Before the second whistle sounded, Kang Mujin ran.
Every piece of iron inside the bastion shuddered at once. Three blades in a tent rattled, the tongs propped beside the forge toppled to the ground, and after that came the stir of people waking and pulling themselves up.
“Don’t build up the fire.”
Kang Mujin said it low, and Rosen, face thrust out of a nearby tent, picked up the words at once.
“Leave the torches as they are! Move the children and anyone easily hurt behind the forge, and let only those with weapons gather before the cornerstone.”
Kang Mujin did not slow his pace.
The seven to the northwest had begun to scatter the moment they heard the whistle. Three spread west along the low slope and two fell back, but the one wearing a curved blade did not move, and the net at the very rear stopped as well.
It was not the movement of flight.
They had already drilled the positions they were to take once discovered.
Kang Mujin drew the sword at his waist. It was a blade whose care he had put off while repairing farm tools during the day, so a small tooth was missing from the tip and the balance sat too far toward the hilt.
It was not a good sword.
For now it only had to block rather than cut.
Beyond the northern slope, metal struck metal hard.
That was Rakan’s sword.
When two short spears lunged in from left and right, Rakan drove straight forward instead of falling back. As he swept the first shaft aside with his left arm and rammed his shoulder into the enemy’s chest, the low growl of the wolf beast split the darkness.
The second spear went for Rakan’s flank.
Kang Mujin reached out his hand.
The iron of the spear grew vivid at his fingertips. Its purity was low and it had not been cooled properly, so the hardness of the edge and the tang were uneven; force a twist into it and it would snap.
He did not break it.
He only turned the direction the spear would pass.
The shaft wrenched around in the demon’s hands, the point grazed Rakan’s flank, and buried itself in the dirt.
Rakan’s sword surged from below. The edge cut in between the seams of the demon’s leather armor and opened the shoulder deep, and in the moment the enemy staggered, Rakan pulled the blade free and cut down the spearman on the other side.
“Seven!”
At Kang Mujin’s shout, Rakan stepped over the fallen enemy.
“Two here!”
“Three to the west. Two behind.”
“The leader?”
“He isn’t moving.”
At those words Rakan’s ears lay back. They had made the same judgment, that the one with the curved blade was the commander.
When the three that had spread west broke into a run toward the bastion, Kang Mujin changed direction.
What they were after was not the forge but the tents. The way they moved with their iron hidden, and the net they had dragged along, both spoke of their purpose.
The scouts had not come only to count the bastion’s numbers.
If they could take people, they meant to take them.
Kang Mujin’s steps slowed.
The hotter the feeling, the colder the hands had to be. Iron rushed in front of the fire cracked inside, and a battlefield was no different.
He let out one breath.
“Rakan.”
“I won’t lose him.”
While Rakan threw himself at the commander first, Kang Mujin cut across the western slope.
A short spear came out of the darkness. Not a straight throw, it had been cast a little to the right, reckoning on the push of the wind.
Kang Mujin brought his sword up.
Just before the point touched, he pushed at the grain of the iron and a sharp sound burst out.
Clang.
The spear slid along the flat of the blade. Because the force had not been taken head-on, only a dull shock stayed in his wrist, and the spear passed his shoulder and lodged in the earth behind him.
In that time the two enemies split.
One blocked Kang Mujin. The other made for the tents.
“Doria!”
“I see it!”
Firelight flashed before the forge and Doria swung a long-hafted hammer. It was the hammer used to move lumps of iron, but turning in a dwarf’s arm it looked like a boulder the size of a man’s head.
The demon charging the tents raised a shield.
The hammer came down in the center of the shield with a heavy sound, and along with the shield’s crumpled iron rim, the demon lost its footing and rolled aside.
“Hrm! Anyone who walks into another’s forge with his boots on pays with his wrists first!”
“This is outside the forge.”
“As far as my firelight reaches is the forge!”
Doria stamped on the fallen enemy’s spear and broke it, then gripped the haft short and blocked a second attack.
When the demon in front of Kang Mujin drew a dagger, gray skin and twisted horns showed beneath the leather hood. The opponent seemed to have seen that Kang Mujin’s sword was poor, and ran its eyes over the chipped edge and the worn grip.
That judgment was not wrong.
Only, it had looked at nothing but the sword.
The demon dove low and stabbed the dagger at Kang Mujin’s thigh. Kang Mujin stepped back half a pace, pressed down on the wrist and cut, and the demon raised the dagger to block.
The two edges met.
In that moment Kang Mujin read the state of the dagger. The surface was blackened with oxidation, but carbon had gathered too heavily at the core, iron that was hard in exchange for not enduring shock, and three fine cracks already ran through the middle of the blade.
He twisted his sword and pressed exactly where the cracks were.
The dagger broke into three pieces, and the demon’s eyes went wide.
Kang Mujin drove the pommel up into its jaw. As the opponent bent backward he hooked its ankle, brought it down, and put the sword in beneath its throat.
He ended it short.
There was no time to shake the blood off.
When Kang Mujin raised his head, a bowstring sounded from the eastern hill.
Once.
After a brief interval, twice.
Silvana’s arrows went into the thigh and shoulder of a demon moving beyond the torchlight. It was shooting meant to bind the feet rather than kill, so the enemy swallowed a scream and dropped to its knees.
Silvana came down from the hill with the bow still in hand, and behind Silvana stood three refugees who had come out of the tents. They carried sickles and a woodcutting axe, but could not come any closer.
“All three to the west are in sight.”
“One is left.”
Kang Mujin answered.
It was the one who had been dragging the net at the very rear.
Feeling that metal lift from the ground, Kang Mujin turned at once.
A net set thick with iron spikes spread open in the air. It was wide enough to cover Doria and Silvana and the refugees in front of the tents all at once, and the lead weights hung along every edge came flying in a circle.
“Get down!”
As the people lowered themselves, Kang Mujin let go of his sword.
When he spread both hands, the metals at the net’s edge pulled at his fingertips. There were dozens of spikes alone, no room to move each one separately, so he tried to feel the net as a single object.
The problem was the lead weights. Different from iron in nature, soft and heavy. Grip them with the same strength and only the spikes would stop while the net flew on, dragged by its own momentum.
Kang Mujin chose the six nearest spikes.
He did not block it from above.
He pulled it down.
The spreading net folded in the middle, its forward edge driving into the ground, and the rear half folded over the top, the lead weights knocking together with a dull sound.
The demon who had thrown the net dropped the line and fled.
“Silvana.”
The bowstring rang before Kang Mujin had finished calling.
The arrow went into its calf, and the demon ran two more steps before pitching forward.
Silvana spoke with the next arrow already nocked.
“Is there any need to keep it alive?”
Kang Mujin looked north.
Rakan’s sword and the curved blade were clashing fast.
“I’ll finish there first.”
The commander’s curved blade was better than the other weapons. The blade was broad but not needlessly thick, and the angle of the curve was good for digging into gaps in armor. Having met Rakan’s sword six times, the metal’s temperature was climbing fast.
Rakan’s sword, on the other hand, was in trouble.
The flaw at the tip he had not been able to see to during the day spread inward with every shock, and two more hard clashes would likely break it.
“Rakan, don’t meet it with the edge!”
Rakan did not ask why.
When the demon commander’s curved blade came down, Rakan laid his sword flat and let it slide off. Sparks scattered at an angle, and in the instant the curved blade grazed the ground, Rakan smashed his elbow into the opponent’s temple.
The commander staggered back.
When Kang Mujin closed in, it opened the distance at once. Even while the tip of the curved blade moved between Rakan and Kang Mujin, the eyes searching out a path to flee behind stayed calm.
Kang Mujin did not pick up his sword.
Instead he pulled at the short spear standing in the ground, and dirt sprayed as the spear flew into his hand.
For the first time, the demon commander’s eyes wavered.
“A sorcerer.”
It was the common tongue of the continent. The pronunciation was stiff, but it could be understood.
Kang Mujin checked the spear’s balance. The tang was short; swing it roughly and the blade would come loose.
“A blacksmith.”
“That difference gets sorted after collection.”
To the end it spoke of people as things.
When the commander pulled a small horn from its belt, Kang Mujin curled his fingers.
The iron ring set around the rim of the horn jerked sideways, and its wrist turned before the horn reached its mouth. Instead of a signal, only a rough breath leaked out.
Rakan sprang in.
Curved blade and sword met again, but this time Rakan did not turn his edge into it. As he shoved the curved blade away with the flat and pressed in close, the demon commander drove up a knee. Rakan took it in the side.
There was a dull sound of impact.
The breath burst out of Rakan’s mouth, but he did not give ground; with his left hand he seized and wrenched the grip of the curved blade.
“Blacksmith!”
Kang Mujin thrust the spear.
The spear touched the commander’s breastplate. It was armor of several thin iron plates laced with leather cord, so the gaps were narrow, and trying to punch through from the front would ruin the spear first.
Kang Mujin pushed the plates.
When the space between the center plate and the right plate opened by a finger joint, the spear went in through the gap.
The demon commander’s body stiffened and the curved blade fell from its hand.
Rakan shoved it off and stepped back. Fangs showed between rough breaths.
When Kang Mujin pulled the spear out, the commander sank to its knees. Its hands tried to cover the wound but could not rise properly.
“Is there anyone else who has confirmed the numbers and defenses of this place?”
It looked up at Kang Mujin.
“You have already… been observed.”
“By whom.”
Black blood ran from the corner of its mouth, but it did not smile. It was the face of someone still calculating losses at the moment of his own death.
“Fire can be seen from far away.”
Those were its last words.
Even after the body fell forward, Rakan stood a while without moving, sword still in hand. Kang Mujin looked first at his side; the cloth was torn, but only a little blood had come.
“Ribs?”
“They’re fine.”
“Try breathing on the side you were hit.”
Rakan frowned and drew in a breath.
“It does hurt.”
“It may be cracked.”
“I won’t die.”
“I didn’t ask whether you’d die.”
Rakan gave no answer, looking down at his sword, and Kang Mujin followed that gaze. The crack that had started at the tip had spread a third of the way down the blade.
“Two more blocks and it would have broken.”
“That’s why I didn’t block.”
“I’ll repair it tomorrow.”
“With something better.”
“Find the iron first.”
Rakan gave a short snort. It was the same sound as always.
Over by the bastion Rosen was keeping the people in order. Doria kicked the wounded demons’ weapons far away, and Silvana checked the pulses of the fallen.
Of the seven, not one was alive.
The two who had gone down with arrows in them had still been breathing, but one swallowed the poison inside his coat, and the other never let go of his dagger while Doria subdued him.
Kang Mujin gathered their equipment in one place.
One curved blade.
Three short spears.
Four daggers.
A capture net set with iron spikes.
A horn ringed with black iron.
Iron did not lie.
Old bloodstains had soaked into the spears in layers, and small notches were cut at even intervals along the back of the curved blade. Whether they marked deeds in battle or counted the people taken, there was no way to know.
The tips of the net’s spikes were barbed. Built so that the more the one it covered thrashed, the deeper they would catch in flesh and cloth.
When Kang Mujin lifted one side of the net, a sound of indrawn breath passed among the refugees.
A beast woman pulled her child behind her back, and on her forearm the old marks of rope remained. Hamon stood gripping the repaired hoe in both hands and said nothing.
Aisha came out from behind the forge.
Rosen moved to stop her, but the child halted in front of the net. After looking at the spikes a moment, Aisha hid her hands inside her sleeves.
Kang Mujin folded the net.
“Doria.”
“What is it.”
“I’ll pull every spike out and melt them down.”
Doria’s thick brows twitched.
“The iron’s rubbish.”
“It will do for nails.”
“To drive into what?”
Kang Mujin looked at the place where the wall would stand.
The traces of stone they had begun stacking during the day ran long into the darkness, but the height did not reach the knee. The northwestern slope was wide open, and to the west a single broken cart across the path was the whole of it.
“The gate and the palisade.”
Doria smoothed the beard once.
“Hold them off with the tools they came to catch us with?”
“What iron is for is decided by the one who uses it.”
“You know something about the taste of iron.”
Doria slung the net over a shoulder and walked to the forge.
As the tension eased a little, the people’s breathing grew louder. Someone sat down where they stood; someone else set a weapon down to hide the late trembling of their hands.
Rosen checked the wounded, then came to Kang Mujin.
“We have no dead. One turned ankle, and one arm cut by a shield fragment thrown off by Doria’s hammer.”
“What the enemy wanted was the tents.”
“Yes. If they had slipped past the watch, they would most likely have taken people and then set the fires.”
Rosen looked around the open slope. The exhaustion lay thick on his face, but his words did not falter.
“There are two choices. From tomorrow we stop work on the quarters and put everyone on the wall, or we carry on with quarters and wall together but raise a temporary palisade on the outer line first.”
“If it rains, the tents won’t hold.”
“You think the second is better?”
“We need more people.”
“We have hands. It’s fighters we’re short of.”
Just then Rakan came over.
He was not limping, but the arm wrapped around his left side was a little stiff. He set the curved blade down in front of Kang Mujin.
“If more like them come, the working hands stop first.”
Rosen nodded.
“We have to divide the ones who build the wall from the ones who hold it.”
Rakan looked at the refugees.
Hamon with his hoe, the young man gripping a woodcutting axe, the beast woman shielding her child, the man binding his arm with bloodied cloth. Until a little while ago they had been people gathered at a fire, each of them to survive alone.
Rakan scratched the back of his neck. The sleeve slid up and the old brand scar above his wrist showed, but he did not pull the sleeve down right away.
“Gather the young ones for me.”
Rosen asked.
“What do you mean?”
“So I can teach them how to fight.”
“You mean we should make a militia.”
“You put the name on it.”
Rakan looked toward Kang Mujin.
“Even if I hold everything in front, it’s over if they leak around the side. Today it was seven. Next time more will come.”
Kang Mujin did not answer.
He noticed that Rakan had not once spoken of debts or favors. Instead he was speaking while looking at the tents and the people. Not the face of someone repaying his own rescue, but the face of someone who would not let what already existed be taken away.
“Weapons are short.”
Kang Mujin said.
“Then make them.”
Rakan answered.
Kang Mujin looked in turn at the hoe and the sickle beside the cornerstone, and at the broken spear shafts. Good iron was rare, the charcoal was tight, and there was only one forge. Hinges and nails for the wall had to be made as well.
There were two hands.
Counting Doria, four.
“Start by choosing who will train.”
“When the sun’s up tomorrow.”
“No.”
Rakan’s ears moved.
Kang Mujin looked at the northwestern slope. The grass the enemy had trodden lay flat, and the smell of blood rode the wind. If the dead scouts did not return, someone would come to find out why.
The fire had already been seen.
“Choose now.”
Rakan looked at Kang Mujin for a moment, then turned.
“You heard him.”
His voice carried between the tents.
“Anyone who can hold a weapon, come to the cornerstone. I’m not looking for good fighters. I start with the ones who won’t run.”
The people did not move right away.
The first to step forward was the young man with the woodcutting axe. After him the man with the injured arm picked up a spear shaft with his good hand, and the beast woman handed her child to someone else and took the end of the line.
Hamon had been standing propped on his hoe, and took one step out.
Rakan looked at him.
“Sit this out, old man.”
“Will a wall stand on young ones alone?”
“Straighten your back before you talk.”
“My back will hold up better than your ribs.”
Rakan shut his mouth.
Kang Mujin turned toward the forge.
Doria had already woken the embers, and orange light spread over the folded net. Silvana stood on the hill watching the northern woods, the hand on the bow still, but that gaze did not leave the fallen demons’ equipment for a long time.
Kang Mujin saw it.
Silvana would know, too, who that net had been made to catch.
Dawn was still far off.
But in the Steel Bastion no one lay down again.
On one side the people who would become the militia stood in line, and on the other the capture net was cut apart to make nails for the wall. Rosen copied names down beneath the word “Watch” written on the board.
Kang Mujin sat in front of the forge and picked up the first spike.
The metal still held the bend that had bound people.
He laid the glowing iron on the anvil.
The hammer came down.
Once.
The bent part straightened.
Twice.
The barb was flattened.
When the third hammer blow rang out, Silvana, on the eastern hill, raised her head.
That gaze was turned toward where the forest lay, far away.
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