by P B Hughes
Leona McPherson was too good for the world, and too good for the likes of Brandon McPherson. How a woman like her ended up with a man like his father, Gregory never knew. She was kind, demure, and sweet as a summer peach. He was a hulking brute with coarse black hair and a body as hard as iron.
Despite her pleading, Gregory wasn’t allowed to go to school with the other children; his father made him work in the smithy on the first floor of their decrepit home from sunrise to sunset, long after he had left for the tavern. If Gregory made a mistake, the consequences were dire. Hammers, tongs, brooms, and bruises were his constant companions.
At night, Gregory’s mother would place a cold compress against his head and hold him while he cried until the dark hours of the morning.
“You’re so hot, little one,” she would say, concerned. “All that work has given you a fever.”
Hours later, his father would come stumbling home. She would hide him, and he would hope everything would stay quiet until morning. But as often as not, his father was in a mood as sour as his breath, and he’d rampage through the house like an angry rhinoceros—smashing, beating, and cursing at the top of his lungs.
Then came the year of Gregory’s eighth birthday, and his father put him in charge of lighting the forge. Oddly enough, Gregory actually enjoyed the job. Fire had always fascinated him, though his father did have enough sense to tell him not to play with it. He loved to watch it, spellbound by the dance of the flames—their flicker, and their glow.
Gregory reflected on that morning, cold and dark, when he swept the ash-strewn floor. It was the first time he discovered that he and fire had a relationship. The floor was filthy, and no matter how hard Gregory tried, it would never be clean, for his father never put anything in its place. As luck would have it, Gregory tripped into the stand of new swords left in the middle of the room. They fell crashing to the ground in a clatter so loud it sounded like a goblin’s spat. He froze, petrified with fear that he had woken his father; a broken snore tumbled down the stairs. Gregory slowly bent to pick up the swords.
That was when he noticed something strange within the furnace. The flames did not dance, but instead they stood rigid, straight up and down like flaming stalagmites. He suddenly realized he was holding his breath. He exhaled, and then, as if released from bondage, the flames whirred back to life.
He stared at the fire a moment and shook his head. “Time to stop taking sneaks of father’s rum,” he muttered to himself.
And then, a month later, his father bloodied Gregory’s nose for a crack he’d found in a steel gauntlet. In a rage, the man stormed off for the tavern, leaving Gregory downstairs, holding back the blood. When Gregory heard the door slam, he kicked a rusted helm into the wall. Behind him, the furnace burped out a thick plume of fire. He threw himself on the ground, shaking, and stole a backward look through the furnace door. The flames were low, small, quivering. He took in a deep breath and stood. The flames rose. Gregory cocked his head, curiosity overpowering his fear. Suddenly he felt the whole thing rather comical. What was he afraid of? Furnaces overheated at times, and this one was no different. Nothing to be afraid of. He let out a little laugh.
The flames jumped.
He stared at them in disbelief, took the broom, and began to sweep.
Near the end of summer, a man clothed in a goatskin cloak arrived at the smithy in the dead of night. His long pointed beard jutted out from the hood, and he smelled of spice and sweat. Father seemed excited by his presence, ordering Mother to bring in their best wine for the man. As excited as Brandon was, he was equally nervous, constantly going to the window to peer out behind the curtains.
Gregory watched the man from the shadow of the doorframe for a long time before he spoke. “Who are you?” he asked the man.
Gregory remembered his black eyes flitting at him out from the corner of his hood. The man’s pinched face made him look like a weasel.
“I am the South.”
The next thing he knew his father had him by the ear and threw him into the hallway.
“Get on with you,” he growled. “This isn’t for young ears to hear.”
Gregory knew that when grown-ups told him he wasn’t allowed to hear their conversation that that was just the sort of conversation that would interest him. So he sneaked to the room above them, pressed his ear against the crack and listened to their muffled voices. The man’s voice was high-pitched and sharp, easier to make out than his father’s.
“…Placing small orders all throughout the kingdom so as to not raise suspicion. Smithies are in short supply in the south and closely monitored. We’ll take fourteen swords, eleven spear-heads, eight pairs of lobstered greaves, and three spiked shields. You’ll have four months to complete the task. Keep them hidden, if you know what’s good for you. If you betray us then we’ll burn your shop to the ground, cut out your tongue, and sell your wife and son as slaves to the Raiders of the Severed Skull. We’re coming to you by the word of Elmar Delwaine. He says you can be trusted and that your skill is unmatched. Although your love for drink has caused you…” the man looked around the littered room with a frown, “trouble maintaining work.”
“A good friend, Elmar is,” his father said. “Don’t fret about me. I’ll not drink while I work. And I have no great love for the Empire, especially now that the Emperor’s been whacked.” He flicked the curtains aside just a crack and peered out into the street. “You can’t betray the dead, if you know what I mean. My only worry is that it may not be enough time. I’ll have to forge, fold, polish and edge each blade myself. To finish such a—”
“I don’t care if you have to put your wife and young son to work night and day,” the man interrupted coldly. “We have the men, now we need the steel. Get it done. It will be well worth the labor. You won’t have to work for the next five years if you so choose.”
Gregory couldn’t see, but he knew his father smiled at that. “It’ll be done then, Roderick. You have my word.”
“Good. On behalf of Irachnia and her people you have my thanks. I shall return in four months time exactly.” The man whisked around to leave, but halted at the door. “Four months, Brandon. Don’t let me down.”
They set to work immediately. Gregory’s father was in a rare good mood, whistling, even singing as they began. Of course, Gregory knew it would be short lived. The next day, his father seemed more agitated than usual, grousing and growling about under his breath as he mixed his iron with a touch of carbon.
“Steel he wants,” he muttered, “and steel he’ll get.” He turned on Gregory with hate-filled eyes and swung at his head with an open palm, narrowly missing. “If I find you’ve spoiled a single piece of his Lordship’s steel I’ll have your head, you hear me?”
The man pulled at his beard, spat on the floor, and resumed working.
The next day was worse. His father twitched and scratched at his arms until they bled. He tried to mix, but his shaking hands had become too violent. With a shout he threw the crucible to the floor and stumbled upstairs. Gregory heard his bedroom door lock with a snap.
His mother trembled with wide eyes as she stared after her husband. She looked down at Gregory, and then back to the forge. Suddenly, her brow knit with determination, and she tied her hair into a bun. She picked the crucible up from the floor with a pair of tongs.
“We must help Father,” she told Gregory with a nod.
As small as she was, Leona McPherson could still wield a hammer. Her father had been a blacksmith, and now her husband the same, and despite her slender frame she knew what to do. Into the furnace went the crucible. Gregory smiled. Smelting, cooling, breaking, re-heating, hammering: they would do it together.
For hours on end they worked. All the while moans and shouts from the upstairs echoed through their home, day in and day out. For nearly eight days it lasted until they began to grow faint. Gregory feared his father might be dead, and asked if he might go and check on him. But his mother urged him to wait. That evening t
hey heard footsteps slowly thud down the stairs.
There stood his father, gaunt, untrimmed, but resolute.
He saw their work, and that was one of the only times Gregory had seen Brandon McPherson smile weakly. His mother smiled back and let her hammer ring out against the cherry red steel. Brandon took up a place beside her.
And so they worked each day from the earliest hours of morning until the sky was black. Gregory was in charge of keeping the forge hot and pouring the liquid steel. His mother helped polish and edge the blades until they were razor sharp, while his father pounded away with his hammer, his strength returning with each day. During this time, his father remained home, not once leaving to go carousing. Without the alcohol in his blood, Brandon slowly transformed. Still gruff, still stern, still silent, but not as unkind. To Gregory, the man was slowly becoming the father he had always wanted—strong and focused. And for the first time in his life Gregory felt happy. The long hours didn’t even bother him. The weeks flew by, and as the final days approached, it looked like they were moving right on schedule.
“We’ll move to the Imperial City,” his father informed them, taking his mother by the waist and spinning her. “Start a new life. Make silver cups and bowls for the wealthy and live like lords and ladies!”
Those nights Gregory fell asleep in his bed, safe and warm. It started to make sense to him why his mother might marry her father. He wasn’t a bad man. It was the drinks that made him bad. The men at the tavern turned him foul.
The days grew short and the nights long, and the first snow fell, leaving a blanket across his town. Two nights before the Irachnian man was to return, his father headed for the front door.
“Since we’ve finished early, I figure I’ve earned a bit of a reward,” he informed them, slinging his fur coat over his shoulder. “Keep that fire hot—I’ve still got some cleaning up to do on the morrow.”
“Please, father,” Gregory pled. “Please…Don’t go.”
His father’s thick brow creased. Gregory had overstepped his bounds, he knew, but he had to try. Everything was going so well.
His father threw open the door, mumbled a curse under his breath, and traipsed off toward the tavern a mile down the road.
An uneasy pit was left in Gregory’s stomach. That night, he lay awake with his mother, waiting for his father to return. Gregory didn’t understand. His father had to be happier. He had to know that things were better this way. Better as a family.
There was a crash in the shop below. His father must be back, he thought. He slipped out of bed and wrapped his woolen shirt around him. Slowly, he opened the door to the room and descended the black stairs as silent as a cat. A soft orange glow met him at the floor, and the sound of clinking metal and gutteral voices caught his ear.
“Father?” Gregory asked, probing the darkness.
The voices stopped. Before him were shadows of two men, hunched over. Gregory noticed a wheelbarrow laden with the swords, shields, and the rest of their hard work.
“H-have you come to buy our goods?” Gregory asked. “Father’s not here yet, but I’m sure if you wait, he’ll be back soon.”
“What do we do?” grunted one of them in a low voice.
The other took a step toward Gregory into the pale light, his mouth covered by a black scarf. “He’ll run off and tell his father.”
A hand went to Gregory’s shoulder behind him. It was his mother.
“What do you want?” she asked them, her voice shaking with fear.
“A woman, too,” said one of the men. “Come on—end them before anyone else comes and let’s be gone. Roderick’s waiting.”
There was the swish of a blade unsheathed. Gregory felt his mother’s hand tighten around his shoulder. The man lunged. Gregory’s mother pulled him backward, placing herself between them. A pained cry filled the air as the blade caught her in the stomach.
“No!” Gregory shouted as the man groped for him in the darkness.
“Come here, you little worm,” growled the man.
The fire in the forge glowed brighter.
He heard his mother groan. The man turned his attention from Gregory, bent over her and lifted the blade.
“Stay away from her!” Gregory shouted.
The forge exploded—fire belching forth, alive, covering the man and setting him ablaze. With a wild shriek the intruder stumbled backward, arms flailing, and fled past his comrade and out into the swirling snow. The other man darted after, wheeling the weapons and shouting curses.
Gregory touched his mother’s face as she gasped for air.
“Mother, Mother, no,” he said, “you’re going to live.”
He choked on the words as smoke filled his lungs. The smithy had caught fire.
“We have to get out of here!” Gregory said. “Come on, Mother, please.”
A wheeze was her only response.
He pulled her as hard as he could down the last few stairs and toward the door. The building was catching fast—horrible flames licking at them. Flames that once danced for him now attacked, hoping to consume him and the only person in the world he loved.
“Stop it!” he commanded the flames. But they would not.
Faster he dragged her. The trim on her nightgown lit. He pulled harder, across the doorframe and into the night. Her gown sizzled as he laid her in the snow.
“Mother!” he cried.
She did not move.
“Mother, wake up—don’t leave me!”
He pressed his hands on her wounds, sobbing, crying out into the night as the smithy turned into an inferno.
His mother looked up at him one last time, reached up her hand and stroked his cheek. Then her arm fell into the powdery snow.
And she was gone.
In the distance, Gregory heard the bells, clanging in the night, warning of fire. He rose to his feet and stood before the furnace that used to be his home. Dozens of people were running toward him, hurrying with buckets and cries for help.
Gregory stared at the blaze, the firelight glowing in his eyes and tears and blood on his hands. He fell to his knees and screamed—his voice tearing through the night.
The smithy exploded, knocking him flat, timber and stone peppering the ground around them. Snow and white ash drifted down from the sky. Though he felt no pain, he knew he was bleeding.
He remembered their looks, the people standing above him, their stares passing from him to his mother, to the place his home used to be. A man threw a blanket on him and pressed down on his abdomen, calling inaudibly.
His father stumbled up later that night, singing off key, swinging a bottle from his waist to his lips. He sobered before the sight: his wife dead, his son wounded, his smithy destroyed. His weapons, greaves, shields, hopes—all of them gone. He just stood there, staring up at the smoking husk that used to be his home, and then down where his wife lay.
And he couldn’t do a thing. If he told the truth, he was a traitor. So he told the authorities that Gregory had caused the fire.
“It should have been you,” he said, staggering up from his chair when Gregory told him the story. “You should be gone, not her. You could have saved her. Weak—you’ve always been—” his father fell to the floor in a stupor.
And then they came for Gregory, days later—men in blue and white capes, silver armor, and a black carriage.
“Don’t fret too much, Blacksmith; we will bring him back during the summers,” one of them informed his father.
“Don’t bother,” his father replied as he threw back an amber bottle and took a long gulp.
Angry tears stung Gregory’s eyes as they continued on through the forest.
Mordecai was the only one who knew the truth. Gregory was an orphan, just like the rest of them. Disowned and cast aside. Where he went during the summers was not home; he went to trade school to continue working as a blacksmith, just in case his Miraclism couldn’t be developed. That wasn’t the story he told his classmates, though. As far as they were concern
ed, he went home. Mordecai never told them otherwise, and for that he was thankful.
Training to be a blacksmith, Gregory thought. Just like my father.
Suddenly, Jude came to a halt.
“What is it?” asked Daniel.
Jude peered off into the distance, and then, without a word, he took off running. Daniel and Gregory raced behind, shouting at him to slow down. They ran until they found themselves amidst a battleground of fallen trees. Branches were snapped and strewn about; deep claw-like slashes slithered down the tree trunks; several were knocked completely to the ground, splintered around their middles like snapped twigs.
“It looks like a herd of rhinogruffs stampeded through here,” said Gregory as he examined the area. “What do you think it was, Jude?”
“I don’t know,” he replied as he knelt down to examine a cracked stump. He touched one of the pointed shards of wood. “Razor sharp.” He stared thoughtfully for a moment, and then moved to another broken tree, then another, and another, scrutinizing each break. Finally, Jude stopped at one and motioned the other two to his side. “Look here,” he said, pointing to a splatter of red at the top of splinters. “Blood. An animal did this.”
“The wyvern did this,” Gregory said, his former fear returning with a vengeance. “And the blood’s still wet—that means the thing is close by. Come on, that’s our cue to leave.”
Jude continued staring intently at the splattered blood, carefully picking at it with his fingers. “No, not the wyvern,” he said, holding up a tuft of black hairs, examining it with keen eyes. “This creature has fur.”
“Then it must have been the wyvern’s appetizer. Let’s get out of here before it’s ready for the main course.”
Jude took the staff from his pack. “I’m going to heal some of these trees.”
