Chương 9: Banaby's Discovery

Barnaby had not slept a single wink. The blacksmith was sitting on his iron anvil using a thick wool blanket to wrap around his shoulders. The small oil lamp on his workbench was casting a flickering light across the interior of the freezing shop. But Barnaby wasn't looking at the shadows. He was staring at the two burlap sacks sitting in the center of his floor. Outside, the morning sky was just beginning to turn a pale, signaling the end of the blizzard. The howling wind had finally died down.

Barnaby stood up, and walked over to the open sack. He reached inside and pulled out a fist-sized lump of coal. He walked to the window, pushing open the wooden shutter just a crack to let the morning light fall onto the rock. It was beautiful. It didn't have the dusty, crumbly texture of surface coal, nor did it leave greasy soot all over his calloused fingers. Barnaby brought the lump to his face and sniffed it. There was no sharp, bitter stench of sulfur.

He raised it to his mouth and gently bit down on the edge with his back teeth. A cheap piece of coal would have crumbled into gritty dust instantly.

"Ten years," Barnaby whispered to the empty room. He hadn't seen coal like this since the mines collapsed, back when the deep veins of the Frost-Grip mines were still open, before the lower shafts collapsed and filled with toxic choke-damp. Where had Lord Jack gotten it? The boy was sickly, frail, and barely able to walk with a cane. He certainly hadn't dug it himself. Had he hired smugglers? Found a forgotten, sealed vault in the castle cellars?

Barnaby shook his head, tossing the lump of coal into his empty hearth. It didn't matter. The young lord had kept his word. He had delivered the coal, and now it was Barnaby's turn to deliver the iron. The blacksmith moved with a frantic energy. He gathered a small pile of dry wood shavings and a handful of dry straw he kept in a sealed barrel. He arranged the kindling in the center of the hearth, striking his flint and steel together with heavy strikes. A spark caught the straw.

A small, orange flame flickered to life. Barnaby carefully arranged a dozen lumps of the coal over the growing fire. He grabbed the wooden handles of his leather bellows and began to pump. The whoosh of air fed the flames. For a moment, nothing happened. The coal was so dense it required immense heat just to catch. But as Barnaby kept pumping, his arms flexing, the edges of the black rocks began to glow. Suddenly, the coal caught. The heat radiating from the hearth was instantaneous and overwhelming.

It hit Barnaby in the chest like a heat wave, chasing away the freezing chill that had settled in his bones for the weeks. Barnaby let out a booming, joyful laugh. He tossed his blanket aside, grabbed a pair of iron tongs, and thrust a rusted carriage band directly into the center of the forge. High above, from the tall stone chimney of the blacksmith shop, a triumphant plume of dark smoke began to pour into the pale winter sky. Up in the castle courtyard, Merchant Gary was in a terrible mood.

His men were struggling to tighten the leather saddles on the pack mules. The beasts were miserable, stomping their freezing hooves on the packed ice and braying loudly. Gary stood near the gates, wrapped tightly in his expensive beaver pelts, his boots sinking into the fresh snow. He had the ancestral silver safely packed away in his personal lockbox, and his men had unloaded the grain into the castle cellars the day before. By all accounts, it was a highly profitable trip. But Gary wasn't satisfied.

He looked toward the oak doors of the castle. He had expected the young Lord Jack to come crawling out this morning, begging on his knees. Gary knew perfectly well that raw grain was useless if you couldn't boil the water to cook it. He knew the castle had no firewood left. He had fully anticipated that Jack would surrender the title deed to the southern timber woods in exchange for a few bundles of the merchant's own travel-wood, or perhaps beg for a ride back to the southern cities.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Instead, the oak doors opened, and Jack walked out. The young lord was leaning on his cane, wearing a wool cloak. Karen walked closely beside him, her face anxious but her posture straight.

"Leaving so soon, Gary?" Jack asked, his voice calm, carrying easily across the crisp, cold air of the courtyard. Gary forced a greasy smile, stepping forward.

"Indeed, Lord Jack. The blizzard has broken, and my men are eager to return to the warm taverns of the south. I must say, it brings me great sorrow to leave you here. You have food, yes, but raw wheat will break your teeth without a fire to boil it." Jack stopped a few feet away, resting both hands on his cane. He looked at the merchant with an expression of absolute, deadpan boredom.

"We will manage," Jack said. Gary let out a dramatic sigh, shaking his head.

"Pride is a terrible thing to freeze for, My Lord. I am willing to offer you two of my mules and a place in my caravan. It will cost you the deed to the timber woods, of course, but your life is surely worth more than a patch of trees."

"I am not leaving my fief," Jack said.

"Then you will die here," Gary said, his artificial warmth finally dropping, replaced by a cold, arrogant sneer.

"I will return in the spring when the thaw comes. I imagine I won't have to negotiate for the deed then. The imperial collectors will sell it to me for pennies once they find your frozen body." Karen gasped, stepping forward with her fists clenched, fully prepared to yell at the wealthy merchant. Jack simply raised a hand, stopping her. He didn't look angry. He just looked past Gary, toward the edge of the castle walls that overlooked the village below.

Down in the courtyard, Giles and several other villagers had gathered to watch the merchant leave. They were shivering, their faces pale. But suddenly, Giles frowned. He raised a hand, pointing down toward the village rooftops.

"Look," Giles said, his deep voice cutting through the sounds of the braying mules. Gary turned around, following the big man's finger. Rising from the center of the snow-choked village was a thick, steady pillar of smoke. It wasn't the thin, smoke of wet pine wood. It was the dark smoke of a roaring, incredibly hot fire.

"That's... that's Barnaby's forge," Old Miller whispered, his eyes widening in disbelief.

"The chimney is drawing! He has a fire!" The villagers stared in stunned silence. A working forge meant heat. It meant iron tools could be repaired. It meant they could survive. Gary's jaw dropped. The smug, arrogant sneer vanished from his face, replaced by utter confusion.

"Impossible. There is no coal in this valley. I scouted the entire route! Where did he get fuel?" Jack took a slow step forward, his pale eyes locking onto the merchant.

"I told you, Gary," Jack said, his voice dropping to a low, quiet tone that sent a shiver down the merchant's spine that had nothing to do with the winter weather.

"Do not come back to my valley with your inflated prices. We do not need you." Gary looked at the smoke, then back at the young, sickly lord. For the first time, Gary realized that the boy's pale face wasn't just gaunt from illness.

"Mount up!" Gary barked at his guards, suddenly eager to put distance between himself and this cursed castle.

"We are leaving, now!" The merchant scrambled onto his horse, not even bothering to offer a parting bow. The caravan guards whipped the mules, driving them out of the heavy wooden gates and down the icy mountain path as fast as they safely could. Jack watched them go until they disappeared behind the first bend of the ravine.

"My Lord," Giles said, stepping forward. The big wood-chopper took off his wool cap, his eyes wide as he looked at Jack.

"The smoke... Barnaby's forge is burning. You... you really did it."

"I told you to give me forty-eight hours, Giles," Jack said simply. He turned to Karen.

"Come, Karen. It is too cold to stand out here. And we have much more work to do." As Jack hobbled back into the castle, the villagers in the courtyard didn't just watch him with pity anymore. They watched him with a new sense of awe. Back in his bedchamber, Jack locked the door and collapsed into his high-backed chair. He was exhausted from the walk, but as he sat there, he noticed something incredible. He wasn't gasping for air. The sharp pain in his chest that usually followed any physical exertion was absent.

He closed his eyes and focused inward. The Grey Core in his chest was humming. The night before, taking direct control of Rusty and Dusty to deliver the coal had pushed him to his absolute limits. It had caused his nose to bleed and his head to pound as if it were splitting open. It had felt like running a marathon with a fever. But just like a human muscle, the core had reacted to the extreme strain.

By forcing the stagnant death mana to flow rapidly out of his body and into his skeletal servants, Jack had effectively exercised his soul. The core felt slightly denser today. The swirling pocket of cold energy in his chest was spinning with a smoother, more stable rhythm. The 'mana-burn' that had been killing his lungs was fading because the mana finally had a designated outlet.

"So, the more I use them, the stronger I get," Jack whispered, opening his eyes. A genuine smile touched his lips. It was a perfect, symbiotic loop. The skeletons did the physical labor his frail body couldn't handle, and the act of commanding them healed his magical sickness. He reached out with his mind, easily finding the three grey threads anchored to his chest. The mental connection felt natural, like extending an extra limb.

Deep beneath the castle, in the pitch-black, toxic depths of the choke-damp mine, Rusty, Dusty, and Bones were standing exactly where he had left them the night before.

"Alright, boys," Jack commanded mentally, his thoughts ringing loud and clear down the spiritual links.

"Barnaby has his coal. Now we need enough to heat the entire village." Through the connection, Jack felt Bones lift his heavy iron pickaxe. Dusty grabbed his shovel. Thump. Thump. The rhythmic vibration of the pickaxes striking the hard coal vein began to echo in Jack's mind once more.