Chương 99: 90. Techne

"All dead worlds leave metal enough in the open to arm every survivor twice over. It only needs hands that know what to do with it." — Codex of the Long Watch, Operational Directive Arthur had moved the prop shaft twice on the trolley and still did not trust where it lay. The thing was a hand span thick and longer than he was tall, a single forging of steel that had run the length of the lorry's belly.

On the flat trolley it wanted to roll, and the container plate they had laid beside it overhung the frame on both sides. The whole load steered like a drunk sailor. He had spent the morning under the lorry with a hacksaw and Steve's heat on the last of the mounting bolts, and the cab panels were already lashed in a stack. The springs from yesterday were already at the yard. This was the rest of it, the heavy and the awkward, and once it reached Petros's it would all go to the forge together.

Steve was crouched over a decomposing wolf corpse, intently studying its teeth.

"These would make good weapons," he said to no one in particular.

"Like the Aztec Macuahuitl, with its obsidian shards, or the Hawaiian Leiomano, with real tiger shark teeth."

"Shhhhh." Donna stood very still at the edge of the pines with the axe loose in her hand, watching uphill.

"Contact?" Arthur asked.

"Yes and no. We have company. The same little scavengers as yesterday." She did not look away from the hill.

"The difference is, they have been sitting about fifty metres off in the scrub, just looking at us. I see no movement." Steve straightened and got his ledger out.

"That is interesting. Local fauna doing threat assessment and picking its battles."

"We don't engage unless we have to," Donna said. Arthur looked at the slope above the scrub, where the pale stone of the anomaly stood clear of the trees.

"Archie. The Ether density around the anomaly. Has it settled?" Arthur said, joining Donna at the tree line. The density gradient has continued to climb since yesterday, Archie said. The anomaly is maturing. What it produces will mature with it.

"Meaning the next things down the slope will not be foxes," Steve said, walking up. That is a reasonable inference.

"Then we better not be here when they come down," Donna said, looking back at the trolley where Petros and Sarah were strapping in the last of the load.

"Load is on. Let's get back." * They split at Petros's yard, with Sarah going to her house to get something Eleni wanted to give Stavros while the rest of them started hauling all the metal from the yard towards the forge. The forge was its usual loud self. The smell of the sea gave way to the smell of hot iron quenched in water. Stavros saw the party come in with iron, motioned with his hand that he would be with them, then went back to hammering.

The party had carried in their last load when Sarah joined them, carrying something wrapped in cloth. They waited at the entrance to the forge as life on the dock flowed around them.

"Kýrie Stavro," Sarah said as the smith made his way towards them.

"My mother sent you this." She handed across the loaf Eleni had sent with her, wrapped in a cloth. Stavros took the bread with both hands and a small bow of the head, and set it carefully on a clean shelf, and only then came back to the metal. He went to the prop shaft first and put one thick hand flat on it and stood there. He tested the weight by lifting an end of it, and he smiled with satisfaction. He then crouched by the spring packs Petros had wheeled up.

He bent one of the leaves and watched it spring back into shape. The deep blue-violet moved in the grain.

"Po po po," he said softly.

"You like it?" Steve asked. Stavros came up off his heels slowly.

"Like it? In forty years I have not seen iron like this. Not from the mills. Not from the ships." He turned a leaf to the light, where the colour sat not on the surface but all the way through.

"This is not iron for gates. This is iron for Poseidon. For the trident itself."

"You better give me a good discount next time I come," Petros said with a wide smile.

"As a thank you." Stavros gave a smile and a nod to Petros before turning back to the metal.

"Where," he said, "do four foreigners find iron for a god?"

"Oh, out there," Steve said non-committally, motioning somewhere off in the distance with his hands. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Stavros held his eyes for a moment and then gave the shrug Arthur was learning to read as Greek for your business, then.

"Endaxi," he said.

"Kilo for kilo, like the Englishman says. I make from half. I keep half." The scale was an old steelyard, a beam and a sliding weight that had never depended on the grid. The four spring packs came in heavier than Arthur's guess, near seventy kilos each; the prop shaft alone ran past fifty. With the plate and the cab panels the whole haul came to over four hundred kilos, and Stavros kept a running tally.

"Two hundred for me," he said, once they were back in the forge.

"Two hundred I make into what you want."

"That seems fair," Arthur said, and he meant it. The man was taking half the best steel in Attica as his fee, but the half he handed back would be worth more to the party than the whole of it was raw. Donna laid out the three jobs.

"An axe head, larger than my current axe and double-edged. Use your best judgement for the haft, but nothing low quality. A hammer head with more weight than this," she said, motioning at Arthur's hammer.

"A lot more," Arthur added.

"And plates to cover a torso and back, roughly the shape of a man." She nodded at Arthur.

"Him."

"Actually, I talked to Maria. She can sew a rough coat from canvas, with pockets all over it," Sarah said.

"I think it will bind better that way."

"Oh, that is clever," Steve exclaimed.

"Drop plates in the pockets and then bind."

"Yes, so make the plates about this big," Sarah said, showing her palm to Stavros.

"Yes, all that is possible," Stavros agreed.

"But that is only…" He thought for a long moment, even turning Arthur around.

"About 30 kilos of raw iron, 20 kilos finished." Steve was nodding his head. He had expected that. Historically, a full plate for a knight was about 20 to 25 kilos.

"Can you hold on to the rest of our share? We will let you know what we want done with it in a day or so," Arthur asked Stavros.

"Ne, ne. Metal safe in my forge," Stavros agreed.

"While we are speaking of time," Steve said, "I wonder if we might shorten it." He took a short offcut of a flat bar lying around and set it on the edge of the anvil. He then put both palms above it. The bar took on a shimmer beneath his palms, a heat with no flame behind it, his hands held a careful few inches off the steel. The rust lifted, and after a minute the metal was glowing a dull red at the centre of its length, throwing warmth up at his face.

He picked it off the anvil with the tongs, set the glowing end against the horn and leaned, and the steel bent like warm wax. He looked rather pleased with himself.

"I can soften it. Arthur can hit it," Steve said.

"Between us we could rough out the shapes and leave you only the finishing. It might save you a day." Stavros put down the leaf bar he was inspecting and came over. He took the tongs from Steve and turned the bar in the light, reading the colour along its length. He then laid it back down and gave it one tap with the runed hammer, frowning at the sound it made.

"You heated the skin," he said.

"Not the heart." He held it to the light.

"Bright here." He nodded at the surface, where the bar was glowing. Then he motioned at the dull grey of the cut end.

"Dark here. You make it move where it is bright, you leave the inside cold and fighting." He searched for the English word.

"Stressed. Tired. It will crack at the quench, or it will crack the first time it hits something hard."

"He is right," Arthur agreed.

"The heat will need time to get to the middle. And the bar needs to heat evenly all over, not just sections of it, otherwise it will lock the stress in the grain." Stavros pointed the hammer at Arthur, pleased to be understood.

"Ne. And this." He pointed along the edge Steve had pulled down.

"Soft. All the way through. An edge like this folds the first time it hits something hard." He looked at Donna.

"Your axe. It goes blunt, the edge bends over, ne? Same thing. Too soft."

"That is the exact problem," Donna said.

"The trick is two things in one blade." He held up the bar.

"Hard at the edge, so it stays sharp. But not so hard it snaps. Softer behind it, so it takes a blow and lives. The same iron, both at once, each where you want it." He set it down.

"That is forty years." He waved at the glowing stone in the firepot, the fire that ate no coal.

"Making it hot is the easy half. A child can make heat now." Steve, who had been deflating in stages, finally set the offcut down. What you did is common, Archie said. Any person above the threshold can soften transmuted metal. What the smith did is rare. On the worlds that reached this stage before yours, the populations that armed themselves fastest were seldom the ones that lasted. Heat was never the scarce thing. Skill was.

Stavros went back to the metal, more interested in it now than in any of them, and sorted the stock with his hands as he talked, the springs to one side, the shaft to the other.

"Two days. Maybe three. The axe is quick. The plate for the armour is slow, much hammer, and I must not burn the good out of it." He looked up.

"You come in three days."

"Three days, then," Arthur said. They said their goodbyes and left Stavros crouched over the spring packs with a wide smile and bright eyes. Donna waited until the forge was well out of earshot before speaking.

"We just taught a stranger three things," she said.

"That metal like that exists. That we can get it. And that we can soften it with our hands, without a fire."

"He already had the firepot and the hammer," Steve said.

"He knew about cores. On the transmuted metal part, people can already see it happening. We just got some that are further along."

"He seems the decent sort," Arthur said, looking at Petros.

"Ne, good man. He has known our family long," Petros agreed.

"Most are good people till they have something to lose," Donna said.

"I know we did not have much choice, but I do not like bleeding information."

"We should think about that," Sarah said quietly.

"About what?" Donna asked.

"What people know. We have been in the city for a few days, and even though there haven't been any inquiries so far, I'm sure people are talking," Sarah said.

"Some would have seen us bringing in the metal. Some might ask Stavros where he got the metal. Eventually someone in the council will hear." Donna mulled it over.

"At least we got the initial breathing room that we planned on. We should try and maintain the cover as long as possible, but you are right, we do need to have a contingency."

"A contingency that hopefully doesn't involve antagonising the council," Sarah said.

"My family would still have to stay here." The lorry was stripped. The cores were split. The steel was at the forge. For the first time since they had stepped off the platform under the Acropolis, there was a run of empty days in front of them, and nothing in those days that needed killing or carrying or solving. Arthur found he did not know what to do with that.

"We have three days in front of us and nothing especially pressing to do. Plans?" he asked.

"Train and find out more about the politics in the city," Donna said.

"We really should get started getting more information about the puzzle," Steve said.

"And, as it so happens, I have an old correspondent two streets over who is said to remember everything."