Four Horsemen: Chapter 6 Part 2 of 2

Valter rolled his shoulders, the heat from the forge waking up his body as he sank back into a rhythm, watching the different firebrick circles, mixing coke and iron pulling out the products and hammering them square.

Gus came around with more coke and iron, asking his question about quenching, why smiths hit their hammers on the anvil as they worked. His questions made Valter dive into his smithing knowledge more and checking what his book said.

The orange brightened with each finished ingot.

He kept the ingots the same standard, to increase them would take a lot more effort and it would have been easier with gear he didn’t want to use in the open.

The bonus that came from smithing something of a higher level than his own disappeared. Another twelve ingots and I’ll step into Orange flecked.

When smithing anything of a lower quality than your core you earned less essence, taking many more products to raise your level.

Two stages below and you earn nothing at all.

Valter looked into the flames. They’d leveled quickly due to only having white cores and fighting people stronger than them. Crafting would supplement their levels and bring them higher.

He’d need to fight at least someone of the Red mixed with orange stage to earn essence.

How much iron had he shaped? Steel he had made, inscribed in secret. How many had he killed, as one of the God-Emperor’s Anointed.

He closed his hand, as if it would block his ears against what he had heard that night. What his fellow anointed had been bade to do. Ordered upon their holy oaths.

The fire twisted in the hearth. His body remained as his mind turned back.

“Mir! There’s no soldiers in the village.” Valter stepped forward, his voice harsh from the fires that already burned on some of the homes at the fringe of the small village.

His armored boots sunk into the mud of the ground. Each and everyone of his brothers wearing their Sarcophagi Immortalias. All a hand and a head taller than any normal man.

Stains of old battles, iron markers and ribbons showing their accolades, or where the last wearer’s accolades had been cut off, shorn metal waiting for their contribution.

Four watched the villagers in the square, several were sporting bruises or broken bones. The strength of the Sarcophagi pushed each to reach new heights beyond their core would allow. Strength used on battlefields against titans. For they were mortals no more.

Mir turned in his armor, more familiar than his face these days. The leader of their squad. Twenty strong, brother in arms before they ever stepped into their anointed armors, before the became chosen.

That time before the madness.

“The order was to kill the enemy that fill the village. Not soldiers.” His words hammer blows that struck Valter’s chest.

He saw it in his eyes then, the understanding, the disgust and the duty pressed upon his soul that stained it with its very weight.

“The God-Emperor’s orders are our law. Not one is to be left alive.” His helmet moved, his eyes cast back into shadow in the flickering flame. “Give them quick mercy from this plane brothers. Let them get peace this night.”

Mir was the first to turn to the villagers. “Children first, they deserve to see the least.” He stepped forwards, people begged and cried and pleaded. Others were yelling, they didn’t understand.

They turned one by one towards the villagers. Valter felt it, the compulsion within his chest, with his oath.

An itch that grew with each passing second.

A blade swung and cries rose.

Valter turned with his brethren and followed after them.What god would ask, no-demand, such a thing from his faithful. Bound to his very will.

Valter’s blows were surgical and precise, killing without suffering, death took his deliveries, the two partners in the trade. Each cut and stab a new oath, a new writ and promise. Long he had turned a blind eye, he would no longer. This ended with blood.

Valter breathed out, coming back to his hearth in Alan’s Forge.

He’d gone through three buckets, and put his latest ingot on the table. He looked up, sensing a pair of eyes.

A bald and scarred man held an ingot tapping it in his other hand, from the chatter, Valter took him to be Alan, the owner of the forge.

“You know how to forge,” Alan said.

“Yes,” Valter’s throat was hoarse, he coughed and pulled out a canteen.

“You got your own tools?”

“Yes.”

Alan tapped the iron ingot again and pointed at the two fire brick hearths in the forge.

“Finish up the remaining ingots, then make me ten spear heads like that.” He pointed the ingot at spearheads next to two women fixing them on wooden shafts.

“Okay,” Valter grinned.

“Use that forge, one of the ‘experts’ the guild sent over will take your spot.” He pointed to another forge, leaving for his forge, taking the ingot with him.

Valter walked over to the two working on spears, they glanced up at him as he picked up the spear head, and continued their work. He turned it over in his hands, taking out measuring tools and writing down information on one of the ingots with a bit of charcoal.

He returned to his hearth, finishing off the two remaining ingots. As he left another man stepped into the space, scratching the back of his head. He looked between the coke and iron buckets to the three fire block circles in the forge.

“Shit I’m a smith not a refiner.”

Valter ignored the man, headed for the forge Alan had pointed to.

He cleaned the area, prepared his coke how he wanted it and pulled out lengths of steel stock, putting them on the workbench, based on size and shape.

Petor’s going to need a new spear soon, or I lend him mine.

The look on the man’s face when he’d used his own spear after Valter’s stuck in his mind. Made of just steel and wood it was a fine weapon but the materials weren’t conductive to mana and there were certainly no inscriptions on it for someone to empower their attacks.

He glanced back at the spears being assembled. The majority were worse than his.

Make something that works with his ability to draw power from people and give it to others. Such a power might worry others, but Petor’s actions, helping that young family and man. The way he fought beside Valter to cover his openings.

With the proper armor and weapons. A spark flared within his heart.

He took in a breath, iron and coal and coke burning his nose. To him it was a calming incense as he drew out his tools, well worn and carved with runes along their lengths, putting them to the side in easy reach.

He shifted to check the forge and the coals, moving fresh coals around those that were already white and red.

“Time we began.” He pulled out a length of steel stock, heating it in the forge’s coals.

Once up to temperature he picked up his hammer, the runes burned into its length and head flared to life as he poured mana into it.

He hit the steel to stretch it, as the steel rang out, it was like he had struck a bell within his own body. His movements adjusted, shifting his feet, his fingers. A deep feeling of peace, of familiarity filled him.

He flattened out one side, then using the shelf on the anvil and the angled end of his hammer he started rounding it.

Something was coming undone in his chest, in his mind. The world was fading away as everything became about the materials, the slight hits and taps. Information and reactions built into his every movement, imprinted upon his very soul.

The socket of the spear formed. A sprinkle of flux, a thrust into the forge with a flare of light and it was fused.

He drew out the other side to the length he needed, creating a leaf shape tapering down the edges.

Valter turned it and checked it.

“What are you looking for?” Gus asked.

Valter grinned.

“Looking to make sure the that socket is welded closed well, that way it don’t break off of the spears shaft. Make sure that its straight and true.”

“Its not sharp though,” Gus frowned.

“Once its heat treated and, on its shaft, then can sharpen it down. Didn’t know you had any more questions left,” Valter raised an eyebrow.

“Coke,” The boy raised a bucket with both hands and tat gap-toothed smile.

Valter chuckled and shook his head, putting the spear into the coals to heat up for the treatment and tossed in another length of stock for the next spear head.

Gus dumped his coke and ran off to other tasks.

Valter drew out the first spear head and quenched it.

Essence flowed through him, twice of what he’d earned making the ingots.

Time faded away, fatigue an old friend. Valter’s hammer blows became more refined, what took ten blows, took nine, then eight and continued down.

His speed increased as his quality climbed.

A lifetime of smithing a dedication to the craft flowed through him. There was no such thing as tiredness, but a state of mild satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

I hit that wrong. That length is too much adding in weakness. There’s too much steel there to create an imbalance. Imperfections were burrs in his mind now opening to a world of knowledge. Mistakes were wastes of effort, a burning of precious time.

He finished his latest spear, turning it in his tongs and grimacing at it, other smiths talked to one another, catching his eye they looked away quickly.

Valter was close to mixing green into his red core. The level of the spearheads were at the same level. Making more his essence gain would drop.

Gus ran up to take the latest spear head.

“You got anything stronger than this steel?”

Gus frowned and shook his head. “No, I’ve heard of other materials like Othir and Dimantium, but those are rare as heaven’s tears here.”

Valter grunted. Well shouldn’t pull that out too easy then.

“Gus!” Someone yelled.

“I’ll go grab some more steel stock for you mister Valter.”

“Just Valter lad.”

Gus grinned and ran off with the spear heads.

Running with spear heads don’t seem the smartest.

Valter rolled his eyes and picked up a piece of scrap metal.

I have my armor, so does Desari, Petor’s isn’t much to look at but its serviceable. Mya is going to need something though cloth with reinforced points will work better for her. Petor has worked in a fighting formation. His attacks have been modified from that to meet his current needs.

Petor and he were going to be the front of whatever fight they were in. Desari and Mya were great with swords but their ranged attacks were better put to use in the rear.

He slipped his dagger free and tapped it against the scrap metal, chewing the inside of his cheek in thought.

In his mind he replayed their fights.

The one thing I can change to have the greatest impact is his spear.

“A steel spear is only going to last him so long,” Valter rubbed his chin and growing stubble. “I need to find something to reinforce it and allow it to work with his power, to draw in mana and then allow him to channel it into attack runes.” He scratched the back of his head.

“Line the interior with mana channels and then have runes on the outside? Going to be complicated to make sure they don’t interact with one another. Then how he draws it out and pushes it back in. If he shifts his grip then going to have to make that all along the length.”

And if he was to do it to just a steel spear then eventually he would need to have another one.

Valter let his ideas and thoughts flow into the metal, using his dagger as fluidly as one would use a brush.

Ideas rose, were added and altered the original plan with each iteration.

More of his strength came back to him as yellow, like golden dust flecked his core.

“Getting close.”

“Valter, more steel stock!”

“Thank you Gus,” Valter put down his last ruminations and fed the stock into the forge, he added in notations as he worked. Testing out ideas on the steel, adding in channels and studying them, his notes an eclectic work of techniques, notes, runes and diagrams.