The Hammer

by K. J. Parker

  Two days after the strangers went to visit Gignomai met’Oc, Lumen Gabela went missing. Ciro Gabela assumed she’d been called back to her father’s house on account of sudden illness or the like. The Tereo house was a day’s walk east, and Ciro had a batch of young bullocks to dehorn. He waited for three days, heard nothing, and walked to the Tereo house. They hadn’t sent for Lumen, or seen anything of her.

  When he got home, he found Lio Heddo and a few neighbours waiting for him. Lio had found Lumen’s head buried in the hay on his side of the linhay. The head appeared to have been cut off with an axe found lying in the grass twenty yards from the linhay door. The tongue had been torn out, and there were other disfigurements. There was no sign of the rest of the body.

  Ciro had to be taken home; two old women from the Paveta house stayed with him. Nobody had any idea as to what should be done. Lio Heddo and his neighbours held a brief, rudimentary parliament outside the linhay, and resolved to send the youngest Paveta boy to town, where somebody was bound to know. Whether anybody was aware at this point that Scarpedino was also missing is unclear.

  A barely quorate town meeting deputised Marzo Opello from the store, in spite of his many and passionately expressed reservations. He left his wife and niece in charge of the store, since Furio refused to take leave from the factory project, recruited Rasso’s two youngest boys as his general staff, and drove out to the Gabela house in a donkey-cart, with the Rasso boys following on their ponies.

  Once he’d installed himself in the Gabela house he officially convened a commission of enquiry, following the forms and procedures set out in a book someone had found in the customs shed, left behind when the garrison was withdrawn. Since Ciro was still too ill to be questioned, he sent one of the Rasso boys to the Tereo house, where Ciro’s movements were confirmed: he’d been to see them, just as he’d said. Unfortunately, as Marzo quickly realised, that proved nothing. To judge from the state the head was in, Lumen Gabela had been dead for some time. It seemed overwhelmingly likely that she’d been killed shortly before Ciro noticed, or claimed to have noticed, that she’d gone missing. Marzo questioned the Heddo family about the axe, and Lio Heddo freely admitted it was his. It had belonged to his grandfather, but nobody had used it for a while because the head had come loose and they had a better axe anyhow, so it had been put in the barn, to be fixed some rainy day.

  Marzo asked how long Scarpedino had been gone. Lio admitted he didn’t know. They saw so little of him these days, it was hard to keep track. Before Lumen’s disappearance? Lio shrugged. But that was beside the point, surely. There were six men living in the barn where the axe had come from; they were strangers, sailors, nobody knew the first thing about them. The facts, Lio didn’t need to say, spoke for themselves.

  At this point, a procedural problem arose. Marzo insisted that the regulations allowed him, as duly appointed investigating officer, to enlist such able-bodied men as he chose for a posse, with a view to interrogating the six men in the barn. Lio Heddo objected that Marzo’s appointment was at best irregular and quite possibly entirely illegal, that he only had Marzo’s word for it that there was any such regulation (Marzo had brought the book, but none of the Heddos could read) and that, in any case, Lio must himself be a suspect in the case, which disqualified him for posse service. Similar objections were raised by the Pavetas, the Otizzi and the Scilios, the only other families in the district. Marzo pointed out that he was unarmed, whereas the men in the barn might well not be; also, there were six of them, all undoubtedly skilled dockside fighters, whereas Marzo hadn’t been in a fight since he was eleven years old.

  Scao Otizzi suggested that the person most likely to be able to control the men was their master, the stranger, last heard of at the factory site. Marzo sent one of the Rasso boys back to town, where Furio reported that the strangers had gone away and he didn’t know where they were now. He assumed they’d gone back to the met’Oc, on the Tabletop.

  Marzo drove back to town and convened a town meeting, rather better attended than the last one. Quoting verbatim from the book, he asserted his right to enlist a posse. The meeting held that he had such a right, but since the town was outside the district in which the crime had been committed, he couldn’t enlist any of them—it had to be neighbours—and Marzo should go back to the Pavetas, the Otizzi and the Scilios, and insist. Marzo refused. At this point, Estimo Fano the cooper suggested from the floor that Marzo should ask for help from the met’Oc.

  The suggestion had the effect of silencing the meeting for some considerable time.

  “I’m serious,” Estimo said. “Why not? They’ve got men and weapons up there, they reckon they’re nobility, better than us. About time they did something for the community.”

  “You must be joking,” Marzo said. “You want me to go up there and ask Luso met’Oc—”

  “Why not?” Estimo repeated. “He won’t eat you. After all, you’re in business with that other met’Oc boy. Practically makes you family.”

  “Gignomai met’Oc’s been disowned,” Marzo pointed out. “Because he’s friends with my nephew, I’m the last person they’ll do a favour for.”

  It was at this juncture that Marzo, and the rest of the meeting, realised that Marzo had, by shared assumption, taken on himself the job of ambassador to the met’Oc. Rasso quickly proposed a motion formalising the appointment, which was passed by an overwhelming majority (Marzo Opello voting against).

  “We can’t do this,” Marzo continued to object, even though the vote had been taken and minuted. “For one thing, the met’Oc are outlaws. Asking them for help would be—I don’t know—treason, or conspiracy or something.”

  “Who says?” Rasso replied. “Where’s it actually written down that the met’Oc are outlaws?”

  “And anyway,” Jano Velife the well-sinker pointed out, “the book says, the posse’s got to be drawn from the district where the crime happened. You look at the map, you’ll see the western edge of the Tabletop’s just inside the district boundary.” He grinned. He wasn’t the sort of man who could easily disguise his emotions. “That makes them neighbours for the purposes of the statute.”

  Marzo, meanwhile, was thinking hard. “Better idea,” he said. “Young Gignomai’s got a parcel of men working for him these days, and they’ve got all manner of axes and adzes and sharp pointy things. And God knows, he owes me a favour.”

  Furio relayed the message; Gignomai replied that he’d have to think about it.

  Meanwhile, events at the Heddo house had moved on. Because the Heddos had stopped sending food to the barn (because nobody was prepared to get that close), the six oarsmen had forced their way into the house and helped themselves to bacon, flour, pickled cabbage and beer from the store room. Lio Heddo had sent to town demanding justice, not to mention protection from further assaults. In the meantime, he’d moved his family out to the Paveta house.

  Furio brought back Gignomai’s considered reply. He would like to be able to help, but he and his partners were artisans and businessmen, not soldiers. If they wanted someone military, he recommended his brother Lusomai, who positively enjoyed that sort of thing.

  Marzo had a great deal to say about Gignomai when the town meeting reconvened. When he’d finished, he was reminded of the existing motion, requiring him to go to the met’Oc. A further motion was passed entrusting him with extraordinary plenipotentiary powers for the duration of the crisis. Nobody was quite sure what that meant, but everybody agreed that it ought to be enough to get the job done.

  Ever since the strangers’ visit, Gig had seemed preoccupied, distant, more so than ever. Having given it some thought, Furio was moderately certain he’d figured out why.

  Almost inevitable, he thought, as he passed nails to Turzo, who was nailing plates to the blades of the waterwheel. She’s the first girl of his own age and class he’s ever seen, apart from his sister, and she’s pretty enough, if you like them small and pointy. Fair enough. It had always been obvious that town girls, let alo
ne country girls, didn’t interest him. Furio couldn’t help grinning when he thought how noble he’d been prepared to be, at first, when it became obvious Teucer preferred Gig to him. But Gig wasn’t going to waste himself on a colonial. Cousin Pasi, on the other hand, was his own sort—he’d noticed the change in Gig’s vocabulary and syntax when he’d been talking to her—and although she might be in some sort of trouble right now, she had a rich and powerful family back home, so whatever the trouble might be, it would probably blow over.

  Was that what the met’Oc had thought, seventy years ago? he wondered. Had they arrived here in bespoke buckskin adventurers’ outfits, with best-quality tools and equipment in hand-polished rosewood cases, bearing the trade labels of the finest City makers?

  In any case, Gig’s intentions and ambitions as far as his pretty cousin was concerned were none of his business. But he needed to talk to him about Marzo.

  “Furio,” think of the devil, “leave that, I want you here.”

  Furio grinned at Turzo, handed him a fistful of nails and scrambled down. Gignomai was leaning against the rim of the wheel, wiping sawdust out of his eyes. Furio noticed he’d skinned his knuckles which were bleeding, but Gig didn’t seem to have noticed.

  “Your fucking uncle,” Gig said.

  Oh, Furio thought. “What’s…?”

  Gignomai shoved a piece of paper at him. Furio glanced through it, cursed his uncle under his breath, and handed it back. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

  “You bet you will.” Gig looked tired more than anything else. “You tell him we made a deal; all the supplies I need till the job’s done. I don’t construe that as meaning what he thinks he can spare when he’s in a good mood. All right?”

  Furio counted to five under his breath. “That’s not what he’s said,” he replied calmly. “If he’s run out of planed shingles and nails—”

  “One, I don’t believe him,” Gig snapped. “Two, if he hasn’t got them in stock, he’d damned well better go out and get them from the lumber mill.”

  “Nails—”

  “Someone’s bound to have a few spare barrels of nails; it’s just a case of getting off his backside and finding them. I can’t have used every last four-inch nail in the colony.”

  Actually, Furio thought, that was a distinct possibility. “I’ll talk to him,” he said. “But please—”

  “It’s in his own interest anyway,” Gig went on, as though to himself. “The sooner we’re done, the sooner he can stop feeding us. If we’re stuck here sitting on our hands for want of a few lousy nails, he’ll be the main loser. But I suppose he’s too thick to figure that out.”

  Furio breathed out through his nose. “My uncle isn’t stupid,” he said.

  “He is, though.” Gig frowned, as though aiming for perfect precision. “Cunning but stupid. Cunning is pulling one over on someone in a deal. Stupid is thinking you can cheat someone you regularly do business with and not pay for it in the long run. That’s your uncle.”

  It was a valid summary of Uncle Marzo’s life in commerce, but that was beside the point. “Do you mind not abusing my relatives?” Furio said angrily.

  “Why not? I say worse about mine. Sorry,” Gig added quickly. “Not your fault. But please, talk to him, will you? I really don’t want to have to fall out with him, not when we’re so far along.”

  Furio calmed himself down, like reining in a fractious horse. “That might not be so easy,” he said. “You see, Uncle’s not going to be at home for a while.”

  He explained. Gig stared at him, then shook his head. “Talk him out of it, for crying out loud. Really. I said some nasty things about your uncle, but he’s not a bad man. People like him ought to stay away from my brother.”

  Furio winced. “I don’t think he’s got any choice. The meeting—”

  “Screw that,” Gig said sharply. “What’s the worst they can do to him? Luso’s perfectly capable of sending him home in a box, or with his tongue cut out, to teach him manners. My brother’s a bit old-fashioned in his views, I’m afraid. You should know that by now.”

  That was the end of the conversation. Gig was called away, and Furio didn’t have another chance to talk to him. On his way home, he thought about what Gig had said. He was puzzled. Gig had said a lot to him about his brother over the years. The mental picture he’d formed was of an unpleasant man, arrogant, violent, potentially dangerous in certain circumstances, but not a lunatic. Furthermore, those old-fashioned views were surely Uncle’s best protection. A met’Oc wouldn’t kill or torture a guest under his roof. But Gig had been quite emphatic.

  Maybe he had his own reasons, Furio decided. After all, if anything happened to Marzo…

  No, that didn’t work. If anything happened to Uncle Marzo, Furio would inherit, and the future of the project would be assured; in fact, it’d be better off. If Gig was as cold and calculating as he was making him out to be, it’d be to his advantage if Luso murdered Uncle Marzo. Not that he could make himself believe that. But why would Gig exaggerate the risk posed by his brother?

  He decided not to say anything to his uncle that evening. As it turned out, he didn’t get the chance. Marzo had gone by the time he got back. The house was painfully quiet. Teucer was the only one who spoke during dinner. She let it be known that she thought the idea of walking into the Tabletop alone and unarmed was insane, practically suicidal. She blamed Gignomai. The least he could have done, after all the hospitality he’d enjoyed and the goods and services he’d received, was to have gone with Marzo and intercede for him. Furio tried scowling at her across the table, but she managed not to look at him all evening.

  The next day, Furio arrived at the site later than usual (the result of losing a boot in the boggy patch on the near side of the river). When he got there, he found the entire workforce clustered round an enormous fire with at least a dozen cartloads of charcoal, burning under what looked like an upside-down clay bell. He had no idea where it had come from or what it was for. He asked Ranio, the ex-blacksmith, who looked at him as if he was crazy.

  “We’re pouring the hammer,” Ranio said.

  That simply didn’t make sense. “What hammer?”

  Ranio shook his head and walked away. Furio looked round for Gig, and saw him heaving on a long lever sticking out of what looked appallingly like the backside of a cow. When he got closer, he realised it was a bellows, made from a whole hide with the hair still on. He couldn’t recall having seen that either, but it must have taken a lot of time and work to make.

  “What, this?” Gig said. “Here, you take over for a bit. I’m shattered.”

  Furio reached up. He was only just able to get his hands on the lever. “I’ll do my best,” he said doubtfully. “But…”

  “We stitched up the hides last night,” Gig went on. “Ranio forged the nozzle a day or so back. We carry on working, you see, when you’ve gone home.”

  Furio couldn’t spare the breath to reply to that. He found he could bring the lever down by hanging from it with his feet off the ground. Pushing it back up again was backbreaking.

  “We made the mould last night, too,” Gig went on. “And the cupola. Baked them overnight in the embers to get them dry enough for the pour. Stick with it,” he added, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  A minute proved to be a very long time. Each stroke of the lever sent a jet of air into the heart of the fire, which responded with a four-foot-high plume of flame, as though there was a dragon lurking in there somewhere. The base of the clay bell was starting to glow. Furio could see a channel—cast-iron guttering, which he’d last seen on the eaves of the store—leading to a pit. Each time he pulled the lever, a wave of heat washed over him, making his skin tingle.

  Gig came back. He had that stone-cold worried look on his face; a very bad sign. He shouted something to Ranio that Furio didn’t catch, apparently got a reply, and stepped back out of the way as the hidden dragon let out another spurt of fire. Around him, all the partners seemed to be busy, though
Furio had no idea what any of them were doing.

  “Right,” Gig shouted suddenly. “Here we go. Furio, one more pull. The rest of you, stand well back.”

  He didn’t follow his own advice; the rest of them did, sprinting like lumberjacks out of position when the tree splits. Furio hauled the lever down, let go, dropped to the ground and curled up into a ball, as a surge of hot air, moving fast enough to hit like a punch, swept over his head. As a result, he couldn’t see what was going on. But he heard a roar not made by voices, and a terrifying hissing and cracking noise like branches breaking. It sounded as though something had just gone dangerously wrong.

  Apparently not. A voice he didn’t recognise yelped with pure joy, others joined in. He heard Gig yelling, “Keep back, it’s still hot,” then several more deafening cracks, then a rushing hiss that drowned out all other sound for three or four heartbeats. Then silence. Feeling extremely foolish, Furio uncurled and opened his eyes.

  He couldn’t see anyone. Then Gig walked towards the pit, with a long pole in his hands. He poked savagely at something inside the pit. Whatever it was, it delighted him. His face split into an improbably broad grin, and he called out, “It’s all right, it’s fine.” There was a chorus of whoops and yells. Apparently, it hadn’t been a disaster after all.