Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 1 - The Fort at River's Bend

He reached over and pulled several pieces of parchment towards him, layering them carefully, one atop the other, so that the deckled edges showed as a succession of tiny steps. "See that, the pretty way the edges flow together? Same thing happens with the iron. You twist five flat straps of metal into a spiral, and you end up with a rod that has twenty grooves running its length—four edges for each strap, you see? Then you heat the whole thing up again and pound it with a smith's hand maul until it's flat again, and you see those markings in the iron, where the edges have been hammer-fused so flat that all they leave are line markings."

"But why go to so much trouble, Joseph? Why not just work with one thick piece of iron in the first place? And why the pigeon dung? I don't follow any of that."

I crossed my arms and leaned my buttocks comfortably against the table as I heard the incomprehension in my brother's voice. I had no urge to interrupt, even though I could have answered his first question, at least. In response, Joseph picked up one of the thin, round rods and casually bent it into a circle shape with his hands, then handed it to Ambrose.

"Wrought iron is too damn soft, in its natural state. Don't ask me why, or why it changes character when you layer it and forge it in multiple strips, because I can't tell you. But I can tell you that if you try to twist a single piece of iron into a spiral, sooner or later it will break, and usually sooner than later. So we layer the strips and twist them, and they reinforce each other. As we do that, even before we do it, we coat the individual strips with the heating mixture. I only know it works, and smiths have been using it for hundreds of years because the simple truth is that a spiral rod made that way is harder, and tougher, than an identical rod made the same way, without the mixture.

"Adding the mixture demands an additional degree of care in the heating process. We can't simply coat the rods and thrust them into the coals—the paste would simply burn away. So we smear on the paste, pack the bundles in it, wrap them in cloth and tic them with string. Then we pack the whole thing again, this time in sand, in what we call a gutter trough. That done, we heat the package in a wood fire to orange-red heat for a couple of hours, and then allow everything to cool. Take my word for it, those rods, when the time comes to twist them, are much harder to manipulate than the untreated rods.

"Now, if you look again at the second line, there, you'll see that only two of the sets of rods—the outer sets—are marked for heat treatment. That's because they're the two that need to be hardest. The central piece won't need to do the work of the two outside rods. Its prime function is simply to support the others. The three rods, though, in their upper extensions—about a handspan in each case—will not be welded together. They will form the triple tang on which we'll build the hilt and cross-guard. So, there you have it. The secrets of a sword-maker."

"Not all of them." Ambrose was still frowning. "How is the welding done?"

"By heating and forging. We heat the metal to a yellow heat and beat it. In the beating, the components are welded together perfectly."

"Hmm. I didn't know that. There are two more bars here, of a different shading, marked as cutting edges. How do they differ from the black rods?"

Joseph sniffed and sighed, but showed no other sign of impatience with my brother's curiosity. "In two ways, which are really only one. First, it is but one rod, folded almost double and clamped into place along the outer edges of the pre-shaped blade core so that it follows the taper of the blade. Bear in mind what I said earlier—the drawing you are looking at is a section of the blade, through the thickest part of it. The edger is a long rod, at least twice the length of the others, and in the case of this sword we are contemplating, it will be very long indeed, requiring much time to make.

'The second difference is that it will be hardened with the paste treatment, then worked, or forged, for a longer time than the three central rods, since it has to be the strongest, keenest part of the blade. Hence the shading— that indicates the importance of the piece. When it has been added, and welded to the core, and if the smith has done everything with absolute correctness, then nothing remains but long, hard hours and days and weeks of chiselling and final shaping, and filing and polishing, followed by the process of pouring and finishing the hilt. And talking of pouring and finishing, my hot wine is cold and unfinished. Cay, have you more of it?"

"Aye, on the hob there." I paused. "What was that?"

The others stiffened, listening, but there was nothing. Joseph looked at me, frowning.

"What did you hear?"

"I don't know, but ... " As I spoke, I recognized what I had heard. "The wind has died down. It was the sudden silence that I heard."

Ambrose got up and crossed to the door, opening it and leaning out. Through the open doorway I could see that it was already approaching dusk. He straightened up and closed the door again.

"You're right. The rain has stopped, too. Are we going to eat tonight?"

Joseph barked a laugh. "Aye, but not for another hour or two, at least. It's early yet. That's not the real night you can see out there. The storm clouds have simply eaten the sun. Dinner's nowhere near being ready. I came through the kitchens on my way here. The fires were not even alight yet."

Dinner, a communal affair, was always served in the common mess hall in one of the refurbished barracks blocks just after full darkness had fallen, although that would change as high summer approached. Suddenly, however, the mention of dinner made me realize that I was hungry, and I remembered that I had not eaten since breakfast.

I reached for the jug of wine on the hob by the brazier, pleased with what we had achieved and knowing we had time to finish off the honeyed wine at our leisure. The others accepted a cupful each, and thereafter we sat talking quietly for a spell, replenishing our cups from time to time, enjoying the heat from the fire and the equally welcome heat from the warmed wine. Eventually our conversation died away completely, so that for a long time the only sound in the room was the guttering of the flames in the brazier accompanied by the occasional soft crunching of settling coals, and I found myself dozing contentedly in my chair. Suddenly Ambrose startled me wide awake again by jerking himself to attention, listening.

"What was that?"

"What? I heard nothing."

He glanced at me, then tilted his head backward. "Listen."

We listened, not knowing for what, and then the door shuddered in its frame in concert with the shutters on the windows.

"Damnation!" Joseph rose to his feet and crossed to the door, opening it to look outside, where it was now full night. Two hours at least must have elapsed, I realized, while we sat at our ease before the fire. As the thought occurred to me, the door was torn from Joseph's hand and blown back to slam against the outside wall and a gust of bitterly cold wind whirled into the room, fluttering one unweighted corner of the parchment on the table, extinguishing several candles and making the brazier flare up in a shower of sparks. Joseph leaped outside and in again, pulling the door with him and fastening it securely, after which he turned to look at us in disgust, wiping his hands on his tunic. His hair was tousled and his tunic splattered with heavy raindrops.

"So much for the passing of the storm," he said. "It was regrouping, not retreating."

I saw the woman Tressa at dinner that night and, as had been the case in every instance since I first saw her, once I had noticed her I remained disconcertingly aware of her presence.