The Master Blacksmith (2)
"...You really do hold a grudge, don't you?"
I marveled at Lucian. The Demon Realm belonged to the demons, and he hadn't refused so much as a commission to pick flowers there. That was not an idea a person in his right mind would come up with.
"'Nothing is impossible' happens to be my company's motto."
"I see... Then where is my uncle now?"
"Ashford Barony. Five days north by horseback. He keeps a smithy in the baronial seat, so you shouldn't have trouble finding him."
"A smithy, in the baronial seat? The head of House Rain?"
"Apparently no one there knows Lord Ruka by sight. By the way, that is a very interesting bracelet you're wearing."
"Picked it up off the road."
"...It doesn't look like the sort of item that lies around on roads, but I'll pretend I didn't see it."
Lucian flashed a grin.
Truly, the man's eye was far too sharp. Someday I would have to look seriously into just what his Awoken Ability was.
It seemed I would have to make the trip to Ruka alone. With the family's shame tangled up in it, I couldn't very well bring my troupe members along. And since he hadn't sent me so much as a single word in all these years, I doubted I'd be getting a warm reception.
Ashford Barony had three iron mines. Every so often a lump of Oradium turned up in the veins, so miners chasing a fortune had gathered from all over, and a sizable town had grown up around the diggings.
It was only natural for blacksmiths to settle in a hub of the iron trade. And wherever smiths gathered, adventurers and mercenaries were sure to follow.
Ssssssss... A young man plunged a red-hot rod of metal into the water. Scalding droplets spat and hissed into the air, and thick tendons stood out along his forearms where he gripped the tongs.
"Ruka!"
The young man called Ruka set down his tongs and looked up. Two knights in steel plate, armed with swords, were stepping into the smithy.
"Is my sword ready yet?"
"Not yet. Give me three more days." Ruka answered, wiping the sweat from his brow.
"I'm not rushing you. Take as much time as you need. Your work is the finest in Ashford."
They were knights of the Baron of Ashford. With the quality of their equipment tied directly to their lives, they chose their smiths with great care.
"Or... we could just buy one of the swords you've already finished." One of the knights spoke, his eyes fixed hungrily on the blade hanging from the side wall.
"That one is not for sale." Ruka said flatly.
"Not for sale? You mean it's just for show?" For a display piece, the sword on the wall had a remarkably plain design. If it had been hung there to advertise his craft, he could have put up something far finer.
"That's right. Was there anything else?"
"We'd like some repairs as well. The armor and shield are badly mangled."
"Set them down on that table."
The knights unbuckled the armor and shield and laid them on the empty workbench. The gear had caved in under the impact, its surface scored with five distinct claw marks.
Ruka glanced over the armor, and an odd light entered his eyes.
"Not the usual quarry, I see."
"You're right. It was a 'Skuldred.' If we hadn't been wearing armor you made, it would have shredded every one of us."
"A Grade 4 monster, prowling this close to Ashford?"
"Don't even get me started, Ruka. Things have been a complete mess lately."
Ruka tipped his chin, as if to say go on.
"You know about the incident that set the Duke off a while back? He flew completely off the handle and banished Lord Chris to Stormrock Fortress. Word is that tore a hole in the northern defenses. High-grade monsters keep crawling down from up there."
He already knew things had turned ugly; these were not the first knights to arrive with repair requests. What drew Ruka's reaction was something else entirely.
"...What do you mean, Chris was banished?"
Ruka had attached no title to the name. His tone was so natural that the knights never even noticed he'd dropped the honorific.
"You really don't care about anything outside the forge, do you? What good are you to anyone if you have no idea how the world turns? This is the sort of thing that affects business too."
"Why was Chris banished?"
"They say he crossed blades with Lord Mabel. Sounds like Lord Mabel caught hell for it as well."
"And thanks to that, Lord Iden has been soaking up all the attention. People whisper that he's the Duke's favorite, that he's already been chosen as the next Duke. Every sort of talk you can imagine."
"Iden has grown that far?"
"You truly know nothing, huh?"
"I don't. I stand at the forge all day."
"Lord Chris used to be the leading candidate for the next Duke. His character leaves much to be desired, but in skill he was second to none. That's changed now, though. People are saying more and more openly that Lord Iden has overtaken him in skill as well. The tale of him slaying a flame giant at twelve is famous enough, and didn't he just bring down a Demon Viscount recently?"
"Come on, man, you're leaving out the part where he rode a magma dragon leaping across the archipelago. The central lot sneered at him as a northern hick, and then it flat-out knocked the souls out of them."
The knights, thoroughly worked up, began reciting Iden's deeds one after another.
"...Is that so."
A faint smile brushed across Ruka's mouth. It vanished as quickly as a mirage.
"I'll send word when the sword is finished."
"We're in your hands, Ruka."
The knights went on their way, and Ruka returned to his quenching.
Ssssssss...
For a long while after that, he could give himself over to the work without interruption. Because he accepted commissions so selectively, his shop saw fewer customers than most.
Ruka repeated quenching and forging until the sun went down. Not a hair's breadth of hesitation showed in him; he might have been a seeker of the Way.
Evening shadows were stretching long across the market when Ruka noticed a boy standing in a corner of the smithy.
The boy was a shade over twelve. The sunset had settled on his snow-white hair and kindled it orange.
In the boy's face, Ruka saw the reflection of a woman. The child looked for all the world like a phantom sent by a cruel fate to mock him.
"You are Lord Ruka, I take it?"
"...I am."
"Do you take commissions?"
"I don't forge weapons for children to swing."
"What I want is not a weapon."
The boy drew a bundle of papers from his pouch and held it out. Sketched across the pages was the blueprint of an intricate device.
"...What is this?"
"Could you make it?" the boy asked, smiling.
"If it's too difficult, I'll try someone else. There are plenty of other smithies nearby."
A flimsy jab. Ruka snorted and studied the drawings.
He could not tell what end the thing served, but one point was plain: it was a tool for work of extreme delicacy. Precision alone would not suffice, either. The blueprint demanded durability on top of it.
"I can make it. But I don't forge things blind for purposes I don't know."
"Just as I'd expect of the head of House Rain."
The boy smiled, and the moment House Rain left his lips, Ruka turned to stone.
He came here knowing I was a Rain.
It had been twelve years since House Rain's assets were wound up. No one had any reason to come looking for him now.
If anyone did, there was only one person it could be. His nephew, grown into the very image of his sister.
"...Iden?"
"Yes. I'm sorry it took me so long to come to you."
Ruka swallowed a sigh.
He had always known a day like this would come. The day his sister's child came tracing the bloodline back to his door.
"What do you want from me? You didn't dig through my past just to have one device made."
"That device will be a great help in raising the knights who will fight the demons."
"Fight the demons? Are you saying you mean to become Duke?"
The boy gave an enigmatic smile.
"Come with me, in the name of House Rain."
"House Rain no longer exists."
"House Rain will not vanish so long as you live, Uncle," the boy declared.
"I've been listening to the sound of your hammer since before I walked in."
He held his smile.
"To my ears, it rings louder than the hoofbeats of a hundred horsemen."
Ruka stared at the boy's smile as though spellbound. It was his sister's smile, lifted straight from her face. He slowly lowered the hammer in his hand. His fingers drummed restlessly on the table, and at last he bit his lip, as if a decision had been made.
"I can't help you. I swore I would never use my Awoken Ability again."
"Then what do you call that?" The boy pointed at the sword hanging on the wall. "That one looks like it was made with an Awoken Ability."
Ruka was startled by the boy's sharp eye. He had hung that sword on the wall on the day he opened his shop, and in all the years since, not one person had ever recognized how extraordinary it was.
"I forged that sword fifteen years ago, when my brothers fell to the Demon Count Grimscale."
Its materials had been Oradium, and Grimscale's blood, the blood that had soaked his brothers' weapons.
The effects of the sword he had created were as follows:
"I made a vow to Lord Solitas that I would avenge House Rain. Until that debt is settled, I will neither leave this place nor use my Awoken Ability."
"Then let me settle that vengeance for you."
The boy went on, "The truth is you've been chained to this place for ten years because there was no one to wield that sword. Isn't that so?"
He was right. After finishing the weapon, Ruka had realized one crucial truth.
There is no one to wield the sword.
He was a blacksmith, nothing more. He had believed, without a shred of doubt, that his two older brothers would make House Rain shine in his stead. So he had neglected the sword and poured everything into the craft, and now the only person left to take up a blade for House Rain was Ruka himself.
In the end, the sword was destined to hang on the smithy wall until it crumbled into dust.
And then the nephew he had half forgotten had appeared before him as if by magic.
Carrying the scarcely believable feat of having felled a Demon Viscount.
"I will be the one to bring Grimscale down. So come to the Duke's residence with me."
"Out of the question," Ruka said flatly.
"I've heard the rumors of your name. Even if every last one of them were true, Grimscale's cunning is beyond anything you can imagine. A war against the demons is not decided by strength alone. If Duke Drek were willing to move, it would be a different story."
"There is no need to go as far as my father," the boy said, his tone crisp and clear. "Just tell me where it is. I'll be back before the iron cools."