Nothing.
A sharp pain caused him to look at his hand. With a start, he remembered his lantern. He couldn’t put it out – they would need a light soon if this was to work, so he closed the shutters, hid it behind him, and hoped for the best.
He could hear Lorrimer beginning to make a soft whimpering sound.
Still nothing.
If the locks didn’t turn soon he would have to start hammering.
Silence.
This was as long as he could afford to wait.
He crawled out just as an iron bolt shot loose and the great door yawned open with a whoosh.
A short, round man stepped into the workshop, a staff held up over his head. “First one of you I see I’m going to squash into a bloody pulp …”
Aedan swallowed and ducked back under cover.
“I’m going to pluck your little ratty whiskers and swing you by your tails until the walls are painted.”
There was the faintest breath of relief from several points under the table. As the man lugged his weight past them to the overturned rack, Aedan slipped from under his hiding and stalked out through the open door. The others were close on his heels and almost as quiet.
Then Lorrimer made the short dash. Clack, clack, clack …
He was at the door when there was a shout, “Oi, what was that? Beck, that you?”
Aedan lifted the shutter on his lantern and they sprinted out into the passage, back past the archways. Aedan was counting – one, two, three, four, five, there! He swung the shutter closed when he saw the opening to the narrow corridor.
From the darkness, he looked back as the heavy curator lumbered into the passage. The man began to turn around, peering this way and that, but the boys were too far away now to be found by his lantern. Eventually, he shook his head and returned to tidy the mess and hunt rats.
The boys passed through the door and crept down the narrow passage.
“You don’t expect us to climb back up, do you?” Vayle whispered.
“Well, yes,” said Aedan. “There wasn’t anything up there sturdy enough to tie a rope onto. But I’ll lower the rope for the lanterns when I get up. Just can’t take your weight.”
“He wants us to climb this!” It was Lorrimer. He was not happy.
“I’m going to,” said Peashot. “Always thought I could climb better than you.”
“Huh? I didn’t say I couldn’t. Probably do it in half your time.”
The climb up was a lot more difficult than the descent had been, but Aedan slid up the blocks as if he were being pushed by invisible hands. Hadley said it was lizard blood. Lorrimer said it was bare feet and he could do that too but the stone was colder than he liked.
By the time they had negotiated the delicate section where the floor was part-crumbled and where mistakes would probably result in broken legs or death, they were scratched and dusty and all steamed up from the exertion. They made the walk back in silence, stopping once to let a night guard amble sleepily round the bend ahead of them, but otherwise they were undisturbed.
Aedan reminded the others about the trigger steps on the way out, and then almost forgot them himself. He had to do a hasty double stretch at the last moment as he remembered.
When they had said goodbye to Kian, they crept back into the dorm and closed the door. It was only Hadley who felt the need to wash himself off. The others were content to dust their clothes and drop into bed.
“That,” said Vayle in distant tones, “was about the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen. Aedan, I’m very glad I went, and I have made up my mind that I will never go on any of your mad adventures again. Ever.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Peashot. “That was more fun than tenderising Master Rodwell.”
Lorrimer said something incoherent, barely audible over Hadley’s splashing.
“What he say?” Peashot asked.
“It was probably a complaint,” said Vayle.
“Well, whatever he says, he learned how to walk quietly. Didn’t make a sound on the way back.”
Just then a horrible scraping noise filled the room as Lorrimer’s throat or nose began to sing that most ancient song of exhausted slumber.
Aedan lay awake long into the night. The cruel shapes and vast proportions of that ship were settling in his mind. It was a destroyer of lives, of hopes, and in this it represented the entire slave trade. Even in death the ship was terrifying. He had glimpsed something of how it must feel to be under the chains of the slave-lords. Even if for only a single slave, those chains needed to be smashed. The slave-lords too.
Just before he dropped off to sleep a small part of him yawned and wished that he had set fire to the timbers.
The next morning, Dun stopped them when they tried to leave the dining hall after breakfast. “To the academy gates,” he said.
Skeet was waiting for them, glaring. As always, he seemed annoyed at something or other, though the sky was young and bright and the birdsong full. The boys hurried into line, falling silent as the glare passed over them.
Aedan tried not to fidget and managed to work up a look of bored unconcern. Had the curator reported the incident?
“You’re going to find this a little different to the bowyers’ workshop,” Skeet said. “The next few days will leave your ears ringing and your fingers jangling.”
“Swords!” The whispered word ran up and down the line, bringing forth twenty sets of gleaming teeth. Aedan’s fears dissolved into the bright morning.
Skeet returned no eager smile. “Usually we keep this until your second year,” he said. “But two weeks ago we had an update on weapons production in Greel. It seems that Fennlor is stepping up their preparations. Their smithies are opening an hour earlier and running an hour later. We cannot afford to lag behind so we have decided to keep our forges hot day and night. Though you won’t be given time to fully master the art of working with steel, you need to be able to at least hammer out a basic weapon. If the Fenn begin their assault before you are old enough to be deployed on the field then you will likely find yourselves with the bowyers or the smiths.”
He ran a critical, disapproving eye over them.
“The border threat has given our weapons manufacturing a much-needed kick. If you misbehave, you too will receive a kick that will send you all the way back to the academy. If you behave, you will learn how to make a sword.”
The grins reappeared. Skeet rolled his eyes, signalled for them to follow and marched away.
The group wound through the streets to a section near the north wall where there were several warehouses and workshops. Outside a particularly smoky building, Skeet turned back and raised his voice over the general clangour of industry filling the area.
“We split the process into stages, beginning here – the bloomery.”
He led them into a hot, smoky chamber, where despite good ventilation, the air was dry and sharp.
“Here, iron is extracted from ore by burning with charcoal. Smelting, not melting. The porous blooms that emerge are hammered to get rid of the slag, giving us pure wrought iron. Depending on where it is mined, ore can have different qualities. There are some interesting stocks reserved for special blades.”
He moved across to another set of furnaces. The boys at the front had to shield their faces as they looked into the flames.
“In order to produce steel, the smelted iron is brought here where it is heated, again with charcoal, and kept at a higher temperature for a long time, sometimes for days, depending on what grade of steel is needed. This is a tricky process. Too much of the charcoal essence in the metal and the steel is brittle; not enough and it’s soft as iron.”
They left the bloomery and the boys jogged to keep up as Skeet marched along a sooty road towards a steady pounding din. It was not necessary for him to explain that they were approaching a smithy. He did, however, mention that it would be unwise to refer to the swordsmiths within as blacksmiths.
Again, several coal forges kept the la
rge chamber at a sweaty heat. The room was packed. Not a bench stood empty, not a forge was cold. If Skeet’s earlier words hadn’t convinced the boys, one look into this room was enough to make it clear – this was a city preparing for war.
About fifty men worked at various stations – swordsmiths and their attendant strikers. Before the visitors entered, they stood in the wide doorway and Skeet shouted, “As you can see, steel weapons are not melted and moulded. Bronze weapons are, but they are weak by comparison. Steel that is moulded is far too brittle for weapons, so forges and hammers are used to draw the blades out.”
He led them inside and began explaining the process, but there was a problem. What the boys heard was, “Over here is the clang! and if you clang! carefully you’ll notice clang! bang! Can you all see it?”
He was met with twenty blank stares. “Sorry Master Skeet,” Hadley said. Clang! “Can we see what?”
“Weren’t you listening? I said this is the clang! bang! bang!”
More blank stares
Skeet was growing red. He turned a dangerous eye on the nearest striker, raised his voice and tried again, “The cling! bang! Oh for mercy’s sake!” He whipped around and bellowed with such force that every hammer froze on its descent. “The next one of you mangy curs who uses his hammer while I’m talking is going to swallow it!”
The response was impressive. Hammers were cautiously laid down. Apart from the rumble from the forges, the space was filled with a respectful silence. Aedan guessed that Skeet was known here and that he held an intimidating rank.
“Now, as I said, here is where the steel is heated and hammered into the right dimensions. He pointed to a steel ingot the size of a fist. “This,” he said, “is a sword hatchling, fresh from the bloomery. Depending on the price offered, it is either beaten directly into shape or subjected to processes that can include combining with other grades of steel or iron, twisting, and folding – all of which result in superior properties.”
He drew his own sword and held it out.
“See the interwoven pattern on the steel that looks like the work of a thousand woodborers? This sword was a combination of four ingots that were hammered into rectangular billets, forge-welded, twisted into tight coils, flattened, folded ten times and wrapped around a softer core before being lengthened. It was a technique developed by Magnus over there, who is our chief swordsmith for good reason.”
This was said for all to hear and Skeet inclined his head to the white-headed, sinewy man who bowed in acknowledgment.
“The swordsmiths are always experimenting, trying and testing new ideas. But this makes for expensive weapons. The quicker and cheaper option of hammering out a single ingot produces a useable but inferior blade that is heavily dependent on the charcoal infusion process, which if you remember, is a tricky one, often unreliable.”
He moved to another bench where he used the tongs to pick up a longer piece.
“This ingot has been partially extended. If you look carefully, you’ll –”
“Eeeeyooww!”
All eyes turned on Lorrimer who was furiously shaking his oversized hand and hopping over the steel block he had just flung on the ground.
“Did you think I was using the tongs to keep my fingers clean?” Skeet asked.
Lorrimer recovered himself, blushed with a heat to shame the forges, and apologised profusely. The swordsmiths and strikers were grinning. Skeet ignored him and carried on.
“Here, you’ll see that two metals have been combined – a hard steel and a softer iron on the inside.”
“Master Skeet,” Vayle asked. “Why use a softer metal? Doesn’t that make it weaker?”
“Fired clay is harder than wet, but which shatters when dropped? If you make a sword too rigid it will break on impact.”
He moved over to where a blade had been drawn out to its full length. It was straight, double-edged, and partially fullered. He held it up and pointed first to the stumpy section at the back.
“The tang,” he said, “is far more important than you would think. Get this part wrong and the handling will be horrendous. The fuller,” he indicated the partly formed groove running down the middle, “reduces the overall weight without taking from the strength.” He put the blade down and turned to another that was glowing in the nearest forge.
“Once the blade has reached its basic shape, it is put through several stages of heat treatment that takes two forms – annealing and tempering – differentiated by how the heated metal is cooled. Annealing is a slow cooling, making the blade softer and more flexible, while tempering …” he drew their attention to one of the smiths who had removed a red hot blade from the forge and now submerged it in a quenching tank, producing a short, angry hiss of steam, “tempering hardens the blade, allowing for a sharp edge. Heat treating is an art that has a big influence on the final strength.”
The clanging resumed as they followed Skeet through a partial division and into an adjacent workshop. This one was just as noisy, though less percussive. Skeet made his explanations from the door.
“The grinders are the craftsmen who shape, sharpen, and eventually polish the blades so that they don’t look like beaten fire-irons. The rough grinding takes place before the tempering while the steel is still soft from annealing, and the final sharpening and polishing afterwards when the edges have been hardened. So the blades and some of the swordsmiths move between these workshops. There are loyal chains of craftsmen running through the process. Each chain has its own particular methods, arrangements, and even a few secrets.”
Inside were a number of men working at grinding wheels and many more at tables, scraping away with stones and files. Others polished. The boys were still feasting their eyes on the emerging blades when Skeet clapped his hands and shooed them out.
They followed a courier hefting a thickly wrapped bundle of sharp steel up a flight of stairs to the next workshop, the cutlers. Here, hilts were produced to match the size and weight of each blade. Some were plain, like the standard military arming sword of which several were to be seen at every bench. Others were of a far higher breed – mostly the swords of officers and wealthy clients.
“A poor cutler,” Skeet told them, “can ruin a good blade in a number of ways, balance being the first of these. A cutler must, before anything else, be a swordsman.”
As if to establish the point, one of the men at a bench nearby stood and executed a sequence of sweeping cuts and thrusts with the sword he had just completed. Satisfied, he placed it in a tray and started on another.
“The scabbard-makers produce standard scabbards for the standard-issue blades, but custom blades must take another journey. Once the scabbards are done, the blades are cleaned, oiled and ready. Right!” he said, with a note of animation. “Classes are suspended. This is where you will be for a little over a week. One day in each of the workshops, and three days making your own sword. When you are done you will swap weapons and test their strength and handling. And if you don’t want to be deaf by the end of it, stuff something in your ears.”
The smiles reappeared, even bigger than before.
Aedan could see the sword he was going to make. It would be magnificent. It would be legendary, a blade by which epic battles would be won. He would call it The Avenger, or The Bane of Lekrau, and it would pass down the generations, hoarded in the vaults of kings and coveted by all …
The glittering eyes around him revealed that he was not the only one with such ambitions. And rightly so. How difficult could a bit of hammering and grinding be?
“I’ll challenge you one shift of clean-up duty,” Aedan whispered to Peashot. “Best sword wins.”
“Deal. You’ll lose.”
“You’ll both lose,” said Hadley. “Just you wait and see what I have in mind.”
“Also me,” said Kian. “I’m hating clean-up.”
Soon everyone was in and the winner would have no clean-up duties for a long time.
Over the next week, they were tutored through t
he details of the process, and then each was given a steel ingot and a place at a forge. They were guided but not assisted in producing their own blades. When the blades cracked, which happened to more than one, they had to be forge-welded – heated and hammered together – and beaten out to length again. Every night the boys returned to the academy with grimy faces, blistered hands, dry eyes, and ringing ears.
On his second day, Aedan decided that the heat of the room would be better endured without shoes. He discovered that of all environments he had ever known, none offered nearly as many sharp objects on which to step, not to mention the showers of sparks that anointed his feet from time to time.
When he returned from the forge that evening, he approached the gate alone, barefoot, hobbling, and filthy beyond recognition. He was, of course, denied entrance, the guard thinking him a street urchin trying his luck. One of the clerks had to be summoned to verify Aedan’s identity.
After his dismal failure with bows, he had chosen to heed what Skeet had said about a soft inner core. Warton too. It made for longer hours of hammering and some late nights, but they pushed on and completed their blades. For Aedan it wasn’t about impressing anyone – he had a little scheme in mind, a little payback for Malik who would want to win the contest no less than the rest of them and who would certainly cheat.
Apart from Aedan and Warton, the boys all ignored advice and made their blades long, resulting in trickier labour and flimsier weapons. Nevertheless, they were proud and competitive as they hammered, ground, polished and finally hilted their creations. Each was truly awful in its own special way. But the boys were quite pleased with themselves, feeling that the art of sword-making was not as difficult as they had expected.
Skeet didn’t say anything. Instead he gathered them in the enclosed marshals’ courtyard and presented them with shields strapped to fir branches. They were told to swap swords so that no one held his own, and deliver ten good blows to the shields.
Aedan could see Malik and Cayde whispering. He called across all the others.
“Hey, Malik! You brave enough to swap with me?”
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 36