The Magic Engineer

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  Both smiths move iron from opposite sides of the forge, and their hammers lift…and fall…lift and fall.

  CLXVI

  Dorrin wipes his forehead, wondering when Liedral will be back from Land’s End, and how successful she has been with the Nordlan brig, and with his toys and gadgets. Darkness knows, they need the coins. He lifts the hammer again, and again, until the iron has cooled below the cherry red he needs. With the tongs he thrusts it back into the bricks.

  On the other side of the forge, Yarrl works on replacing the curved claw side of a peavey for a holder. His hammer is almost musical on the iron.

  “You’re working like the demons of light are after you.” Rek’s face glistens under the sheen of sweat as he pumps the bellows.

  “More like the Black Mages of Recluce.” Dorrin retrieves the block of iron, deftly eases it onto the anvil with the tongs. He never knew building a new engine would take twice as many parts, it seems, as the old one.

  “But they’re your people.”

  “Things are never that simple.” Dorrin nods to Vaos. The striker brings down the hammer on the swage—once, twice. Dorrin returns the iron to the forge, heated here by coal, which requires more work with the bellows by Rek, and occasional sprinkling of the coals with a water can—another item Dorrin had to quickly forge. Dorrin returns the iron to the anvil and nods to Vaos again, for another series of blows. He taps the anvil to signify that the striking on this piece is done. When Vaos lifts the small sledge, Dorrin sets the short and rough valve casing on the fire bricks.

  “No one is my people. Not at the moment. They’re more afraid of me than the White Wizards. The White Wizards can only starve them to death.”

  “That’s…a funny thing…to say,” pants Rek.

  “Slow down for now.” Dorrin pulls another flat plate from the stack on his work table, built of a few of the timbers delivered by Hegl. In between engine parts, he must continue to work on the black iron tubing, hoping that it will not be needed, and knowing that it will.

  Frisa slips in through the open door, her hair fluffing away from her head. She studies the iron annealing on the firebricks. “Is that something special, master Dorrin?”

  “Is it?” asks Rek.

  “It’s for a special purpose.” Dorrin’s head throbs as he realizes the evasion he has voiced.

  “Mommy told me to tell you that master Kyl is walking up from the pier.”

  Dorrin sets the iron back on the bench. “Take a break, and get some water, Rek, before you burn up. Vaos, stay here in case Yarrl needs you.” Then the smith walks through the doorway of the space that is part smithy, part engine works, and part something else and looks down the hillside to the pier where the Black Diamond is tied. In front of the converted sloop is a smaller vessel, with two lower masts and nets drying across the main deck.

  A stocky figure marches up the gravel pathway from the Great Highway. Dorrin raises his hand. The other grins, raising his own hand.

  Dorrin walks over to the porch. “Merga, do we have anything to drink?”

  “Water and cool tea.”

  Dorrin grimaces and waits as Kyl crosses the last few rods between them. “I didn’t think we’d see you for a while.”

  “I didn’t think so, either, but the winds aren’t right, and it’s easier than fighting them. Sort of nice to have a port down here, even if getting in is tricky under sail.”

  “All we have is water and cool tea.”

  “Water’s fine.”

  As if she has heard, Merga arrives with two tumblers.

  “Let’s go up on the porch.” Dorrin leads the way to the bench. Some time he hopes they will have chairs, but the new ship comes before chairs, and the only two they have are the two at each end of the long kitchen table.

  Dorrin sits and takes a deep swallow of the water. At least it is cold, and he is glad he did divert some of the stream for running water in the house. At least he could buy piping rather than having to forge it.

  “Still can’t get over how you’ve changed.” Wispy hair straggles across the tanned forehead of the stocky man.

  “So have you.” Dorrin surveys Kyl, taking in the weathered clothes and sun-bleached eyes. “Was it hard?”

  “Getting them to let me go to sea? No…not after your letters.”

  “I hoped…but I was never good with words—not like Brede.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was good enough to be made marshal of Spidlar. The Whites got him when they crushed his forces at Kleth.”

  “Was that when you got injured and blinded?”

  Dorrin nods.

  “What about Kadara?”

  “She was almost killed early in the battle. Liedral brought us both back. How I’m not sure. I just managed to hang on…my horse.” He swallows hard, thinking of Meriwhen, still picturing her in the water behind the Black Diamond.

  “I didn’t mean about Kadara being wounded. You once were…”

  Dorrin grins. “I was. I wanted her for a time. Then I found Liedral, and I recognized the difference. Kadara’s always been in love with Brede. I finally realized that Kadara was indeed more of a sister than a lover. We’ve adjusted, although she was bitter for a time, and will be, because I couldn’t save Brede. I hope that will pass and that I can become some sort of an uncle to her son when he’s born. That would be fine.” He lifts himself off the bench. “I need your help.”

  “With father?”

  “No. He won’t listen to either one of us. As a matter of fact, he still has trouble listening to common sense. Sometimes, anyway.” Dorrin strides past his brother and into the part of the high-roofed building that is the metal fabricating area.

  Kyl follows, puzzled expression on his face.

  Dorrin stops by the newly built and already battered workbench, lifting the black model of the new ship. “Look.”

  “It’s low, not much freeboard, deep keel.”

  “You need that to carry the black iron plating.” Dorrin turns to a black box nearly four cubits long, which he opens. Inside is a black metal tube with a shoulder rest and a handgrip. “This is just as important.”

  “What is it?”

  “A rocket launcher. Here.” Dorrin hands his brother a shell. “It’s filled with explosive powder.”

  “Won’t the White Wizards just set it on fire?”

  “It would be hard for any except the greatest ones. The casing is thin black steel. Take it.”

  Kyl holds the projectile, then sets it on the bench. “Why?”

  “I’d like you to tell mother about it. You might also explain that I don’t intend to be driven off Recluce.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  Dorrin’s eyes are like black steel as he looks at his brother. “I intend to save Recluce. And my ships are the only way that will work right now. But Oran insists that everything will be all right so long as we maintain the old order, and he’s working on Ellna and Videlt to change their minds. I can’t build a ship and politic.” He ignores the headache that reminds him that he is doing just that as he speaks to his brother.

  “I think you’re doing just that.” Kyl smiles, and hands back the shell.

  “You’re right. Do you have any better ideas?”

  “Forget about the weapons. They already know you can do something awful. It’s better if I just talk about your feeling responsible for all these people and worried that father will let his fears mess up everything.” The younger man gestures toward the sun-framed smithy door. “Already, you must have thirty people here from elsewhere on Recluce. It will grow. Darkness, I’d like to live here.”

  “I haven’t counted. I’m glad we had some tents. You’re welcome, though I don’t know as we’re the best market for your catch.”

  Kyl laughs. “You will be. You don’t need force. All you need is time.”

  Dorrin has been using force too much, and Kyl is right. But will the Whites and the Council give him time? “You’re right. But I worry.”
<
br />   “You can always use force, Dorrin,” Kyl says. “Remember, your letters worked—after mother read them.”

  “I trust your judgment.” Dorrin points downhill. “Do you want to see the plans for the new ship?”

  “I saw the keel and frame on the way up. It looks like the model, keel and all—demon-damned deep.”

  “I’ll show you the plans. Just wait here.” He ducks into the house and walks into the large room in the far corner that contains but a chest, a table and a stool, and a big bed—the only kind he and Liedral can still share—and pulls the drawing from under the chunk of iron that serves as a paperweight.

  Kyl smiles as Dorrin sits down and smooths out the paper on the part of the bench between them. “Here.”

  “It’s low,” Kyl repeats. “No masts and not as much freeboard as a schooner.”

  “It’s a warship. Nothing more.”

  “It looks nasty.” Kyl gives a shiver. “Do you have a name yet?”

  “Not yet. Black something, I suppose.”

  “You ought to call it something appropriate, like Black Smith or Black Blade.”

  I don’t know. It’s not a smith or a blade.”

  “Black Hammer, then.”

  Dorrin purses his lips. “Maybe. That sounds better than anything I’ve thought up. We’ll see.” He begins to roll the sheet up to keep it from blowing in the breeze. “You know, I’ve never thanked you for the fish…or for being one of the few that weren’t always after me.”

  Kyl glances at the rough stone of the porch floor. “You always were there for me. I never could do anything for you. Now I can.”

  Dorrin looks at his brother. “I’m glad.”

  “So am I.” Kyl stands and looks at the whitecaps beginning to form on the ocean beyond the inlet. “I need to catch the winds or my crew won’t forgive me.” He clasps Dorrin roughly for an instant. “I’ll see you when I can.”

  Dorrin watches as his brother hurries toward the fishing boat tied in front of the Black Diamond. Then he carries the tumblers into the kitchen and sets them on the wash table.

  Unfortunately, he will still need the rockets. He has no doubts that the White Wizards will try something.

  CLXVII

  Dorrin sits on the porch bench, hoping Liedral will join him before he heads down to the shipwright’s.

  Gee—ahhh…A gull circles and dives toward the inlet that is becoming a harbor under Reisa’s direction. The stone walls now stretch a good two hundred cubits on each side of the temporary wooden pier, and she is beginning to build a permanent stone pier. With the recent immigrants from as far north on Recluce as Land’s End, Reisa has assembled a formidable work crew.

  Dorrin stands and opens the kitchen door just as Liedral emerges. “I was looking for you.”

  “I thought you were going down to Tyrel’s.”

  “I am.” Dorrin gestures to the bench.

  “I have to get things ready to leave. They say a Bristan trader will be in next eight-day.” Liedral sits on the bench, and Dorrin settles next to her. He puts an arm around her and squeezes, but only for a time, until he can sense the tension rising in her. More than a year has passed, and they still cannot hold each other for long before the discomfort that was once screaming agony begins to bubble up in Liedral.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “So am I.” He stands, then bends and kisses her cheek. His eyes burn as he goes down the steps. Once he turns back to look uphill, but Liedral has gone inside, getting ready to head out to the warehouse, he supposes.

  The late summer sun warms Dorrin as he pauses by the latest structure, a small, squarish, one-story armory—black, like all the other stone buildings. At least he had enough sense to lay out a plan that sets plenty of open space between buildings for the town that seems to be growing.

  Silently, he watches as Kadara stretches and forces her right arm to full extension, then lifts the small weight once, then again, then again. Not only can he see the streaking on the redhead’s face, but he can feel the agony and discomfort of her exercise. The discomfort arises from her swelling abdomen, and the weight of her son, and the agony comes from rebuilding that slashed and sundered arm.

  He has added his own order to that struggle, silently, without thanks, but without Kadara’s opposition, either. She suffers him to help heal her.

  Dorrin blots his forehead with his sleeve in the stillness. While it is well before midmorning, the stillness promises a warm fall day, and the sea beyond the point is almost glassy, the green-blue sky carrying the faint haze that foretells searing heat later.

  Through the heat, the clinking of hammer and stone rises, and the hammering of spikes and nails.

  He shifts his glance to Reisa, who also exercises, but with an iron wand twice the weight of a real blade, to Petra, and to several others who have joined the blade squad that Reisa and Kadara have formed—including Quenta, a former farm youth from Feyn who has begged for their training, and others whose names he has never known.

  Beyond the armory are the foundations of yet another building—a barracks for the new Black Guard of the port town to replace the tents that Quenta and the others are now using. Dorrin smiles. Pergun has become the de facto director of building. All the buildings are “his”—his armory, his warehouse, his barracks.

  Already, Dorrin can sense that the community created out of necessity is developing its own character—and drawing others from the isle in the process. So far, all of them have been orderly in character, but Dorrin has no illusions that it will remain that way. Will he have to follow the exile precedent of the Council?

  He shivers, then turns and resumes quick steps downhill to the shipwright’s, where, no doubt, Tyrel will be grousing about some new detail.

  Even before his booted feet carry him inside the shed and toward the blocks where the ship rests, Tyrel has found him.

  “Master Dorrin…you sure the new engine won’t go over four hundred stone?”

  “It should be less than that—two hundred and fifty or less, but we still have to consider the water tanks, and the coal bins…”

  “The bunkers are both fore and aft and braced different.” Tyrel points toward the slideways into the channel. “Those…are ye sure they’ll support this little monster?”

  “They should.” Dorrin hopes the calculations he has checked and rechecked are accurate.

  “Do ye have a name yet for the monster?”

  “Why are you always calling it a monster?”

  Both look at the near-completed hull, seventy cubits long, perhaps twenty-five wide, with the deep keel that has required both higher graving blocks and a deep trench beneath, not to mention use of explosives and the Black Diamond to dredge the inlet deeper.

  “It’s a black monster. All ye designed it for was destruction. Hasn’t got cargo space for much. Just room for troops and coal and weapons and an engine.”

  “You told me I couldn’t build anything bigger…and I can’t afford more. Darkness…I can’t afford this.”

  Tyrel looks up. “You’re getting a mite of help, young fellow.”

  “I’m getting help.” More than he probably deserves, but his coins are running out, and neither the ship nor the engine is close to completion. He pauses. “Let’s call it the Black Hammer.”

  “Black Hammer it is. Fitting enough for a smith, leastwise.” Tyrel coughs. “We need to look at the collar for the main shaft bearing.”

  Dorrin takes a deep breath. Every time he and Tyrel discuss the ship—the Black Hammer now—he has another half-dozen smithing items to redo or develop or add to his list.

  The two men climb the ladder and edge across the beams that will support the engine deck.

  “If you brace that the way you drew it, and there’s any vibration in that shaft, you’ll be a-tearing that right out.” Tyrel points to the problem.

  Even without trying to calculate, Dorrin can sense that the shipwright is correct. “What do you suggest?”

  “Run
a set of false beams right inside the hull, next to the structural ones. They’d be held in place by weight, but if the shaft vibrates, you see, it won’t separate the hull from the beams.”

  “How much extra weight?”

  “With the iron you’re putting on, you won’t notice it. Maybe fifteen stone.”

  Fifteen stone is fifteen stone. Where can he shave off another fifteen stone? He must keep the ship as light as he can for the speed. Tyrel doesn’t really consider speed, only structural soundness.

  “Do it. I’ll have to find where else I can cut weight.”

  The tapping and clinking of the rest of the shipwrights are underscored by the sound of a heavy wagon pulling up beside the big shed.

  Dorrin looks down through the beams, recognizing both Hegl and the healer beside him. “Excuse me, Tyrel.” He climbs across the unfinished beam work and down the ladder. Why has his mother made the long ride to Southpoint? Is something wrong with his father? Has the Council changed its mind, and is she warning him?

  The wagon is laden with a variety of items, ranging from a cradle to a barrel of ship spikes and hull bolts.

  Rebekah waves to Dorrin with a smile, but has stepped away from the wagon to allow the unloading to proceed. “Go ahead and unload, Dorrin.”

  Dorrin turns to the wagon.

  “I’ll be leaving these with Tyrel,” says Hegl as he lowers the tailgate and lifts the barrel of bolts.

  Styl appears behind Hegl and grasps the barrel of spikes. “Never say the smiths don’t bring what ye need when ye need it.” He offers everyone a gap-toothed smile as he carts off the heavy barrel.

  Dorrin unloads two shipwright’s adzes with spur heads, and looks at the cooper’s adz beside it. “This for them, too?”

  “Tyrel said he’d have to make some special barrels for this monster of yours.”