Orin Ironfoot had no forge, no coin, and one goal that would not let him rest. Someone had stolen his family's ancestral hammer the night the dwarf king cast him from the underground kingdom. To hunt the thief, he needed supplies. To buy supplies, he needed coin. He had neither. He sat on a fallen log at the forest's edge and counted what remained: three copper bits, a waterskin, and the smithing hammer on his belt. The hammer was not the stolen one. It was his working tool, and he gripped it now like a weapon. A blacksmith with no forge was just a man with sore hands. He knew this. He also knew he could not sit and starve. So he searched. He walked the tree line until his boots ached. Near a rocky slope he found it: a rugged ore node broken from the ground, its dark stone split by bright copper seams. Jagged chunks glinted in the crust. Orin knelt and pressed his thumb against a vein. Real copper. Enough to melt, shape, and sell. But he had no forge to melt it, and no fire hot enough here. He needed a bellows, a hearth, a proper flame. He had none. Orin thought like the craftsman he was. He gathered dry wood and stacked stones into a ring. He dug a pit and lined it with clay from the slope. He worked until dark, then struck sparks into the tinder. The fire caught. He fed it, packed the coals close, and set the copper chunks in a hollow he had shaped. Sweat ran into his beard. His arms shook. He pumped air through a hollow branch until his lungs burned. The copper glowed. Then it softened. Then it ran. He poured the molten metal into a groove pressed in wet clay. When it cooled, he hammered. Blow after blow rang across the empty slope. By first light he held three rough copper ingots and a crude knife. Not fine work. But it was metal shaped by his own hands, and metal sold. He carried his goods to a trailside camp where travelers traded. A merchant weighed the ingots and turned the knife in her fingers. She named a price. Orin held her stare and named a higher one. She paid. He walked away with a full purse, dried meat, a flint striker, and a whetstone. He had his supplies. He could fund the hunt now. Then a hand closed on his shoulder from behind. He spun, hammer up. A wild elf stood behind him, fangs bared, clawed feet planted in the dirt. Red and black tattoos covered her body. A bow hung ready across her back. She did not flinch at his raised hammer. "That copper you burned," she said, "belonged to my people. You'll pay the debt, dwarf. Or you'll pay in blood." Orin had his supplies at last. He had also just made an enemy who could hunt him better than he hunted anyone.

The wild elf's name was Shredra Clawrend, and Orin learned it the hard way. She did not wait for his coin. Her body bent and stretched. Fur swallowed her tattoos. In a breath, a black panther crouched where the archer had stood. Its claws raked the dirt near his boots. Orin swung his forge hammer. The panther slipped aside. Claws tore his sleeve and opened three red lines on his arm. He backed toward his camp, a small tent beside a dying fire. His hammer shaped iron well. It did not stop a cat that moved like water. He needed a real weapon, or she would gut him here. He hit the dirt as she leapt. His pack lay by the bedroll. He clawed the flap open with one hand. His fingers found the goods he had just bought from the merchant. Among them lay a short sword he had bartered for, its blade sleek iron, its copper guard shaped like petals. He had meant to sell it. Now he tore it free. The panther landed on his chest. Its weight crushed the air from him. Fangs snapped at his throat. Orin jammed his forearm under its jaw and shoved. He drove the sword up into its shoulder. The blade bit deep. The panther screamed and sprang off him. Blood matted the black fur. The cat limped back, then buckled. Its shape broke apart. Fur pulled inward. Shredra knelt in the dirt again, one hand clamped over a wound below her collarbone. Her fangs showed, but her breath came in gasps. Orin rose. He held the short sword level, its copper pommel warm in his fist. The forge hammer hung useless on his belt. He knew now which one had saved him. "Finish it, then," Shredra spat. Blood ran between her fingers. He did not. He wiped the blade on his apron and stepped back. "I pay debts," he said. "But not to a corpse, and not to a thing that jumps me from behind." He dug into his purse and threw four copper bits into the dirt at her feet. "For the ore. That squares us." She stared at the coins, then at him. Slow, she gathered them. "You wound a wild elf and let her live." She bared her fangs, but the threat had thinned. "My people will hear both halves of that." "Let them," Orin said. Shredra pressed a leaf to her wound and slipped into the trees. She left no sound behind her. Orin sat on his bedroll and bound his arm. The short sword lay across his knees. His forge hammer had failed him tonight. Iron and edge had not. He had come to this land to hunt a thief and win back his family's stolen hammer. Now he knew the plain truth. A blacksmith who could not fight would never live long enough to reach the man who took it.