Chapter 22 — The Steel Bastion Pattern

The first stock was a square bar drawn to a uniform thickness the day before.

Length, width, and the inner diameter of the socket had been fixed to match the standard spearhead, and the order of the division of labor and the inspection rules for each step had been set as well. But whether those dimensions could survive actual hammering and the quench, and how much deviation could still be sent out to a battlefield, had not yet been proven in iron.

Before putting the square bar into the forge, Kang Mujin first counted through the equipment list the scouting party had brought back at dawn. From the main force loaded with armor and spears, horseshoes and cavalry sabers, arrowheads and cart axles had split off as a light vanguard and were moving south faster.

Rakan spread the mud-stained scout reports and a map across the workbench and set a finger on the northern pass.

“The vanguard alone, ten days. Nine if they push. If they come clearing the road as they go, the main force will fall in behind them.”

Doria shook the charcoal dust out of his beard.

“You said a fortnight wouldn’t be enough, and now the enemy shaves five days off it.”

The Steel Bastion’s residents came to two hundred and two after fourteen new refugees joined. All fourteen took on work, so the militia and labor rolls rose to one hundred and forty-two; the formal combat squad was thirty-eight, the reserve squad in training twenty-three. Most of the remaining registered hands had to take watch, transport, engineering, and cooking duty, and there was no slack to replace broken gear right away. If the vanguard arrived in ten days, the method of one craftsman carrying a single weapon from start to finish was too slow.

“We put out the first batch within ten days.”

Doria snorted.

“And how much is a first batch?”

“Spears and shields for the whole combat squad. Armor for the reserves to share out as well.”

“The fire’s only half-tamed and the hands are green.”

“That is why I set the standard before the people.”

Kang Mujin pushed the square bar into the forge.

Fourteen new hands had come into the workshop. Eight humans, two dwarves, three goat-horned demi-humans, and one raccoon beast — and only the two dwarves had ever worked as smiths. The rest were carpenters, drivers, miners, and farmers, people who in ordinary times would have spent months learning how to sort charcoal before ever gripping a hammer.

As the iron in the forge slowly reddened, Kang Mujin closed his eyes and traced the heat seeping from the surface toward the core; the crystals on the outside had already loosened, but a cold grain remained within. Pull it now and only the surface would stretch first, opening a crack along the center.

He spoke to the apprentice reaching in with the tongs.

“Not yet.”

When the man stopped his hand, Doria adjusted the tuyere on the far side, and the wind driven in from the bellows burrowed between the coals and raised the flame short and blue.

“Don’t put the tool steel in the same spot! That one has to eat a different fire. Hrmph — let a man who can’t read color pull his iron out first and all he’s left holding is slag!”

While Doria’s shout rang through the smithy, Kang Mujin waited for the moment the heat stood even all the way to the core, then laid the stock on the anvil.

“In the first step we set only length and width.”

The hammer came down.

Clang.

The first blow flattened the glowing iron; the second, struck after the stock was turned, took the width; on the third, the part that would become the spearhead’s neck narrowed. Before, he would have carried the shape straight through, but Kang Mujin set the hammer down and handed it off, tongs and all, to the next person.

The man who had been a human miner asked with a flustered face.

“Me?”

“Match it to the iron rule.”

On the workbench lay the iron gauge the dimensions had been transferred to the day before, and when the man set the stock against its notch, the end ran long by a finger joint.

“Where do I strike?”

“Not where it’s long — where it’s thick. Push the iron out from here and the length comes right.”

The end of Kang Mujin’s hammer handle pointed at the middle of the stock. The man’s first blow glanced off; the second came too hard and bulged one face.

Doria’s breath came rough through his nose.

“You call that a blow—”

Kang Mujin raised a hand and cut him off.

“Heat it again.”

The miner looked down at the warped stock.

“Haven’t I ruined it?”

“Iron doesn’t end because one blow went wide.”

Reading inside the stock as it went back to the forge, the grain was disturbed but there was no crack yet; press the bulged face from the other side and it could be saved.

“Next time don’t tilt the hammer face. Don’t chop with your arm — let the weight fall.”

“Yes.”

The third blow fell on the iron once it was drawn out again. It was not perfect, but when the stock dropped into the gauge’s notch, Kang Mujin passed it straight to the next step.

The dwarf smith spread both wings over a grooved form, and then the raccoon beast wrapped the part that would be the socket around a cylindrical mandrel. Last of all, Doria struck the seam twice to close it — which meant six pairs of hands had touched a single spearhead.

The first finished prototype was a little heavier than the drawing. The central ridge sat off to one side as well, and when Kang Mujin read the grain inside, stress had gathered unevenly at the roots of the wings. Quench it as it was and the left side would shrink first, twisting the tip out of true.

He tapped lightly twice beside the ridge — a correction hard to catch by eye, yet the grain that had been pushing against itself inside followed the blows back into place.

“We quench.”

Doria took the tongs himself.

As the spearhead heated again, the surface that had been bright orange settled a shade. Too hot and the grain would coarsen; too little and the thick core would not harden through. Kang Mujin traced with his fingertips the state of the iron as it lost its magnetism, then said shortly,

“Now.”

Doria plunged the spearhead into the oil.

Hsssss!

Acrid smoke spread across the ceiling. As the thin blade and the thick ridge cooled at different speeds, bubbles burst in the oil that had seeped into the socket, and Kang Mujin pushed the end of the tongs to change the angle. Once the pooled oil drained and the smoke thinned, the spearhead that came into view had not warped.

Doria raised an edge on it at the whetstone, fitted it to a short haft, and swung it down hard at a block of oak.

Thunk.

The point bit deep. When he twisted the haft sideways the wood creaked, but the roots of the wings did not split, and the seam of the socket did not open.

“Not especially beautiful.”

“It doesn’t need to be.”

“Still, it has the taste of iron in it.”

Beside the first prototype stood a box for rejects. Doria looked from one to the other, then pushed the spearhead toward the prototype.

“It passes.”

The held breath went out of the workshop all at once. But Kang Mujin did not smile. One sample armed one soldier, and from the north, iron dozens of times that amount kept coming closer.

“Put in the next stock.”

Three forges opened at once.

On the second day, six of nineteen spearheads failed; on the third, seven of thirty-two. Hands grew faster, but because the forges ran at different temperatures, iron that was underdone at the core or coarse in the grain got mixed in. When Doria brought down a reject that looked perfectly sound on the anvil, the root of a wing split with a sharp ring.

At sundown on the third day, wooden tablets from the forward watch posts arrived one after another. The cart tracks of the vanguard that had split off ahead of the main force broke at the southern fork and turned back toward the northwest staging ground, and below that there were no fresh traces running south. It looked as though the enemy was massing its strength again or waiting on supply, but Rakan did not rule out a feint. Kang Mujin, for his part, did not push back the ten days he had set at the start, and drove production and the watch on as they were.

“Send something like this out and a soldier dies without ever knowing why.”

Kang Mujin set up color boards for each step and test rods of differing carbon content side by side. He had them read the color by eye and check the bend of the test rods by hand.

“A dwarf apprentice learns without any of this.”

“How many years does it take?”

“Ten.”

“We have seven days left.”

From that day the rejects dropped. The spearhead standard was extended to shield rims rolled round to shed impact and to interchangeable armor plates. Aisha, too, moved a small anvil close to the forge, checked the temperature with a test rod, and made buckles for shield straps. When the fourth piece of iron fit the gauge’s notch and held even against twisting, Kang Mujin put it back into the child’s palm.

“It works.”

Instead of smiling, Aisha picked up the next stock.

Then the bell in the north watchtower rang.

One long, two short.

The signal for enemy sighted.

The hammering broke off inside the workshop, and a moment later Rakan’s shout crossed the front yard.

“Combat squad to the north wall! Reserves, pull the residents inside! Damp the smithy fires first!”

When everyone started crowding toward the door at once, Kang Mujin brought a hammer handle down on the workbench.

Bang!

“Clear the hot iron first. Do not drop your tongs and run.”

Those who had frozen in surprise began moving again. Stock still being shaped was buried in the sand bin, lids went onto the oil barrels, and once the bellows stopped, earth was scattered over the coals. While the novices evacuated, Doria and the two dwarf smiths stayed at the forges and pressed the breath out of the fires just enough to keep them from spreading.

Kang Mujin stretched his senses toward the northern hills. Some twenty horseshoes were dividing into two lines, and part of them swung east along the edge of the forest. Cavalry sabers and arrowheads were mixed in, but he felt no siege equipment.

“Scouts. Three are swinging east.”

Rakan lifted his shield.

“They mean to test the gate. Will you stay beside me?”

“I’ll watch from here. I’ll say when iron touches the wall.”

Rakan asked nothing more and ran for the north wall.

A moment later the black shapes of demon cavalry appeared above the hills. They spread out beyond the wall’s bowshot and studied the bastion’s size and its entrances, and two dismounted to check the cart ruts on the northern road.

Silvana’s arrow struck the ground in front of them.

It was not a distance at which a warning could be missed. Even so, three demon riders turned their horses’ heads and drove for the eastern palisade, while the rest raised their bows from the north to measure the response on the wall.

“Three to the east!”

With the shout from the watchtower, arrowheads came flying. Several stuck in shields, but one cleared the smithy roof and lodged in the dry straw covering the charcoal kiln in the front yard.

When smoke rose, the workers still there ran with water buckets. The fire was not large, but while they raked the straw off and covered it with wet earth, a bundle of cooled stock was kicked over and spilled into the mud.

At the north wall, Silvana’s bow sang again. A horse that had come down to the foot of the hills reared and stopped, and when the shield line Rakan led showed itself behind the eastern palisade, the scouts came no closer. They circled half the bastion’s perimeter and withdrew into the northern forest.

The all-clear did not sound until the sun had passed its height. Between the forges killed in haste and the stock dropped in the mud, half a day was gone.

Kang Mujin did not rush the quench to make up the loss. He redivided the work so that when the alarm sounded, two would hold the fires, two would clear away anything that could burn, and only the rest would evacuate. Assembly and inspection, which needed no fire, moved to the night, and the carpenters did not wait on the iron rims but stacked standard boards first.

The buckles Aisha made went into the field box as well, once the shield straps had been struck three times in inspection. The half-day the scouts stole became the basis for changing the process, and the skilled hands concentrated on the quench and the final inspection.

On the morning of the tenth day, some two hundred spearheads, seventy shields, and several hundred modular armor plates lay in the smithy’s front yard. Gear for the thirty-eight of the formal combat squad was finished first, and the next batch was to go to the twenty-three reserves.

Of ten spearheads drawn at random, Kang Mujin threw the one with a hollow in its grain into the box for remelting. On the other nine he cut a short horizontal line beneath his own mark. It was a sign that many hands had finished them.

Then three black riders appeared again on the northern hills. They were the scouts who days ago had stolen half a day with a fire arrow.

Rakan set the seventy new shields in a single line. At one command the iron rims locked together as one, and behind the shields thirty-eight spears shot out at the same height. People who ten days before had waited on a craftsman for every single spear now swapped parts in and out and raised one wall.

“Brace!”

When Doria rolled the test log, the whole shield wall took the shock with a roar. The boards bowed, but the rims rolled round shed the force to either side, and one snapped leather strap did not slip free of the buckle Aisha had made. Behind the shield the child held the strap with both hands and did not give a single step.

“Spears!”

Thirty-eight struck the oak target at once. Spearheads that had come from the hands of different humans and dwarves, beasts and demi-humans, bit home in a single shock. When the sound ran along the wall and spread to the northern hills, the scouting riders came no closer and turned their horses around.

Doria pulled Aisha’s buckle from the shield and twisted it. The iron neither bent nor cracked.

“Inspection passed.”

Aisha swallowed a breath. On the narrow face of the buckle Kang Mujin cut the joint-work mark and Aisha’s crooked line side by side.

Doria looked around at the gear filling the front yard and the shield wall still trembling.

“A way to get the same use out of it without one man holding it from start to finish. The dwarven mandrel, your test rods, the modular armor, even that little one’s buckle — all of it bound together.”

He raised a spearhead high.

“Let’s call it the Steel Bastion Class.”

The hammering around them stopped. For Doria to give a craft a name in front of the forge was no joke.

“Use matters more than a name.”

“So you’re saying you don’t want it?”

“No.”

Kang Mujin looked at the mark the log had left on the shield wall.

“With that name, anyone can tell where the method was made, and what it was made to protect.”

Doria’s laugh rang off the smithy ceiling.

“Then it’s settled. The Steel Bastion Class!”

Aisha rubbed a thumb across the buckle stamped with that mark.

“Is mine that too?”

“What you made held the wall as well.”

The corner of the child’s mouth went up. Out in the front yard, the thirty-eight spears rose once more to the same height.

Of the twenty-four elf archers who had fought in the first defense, once the archer with the wounded shoulder had recovered enough to travel, twelve of them, that archer among them, took charge of the battle report and the return of the wounded and went back to the forest. The other twelve archers stayed at the Steel Bastion and kept up the watch rotation, while Silvana, who handled liaison and the magic of the spirits, remained at the bastion apart from them.

It was that evening that Silvana appeared at the smithy door in a travel cloak. She ran her eyes over the gear in the yard, then picked up one standard spearhead.

“I’m going back to the Council of Elders. This time I intend to request regular troops, not a trial detachment.”

Kang Mujin asked,

“You’re taking that spearhead?”

“I need proof that will last longer than words.”

Silvana wrapped the spearhead in cloth.

“And I need a witness. If I bring only the spearhead, the opposition will insist it’s something humans dressed up. I need someone who can read the grain of the alloy and make the same specification again in front of them, someone who can answer before the elders that this method was truly used to prepare for war. That can only be you.”

Kang Mujin listened to the hammering going on without a pause. Doria was tending a forge. Aisha was fitting a new buckle to the gauge. Now the work would not stop even if he were away from his place. He checked the watch roster and the work roster for the north wall in turn, then called Doria and Rakan.

Before he settled on leaving, Kang Mujin spread his senses from the north wall to their limit. Within about a hundred and fifty paces he caught only the horseshoes of the scouts withdrawing after finishing their daylight probe, and beyond that he could not confirm the main force’s position by sense. Instead, the latest tablets from three forward watch posts recorded that after the vanguard turned back, every cart had stopped at the northwest staging ground where it rejoined the main force, and that there were no new wheel tracks at the southern fork either. The ten days he had fixed at first had been a deadline assuming the worst — the enemy marching south without rest — and now three reports supported the judgment that the enemy force, the vanguard included, had turned aside to concentrate.

“I’ll be back within five days. Doria, take production and the final inspection. Rakan, take the watch and the placement of equipment. If the forward watch posts report that the enemy force, vanguard included, has resumed its march south, send a messenger. I’ll return at once, even in the middle of the council.”

When the two had taken up the rosters each would hold, Kang Mujin looked at Silvana.

“I’ll go with you.”

Before daybreak, Kang Mujin left the Steel Bastion with Silvana.