HONOR BOUND (The Spare Heir) (21 page)

When Franks was satisfied with the blade, he would snip off bits of the hilt until he could balance the sword at a point about a finger width down the length of the blade from the cross guard.  Then he would hammer at the hilt until it resembled a thin version of a standard sword grip.  Somehow with all of the heating and cooling the smith managed to make the metal of the hilt soft enough to be malleable while keeping the blade hard without being brittle.

Two of the swords that Franks had deemed as unacceptable, he had kept for a demonstration for the Duke.  For some reason unknown to Jorem, the smith insisted on finishing those two swords along with the rest.  He spent just as much time honing and polishing them as he did the rest.  However, he didn’t put them through the heating and cooling processes.  To Jorem, they looked identical in every way to the other swords that lined the wall.  He would have asked the smith about them, but he had three newly cast swords to keep him busy.

The warmer weather brought the other members of the smith’s family out of their house.  Occasionally, the smith’s wife or daughter would bring them ice-cold glasses of water or punch.  The blacksmith’s wife, Luciel, always had a smile and kind words for Jorem.  Jannett, the smith’s daughter, generally did her best to pretend Jorem didn’t even exist.

Jannett’s attitude was no more than he had expected.  After all, she had been the primary target of his brothers’ cruelty.  Luciel’s kindness, however, was altogether unexpected.  He actually started looking forward to her afternoon visits.  He knew she came to lighten her husband’s day and that the warmth he felt at her presence was merely the overflow of the love shared between her and her husband.

On the day Luciel and Jannett came together with Ben limping along between them, Jorem would have dearly loved to be somewhere else.  Ben was thin and pallid.  His eyes were sunken and lined with dark shadows.  As they sat him down at one of the benches, he sighed as if the trip from the house had taken all of the energy he had.  Mother, Father and daughter fussed over the boy until he was settled and comfortable.  Franks pulled a bundle from beneath another bench, opened it and spread its contents out in front of Ben.  Then he laid one of the swords on the bench and sat down beside his son.

“Much have I missed you here with me.”  The smith’s voice choked with emotions as he gently laid his arm across his son’s shoulders and squeezed.  “Much there is to be done that I would trust to no other hands but yours.”

Ben placed his hand on his Father’s and smiled weakly.  “It’s good to be back Father.  Another day of laying abed and I think that I’ll go crazy.”

“Good!” Franks said with a nod that conveyed both approval and pride.  “The Duke wants these swords on the first day of summer and that is but a sevenday away.  Off with you ladies,” the smith said, shooing the women out the door.  “Much we have to do.”

Jorem had stood frozen behind the forge from the time that Ben had entered the room.  The closeness of the smith and his family, the open caring and concern they showed for one another, left Jorem with a dull ache in his chest.  The mention of summer season being but a sevenday away left him stunned.  He’d been here for nearly three seasons.  After watching Franks with his family, it hurt even more to realize that his birthing day had come and gone with nary a word from his Father.

“Son, son, are you alright?”

The voice of the smith seemed to come from far away until his large, callused hand gently shook Jorem’s shoulder.  Two things entered Jorem’s mind when he looked up at the smith.  First was the concern in the smith’s eyes.  Second was that he didn’t actually look up so much as over at the smith.

In all of his years, the only person that had ever shown that much concern for him was Pentrothe.  That Franks would worry about him had never occurred to him.  The thought caused a lump to form in his throat, making it difficult to speak.  Shaking himself, Jorem coughed to clear his throat.

“Sorry, sir,” Jorem mumbled.  “I must have been day dreaming.”

“That’s alright, lad,” the smith said with a grin.  “See what you can do with these last few castings today.  Starting tomorrow, I’ll have you helping Ben with the finishing work.  I want to have as many swords finished as we can before the Duke comes to collect them.  Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind staying late for a few days, I have one more sword I want to make, something special for Pertheron.  It’s a wedding gift that will be of good use to him and something that I have wanted to make for some time.

Jorem nodded his agreement and got back to work.  He was about halfway done with the sword he was working on and there were two more he had yet to start.  He set to it with a will and by the end of the day had all three roughed out.  As he leaned the last one against the wall, he felt a bit of pride as he looked at the row of partially finished swords.  He had helped to make these swords from raw ore.  One day, these very swords might be used to defend this land from foes.

After Luciel and Jannett came to help Ben back to the house, Jorem took half a candle mark to clean things up before going to get his dinner.  He ate quickly so he would have time to set things in order for the smith. By the time Franks returned from his meal Jorem had everything set in place and was ready to start smelting another batch of metal.  Franks looked it all over and nodded at Jorem in approval.  The smith walked to a dimly lit corner of the room.  Kneeling down, he grasped something in the floor and pulled up.

Something clicked and there was a creaking of wood scraping on wood.  With a heave, the smith dislodged a small section of the floor and set it aside.  Then he reached down into the opening and, struggling a bit, lifted out a small chest. Franks carried the chest over to the bench nearest the forge and reverently set it down on the bench top.  He blew across the top of the chest and a cloud of dust billowed out into the room.  It was a plain looking chest with no special markings.  There wasn’t even a lock to keep it closed, just a simple latch.

Franks pried the latch up and gently opened the chest.  Jorem didn’t know what he expected to see inside the chest, but it certainly wasn’t the half dozen or so leather sacks that were revealed.  Franks took each of the sacks out of the chest and spread them out on the bench. The sacks were stiff and gray with age.  Looking closely, Jorem saw that each bag was marked with some type or rune, and that no two bags were marked with the same rune.  The runes looked familiar to Jorem.  When he leaned over the bags to get a better look at the runes, he knew where he had seen them before.  Pentrothe had a few books that were kept locked away that had writings from the ancient race of people that had lived in what was now tumbled down ruins near the capital.  No one knew how old the ruins were.  Nor was it known what had happened to the people that had lived there.  A few books and odd artifacts were all that remained.

Jorem ran a finger over one of the runes.  Looking up at the smith, he asked, “It’s ancient, isn’t it?”

“So I was told,” the smith answered.  “When I was just a lad I came across an old woman with a busted wheel on her wagon.  I swear she must’ve been near a hundred years old.  Well, I stopped and fixed the wheel for her, took a few days cause I hadn’t any tools with me.  When I finished, she came out with these sacks of powder and rocks.

“She told me they were for making a special metal, a metal to make a sword like nothing we have around here.  She told me what each one was for and how to use it.  I was well apprenticed for the smith craft by then and had no use for weapons, so I hid all of it away.

“Ben, he’s like me, better than me, really.  In time he’ll be the best smith in the Kingdom.  Put a sword in his hand and he’ll just end up dead.  Give him a forge and some ore and he’ll build you an army.  Perth though, he’s a warrior born.  It’s in his blood.  He thinks a battle through before it even starts, doesn’t matter whether it’s one-on-one combat or hunting down bandits.  I’ve seen him at it.  He sits down at a table and marks out all the possibilities.  Strategy, he calls it.

“He’ll marry my Jannett in less than a cycle.  I want him to have a sword he can count on.  Armor he’s got plenty of.  I’ll do what I can to see that he comes back home to his wife and children.  A sword he can trust will give him that much more of an edge.”

Jorem stoked up the forge with coal and pumped the bellows until the inside of the forge was white-hot.  Franks sorted through the piles of ore, selecting out bits of this and chunks of that.  He also slid one of the roughed swords Jorem had been working on into the coals. The smith layered the various ores in the crucible and settled the crucible into the scorching heat of the forge.  While Jorem continued pumping the bellows, Franks opened several of the leather bags.  Once the contents of the crucible had melted, the smith pulled the heated sword from the coals, bent it in half and then quarters and added it to the crucible.

While they waited for the metal in the crucible to melt he set another crucible into the forge. Taking one of the leather sacks the smith poured its contents into the liquefied metal.  Thick gray foam formed on the top of the metal and the smith quickly scooped it off with a long handled spoon. The foam was placed into one of the molds used for casting ingots. The liquid left in the crucible now had a shimmering silver look to it.

With Jorem’s help the smith carefully poured the seething liquid from the first crucible into the second.  Taking another of the leather sacks, the smith poured its contents, dark blue stones, onto the heated coals.  The blue stones, heated by the coal, began to glow.  As the stones got brighter the heat from the forge intensified. The smith poured various powders from the other leather sacks into the crucible.  Some sparkled and popped as they were added, some gave off putrid or acrid odors.  When all but two of the leather sacks had been emptied, the smith sat back and watched the waves of heat rising from the forge.

Whenever Jorem’s pace at the bellows slowed, Franks urged him on.  When Jorem’s strength was about gone, the smith stood at his side and they pumped together.  Sweat was pouring from their brows from the heat of the forge and the strain of the work.  Just when Jorem thought that he could go on no longer, the metal in the crucible began to brighten. In moments, the light from the crucible was like the noonday sun.  Quickly, the smith grasped the crucible with a long handled clamp, lifted it from the forge and poured the glowing liquid into an empty mold.  The light from the liquid metal brightened the entire room.  Jorem slowly sagged down to the floor, too spent to even stand.

The smith wiped the sweat from his own brow with his sleeve, leaving a black smear across his forehead.  As he watched, the light from the newly cast metal dimmed.  Slowly the metal cooled and hardened.  When Jorem finally pulled himself to his feet and looked at the raw hardened metal it looked no different than any of the other swords they had cast.  After all of that effort he had expected something special, something visible that would mark this sword as different from the others.

After the smith left to seek his bed, Jorem made a meager attempt at cleaning up after them.  Even the broom seemed to weigh more than he was able to lift.  It didn’t take long for him to give in to his body’s weakened state.  His need for sleep far outweighed his desire to clean the smithy.  Knowing that dawn was only a few candle marks away got him to the door and on his way to his own bed.  Hopefully he could grab a bite to eat on his way past the kitchen.

Chapter XXII

Over the next few days Jorem spent dawn to dusk helping Ben fashion grips for each of the swords.  Ben insisted that each one be different from the others.  Although he tired easily, he refused to do less than his best work.  With cord and wire, cloth and leather, they created quite an array of artistic designs.  Ben’s hands would often cramp and Jorem would massage them to ease the pain.

As the two boys worked together, they developed somewhat of a kinship.  Ben talked mostly of his family and some of the local people.  Jorem mostly listened, though Ben got quite a laugh out of Jorem’s description of his first dance lesson with Jennifer.  By the end of each day, Ben would be so weary he would start to fall asleep as he sat at the bench.  Each evening after the sun had gone down and Ben had returned to the house, Jorem would take his place at the bellows while Franks hammered at the special sword.  It took a few nights’ work before the smith was satisfied with the shape and balance of the blade.

On the fourth night the smith retrieved the two remaining rune-marked bags from their hiding place.  One of the bags contained a fine, green powder that the smith poured into the barrel of water he used to cool hot metal.  As Franks stirred the powder into the barrel, the water became dark and murky.  When Franks pulled out the staff he was using to stir the powder in with, Jorem saw that the water had become thick and slimy.  The other bag contained dark red crystal-like stones.  These the smith poured onto the heated coal in the forge.  These stones, like the blue stones from before, began to glow.  Again, the heat from the forge intensified.  Through the heat, Jorem did his best to maintain a steady rhythm at the bellows.

While Jorem pumped the bellows to get the forge up to temperature, the smith worked on finishing up the blade.  With hammer and tongs he pounded away at the blade. Watching the smith at work was mesmerizing.  Ping, ping, ping the hammer sounded and the sword flipped over to receive another ping, ping, ping on the other side.  The smith’s eyes never left his work.  The hammers strike never missed its mark as the sword took on its final shape.  Only a few times did the smith pause to inspect the blade a little closer, then he'd switch to a different hammer and continue on.

Once the heat at the forge became stable, the smith took the newly cast blade and slid it deep into the coals.  While Jorem pumped the bellows the smith stood and watched the sword.  Jorem had no idea what he was watching for, but occasionally the smith would reach in with a pair of tongs and turn the blade.  When the full length of the sword was so hot it was nearly the color of the coals in the forge, Franks gripped it with the tongs, pulled it from the forge and thrust it into the dark gooey liquid in the barrel.  A geyser of dark mist and smoke surged out of the barrel.  The stench that filled the air was unlike any that Jorem had ever experienced.