Chương 118: 108. Sídero

The smith would not lay his hammer to the iron until he had said a prayer over it, though I had told him plainly that the iron came from a mine. He agreed with me, and prayed anyway, and the blade came out true. I no longer correct them. The prayer costs nothing, and the iron is the better for the care that goes into it. — Codex of the Long Watch, Field Observation, 14th Century, Anatolia The forge under the old rail bridge was its usual loud self when they arrived the next morning.

The clean smell of the sea quickly gave way to the reek of hot iron and the steam rising from the quench tub. Stavros raised his heavy hammer in a brief greeting when he saw them enter. He finished his final pass on the glowing steel he was working, plunged the metal into the water, and only then stepped around the anvil to meet them, wiping his hands on a soot-stained rag.

"Doctor," he said, his eyes going straight to her sling.

"Po po po. The road bit you."

"Not just the road," Sarah said.

"Speaking of which." Donna swung the heavy weapon off her shoulder and laid it across the face of the anvil with a sharp, metallic clatter. Stavros went completely still the moment his eyes locked onto the black metal.

"Theé mou," he breathed softly. He approached the anvil slowly, as if the weapon might snap at him. He extended one thick, calloused hand, pressing his palm against the barnacled shaft and running it down the length of the encrusted black iron, tracing the metal up to the three long prongs.

"Poseidon," he whispered.

"You find the trident of Poseidon."

"Not Poseidon," Steve corrected.

"We found it at the ruined sanctuary at Sounion. The thing that carried it was half a man and half the sea. You would have called it Triton. The Babylonians called him Oannes and said it came up out of the water to teach them their letters. It's the exact same archetype found across nine distinct ancient coastlines. The three-pronged spear shows up from Poseidon to Shiva all over the world." He nodded at the iron resting on the anvil.

"That right there is the real thing. The genuine article."

"I know who carries the trident, Englishman." Stavros did not lift his eyes from the iron.

"I am Greek. We had the gods long before your people had the alphabet to write them down." He said it without any real heat, his hand still moving gently over the rough, barnacled surface. Then he shook his head and looked up at them.

"You remember what I told you? The first iron you brought to my shop? I said to you then, this is not iron for garden gates. This is iron for Poseidon. For the trident itself." He spread his scarred hands over the anvil.

"And now. You bring me the trident." A cold, familiar frequency vibrated in their minds. The entity was not a deity, Archie's voice commented in their heads. It was a guardian left at a door a very long time ago. You possess its weapon simply because you terminated its defensive protocol. Your species consistently constructs mythologies around anything standing before a door you lack the capacity to open.

"We thought you would appreciate the irony," Donna said to the smith.

"The irony." Stavros shook his head. He crouched down, bringing his eyes level with the prongs to read the black metal along its length. He tapped the iron once with a thick knuckle, listening closely to the dull ring it gave back.

"Good iron," Stavros said, standing back up as his knees cracked loudly.

"Fifteen kilos, maybe more. God's iron. Dead now. Mine to forge." He looked around at them, his eyes bright through the soot on his face.

"Tell me what you want from it. And tell me why your shield needs my pity." Arthur shrugged the broken Ironhold shield off his pack and set it on the timber bench. The bottom half was entirely gone, sheared down to a jagged, grey lip of ruined metal.

"It held through many fights," Arthur said, looking down at the wreckage wistfully. Stavros looked at the broken shield for a long moment, like a doctor studying an X-ray.

"Then we make you another, and this time make it right." He went to the dark back of the forge and returned with a heavy leaf of the infused spring-stock he had from their first haul.

"I have your iron. Good iron. You give me the shape, I beat it true."

"The same shape as the last one, or near enough," Arthur said.

"A touch bigger. Turn the rim inward so a thrust slides off instead of catching the edge." He drew the curvature in the air with a flat hand. Stavros watched the movement closely, nodding along with the lines.

"Large aspis hoplon," Stavros said, a grin touching his beard.

"I build you a Greek legend to take into battle." He tapped the ruined Ironhold.

"This time, you use Argive grip. One to brace, one to move." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Arthur glanced over at Steve, questioning the term.

"He means a two-point grip," Steve explained.

"Your forearm slips through a heavy strap in the centre to take the weight, and your hand holds a handle near the rim to manoeuvre it." Arthur nodded, visualising the leverage.

"Big shield, much weight," Stavros said, making a heavy shoving motion with his forearm held tight against his chest.

"Othismos. Push enemy." He nodded to himself, satisfied with the plan.

"This I can do. Two days. The body is slow, much hammer. I will not burn the god out of it by rushing."

"Milo," Stavros shouted, and a young man in his early twenties came out from the storage area. Stavros gave some rapid-fire instructions, and the young man ducked back in.

"My son, Milo," Stavros explained.

"Teaching him smithing. Much work after your iron," he said with a smile, then he looked at the trident on the anvil.

"And from this?"

"Two more things and an offcut." Donna stepped up.

"Same deal?" Stavros interrupted.

"I keep half, I make you half?"

"Yes, same deal," Arthur agreed, and Stavros gave a beaming smile.

"I want a blunt weapon. A mace. Preferably flanged, so it bites into plate and bone instead of skating off, one-handed, and weighted forward. Make it a little heavier than a normal mace." She held a hand out at a length, judging it.

"About this long. And put a pry on the butt of it," she said, showing her prybar.

"I am tired of carrying a prybar that looks like a prybar."

"A mace." Stavros looked pleased.

"Like the Pernach from Macedonia. Honest work."

"And mine," Steve said, while Stavros was still looking at the trident, no doubt weighing the metal in his mind.

"A focus rod. Like this one," he said, showing Stavros his current rod.

"With a tapered tip."

"About four kilos. The mace and the rod. The rod is easy," Stavros said.

"And the doctor." Stavros turned to Sarah.

"What does the doctor want from the god's iron."

"Almost nothing," Sarah said, smiling.

"Strips. Thin and flat and as fine as you can draw them without ruining the metal. About two kilos of the trident, no more." She lifted her good hand and turned it in the firelight, the fingers spread.

"The thing I want is delicate, and I will not ask you to do a goldsmith's job. The strips will go to a jeweller for a hand bracelet."

"A jeweller." Stavros considered it without offence.

"Ne. For jewellery you want hands smaller than mine. But two kilos is heavy for your hand, ne?"

"Mama knows one," Sarah said.

"There is always a someone, with my mother. And one kilo for my bracelet, one kilo for the jeweller. Same deal as yours."

"That is maybe five, maybe six kilos," Stavros said, nodding.

"The trident is at least fifteen. I keep six. What about the rest?"

"I could use a backup edged weapon," Arthur said, "if we have the metal." Stavros looked at Arthur's frame.

"Xiphos?" he asked.

"No. I've been thinking about it for some time," Arthur said.

"I'm used to the swinging motion of a hammer, a thrusting weapon will clash with my muscle memory."

"Steve, could you show him what we discussed?" Arthur asked, looking at Steve. Steve opened his ledger, where he had drawn a sword.

"Langes Messer," he said, looking at Stavros.

"I know Messer." Stavros nodded.

"Single-edged, swinging weapon. Knife sword. I can do this."

"Now, for the rest of our iron," Steve said, turning his back to the heavy anvil to look at the other three.

"Seeing what Maria is putting together in that yard got me thinking. We should just have Stavros beat the rest of the iron into flat plates, like the ones we used for Arthur's chest piece."

"And we ask Maria to stitch the new leather gear with open pockets," Sarah added, nodding.

"Exactly. That way we can just slot in however many we need," Steve said.

"Arthur can pack his gear heavy, while the rest of us keep our setups light and mobile." Once he saw the team nodding along, Steve turned back to the smith.

"Can you turn the rest of our share into uniform plates, like last time?"

"I can," Stavros said, nodding his head.

"Good practice for Milos, too." Arthur stepped forward, his eyes on the ironhold wreckage on the bench and laid out the production line.

"Priority is my shield. Then the backup weapons, then the equipment for Steve and Sarah. The extra plates come last."

"Kilo for kilo, like the first time," Stavros confirmed.

"I make from the trident what you have asked, and I keep my share of the iron for the labour. The shield I make from your own stock that I am holding. Rest I turn into plates." He held out both hands and shrugged.

"A smith who works for love alone has a cold forge, and a cold forge helps nobody, so I keep my iron and we are all of us square."

"Square," Arthur said, and put out his hand, and Stavros shook it with a wide smile.

"Five days," the smith said.

"Maybe six, if the god in the metal fights me, for the equipment. Shield in two days. Plates in another four days. Maybe five." The patrol report reached the villa on the third evening, carried up the hill by a young man. Papadakis listened to it while standing at the long window, her back turned to the messenger and her eyes fixed on the sprawling, lamplit city below. Four foreigners had walked all the way to Cape Sounion and back.

The ancient temple was in significantly worse shape than before, and there had undeniably been a brutal fight. The report detailed the bodies left behind at a clearing. A camp previously suspected of snatching villagers from the surrounding valleys. And the smith under the old rail bridge was now forging new iron for them.

"Sounion," she said when he finished, her voice thoughtful.

"A long way to walk for a ruin on a cliff."

"Checking on family perhaps," the young man offered.

"Perhaps." She turned from the view and gave him a warm smile.

"Thank you, Andoni. It is nothing. Go, have your supper." Once the door clicked shut, she crossed the quiet room to the heavy writing desk and pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer. It was a letter from Stefanos, the mayor of Nafplio, replying to an earlier inquiry sent by Vlachos. The text was plain: Stefanos had no record or memory of four foreigners matching that description setting out from his jurisdiction.

He apologised, noting that things had been far too chaotic since the integration to keep track of every traveller, but he insisted he hadn't crossed paths with a single outsider since the sky changed colour. Papadakis stared at the ink for a long moment, then reached and snuffed out the desk lamp.

"Too many anomalies," she murmured to the dark.