Vesla stared into the maw of the blazing hot forge, where the long metal billet lay nestled among coals, and she asked, “Is it ready yet?”
From behind her, she heard the old man laugh.
“And I’m to answer that, how,” he said, “if I can’t even see the steel?”
“Sorry, sir,” Vesla mumbled, and, gripping the billet carefully with tongs, she drew it out from the forge, and held it up in the air, for her master to see.
The old man didn’t shift in his seat. His blacksmith’s body bore the ravages of age. His arms were still strong, and corded with muscle, but years of swinging the hammer had left him stoop-shouldered, and bow-legged, and he always winced as he moved, from the pain in his joints. His hands hardly opened or closed, but stayed curled in the shape that would best grip a handle. And the accumulated echoes of metal on metal had left him practically deaf, so that Vesla had to shout to be heard, from even a few feet away. But his eyes were still clear, and his mind was still keen, and Vesla knew that – even from clear across the room – he could tell if her metal was ready from just the color of its glow.
The man gave the billet a quick, appraising glance, before turning to Vesla, and saying: “What do you think?”
Vesla opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated. She studied the way the heat rose from the metal, the patterns it made in the air.
“I… I think so?” she said. “I’m not sure.”
“Get closer, then,” the man said, “and be sure.” He rasped, and spit – it was hot in the forge. “Get your head in there close, and listen.”
Vesla held the billet as close to her ear as she dared – grateful for once that she did not have hair – and she strained to listen to the metal, to hear it speak. Without an eye for color, Vesla had had to learn other tricks to gauge the temperature of metal, had had to develop her other senses, until she had discovered – much to her own surprise – that hot metal had a smell, and a sound. It burnt the air, just so, and it whistled, and the smell of its smoke and the sound of its song both gave some clue as to its readiness for the hammer.
“Not yet,” she sighed, and, sliding the billet back into the forge, Vesla put down the tongs, and resumed working the bellows.
“Good girl,” the old man said, and leaned back in his chair.
“How much longer?” she asked him.
“You’ve a lot of metal to heat,” he told her. “It’ll take some time.”
“How much time?”
The man laughed.
“Do you have somewhere to be?”
“No,” Vesla said, and sighed. “It’s just… I just…”
“I know,” the man said. “I know. I was impatient, too, at your age.” He took a sip of water, then a sip of wine. “But what’s the one thing we never do? What’s the one thing we never, ever do?”
“We never hammer cold steel,” Vesla said, and she worked the bellows ‘til they roared.
* * *
Vesla had never thought to become a smith. She had been tired, and cold, and had broken into the old man’s forge looking for something to eat, and a place to sleep.
It was a dark and moonless night, and she’d thought she’d been quiet about it, but she must have tripped some sort of alarm, because, even as she’d been digging hungrily into the man’s stores – eating raw oats from a barrel, as though she were a horse – she’d heard a voice behind her saying, “Why don’t you come out, and we can discuss this like friends? I’m much too old to chase you, and, anyway, you’re too young for the chop.”
Vesla’s first instinct had been to run, but for some reason she had not. Even to this day, she sometimes wondered why.
Maybe it was something in the old man’s voice, she thought. He had a kindness in his voice, and she heard it when he spoke. But it was a kindness tinted by loneliness, and Vesla had heard that, too.
So she had come out of the shadows, and into the light. She had come out, head bowed in apology, hands clasped behind, and she had waited for the man to blanch at the sight of her, because most men did. But the old smith did not. Instead, he gave her food, and a bed, and, the next morning, when she woke with the dawn, he asked her if she knew how to swing a hammer.
“No,” was all she’d said.
“Do you want to learn?” the man asked her.
“Yes,” she’d said.
“Good,” the man had said. “Then I’ll teach you.”
* * *
The sign out front said, “A. RIMMER & SONS, FERRIERS,” and the man’s name was Rimmer, but, as Vesla soon learned, there were no sons.
One day – after months of private wondering – her curiosity had boiled over, and she had asked the man about it. “If this is ‘Rimmer & Sons,’” she’d said, “then where are your sons?”
“The ‘A. Rimmer’ was my father,” the man had said, and laughed. “My brother and I were the sons.”
“Oh,” Vesla had said, feeling both grateful to know the answer, and anxious that she had trespassed. “And where is your brother now?”
“Gone,” the old man said, a suddenly-distant look in his eye. “Long gone.” He sighed. “I’m the only Rimmer left.”
“I’m sorry,” Vesla said.
“Don’t be,” the old man had said, and sighed again. “We’ll make a smith out of you yet, and maybe then I’ll change the sign.”
* * *
She could make twenty horseshoes a day.
It was hard work – brutally hard work. The forge was hot, and she didn’t sweat, so she had to constantly wet her scales with water from a bucket. Her slithering hair she kept tied back in a bunch, and her colorblindness made everything harder. The hammers were heavy, and each echoing blow sent shockwaves round her body. At the end of each day, she was tired, and sore, and her lean muscles ached as though they would never stop aching.
But she was young, and she was strong, and she was determined to please the old blacksmith, and, working under his careful watch, she could make twenty horseshoes a day. And, while the hot metal didn’t quite speak to her yet, the way it had once spoken to him, she had by now learned something of its tendencies, and she was starting to bend it to her will. She began to rely less on the force of her blows, and more on their economy. She learned how to curl the hot iron round the horn of the anvil, how to forge it to shape, how to get the fittings just right, before she quenched them in oil. And, though the old man never told her as much, she could tell he was pleased with her from the way he nodded his head as she presented each shoe. A nod of the head from him was better than the most flowery praise.
She could make twenty horseshoes a day, and they were good horseshoes, too. The man handled the tradesmen out front, while she swung the hammer in back, and between their combined labors, A. Rimmer & Sons did well. They never prospered, exactly, but they did well.
One night, over cold mutton and stew, the man had said to her, “When it comes to making shoes, there’s really little else for me to teach you. What you need now is practice, and lots of it. But that’s a thing you can get anywhere. You don’t need that from me.” And he let the unspoken question hang there, just above the dinner table, all the while never quite meeting her eye.
“But I don’t want to learn anywhere else,” she had said to him, feeling startled that – in his mind, anyway – the question needed answering. “And besides, you still have much left to teach me.”
“Oh, do I?” the man had said, and laughed, not even trying to hide his relief. “Such as what?”
“Such as that,” she’d said, and she’d pointed to the singular object she’d stared at every day since her arrival, where it hung above the man’s mantlepiece. “I want to make one of those.”
* * *
“Is it ready yet?” the man asked, as Vesla drew the long billet from the fire.
She held the steel close, and, though she could not see its color, she sniffed for its smell, she listened to its sound, and she watched the way it made the air dance.
“It’s ready,” she said, confident this time.
“Good,” the man said. “Now show me that you are, too.”
And, with that, the sound of her hammer filled the forge, as Vesla put steel to her anvil, and began to draw out the sword.
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