General Cracked Hammer's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Cracked Hammer left the carved cliff with little to show for the climb. The book-keepers had given him two scraps worth carrying. The Cursed Anvil rang with a nether resonance, faint but distinct. And no common smith would hear it; he would need a holy man, or an Artificer skilled enough to tune iron to the underworld. He tucked the notes into his coat and rode hard for camp. His base sat at the lip of the search grounds, a wide canvas tent staked deep against the wind. Inside, lanterns swung over a working table buried in paper. He spread his field map across the boards and weighed its corners with hammers. Decades of marks crowded the parchment: crossed-out shafts, ringed ravines, a red circle on the high-probability ground above. Beside it lay his bound stack of leads, coordinates, and warnings tied with cord. He added a fresh card in ink: nether-tone, priest or Artificer. He pocketed the ore sample, the green and pink veins still warm against his ribs. He whistled for his mount and swung up. The striped buffalo bore him out of the dig and across the flats toward the only pub that ever told him true things. The Witch's Pyre stood squat under its iron spikes, lamps burning red in the dusk. He pushed through the door and let it slam. He set a coin on the bar and asked the keeper for names. Holy men worth a pouch of sand. Artificers who would not lie. The keeper poured, thought, and pointed him down the room. Cracked Hammer worked the tables. He showed the ore to an old dust-runner who flinched from it. He showed it to a fence who shook her head. He spoke to a freight broker who owed him a favor from a winter long past. He asked the same question at every chair. Who hears the bottom of the world. By the third hour he had two answers, and only two. The first was a dark priest who worked under the title Sulfur Parson, known in some quarters as Derelict Salvo Viss. He took grim work no one else would touch. The second was the Artificer's Guild, far to the southeast, a long ride and a heavier purse. No one offered a third. The broker said it plain: those were the only hands that would reach for a thing like his. Cracked Hammer paid his tab and stepped out under the spikes. Two roads now, and he could walk only one at a time. The priest was closer and cheaper and would not ask clean questions. The Guild was distant, costly, and would demand to know what he meant to forge. He would not name the weapon. He mounted, turned the buffalo's head toward the dark road south, and rode for the Sulfur Parson.