Doria Stonebeam did not press for an answer. He looked the workbench over instead. From the depth of the hearth to the edges of the anvil to the wear on the bellows leather, he studied each in turn, and when he reached for the hammer Kang Mujin used, he stopped just short of the handle.
One does not lay a careless hand on another smith’s hammer.
In that single pause, Kang Mujin understood what sort of man stood before him.
Four metal rings were threaded through Doria’s beard, which hung to his waist. Copper and silver, then black iron cut with a pattern, and at the very bottom a crest of a hammer crossed with a beam. The beard was braided smooth and even, without a single strand showing the mark of a blade.
He seemed to carry an entire furnace inside that small frame.
“What is it I’m to hammer?”
At Kang Mujin’s question, Doria’s eyebrows twitched.
“No fear in you.”
“Does hammering iron call for fear?”
“Hrmph.”
Doria pushed a heavy breath out through his nose. Not anger so much as the face of a man chewing over a remark that had caught on something inside him.
He stood a plow blade up on the workbench. It carried Kang Mujin’s mark. Long seasons in the soil had scratched the surface, but the joint had not opened and the tip had worn away evenly.
“This thing came over the mountains. A human trader was crowing that it lasts two seasons longer than a Stonebeam plow.”
Doria scraped the flat of the blade with a thick fingernail.
“Thin steel joined to a tough body. The angle that throws the soil aside isn’t bad either. This is the work of someone who knows the earth changes from field to field.”
It sounded like praise, but his jaw was set.
“And yet the humans are saying it. That good iron can be had now from someone who is no dwarf.”
Outside the smithy the noise swelled, and villagers pushed their faces into the gap of the open door. The two dwarves who had come with Doria stood with their arms folded, hammers slung across their backs, though neither had come a step nearer since entering Doria’s forge.
Doria looked Kang Mujin straight in the eye.
“Iron is the root of us dwarves. House Stonebeam has kept the forge of these mountains for seven generations. On every chimney stone, every anvil block, the hammer marks of our ancestors are still there.”
He took hold of the crest at the end of his beard and went on.
“I will not let one wandering human pile rumors on top of that name.”
Kang Mujin looked at the scratches on the plow blade. A farm tool had only to turn the earth, a blade had only to guard a life, a nail had only to hold up a house. The race of the maker added nothing to the use.
Still, what Doria was defending was not only an empty name. Old burn scars marked every knuckle, and beneath the thumb of his right hand the calluses worn in by hammer hafts lay in layers. That hand proved his words better than any ornamented armor could.
Kang Mujin asked.
“Where do we do it?”
The corner of Doria’s mouth lifted.
“At our forge.”
“Good.”
“You won’t even hear the terms?”
“Speak them.”
Doria held up two fingers.
“The same ore, the same charcoal, the same span of time. Each of us makes one blade. No ornament. No magic either. The edge, the grain and the balance of the finished blade decide it.”
Kang Mujin thought for a moment. Whether the blessing of iron was magic he did not know himself, but it was certainly a power that felt iron and moved it. To compete while keeping it hidden would not be fair.
“I can feel the condition of iron.”
Doria’s eyes narrowed.
“Any smith feels it.”
“More closely than that.”
Kang Mujin took a scrap of iron from the basket under the workbench, laid it on his palm and curled his fingers.
The cold iron trembled faintly, the rust powder on its surface shook loose, and the scrap, no bigger than a nailhead, rose slowly into the air. The people watching from the doorway caught their breath, and the hands of the dwarves who had come with Doria went toward the hammers on their backs, but Doria alone did not move.
The scrap turned half a circle and settled back onto Kang Mujin’s palm.
“I can handle it this way as well.”
Doria glared at the scrap for a long while, then asked.
“You mean to make the blade with that power?”
“If you tell me not to use it, I won’t.”
“The sense that sees inside the iron as well?”
“I’ll close it as far as I can.”
The rings in Doria’s beard knocked together with a low sound. Each time he thought, he drew his hand down the beard once.
“No.”
Doria said.
“Use all of it.”
One of the dwarves outside the door cried out in alarm.
“Doria!”
“Do not cut in before the forge!”
At Doria’s shout the dwarf fell silent at once.
He turned back to Kang Mujin.
“If the hammer is heavy, you use the heavy hammer. If you were born with good eyes, you don’t put them out to make it even. Use everything you have. I will use everything Stonebeam has piled up.”
Kang Mujin nodded.
“I will.”
Doria bared his teeth in a grin.
“Three days from now. Come find the southern chimney of the Grey Mountain. If you run, I will buy up every piece that carries your mark and melt the lot.”
“I won’t run.”
“Hrmph. We’ll see whether that word is as hard as iron.”
Doria tucked the plow blade under his arm and turned away, then stopped once before he reached the door.
“That hammer.”
His gaze rested on the short hammer Kang Mujin had made himself.
“You made it?”
“I did.”
“You pulled the balance back.”
“It’s meant to be swung a long while.”
Doria said nothing to that, but he left the smithy at a slower pace than before.
Three days later, Kang Mujin reached the Grey Mountain.
The dwarf village on the mountain’s flank showed itself from far off by its smoke. Chimneys rose from every stone house, and between them red sparks scattered like stars even in daylight. The roads were broad and beaten flat so cart wheels would not sink. Drain covers, railings, door handles, all of it was iron.
There was little ornament, but nowhere a hand came to rest was loose.
Kang Mujin slowed his steps. The nails in the bridge had their heads pressed round so the water would not eat them, and the wheels of the ore carts were grooved so that only the worn rim need be replaced. The iron clamps binding the stone walls had been left a little play so they would endure the shaking of the earth.
He could see the years piled up in it.
Stonebeam’s forge stood at the innermost part of the village, inside a vast smithy carved straight out of the mountain’s rock face. There were three chimneys, and the bellows linked to the waterwheel let out their breath at an even beat.
Thump. Whoo.
Thump. Whoo.
It sounded like a giant breathing under the earth.
Dwarves were gathered in tiers before the smithy. Children sat on the shoulders of grown folk, and the old dwarves, house rings hung in their beards, had taken the stone seats. Kang Mujin was the only human there.
As he stepped inside, dozens of pairs of eyes fastened on him at once.
Doria had already finished his preparations. He stood between the two hearths tightening the ties of a leather apron, his long braided beard wound up onto his chest and wrapped in wire mesh so the fire could not touch it. Cutting it would have been simple, but for him it seemed not even to be a choice.
Doria looked at Kang Mujin’s bag.
“Personal tools are allowed. Hammer and tongs only.”
Kang Mujin opened the bag and showed two short hammers, tongs, a file and a whetstone. Doria checked each one without laying a hand on them.
“We choose the ore first.”
In the middle of the forge lay a heap of iron ore dug from the same mine. Reddish limonite was mixed with black magnetite, and though it had been divided evenly to the eye, the amount of iron and the impurities differed from stone to stone.
“Didn’t you say the same ore?”
At Kang Mujin’s question Doria’s eyes glinted.
“The same heap.”
“So the eye that chooses is a craft as well.”
“You know the taste of iron!”
Doria slapped his knee and laughed, and the two of them sat down before the ore heap together.
Doria picked up stones, weighed them in his hand, cracked their edges to look at the color inside. There was no hesitation in the way he touched them to the tip of his tongue or tapped them with a small hammer to hear them ring. They were the choices of a man who had handled stone from the Stonebeam mine all his life.
Kang Mujin brought his palm close to the heap.
As the presence of iron seeped into the lines of his hand, he felt a different pulse in every piece of ore. In some the iron was spread evenly, in others a black core was clenched at the center alone. Stones carrying sulfur sent up a prickling like needles, and those thick with silicon were dull and dry.
He did not take only the purest. A blade needed a hard edge and a body that endured, so he set aside iron that would take carbon and iron whose grain would not break however many times it was folded. Iron too mild made a good body but was hard to bring to an edge.
By the time Kang Mujin had drawn out seven lumps, Doria had nine set aside.
Doria’s eyes ran over the other man’s share.
“Few.”
“There’ll be little slag as well.”
“Talk when it’s finished.”
“I will.”
The smelting began.
Doria stacked charcoal of one size in layers and drove the fire to a single point. Kang Mujin split the waterwheel’s wind and brought the whole hearth to an even heat. Almost at the same moment, red bloom iron came out of each.
Clang! Clang!
Doria’s heavy hammer overlapped half of the previous mark without fail. Kang Mujin opened a road for the impurities with his small hammer and pressed the joining faces into waves.
“Little tricks!”
“They serve.”
“Say that once it holds!”
The first advantage was settled at the quench. Doria’s blade rang short and clear, while on Kang Mujin’s a faint line surfaced where the hard edge met the tough spine. Doria took it for a warp and sneered, but Kang Mujin offered no explanation and drew the whetstone to him. The contest would end on the testing bench, not in words.
As the sun tilted below the ridgeline, the two blades were finished.
Doria’s was short and broad. The weight carried forward toward the point, fit for splitting armor or heavy bone, and between grip and blade there was only a low shoulder to keep the hand from sliding. No house crest, no jewels.
Kang Mujin’s was long and plain. One edge was thin and the spine thick, and the handle was not yet even wrapped in leather. There was nothing on it that could be called ornament.
Kang Mujin cut his mark near the hilt with a small chisel.
A line broken twice, and a short stroke through the middle.
Tock. Tock. Tock.
Listening to that sound, Doria stamped the Stonebeam crest, hammer crossed with beam, below his own blade.
When the two of them laid the finished blades side by side on the anvil, the smithy went quiet.
The three old dwarves who served as judges rose from their stone seats. All three wore beards that fell past their knees, and in their hands were worn glasses and small testing hammers.
The one in front spoke.
“First we look with the eye. Next is the sound. After that we test the flex and the edge.”
Doria folded his arms.
“If it breaks, I won’t complain.”
Kang Mujin nodded as well.
“A thing is known by using it.”
The old dwarf took up Doria’s blade first. The glass ran along the edge, and the testing hammer struck the spine, the edge and the part near the grip in turn. A clear tone of a different pitch came from each place, and the judges looked at one another without a word.
Kang Mujin’s blade came next.
The first dwarf frowned the moment the blade was lifted. The second held the glass to it and did not move for a long while. While the third scratched a fingernail along the faint boundary risen between edge and spine, Doria’s folded arms slowly came undone.
“What is it?”
The judge gave no answer and struck Kang Mujin’s blade with the testing hammer.
Ting.
A clear ring climbed to the smithy’s ceiling.
The spine was struck next.
Tung.
This time the sound came low and tough.
When two different rings came out of one blade, as though from two different irons, Doria took a step toward the anvil.
The hot stubbornness of the first day had gone out of his eyes. In its place was the look a craftsman wears when iron throws a color he did not expect before the hearth.
The flex and the edge were still to be tested, and no winner had been named. Yet in the moment two different rings sounded from Kang Mujin’s blade, it was Doria, who had never once doubted his own victory, who fell silent first.
Unable to take his eyes from the blade, he murmured very low.
“That grain…”
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