Chapter 11

Waking the boys up was harder yet but once they were reminded of the sword under their bed they hurried.

They went to get the forging crew and all of them went to eat. If a mirror had been handy I knew that all of us would look dirty. I got Jón and Forni to at least clean their faces and hands and like all boys they wondered why.

Breakfast was quick and the boys smelt. The women said nothing but then again they were no bed of roses either. Dagmar had her happy smile and I wondered what she was doing to her guest to keep her this way.

The entire crew made a sort of procession down the smith's forge. Yngvi was not happy to see us and let it show. Jón was in command and he asked, "May I use your grindstone. I have some tools for you to examine."

"Go ahead. I wonder what tools you could possibly show me?"

Sander turned the stone and Jón sharpened all of the chisels and then the other tools. He turned around and the smith was there to see what he had.

Jón simply said, "Try these three chisels."

"I can see that they are too light now. They will not last as long as mine."

"Do you want to make a wager?"

"One of my silver coins against what it will buy in your iron."

"We have a deal."

When the next piece of hot metal came out of the forge the chisel was used for some small cuts. Yngvi looked at the blade and frowned. "What did you do to the blade?"

"I made it hard. This blade has to be kept cool. That means that you have to quench it every few cuts or switch to another chisel. Heat can destroy the edge of the blade and turn it soft."

"What do I do to repair it?"

I assumed, and I guess Jón did to, that he meant the edge. Jón said, "Heat it to red and quench it quickly in cold water. The quicker it cools the better."

Yngvi didn't say much but used the other chisels to make cuts in the metal too.

Jón said with a smile, "The chisels work on cold metal too. Try it."

"What?"

"Try it on cold metal."

This was a challenge and Yngvi found some scrap and used his biggest hammer to cut a thin layer off the iron. "This cannot be."

"Oh, but it is." Jón walked forward with just a file now and put his right hand on the scrap and used the left hand to smooth out some of the rough spots.

The smith took the file as soon as it was offered and examined the tool. "How is this done."

"I used my chisels to cut those edges then hardened the metal. Surely a smith that knows everything would know how to do that."

"This is new."

"I said that before but you didn't believe me. The tools you have are not even the best. They could be made much better but there was little time and equipment."

"What do you need?"

"I will tell you after. I was going to tell you before but you didn't want to hear. Today I will just offer six files and six chisels. I will accept your iron and more charcoal. I even brought back your two sacks."

"How much iron do you want for them?"

"I want a great deal more than last time." Yngvi started to turn red and Jón said, "I know how to make iron the way you do. If you want I will tell you all the details. I need a lot of iron and I need help to make what I need. You can help me and I will tell you the secrets but they will also have to be told to the other smiths."

"Why? My iron is better."

"We are at war. We need more iron than you believe. It needs to be changed into steel as I have done then it needs to be hardened. The people of this city and all of the land my father governs needs this information. With good weapons and tools we can defeat our enemies much easier."

Jón added, "We need hundreds of new swords not a few. We need this metal used for our arrowheads. It will go through Roman and Gallic armour. Our swords will cut through the same armour with ease."

"That is easy to say without proof."

"Another silver against another silver's worth of iron?"

The smith was unsure but all his apprentices were listening as well as two customers. "It is a wager."

Jón said, "Find some suitable armour. I will sharpen my sword." He opened one of the leather sacks and brought out the larger blade.

Suiting words to actions the sword was cleaned of scale as good as it could be then rubbed against some granite to put a rough polish on it. This took a half hour then the blade was sharpened on the rotating stone. This was done slowly and with water to keep the blade cool. A piece of wood was split for a temporary handle and wet leather was used to securely hold it to the shaft.

The newly sharpened blade was then polished on a softer stone to abrade the harsher marks made by the first rotating stone. The edge was now very sharp but not enough to shave the hair from his arm yet. Jón worked harder at this now to get the final edge to do this task.

A crowd had formed over time and the smith was not making any profit from this. When Jón was done, he handed the handle of the sword to the smith. The man examined it and said, "It is rough."

"It takes time to make a blade look beautiful. If you will run the blade along your arm you will find that it is sharp enough to cut the hair."

The man did this and looked at Jón in surprise. Only his best bronze tools would do this.

Jón said, "Will you swing it for our test?"

"Me?"

"I am a young man and just up from my sickbed. You are like our warriors in strength. Swing with what you think is proper and we will all see how the blade behaves in the hands of man that could adequately use it."

The smith didn't say anything but held the sword and swung it to get the feel. Everybody quickly backed up to give him room. A smile came over his face as he swung as if remembering his earlier days. In a moment he stopped and said, "I will do it even if it is too light."

He turned and approached the piece of heavy bronze armour. It was supported but a pile of old pieces of leather on a section of tree trunk. He put his sword in position and made a few practice swings as if he were the king's headsman.

The swing came swiftly and sure. It cut through the armour and then through the leather to embed itself in the wood. Everybody moved closer to see what had happened and there were even gasps. Apparently the spectators knew a good sword when they saw it.

When the sword was wiggled free Jón said, "Put the armour against a beam and stab as if a Roman is wearing it."

Yngvi didn't bother to question this but hung it from a nail on a wall and stuffed the leather behind it as if this would represent a man. Yngvi moved the sword in a thrusting fashion and unerringly ran it against the centre of the remaining piece of armour. Yngvi was a fair sized man and the sword went through the armour, leather and the wood wall to the hilt.

The gasps now were even louder than before.

Yngvi tried to pull the blade free and had to use his foot to hold the armour to the wall as he pulled. Once out the man looked at the point and at the edge that had cut the armour.

In a moment Jón got the blade back and walked to the anvil and swung the blade as he did last night. Again it bounced back. There had been a small bend but now it had been corrected by a bend the other way.

Jón said, "The blade is strong too."

The crowd had been quiet and the blade handed back to the smith.

"This is a marvellous blade. It needs a lot of work to make it beautiful."

Jón said, "That is true. I can make steel but you make things of beauty. Let's have a talk to discuss this steel?"

Jón and Forni were invited into the smith's home and the wife came in to argue but quieted as she saw that the king's only son was here.

Yngvi asked, "What do you want for that blade and for the other tools you offered me?"

"I will ask some questions first if I may. How much iron could you produce, if you gathered iron for four weeks without having to hunt or prepare food? This would include all your apprentices helping you. Charcoal could be produced by others."

"You want that much?"

"I simply asked a question. I want to know how much iron could be found and then turned into the metal you produce."

"Perhaps as much as ten talents a day but that is if we are lucky at finding the ore." A talent was around twenty five kilos so this was two hundred and fifty of the old kilos a day. Twenty eight days would give seven tonnes. He may be bragging. His men would be very tired as the days progressed.

"Is the area you get your ore a secret?"

"No, all the smiths get their iron there."

"I will offer you six files, six chisels and the sword for twenty talents of your finest iron and four talents of charcoal." Again the man was getting red and Jón continued, "I will work with you in your forge. I will show you how to make the crude steel. One of the secrets is that it has to be hammered out and folded many times. This gets rid of the slag and mixes the ingredients of the iron much better. I will then tell you how to make my steel harder with charcoal and clay.

"We will make swords for our men. I will assist as best I can and I will also get to make with your iron six swords for my own use. One will be similar to the one you have. One will have much more iron and this will go to my father. He may or may not use it in battle but it will be good steel. Two more blades will be similar to the one you will get but longer and two will be shorter. You will get to see everything I do and I will not keep secrets from you."

"Six swords?"

"Six swords do not take that much iron. They do take a lot of charcoal though. I have made a stone roof and walls around my forge to keep the heat in. If we use my steel for saws then we can cut down some of the larger and perhaps dead trees and make charcoal with them."

"Six swords?"

"Six swords, twenty talents of iron and four talents of charcoal."

The deal wasn't settled that well and we had to argue over a lot of matters. I brought up the two silvers worth of iron only after we had reached the deal I wanted.

We took the rest of our products back as well as some fine brass wire made by hand and some powdered abrasive. Yngvi had seen the k-bar knife and had to hold it in his hands. At my insistence he tapped the side on his anvil and instead of a dull sound he heard the high pitch of a hard metal. When this was explained he had to smile.

After the knife was roughly ground we headed back to the castle. We would have to go back later with a cart to pick up more iron and all the excess charcoal the smith had.

Dina, Aagt and Dolf tried to get on the side of Jón not occupied by Forni. Dolf was the one to make it but Jón was polite to the two girls too. They talked of what interested kids and in this case it was the sword.

The three adults too were asked their opinions but they wanted to know about the deal Jón had swung for more supplies. He relented and gave the details and the children listened intently.

Dina asked, "Are you going to work at the other forge then?"

"That will be in a few days. The smith has to get more iron and a lot more charcoal. His apprentices are going to have to work out in the field gathering what he needs. I would like to go for a day just to see what it is like."

"Digging rocks?"

"Yes then you know what to look for. Anyway all of you are going to be busy. We have more steel to make and I have to produce some different types of tools. We have to make steel hammers and special chisels that will cut through rock. We need better punches made as well as drill bits. I would like to make a tool for making needles. In fact I have to make a great deal of tools."

"Why?" Dina asked. "You only need swords and maybe knives."

"That is to start but we need many more weapons and they require me to make tools to make them."

"Like what?"

"How about some girls and boys that learn so much that they can go out and get men to build thousands of swords. Some girls and boys could go out and show farmers how to use a better plough that will make their crops grow better. Other girls or boys may go out with the information from a potter and bring back clay. One day we will find the right one and it will be so strong that we can heat iron so hot that it will run like water but the clay will not melt or fall apart.

"Others will look for what we need and then come back with the information. If you are able to read and write then you can send somebody else back and we will know what is happening. When we find what we need, we will be stronger than the Romans and the Gauls. We can protect our families and sit on a comfortable chair with grandchildren on our laps. We would know that the babies would not have to fight a war because we would be so strong that nobody would dare threaten us."

The children had their mouths open and they closed them when Jón was finished. Dolf said, "You want us to hunt for what you need?"

"Only when you are trained. This will take years but it's a start. You make steel and weapons today and something else later."

Jón recited what he had seen in my memory and talked of a far future where things looked good but weren't. If people had no problems then they would invent them. The twenty first century may be a fantastic place if we had not had to go through the Dark and the Middle Ages just rediscovering what Rome already had now.

We shifted course on the way back and entered the main gate. Modius got up on his one leg and handed Jón the four swords. "Are these what you wanted?"

I relayed the information to Jón and he mentioned about some of the finer details that had not been covered. He did say, "These are as I asked though. I will accept them gladly."

Modius said, "Your changes would be easy to do. Please wait. It will only take a few minutes." The man passed the swords around to his friends and he leaned on the wall and cut the smaller details that were not mentioned earlier.

The man was as good as his word and the wood swords were done in two minutes. They were passed to Modius and he placed them into Jón's arms.

"Is that suitable?"

"They were done very well. Would you be interested in putting a special handle on my knife? It has to be done with oak and two bronze rivets."

"Do you have the knife?"

Jón produced the k-bar and the men all were interested in it. Modius asked, "Who made this?"

"We all did. It was my idea but it was done by all of us. The knife has to be ground and polished before any handle can be attached."

Modius said, "I would be honoured to put a handle on a weapon like this."

"We are making more knives. The knives I have seen have almost been decorative. They were thin and difficult to hold in a fight. I need a heavy handle to fit the hand of a man that is fighting. Sweat and blood may be running down his arm and his hand weak. The knife has to be the best for the man to survive."

Jón must have been talking passionately because Modius didn't reply right away. When he did he said, "We are your men. We will do our best."

Jón reached out and up to Modius' shoulder and said, "I will accept that. Have you eaten today?"

"The king has been generous."

"Perhaps he will be more so."

When we got back to the forge, we started all over again but we had to hire a stable hand to take a cart to pick up our iron and charcoal. Wood was called for and this time many people were delivering to us until we had a very large pile. None of it was dry so it was difficult to get the heat we needed.

After our meal we went back to work. The iron had arrived and it was heated in the forge, but we kept the fire small. We took turns hitting the metal until it was flat and thin. This time it would thinner than what we had received from the smith the first time. There would be more area to pick up carbon and possibly no need for extra case hardening.

Three more jars and lids were brought in and all of them were filled and sealed with damp clay. The stones were rearranged to cover a larger area and more were added. The temperature rose slowly to keep the containers from cracking. The pumping of the billows had been too energetic and I knew that in a while everybody would be tired.

Sander put his children to sleep and he got ready because he and his wife would take the night shift.

The next morning Forni and I had a bath after our breakfast. Again this was done in two shifts to keep the forge hot. The bath was just off the kitchen with Helga keeping this our secret. Bath time was usually quite erotic lately and I just wanted to get clean though the two boys thought differently. I looked around the kitchen again and saw how everything so much easier with some simple tools that I knew about. It was just a bit closer with our steel being made.

To move along quicker Modius was given the knife blank and told, "It is probably better for you to polish this knife but I will sharpen it. The way I want is not the way you have seen it done before." I pointed out the features and how they would be continued until they met at the edge. "A guard has to be added yet but it should slip over the handle easily enough."

"You are trusting me with this knife?"

"Why not? You may be a Roman, and Romans can be honourable too. If your mind works a certain way then you can look to find ways of improving this construction. Making one may be a matter of art and love but making a thousand is work."

"I will see what I can do."

At the forge, I had the thin brass wire put on a piece of wood shaped like a bow. The needles we made were strung on this thin strand. Olive oil was put on the strand and some of the fine abrasive. It was the job of the children to move this around. It could just as easily been done by the wind but I wanted to get this job done.

There was a half kilo of steel left and we tried our hand at making more needles and some turned out to be very short. They were mistakes that could be remedied. My words about feeding the people reminded me about fishing. We made wire and then put an eye at one end and barbed the other before sharpening the end to a blunt point. These were all bent and then put on charcoal covered clay to bake.

Fishhooks were not new but they didn't have an eye and they were not barbed. A horse hair was labouriously wrapped around the shank the way some snelled hooks were in my day.

I thought of getting into lures but limited it to making some treble hooks. While I was at it I tried bobby pins, diaper pins. Straight pins would have to wait until I got a press strong enough to hold them while their heads were peened over.

Before we knew it, it was time for lunch. On impulse Jón decided that he liked clean children. I did too but had not mentioned it at all. He could probably smell the others much more than he could smell Forni or himself. The bath tub that was a real tub was carried to the forge. Heat that would have escaped otherwise was captured by iron pots.

Geiri started first and washed her two youngsters and they liked to sit in the shallow water and play. I didn't think their mother had bathed them before. The rest looked on and it was nice to see the children play because they were not rushed.

Dina was not shy about getting in next. I took the controls and washed her hair and then her body. I used a cloth and stayed away from any erogenous areas. She had to do those herself. Her breasts were larger than Aagt's and I didn't think she had really started puberty yet. She seemed much more a serious child than a young adult. I tried to think of my own daughters when they were young and this helped me compensate for Jón's hormone charged body.

Aagt was next. She was starting to develop breasts. She was easier to deal with because she happened to look like one of my daughters when she was Asgt's age.

The boys claimed to not need a bath but had to get one on principle because the girls did. I still washed their hair and looked for vermin. Fleas were the least of our problem and the cause of the Black Death and probably many other plagues too.

The children ran around naked while Geiri washed their clothes in the tub with the soap I insisted she use. After a while a rope was strung up and the clothes put on it to dry. This made feeding the fire difficult.

The small articles came out of the fire and immediately into some water. Some of the hooks were too hard and broke when I put some pressure on them. Others seemed to be ok and went for final sharpening.

The first batch of needles didn't catch or cut the thread so the new batch were put in their place. Aagt took them and gently rubbed them against a smooth stone to hone their edges and get rid of any rough edges around the eyes.

The girl came up to Jón and asked, "What about these odd needles? How do I sharpen them?"

He said, "They are for the bootmaker. The blunt part goes into a wood handle and the other end gets sharpened. He can push this part way through the leather to make a stitch."

"My mother used a needle to go all the way through."

"This type can use two needles. This goes through the leather and another just goes through the loop in the thread. He just makes a hole in the leather now and pushes a thread through. It's slow. To do it even better I can put a spool of thread inside a hollow handle to keep it from getting in the way."

"That is nice of you. Are you always so nice?"

I could feel a lot of embarrassment but he said, "I was not very nice before but after my accident I found that I had to change. It feels better to be helping people than to make fun of them. I don't even mind washing some girl's hair."

Now Aagt blushed and a small smile came out. "I like being washed by you. My mother used to do it all the time."

Jón said, "We have to help each other more. A man or a woman can only do so much. We are at war now and a little help now and again could mean the difference between winning or either dying or being a slave."

The smile had left Aagt's face. She nodded her head and turned back to complete her tasks.

Aagt was a nice girl and I hoped there was a way to allow her to grow in our academy without her losing her childlike qualities. Then again all of us had to grow up.

I looked at her working and thought of my own past. I had found an old straight razor once and bought it to see how it worked. This meant I had to find a stone to sharpen it and a leather strop to get all the small imperfections pointing in one direction. A good wooden wheel with a piece of leather glued on could work for edges that had to be done with finesse like a needle or a brand new sword.

I sent Jón over to see the scrap wood we had dug out and after I explained what I wanted, he picked out a half dozen pieces of wood on his own. "How are these?"

"They look good to me. They are all oak or maple. We need to borrow Fálki's saw and use the wood lathe. The men out front could work this device if they try together."

"Can we make one that doesn't need beams sticking in the floor?"

"Sure but it will be more work. We used a quick and dirty method." I constructed a wood lathe in my mind with a bed and a movable tailstock. The trouble came when I wanted to secure the tailstock from moving. I had no bolt. A thick wooden peg with a hole through it could be used with a tapered wooden pin to wedge it so it would not move. This could be done all with a saw but a plane would be good to finish this off.

This got me onto another topic because I had seen planes that were made of maple that had only one metal part. The blade was wedged into position with a similar wood peg.