Chapter 24: Forging the Drill

Winter was not long for the world. The next morning, Yorvig smelled the tang of thaw in the air as they went out to test the bloomery. Already winter’s greatest strength had passed. Yorvig did not hate the winter. He had never known one like it, raised in Deep Cut as he was. The cold was not so bothersome, but he missed the easier food of the weir and the fish oil light.

The bloomery had cracked during the night, and they tore it apart. Such clay bloomeries often needed rebuilt after each use. What mattered was that they found what they were looking for; a large boulder of congealed metal. It was still hot when they pulled it out of the bottom of the bloomery using one of their picks. There was a thick crust of slag and cast iron, but they hoped that within, they would find workable stuff, enough maybe for two drills. They would have to repeat the whole process over again if they wanted to make other tools—or an anvil, which would be difficult. Stone was a poor replacement for an anvil but they would make do. Drills were the first priority. Once they had drills, they could cut air shafts to make a smithy within the rock, but for now they needed the ventilation of the open dell.

Yorvig and the others met outside the Lower Adit to discuss the plan for the day. There was a scattering of birdsong. After the absence of winter, the chirps and trills came like heralds of change. Yorvig was confident they were all wondering how long it would take their friends to arrive, whether they had started already in the warmer climes of the Waste, and whether they would make it unharmed. Should they have tried to warn them of the ürsi, somehow? How? Were they just jumping at shadows? There was at least one ürsi out there, somewhere. An ürsi with a missing ear.

Yorvig shook himself out of the questions and back to the present.

“I will begin forging,” he said. “Shineboot will stand watch in the dell. Sledgefist and Hobblefoot, uncover some of the green logs and take them up the dell to the High Adit.”

“Why?” Sledgefist asked.

“Aren’t those for charcoal?” Hobblefoot asked at the same time.

“You’ll make a post-and-beam tower twenty feet away from the High Adit. It should be ten feet lower than the level of the adit, itself.”

“Why build a forty foot tower?” Sledgefist asked.

Yorvig had come up with the idea while staring at the flames within the bloomery.

“You know the gate bridge in Deep Cut?”

“Of course.”

“Once the tower is complete, give it a floor at the top, and build a ladder up to it. Then make a wooden bridge to the High Adit, one we can raise from the cliff.”

“A defense, then.”

“Right.”

Hobblefoot stuck his jaw out to the side, thinking.

“There are some logs up the dell that barely burned.”

“Use whatever is best,” Yorvig said. They nodded, took the axes, and headed up the dell.

Shineboot sighed.

“And I get to stand here watching. I could aid you in forging. We can see anything coming, now.”

“We can trade off, if you like, but one must always stand apart and watch. If we get distracted with the labor, then we are most at risk.” And Yorvig remembered just how sly the ürsi had been.

Shineboot nodded, then walked toward the edge of the tailings pond. There was still a layer of ice, but it was now covered by a few inches of dark water.

The lean-to the dwarves had used as a first shelter had succumbed to the flames of the fire in the dell. So Yorvig chose a split boulder in the dell and broke away enough stone to make a space for a forge fire where he wouldn’t have to bend over. Within that space, he prepared a fire of charcoal, starting it first with wood to get a bed of embers. He found a suitable flat but thick stone nearby but had to ask Shineboot to carry it. Yorvig’s leg was still giving out when he lifted any significant weight. He brought out the makeshift bellows, made from the worked and threaded skin of the pig. It was not entirely air-tight at the threading, but it would do for now.

With his fire built and burning a nice orange, Yorvig managed to get the lump of bloom into the flames, half-burying it in the burning coals and then pumping the pigskin bellows. The heat washed over him. No gilke in Deep Cut grew to his rhundal without learning at least the basics of working hot metal, but Yorvig had always had better-smelted stuff in his lessons and practice. Much on the outside of the bloom was slag and impurity and even cast iron, none of which he wanted for his purpose, and there were fissures. The bloom was too big to work as well. They had steel tongs, one of the simplest and most vital of implements to the forging process, but there was no way they could have carried a full smithy’s worth of tools, as well as mining tools, food, and the other necessities of survival into the wilds. The problem was, the tongs were nowhere near big enough to handle the full lump of bloom.

He used a shovel to lift the hot bloom from the fire and slid it onto the stone that served as his anvil. Then, he pressed the tip of his pick into a fissure of the hot bloom and struck the first blows with his hammer, nearly sending the bloom jolting off the stone. It was an improvisation he couldn't manage; he needed more hands. He risked it and called Shineboot, who rushed over and held the bloom steady with the pick. The color on the outside of the bloom dulled rapidly, but there was still heat within. Moving with speed, Yorvig took a chisel and slotted it into a fissure, then worked it with his hammer. Sparks and flakes of slag broke away. The bloom fractured into three pieces.

He took the smaller of the pieces and put it back into the fire and knocked the other two pieces off the stone anvil. Once the piece of bloom was hot, he pulled it back out and attacked it with his hammer. This time, he could get purchase with the tongs to hold it steady and Shineboot returned to the watch. The process now was to see if he could consolidate the bloom into a true lump of iron, working away slag and fractures and drawing it out in length as he did. Again and again the lump of metal went into the fire, growing lighter each time as bad material was beaten away, but also growing longer.

There was no way he could get a full drill out of just this piece, but he hoped he had enough with all three of the broken lumps of bloom. It took an hour to draw this lump out into an eighteen-inch rod. Then he worked the two larger pieces. He managed to heat them and beat a hold for his tongs, and he elongated each of them in turn until he had three sections of equal diameter but unequal length. The next step was forge welding. He heated the ends of two of the rods until they were nearly white hot, and then beat the ends together on the anvil, joining the heated metal. It took him three attempts to get the forge weld true, and then he did it again with the third piece. It was an unwieldy process, but in the end he had a six foot length of iron.

For the next two hours, he heated up section by section and beat pentagonal sides into the rod. It was two inches in diameter at all points, and at the end the drill came to a flat, sharp-angled bit-blade. In truth, a drill was just that — a great rod. One dwarf would hold it against the stone while another would pound it with a sledge, and between each strike the holding dwarf would give it a partial turn and so drive a hole through rock.

Now came the last and most delicate part, and a part that would be repeated many times in the useful life of a great drill. It was the quenching of the bit blade. Yorvig had no oil, but water from the stream must suffice. He brought out one of the tall now-empty honey pots they’d carved and filled it with clear water. Then, he set the end of his drill bit in the burning coals until it glowed. He waited till it gleamed, then pulled the bit from the coals. Hardening a pick or a drill was not like hardening a blade. He dipped just the very tip into the water, letting it go dark but leaving a reservoir of bright heat behind it. Pulling the tip from the water, he waited, watching as the heat traveled back into the metal from the hot reservoir behind. He waited for the change of color. The color would tell him the right hardness the bit would have after the quench.

Purple. . . to blue. . .

He waited. It was important for the quench to come at just the right temperature. . . a tinge of yellow for cutting stone. He plunged the end of the drill into the water. Steam bubbled up. He withdrew it, then took a file and tested the edge. It skipped along the iron, not biting. It was hardened.

Shineboot was there, observing. Yorvig hadn’t noticed him approach.

“It will cut,” Yorvig said.

“I suppose we’ll find out.”