Chương 301: Chapter 96: One Copper A Day

The Deep Ironbacks occupied three stone tables after Mörk and I separated the limbs from the bodies. Cold water ran through narrow channels around the processing floor, carrying blood and mine grit towards iron grates beneath the wall. Mineral plates stood against the far side like shields made for people broader than Halden, while the hides beneath required both of us to lift without folding the wet weight across itself.

Seighard closed the flooded gallery for repair and gave the carcasses to the incident ledger rather than the ordinary bounty line. Eisenfeld retained the chain clasps, marked organs, and anything that might explain how the animals had been directed; the remaining material could be sold after Gertrud recorded its grade and Mörk recorded who had preserved it. Mörk worked through the larger carcass with more care than his hands suggested.

He rubbed salt into the black hide, packed the mineral plates inside straw-lined crates, and wrapped each pressure organ in waxed cloth before the reflex inside it stopped contracting. The cord around a crate of teeth tightened until the timber complained, then held without crossing or loosening.

"Four hundred and twenty-five Iron bars," he said while checking the knot.

"Thirty-seven Copper. Twelve Bronze, if Gertrud's projection survives the furnace."

"The furnace has not seen the ore yet."

"Neither had you when you paid me one Copper a day to carry it." The rate had sounded reasonable when each shift stood alone. Mörk had moved my carts for twenty mining days, waited through licence delays, protected Star-Tin, brought the Kóboldar bodies to the surface, and helped recover two Deep Ironbacks large enough to block the lower rail. The ledger reduced all of it to twenty Copper. I worked my knife beneath the larger animal's shoulder plate.

Dense tendons ran through channels in the shell, with mineral nodules grown around each attachment point. Beastcraft showed the strain held inside them: cold current, pulling force, chain pressure, and generations of bodies selected because they remained standing where ordinary Ironbacks would be carried away. The plate released suddenly and trapped two fingers against the table.

Pain entered the left ring finger first, narrow and hot where the unexplained line had stopped after the fight, then spread through the rest of the hand. Mörk looked at it.

"That finger again."

"It still closes."

"So does a cracked brake until the loaded descent." He fitted another layer of straw beneath the first crate.

"The useful question is whether it opens when required." I freed the hand and changed the knife angle. Behind the tendon anchor sat a dark pressure sac attached to the animal's water-adapted circulation. A careless cut would turn it into leaking tissue. An intact organ might interest an alchemist, breeder, or engineer responsible for submerged work.

"What happened after the knocking?" Mörk asked.

"The Heartwood Bird heated. Pain went down both arms and stopped in the ring fingers."

"Marks?"

"None I could see."

"Halden?"

"Asked more questions than the event produced answers." Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Mörk placed an empty waxed basin beside my hand.

"He trusts questions because they remain where he puts them. Answers have weight." I cut around the organ and found a second smaller sac behind it. Beastcraft widened as I worked: shell, tendon, water lungs, mineral growth, circulation, and the sensory lines that carried vibration through the body before sound reached the buried eyes. The Kóboldar had bred the Deep Ironbacks to feel pressure through water and stone, which explained why measured knocks turned them more reliably than reins.

The understanding also revealed what fatigue had already cost. One section of hide had begun drying unevenly. A pressure sac carried a shallow nick from the first cut, and several smaller glands had been contaminated by the time the bodies spent submerged in mine water. BEASTCRAFT INSIGHT GAINED Your understanding of bred working-beast anatomy, environmental conditioning, mineralised structures, pressure organs, and the relationship between imposed labour and inherited adaptation has deepened.

Careful harvesting can preserve more complex ranked materials when sufficient time, tools, and storage are available. Beastcraft I is under significant pressure towards Copper (late). The notice showed another twelve useful cuts and made the damage already done harder to ignore. I continued until Mörk took the knife from my hand and placed it beside the basin.

"You have begun cutting slower without becoming more precise," he said.

"There are glands under the sternum."

"They remain there while you eat."

"They will spoil."

"So will the hand." By the time Halden entered, the carcasses had become rows of labelled material. Hides hung from timber frames, shell plates filled one wall, teeth occupied separate crates according to size and damage, and pale pressure tendons rested in salt like coiled rope. The remaining trunks still held enough material for another full day. Halden looked from the carcass to the ore tallies pinned beside Mörk's cart ledger.

"You have sixteen tonnes of accumulated material waiting for reduction, and you are trying to recover the last gland from a dead working beast."

"The gland is ranked."

"So is the ore."

"The gland will spoil."

"The ore is waiting to become the bars you travelled north to obtain." Mörk folded his arms.

"The bars have spent four weeks being rock." Halden tapped the projection sheet.

"Four hundred and seventy-four bars if the assay holds. Some of them Bronze."

"Twelve," I said.

"Then you understand why the furnace has priority." I looked at Mörk's separate carting line.

"Twenty Copper is too little."

"It was the agreement," he said.

"You moved every load, waited through sorting, and protected material worth more than the rate allowed." Mörk lifted one shoulder.

"The rate was set while the carts contained rock. You did not know what the stone would become." Halden gathered the ore tallies.

"Neither of you did. Correct the next agreement rather than pretending the earlier one changed after the yield became visible." Mörk accepted authority over the remaining carcass material without ceremony. I retained one narrow shell plate, both Kóboldar chain clasps, several pressure tendons, and one preserved sensory organ that contracted when placed against vibrating stone. Everything else remained under his control for sale, storage, or disposal.

Leaving the processing floor felt like abandoning value while it still carried blood. The ore ledger made the feeling smaller without proving it wrong. The production forge stood against Eisenfeld's eastern retaining wall. Stone channels drew smoke upward and carried cooling water beneath the working floor, keeping both away from the measured furnace lines. There was no central anvil or personal workbench.

Ore entered in graded batches, crossed furnaces, moulds, scales, and assay tables, then left as bars only after every failure had been assigned to a ledger. Gertrud Fels waited beside the feed bins with my twenty-day tally open before her. Halden's smaller stacks occupied the neighbouring line, already divided by grade and moisture. She read the projected weights once, then looked at my hands.

"Eleven tonnes of Iron-bearing material, three point eight tonnes Copper-bearing, and one point two tonnes carrying recoverable tin fractions," she said.

"If your underground decisions survive reduction, the yield should approach two thousand one hundred and twenty-five kilograms of Iron, two hundred and forty kilograms of Copper, and six kilograms of tin."

"Four hundred and seventy-four bars," I said.

"That is what the material is attempting to become." She closed the tally.

"Tomorrow we discover what you prevented."