Kain bowed and replied, “Yes, father.”
Munesuke reached for a nearby length of wood and hit Kain’s leg with it. The warrior made no expression. “You are to call me Munesuke-sensei. You are my offspring, this I admit, yet I do not yet recognize you as an individual. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Munesuke-sensei.”
“Hmm. From here on, you shall assist me with anything I need around the forge, you are to do it precisely and expeditiously, you shall not utter a word unless you are spoken to. In private, I shall address you by your given name, but when we are outside I shall name you Gizoo, a deaf and a mute. You are thus forbidden to speak. Am I understood, Gizoo?”
Kain understood the meaning of his father’s question. He said nothing, limiting himself to nod in reply.
“Good. Lastly, and perhaps most important of all,” Munesuke took a deep breath before saying, “You are never to rely on the... blasphemous method forcibly fed to you by westerners and barbarians. You are to follow our family’s way, the proper way to create hagane and forge our blessed living swords, not the... abominations westerners call vessel blades. That,” he spat, pointing at the unfinished Zweihänder blade, “is not a weapon for a warrior, but an instrument for an animal. I don’t want to see something like that ever again, am I understood?”
“But Munesuke-sensei—” Kain was interrupted by another violent strike of the stick and, again, he remained inexpressive.
“Do not presume to rebuke me, child! Understand this. I don’t care one bit about whatever you learned during your stint among the westerners, I don’t care about your alien magics, your twisted philosophies, or your profane smithing methods. You shall do things the proper way,” he paused and dangerously added, “Or I will. Am I understood?”
The meaning wasn’t lost to Kain. Either he complied and followed his father’s traditions, or Munesuke would denounce him to the authorities. Not much of a choice, Kain thought before saying, “Yes, Munesuke-sensei.”
“Good. Go and smelt that... thing you thought was a weapon, then cast the refuse away. The steel is tainted beyond use. Come the morrow, you shall ready the forge for use. Ignite the coal, fan the tatara, fill the trough with water for quenching.”
“Oil works better,” Kain muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Munesuke-sensei.”
“Hmm. As I said to Hanataro-sama, the tamahagane is ready to be worked into a proper katana. You shall aid me in the process and, if the gods are kind, you may yet learn something through the process. Do you have any questions,” Munesuke paused, letting a slight smirk curve his lips, “Apprentice?”
Kain nodded and replied, “No, Munesuke-sensei.”
“Good. Now go and rest, tomorrow will be a long, arduous day.”
“Yes, Munesuke-sensei.” Before Kain retreated into the house, however, a question popped into his mind. “I do have a question.”
“Hmm?”
He took a deep breath and gingerly asked, “What happened to my mother and my sisters? And to our homestead, for that matter? Everywhere I look I see the clear signs of deterioration, as if our ancient household had been left untended for years. Why is that?”
Munesuke closed his eyes and grimaced. “Nippon goes through duress, Senshi, and though work is constantly required from a blacksmith, few mon are paid even when one produces an ikiteiruken. Our family too fell under trying times, despite my best efforts. I am but a humble blacksmith, destined to inferiority in the eyes of the gods,” he sighed. “And my family shares the burden.”
Kain’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Famine and disease took your mother and sisters over seven years ago, and with them, it took the soul of our household. If you wish to pay your respects to them, their final resting sites are at the back of the house, at my beloved wife’s favorite pond. Although,” he scoffed derisively, “It’s no longer a pond, but a malodorous hole in the ground.”
I came back too late, Kain thought as he felt a pain, sharper than any physical wound, stab through his chest. “I wish to see their final resting place.”
Munesuke shrugged. “Do as you will.”
Kain followed the cobblestone path leading around the house and towards the old pond. His father was correct, the place was but a hole in the ground. Gone were the hyaline water it once contained and the greenery teeming around it. Now the garden was as derelict as the rest of the place. The resting stones were at the far end of the abandoned garden, hastily placed beside the ancestors of the Kajiya family.
Kain knelt respectfully in front of his mother and sisters’ final homes. “Mother... sisters... I wish I could have seen you one final time. I wish...” He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter what I wish. What matters now is what is. I have returned to my father, and I saw the pain in his eyes as he spoke of you. I shall return to him the joy of living by bringing honor to him and to our family name.
This I promise.”
He closed his eyes, wondering whether his tears could fill the pond once more.
Chapter IV: Give and Take
“Have I ever handled one of their vaunted living swords? Yes, I have. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced, the weapon it was... Well, as its very name says, alive. It had a consciousness and a mind of its own – not unlike yours or mine. It almost made me feel bad when I ordered it smelted.
Almost.
-Deacon Orestes Militides, in “Metallurgia Arcanum – The Demon Blades of the East.”
Munesuke hadn’t lied. Kain started working the forge first thing in the morning, and though he relished the opportunity of learning under his father once more, he had to admit the hard facts to himself: He was bored senseless, and his thoughts trailed off as he slowly tended to the bellows in the furnace.
As the aged blacksmith had said, the tamahagane was ready to be worked. A fact which meant that Munesuke had been working tirelessly and deftly over the past seventy-two hours, keeping the heat inside the furnace, hammering the slag away from the resulting metal, and making sure the iron sands were properly combined with coal to produce steel. Kain couldn’t help but feel impressed. The process typically needed five or six capable individuals constantly working the clay furnaces where iron was deposited and carefully adding in coal. Yet his father had accomplished it on his own, but in much lower quantities. The young smith calculated that it would take his father close to a month to produce enough tamahagane to forge a single katana. No wonder Hanataro seemed impatient.
He felt proud that his father kept working adroitly in his profession. After all, he had held the Kajiya name aloft on his own. Commissioning a katana was expensive, and having an ikiteiruken forged was beyond most ronin’s aspirations, let alone a commoner’s ideas. Still, in times of war, the Emperor and his shoguns could “request” any number of the living swords from their blacksmiths without the luxury of payment. Honor to the smith was more than enough payment, even if it failed to satisfy the physical needs of the blacksmith and his family. What’s eating properly, or living at least acceptably, next to the gods’ favor, huh? Kain wondered snidely as he remembered the derelict tombstones at the back of the house.
The unfairness with which Nipponese were treated hadn’t changed at all. When he was drafted into the Emperor’s army, the official propagandistic speech was that winning the war against the deplorable, despicable, detestable—and many, many more such adjectives—Goguryese would bring peace, prosperity and honor to Nippon, yet it had done neither.
For one, the “war” had been but one of many skirmishes between the two nations, spearheaded by the Emperor’s expansionist desires. The war had never truly ended, but the misery it caused permeated every aspect of life. From the moment a Nipponese was born to the moment he died, his entire existence revolved around the Emperor, the gods, and subservience. Anyone with aspirations loftier than bending their necks in acquiescence was likely to find themselves at the business en
d of an executioner’s blade.
Kain scoffed, just as would anyone thinking what I’m thinking. He had become something the Empire abhorred. More than a soldier returned alive, he had become exposed to viewpoints, thoughts and ideas which were anathema to the Empire’s own. He had become, as he had been called before, a heretic.
His thoughts were returned to the present by a swishing strike of his father’s stick. “Agh! What gives?”
“You were spacing out. Inattention brings imperfection, imperfection brings impurity, and impurity brings shame. I will not tolerate the besmirching of our family name on account of your immitigable laziness.”
“Jeez, fine!” Kain replied before softly laughing under his breath.
“Have I said something you find amusing?”
“You said our family name.”
Munesuke sighed. “As I have said, I accept you are my son, thus you bear the Kajiya name. It’s your duty to uphold it.”
“Indeed,” said Kain finally, “But I must say, father, you’ve upheld it remarkably on your own.”
“Yet I am but one man, Senshi, and a man has limitations,” he shook his head unconsciously.
There’s something he’s not telling me, Kain inferred, but said nothing. Instead, he returned towards working the bellows for the furnace. The tamahagane inside was red-hot and ready to be worked. “The steel is now malleable, father,” he declared.
“Good. Remove it from the furnace and bring it to the anvil. We must work quickly, before atoning for our sins.”
“Our sins?” Kain asked, surprised.
Munesuke started hammering the heated up steel, removing the outer layers of slag and peeling off various thin platelets of the metal. “Son, as I have said, I am but one man, and a man alone can hardly appease the gods. Time and again, I have brought shame upon our name by not conducting the proper rituals to create steel and work it into a venerable katana. I produce weapons for Lord Yorunokenshi Ishida-sama and his samurai, but they are... diminished.”
“Diminished?” Kain folded his arms, tilting his head incredulously. “How are they diminished?”
“Are you not only daft, but deaf? I have failed to perform the rituals to anoint the weapon as is necessary!”
“Father, may I ask something of you?” Munesuke nodded his assent, and Kain asked, “Does an anointed sword cut as precisely as a non-anointed one?”
“Whether it does or not, Senshi, is not the point. A sword must be made properly, or not at all.”
“Then why have you made, as you said, ‘non-anointed’ blades?” Immediately as he saw his father grimacing in consternation, he quickly added, “Understand, father, that I am neither judging nor berating you. I merely wish to instill upon you my opinion on the matter.” Munesuke remained silent, and Kain continued, “During my time as a slave for the Albionese, I was forced to act as a blacksmith on their behest. They cared little about tradition in the way our smiths have been taught. They didn’t anoint their blades, nor did they call upon the gods to bless their metal.”
Munesuke scoffed. “Thus why their methodology is impure, undesirable and—”
“Father, please,” said Kain, trying to prevent an unnecessary argument. “It has been but one day since I am returned to you, and over a decade since you saw me last. You said so yourself; you don’t know who I am as an individual, and I am offering you an opportunity to peer into my thoughts. Would you reject it?”
Munesuke glared at Kain, but after a few moments he simply said, “Go on.”
Kain nodded and did as told. “As I was saying, father, we weren’t required to follow religious rituals and scriptures. We quite simply had no time. There were other smiths from myriad nations, from Bharat to Israel who were also mortified at their failure to appease the gods. Yet I must ask you, father: Under such circumstances, isn’t it preferable to do as necessary, and then appease the gods once the opportunity arises? After all, the gods are forgiving and indulgent, surely they must understand that time is at a premium?” Kain noticed a change in his father’s face. It was subtle, but it was there. Munesuke was thinking outside of the limits of Shinto.
“Perhaps, son, you have a point. I have not performed the rituals ascribed to a blacksmith not out of willing disdain, but out of necessity. I am but one man and a smith. I am no priest.”
“Precisely, father; you cannot count yourself at fault for being unable to follow the rituals.”
“Hmm, I shall meditate on the matter, Senshi. In the meantime, we must forge the sword.”
“As you say, father,” Kain said finally. Unknown to his father, he had used a small trick he had found useful during his captivity: When facing a stark believer in any religion, be it Shinto, Catholics or Hindu, the best way was not to counter the tenets of their belief with stark reason, but with their own words. A small smirk curved Kain’s lips. Perhaps he could still take his father on a more practical, more open-minded path. But for now, work awaited.
Kain’s role in forging the weapon was diminished by his situation as an apprentice. Though he could have easily and expertly forged the weapon on his own, he was keen on learning his father’s methods, not because he found them to be exceptional, but because in his mind, the secret to create an ikiteiruken was the missing component for his own endeavors.
Disregarding the long, tedious rituals ascribed to Nipponese swordsmithing made the work more palatable, but still mind-numbingly dull for Kain. His father called upon him only to blow the bellows, to hold the metal with a pair of pliers, and other forms of menial labor.
“The hagane, Senshi,” said his father, “must be carefully selected. This,” he added, pointing to a piece of metal, “is hard steel, suitable for the blade’s ha, the strong cutting edge. While this piece,” he said, “Is softer, malleable and doesn’t break easily. It will suffice for the blade’s core, its ji. The softest steel shall become the sword’s mune, making it resistant, strong, yet lethal.”
Three types of metal, Kain thought appreciatively, the only way to overcome our iron’s poor quality. Nipponese ore deposits were, Kain had learned, lacking in many aspects, chief of which was the concentration of iron in the sands used for metallurgy. The unevenness of the iron content, coupled with the usage of pine coal ended up producing tamahagane of varying quality, which was then folded unto itself to remove impurities and work the blade. A process done out of necessity more than out of the mysticism ascribed to it.
Munesuke noticed Kain’s expression and said, “I see you are troubled. What swirls within your thoughts?”
“I wonder, father, if we could increase the concentration of iron and even out the use of coal—”
“Through your sinful arts, Senshi?”
“No, father. Through the purchase of iron ore rather than sands, and the usage of mineral coal, rather than wooden.”
“Hmm,” Munesuke thought, a hand to his chin. “Perhaps more thought on the matter is required. But for now, we must fold our metal, Senshi. Behold,” he said, carefully picking the steel platelets of varying hardness and layering them in a roughly brick-like shape; the briquette itself was placed upon a piece of fabric.
Once the blacksmith deemed the briquette complete, he wrapped it in the fabric, poured a mixture of clay and water and said, “Tsumiwakashi, Senshi. The art of melding the hagane into a seamless piece in order to properly work it. Now we must lodge it into the hearth and let it heat up until we can fold it unto itself.”
“What was the first heating for, then?” Kain asked.
“To remove impurities and make the sturdiest tamahagane possible.”
Kain nodded and lit the hearth, a secondary furnace made out of dry straw. Father and son waited until the former declared, “The steel should be ready to be worked now. Return it to the anvil and take a heavy hammer. I shall take the smaller one and lead your strikes towards precision.”
Again, Kain did as told, taking the heavier hammer and feeling its weight in his hand.
Now this is something I understand. Munesuke hefted the lighter cudgel and struck a certain point on the metal. Kain had seen the process done before and hit the same spot. Time and again, the master hammered and the apprentice followed, further peeling away more layers of impurity.
“Now,” said Munesuke, “Comes orikaeshi. We must fold the hagane unto itself over and over, along its length and along its width, to create the necessary pieces.”
“How many times must we fold, father?”
“Until I judge it ready. Perhaps twelve times, only the gods know now.”
And so they went, heating the steel before folding and cooling it in a vat of water before repeating the procedure. A means to homogenize the carbon in the steel, mused Kain, to make the distribution more even and the structure of the weapon more resilient.
Once the process was complete, Kain stacked another pile of lower strength steel, reproducing what his father named tsumiwakashi; he heated the resulting briquette, and the folding procedure started anew.
When the second piece of medium-strength steel was ready, Kain repeated the process once more for the lowest-strength bits of tamahagane, effectively creating three pieces of steel of varying strength.
“Well done, Senshi,” his father praised him. That was a decidedly out of character gesture, but Kain uttered no complaint. “Now we have three different manifestations of tamahagane: Soft shingane for the katana’s core, medium strength kawagane for the weapon’s spine, and the strongest hagane for the edge. Every smithing family has their own unique manner to combine the steel into a katana. Ours, the way of Kajiya, implies creating each layer before fusing them together.”
“Show me, father,” Kain said solemnly.
Munesuke nodded and thrust the hard steel into the furnace, heating it up before taking it to the anvil. “Observe, Senshi, for I will do this one time only.”
Heretic's Forge: A Crafting Fantasy Adventure (The Warrior Blacksmith Book 1) Page 4
