Dies the Fire

"How did you know it was two days?" Signe said, dipping a cup into a bucket that stood on a table nearby. "You came to a few times before, but you were sort of semiconscious."

"Don't remember a thing since Mr. Bear turned out to be Not Our Friend," he said, and then a long wordless ahhhhhh! as he drank the cold river water. "Thanks… no, I could tell by the state of your bruises. They're a flattering shade of yellow-green; mine are fresher. What smells so good?"

A woman was singing in Spanish in the middle distance, a husky soprano, a voice with smoke and musk and heat in it-Angelica Hutton, at a guess. He could hear the words now and then:

"Mi amor, mi corazon-"

Signe gri

"It's bear broth," she said. "We're making jerky out of most of it, but the soup's good. Want some? Meal and revenge in one."

He nodded, too tired to speak much. She brought over a cup and put an arm under his shoulders to lift him so that he could sip. The contact was remarkably pleasant, in an abstract sort of way. The broth itself was delicious, mostly clear, with a little finely minced meat in it and some dried onion. He could feel the rich warmth of it spreading through his middle, and his eyelids grew heavy again.

Havel fell asleep to the sound of the Spanish song, the splashing of the river, and a distant sound like a grinding wheel on hard steel.

His next waking found him clearheaded; a day after that he was still feeling shaky but strong enough to rise and eat solid food, wash and walk. The next day he was himself again, save for a lingering stiffness.

The older men had been hard at work on the flatbed; the towing bar had been rerigged, and the gear sorted and readied for loading.

Will Hutton had set up his workbench a good ways away; near it was some contraption powered by part of a bicycle, with a transmission belt ru

"Good to see you up," Hutton said, turning from the fire; sweat ran down his stocky muscular torso.

"Good to be up," Havel said frankly. "Not quite good as new, but getting there."

His scalp wound itched like fire, but that meant it was healing well. For the rest he was stiff and bruised, but he'd been there before; with nothing torn and no damage to his joints he was ready to chalk it up to experience.

Some exercise was just what he needed.

Astrid smiled at him shyly. Havel looked at the black man; he nodded very slightly. Havel glanced back at her coolly, and then went on after he'd made greetings all around: "Maybe you should start practicing that mounted archery stuff again, kid?"

"Thanks, Mike!" she replied, and then broke into a broad su

Surprised, Havel looked at the Texan.

"With y'all in a second," he said.

Then he took his workpiece out of the coals with a pair of pincers, gave it a quick once-over, nodded, and picked up a smoothed nine-foot pole with his other hand. The metal was a twelve-inch tapering double-edged blade shaped like a willow leaf and about as broad as two fingers, but it was mounted on a round steel tube. Using the pincers, then the anvil and a hammer, Hutton forced the tube sleeve onto the pretapered uppermost section of the pole.

The wood began to smoke almost immediately; the sleeve was heated past the red-glowing stage.

Quickly he reversed the spear and plunged the whole head and a foot of the shaft into a big bucket of water. There was a volcanic hiss and spurt of steam, dying away to a muttering and bubbling. The hot metal would shrink as it cooled, binding unbreakably to the wood.

"Saw somethin' like this in Calgary, up in Canada, when I was workin' rodeo-went for the Stampede there couple of years," Hutton said.

He took the spearhead out and wiped it dry, then wiped it again with an oiled rag, then braced the shaft between his legs with the top three feet across the anvil and touched up the edges of the head with a two-handed sharpening hone. The steel made a scring… scring… sound under his swift expert strokes.

"The Mounties at the Stampede used lances 'bout like this, put on quite a show."

"You were in rodeo?" Havel asked.

Astrid was begi

Good, he thought. Let's introduce the concept of discipline and patience into the Elvish ranks.

Hutton nodded. "Roughstock," he said.

That meant riding Brahma bulls, and horses deliberately picked to buck. He glanced over at his wife, who was checking the bundles and boxes of their gear against a list.

"Angel, though, she wanted more than broken bones and trophies on the wall. She was right, of course; and I'd rather work with real horses, anyhow. By then I had enough saved to get our spread and a decent herd."

He tossed the long spear over to Havel. The younger man ran his hands along the smooth length of it; the blade was sharpened right down to where the curve of the shoulders melded into the tubular socket, so it wouldn't get stuck in someone or something's body the way the knife-bladed weapon had.

"Used part of a leaf spring for that," Hutton said, waving his hand back towards the vehicles by the side of the road. "It's good metal; forming the socket, that was the hard part. I made up a couple of 'em."

He went over to the flatbed and got something else. Havel's eyes widened a bit. It was a straight-bladed saber just under a yard long in the blade, with a three-bar brass guard. A neatly made sheath of leather-covered wood held it, with chape and mouth done in aluminum beaten to shape. Hutton handed it to him, and he examined it more closely; the hilt had wooden fillets glued to the tang, covered in layers of thin braided rawhide to shape it to a man's palm. When he drew it the weapon was heavy but well balanced, blade cross-sectioned nicely from thick back to edge; the reverse was sharpened for a foot back from the point.

It felt right in his hand, suited to a thrust or solid chopping cut.

"Haakkaa paalle!" he said, giving it a flourish. At Hut-ton's raised eyebrow, Havel went on: "Fi

"What's it mean?" Astrid asked.

"Literally? Hack them down! Freely translated: Kill! Kill! Back in the old days in Europe, the Fi

He tried whipping the sword through a figure eight, and then winced slightly at how close he'd come to taking off part of his own right kneecap in his enthusiasm.

Hope nobody else noticed that. This is going to take some work, he thought, and went on aloud to Hutton: "I thought you said you weren't a blacksmith!"

"I ain't; and if I was, I couldn't do a sword from scratch in four days. That's not hardly blacksmith's work at all, Mike. Just mutilating a length of leaf spring. The hard part in makin' swords the old-time way was tempering, heating and quenching just right. But that, it's alloy steel and already heat-treated better than anyone could do in a forge." "Hmmmm," Havel said. He braced the point against a stump and leaned on it; the metal bowed, then sprang straight again. He tested the edge with his thumb. It was knife-sharp, which was practical for a weapon-a razor edge was too likely to turn on bone. A flick at the stump took out a surprisingly large chip without dulling it.