cenaries and priests.”
“Alone? Why?”
“Because I cannot call in help; cannot let anyone know my goal. Any such would lie on the green stone very soon.
They suspect me; perhaps they know. I am, however, the best smith in all Lomarr, hence they have slain me not.
Nor will they, until I have found what I seek. Nor then, if by the favor of the gods-or by your favor, Lord-the metal
be good enough.”
“It will be, but there’s a lot more to fighting a platoon of soldiers than armor and a sword, my optimistic young
savage.”
“That the metal be of proof is all I ask, Lord,” the smith insisted, stubbornly. “The rest of it lies in my care.”
“So be it. And then?”
“Sarpedion’s image, as you must already know, is made of stone, wood, copper, and gold-besides the jewels, of
course. I take his brain, liver, and heart, flood them with oil, and sacrifice them. . . .”
“Just a Minute! Sarpedion is not alive and never has been; does not, as a matter of fact, exist. You just said,
yourself, that his image was made of stone and copper and. . . .”
“Don’t be silly, Lord. Or art testing me? Gods are spirits; bound to their images, and in a weaker way to their
priests, by linkages of spirit force. Life force, it could be called. When those links are broken, by fire and
sacrifice, the god may not exactly die, but he can do no more of harm until his priests have made a new image and
spent much time and effort in building up new linkages. One point now settled was bothering me; what god to
sacrifice him to. I’ll make an image for you to inhabit, Lord, and sacrifice him to you, my strange new god. You
will be my only god as long as I live. What is your name, Lord? I can’t keep on calling you ‘strange god’ forever.”
“My name is Skandos.”
“S . . . Sek … That word rides ill on the tongue. With your permission, Lord, I will call you Llosir.”
” „ Call me anything you like, except a god. I am not a god.
“You are being ridiculous, Lord Llosir,” Tedric chided. “What a man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears-espe-
cially what a man hears without ears, as I hear now-he knows with certain knowledge to be the truth. No mere man
could possibly do what you have done, to say naught of what you are about to do.”
“Perhaps not an ordinary man of your . . .” Skandos almost said “time,” but caught himself “. . . of your culture, but I
am ordinary enough and moral enough in my own.”
“Well, that could be said of all gods, everywhere.” The smith’s mien was quiet and unperturbed; his thought was
loaded to saturation with unshakable conviction.
Skandos gave up. He could argue for a week, he knew” without making any impression whatever upon what the
stubborn, hard-headed Tedric knew so unalterably to be the truth.
“But just one thing, Lord,” Tedric went on with scarcely a break. “Have I made it clear that I intend to stop human
sacrifice? That there is to be no more of it, even to you? We will offer you anything else-anything else-but not
even your refusal to give me the god-metal will change my stand on that.”
“Good! See to it that nothing ever does change it. As to offerings or sacrifices, there are to be none, of any kind. I
do not need, I do not want” I will not have any such. That is final. Act accordingly.
“Yes, Lord. Sarpedion is a great and powerful god, but art sure that his sacrifice alone will establish linkages strong
enough to last for all time?”
Skandos almost started to argue again, but checked himself. After all, the proposed sacrifice was necessary for
Tedric and his race, and it would do no harm.
“Sarpedion will be enough. And as for the image, that isn’t necessary, either.”
“Art wrong, Lord. Without image and temple, everyone would think you a small, weak god, which thought can never
be. Besides, the image might make it easier for me to call on you in time of need.”
“You can’t call me. Even if I could receive your call, which is very doubtful, I wouldn’t answer it. If you ever see me
or hear from me again, it will be because I wish it, not you.” Skandos intended this for a clincher, but it didn’t turn
out that way.”
“Wonderful!” Tedric exclaimed. “All gods act that way, in spite of what they-through their priests-say. I am
overwhelmingly glad that you are being honest with me. Hast found me worthy of the god-metal, Lord Llosir?”
“Yes, so let’s get at it. Take that biggest chunk of `metal-which-fell-from-the-sky’-you’ll find it’s about twice your
weight. . . .”
“But I have never been able to work that particular piece of metal, Lord.”
“I’m not surprised. Ordinary meteorites are nickel-iron, but this one carries two additional and highly unusual ele-
ments, tungsten and vanadium, which are necessary for our purpose. To melt it you’ll have to run your fires a lot
hotter. You’ll also have to have a carburizing pot and willow charcoal and metallurgical coke and several other
things. We’ll go into details later. That green stone from which altars are made-you can secure some of it?”
“Any amount of it.”
“Of it take your full weight. And of the black ore of which you have occasionally used a little, one-fourth of your
weight. . . .”
The instructions went on, from ore to finished product in complete detail, and at its end:
“If you follow these directions carefully you will have a high-alloy-steel-chrome-nickel-vanadium-molybdenum-
tungsten steel, to be exact-case-hardened and heat treated; exactly what you need. Can you remember them all?”
“I can, Lord. Never have I dared write anything down” so my memory is good. Every quantity you have given me,
every temperature and step and process and item; they are all completely in mind.”
“I go” then. Good-bye.”
“I thank you, Lord Llosir. Good-bye.” The Lomarrian bowed his head, and when he straightened up his incom-
prehensible visitor was gone.
Tedric went back to bed; and” strangely enough, was almost instantly asleep. And in the morning after his cus-
tomary huge breakfast of meat and bread and milk, he went to his sprawling establishment, which has no counter-
part in modern industry” and called his foreman and his men together before they began the day’s work.
“A strange god named Llosir came to me in the night and showed me how to make better iron,” he told them in
perfectly matter-of-fact fashion, “so stop whatever you’re doing and tear the whole top off of the big furnace. I’ll
tell you exactly bow to rebuild it.”
The program as outlined by Skandos went along without a hitch until the heat from the rebuilt furnace began to
come blisteringly through the crude shields. Then even the foreman, faithful as he was, protested against such
unheard-of temperatures and techniques.
“It must be that way!” Tedric insisted. “Run more rods across, from there to there, to hold more hides and blankets.
You four men fetch water. Throw it over the hides and blankets and him who turns the blower. Take shorter tricks
in the hot places-here, I’ll man the blower myself until the heat wanes somewhat.”
He bent his mighty back to the crank, but even in that raging inferno of heat he kept on talking.
“Knowst my iron sword, the one I wear” with rubies in the hilt?” he asked the foreman. That worthy did, with
longing; to buy it would take six months of a foreman’s pay. “This furnace must stay this hot all day and all of
tonight, and there are other things as bad. But ’twill not take long. Ten days should see the end of it”-,actually seven
days was the schedule, but Tedric did not want the priests to know that “but for those ten days matters must go
exactly as I say. Work with me until this iron is made and I give you that sword. And of all the others who shirk not,
each will be given an iron sword-this in addition to your regular pay. Dost like the bargain?”
They liked it.
Then, during the hours of lull, in which there was nothing much to do except keep the furious fires fed, Tedric
worked upon the image of his god. While the Lomarrian was neither a Phidias nor a Praxiteles, he was one of the
finest craftsmen of his age. He had not, however, had a really good look at Skandos’ face. Thus the head of the
image, although it was a remarkably good piece of sculpture, looked more like that of Tedric’s foreman than like
that of the real Skandos. And with the head, any resemblance at all to Skandos ceased. The rest of the real Skandos