The Castle of the Winds Read online

  ‘Do you want them to? Anyhow, I warned him in some wise. He seemed more concerned about his sword, and that’s what I’ll be about.’

  So they laboured through that day, ate the food that was doled out to them, and at last sank exhausted on their rough bedding. The duergar, tirelessly strong, still laboured away quietly on what they had been given, and nobody felt inclined to stop them. Kunrad had spent the day making moulds in heavy boxes with the forge’s supply of sand and clay, and made a start on preparing the great heaps of materials he had been given, weighing out scraps of metal and piles of filings, together with other stuffs such as scraps of hide and pure twice-burnt charcoal, setting them aside in separate crucibles. It was easy work that had left him time enough to think, and this night he lay down in better heart. The pottering sounds that still came from the forge, the soft creaking of taut metal, he found positively familiar and comforting, an antidote to the marshland cries, and he slept deeply despite them.

  Next morning he was up with the sun and twice as eager, chivvying up the prentices to stoke the forge fire high and strong, the duergar to work the great bellows. The moment it was ready he set within it the largest crucible he had prepared, containing fine cast iron. Others he ranged along the hearth-side, and as the cast iron began to melt in the strong, steady bellows-blast he would set them to liquefy, too, or add them as they were, solid, to the growing pool of red in the main crucible. He chose his time, carefully watching as the crucibles hissed and spat, doling out his materials with a cold, considering eye. And as he watched and added he sang over them, slow words of unity and strength, of flowing together into something greater; and he turned to Gille again. ‘I need more words! Fresh words, that haven’t been staled with use, words that will wake every virtue a great sword must have!’

  Gille snorted. ‘What, for that bloody pirate? Better any blade of his should fold like tin, as you say! Why wear yourself out for him?’

  Kunrad seized him by the shoulders. ‘You won’t be near mastery till you understand why! Until you make every work, large or small, with the same inner fire. Fixing mailshirts, that’s different, that’s just … labour. Not creation! But whatever you make yourself, it has to be true to yourself, the best you can make of its kind. If it’s a cheap sword, it mustn’t be a mean one. It has to be the best cheap sword you can come up with! Or you make yourself that much meaner!’

  The prentices retreated, startled, before his tirade, though he never raised his voice. ‘And who it’s for – well, can you ever tell? Could I foresee my best blades would end up in Merthian’s hands? But I’m still not sorry I made them so fine. Nor even the armour.’ He grinned suddenly, and cuffed Gille gently about his head. ‘After all, they may end up in better hands than his one day. Who’s to say this blade won’t, too? So bend your wordsmithing to it, for that’s the best of your art so far. And you, Olvar, come help me with my alloying and learn a precision to match your patience! I’ll have you both masters yet, if it’s the death of me!’

  ‘Well – all right!’ said Olvar doubtfully. ‘But all this repair? Best we keep the corsairs happy.’

  ‘I guess you can leave a lot of that to our friends,’ Kunrad told him. ‘They know what they’re doing. They know, all right!’

  The duergar turned their heads to him. Their expressions did not alter a jot; but then the woman quietly picked up the mailrings Olvar had been welding, and began tapping them into perfect shape.

  In Kunrad’s day the fashion was to make a sword in two pieces, adding a cutting edge of harder steel to a softer, more springy centre, that would absorb the weight of the blows without snapping; but he had perfected a subtler technique. ‘Devouring more hours!’ he told prentices, as they heaved the glowing crucible out of the furnace, on winch-chains that smoked as their oil burned in the withering airs. ‘And more minute care – but infinitely better!’

  He leaned over the first of his blade-moulds, lying couched among the forge-coals, and the pale-glowing strip of metal at its heart. ‘So to this core, rich in essence of charcoal, we add the first of my alloyings, so, with less, and a touch more nickel, in a thin stream, thus—’

  His hand, bound in cloth and leather, tilted the crucible and swung it in a quick but controlled double arc around the glowing mould, as if sewing in the fine thread of metal it trickled. He waited, watching it ooze across the glowing surface of the steel already there, ignoring the smoke that was rising between his fingers. Then he grunted with satisfaction and gestured to the male duergh, who swung the great bellows-lever as if it were a twig, rocking it back and forth with slow sure strokes, one leather lung gasping full as the other emptied. ‘Now we blow air through it, across it, to blend it and burn out that last brittleness!’ coughed Kunrad, ducking the fine ashcloud that puffed up through the coals. Squinting painfully in the frizzling dragon’s-breath he swung the crucible back again, his hand-guards smoking. ‘And thus! Heat it again, with force!’ He coughed. ‘Blast this chimney! So that the steel alloys unite at the edges, flow just enough, and mingle as one! Or they’ll crack at the first tempering, like lesser trash. There now!’

  His hand burst into flames. With speedy calm he steadied the crucible and scraped back the flow, then turned to the cooling-trough and thrust his hand in. Smoke arose, and a stink of charred leather. ‘But if it mingles when you heat the mould again—’ put in Gille.

  ‘It doesn’t. Not completely. The alloy remains where it’s laid within the mould. Only the meeting faces mingle completely, stronger than a mere weld, because you heat them to just the right viscosity. It takes a smith’s eye to gauge that finely, looking for the virtues we’ve sung into the metal. One reason we imbue them so early and strong, into the very cohesion of the alloy. When they begin to blur – in the mould, see? – then it’s growing too hot. So we let the forge subside a moment, shift the mould and turn again to the metal. The small crucible laid out with the nickel, the copper and those rare earths, heat it now! And sing, damn it – sing!’

  Gille shifted the crucible in the flame, watching as its flanks began to glow and the filings heaped within smoked, spat and sagged inward; and in his clear tenor, to the panting pulse of the bellows, he sang to the metals they were working.

  When first from stone fire set you free,

  From sleep to new life waking,

  You took on purer, firmer form

  Through smelting fierce and slaking!

  Now sweat again to be refined,

  By word and smithfire glowing,

  To mingle with a nobler kind

  To sterner purpose growing!

  Within the walls of clay take shape,

  Obey the hands that pour you,

  Flow straight and true to edge and point

  Drive air and dross before you!

  Kunrad, hunched at the fireside, tapped and shook the metal gently, watching the rhythm of the ripples across its surface. Suddenly he seized the tongs and lifted it, and just as easily Gille shifted the rhythm.

  Be confined, that you may spring free!

  Be silent, to ring valiantly!

  Be still, to win your liberty!

  Be mastered, and find mastery!

  It was an illusion, perhaps, that as he sang the words over the trickling thread of steel it somehow poured more smoothly, and the erupting bubbles grew smaller and finer. In low voices the others joined in the chant, catching its beat. The duergh’s hand on the bellows never slackened, rocking easily, rocking long, while the men’s strength lasted.

  That was the pattern for the days to come. Sometimes Kunrad sent the prentices to rest, or to lighter work away from the stifling, stinging forge, but he himself hardly left it from waking to sleep. And yet, every so often he would turn away to the far end of the hearth, where he had set other, much smaller crucibles deep in the coals, and tipped in needle-thin threads of molten silver, mumbling deep words of his own in a hoarse monotone over the earthenware mouths. And when he could do nothing more at the forge he would hunch over his wo
rkbench, working away with grip and plier and hammer at finer, smaller things. When the great door creaked open for the arrival of food, or the taking away of their repairing, he hardly so much as looked up. Yet at one sudden roar in the chimney he rose suddenly, and met the chieftain’s cold eye as he swept in with the same careless vigour, scattering the duergar from his path. He stopped by the benches, glaring at the loom of fine wires that Kunrad had been twisting together, and snatched up the small ring-moulds that lay half uncased beside them. ‘What’s this? Pissing about with trinkets?’

  Kunrad caught the larger mould as he tossed it in the air. ‘That’s a ring to support the wire-work on the guard. The other’s a form to shape the end of the grip. Hold a moment, and look at these, though they’re barely cool yet, and in the rough. This one’s the best.’

  The chieftain peered dubiously at the dull length of metal Kunrad selected from the sheaf. ‘Looks like the rest, to me.’ He took it gingerly by the broad tang, frowning at the furnace-bloom and hammer scars that marred it.

  ‘Not tempered as yet,’ Kunrad told him. ‘Not hammered out, or trimmed, or ground to exact length, or fined off, or balanced. And then we’ll pickle it a day or two in corrosive, and only then inlay it and polish it properly, put an edge on. And a plain hilt, to check the action and the shape. The real one, the ornate one, last of all.’

  The corsair nodded abstractedly, swinging the rough sword this way and that. He tapped it against the metal bench-strap and at the soft clear ring a smile grew on his face. Kunrad nodded confidently. ‘Like the feel of it? Wait till the right hilt’s on it, with the proper balance, the wire-work and gems and everything. We’ll need you in for that, to measure your reach and cut and so on. A sword can be tailored as close as fine clothes.’

  The corsair’s thin lips twisted, and he stroked his well-cut woolen tunic. He kicked something under the bench, that clattered softly. ‘And that’s the wire for it, eh? Looks rich. Padrec never made a better sweep than you lads! And I hear the repairs are coming on apace, too. Well, keep at it, my smith. Events are marching on. A few months more and we’ll be ready to make our move. That’ll end our need to skulk here in secret, and to keep you enchained. Go on serving us so well and there’ll be rewards for you beyond your dreams!’

  ‘I don’t doubt it!’ said Kunrad evenly, as the chieftain stalked out again. As the door closed he shook his head. The more he saw of the man, the more surprised he was, and the less impressed. Hard, certainly, bold and brutal, probably, with a taste for show and dash that would impress his followers; but to his mind the bejewelled corsair showed little of the wits or vision that could create and hold together such a formidable place as this. He hefted the ring thoughtfully, and turned back to his loom. ‘Trinkets? He should talk!’

  Then he remembered something, and looked beneath the bench. Wire? Had he dropped some? He stared. It was a big coil, and he did not remember it being there the last time he looked. He picked it up and hefted it. Very light and flexible, nothing he recognised. He shrugged, and was about to put it aside when he caught the woman looking at him. He grinned. He was rewarded by a sudden flash of teeth among the grime, large white teeth; and then she glanced back at the cubbyhole, and turned away even more sharply than before.

  He looked at the wire. It was thicker than the gauges he had asked for. He peered more closely, and saw that it was not solid; it had been twined, braided almost, out of finer wires. He strode over to the wire drawer. Sliding out of their cubbyhole with startling speed, the male duergh was there before him. Dropping the wire, Kunrad lunged, and their hands closed together on the book.

  ‘I’ve read it,’ he said. ‘All of it. Don’t be angry with her, she was right to give it me. This; this was the other smith’s, wasn’t it? It was you who helped him, wasn’t it? Yes!’ Again he felt like a hound on a fresh scent. ‘He had the same idea as me. Only you added … something, that made it a whole lot easier. And, damn it, you didn’t escape with him. Why—’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘I keep my promises, whatever. But you must help me, as you helped him.’

  The male duergh looked at him, expressionless as a statue, then passed him the coil of wire. ‘Yes, yes!’ muttered Kunrad impatiently. ‘Very pretty, yes! But what I really need is—’ He stopped, stared more closely at the wire, and sucked in his breath sharply. The duergh snapped his huge teeth with a loud crack, and ducked back into his cubby. Kunrad peered at the wire, and then snipped a piece from it, and held it to the flame with the pincers.

  He dropped it in sudden alarm.

  He scrabbled through the materials he had been given for the sword, trying to work out what had been used. Copper, magnesium, all the things the book had mentioned, but they couldn’t all account for this. A set of thin bar-moulds by the hearth still held some scraps of fresh sprue, of a glinting green-gold alloy he didn’t recognise, and filings of it lay by the wire drawer. He stood a moment, thinking; and then he laughed aloud. ‘I see! Then it’s high time I was about my part!’

  Laying the wire aside, he turned to the anvil, and picked up the sword he had singled out for the corsair. ‘Olvar, see the forge is charged, if you please, and the trough filled. Gille, would you set in the soaked hides, and measure out the ground minerals as I showed you? And then we’ll hear how your words sound to a new beat!’

  All through that long day the sentinels on the walls above found themselves marching involuntarily to the relentless rhythm that came juddering and clanging up from the hidden forges, and late into the night they glanced down apprehensively at the red glares that blossomed from the crevices in the rock. They shivered, for the whole community of the rock was talking about the strange Northern mages, enslaved to perform their savage magics within the stone dens. It was talk their leaders encouraged, knowing it provided a distraction from the Marshland perils and a heartening sense of strength. All the same, the ceaseless hammering disturbed the sentinels, wondering how any man or even men could keep up such labour for so long; and hearing the chanted words, so archaic and poetic in form that even those who spoke the Northern tongue could make out only a few dark words. It was whispered then that the mages hammered steel by the force of their voices alone; and so, it seems, they made it sound.

  Now sweat within the breaths that burn!

  I strike you, that you strike in turn,

  I temper, that you temper may,

  I grind you, that you’re sharp to slay!

  Be hot as wrath can make you!

  Be quenched as blood can slake you!

  Be strong, so none shall harm you!

  Be cold, that flesh shall warm you!

  A lesson grim for warrior kind,

  You son of steel and burning,

  On anvil learn beneath our blows

  That blows are for returning!

  Over the next few days Kunrad was more intent than ever, carefully chiselling fine channels in the steel and flattening gold wire into them, wire he had had drawn anew by the duergar. He seemed barely to notice his prentices, save when he had a task for them. ‘Like the Weaver of Destinies with that wire, and as enigmatic!’ complained Olvar at last. ‘Must have enough there for a hundred hilts!’

  ‘Or a prettier birdcage, if you’re not content with this one!’ put in Gille.

  Kunrad looked at them, and his face was as blank as the duergar’s. ‘You’ll see the uses of wire soon enough. And pay good heed, I think.’

  They stiffened. They too had heard the bolts rattle back, felt the air change about the forge. The chieftain strode in, impatience in every line of his sallow features, his officers lounging along behind him with carefully neutral faces. They coughed in the sudden smoke.

  Kunrad, rising from his work, smiled grimly. ‘With the winds across these open lands you’d have done better to build a draught-furnace!’

  ‘To Hella with that—’ snapped the chieftain, but had to break off and spit on the floor. Before he got his voice back Kunrad waved casually at the workbench, and
he fell silent, mouth wide.

  There, resting alongside plain black scabbards, lay three formidable swords. Two were fine solid affairs, but between them, as in an honour guard, was one that shone out like a hawk among grey pigeons, shimmering as the forge-flame flickered briefly in the sudden draught. The corsair stalked over to it, eyes gleaming, seized the smooth steel and leather hilt, and held it high in the air. The corsair commanders shouted in surprise. The afternoon outside was grey, the gleam of the narrow slots was dimmed; but the polished steel caught it and turned it to a sullen flame, and the gold beaten into the fine incised lines throbbed like living veins.

  To the eyes of the smiths there was another, deeper light that blazed within, and Gille read in it the echo of his own words, cold and biting, yet clear as a Northland winter’s dawn. It seemed a profanity that such a fair thing should lend that ruthless hand a still greater strength and terror. He stole a look at Kunrad’s face, but saw there only the smug satisfaction of a craftsman with a pleased customer.

  ‘It’s a bloody marvel!’ exclaimed the corsair. ‘It feels like part of my arm. And that edge—’ He tested it with a thumb, and whistled.

  ‘Try a feather!’ suggested one of the officers. They clustered around it like children. ‘You know, toss it in the air and—’

  ‘I will if you’re growing any, you little tit!’ The chieftain looked around for something, then reached out and plucked a hank of sheepskin out of Kunrad’s jerkin. Kunrad’s expression did not change in the least. The corsair flicked it in the air, and as it fell slashed at it with vicious precision, back and forth. Three wisps of wool floated to the dirty floor. The chieftain hefted it, looked to his officers and grinned evilly. ‘Anyone else got any smart saws? We’ll needs be taking those tales our Northern lads tell a bit more seriously! This is your plain hilt, eh? I’d just about settle for that—’