“Right,” said Udd. “They’re all red-hot. Take the first spike and lay it down to one side.”
Shef took a red-hot iron spike, the raw material for a dagger or spear-head, and laid it carefully across the mouth of a pottery bowl, not letting it touch the still-frozen earth of the floor.
“Take the next one and put it straight away into the snow-water.”
Shef lifted it with the tongs and plunged the red-hot metal into a leather bucket full of barely-melted snow, gathered a few minutes before from outside. A cloud of steam rose with violent hissings.
“When the metal’s cold, take it out and bend it between your hands.”
Shef waited a minute or two, plucked the spike out, felt it gingerly to make sure there was no residual heat. Bent it between his hands. He had a good idea of what would happen, but was content to let Udd make his demonstration his own way. As the muscles stood out on Shef’s forearm, the metal spike suddenly snapped in two.
“Now try the other one.”
Shef handled this one, still warm even in the chilly air, with rags. This time he needed no force. The metal bent in his hands like wire, remained bent without any sign of springing even after he let it go.
“Same metal,” lectured Udd. “If you quench it, it gets hard and brittle—takes a good edge, but no strength. But if you just cool it, it bends. Neither hard nor strong.”
“As much use as an old man’s dick,” said a catapulteer companionably.
“More use than yours,” retorted Karli.
“Shut up,” said Udd, bold only in the making of steel. “Now, Shef, my lord that is to say. Take the bent one. Bend it straight again. Put it back in the fire and heat it red-hot once more.
“Now, quench it.” Again the hissing and the cloud of steam. “Return it to the fire. But this time, don’t let it get red-hot. Heat it gently—slow down on the bellows there, Cwicca. Let it get to the color of straw.”
Udd peered over with near-sighted anxiety. “Now, that’s enough. Take that out and let it cool slowly.”
Shef followed instructions, this time more unsure of what would happen. As a working smith, he knew well the virtues of quenching and the dangers of annealing. His way of combining the qualities of strength, hardness and suppleness, however, had always been to work different grades of metal together in strips. The thought of going back to a strip once annealed had never occurred to him. Nor did he see the significance of the third gentle heating. As the metal cooled he looked with satisfaction at the returning blisters on his hands. They had got too soft while he had played at being a king.
“All right,” said Udd. “Now try it.”
Shef picked up the iron spike and bent it in his hands. It flexed powerfully, giving but then striving to regain its shape.
“This is how you made the crossbow strips,” he remarked.
“In a way, lord, yes. But this is different.” Udd’s voice dropped with a kind of reverence. “This iron is the best I have ever seen. The ore it comes from takes half—a quarter—of the working we are used to. How long does it take a forge to make ten pounds of iron in England?”
“Two days,” suggested Shef.
“Here you would get forty in the same time for the same labor. That is one reason the Vikings are so well-armed, I think. Their iron is better. It costs far less time and charcoal to make. So every man can have iron tools and weapons, not just the rich. The iron comes from Jarnberaland, far to the east across the mountains. The Way-folk say they have a mine there and men to run it.
“But there is still more we have discovered, lord.”
In the heart of the forge there lay a pile of what appeared to be ash. Using long tongs, Udd hauled it out, dragged it onto the earthen floor, briskly swept away the covering cinders to reveal a metal plate.
“This has been in the fire for hours, since last night. I have kept the fire going all that time, while the rest of you were snoring.”