Borin Ironforge's Arc

Chapter 14 of 20

Three days after the market, the forge could not keep up. Orders stacked on the anvil like firewood. A hinge, two plow blades, a scythe, a set of nails for the mill. Every note asked for Finn by name. The boy worked from dark to dark and slept on the floor beside the coals. Borin watched him fumble the tongs at dawn, hands shaking from no sleep. The town wanted its new smith. It would burn him out before winter. And Borin still had not told the boy he meant to leave. Finn dropped a red-hot bar. It hissed against the stone. He swore and grabbed it wrong, then hissed himself. "Enough," Borin said. He caught the boy's wrist. "You cannot make all this alone." "They asked for me." Finn pulled free. His bright smile was gone, worn thin. "You said I was ready. So I work." "Ready to smith. Not to drown." Borin swept the notes off the anvil into his palm. "A smith who takes every order takes none well. You want your name on good iron, not fast iron." Finn stared at the empty anvil. "Then what do I do?" Borin split the notes into two piles. "You choose. These you can finish this week. These wait, or go to another hand." He set the second pile down. "And you find that hand. You cannot run a forge with two arms." Finn frowned. "Who? There is no other smith in this town." "There will be." Borin thought of a farmer's daughter who lingered at the market, watching the fire too long. Of the mill boy who asked how the flue drew air. "You watched me pick you from a broken hammer. Now you learn to pick the next one. That is the last thing a master does. He makes himself unneeded." The boy went quiet. He looked at his master a long moment. "You are leaving." Borin did not lie. "Soon." "Why?" Finn's voice cracked. "The forge is yours. The town is yours." "The forge is yours now. My name kept customers away with you in it. Yours brings them." Borin gripped the boy's shoulder. "A hammer passes down. It does not stay in two hands." Finn wiped his face with a sooty arm. He did not argue. He turned to the two piles and set to sorting, slow and careful, the way he once forged his first nail. He pushed three notes aside. "These wait," he said. "I will ask the mill boy if he wants to learn." Borin nodded. The flood was cut. The boy would not break. But the words were out now, and they could not go back in the fire. Finn worked the rest of the day without looking at him. By dusk the anvil held one order, not ten. And Borin knew he had days left here, no more.