“This is war,” said Hunnan, his mouth twisting. “Right’s got nothing to do with it. King Uthil said steel is the answer, so steel it has to be.”
Brand waved his hand toward the miserable survivors, picking over the wreckage of their homes. “Shouldn’t we stay and help them? What good will burning some other village do just ’cause it’s across a river—”
Hunnan rounded on him. “Might help the next village, or the one after that! We’re warriors not nursemaids! You got a second chance, boy, but I’m starting to think I was right after all, and you’ve got more Father Peace than Mother War in you.” Looking at Mother War’s handiwork behind them, Brand wondered whether that was such a bad thing. “What if it was your family died here, eh? Your house burned? Your sister made some Vansterman’s slave? Would you be for vengeance then?”
Brand looked over his shoulder toward the other lads, following in a meager straggle. Then he gave a sigh and hefted the two shields.
“Aye,” he said. “I guess I would.”
But he couldn’t see how any good would come of this.
FIRE
“Reckon I need a new sword.”
Thorn tossed her father’s rattling down on the table.
Rin gave the blade she was working on another grating stroke with the polishing stone and frowned over at her. “This seems familiar.”
“Very. But I’m hoping for a different answer this time around.”
“Because you bedded my brother?”
“Because there’s going to be a battle, and Queen Laithlin wants her Chosen Shield suitably armed.”
Rin set her stone aside and walked over, slapping dust from her hands. “The Queen’s Chosen Shield? You?”
Thorn raised her chin and stared back. “Me.”
They watched at each other for a long moment, then Rin picked up Thorn’s sword, spun it over, rubbed at the cheap pommel with her thumb, laid it back down and planted her hands on her hips. “If Queen Laithlin says it’s so, I guess it’s so.”
“It’s so,” said Thorn.
“We’ll need some bone.”
“What for?”
“To bind with the iron and make steel.” Rin nodded over at the bright blade clamped to the bench, gray steel-dust gathered under it. “I used a hawk’s for that one. But I’ve used a wolf’s. A bear’s. Do it right, you trap the animal’s spirit in the blade. So you pick something strong. Something deadly. Something that means something to you.”
Thorn thought about that for a moment, then the idea came and she started to smile. She pulled the pouch from around her neck and tipped the smooth and yellowed little lumps out across the table. She’d worn them long enough. Time to put them to better use. “How about a hero’s bones?”
Rin raised her brows at them. “Even better.”
THEY STOPPED IN AN ash-scattered clearing by the river, a ring of stones in the center blackened as if it had held one hell of a fire.
Rin swung the big bag of tools down from her shoulder. “We’re here.”
“Did we have to come so far?” Thorn dumped the coal sacks, stretching out her back and wiping her sweating face on her forearm.
“Don’t want my secrets stolen. Talking of which, tell anyone what happens here I’ll have to kill you.” Rin tossed Thorn a shovel. “Now get in the river and dig out some clay.”
Thorn frowned sideways, sucking at the hole in her teeth. “I’m starting to think Skifr was an easier master.”
“Who’s Skifr?”
“Never mind.”
She waded out to her waist in the stream, the water so cold it made her gasp in spite of the summer warmth, and set to cutting clay from the bed and slopping it onto the bank in gray shovelfuls.
Rin put some dull lumps of iron-stone in a jar, along with the black ash of Thorn’s father’s bones, and a sprinkle of sand, and two glass beads, then she started smearing clay around the lid, sealing it shut.
“What’s the glass for?” asked Thorn.
“To trick the dirt out of the iron,” murmured Rin, without looking up. “The hotter we get the furnace the purer the steel and the stronger the blade.”
“How did you learn all this?”
“I was apprentice to a smith called Gaden. I watched some others. I talked to some sword-merchants from down the Divine.” Rin tapped at the side of her head and left a smear of clay there. “The rest I worked out for myself.”
“You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?”
“When it comes to steel.” Rin set the clay jar carefully in the middle of the ring of stones. “Back in the river, then.”
So Thorn sloshed out shivering into the stream again while Rin built the furnace. She heaped coal up inside, stones outside, and mortared them with clay until she’d built a thing looked like a great domed bread-oven, chest high, with an opening at the bottom.
“Help me seal it.” Rin dug up clay with her hands and Thorn did the same, smearing it thick over the outside. “What’s it like? Being a Chosen Shield?”
“Dreamed of it all my life,” said Thorn, puffing herself up. “And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather serve than Queen Laithlin.”
Rin nodded. “They don’t call her the Golden Queen for nothing.”