Chapter 292 -285:The test
The Blood Forge, casting floor, second furnace
Dolgha got there before the day started.
Herrek was already at the bench with the ledger open and a lamp beside it.
"You’ve got it written down, then?"
"All of it."
"Read it to me."
"You’ve heard it already."
"I’ve heard it in a room with eighty men and a foreman shouting," she said, pulling her apron over her head. "Read it to me here, where I’m going to have to do it."
Herrek turned the page around.
"Ore from the mine, six hundred and forty unit of the standard weight, weighed twice before it goes in. Light the fire then look glass in the wall. You hold the line where it’s marked. Six hours from when the line first reaches the mark—not from when you light it. Then you pour the ore to cool it down. Then we cut a small mould of test bars off the same ladle."
"Six hours from the mark."
"From the mark."
"Not from lighting."
"Not from lighting. It’s written."
Dolgha looked at the furnace—cold and dark—and then at the glass tube sunk into the stone wall of it with its marks scratched down the side.
"Do you think it’ll work?"
Herrek didn’t answer straight away, which she gave him credit for.
"I think the mortals do it," he said.
"That’s not what I asked."
"I know." He closed the ledger on his finger. "No. Honestly? I don’t see how. Metal isn’t the same twice. It’s never been the same twice for anybody. My father poured for eighty years, and he’d tell you two batches from the same day come out as different."
"So you think it won’t."
"I think we’re going to find out by dinner tomorrow, and I’d rather find out than argue about it." He opened the book again. "Six hundred and forty. Are you weighing or am I?"
"You are. That’s written down too, isn’t it?"
"It is."
"Then get on with it."
He weighed it twice. Same number both times. He wrote both down and read them out, and she nodded once.
She laid her fire the way she’d laid it for two hundred years, lit it, and stood back.
"Now what?"
"Now we watch the line."
"That’s it?"
"That’s it, until it reaches the mark."
Dolgha watched a glass tube for an hour and a half and found it was the most tedious thing she had ever done in her life.
The line climbed up the tube slowly—a bright thread climbing through the scratches—and at the ninth mark, it touched the groove the scholar had cut deeper than the rest.
"Mark," Herrek said, writing the hour down. "Six hours from here."
"Six from there."
"Six."
The first two hours were easy. The third was where the work started.
"That’s hotter than it was," she said.
Herrek came over and looked. "Line’s on the mark."
"I’m telling you it’s hotter. I can feel it on my face."
"Line’s on the mark."
"The line’s a piece of glass with a hair in it, and I’ve got two hundred years of face." She leaned in at the furnace mouth, took the heat, and pulled back. "It’s hotter."
Herrek stood there holding the ledger. "Do you want me to write that you fed it?"
"I haven’t fed it."
"Do you want me to write what you’re going to do?"
Dolgha looked at him. Then at the glass. Then back at the fire finally relenting.
"No," she said. "Write that I said it was hotter and the line said it wasn’t."
He wrote it.
The fourth hour was worse, because by the fourth hour the metal was ready.
She knew it was ready. The color was right. It had that flat, oil-like look on the surface that meant pour it now. Her arm knew it before her eye did, and her arm had been correct about this since before the boy’s father was born.
She carried the ladle to the far bench and went to stand against the timber wall.
"What are you doing?" Herrek asked.
"Standing over here."
"Why?"
"Because if I stand over there, I’ll pour it."
At the fifth hour, Torbek came in from the third furnace to see how it was going and stood looking at the fire with his hands on his hips.
"That’s ready."
"I know it’s ready."
"That’s been ready an hour."
"I know."
"So pour it."
"Six hours havent completed."
"It’ll be spoiled." Torbek jabbed a thick finger at the hearth. "You’ll cook it to slag. Two hundred years and you’re going to stand there and cook a good heat because of a line on a stick."
"Aye," Dolgha said.
"Aye?"
"Aye. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Go away."
He went away. He came back forty minutes later and stood in the exact same spot without saying anything.
At six hours from the mark, Herrek said, "That’s it."
Dolgha picked up the ladle.
She’d expected to feel something about it. She didn’t. It was just a pour—the metal ran clean and bright down the channels, filled the sand moulds true, nothing spat, nothing hung. She poured the small mould last off the exact same ladle: six thick bars.
Herrek wrote it down the ledger.
"Well?" Torbek called from the wall.
"It poured."
"Looks the same as any."
"It does."
"Then what have we proved?"
"Nothing yet." Dolgha set the ladle down. "Ask me in two days."
Two days later, at the test bench, they cut the bars and brought them to the rig. Forty men came to watch.
The rig was a simple lever, a knife-edge, and heavy weights hanging from an iron hook. You loaded a bar and hung weights until it gave. Where it snapped, that was its number.
The blueprint said dread-wagon armor had to hold to the mark.
Herrek loaded the first bar.
The scholar hung the weights one by one, calling each line as it went. Dolgha found she was watching the iron bar, not the scale.
It held past the mark.
Then further past it.
Then after a long time it suddenly snapped with a loud crack, well over the requirement, and a breath went through the crowd men letting go of their breath they hadn’t realized they were holding.
"Above the line," the scholar said, writing.
Second bar. Same. Above.
Third bar. Above.
"Three of three," the scholar called out. "Batch twelve holds."
Torbek was standing at the front with his arms folded tightly.
"Read the numbers."
"Which?"
"All three. Out loud for everyone."
The scholar read all three numbers. Their difference sat within a hair of each other.
Torbek unfolded his arms, then folded them again.
"That’s one batch," he said.
"That’s one batch," Dolgha agreed.
"Could be luck."
"It could."
"Any batch can come out good."
"Aye."
"So it proves nothing."
"Nothing at all," Dolgha said. "Pour all thirteen batch and let’s see."
Torbek stood there a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the scale.
"I’ll want the same glass thing of your wall," he muttered. "Mine’s cracked. I’m not using a cracked one."
"Ask Herrek. He’s got the spare."
Torbek immediately went off to ask Herrek for the spare, and everyone else went back to their work.