Fred Ironheart's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

The field was Fred's now, but his hammer was not. He stood in the half-built smithy, its stone walls raised, its great forge cold. He had built the place to his own size at last. He could stand inside without bending. Then Garrick Thornberry crossed the field and stopped in the wide doorway. The old dragon slayer looked up at the giant, unimpressed. The three scars pulled tight as he frowned. "Walls don't prove a smith," Garrick said. "Any fool stacks stone. Forge me something. A blade. If the work is poor, you don't touch that hammer for weeks. Every hour of forge time is mine to give or take. Remember the bond." Fred's chest went tight. A month of idle hands, and now a test. He set his jaw. "You'll have your blade." He lit the great forge. The bellows breathed. The heat filled the room and pushed Garrick back a step. Fred chose a bar of iron and laid it in the coals. He watched it glow from red to yellow. Then he took his hammer from his back and lifted it over the anvil. The first blow rang like a bell. The iron flattened under his weight. He struck again, and again, folding the metal the way his hands remembered. His arms had waited a month for this. Sweat ran down his face. He shaped a blade, thick at the spine, thin at the edge. He quenched it. Steam roared to the roof. Garrick came forward. He took the blade from the rack where Fred hung it and turned it in the firelight. He ran a thumb along the edge. He bent it slightly and watched it spring straight. His frown did not soften, but his eyes did. "It holds," Garrick said. He set the blade down among the others on the rack. "Fine. You keep your forge time." He walked to the doorway, then stopped. "But you don't forge for yourself. Not one nail. I've had orders sitting for years. You'll fill them. Every blade you make, I sell. The coin is mine." Fred lowered his hammer. "And my own work? The heroes need arms. That's why I built this." "Your work is mine," Garrick said. "Ten years, giant. You proved you can smith. Now you'll smith for me until my debts are paid." He pointed at the loaded rack, the weapons Fred had dreamed of making his name on. "Those go to my buyers first." He left. Fred stood alone in the smithy he built. He had passed the test. He had kept his hammer. But every blade he forged now fed Garrick's purse, not the heroes he swore to arm. He sat in the worn chair by the forge and stared at the fire. The smithy was his. The work inside it was not. To build a name in Gildenshire, he would have to earn back his own hands, one order at a time.