“Too complicated. You’d be better off with something simpler. Pass the trial first. Experiment later. But don’t listen to a word I say,” he threw over his shoulder as he ambled away to the next forge. “No one ever does.”
Anskar took his time selecting the steel for the spine of his sword, eventually settling on the hardest the Order had to offer. He caught some of the novices shaking their heads at him, knowing how hard it was to work such steel, but Anskar was no stranger to difficult forge work and the accompanying ache in his muscles.
He began by laying the steel bar in the coals to heat, adding air from a bellows and waiting till it was white-hot. Sweat dripped from his brow into his eyes. He’d barely even started and he was dying for a drink. Later, he told himself. Five days might have sounded a lot, but with a sword as complex as the one he had in mind, he could have used an entire week.
When the steel was ready, he put in his earplugs and began to hammer out the bar on an anvil. Sparks flew, and the steel rippled white and red as he drew it out with rhythmic blows. The ring of steel on steel could be heard even through his earplugs, and with each strike vibrations traveled up his arm.
Anskar returned the bar to the heat while he found a heavy chisel, then brought the tool back to the anvil, where he scored a groove across the bar’s center so he could force the metal to bend with powerful strikes of the hammer.
After more heating and hammering, he got the bar to fold fully back on itself. Then he heated the steel to white again and forge-welded the pieces together before starting to draw out the steel once more.
He’d folded the metal only twice before he needed a break. The skin of his palms ached from gripping the hammer, and sweat was pouring off him and pooling on the floor. He rubbed his sore forearms, then grabbed himself a cup of water from the jug by the entrance.
As he drank deeply, Anskar tried to get a good look at what his peers were working on.
Orix was scratching his head and staring balefully at the misshapen iron bar he’d somehow managed to fuse to the tongs he’d used to hold it in the coals.
Naul had already forge-hardened a bar of iron and shaped a broad, tapering blade complete with a tang. Naul knew what he was doing. Nothing fancy: just enough to pass the trial.
Sareya had also taken the easy option of working with iron, and her sword had a decent shape. At the rate she was going, she’d be finished by tomorrow. He wondered if she’d forge-hardened the metal enough so it wouldn’t bend or shatter under stress.
She wiped her brow with her forearm and saw Anskar watching her.
Her eyes flashed with what he took to be annoyance, but then her lips parted in a smile that was, if anything, the opposite.
He looked away and ignored her.
The novice at the forge next to Sareya was clearly copying her design, though he was still drawing out the iron to the required length.
Sned saw Anskar looking and lumbered over to him. “What a goat turd. If he thinks just hammering out an iron bar is going to stand up to my tests…”
Iron or not, at least the novice had something that vaguely resembled a sword, whereas Anskar had slaved away all morning and only had an unformed block of steel to show for his efforts.
A couple of novices took off their leather aprons and gloves and stowed away their work. Judging by the sun’s position through the windows, it was past midday.
“You breaking for lunch, Assling?” Sned asked.
“I’d sooner keep working.”
“Thought as much.” Sned took a pewter flask from his pocket and swigged the contents, then wagged a finger at the block of folded steel on Anskar’s anvil. “Too complicated. You know how long it takes the Jargalan nomads to make their curved blades?”
“Just over a week,” Anskar said. All the books agreed on that.
Sned raised an eyebrow, then took another swig. “That’s with three smiths working on it. You’ve got five days.”
“I’ll be fine,” Anskar said, though he was far from certain. “I was planning on working through the night.”
“Not tonight you can’t. The external adjudicator of sorcery is arriving, and the Seneschal wants you novices in the bailey to greet him.”
“External adjudicator?”
“Frae Ganwen’s job is to teach, but she can’t very well assess you as well, can she? That needs someone independent. Same as I won’t be the one to test your swords.”
Sned screwed the top back on his flask and stowed it in his pocket.
“And this adjudicator is a sorcerer?” Anskar asked.
The Forge Master touched four fingers and a thumb to his forehead. “One of the few real sorcerers the Church permits us. The Order has a contract with him. Bringing astrumium with him, he is, among other things. These fools won’t be happy when they have to hammer their work out tomorrow so they can meld astrumium shards to the iron and steel.”
“Astrumium?” Anskar said. “That’s an alloy of orichalcum and star-metal, isn’t it?”
“Good boy, Assling. I see all that reading’s been paying off. Without astrumium, the swords won’t hold the sorcery that stops the edge from blunting—which is the whole point of the second trial.”
“How come you let everyone shape blades, knowing they’d have to start again in the morning?”
“They should have watched what you were doing. They’ve all been told repeatedly about the importance of bonding metal to make it hard without being brittle, so there’s no excuse. What were they thinking—that I’d pass them just for turning up, or because their sword has a pretty shape? No place for slackers in my smithy, Assling.”
Sned ambled to the center of the smithing hall and addressed the group of novices. “Besides Assling here, who’s been diligently preparing his metal rather than rushing to shape it, you’ll all be starting over in the morning.”
Orix palmed his face. Naul narrowed his eyes at Anskar and shook his head. Sareya looked as though she were going to cry. The two novices who’d already packed up for lunch started to grumble, but stopped when Sned picked up his mallet and flipped it from hand to hand.
“There’s a mainland sorcerer arriving by ship tonight,” Sned said. “Besides the astrumium he’s bringing for your swords, you’ll be pleased to hear he has a gift for each of you.”
Glances passed between the novices, and a few covered their eyes with their forearms. They all knew that Menselas despised sorcerers. But the Order’s relationship with them, so it seemed to Anskar, was more complicated than that.
It had been sixteen years since Carred Selenas had been to Hallow Hill. The day Naphor had fallen. The day she’d learned her lover, Talia, had a daughter. The day the Queen had died. It had also been the start of Carred’s long wait for the daughter—and her guardian—to be revealed.
And still she was waiting.
Her ragtag force of fifty were among the trees skirting the base of Hallow Hill. They remained mounted while their horses cropped the grass. None of them had offered to accompany her to the top. She knew they muttered behind her back. Knew they no longer believed in her promises. She didn’t blame them. Her promises sounded hollow even to herself.
There seemed no goal to anything she and her rebels had done all this time—just hit the enemy then flee and hide, only to do the same again and again the length and breadth of Niyas. There was no rhyme or reason to their attacks. All they were was a long, drawn-out act of defiance, a reminder that not all Niyandrians had rolled over and accepted mainland rule. Sometimes it felt as if she were just passing the time till Queen Talia’s heir revealed herself.