Jeff's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Jeff knelt at the dead hearth and ran his hand across the iron grate. Cold. No coal, no wood, no spark. He had crossed a flooding tunnel and a river serpent to reach this fire, and the fire had nothing to burn. Behind him, Garrick set the map down on dry stone and stared at the empty grate. "There's no fuel," Garrick said. He did not soften it. "You can't forge without heat. We came all this way to freeze." Jeff didn't answer. He looked around the cavern. The river fed the pool. The walls dripped. He needed something dry, something that burned. He had none. Then he saw it. Beside the hearth stood an old iron pit, low and round, ringed with rusted feet. A torch leaned in a bracket on its rim. Someone had built it here long ago, maybe the last smith who died trying. Split logs still filled the pit, dry as bone in the cavern's heat. "Wood," Jeff said. He touched a log. It crumbled a little but held. "Old, but dry. It'll catch." "Catch on what?" Garrick asked. "We lost our flint in the flood. I checked. We have no spark." Jeff sat back on his heels. Garrick was right. He had matches once, in a tin at his belt. The river had soaked them through. He pulled the tin out and opened it. The matches lay in a gray paste. Useless. He stared at the golden fish on the hearth face. He had come to earn this blade a name. He would not lose it to a wet match. Jeff drew his hammer. He gripped his steel blade, the one he meant to finish, and struck the flat of it against the grate's edge. Sparks jumped. They died on the cold iron. He struck again. Again. His arm burned. Nothing caught. "Stop," Garrick said. He knelt and pulled dry moss from a crack in the wall. He shredded it fine and packed it under the logs in the pit. "Tinder. Now aim your sparks here, not at stone." Jeff struck the blade against the hammer's face, close over the moss. One spark landed. The moss glowed. Garrick bent low and breathed on it, slow and steady, the way an apprentice learns before he learns anything else. A thread of smoke rose. Then a small flame. Jeff fed it the dry logs. The fire climbed. Heat rolled off the pit and washed over both their faces. He lit the torch from the flame and carried it to the dead hearth. He pushed it deep into the grate. The old furnace woke. Coals dust and dry splinters caught inside it. The grate glowed red, then orange. The golden fish shone in the light. "It's lit," Garrick said. He stared at it. "No smith has ever gotten this far." Jeff laid his blade against the anvil stone. The fire was hot enough to work. But the metal was raw, and the real forging had not yet begun.