Chương 142: Chapter 115: The Forge of Darwen

The cart entered Dunmere behind its own broken rhythm. One wheel dropped into every rut and struck the axle housing, while wounded guards walked beside it carrying split spear shafts, damaged tack, and hides dragged through enough mud to hide whose blood had dried first. I stood beneath the old stone arch and counted injuries because numbers were easier to hold than the distance between the road and the forge. One guard kept weight from the left leg. Another pressed cloth beneath the jaw.

Wade walked beside the cart with blood on one sleeve and continued assigning hands to the damaged crossing, which meant the blood belonged to someone else or ambition had become stronger than pain. Lysa moved through the returning line with a water skin, sending wounded people towards Bellan and tools towards the work yard before anyone could gather enough breath to ask where she wanted them. No covered bodies followed the cart. The relief loosened something beneath my ribs and made the wound hurt more sharply.

They had gone south, fought, repaired the crossing enough to bring the cart back, and begun distributing the cost without me. The forge stood behind me carrying a day of carvings that had saved no one on the road, but the river, mine, and southern herds now darkened its braces beneath soot and fresh blood on the floor. Carl entered after the wounded had been moved. He carried a hammer head cracked through the eye and stopped beneath the arch where the old forge ended and the new one began.

His gaze travelled over the carved river, road, mine, and Orven's empty coat, although he gave each less attention than the furnace lining and vent plates.

"You finished the secondary vent?" he asked.

"Half a finger wider. The demon-hide side has an adjustable plate." Carl placed the hammer head beside the anvil base.

"Then light it before Halden returns and discovers another measurement." Halden arrived before the first full charcoal bed caught. Mud had dried to both knees, and one sleeve carried the pale streaks left by wet bridge timber. He ignored the carvings, the returned raid equipment, and Wade's blood-marked sleeve until he had checked the inner lining, expansion gap, chimney draw, grate, vent plates, and both bellows. The demon hide recovered faster after warming.

Halden narrowed its plate, opened the frost-boar side by another fraction, and pulled both levers through ten cycles while ash rested over the tuyere openings.

"The left stream now falls after the seventh stroke," he said.

"The ordinary hide is warming more slowly."

"Then the operator changes sequence after six."

"Or we shorten the lever by one peg." Halden examined the hinge, moved the pin, and repeated the test. The two air streams met evenly beneath the grate. That was his version of agreement. Refined Iron and charcoal entered in weighed layers. Smelting joined colour, resistance, sound, and the smell of the first slag into one account, while Carl worked the bellows and Halden watched the chimney for any sign the pressure had found an easier route through the walls.

The fuel bed brightened from red towards yellow-white without smoke crossing the room. Our first steel charge was too small for pride and too important to waste. Halden had carried the dimensions of a bridge bracket since before Dunmere possessed material worth shaping. The bar entered the heat as refined Iron, absorbed carbon unevenly at first, then settled under repeated turns and a second controlled soak.

I drew the slag away before it trapped the edge and kept the hottest part of the bed beneath the thicker shoulder. Carl lifted the softened bar to the anvil. He struck once, listened, and altered the angle before the second blow. His hammer did not carry Halden's technical precision or my ability pressure. It carried years of making poor stock become serviceable because Dunmere could rarely afford to reject anything outright.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I joined him with a lighter hammer. Smelting showed where the carbon had entered, where the metal remained softer, and where the cooling seam from Eisenfeld threatened to open if we drove the bend too quickly. Appraisal named the surface changes after each heat, while Ironwood Strike remained quiet because the work required persuasion rather than failure.

The bracket emerged broad, ugly, and dimensionally correct. Halden checked every hole against his template, then placed the piece back into the heat to correct one shoulder by less than a finger.

"It would have fitted," Wade said from the doorway.

"It would have moved under load," Halden replied.

"The bridge does not exist."

"That remains a poor argument for beginning it inaccurately." The corrected bracket entered the quench. Steam filled the room and crossed the carved braces, hiding the Greywash first, then the road, Eisenfeld, the southern herds, and Orven's coat. Soot remained inside the cuts when the images returned, ageing the new work several years in one firing. SMELTING INSIGHT GAINED Your understanding of draught balance, carbon uptake, slag control, repeated heat, and structural steel production has deepened.

Smelting I remains Copper (mid). Pressure towards Copper (late) has increased. The notice did not improve the bracket. Halden still took it to the damaged crossing before the metal fully cooled, wrapped in wet cloth and carrying two spare pins in his coat. Wade followed with the repair crew, leaving Carl and me to reduce the furnace and clean scale from the floor. People began arriving with objects once smoke proved the forge worked. Edda brought a cooking grate split at one corner.

Garron carried two hinges torn from the Cataract door. Jory delivered a bent spearhead and waited while Carl explained why straightening it cold would only move the fracture out of sight. Fen left a hammer with a loose eye and returned to the roof line before anyone could tell him to rest the injured arm. Each object entered Merris's temporary repair ledger before reaching the bench. Payment remained deferred for town work, though Carl insisted every repair still receive a material and labour mark.

"Free work becomes invisible," he said while heating the hinge.

"Invisible work gets assigned twice." The forge filled without becoming crowded. One person worked the anvil, another bellows, and a third could sort bars or repair small tools without entering the hammer line. The quench trench drained away from the foundation. Smoke stayed inside the chimney even when the western wind shifted, and the carved heat line along the furnace brace darkened before the timber itself grew hot enough to char.

The objects waiting by the wall made the building's scale clearer than the dimensions had. A cooking grate meant Edda could keep two pots over one fire. Repaired hinges meant the Cataract door could close without three people lifting it. Fen's hammer would return to the roof line, while Jory's spearhead would re-enter a rack that had been empty that morning.

None matched the value of the Cinderline or the Bronze bars under lock, but the town required these smaller pieces repeatedly enough that sending them north had become another kind of slow, expensive, recurring civic leak. Merris arrived after sunset with Lysa beside him. He carried no ledger, which made him look more suspicious than when he openly intended to price something.

He paused beneath the old arch and examined the demon-hide bellows, tool line, and breadth of the floor before letting his gaze travel across the carvings.

"You have converted an urgent workshop into something future generations will resent maintaining," he said.

"An ambitious form of economy."

"It works."

"So did the former forge, intermittently and at personal risk. Dunmere considered that adequate for years." Lysa followed the carved river into the southern road, then across the mine brace towards Orven's tree. She stopped beneath the empty coat without touching it. The furnace settled behind us with small clicks as the inner lining cooled. Merris rested one hand against the blackened stone of the original doorway and rubbed soot between his fingers.

"This parcel belonged to Elias Darwen before the road possessed a recognised name. Darwen repaired ferry fittings, tools, and cooking Iron through three failed harvests. The settlement records credit cleaner men who preserved Dunmere by writing down that they had done so."

"What happened to him?" I asked.

"Debt. It arrives reliably for practical people who repair first and invoice later." Lysa's eyes filled with pale system light. The glow reflected across the demon hide, traced the buried red channels without becoming flame, and spread through the carved Ironwood braces. Merris removed his hand from the arch and stopped breathing through his nose.

BUILDING RECOGNISED The Forge of Darwen Rank: Copper Quality: Relic Primary functions: aligned furnace work, structural metal production, communal repair, and responsive Wood Charmcraft integration. Ownership: unresolved. Lysa read the notice twice. Her gaze moved from the old arch to the first bridge bracket missing from the bench, then towards the carved town waiting inside its empty ground.

"The Forge of Darwen," she said.