#40

A loud metal clang rings in a small room bedecked with horseshoes, yokechains, and a small assortment of picks, spades and axes.

“A good blade isn’t rigid or flexible. With the former it’s easy to snap in any application and with the latter it’s no good for striking or blocking because it’ll just bend as soon as there’s resistance.” Carefully holding the hot hammer away from his face, the man brushes the sweat rolling down his face away with the back of his arm. “They need to be in between. Firm yet responsive. Pliable yet solid. The best blades are in between.”

The smith stands at about an average height with receding brown-and-gray hair. He doesn’t wear anything except for his smithy apron, a huge thick incredibly burned thing, and his pants. His feet are bare and nestled underneath the dirt lest steel fragments or sparks land on them. His arms are strangely proportioned; the right is nearly two times the size of his left. The muscles coursing through his right arm are impressive and powerful, yet visibly worn at the same time. The skin of his bare arms is dotted with scars, pockmarked with hundreds of tiny burns and a couple of old cuts as well. He’s old, yet still very very strong.

More clangs ring out as the man starts hammering the red-hot piece of steel on the anvil before him. Sparks fly, scattering into the air with each stroke. The man grunts as he works, pushing his muscles to keep shaping the metal lest it cools.

“You hear me boy?”

A short silence from the apprentice confirms it.

“You don’t get it, do you?” He grins at the kid. He’s not too bright but to smith for a small village you don’t have to be bright. He’d do fine once he got the basics. “Alright, listen up. It’s like this. Think of Septa Johannson. He’s always preaching about the Seven Gods and rambling on about how everything he says and thinks about the Seven is the only way to think. Now see, I’ve traveled, used to smith for Winterfell Castle my boy. I’ve talked with other septas, ones more learned than this upstart, about the Seven and they’re nothing like this one. Johannson really thinks the Seven operate by our rules, HA! No no my boy, they’re all of their own, we belong to THEM, not them to us. He’s way too stupid to realize what he’s doing. See, it’s simple. He’s too rigid and he completely misses what the faith is about and defiles the faith by being that way. He’s too rigid. A blade can’t be rigid like that. It has to be able to move and change to the situation without breaking. Just like Johannson. If you took him out of his comfortable little cell and put him out into the woods he’d be gone in a couple of days. The Smith knows all he’d do is demand they give him food and water and shelter and we all know that won’t happen. It doesn’t work like that.”

“As for too flexible. Think of the barmaid…what’s that lass’s name…”

“Marci” the boy offered.

“Ah, right right. You’re old enough by now to know what she’s like. Sleeping around, always doing what anyone tells her. Completely worthless whore, that’s what I say to that. What good would Marci be to a husband? She can’t be loyal even if she wanted to be. Too flexible. Lacks strength and tenacity. A blade can’t be like that, if it would it’ll bend and never hit the way it’s supposed to. A blade has to listen to one person and one person only. It has to be strong.”

“You get it? It has to be strong enough to be able to stay in one piece, it has to know what it’s place is in the scheme of things, and at the same time it needs to be responsive enough to go with the flow of things and not be so hard that it snaps as soon as something presses on it. Nothing worse than that, my boy. Nothing worse than your blade snapping in the middle of a fight.”

“Yeah…”

The smith stops hammering and examines his work with a keen eye.

“So what are you, boy?”

“Huh? What do you mean.”

“What are you made out of?”

The boy grinned, he knew what this was about. He knew exactly what he was. He was a man and the smith was asking him what he was. “Valyerian Steel!”

The smith’s booming laughter fills the room and pours out into the streets beyond. “You? Valyerian steel? Ha, you’d be lucky to even be iron with those arms. My boy, you’re too flexible yet too, just like lassy out there in the Fat Goose. Not in the same way of course, but too weak all the same. Real steel isn’t in the rock. It’s this right here.” The smith picks up the blade he’s working on for a local would-be knight. “This right here. Put into the fire and cooked almost unto death. Then, while it still burns, beaten into shape. Beaten into shape, struck more times than the number of days you’ve seen, boy. Then flipped, put back in, and beaten again. And again and again. Then after that ordeal is over, sharpened on the whetstone every week. You don’t even know what it is to BE sharp. Not yet.”

The boy is taken aback; he hadn’t expected to be rebuked so sharply. He stays quiet.

“Ah, don’t worry my boy. This is your first step into that world. See those steel rods over there? That’s you. You’re nothing. You’re just a worthless piece of metal. But look at what we can do with that ‘worthless’ piece of metal. Look at the walls around you. With work you can be something. It takes a while, but you can be something. You understand, boy?”

“Yes sir…”

“Good. We’ll see if we can make you into valerian steel yet, hahaha. That’s the lesson for today. Get yourself upstairs and get lots of rest, you’ll need it. Ha, tomorrow you begin to help. We need to whip you into shape. And I’m going to work you til you can’t work anymore. You’ll never survive with those muscles of yours, hahaha.”

The boy respectfully gets up and walks around the smith, into the main house, and then slowly up the stairs to bed. The smith dips the blade into a bucket of water and steam sizzles upwards towards the ceiling. He pulls the blade out and examines his handiwork, wincing in disappointment at his own faulty strikes, probably from laughing so hard moments before.

“Ah, oh well. The hedge probably doesn’t know which side to poke a man with anyway. He’ll live. But perhaps I should…”

Chuckling some more and making some more comments to himself about valerian steel, the smith takes up his hammer and tongs and begins to reheat the blade. Soon shots of steel on steel are heard once again as he goes back to work to correct his mistakes.

Today has been a good day