The old man could not bring himself to speak for some time, even after he had finished climbing the slope.
The neck bared beneath his frayed coat was withered, and mud had dried thick on his shoes. Behind him came a line of broken carts and worn-out people. Most were human, but among them were a rabbit-beast mother and child with tawny ears hanging low, and a demi-human man with one horn snapped off.
Twenty-three in all.
The Steel Bastion already held twenty-three: the five adults who had first broken ground, Aisha, and then the thirteen adults and four children who had joined after. Even with all of them, hands had been stretched thin raising the forge, the drainage ditches, and the tents. Now, overnight, exactly that many people again had been added.
Rakan stood about two paces from the newcomers. A hand rested near the sword’s hilt, but the blade stayed sheathed.
“Met them in the northern valley. They said they came because they saw the smoke.”
The old man’s gaze passed over Kang Mujin and Doria and settled on the forge. In the eyes that looked at the fire, hunger showed before fear. They were the eyes of someone who had never seen a fire that went long without dying.
“Is this… the Steel Bastion?”
Rosen closed the ledger and stepped forward.
“That is what we call it. Where have you come from?”
“Brena village. It was three days to the north.”
Kang Mujin saw Rakan’s ears lay back a little. It seemed to be a name Rakan knew.
Rosen asked.
“A place where a village once stood?”
“There is none now.”
The old man drew a broken hoe blade from inside his coat. The middle of the blade had melted black, and the cracked face was rough, as though it had been wrenched apart by force.
“Men in black armor came. Told us to hand over the grain. They took it last year, and they took it again in the spring. When we said there was no more, they counted the people.”
The old man’s fingers clenched around the hoe blade.
“Said they would take them instead of grain.”
A woman behind the cart covered her child’s ears, and the child, understanding nothing, looked up at her mother.
Kang Mujin took the hoe blade the old man held out.
Soft low-carbon steel. Years of striking earth and stone had worn the tip down, and there were traces where its owner had heated it in a fire and straightened it several times. At the break was a twist that could never come from use as a farm tool. Something broad and iron had come down on the flat of it, and then a boot had stamped it until it snapped.
Even when people kept their mouths shut, the force that had been applied remained in broken iron.
Iron did not lie.
“Are these all who got away?”
Kang Mujin asked.
The old man shook his head.
“We scattered. Some went south, some hid in the forest. And many were… taken.”
Kang Mujin looked down at the hoe blade, then set it beside the forge.
“This can be mended.”
The old man’s lips parted slightly, but Kang Mujin offered no further explanation.
Rosen studied the faces one by one.
“The injured, step forward. Children and the elderly will rest in the left tent. Do not drink a great deal of water at once; take half a bowl at a time.”
No one moved readily.
“There is not much food. Even so, we will not send you away hungry. Rest today. From tomorrow we will divide the work each of you can do.”
The old man asked carefully.
“You will take us in?”
“We cannot drive people out when we do not even know who has come.”
Rosen’s tone was courteous, but it left no room.
“I will record names, where you are from, the work you can do, and the family who came with you. Those carrying weapons, say so as well. They will not be taken from you. But at night I must know which tent holds a weapon.”
The man with the broken horn narrowed his eyes.
“Planning to levy a tax?”
“The only tax we could collect right now is mud and stone.”
Rosen pointed to the empty ground to the west.
“As it happens, we need a great deal of both.”
Short laughs escaped here and there, and stiffened shoulders came down a little.
The rabbit-beast woman asked.
“If we cannot work, are we driven out?”
The child in her arms had red cheeks, perhaps from fever.
“This is not so wretched a place that we put shovels in the hands of children and the sick.”
Rosen called for Aisha.
“Aisha, may I ask you for water and clean cloth?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes.”
As Aisha ran off toward the water barrel, the rabbit-beast woman took in the short horns and the tail, and loosened her hold on the child a little.
That was enough.
People began to move.
Rakan hauled a cart up the slope, and with every turn of the tilted wheel the axle groaned harshly. Doria heard it and clicked his tongue.
“They came three days dragging that? It’s a wonder the wheel didn’t abandon its owner.”
Doria pushed his head under the cart, then pulled straight back out when mud caught the end of his beard.
“Kang Mujin, you have a look.”
“Why me?”
“There’s dirt in my beard.”
“It’s already there.”
“Can’t have more of it.”
Doria shook out the beard and went back to the forge. At his own forge he suffered no one’s meddling, yet he handed off the cart repair without hesitation.
Kang Mujin crouched beside the cart.
The iron tire binding the wheel was of low purity, and one side had stretched until it stood a finger’s width from the wood. The axle pin was worn nearly halfway through; left as it was, it would drop out on the next slope.
When Kang Mujin laid a palm against the tire, a cold, coarse grain spread into the hand, and the stress stored inside the iron could be felt crowding along the warped circle. The power could have drawn it closed that instant. But forcing stretched iron back in only made another side bulge out; it had to be heated, shortened in length, and brought back into balance to hold for long.
“Unload it.”
The cart’s owner hurried to shift the sacks, and a few handfuls of dried beans and a wooden bowl rolled out. Everything they owned did not fill even one cart.
Kang Mujin stripped the tire off and laid it at the edge of the forge. Kang Mujin waited until a dark red glow ran evenly through the whole of it, then set it on the anvil.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Gathering the stretched section in a little at a time, three strikes, then a turn. Three strikes again. If the circle was out of balance, the wheel would wear from that same spot first.
People gathered toward the sound of the hammer.
When Kang Mujin fitted the heated tire around the rim of the wheel, Doria, who had come up with a pail at some point, poured the water.
Hsssss.
Steam leapt up, and the cooling tire shrank and bit hard into the wooden wheel.
“The axle pin needs replacing too.”
The cart’s owner bowed from the waist.
“As for payment… I have nothing now.”
“Who asked for any?”
“But iron is precious, is it not?”
“If the cart breaks, the load it carries is lost too.”
Doria tossed over a short iron bar.
“Don’t make it too fine. The cart will run off on its own.”
“It isn’t that kind of iron.”
“It was a joke.”
“I know.”
Doria let out a gruff hrm and smoothed the beard.
Kang Mujin heated the bar. Rather than softening only the surface, Kang Mujin waited for the heat to seep to the core, and when the grain of the iron loosened, hammered the square bar into eight faces and then rounded it. At the end a shoulder was left to keep it from slipping out.
The new pin was driven in and a wedge set, and the wheel turned without a wobble.
The cart’s owner rolled the wheel again and again.
“It’s like new.”
“It is not new.”
Kang Mujin brushed the soot from his hands.
“It is a thing that can be mended and used. Oil it often.”
When the man started to pull a sack of beans from the cart, Kang Mujin stopped him.
“Give it to the children.”
“I cannot simply take and give nothing.”
“Then work.”
Rosen came over with the ledger.
“Do you know how to handle a cart?”
“I did carpentry in the village. I made wheels too.”
“Good. We need someone to build quarters. Your name?”
“Marten.”
Rosen wrote in the ledger.
Marten. Human. Carpenter. Family of three.
Behind him the others waited their turn.
The old man said he was Hamon; he had tilled fields all his life and knew how to lay a stone wall. The rabbit-beast woman was Seah, and she could tell medicinal herbs apart. Kurn, the demi-human man with the broken horn, herded goats and worked hides.
The order Rosen asked in was the same for everyone.
Name. Family. Work you can do. Where you are hurt.
There was no column for station.
“You do not write down whose lord’s subject a person was before?”
Hamon asked.
Rosen’s pen paused.
“Does that lord feed you and keep you safe now?”
No one answered.
“If it becomes necessary, I will write it later. For now let us record what is of use for staying alive.”
Kang Mujin looked at Rosen’s ledger.
A forge, too, was not raised from the outer wall first. The path of the air and the path of the flame came first, and if the foundation could not hold, ornament only added the weight of its own collapse.
Rosen knew the order in which people are gathered.
That morning, dull sickles, crushed shovels, and holed pots piled up before the anvil all at once. Rather than spend new iron, Kang Mujin left the sound parts and brought the farm tools back first. Aisha, who asked about the cracks that could not be seen, was made to touch the tang of a sickle.
“Iron doesn’t talk.”
“When it is about to break, it speaks loudly. Hearing it before then is what makes a craftsman.”
Before midday Rosen came with the figures.
“If the rations stay as they are, six days.”
The hammering stopped. The joy of twice the hands ran up against the fact of twice the mouths.
Kang Mujin divided the waiting repairs into three piles.
“Today we mend only the tools for the fields and the storehouse. Marten, raise the frame of the storehouse before the quarters. Hamon, take the western watercourse and the fields. Until the southern trade road is open, the northern watch stands at double.”
When the words ended, people’s skills turned at once into places. The carpenter picked out straight timbers, the old man who laid stone walls began by stripping away the soft ground, and Seah and Silvana sorted the herbs that could be eaten from the ones that could not. Rakan carried the largest stone up the northern slope on his back and showed the direction instead of speaking it.
Hamon took up the mended hoe.
“Can a field be made here again?”
“We make one.”
When the shortened hoe blade turned the first soil, the people who had been waiting followed after. Before the smithy there remained a human’s sickle, a beast’s hide knife, and a demi-human’s pot, and in the fire they were all the same iron.
After the sun went down, thin bean porridge boiled at the first communal hearth. There were not enough bowls, so people lined up holding wooden cups and pot lids, and when Rosen put the children and the sick at the front, no one objected.
Aisha sat beside the forge and lifted a spoonful of porridge.
“There are so many more people now.”
“There are.”
“Will more come tomorrow?”
Kang Mujin did not answer.
The smoke was visible from far off. If there were people looking for fire, they would come.
So would those who meant to put it out.
Rosen stood a board beside the cornerstone and wrote the items in charcoal.
Water.
Food.
Quarters.
Work.
Watch.
Hamon pointed at the last word.
“Who stands the watch?”
Rakan set down an empty bowl and rose.
“Tonight I make the rounds.”
Kang Mujin saw the mud soaked into those boots, and the tiredness in arms that had carried stone.
“I will take the west.”
“A blacksmith should watch the fire.”
“Doria watches the fire.”
Doria raised an eyebrow.
“Who decided that?”
“I decided it now.”
“Hrm. It’s my forge, so you’re not wrong.”
Silvana set down a bowl as well.
“I will take the eastern hill. From there you can see as far as the forest path.”
Rosen wrote the three names and their hours on the board, and marked where torches would stand and the routes of the patrol.
There was no grand law, and no high wall.
But people knew the order of the rations, they had a place to sleep, and they had heard the work they would take tomorrow. As the refugees flowed in, the Steel Bastion passed beyond a small worksite and began to take the shape of a community.
Night settled.
The fire in the forge sank low, and the sound of even breathing spread between the tents. The mended cart stood beside the storehouse ground, and Hamon’s hoe leaned against the cornerstone.
Kang Mujin walked the western slope slowly.
When the sense of iron widened, the metals inside the bastion surfaced like embers in the dark.
The nails holding the tents.
The latch of the forge.
The three blades the people had declared.
Rakan’s sword, moving.
Silvana’s arrowheads, climbing the eastern hill.
Kang Mujin stopped walking.
Below to the northwest, unfamiliar metal made itself felt.
Iron wrapped in wood and leather was moving low. One passed, and another followed behind it, and unlike the ragged steps of refugees they held an even spacing, gripping the metal tight so that it would not knock against metal.
Kang Mujin bent and put a hand to the ground.
Beyond the cold earth a faint tremor spread.
Six.
No, seven.
At the very front was a curved sword in its sheath, and the three behind it carried short spearheads. At the very back, something studded close with iron barbs was being dragged.
It was not a tool for carrying loads.
It was a net for catching people.
Kang Mujin straightened.
In the darkness to the north, Rakan’s sword suddenly changed direction.
A low, short whistle followed.
The alarm signal.
The same force that had snapped the old man’s hoe blade was coming now, this time toward that fire.
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