently? Or have you noticed any strangers on your travels through these lands?”

  “No, sir,” Itzik said, shaking his head.

  With a grunt and a frown, the soldier turned and called for his companions to move the blockade. He then waved Itzik through.

  The presence of men like these can only mean trouble, Itzik thought as he piloted his wagon through the breach.

  Strange Happenings

  The evening’s dinner was fantastic, and to Ryan’s surprise, Mom was brimming with excitement about how the roast had turned out. She kept talking about all the fine nuances of “feeling” the roast for the proper doneness, timing the vegetables so they would turn out just so, controlling the temperature of the oven, and all sorts of things that were completely out of character, as far as Ryan was concerned.

  Dad apparently felt the same way. “Aubrey, would you have imagined we would be having this conversation just a few weeks ago?” he said, smiling as he speared a potato with his fork.

  Mom laughed. “You know, I simply can’t imagine being as happy back home as I am right now. We were always so focused on things that now, in retrospect, seem so unimportant. Insurance, bills, fixing the car. All those things had nothing to do with our family. Here, everything I do is for our family. I can see the work I do being appreciated.”

  “For example?” Dad said.

  “For example,” Mom said, her eyes shining brightly as she looked from Ryan to Aaron, “there’s Aaron, the boy who never eats meat, struggling to fit as much of that roast into his belly as he can manage.”

  Aaron, who was right in the middle of carving off another large slice from the side of the roast, shrugged and grinned.

  “And then there’s Ryan,” Mom said, “the greatest fan of bread I’ve ever known, enjoying a loaf of bread that I made with my own hands.” Mom shook her head with obvious pride. “Thanks to Gwen, I know how to make literally everything on this table. And I get to watch my family and friends enjoying it. And to top everything off, I’m pregnant. I never would have guessed things like this could make me so happy.”

  Ryan was startled to see his father tearing up.

  “You also made a wonderful dessert,” Gwen added. She looked at Ryan and Aaron and winked. “So don’t fill up too much, boys.”

  The next morning, Jared took both boys with him to the smithy. He fired up the furnace, not wanting to waste any time testing out the new bellows, and he could soon tell by the heat coming off the furnace that this would be far more efficient than working in the shed back home.

  “Can I pump the bellows for a bit?” Ryan asked.

  “What about your arm?”

  Ryan shrugged. “It feels fine. I can manage.”

  “I don’t know, son. You don’t want to overexert yourself. Mom said your cut was deep. Muscle injuries like that take weeks to heal properly.”

  “But Dad, really, I’m fine. The stitches itch, but that’s about all.”

  Jared frowned. “Can I take a look? The fact you don’t feel any pain actually worries me. When I strained my triceps last year, it hurt ferociously for more than a week. And you didn’t just strain something; you had a knife slice into your arm.”

  He unwrapped the cloth binding Ryan’s arm, then turned it one way and then the other.

  “Ryan,” he said, “what exactly did your mother stitch up?”

  “What do you mean?” Ryan looked down at his arm. “The big cut right—” He paused, looking at his own arm. The stitches were there, along with a little dried blood… but beneath the stitch
es, there was no sign of a cut. “Where’s the cut?”

  Jared pressed his fingers on the stitched area. “Does this hurt at all?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Not at all.”

  Jared frowned. “Well… there’s one more thing that doesn’t make sense in this world. But…” He smiled. “I won’t complain. We’ll have Gwen take a look when we get back to the house, but for now… I guess you can work the bellows.”

  Ryan grinned.

  “What about me, Dad?” Aaron asked, coming over to join them.

  “You can ready the forms and the mix,” said Jared.

  “Got it.” Aaron went to work.

  Jared turned back to Ryan, who’d already started working the bellows. “Once Aaron has prepared the forms, I want you to use those arrow molds Throll gave us. You boys run it like an assembly line. Let’s see how many we can make today.”

  “What are you going to be doing?” Ryan asked.

  “Handling the crucible, of course.”

  Thirty minutes later, they’d prepared two dozen arrow forms ready for casting, and the crucible was filled with molten iron topped by slag. Jared used a skimmer, that looked very much like a garden hoe, skimmed off the slag, then called Aaron over.

  “Okay, Aaron, grab that ladle, fill it with the molten iron, and pour it into a form. Ryan, you do the same with the second ladle. Just alternate so you don’t get in each other’s way.”

  Working quickly, the two boys filled the forms one by one. It didn’t take long to get all the forms filled with glowing red iron—what would soon be perfectly cast arrowheads.

  As the color of the metal faded, Jared fetched a bucket of water and slowly poured it over the forms, steam erupting all around him. “Remember,” he said, his voice straining to rise above the sound of the hissing steam, “just because it looks like it isn’t hot, you can never assume that to be true.” To emphasize the point, he retrieved a second bucket of water and poured it over the arrowheads as well. “Always check it twice.”

  With his boys at his side, Jared stood before the first form and touched it gingerly to confirm it wasn’t hot. Then with a few taps from his hammer, he broke off the clay molds, leaving a long row of arrowheads that were still connected to one another.

  “We separate them with a chisel and hammer… like so,” Jared said, demonstrating. “Remember… quick taps with the hammer.” He pointed to a pair of oversized scissors. “Since the metal is so thin, you could use those snips, if you prefer, but it might be tough. This isn’t the regular iron folks are used to around here. I added powdered charcoal to the mix in the crucible. If I calculated things correctly, what we have here won’t really be iron, but rather a reasonably high-carbon steel. It’ll be stronger and more rust-resistant than anything Trimoria’s ever seen.”

  He then motioned for his boys to follow him to the grinding wheel—a large, coarse, circular stone powered by a foot pedal. He began working the pedal. “We’ll want to sharpen each of the arrowheads a bit, but not too much—we don’t want them to lose their shape.” He pressed one of the arrowheads against the rapidly rotating stone. Sparks flew from the steel as he shaved away the arrowhead’s tiny imperfections. As a final step in the grinding process, he added a sharp edge to the tip.

  When he was done, he lifted the finished product to inspect it in the light. Then he handed it to Ryan. “I want all of them to look like this.”

  The assembly line began again. The Rivertons took the arrowheads out of the forms, separated them from one another, sharpened them, and collected the scraps for reuse. In the end, they had two dozen well-made—and extremely strong—arrowheads. Jared looked over his work, and his boys, with pride.

  “What now, Dad?” Aaron asked. He was clearly eager to keep going.

  Dad grinned. “I think it’s time to try out some of our sword forms.”

  Aaron’s face lit up.

  Jared held out a calming hand. “Let’s not forget the process, all right? We have to be careful with everything we do.”

  “Of course, Dad.”

  “Okay then. My plan is to make swords in a similar fashion to the way we saw the masters in Japan making their katanas. We want the blade to be both hard and flexible. Which means we need the right metal.”

  He gestured to the arrowheads. “High-carbon steel is not ideal. It can be sharpened to a very fine edge, but it’s brittle. And plain wrought iron can bend, but it can’t really hold an edge. So what we’re going to do is merge the two. The high-carbon steel will be wrapped around the outside to let us give the sword a razor-sharp edge, whereas the core of the sword will consist of tough iron, making our swords strong enough to absorb the impacts of battle.” He smiled. “It’ll be truly revolutionary, at least in this world.”

  “What’s revolutionary?” asked a voice from the door. It was Sloane.

  “Oh, Sloane! We’ve just finished making a batch of arrowheads for your father, and were about to start on a new technique for forging swords.”

  “Well before you get started… we brought lunch!” Sloane said with a grin.

  “We?” Jared asked.

  They followed Sloane outside to find Aubrey already setting up for a picnic. But she stopped what she was doing when she saw Ryan.

  “What happened to your bandage, Ryan? You’re going to get an infection if you don’t keep that wound covered. Jared, you need to keep an eye on him!”

  Ryan shrugged and looked at his father. “You want me to tell her, or you?”

  “Tell me what?” Aubrey snapped.

  Jared ran a hand through his hair. “The thing is… he doesn’t seem to have a wound anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?” She stepped over to her son, grabbed his arm, and looked at the stitches. “How on earth… there isn’t even a scar.”

  “We don’t understand it either,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t hurt though. It’s healed.”

  Jared turned to Sloane. “Is it… usual around here for a wound like that to heal overnight?”

  Sloane shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

  “When did this happen?” Aubrey asked.

  “This morning, when we got started,” Ryan said. “We took off the bandage and it was just like this. Although honestly, it hasn’t been hurting since you sewed it up, not even a little, so maybe it’s been fine since yesterday.” He frowned. “Could it have been that wine that Gwen poured into it? That’s the last time I felt any pain. And boy did I feel pain.”

  Sloane shook her head. “That stuff’s just to fight rot. It’s no healing potion. Such things don’t exist.”

  Aubrey kept staring at Ryan’s arm as if the cut would magically reappear. “I don’t understand…” she said.

  “Well, as long as it’s healed,” Ryan said, “can we take the stitches out? They itch.”

  Aubrey looked up at him. “I mean… I suppose. It does seem pointless to have them at this stage. But if you feel any pain, we’re putting them right back in. Do you understand me?”

  “You’re going to put them back in?” Jared said. “What sense does that make? There’s not even a—”

  She jabbed a finger at him. “You shush.”

  Jared wisely shut his mouth.

  “But let’s eat first,” said Aubrey.

  “Way ahead of you,” Aaron replied, his mouth already stuffed with a hunk of bread.

  After they ate, Mom and Sloane asked if they could stick around for a little while to watch. They both stood at a safe distance as the men worked, both to avoid being burned by any stray embers, and because it was much cooler even a short distance away.

  Ryan again worked the bellows, and his dad filled the second, smaller crucible with some of the wrought iron they’d created the day before. When it was ready, he placed it in the furnace, along with the now-softening steel, and he and Aaron set up two sword forms.

  “One of these will be used as the core of the sword,” Dad explained. “The second will form the outer edge.”

>   After about ten minutes, Dad told Ryan to stop pumping the bellows. Dad and Aaron then lifted the second crucible, the one with wrought iron. Dad was clearly straining, but Aaron didn’t struggle in the slightest.

  “We’ll only do a smaller pour on this form,” Dad grunted. “This is only going to be the core of the sword, remember.”

  They poured about half of the wrought iron into the form. Dad then ladled a half-blade’s worth of molten steel from the other crucible and poured it into the second sword form. He told Ryan to retrieve the barrel from outside the smithy and set it up next to the anvil, which Ryan did.

  “Okay,” Dad said. “While these forms cool a bit, I want you boys to go to the well and fetch as many buckets of water as it takes to fill this barrel. We’ll need the water to cool the outside of the sword once we’ve perfected the composition and shape.”

  For the next thirty minutes, the boys went back and forth, filling buckets and dumping the water into the barrel. When they were done, Dad deemed the metal had cooled enough. Using the hammer and tongs, he broke the cast around the partial swords, then heated both of the sword components in the furnace. Once the steel component was at the proper temperature, he pulled it out and beat it into a wider and wider shape. Whenever it cooled, Dad would put it back into the furnace to raise its temperature again. After some time, he’d pounded the blade flat and folded it into a ‘U’ shape.

  Then he extracted the red-hot wrought iron and inserted it into the “U” of the steel. He beat on the pieces to forge them together into a layered sandwich of metals.

  Ryan recognized the steps his father was taking—he’d seen the masters forge swords in Japan. But all the same he was amazed at how well Dad was able to do this. It was like he was born to be a blacksmith.

  When Dad was done forming and beating, he painted a mixture of clay and charcoal powder on the cutting edge of the blade. “By doing this, we insulate the cutting edge to help ensure some parts of the blade cool faster than others,” he explained. Then he took the finished form of the sword and put it back into the fire.