Immaculate
Copyright© 2025 by Daelyx Len Auphydas
Chapter 11: Brute
“Really? You’re still here?” Gatrick sounds both disappointed and surprised. “I really would have thought you’d have gotten bored and run back home by now.” There is a little bit of hopeful tone in Gatrick’s voice as he suggests that, but Alunya just perks up as he returns.
“Heya! I’m still learning all about your work, it seems really impressive!” Alunya states, acting as though he hadn’t caught onto the obvious aggression in Gatrick’s voice in hopes that he would just drop it.
“Ugh...” Gatricks eye twitches as he gazes at Alunya, as if debating whether to do something drastic. After a moment of contemplation he just sighs. “If you want to stick around, you’re going to make yourself useful. Lyrin, go fetch me a trough of water with your new ‘friend’. Nathi from up the hill needs a new scythe, apparently the corrosion on his old one has gotten so bad that the blade has thinned down from all the sharpening it needs.” Gatrick demands.
Alunya suppresses a squeal of victory with some effort. This was even better than he expected, not only would he get to watch Gatrick work but he’d even get to help out! “Aye-aye, sir, leave it to us!” Alunya salutes Gatrick.
Alunya is able to follow Lyrin without any further instruction to where the trough was, remembering where it was kept.
“Are you really going to stay...?” Lyrin asks Alunya once they were out of earshot of Gatrick.
Alunya pokes Lyrin in the cheek with his free hand and winks at him. “Of course, silly! How else am I supposed to learn how he makes things? He’s the only coppersmith in the village, after all.” Alunya pauses momentarily to think. “Um, present company excluded, I guess.”
Lyrin looks down and away. “Mhm ... And what a shame that is...” He sighs and leans over with Alunya to fill up the trough with water from the river, just behind Gatrick’s house. “Not that I don’t appreciate the company. Father’s less likely to act up if someone else is around.”
The two boys trot back with the trough, to find Gatrick currently dumping a bag of charcoal into the smelter and grunting. “Lyrin, start up the bellows.” Gatrick demands, before turning to look at Alunya, a small amount of surprise that he was still present. “ ... You think you can stoke the fire, brat?” Alunya nods emphatically.
Wow, I didn’t think he would be this lazy. Alunya thinks to himself. Not that he was complaining- if anything it was convenient, since it gave him a chance to learn. Thankfully Lyrin had instructed him somewhat in how this worked before, so he is able to get the fire going inside the bloomery. The heat coming out from the front once the fire got going was intense enough that even Alunya had to keep some distance, laying down in front of the bloomery to stare into the intense flames. They are certainly brighter and more vibrant than the fireplace back at home, bathing the entire inside of the bloomery in a vivid orange light.
Meanwhile, Gatrick pounds a bit of copper scrap, including the corroded old scythe blade he was replacing, into pieces that would fit in the crucible, a ceramic cup that he held with tongs. Alunya watches him place it into the fire. It’s a bit hard to see inside the crucible- if Alunya holds his head at a precise angle, he can just about see past the lip of the crucible through the narrow aperture that provided access inside the bloomery.
Alunya isn’t quite sure what to expect; he’d never seen anything melting in real time after all. But he was to be disappointed when Gatrick got up and headed back inside. “Huh? Why is he leaving?” Alunya asks Lyrin as he follows his father inside.
Lyrin pauses for a moment to explain to Alunya. “Oh, the copper will take a while to melt. Think about how long it takes to cook a hunk of meat, and how much longer it would take to heat it up a dozen times hotter.”
Alunya frowns slightly in disappointment. Watching the copper melt in real time sounded fun. But he doesn’t want to miss whatever was going on inside, so he hurries after the two coppersmiths, wheeling around the corner and skidding to a halt in the entryway to close the door behind him. As he hops back to the forge where Gatrick was settling down, Gatrick was shouting at his son who was sprawled out on the floor, cowering away from him.
“No you daft guanaco! I said the scythe ingot, not the knife ingot. You’ve been living here your whole life and you still don’t know where things are kept?” Gatrick storms over to the storage next to the forge, replacing the ingot in his hands with another, almost imperceptibly larger replacement.
Alunya rushes over to Lyrin and helps him back up to his feet while Gatrick was going back to the forge. “Oh no! Did you trip, are you alright?” Alunya asks, noting a brand new bruise below his eye. Lyrin was tearing up, but held it in, putting his hand over his eye.
“ ... Yeah, tripped, lets go with that.” Lyrin utters.
“Enough, go get a fresh bag of charcoal for the forge.” Gatrick demands, settling down by the anvil. Alunya glares over at him. You’re on thin ice, mister. Your work might be really cool, but that doesn’t mean you can just act like a jerk all the time. Alunya pats Lyrin on the back, as Lyrin quickly rushes to go find a bag of fuel to start a fire.
Gatrick stares at Alunya for a long moment. “You know how to work the bellows?” Gatrick asks. Alunya nods; The bellows for the furnaces are just a larger version of the fire pistons used for starting fires, and are rather simple to use. Now we’re getting somewhere, I’ll get to actually help him make something! Alunya smiles eagerly.
“Mhm ... I guess you can stay as long as you can pump the bellows. Lyrin! Get in here with the charcoal and break them up, I want to get a move on!” Gatrick shouts out.
Alunya helps break up some of the charcoal with a couple axes while Gatrick just watches. Good thing he’s so lazy, or I probably wouldn’t even get to stay here. Alunya giggles to himself. Before long, Gatrick barks for Alunya to man the bellows instead, while Lyrin keeps breaking up chunks of charcoal, and Gatrick himself dumps small pellets of charcoal into the furnace. It takes a couple strokes of the piston bellows before the fire starts, the rush of compressed air igniting the charcoals in a bright flash.
Alunya watches on enthralled as Gatrick begins his work, heating the ingot in the furnace, and then begins striking it with his hammer; a misshapen lump of copper with one flat end, placed on a short oak handle. Alunya casually wonders how the hammer didn’t bend when he struck the ingot beneath it.
Pumping the bellows is hard work, but Alunya quickly gets into a rhythm with it. Just like with the smaller fire piston, the trick was to slam it shut as quickly as possible to keep pouring more hot air into the fire, if you did it slower then it wouldn’t produce as much heat. Soon enough the entire room felt hot, and sparks flew both from the coals in the furnace and Gatrick hammering the copper workpiece on his anvil- a cylindrical boulder of solid basalt with a flat top, convenient for hammering on.
Alunya grunts with effort. The piston was tiring to work, but at the same time it was somewhat exciting to him; Every time he snaps it shut, he can feel the pulse of heat and sparks in the furnace as the coals are exposed to a new burst of air. The furnace is not nearly as well insulated as the smelter, so it doesn’t get as hot, but instead the heat spills out around the room. The charcoal in the air and on his skin makes Alunya itch, but Alunya resists the urge to scratch with some effort. He had to make sure he kept pumping the bellows well, so that Gatrick wouldn’t kick him out.
As the ingot heats up, to Alunya’s surprise it glows with the heat just like the coals. With every stroke of the hammer, its form changes, the rectangular ingot becoming flattened and elongated, while Gatrick sometimes would use the tongs to place the ‘edge’ against the anvil and hammer it in, making the curved shape of the blade. To keep it all in one piece, the scythe blade was in an arc, which would later be transfixed parallel to the handle, simply curving forwards to form the characteristic scythe shape. And then, of course, he had to place it flat against the anvil again to flatten out the piece of metal once more.
When Gatrick finally tells Alunya that he can stop pumping the bellows, Alunya’s eyes and arms are burning, both from the smoke and coal in the air and the muscular strain in his arms. But even so, his eyes gleam looking down at the product of Gatrick’s work, the curved scythe blade, still glowing a dull orange-red. I helped make that! Alunya grins with pride, even though he hadn’t actually hammered it himself he still was involved.
“I guess even a bastard can put in some good work now and then.” Gatrick grunts, reluctantly. “You hear that, Lyrin? If this scrawny kid can pump the bellows that long, what excuse do you have?” Gatrick grumbles, before dipping the blade in the trough of water by the forge, releasing the heat in a great hiss of steam.
Alunya sighs and leans back, his tired arms relieved from the break. Lyrin is similarly tired, having been cutting up pellets of charcoal for the flame. But the work is not done yet, as Gatrick takes the blade, little more than a flattened, curved piece of copper at the moment, and places it on the grindstone. There isn’t much in the way of additional help needed here, so Lyrin starts cleaning the area around the forge without prompting. The inner side of the scythe blade is ground down to hone it to a fine edge, by placing it against a cylindrical mass of gritty rock and spinning it with a foot pedal. The sparks fly everywhere; one singes Alunya’s hand, and he resists yelping out with some difficulty.
At least Alunya is free to sit around and watch as Gatrick performs the final touches of more precision work, using an awl to pierce holes in the tang where the blade would later be transfixed to a pole. But before Gatrick can finish, he pauses in his work to look up at the two kids.
“Go check the copper.” Was the only thing he says, before dismissively going back to work.
Alunya frowns slightly in disappointment-he had hoped he would get to stay long enough to see the blade actually be completely finished, so he would have been there start to end. But, at least he’d get to see what the molten copper was like. So he jumps up to his feet and follows Lyrin outside.
It’s starting to get colder, a welcome change from the blazing heat inside the smithy, though it is still quite hot in front of the smelter. Lyrin fetches the tongs and cautiously lifts then pulls the crucible out of the smelter. Alunya gapes in interest at the contents; Molten copper, brighter than the scythe blade had been when heated.