Thorgar's Arc

Chapter 7 of 13

The ribs held, but the rivets ran short. Harek counted them twice at the bow, then looked up at Thorgar. "Three ribs set. Need one more over the aft seam." He held up the last handful of rivets. "Not enough iron. The smith gave me what his boy could carry. It's spent." The tide would turn by morning. One weak seam would open in the ice like the first. Thorgar walked the shore for a smith he could still bargain with. He found none. So he climbed to the old stone brewing hall on the rise, where a forge burned in the back. Smoke rose from the chimney. Inside, a red-bearded dwarf worked a hammer at a small anvil. Rings and beads swung in his beard. Soot blacked his hands. This was Gunnar, who tended a mountain forge for thirty years before it went cold. Thorgar had heard he mended tools here for ale and coin. "I need iron ribs forged before the tide," Thorgar said. "A boat, a cracked hull. I've no ore left to melt." Gunnar set down the hammer. "No ore, no ribs. Iron doesn't come from want." Thorgar poured the hoard-coins across the anvil. Worn gold, strange runes, the gleam of a buried lord's hoard. "There's a mountain of this two days north. Forge my ribs now, take your cut from the haul." Gunnar turned a coin under the firelight. He did not reach for it. "Promises don't melt either. I've been paid in promises before." He pushed the coins back across the iron. "Bring me metal." Kjell came through the door then, teeth and claws swinging in his beard. He had endorsed Thorgar before the sailors, and the crew followed his word. He looked at the cold refusal on Gunnar's face and read it fast. He unslung his heavy rune-carved axe and laid it on the anvil. "Good steel," Kjell said. "Cut it down. Forge the ribs from it." Gunnar lifted the axe and weighed it. He ran a thumb along the edge. "This is worth ten of your coins." "Then it's worth a boat that floats," Kjell said. He did not look at Thorgar. "I'll take a hunter's blade from the haul. Two, if the hoard is what you say." Gunnar set the axe in the fire. "Wait outside. Ribs by the tide." By first light Gunnar carried the last rib down to the beach. Harek drove the rivets hot, and the aft seam vanished under banded iron. The hull would hold the ice now, whole from bow to stern. Thorgar watched Kjell stand empty-handed on the shingle, his oldest weapon melted into the boat. The crew had followed Kjell. Now Kjell had spent his axe on Thorgar's promise. The debt was no longer only to a smith. It rode with the man the crew trusted more than him, and Thorgar had two days to prove that trust was not thrown away.