By the time the sun rose, only traces of the capture net remained.
The thick chain had been divided into latch rings for barring doors, and the densely woven wire had been straightened into clamps that bound the palisade. The barbs were cut away and used as wedges to pack beneath the nail heads.
Kang Mujin drew the last wire out with the tongs.
The iron, glowing red, stretched thin, but it was the kind of thing that would snap at the middle if straightened by force alone. Because the demons had melted cheap ore in haste, a great many impurities were left in the wire; the carbon was uneven, and in places there were fine cracks formed as it cooled.
Kang Mujin felt that grain with his fingertips.
The tangled places inside the metal caught at the skin like fine splinters in the palm. After deciding where the hammer would strike and where it would not, he held out a hand to Doria.
“The small hammer.”
“You couldn’t even get a nail out of that.”
Doria said this while passing the hammer over.
“It isn’t for nails.”
Kang Mujin flattened the wire, cut away the part that was about to break, and curled the remaining piece into a ring.
“It will bind the shaft to the arrowhead.”
“Hrm. Nothing to throw away.”
“There is no iron to throw away. There is only iron that was given the wrong use.”
Doria twisted the end of a beard.
“If the old ones of my house heard that, they’d carve it into the family register.”
Kang Mujin did not answer and dipped the ring into the water barrel. With a short sound, white steam rose.
Beyond the forge, Rakan had people standing in a line.
Of those who had stepped forward in the night, thirteen remained, and the young man with the firewood axe and Hamon were among them. The beast woman held a wooden spear with a child on her back. To Kang Mujin’s eye it was hard to call an army. Even the spacing between them was ragged, and they did not know which foot to put forward.
Rakan did not have them swing weapons. They were sent running down to the foot of the northwest slope and back.
Three times.
From the second run the line stretched long, and on the third half of them bent double. Hamon dropped to the very back but did not stop, and Rakan neither waited nor hurried anyone, speaking only after every one of them had returned to the cornerstone.
“The enemy won’t wait for you to catch your breath.”
The young man with the firewood axe swallowed a ragged breath.
“Then must we fight without resting?”
“No. You choose your resting place before you’re driven to it.”
Rakan pointed in turn at the northwest slope and the still-low rampart.
“If you’re pushed back there, you run to the forge. If you’re pushed from the forge, you go to the tents. Behind the tents are the children. So you decide where you give ground. Don’t leave it to the enemy.”
Kang Mujin put the cooled ring into the basket.
Rakan was teaching where to fall back before teaching how to fight. It was the way of one who had survived.
Then footsteps came closer.
Silvana carried dew on the hem of the cloak, as though the whole night had been spent on the hills, and the silver hair was not bound as neatly as usual. The bow was slung on the back, but the right hand still stayed near the bowstring.
Silvana looked at the cut pieces of net and the newly made nails.
“You have changed all of it.”
“There are many uses for it.”
“The fact that it was a net does not disappear.”
Kang Mujin picked up one of the nails. On its surface remained a flaw from the time it had been part of the net, one that had never straightened out.
“It doesn’t need to disappear.”
Silvana’s gaze stayed on the nail.
“That iron was used to capture.”
“Now it is used to hold off.”
“If you change the use, does the past change as well?”
“The past stays as it is.”
Kang Mujin set the nail down in the basket.
“What it does next changes.”
Silvana’s fingers left the bowstring. After looking at the forge for a moment, she spoke slowly.
“I must return to the forest.”
Doria let go of the bellows handle, and Rosen, writing on a board a little way off, raised his head as well.
Kang Mujin looked at Silvana.
“When do you go?”
“I will leave today.”
“That is sudden.”
“Last night the scouts numbered seven. If they do not return, a larger force will come to see why. Unless I take the paths of the spirits without resting, the journey between the forest and this place takes two days. I must have the Council of Elders’ answer within that time, so it may already be too late.”
Silvana spoke slowly and clearly, as always, but the thumb of the left hand on the bow rubbed the same spot twice.
Kang Mujin saw that small movement.
“What do you mean to request?”
“First I will formally report the existence of Steel Bastion. After that I will request support.”
Rosen set the board down and came over.
“Support in troops?”
“Archers and summoners of spirits, and if possible the trackers who hold the forest border.”
“Will the Council of Elders accept?”
Silvana did not answer at once.
When the wind came out of the north, the smell of forest soaked into the cloak passed through the smells of charcoal and iron.
“It is more likely that they will not.”
Rosen’s expression did not change.
“May I hear the reason?”
“Because it is a stronghold built by humans.”
Rakan glanced over without stopping the drill, and Doria blew a short breath through the nose.
Silvana did not turn away from Kang Mujin.
“The Council of Elders does not believe human promises. When there is need, humans ask to borrow the roads of the forest, and when the road widens they fell the trees beside it. They beg leave to raise a wall against the demons, and when the wall is finished they cut a gate facing the forest.”
“We don’t even have a gate yet.”
Doria spoke gruffly.
“You look at holes dug in the dirt and call that a threat?”
“Asking what those holes are the foundation of is the role of the Council of Elders.”
“Foundation for a rampart.”
“To a dwarf, no doubt.”
Doria’s brows twitched, but Silvana did not give ground.
Kang Mujin looked at the basket of nails set between the two of them. The same iron became a door or a shackle according to who used it, so the distrust of the forest had not arisen without cause.
“Does it look like a rampart that guards only elves?”
Kang Mujin asked.
Silvana’s hand stopped.
“No.”
“Is it a rampart that guards only humans?”
“That, too, it is not.”
Kang Mujin looked toward Rakan. While wolf beasts, humans, and demihumans of races unknown to him ran the same slope, Aisha was sorting nails beside the forge with a small pair of tongs. The hands that separated the hot from the cooled moved faster than before.
“Say it as you saw it.”
Silvana asked, low.
“Do you think that will be enough?”
“Exaggerate, and the iron grows weak.”
Kang Mujin picked up a scrap of wire thick with impurities.
“Hiding it doesn’t make it strong either.”
Silvana’s eyes narrowed, and the gaze moved from the wire to Kang Mujin’s hand.
On the back of that hand, old burn scars from the forge of a past life overlapped with fresh wounds left by the iron of this place. It had never once been held out for anyone to see. Hands existed to make things, and the finished thing stood in place of explanation.
Silvana looked at that hand for a long moment.
“I will relay exactly what I have seen.”
The words came more slowly now.
“I will say that the one who saved my kin, held by the slaver caravan, was a human. I will say too that afterward no payment was demanded.”
Rakan’s ears tilted this way.
“I will report that a sword was entrusted to a wolf beast, that one forge is shared with a dwarf, that a hammer was put into the hands of a child who had not even a name.”
Aisha raised her head, a small nail hanging from the tip of the tongs.
Silvana glanced at Aisha, then went on.
“And I will not hide that the humans here are not all like you. Among those who stood in line yesterday, some looked at me and whispered that my ears were pointed. Some took it for granted that the firewood of the forest was theirs to use.”
Rosen wrote something on the board at that, and Silvana continued.
“I will not say that this place is proof of a coexistence already finished. I will say only that the possibility is worth testing.”
“That is enough.”
Kang Mujin said.
The hand gripping the bow trembled faintly, but this time Silvana did not try to hide it.
“You do not know the Council of Elders, Kang Mujin.”
“I don’t.”
“Once they doubt, they watch for a generation. To a human a generation is near a whole life, but to us it is a reason not to hurry a decision.”
“We cannot wait.”
“I know.”
“Is that why you are going?”
Silvana looked at the northern forest.
“I am an envoy. My duty was to report what I observed.”
The quiver at the waist was straightened.
“But this time I do not intend to stop at reporting.”
Rosen asked.
“You mean to persuade the Council of Elders?”
“I do.”
It was a short answer.
Kang Mujin looked at Silvana’s profile. The face still gave nothing away, but the feet pointing north had already turned.
An observer had discharged all duty once what was seen had been passed on. A mediator had to carry to each side the words neither wished to hear, and that road took longer than loosing an arrow, with no clear target at the end of it.
Silvana had chosen that road.
“I cannot promise you a favorable answer.”
“Do not promise.”
“I may not be able to bring reinforcements.”
“I know that as well.”
“And still you will send me?”
Kang Mujin looked at Silvana for a moment.
“There is no reason to hold you.”
Silvana’s brows rose the smallest amount.
“I will understand that as respect for a comrade’s decision.”
“You know the roads of the forest better than I do.”
Doria burst out laughing.
“Hrm, that human’s words always leave half of it for the listener to build.”
Rosen smiled faintly.
“And not fitting the other half on wrong is our part, I suppose.”
Silvana looked at each of them in turn. The corner of the mouth seemed to move, but it was too brief to be called a smile.
The preparations for departure did not take long.
While Silvana gathered dried fruit and a bundle of herbs from the tent, Rosen held out a map drawn with the terrain around Steel Bastion. It marked the planned line of the rampart, the road by which the scouts had approached, and the location of the villages the refugees had crossed from.
“You may show it to the Council of Elders.”
Rosen said.
“You would reveal even the defensive placements?”
“To decide whether to give support, they must know what we are trying to protect. Only, it would go badly if this map fell into demon hands.”
“I will burn it before that.”
Silvana put the map inside a fold of waterproofed leather.
“If new information comes after I have gone, hang a sealed iron tag on the silver knot at the northern forest border. The wind spirits I have left behind will carry it as far as the road of the Council of Elders.”
Rosen answered that each message would bear the seal of the bastion’s scribe along with the hour it was written.
Rakan set down the wooden spear from the drill, came over, and handed Silvana a small knife. It had been taken from the demon scouts, but the blade was newly ground.
“Don’t know if you’ll have any use for a knife in the forest.”
“Elves cut cord and whittle branches too.”
“And put it in people.”
“I hope there will be no need.”
“If there is, don’t hesitate.”
Silvana took the knife and set it behind the belt.
“I will remember the advice.”
Rakan scratched the back of the neck, then added,
“If the old ones of the forest don’t believe you, tell them to come here and look for themselves.”
“I will not call the elders old ones.”
“It isn’t wrong, though.”
“In diplomacy there are more words better left unsaid than there are words that are simply not wrong.”
Rakan looked at Kang Mujin.
“That one, you could learn a bit of it yourself.”
Kang Mujin did not answer.
Aisha kept circling the forge while Silvana made ready to leave. Her face was the face of someone with something to say, but she did not speak first.
After tightening the pack straps, Silvana bent a knee to meet Aisha’s eyes.
“What were you watching?”
Aisha pointed at Silvana’s bow.
“Isn’t it heavy?”
“Once you are used to it, it is not heavy.”
“Same as a hammer, then.”
“Most likely it is.”
Aisha dug through a pocket and brought out a nail. The tip was blunt and the head leaned to one side; it was the nail she had hammered alone yesterday, without Kang Mujin’s help.
“Take this.”
Silvana did not take it, and asked,
“What is it used for?”
Aisha thought for a moment.
“A mark for the place to come back to.”
The words were short.
When Silvana opened a palm, Aisha laid the nail on it.
“Then I will be certain to bring it back.”
“If you lose it, I can just make another.”
“I will remember that as well.”
Silvana put the nail into the same leather pouch as the map.
Kang Mujin watched from beside the forge. The nail was clumsy, covered with hammer marks that had failed to read the grain of the material, and the angle of the tip was wrong. Driven into the rampart, it would not go in straight.
Even so, Aisha had made it from beginning to end with her own hands.
Usefulness was not settled only at the moment of making.
When Silvana started up the northern road, not everyone came out to see her off. Those raising the rampart carried stone, the militia went up and down the slope, and Doria did not leave the bellows.
At Steel Bastion there was far too much that would have to halt. And so no one halted.
Only Kang Mujin walked with Silvana as far as the mouth of the road.
Once they crossed the low hill, the sound of the forge fell away. To the north a deep forest ran along the horizon, and on the grassland that opened long toward it, traces of the demon scouts’ passing remained here and there.
Silvana studied the direction in which the grass lay.
“They came from the northwest.”
“I know.”
“There were no traces heading toward the forest. But the next scouts may take a different road.”
“Is it all right to go alone?”
“It is because I am alone that I can go faster.”
The quiver was given a tap.
“And I am not yet old enough to need protecting.”
Kang Mujin nodded.
Adding human-style worry to an envoy of the forest might not be courteous, so instead a slender thing was drawn from the belt at his waist.
It was an arrowhead.
Wire cut from the net the night before, folded over many times and hammered. The purity of the iron was too low for a whole blade, so Kang Mujin had pushed the impurities out of the core and gathered the hard grain at the point alone. The long neck made it suited to armor gaps, or to cutting leather straps.
Beneath the arrowhead, Kang Mujin’s small mark was stamped.
“It is a trial piece.”
Silvana took the arrowhead and turned it between the fingers.
“What is being tested?”
“How far bad iron can still be useful.”
“And the result?”
“You have to shoot it to know.”
Silvana drew out an arrow, pulled the old head, fitted the new arrowhead, and bound the shaft tight with one of the iron rings Aisha had sorted.
A dead tree at the roadside was chosen.
The distance was more than a hundred paces, and the width of trunk showing between the branches was about two palms together.
The bow bent.
When the string sang, the arrow split the wind and struck the middle of the trunk. The arrowhead pierced the hard outer bark and sank in more than halfway, and though the shaft quivered a long while, the head did not come loose.
Silvana looked at the target for some time.
“The craftsmen of the forest, seeing this, would say first that the material is poor.”
“They would not be wrong.”
“Then they would ask who made this shape.”
“They’ll know by looking.”
The mark was there, so there was no need to explain a name at length.
Silvana slung the bow across the back.
“You send iron ahead of words.”
“Iron doesn’t lie.”
“Do people?”
“They do.”
“Do you?”
Kang Mujin thought for a moment.
“I don’t say what isn’t needed.”
This time a clear smile passed across Silvana’s mouth.
“I will report that as your answer.”
Turning, Silvana walked north.
A few steps on, Silvana stopped.
“Even if the Council of Elders refuses, I will come back.”
Kang Mujin nodded instead of answering.
Silvana walked on, and the silver hair thinned at the far edge of the grassland. Kang Mujin kept his place until the shadow of the forest swallowed her.
On the way back the wind grew harsher.
The forge smoke of Steel Bastion lay long to one side, and on the rampart people were fitting stones while Rakan’s shouting rang along the slope. Doria’s hammer kept its steady beat.
The only thing changed was one empty place.
But Kang Mujin stopped before he reached the forge.
A faint tremor came up through the ground.
It was not wind, nor the shock of hooves. It was the heavy, rough resonance that comes when many pieces of metal move at regular intervals. Among the sounds of iron cart rims, pots, and farm tools knocking together, the lighter vibration of a few weapons was mixed in.
Still far off.
More than the seven of last night.
Kang Mujin looked at the northwest slope. It lay in a different direction from the forest road Silvana had taken.
Rosen, coming over with the board, turned to follow that gaze.
“What is out there?”
Kang Mujin set a hand to the ground and counted again the metal tremors spreading under the soil. The distance was great, and the feel of it overlapped with what rose from the ore veins, so it was still hard to tell what the carts carried or how many came armed. Only, it was neither as fast nor as even as a battle formation.
Someone was coming this way with their household goods loaded up.
A few of those pieces were not a weight a person could carry.
“Guests are coming.”
The fatigue left Rosen’s face.
“How soon?”
Kang Mujin lifted his hand and rose.
The low rampart, the open slope, the stone piles not yet stacked came into view. There was one forge, Silvana had gone, and the militia was only now learning how to stand.
“They won’t be kind enough to come after we’re ready.”
He walked toward the forge.
Far off, under the ground to the northwest, the heavy iron moved once again.
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