The horse that came around the bend was heaving foam-flecked breaths, and the man on its back, wrapped in a tattered cloak, drew the reins; the moment he made out the party and the cart, he came straight down from the saddle. Over his chainmail, iron plates of differing size and color had been fastened on, and on the shield on his left arm the marks where something had been scraped away were plain to see.
He stopped two paces in front of Kang Mujin, and kept his right hand near the sword at his waist, but did not draw it.
“Are you the ones from the mine?”
Kang Mujin looked over the man’s gear before answering. The armor was old but free of rust, and the leather straps bore traces of fresh oiling. The rim of the shield had been split many times and reinforced with iron nails; these were things their owner tended every day.
“We are.”
The man’s gaze swept over the cart loaded with severed chains and the freed people standing behind it. When he saw Rakan, the collar scar still ringing his neck, his jaw hardened, but he soon took his hand from his sword and showed an empty palm.
“I am Rosen Cardier. I was a knight of the western marches; now I go round the outposts that are left and send refugees east.”
‘Was.’
Kang Mujin heard the past tense attached to the words. A man in whole armor, wearing a sword besides, had not called himself a knight but said he had been one.
Silvana’s arrow was still aimed at Rosen’s chest.
“Why did you follow us?”
“I sent a scout toward the mine and confirmed black smoke. After that I also saw a demon soldier fleeing down the southern road. He is a little over two hours ahead of us. If he reaches the cavalry at the southern outpost, a report goes in to Grimoire’s forward command post before noon tomorrow, and at the earliest a pursuit force blocks this road by sundown.”
Rosen moved his gaze as if counting the party, then brought it back to Kang Mujin.
“I had to know who struck the mine.”
“And what did you mean to do once you knew?”
“If enemies, stop them. If refugees, guide them on their way.”
Rakan raised a short blade. It was a thing hurriedly made at the mine, but in his hand it looked like a stubby sword.
“If we were enemies, you’d stop us alone?”
“I can buy time.”
Rosen’s answer was calm and did not sound like bluster, but Kang Mujin was feeling the crack hidden inside his sword. A fissure finer than a hair ran through the middle of the blade, and shock had built up in the tang, narrowed by repeated grinding. Not enough to break at once, but not a state he could promise would hold until the next hard fight.
A sword much like its owner.
Kang Mujin asked.
“Do you know whose command the men guarding the mine belonged to?”
“The invasion army of the demon-realm border. General Grimoire Vargas’s jurisdiction, to be exact.”
Silvana drew the bowstring back a little.
“You are saying a demon general runs a mine on human land?”
“It is hard to call it human land now.”
Rosen’s voice did not waver, but the fingers pressing the rim of his shield had gone white.
“Of the lords of the western marches, three are dead and two have fled. The one who remains holds his gates on condition of paying tribute. It is not only mines. There are farms and logging camps. They move people like goods as well.”
“Hrm.”
Doria dragged roughly at the end of his beard.
“And knowing that, what are the human kings doing?”
“They keep repeating the same answer, that they are gathering troops.”
“And meanwhile the border folk are dragged off?”
“Yes.”
Doria made to spit, then saw the wounded and turned his head away; the hand gripping his hammer haft cracked.
Rakan let go of the cart handle.
“Grimoire.”
The voice that spoke the name was low. When Kang Mujin turned, the fur at the back of Rakan’s neck was standing on end, and with his left palm covering the brand on his right wrist, he glared at Rosen.
“Is he the one who took us?”
“He would not have gone hunting himself.”
Rosen did not avoid his eyes.
“But he sets the capture permits and the quotas. Down to how many are taken from which village, and how many are put in which mine.”
Rakan bared his teeth.
“So he writes the number of people in a ledger.”
“Yes.”
“The dead too?”
Rosen closed his mouth a moment.
“Recorded as losses.”
The instant Rakan turned, he struck a tree by the road with his fist; dry bark rained down, and the cloth wound round his wrist reddened again, the wound having split open.
Kang Mujin stood in front of him.
“Open your hand.”
“Does that matter now?”
“It matters if you mean to hold a sword.”
Rakan’s ears flattened back, but the fist opened. Old calluses were set into the palm. Unlike those a pickaxe haft makes, hard skin lay layered between the thumb and forefinger and beneath the little finger, so one could tell it was a hand that had long gripped a sword.
Kang Mujin took a clean cloth from the pouch at his waist and wrapped Rakan’s hand.
“You used a sword?”
“Before I was taken.”
“What kind of sword?”
“Long and heavy. My tribe did not use shields.”
“That would be how you were taken.”
Rakan’s eyes narrowed, and Doria swallowed a laugh into his beard.
“That human shows no mercy where iron is concerned.”
“He is not wrong.”
Rakan answered curtly, then held out the short blade he had been given at the mine.
“This is light.”
“It was made in a hurry.”
“It still held.”
Kang Mujin took the blade and examined the edge and the tang. Because it had been hastily repaired from the short curved sword of a demon felled at the mine, the grain of the metal was uneven, and the spine, having taken several impacts, was slightly bent. Even so, the iron band wound round the tang had not loosened, and for something thrown together it had done its part.
Iron meant to hold for now only had to hold for now; after that, you put it back in the fire and made something better of it.
Kang Mujin handed the blade back.
“I will make you a proper one later.”
Rakan looked down at the blade.
“The price?”
“Pay me when you are able to work.”
“A kindness is a debt and a blade is a debt too?”
“I never set a price on the kindness.”
“I did.”
Rakan shoved the blade through his belt.
“So I am coming along.”
“You do not even know where we are going.”
“Neither do you.”
Kang Mujin could not answer at once. Until now he had walked where there was a road, mended broken farm tools when a village had them, and stayed where there was usable ore, thinking a good forge and iron were all he needed.
But the sound the chains on the cart made was not a light one, and with every step the links struck one another, as though the pickaxes left behind in the mine were following after him.
“Do as you like.”
When Kang Mujin said it, Rakan snorted.
“I was not going to ask permission.”
Rosen, who had been listening to their exchange, bent one knee to study the road; pressing a hand to the deep ruts the cartwheels had left, he soon pointed to a mountain path to the northeast.
“Come to my camp first. Even with the wounded it is a little over two hours from here. It is an empty outpost, but it has a roof and a well, so they can rest.”
Silvana asked.
“You are not planning to gather us there and then call in troops?”
“It is only natural that you doubt me.”
Rosen unbelted the sword at his waist and set it on the ground, then laid down his shield as well.
“I will go at the front. I will give my horse to the wounded, too. If you still cannot trust me, you may bind my hands.”
Kang Mujin picked up the sword lying on the ground.
At that, Rosen’s expression broke for the first time.
“I will look at the sword.”
“Now?”
“It will break soon.”
When Kang Mujin drew the blade, fine cracks showed faintly along the dark steel. It was a fissure hard to find with the naked eye, but when he pressed the flat with his thumb, the grain of the metal split at his fingertips. Traces of heating it too often, of forcing it straight without hammering, of quenching it in haste after the temperature had dropped, came through one after another.
“Who repaired it?”
“I did.”
“There was no smith?”
“There was.”
Rosen’s gaze moved away from the blade.
“He stayed behind after we sent off the last refugee column.”
It was a short answer, and Kang Mujin asked nothing more, sheathing the sword and returning it.
“Take no heavy blows. The middle of the blade has split.”
“How long will it last?”
“A long time, if you do not fight.”
“And if I must fight?”
“It may be once, it may be ten times. Iron does not lie, but it does not tell you the future either.”
Rosen took the sword and belted it on.
“Then I will think of it as once.”
“Find a way to last ten times first.”
When Kang Mujin took the horse’s reins and handed them to a freed old man, Rosen adjusted the saddle without a word. Silvana went ahead to scout the forest path, and while Doria rapped the rear axle of the cart to check its condition, Rakan again took hold of the heaviest cart handle.
“You are wounded.”
When Kang Mujin said it, Rakan snorted.
“I am also a man in debt.”
“If your legs give out, the cart goes over with you.”
“Then hold it from the side.”
Kang Mujin watched Rakan’s gait. His knee wobbled each time he set down his right foot, so lasting half a day on stubbornness alone would be hard.
When he laid a hand on the iron tire of the cartwheel, the cold, rough feel of the metal seeped into his palm. The tire, the axle pins, and the chains binding the load ran together as one structure, and the force borne at each part came to him like thick and thin lines. Kang Mujin evened out the tension of the tire while tilting the axle pins a fraction, and made the chain links mesh with one another so they caught the sway of the load.
The cart’s center of gravity shifted a little forward. The force needed to pull it had not vanished, but the drag hauling backward with each turn of the wheel was less.
Rakan’s shoulders rose slightly.
“It got lighter.”
“Do not tip it over.”
“Would it kill you to speak kindly?”
“When iron listens to kind words, I will try it.”
Doria laughed outright.
“He knows the taste of iron!”
The party reached the empty outpost before dark fell. The time left before the fled soldier’s report reached the forward command post and the first pursuit force blocked the road was a little over a day. Rosen turned an hourglass and hung it under the eaves, and made it plain that the wounded had to be moved and the northeastern road cleared before the last of the sand fell. The stone wall had crumbled to waist height and half the palisade was rotten, and where the alarm bell had been, only a thick rope hung. Even so the well water was clear, and dry straw was piled in the barracks that still had a roof.
Kang Mujin brought the wounded inside first. While Silvana fetched herbs from the forest and washed wounds, Doria pulled a broken door off and split it for firewood, and Rakan ignored three orders to sit down while carrying water buckets, until at last he slid down with his back against the wall.
“I am fine.”
Rakan spoke first.
Kang Mujin did not answer, but looked at his legs. The thighs were trembling even at rest.
“Do not look.”
“I am not looking because I want to.”
“Then why?”
“I am seeing what kind of sword to make.”
Rakan looked down at his own legs, then clicked his tongue briefly.
“Make it heavy. Do not use my legs as an excuse to give me something light.”
“I will decide after you can walk.”
Kang Mujin went to the hearth. He pulled out a rusted iron plate wedged between the stones, knocked the ash from it, and patched the cracked places with lengths of chain hammered flat. The air hole was narrow so the flame leaned to one side, and when he widened the tuyere as well, the fire settled considerably.
He put into the hearth the two demon swords he had taken at the mine. They were not good steel. The ore had not been refined enough, so sulfur and phosphorus remained, and the carbon was unevenly spread, but if he cut away the parts where the impurities had gathered and folded it several times, there would be a use for it.
Doria squatted down before the hearth.
“Hammer?”
“There is one I brought from the mine.”
“Tongs?”
“I will straighten a manacle.”
“Anvil?”
Kang Mujin pointed to the boundary stone fallen at the outpost’s entrance.
Doria’s eyebrows twitched.
“You mean to make a blade on a rock?”
“Not blades.”
“Then what?”
Kang Mujin drew out the glowing sword.
“Hoes and scythes. They serve to clear a road and raise a palisade, and if those things reach us first, you can choke up on the haft and block with them.”
Doria looked at Kang Mujin a moment, then snorted.
“Good. But I will handle the fire.”
“I thought you took no interference at the forge.”
“You are the one who came into my forge.”
The two of them beat iron deep into the night. When Kang Mujin picked out and cut away the parts where impurities had gathered, Doria folded what remained, and the dwarf’s short, heavy hammer never struck the same spot three times. Feeling the heat and the direction of the grain flowing out from inside the metal, Kang Mujin pointed out where the hammer had to land.
“A little to the left.”
“I know.”
“Then strike.”
“There is such a thing as rhythm!”
The words were rough but the hammer was exact. The chains became the bodies of scythes, and the demon swords turned into hoe blades and small hand axes. For the handles they chose sound wood from the collapsed palisade and shaved it down, and on every finished piece Kang Mujin left a small mark near the tang.
The freed people sat in a ring around the fire and watched, and not one of them spoke loudly. Only, when the old man who received the first finished scythe flicked the edge with a fingernail, it rang clear.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Whatever you want.”
Kang Mujin put the next hoe blade into the fire.
“Till a field, or build a house.”
“And if the demons come again?”
The hammer stopped.
Kang Mujin looked at the color of the iron in the hearth. It was still a dark orange, not yet the time to strike. Feed it more fire and the grain of the metal would loosen, and only then would the hammer not split it.
“Then you must stop them.”
The old man cupped the scythe in both hands.
“Could we stop them?”
Instead of answering, Kang Mujin pushed in more fuel, and as the hearth’s temperature rose the grain of the iron softened and made ready to take the hammer.
“We will have to make it so you can.”
Rosen, who had been watching from outside the outpost, came slowly in. He wiped the dust from the table with his sleeve and spread out an old map. It was a map that still carried the marks where rain and blood had soaked it; the western corner had burned away, and black lines were drawn through several place names.
“My home was here.”
Rosen pointed to a small castle set west of the map’s center.
Cardier March.
A black line was drawn through that name too.
“It was three days from the demon-realm rift. Not fertile land, but there was an iron vein, and walls that held the northern pass. My house kept it for six generations.”
Rosen’s finger moved from the castle to the southern road.
“The first year, packs of monsters came down. The next year armed demons appeared, and after that an envoy came.”
“An envoy?”
Rakan asked, still sitting against the wall.
“He urged surrender. Hand over half the mine’s output and two hundred residents every year, and they would guarantee the lordship.”
“And?”
“My father burned the envoy’s document.”
Rosen said it evenly.
“Three months later the castle fell.”
Sparks flew, but Rosen did not close his eyes.
Kang Mujin looked at the castle’s position on the map. It stood where three roads met, a key point linking the mines of the northern range, the eastern plain, and the southern river, so it had not been attacked simply in reprisal for a burned document. The demons wanted roads and iron, and they counted people, too, among the means of production.
“What became of the people?”
Silvana asked.
“Some we got away to the east. Most of those who stayed in the castle were killed or taken. I was ordered to escort the last refugee column.”
“So you kept the order.”
Rakan said.
“I failed to keep my home.”
“The ones who got out alive, you are the one who kept them.”
Rosen’s gaze turned to Rakan, and when Rakan shifted his grip on the cloth wound round his wrist, the brand on his right wrist was laid bare.
“I could not run. That is how I ended up like this.”
He tapped the blackened, twisted scar with a finger.
“If there is even one you sent out alive, that is enough. Stop playing the dead man.”
Rosen said nothing for a while, then straightened his back.
“Rough advice.”
“It is free.”
Kang Mujin drew the iron from the hearth.
The hammer came down.
Once.
The red iron spread wide.
Twice.
The rough edge folded over.
At the third stroke the tangled grain of the metal gathered in one direction, and Kang Mujin struck no further; he turned the iron and held the part that had cooled nearer the fire. When you had struck as much as was needed, it had to be heated again, and an impatient hammer ruined iron.
He set down the tongs and looked at Rosen.
“Why did you come yourself over one mine being struck?”
Rosen pointed to the eastern road on the map.
“The beacon at the southern outpost went up just now, once. It means the soldier who fled reached the cavalry. Twelve hours to the forward command post, and another six for pursuit cavalry to come from there to here. We must empty this place before the sun sinks tomorrow at the latest.”
Silvana asked.
“How fast will the pursuers come?”
“By sundown tomorrow at the earliest. But there is something that moves before that.”
Rosen ran his finger along a road marked with dots on the map, and a line beginning at the northern mine and a line running up from a small village in the south joined at a pass to the west.
“A slaver caravan. It carries the mine’s iron and newly taken prisoners across the border every three days. The morning after tomorrow it is due to pass through Blackbrook Gorge.”
Rakan pushed himself off the wall; his knee wobbled, but he braced against the wall and held.
“How many are being dragged off?”
“Eight carts confirmed.”
“The escort?”
“Around twenty, ordinarily. But since the mine was raided, there is a good chance they have been reinforced.”
Rosen looked at Kang Mujin.
“There is also a rumor that elite troops bearing Grimoire Vargas’s mark have joined them.”
Silvana’s hand on her bow stiffened, and Doria narrowed the hearth’s air hole without a word.
Kang Mujin studied the gorge’s width and slope on the map. Blackbrook ran along the left of the road and a sheer cliff rose on the right. With eight carts the column would have no choice but to stretch out long, so if the front and rear were cut off, the escort would find it hard to move all at once.
“How many approaches are there?”
As if he had been waiting for it, Rosen drew two more lines at the edge of the map.
“Besides the cart road at the front, there is a hunters’ path up over the cliff. Fast, but no horse can pass. The other follows the brook upstream. You will not be seen, but the water rises when it rains.”
“Is there an iron bridge?”
“There is an old mine-cart bridge at the mouth of the gorge. The caravan does not cross it; it passes beneath.”
Kang Mujin pressed a finger to the bridge’s position. If it was an iron structure he could feel the fixing pins and the load and move it to some degree, but he could not put it into a plan without checking its condition himself.
His gaze swept the barracks. There were many wounded, and he could not put the freed back into danger. Rakan struggled even to walk properly, and Rosen’s sword was cracked, and Silvana’s arrows were not plentiful, and he and Doria did not even have a proper anvil.
Doria studied Kang Mujin’s face.
“Are you thinking of going?”
“Not yet.”
Kang Mujin took his hand off the map.
“There is something to do first.”
He held out a hand to Rosen.
“Give me your sword.”
Rosen looked down at the sword at his waist.
“Did you not tell me not to fight?”
“With that sword, yes.”
Rosen slowly unbelted it and handed it over.
Kang Mujin drew the blade and checked the crack again, then pushed the fissured part into the hearth. There was no time to make a new sword. Cutting away the area around the crack would leave the blade far too short, so he would have to pick out the part of the iron brought from the mine where the carbon lay evenly and weld it on. A perfect sword he could not make, but a sword that came back alive he could.
Rakan came over unsteadily, the short blade he had been given at the mine in his hand.
“Do mine too.”
“Rest.”
“No.”
“Your legs are still unsteady.”
“Then let me hold out with the sword instead of my legs.”
Kang Mujin looked into Rakan’s eyes, and what remained in them was not anger alone. The people of eight carts he had not even met yet were already up on his shoulders.
“Is the debt the reason you mean to follow me?”
“That is right.”
Rakan did not hesitate.
“You saved my life at the mine, and you have even put a blade in my hand. Until that debt is paid in full I am not leaving.”
“Who decides when it is paid?”
“I do.”
“Even if it takes your whole life?”
Rakan held the short blade out toward Kang Mujin.
“Then I follow you my whole life.”
Kang Mujin asked nothing more. It was not a stubbornness words could break, and he could find no reason to break it either.
He put out his hand.
“Give it here.”
Rakan entrusted him with the short blade.
“Fix this and the debt grows by one.”
“This time I will take payment in advance.”
“Of what?”
“Coming back alive.”
Rakan bared his fangs.
This time it was plainly a smile.
Kang Mujin laid the two blades side by side in the hearth. Rosen’s sword had a weary grain from enduring so long, and Rakan’s blade had been straightened too hastily, leaving stress inside it. Different problems could not be fixed with the same fire, so the place and the timing had to differ.
He set Rosen’s sword deep in the flame but let only the cracked section glow red, and laid Rakan’s blade at the edge of the coals to take heat slowly. As the temperature rose, the differing grains of the two metals grew distinct within the red light.
Night wind blew in from outside the outpost, and far off in the western sky a single column of black smoke rose.
Rosen spoke with a hardened face.
“A signal beacon.”
Behind the first light, a second and a third crossed the ridgelines in turn. The soldier who had slipped away from the mine had finished his report.
Kang Mujin drew the glowing sword out with the tongs.
“Doria.”
“I know.”
The dwarf raised his hammer.
“Silvana.”
“I will scout the road until dawn.”
The elf took up her bow.
“Rosen.”
He answered while folding the map.
“I will prepare both: a route to move the refugees to the abandoned village in the east, and a plan to strike the gorge.”
Rakan leaned in the doorway and watched a blade being born again. His legs still shook, but his eyes never left the flame.
When Kang Mujin brought the hammer down, sparks split the darkness, and the cracked blade grew thicker instead of shorter, the welded iron filling the place where the shock would land.
The time left until Blackbrook Gorge was a day and a half.
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