Borin Ironforge's Arc

Chapter 11 of 20

The hero's gold sat heavy in Borin's pocket, but it gave him no peace. Finn could forge a blade alone now. Yet the boy had never smelted a single scrap of ore. Every bar of steel in the forge had come from the orcs at the valley's edge. Borin gripped a cold bar and turned it. A smith who could not free metal from stone was only half a smith. He would not leave Finn that gap. "We're building a hotter fire," Borin said. "One that can melt the mine's ore ourselves." Finn frowned at the old forge. Its stone arch was scorched black, the chimney cracked near the top. "Yours already failed at this. Why would it work now?" "Because we rebuild it right," Borin said. But he did not know how. He had tried before. The heat had never come. A knock rattled the door. Maple Thornwhisker stepped in, the grey-furred cat who raised half the village's walls. A hammer and a folded measure hung from her belt. Her yellow eyes swept the cracked chimney at once. "Your draft's wrong," she said. "That flue chokes your air. No air, no heat." Borin bristled. He had shaped iron sixty years. "I know my own forge." "Then you know it can't smelt." She tapped the stone. "I don't shape metal. I shape what holds the fire. Let me rebuild the chamber." Finn looked between them. "We've got nothing to lose but the ore." Borin swallowed his pride. "Show me." They worked through the night. Maple tore out the choked flue and laid a tighter chamber of packed stone. She narrowed the throat so the air ran fast and hard. Finn pumped the bellows until his arms shook. Borin fed charcoal, then more charcoal, watching the coals climb from orange to white. By dawn the fire roared blue at its heart. Borin had never seen it so hot in his own forge. He buried the last of the mine's raw ore deep in the coals. The three of them watched. The rock hissed. It glowed, then softened. A bright trickle ran from the stone and pooled beneath. Metal. Freed by his own fire, in his own forge, at last. Finn stared, mouth open. "It worked. We don't need the orcs." Borin poured the molten metal into a mold. It cooled into a rough, honest bar. He set it in Finn's hands. "Now you've seen it done. Next batch, you run the fire alone." Finn closed his fingers around the warm bar. "I can do that." Maple wiped soot from her paws and grinned. "Fire's yours now. Don't let it die." Borin looked at the glowing forge and the boy beside it. Finn no longer depended on any other hand for his steel. The last gap was closing. Only one question remained, and it pressed harder than before: whether the boy could stand alone when Borin was gone.