The Smith

Sweat sprayed from the young man’s well-muscled ebony shoulders with each hammer blow, mirroring the sparks cascading from the singing steel he grasped tightly with his forge tongs. Penub wiped his brow, leaving a trail of soot in the wake of his hand. He blinked away the sting of perspiration from his eyes as he placed the steel back into the forge. Once the metal was restored to a white-hot glow, that could even be seen on a bright sunny day like this one, Penub resumed his hammering. The steel obeyed each hammer stroke and soon Penub lost himself in the repetitiveness of his work. When he could get in these grooves, he would become unflappable, and time often slipped away from Penub. Last time this happened an entire day was lost to him as he hammered out fourteen horseshoes, twelve swords and a year’s stock of carpenter’s nails before he snapped out of it. That time the entire day was lost to him. If someone had stopped by the forge to talk with him, he wouldn’t have known or at very least had no recollection of them doing so.

“… Penub, mah boy.” Finally, the spell was broken, Penub whipped his head up. His father stood at the end of the anvil with a jovial, toothy grin on his face. “I Gods near touched you that time. You must always be aware of your surroundings, mah boy. What if you hadn’t seen me and ran me through with one of those things?” the older man said while jerking a thumb at one of the swords hanging on the wall.

“No one should be in my forge uninvited.” Penub said with a smirk on his face. He liked to tease his father, especially when it came to one of his many safety lectures. That said the old man was right, Kreisen was practically standing right next to Penub before he realized his father stood in his forge.

Penub quenched the hoe head he had been working on with a hiss as it entered the oil. He removed the farming instrument from the bubbling oil and set it on the anvil to cool. Finally grasping his father around the wrist and pulling him in to a half hug of greeting. Kreisen’s hand struggled to clasp around the well-tone harden steel of his son’s wrist, whereas Penub’s hand fully encompassed the older man’s arm. “It’s good to see you father.” Penub said with the same smirk across his lips.

“Yes, mah boy. It is good to see you too. I feel you become broader each time we go without seeing one another for some time.” As if to emphasis his father’s point, Penub’s shadow loomed over his father, shading him completely from the sweltering mid-day sun. Penub realized the buttering up immediately however, because “go without seeing one another for some time,” is a funny way of saying “returning from a bender in which I gamble, drink and whore away any amount of money you have spared me since the last time, now may I please have more.”

To know something and acting upon it are two completely different things. Penub would prefer his father on the straight and narrow, but he loved his father, so ultimately Penub was an enabler. He justified it by only lending Kreisen just enough gold to get his fix but stay out of trouble. Or so Penub thought.

“Where are you, you son of a whore?” a gruff voice rang out from down the street. Kreisen’s eyes widened, and he darted for one of the cupboards in the back of Penub’s forge.

“Gods curse you old man, what have you done now?” Penub’s only answer was the cupboard doors closing.

“Kreisen, where the Dark One have you run off to?” the gruff voice said, much closer this time. “Ah, you blacksmith. You’re the son of Kreisen Gobrinn yes?” Penub turned to see two men dressed in soldier’s canvas overcoats, the sleeves cut free to expose the well-fit beveled armor. The leader of the two men, the one Penub assumed to be the one with the gruff voice stood hands on hips exposing a simple yet durable looking sword. His pompous face was wrinkled in a self-important sneer as his bright green eyes swept Penub up and down. The other soldier was bigger than his gruff voiced leader and appeared to be the silent type. A large, hooked nose zigzagged the man’s heavily scarred face. The contrast between the two men was almost as distracting to Penub as their armor. Penub shook free from his admiration of craftsmanship shown on each man’s armored shoulders and arms. “I repeat, blacksmith, are you not the drunk’s son?” when Penub continued his muteness the man added while exposing a steel dragon insignia behind his coat’s lapel, “You’ll want to cooperate.”

“Um, yessir.” Penub said while dropping his eyes from the dragon pin in an obedient gesture. “but he doesn’t come around here mu…”

“Check the shop.” The gruff voiced soldier ordered the other while interrupting Penub.

“I’m sorry Sir, I can’t allow tha…” Penub was interrupted again this time with the back of the gauntleted hand of the lead soldier.

Woozy Penub fell to one knee. The blow struck him fully in the chin, leaving a split lip and a growing welt. He felt a wetness strike him in the face as the lead soldier spat on him and said in a nasty hiss “I am a Dragon; I am no Knight. You will not refer to me as such.” Outside of the serpent shaped insignia worn by Dragons, Penub didn’t know the difference between the two nor did he understand the anger that followed to confusion of stations. However now wasn’t the time to explain that to this man or his hooked nose lacky, because the latter was dragging Kreisen out from the cupboard by his hair. “Ah, so the son of the whoring drunk is a liar. I see the blood melon didn’t roll too far from the bush, I’m afraid.” The man with the Dragon insignia turned his sneer back onto Penub. “Shame you couldn’t have just turned in the old drunk. I’ve heard rumor of good steel coming from this forge.” He clicked his teeth. “What a waste. But the punishment for hiding a fugitive is unfortunately death.” The weaselly man’s sneer deepened as he searched Penub for a reaction. Penub denied the man’s craving, he was the steel worker here, he was not going to be the one hammered into something he wasn’t.

Kreisen cried out something but was quickly muffled by a punch square in the jaw delivered by the larger man. Penub’s father fell limp to the dirt floor of the forge. Giving up on his pursuit of Penub’s panicked pleading, the Dragon officer ordered Kreisen dragged to the anvil, while slapping manacles around the thick blacksmith’s wrists. On the same wrist just moments ago Kreisen struggle to grasp, cold iron locked in place, securing his arms behind his back.

“Lessons need to be learned and this drunk ought to have learned his years ago. Set his right hand on the anvil.” The scarred faced man silently obeyed while the Dragon Officer sauntered over to the collection of swords lining the walls. He selected a particularly ornate sword with a great lizard as its pummel. “Oh, how fitting a new dragon sword to enforce the laws of the Dragon.”

It was not a “dragon sword” it was a great lizard. Completely different. For one dragons do not exist while great lizards were very real, albeit mundane in comparison with the creatures of legend but they could still serve a nasty bite. Either way Penub gathered now was not the time for such an argument nor would this man care to hear one.

“Kreisen Gobrinn, I, Verkich Tartrain, hereby name you thief by way of borrowing with no intent of repayment and I shall carry out the Dragon’s justice.” Verkich said loudly as if to draw a crowd, which it did. The small forge was soon surrounded by patrons fighting to catch a glimpse of some poor saps’ misfortune.

Kreisen groggily lifted his head just as Verkich Tartrain brought the great lizard sword down on his right wrist, severing it with one swing. Blood dowsed the crowd close to the action. Wails from Kreisen flooded the blacksmith’s makeshift canvas canopy as he fell to the dirt clutching his new stump.

Penub watched in numb horror as sprays of blood surged out of his father’s wrist with every pump of his heart. Every stream of blood more important and with less volume than the last. Penub hadn’t even noticed that the bigger Dragon dragged him by his shackles and had bent him over the blood-stained anvil. Verkich was saying something to Penub, no he was addressing the crowd so it must have been about Penub. That is when he saw Verkich raise the sword one last time and said, “I sentence you, son of Kreisen Gobrinn to death by way of beheading.”

Penub Gobrinn had one last fleeting thought. This man is going to kill me and he didn’t even bother to learn my name?

That was when Penub felt his entire body flood with icy cold steel. He could feel the sword on the back of his neck, he could even feel the warmth of where Verkich’s hands held the pummel. Penub’s first instinct was, this must be what death is but realized this was something else completely. He gathered his will and turned his head towards his would-be assassin. Verkich Tartrain was holding the sword in place at the back of Penub’s neck, straining against some unseen force. Urging the blade upwards by arching his back, Penub stood to his full height, dwarfing even the bigger of the two Dragons, who looked about as confused as Penub himself.

“What is this sorcery?” still straining, Verkich asked “If you’re an Iron Ward you have to be registered.” As if to answer his queries, Penub’s manacles opened and fell off as if melting away under extreme heat.

Penub bent and retrieved his hammer that had been discarded near the anvil. He could feel the steel. Not simply cold rough edges at his fingertips but the grain that ran through the head of the hammer. Penub could also feel the sword still frozen in Verkich’s hand and all the swords lining the forge walls, even the handcrafted beveled armor that encompassed both Dragons’ arms and chest.

As if sensing Penub’s realization the large hook-nosed man rushed at Penub. Calmly, Penub raised an open hand facing his pursuer and closed it into a fist. The exposed armor on the man’s arms flattened. A horrifying crunch of snapping bone and popping flesh accompanied the man’s howls. Skin, muscle, and blood oozed from the crumpled metal where the man’s arms had been just moments before. Penub raised his free hand, repeating the motion, the chest plate burst inward, and the man crumpled to the floor finally out of his misery.

“I have no clue what an Iron Ward is, but I know one thing. A Dragon came into my forge and threatened my life, this I will not stand for.”

Verkich began to protest but Penub flicked his first two fingers in an upward motion and the sword responded. The great lizard sword, in the blink of an eye, rotated backward and rocketed up through Verkich’s chin, pinning his mouth closed and for the first-time since stepping foot in the forge, wiping the sneer from his lips.

The crowd had dwindled but those who remained whooped and jeered as the second Dragon was slain. Despite having just killed two men, though in self-defense, Penub wore a smile ear to ear. Especially as there were no signs of any more Dragons. Penub sighed with relief because his newfound power had completely drained him of energy. He had never felt exhaustion like this, even after a long day in the forge followed by a night cap in his cups.

“Penub, mah boy.” Rasped a voice near the stone wall that held the swords, now in disarray. Penub snapped his head in that direction and to his horror he had forgotten about his father. Kreisen lay slumped in the corner, pale and ashy, his bleeding wound dribbling at a mere trickle. Penub raced to his father and in one motion scooped him up. “Listen to me,” the old man said before swallowing hard. “I had hoped you were an Iron Ward,”

“What is this Iron Ward nonsense, we need to get you to an apothecary.” Penub interrupted.

“No mah boy, just listen. Iron Warding is in your blood. You must travel to Carriton Valley and hone your skills. What you did here today was great but awful. You must be trained…” Kriesen rasped out a couple of ragged breaths and then took his last.

“Trained how? What’s in Carriton Valley? Father? Father?” he gently shook Kreisen for a response, but none came.