Before the dawn bell rang, Rosen stood before the west gate.
There was one horse for Rosen to ride, one spare for baggage and relief, and four escorts on foot — no cart. The only things to be taken were a leather document case and a single dagger Kang Mujin had made.
The dagger was not a gift but a sample.
The blade was a hand-and-a-half long, its spine thick, its point not narrowed to excess. The grip was cut with shallow grooves so it would not slip even in wet hands. There was no ornate silver fitting, no gem — only Kang Mujin’s small mark stamped beneath the blade.
Rosen drew the dagger halfway from its sheath.
“Some might say it’s too plain to bring to the royal palace.”
Kang Mujin studied the gleam of the blade.
“It’s a thing to be used.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
Rosen sheathed the dagger. Behind the saddle, the request for reinforcements and the list of supplies were bundled separately. Three hundred troops, crossbows and arrows, dried grain, bandages, fever herbs. So that if one was refused he could ask for another, Rosen had made the documents in six copies.
Kang Mujin knew the marks of the night he’d spent revising them. The metal clasp of the document case had been opened and closed so many times that one side had worn faintly thin.
“If they won’t give troops, I’ll ask for provisions.”
Rosen said.
“If provisions are hard too, then medicine, and if even that is hard, exemption from the trade tariffs. At the least, the road for supplies coming to the Bastion must be opened.”
“And if they give nothing at all?”
Rosen looked down at the document case for a moment.
“I’ll find out why they won’t give it.”
Kang Mujin nodded.
Coming back empty-handed was different from coming back with only empty words. Even refusal had its grain. Whether they were retreating out of fear, weighing profit and loss, or simply did not see them as people at all — knowing which would decide the next hammer-blow.
Rakan shouted from atop the west gate.
“If the palace bastards try to turn back, bite their necks and drag them here!”
Rosen looked up.
“That doesn’t sound like a proper send-off for an envoy.”
“Don’t bite, just ask, then!”
“That’ll do.”
Laughter spread along the wall. Rosen bowed his head to Kang Mujin and mounted, and the four escorts formed up on foot, flanking the two horses front and back.
“I’ll be back within ten days.”
“Travel safely.”
“I leave the Bastion in your hands.”
“That’s what I’ve always done.”
Without another word, Rosen rode west with the escorts. The sound of hooves beat against the dry ground, growing distant, and vanished into the morning mist.
Kang Mujin stood before the west gate until they were no longer in sight.
After that, the days at the Bastion passed even faster.
While the clerks ran double to fill the gap Rosen had left, a sack of flour went missing from the ration tally, and a cart hauling stone for the northern wall broke an axle. Rakan turned the training ground upside down, complaining that the newly formed squad leaders each understood orders differently.
The forge did not rest either.
At dawn Kang Mujin inspected spearheads, at dusk he fitted helmet rims, and at night he worked with Doria on the airways of the new forges. As the number of forges grew, so did the charcoal consumed — but stoking the fire too hard only scorched the surface of the iron.
“The third forge eats too much.”
Doria said, letting go of the bellows handle.
“The air vent is too large.”
“I’m the one who bored it.”
“That’s why it’s too large.”
Doria’s brow twitched.
“Hmph. A human finding fault with a dwarf’s forge.”
“It’s the iron finding fault.”
When Kang Mujin lifted the heated scrap of iron with the tongs to show him, a thin oxide film had risen on the surface, and the edges had gone white before the core.
Doria glared at the scrap of iron for a while.
“I’ll cut it by an inch.”
“Half an inch will do.”
“And if half an inch isn’t enough?”
“Then we cut more, then.”
Doria snorted but soon began whittling a half-inch plug. Before his own forge he brooked no interference, but even he would not ignore the answer the iron itself had given.
Kang Mujin returned to the anvil.
Over ten days, a hundred and forty spearheads and thirty-one swords went into the armory, and fifty-six shield rims were finished. The standard nails under Aisha’s charge, too, saw their defect rate cut in half from before.
But from the western road, no word came at all.
At noon on the eleventh day, Kang Mujin felt a horseshoe approaching toward the west gate.
It was a familiar metal. The horseshoe whose nails he himself had tightened before departure — the outer edge of the right forehoof had worn deep. It meant the horse was spent.
He set down his hammer and went outside.
As the west gate opened, the first to enter were the two escorts on foot. All four escorts had returned, and there was no smell of blood. Behind them, one escort held the pack horse’s reins, and another kept pace beside Rosen’s tired mount.
Rosen came in last, still on horseback.
His cloak was settled with a gray film of the royal capital’s dust, his beard had grown, and the skin beneath his eyes had darkened. Yet his back had not bent, and the leather document case was still tucked under his arm.
Rakan crossed the training ground toward him.
“The troops?”
Rosen dismounted.
“None.”
“Provisions?”
“None.”
“Medicine?”
“None.”
Rakan’s tail stiffened upright.
“Then what in hell did you bring back?”
Rosen handed the reins to an escort.
“I brought back an answer.”
Kang Mujin looked at his document case. The leather strap, once taut when he left, had gone loose, but the documents inside seemed to remain just as they were.
“Let’s talk inside.”
Kang Mujin said.
In the meeting room gathered Kang Mujin, Rosen, Rakan, and Doria. Silvana’s seat was empty. She was still in the forest, persuading the Council of Elders.
Aisha brought a water jug and hardened bread. Only after emptying a cup of water did Rosen open the document case.
Six copies of the documents overlapped on the table. Rosen did not read through them one by one. As he pressed a finger against the red line of refusal on the topmost sheet, the royal council chamber that had been closed for ten days opened again within his voice.
At the border council he had waited three days to enter, the deputy of military affairs spoke without even closing the refugee registry.
“Become a vassal of Redon. If the royal house decides the commander and the garrison, we will consider sending troops.”
Rosen pushed the demon mobilization chart and the Grimoire’s route before him.
“If the Steel Bastion falls, the next wall on this road belongs to Redon.”
“That is precisely why we propose this. Hand over the right to govern, to tax, and to garrison, and the royal house will take responsibility for that wall.”
One answer would have won troops and grain. But in exchange, the people freed from the mines would only be placed once more under another’s command, with nothing but the flag changed.
“I refuse.”
After those words, a red line was drawn across the request for troops.
The treasurer folded up the grain export permit and quadrupled the price, and the relief officer said that to hand over the boxes of medicine, the name Steel Bastion must be erased.
“We will record it as the western temporary refugee settlement of the Kingdom of Redon. Rationing will be managed by royal officials.”
Rosen looked down at the list of medicines. Taking it now would save lives, but the first stake driven into that document would turn the whole Bastion into Redon’s land.
“I will buy the medicine. The name and the people, I will not hand over.”
“On that condition, not one box crosses the border.”
“Then I will go back empty-handed.”
The official’s seal came down, and even the last permit was closed. There, Rosen separately noted down only the names of three western nobles and a merchant company outside the royal house. He had lost official support, but salvaged one detour to be paid for with mercenary-turned-instructors, medicinal herbs, and iron farm tools.
In the present meeting room, Rosen spread open his forefinger, chafed red.
“It was not that they refused because they don’t know us. It was because what we are has not yet been decided, that they tried to attach the name they wanted first.”
“Redon did not refuse merely out of cowardice. In their way, they cannot make a promise with us. There is no sovereign to answer for it should the promise break, no office to inherit the treaty, no law to fix the border.”
Rakan folded his arms.
“Is it not enough that we’re here, that we’ve kept holding back the demons all this while?”
“On the battlefield, that is enough. In diplomacy, it is not.”
“Because of one missing sheet of paper?”
“Because of what does not stand behind that paper.”
Rosen’s words were courteous, but their end carried weight.
“We are building an army. We collect labor and goods in place of taxes, we raise walls, we decide punishments, we divide out quarters for refugees. We are already doing what a nation does.”
He stacked the refusal documents one by one.
“And yet when asked from outside, we are nothing. Too large an army to be called a village, no lord to be called a domain, no name or law to be called a nation.”
Kang Mujin picked up the temporary pass tag on the table.
As he pressed it with his fingers, the iron plate rang low, but he did not break it. Forcing bent unheated iron only left a crack. To mend a flawed shape, one had to heat it first.
“Attaching a name right now doesn’t make us a nation.”
Kang Mujin said.
“Of course not.”
“Making a crown doesn’t make a king appear, either.”
Rosen’s gaze paused a moment.
“That, too, is so.”
Kang Mujin set the tag down.
“Still, now we know what is missing.”
As Rosen slowly let out a breath, for the first time since his long journey, his shoulders seemed to lower just a little.
Kang Mujin examined the rejected request for reinforcements again. The paper was intact, the writing was not wrong, and the needed quantities and reasons were exact.
What had failed was not the document.
There was no name to stand behind the hand that had held it out.
Outside, hurried footsteps sounded, and the door opened as a guard from the northern watchtower entered. He was out of breath, hands braced on his knees.
“Blacksmith.”
“Refugees have come in through the eastern forest path. More than twenty. They say there are more behind.”
“Pursuit?”
Rakan was already on his feet.
“Not seen. But one of the outer watch posts is not responding.”
Kang Mujin rose at once.
At that instant, at the edge of his senses, a small piece of metal caught his attention.
East of the Bastion, outside, at the refugee settlement the wall had not yet reached.
The weight of the alarm bell.
It had fallen to the ground.
Kang Mujin picked up his hammer.
“Rakan. Gather the troops.”
Rakan was already running out the door.
Kang Mujin glanced once more at the tag on the table before turning away.
Redon had not called them the people of any nation.
But the enemy already knew exactly.
Where to strike first.
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