Before dawn broke, the forge in the infirmary was the first thing to glow hot.
The three who had lost consciousness made it through the night. Two human militia members and one elf archer lay side by side, and their breathing was still shallow, but it had not broken off.
When Silvana peeled away the cloth stuck to the wound, a shard of armor that had curled inward came into view along with the blood, deep inside the shoulder of the elf archer that the crossbow arrow had punched through. Kang Mujin set a finger to the tip of the tongs, and the position and tilt of the metal carried to him from beyond the skin.
“Do not move.”
He did not pull the shard straight out. He first straightened the twisted grain, and as he pushed it back along the very angle by which it had entered so as not to tear the flesh further, the resistance that had been catching at his fingertips vanished. In that instant he drew the tongs back, and the dark red sliver of iron came free.
Silvana pressed down on the wound at once, and the faint light of the spirits’ art spread between the fingers. A moment later, as the elf archer’s labored breath stretched a little longer, Kang Mujin dropped the shard he had taken out into a water bucket.
Hiss.
Aisha was beside them, wiping down the blood-smeared scissors and tongs.
“Do we use these again too?”
“We boil them and use them.”
“What about the broken one?”
The child pointed at the tongs for removing arrowheads that lay under the cot. A crack ran along one side of the handle.
“Melt it down and it can be used again.”
Aisha put it not in the bin for discards but in the bin for scrap iron.
When the sun came up, Steel Bastion began by dismantling the traces of its victory. The enemy’s battering ram became reinforcement for the wall; the armor fragments were ground down into weapons, chain fasteners, and nails. Iron with too many impurities was pushed aside, and only the red alloy was kept for analysis.
Cracks had spread across the inner wall of the forge that had been running all night. When Doria warned that it would come down within three days, Kang Mujin, instead of putting out the fire, divided the pressure with a secondary wall and six rows of clamps. As they were heating the first clamp, Rosen came with the register of residents held in their wounded arm.
“A hundred and seventy-six yesterday, and twelve more refugees came in at dawn today. Before the next attack we have to settle who fights, who takes charge of the water and the food, and which family to find if someone is hurt.”
The empty camp the northern scouting party had found held few cart tracks. It meant there was a supply point nearby, and Rosen said the register, the residential blocks, and the fire circulation routes would all be fixed before the sun went down.
Kang Mujin had the gaps between the forges and the houses widened, opening a road for two carts to pass. Before noon the residents lined up at a long table, and Aisha put their name down as well. When the child stopped at the column asking for race, Rosen answered that even if it were left blank, the name would not disappear.
Aisha pressed the space beneath their own name with a soot-stained thumb. Rosen did not wipe the small fingerprint away.
By sundown the northeastern wall stood a foot higher, and the forge’s secondary wall had been closed as well. The iron banding from the enemy shields spread out the impact inside the earthen wall, and Kang Mujin’s lock was set on the box that held the register.
Click.
That night, a single piece of metal came toward them from the north of the wasteland.
One horse and one rider. A sword, the buckles of armor, the horse’s bit—all of it came through to him, and the arms were light, the pace not quick.
A moment later a spear with white cloth tied to it appeared out of the darkness.
The rider stopped beyond the range of an arrow and set a sealed scroll on the ground.
“A delivery from the southern merchant caravan.”
“Who sent it?”
Rosen asked.
“Don’t know. Took money on the northern road and carried it.”
The rider turned the horse at once, and the scroll was dragged in with a long hook.
The seal was dark red metal.
A crown wound around three horns.
It was the same emblem as the red iron nail Kang Mujin had thrown into the forge.
When he brought a finger close, a minute groove inside the metal caught at his senses. It was built so that a poisoned needle would spring out if it were forced open.
“Do not touch it.”
When Kang Mujin took hold of the grain of the metal, the seal parted without a sound, and the slender needle dropped onto the paper, stripped of its force. Blue liquid was smeared on its tip.
A short order was written on the scroll.
Steel Bastion is designated the highest-priority target for elimination in the plan for the conquest of the north.
Recoverable labor is to be sorted; resisting resources are to be discarded.
Assemble in accordance with the order of total mobilization.
Below it was a name.
General of the Demon Realm Invasion Army, Grimoire Vargas.
When Rakan gripped the edge of the shield, the metal creaked briefly.
Silvana said nothing, but the fingers holding the bow trembled just slightly.
“They’ve written people down as resources.”
Doria said it low.
Rosen looked the order over again.
“It was most likely leaked on purpose. The aim would be to frighten us, or to shake things from the inside.”
“Is what it says a lie?”
Rakan asked.
“If it were a lie, there would be little reason to put a poisoned needle in with it.”
Kang Mujin picked up the red seal.
Inside the metal remained the stress of hundreds stamped out at once. The same mold, the same alloy, the same thickness. The order was already spreading to many units.
From that night on, the signal fires in the north went up one after another. On the wooden tablets sent by the forward scouts, the marks overlapped: carts loaded with armor and spears, and chains for siege equipment, all gathering onto the same southern road.
The destination was Steel Bastion.
Kang Mujin crushed the seal in his hand.
“Complete the register.”
Rosen straightened up.
“I will prepare a plan for redistributing the walls and the storehouses as well. I will submit both—a plan to increase our forces, and a plan to hold with the numbers we have.”
“Both are needed.”
Kang Mujin looked at Doria.
“We increase the forges too.”
“The ones we have now are being fed day and night as it is.”
“That is why we increase them.”
“How many?”
“As many as there are people to use them.”
The fatigue lifted from Doria’s eyes.
“Hrm. I’ll have to look at the ground again.”
Rakan said it low.
“We’re short on people too.”
“Gather them.”
“They’re nothing but refugees who don’t know how to fight.”
“Then we teach them.”
“And if there’s no time?”
Kang Mujin looked north.
There was no need to raise his voice. The angrier he grew, the fewer his words became.
“We finish it inside the time we have.”
He walked to the cornerstone where he had driven an iron nail on the day he first staked out this ground. Now roads stretched out from that nail, houses had gone up, and a register with names written in it had come into being.
Kang Mujin took out a small chisel and carved one letter at a time into the side of the cornerstone.
Steel Bastion.
Each time the tip of the chisel struck the stone, the vibration climbed into his fingertips. Strike too hard and the grain of the stone broke; too weakly and the letters did not stay. It was no different from carving a name into a sword.
Beneath the last stroke he left his own small mark.
A tool, if it broke, could be repaired. A house, if it fell, could be raised again.
But the people who lived inside it could not.
If the one who makes a thing looks only at the material and turns away from where it will be used, then it is not a finished thing.
Kang Mujin did not set down his hammer.
“Iron doesn’t lie.”
Grimoire’s written order shriveled black inside the forge.
“Prepare for as many as are coming.”
The iron of the north moved.
This time it was not a movement measuring the perimeter of Steel Bastion.
War was setting out on the road.
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