bashing it flat with big hammers. The trick'll be to work it down to the right thickness before all the heat goes out of it. In case we don't, and it's a fair bet we won't manage it all in one pass, we'll have to get it hot again on that forge over there. It's awkward because the blooms are heavy; we've got the rollers to make it a bit easier, but it's still a fair amount of heavy work.' He realized he was chattering, and fell silent. Valens nodded, and said nothing. He seemed preoccupied, and he was too far away to feel the heat.
The flames turned yellow. Daurenja was the first to notice. He pointed and yelled, as though he'd seen a miracle-for the Duke's benefit, perhaps. Ziani nodded. It would be as well to let the melt sweat for a while.
'What's that man jumping up and down for?' Valens asked.
'He's letting me know the flames have changed color. That's my assistant, the man we were talking about a while ago.'
'Oh, him.' Valens frowned. 'Excitable sort, isn't he?'
Ziani hesitated. 'He's a first-rate craftsman,' he replied, 'and he certainly knows how to make himself useful.'
'Fine. Didn't you say the change in color means it's ready?'
'I'll give it a little longer,' Ziani said. 'It needs a chance to sweat out the rubbish. If it's not clean, you can get brittle spots that'll crack when you hammer it, and that's a whole plate wasted. Well, that's not strictly true, you can heat it up and weld it, but that's more time and effort.' Telling him far more than he wanted to know; a sign of nerves, or maybe he felt an urge to impress, because the Duke was standing so still and quiet. 'Right, that's long enough,' he said, though it wasn't. 'Let's have the gate open and see what we've got.'
Someone tugged on the wire, and the clay bung popped out. Half a heartbeat later, a dribble as bright as the sun nuzzled its way out of the pipe, like the nose of a sniffing mouse; it hesitated, then came on with a rush; stopped as if wary, then began to gush. It was impossible to see because of the dazzling white light-like looking at an angel, Ziani thought suddenly, or how he'd heard some people describe the onset of death, when they'd been on the verge of it. Valens winced and looked away.
'There we go,' Ziani said.
The sand it flooded out onto crackled and popped, and a thin cloud of steam lifted and hung over it like a canopy. Ziani fancied he could see the heat in it moving about, vague dark flickers inside the searing brightness. It had the oily sheen of the melt. Someone approached it with a long stick, presumably to see if it had started to set cold. Ziani yelled at him to stay away.
'When it's this hot it'll take all the skin off your face if you get too close,' he explained. 'A puddle that size ought to stay white hot for a good long while.'
Valens nodded. 'Well, your furnace seems to work,' he said. 'What happens now?'
'Nothing, for a minute or two. Soon as it's cooled down enough to be moved, the real work starts. Talking of which,' he added, and turned round to give the signal to the smiths to light the forge fire. 'Shouldn't be long now,' he said, and he realized he was making it sound as though the delay was somehow his own fault.
The laborers and most of the smiths were closing in, picking up tools. Daurenja, swathed in wet cloth, sidled forward like a nervous fencer and prodded the shining mass with a long poker.
'Ready,' he shouted.
'Here goes,' Ziani said, and the laborers stepped forward. They had long poles with hooks on, like boathooks. 'They've got to drag the bloom-that's the puddle of hot iron-onto the logs. The awkward part is lifting it off the logs onto the anvil. That thing weighs over three hundred pounds, even after all the waste's been fluxed out in the furnace.'
As soon as the bloom hit the rollers they began to smoke, as the dried bark of the logs caught fire. They did their job well enough, nevertheless, and it wasn't long before the bloom lay at the base of the big anvil, glowing like a captive star. Three men on one side drove steel bars under it and levered it up on its edge; three more men laid the ends of longer, heavier bars under it, then stepped back smartly as the levers were drawn out and the process was repeated on the other side. That done, men crowded round to pick up the bars and lift the bloom, like pallbearers raising a coffin. Four smiths with long hooks teased it carefully onto the anvil and jumped out of the way as their colleagues stepped in with sledgehammers.
The first blow shot out a cloud of white sparks-drops of still-molten metal, Ziani explained, scattered by the force of the hammer. A dozen smiths were striking in turn, timing their blows so that there was no gap between them. The sound was like the pattering of rain, the chiming of bells, the crash of weapons on armor. To begin with, it seemed as though they were having no effect at all. As Valens watched, however, the bloom gradually began to squeeze out at the edges, gradual as the minute-hand of a clock but constantly moving, like the flow of a very thick liquid. With each strike, the target area dimmed a little. The blinding white was starting to stain yellow, like snow made dirty, and the smiths were straining to strike harder. They were working in a spiral, starting at the edges and working inward to the center, then back out again, the same pattern in reverse. Each blow slightly overlapped each other, and as the hammer lifted, a vague blur of shadow appeared in the metal and faded, like a frown. Occasionally there was a crack and a sizzle, as sweat from someone's forehead landed on the surface. All twelve of the smiths were wringing wet, as though they'd been out in the rain.
'We're losing the heat,' Ziani said, raising his voice over the incessant pecking clang of the hammers. 'Once it drops from orange to red it's not safe to work it. That means it's got to go in the other fire.'
Valens was frowning. 'You're really going to bash it down to a sixteenth of an inch?' he said.
Ziani nodded, noticing that although Valens had hardly raised his voice at all, he could hear him quite clearly through the hammering. 'As it spreads out, we can support the edges on the smaller anvils and work it on them,' he shouted. 'It'll be awkward, though, keeping the thickness consistent. We'll need to keep shifting it around so the bit we're working on stays directly over the anvil face. At the ordnance factory we had rollers and jigs and derricks to handle the weight, but of course we haven't got the time or the facilities for a setup like that.'
Valens yawned. 'But it's all going to plan, is it?' he asked. 'You're pleased with how it's working out?'
He's had enough, Ziani thought, he wants to go away and do something else. 'All fine so far,' he said.
'Splendid,' Valens said, and yawned again. 'In that case, I guess you've proved your point. I'll want to see your accounts, of course, but in principle, yes, you carry on. Let me know from time to time how you're doing; if you need anything, see Carausius. I've told him this project's got priority.' He fell silent and stared at the gradually flattening bloom for a moment. 'You've done well,' he said at last. 'I've got no idea whether this'll help us fight off the Mezentines, but you seem to me to be making a good job of it. Sorry, but I've got to go now. That racket's giving me a headache.'
That racket, Ziani thought; that racket's the sound of the trial you asked for, the miracle you want me to achieve for you. But it didn't matter. 'Thank you for-' he started to say, but Valens nodded, smiled tightly, and walked quickly away, the courtiers scrambling behind him like chicks following a broody hen.
It was dark by the time the first full sheet was finished. It was horrible, no other word for it. Ziani didn't need his calipers to know that the thickness varied wildly, from a sixteenth up to a full eighth in places. But three such sheets, riveted to a frame or simply nailed to boards, would protect a wagon against fire, axes and arrows. Left unsupported at the top, it'd be too flexible to climb over or bear the weight of a ladder. Against cavalry, it'd be as effective as a stone wall. It was an affront to everything he believed in, but it was good enough; and besides, the others would be better. This was simply a demonstration, put on for the benefit of a man who hadn't even stayed to see it, because the ringing of the hammers made his head hurt. That didn't matter either.
'We did it, then.' Daurenja's voice in his ear; he didn't bother to look round. There were times when he wondered whether Daurenja was actually there at all, or whether there was just a voice he could hear. 'I trust the Duke was impressed.'
'Impressed enough,' Ziani replied (it was a word he was coming to hate). He took a deep breath, as though about to confess a mortal sin. 'Thanks to you, mostly,' he said. 'You've been a great help.'
'Me?' Genuine surprise. 'I just did as you told me.'
'Yes.' Trying to find words to talk to him was getting harder all the time. 'Just what I needed. I owe you a favor.'
'Please, think nothing of it.'
There were stories he'd heard when he was a boy, about the demons who tempted fools. Apparently they were the spirits of foxes-Ziani had never seen a fox until he ran away from Mezentia-who possessed human bodies, and they attached themselves to weak, ambitious men and gave them anything they wanted, in return for some unspecified future favor, which turned out to be the victim's body. When the process was complete, the fox simply
