Fritha blinked sweat from her eyes as her hammer rose and fell, the clangour filling her head, echoing through the room. She was in the forge room of Drassil, this wondrous place secreted right at the very heart of the fortress, a chamber carved out within the great tree’s heartwood. She liked it here; she felt as if she was party to some ancient secret.
And I am. The Seven Treasures were forged here. And out of their molten destruction, something new shall be reforged.
Fritha paused in her work, muscles burning in her arm, shoulder and back. She wiped sweat from her face and looked to one corner of the chamber. Blue giants-fire flickered in the trough set around the circumference of the room, warring with the white-orange blaze of the forge. Combined, the two light sources cast an eerie glow on the huge chest in which Asroth had stored the shards of starstone metal that had once been his gaol.
The lid was open.
Fritha looked down at the shape on the anvil before her. An iron glove of black metal, riveted and articulated for ease of movement. It was big, made to fit a large hand, larger than most men’s, though smaller than a giant’s hand.
“He will be here soon,” a voice said, Choron, standing close to the chamber’s entrance. He was one of half a dozen Kadoshim in the chamber, all of them watching her every move. It was an honour that Asroth trusted Fritha to be in this room, to be carving and making something from his horde of starstone metal, but he did not trust her completely.
Not enough to leave me to work in peace. I have to have their black eyes watching me.
If Wrath were down here you would speak to me with a different tone, she thought, staring at Choron. Her draig was too wide now to fit down the stairwell that led to this chamber, even though it had been built by giants, for giants. Fritha knew that he would be waiting for her in Drassil’s Great Hall, though.
She bit back a retort and reached for her tongs, gripped the glove and thrust it into the forge fire, held it there until it glowed white-hot, then laid it back upon the anvil. She took up a small, sharp knife and neatly sliced her palm, another red line that would soon join the myriad scars that were testament to her dark work.
Everything has a price, especially power.
Blood dripped from her palm onto the white-glowing metal, sizzling and spitting, then she picked up a small hammer and an engraver’s chisel and hunched over the glove, tapping in careful, measured beats.
“Réalta dubh, foirm nua, saol nua. Bí láidir, ná sos, crush do naimhde,” she breathed as she tapped. “Réalta dubh, foirm nua, saol nua. Bí láidir, ná sos, crush do naimhde,” she repeated, again and again as she carved runes into the backplate of the iron gauntlet.
A blast of air made the forge fire roar, flames leaping hungrily, and Fritha looked up from her work. Footsteps echoed on the stairwell and Bune appeared, and behind him, Asroth himself.
“Is it done?” Asroth asked, approaching Fritha.
“Yes,” she said, taking the gauntlet in tongs and dipping it hissing into a vat of oil. She pulled it out, held it up for him.
Asroth took it in his one hand and studied it, turning it this way and that. He saw the runes carved into it.
“Unbreakable, foe-crusher,” he whispered. Slowly a smile spread over his face. “I like it. Now I just need a hand to wear it upon.”
“Yes, you do,” Fritha said with a sharp smile. “And that is what we are here to do.” She waved her hand over a table full of tools. Razor-edged saws, spikes, tongs, knives, a wide-bladed cleaver. Strips of leather cord, bone needles and twine. Fritha looked over to the Kadoshim Choron and nodded. He shifted his weight, pulling on a chain, receiving only a groan in response, drifting up from a shadow at his feet. Choron spat a curse and kicked the figure on the floor, dragging on the chains again. The figure slowly stood, a tall, muscled man, swaying unsteadily. Vald, the White-Wing warrior who had spat in Asroth’s face the night of their victory feast.
He did not look like the same man now. His hair had grown out from the close White-Wing crop and now hung lank and greasy, one eye was barely open in a swollen mass of purple bruising, the other eye a black, scar-puckered hole where Asroth had gouged it out. His lips were macerated against chipped and broken teeth. In his half-open eye, though, Fritha saw the same defiance and strength of spirit that had led him to spit in Asroth’s face. It was a stubbornness that no beating would put out. Fritha knew, because she had administered much of the torture; she had tried to snuff it out, and failed. She was still a little annoyed about that, though also felt a grudging respect for the warrior.
“Bring him here,” Fritha said.
Choron jerked the chain and led Vald shambling across the chamber to stand before Fritha and Asroth. It was not just Vald’s face that had been beaten. He dragged one leg, blood crusted on cuts and burns all over his torso, the burns weeping yellow pus.
“Your new hand,” Fritha said, gesturing at Vald.
“It is still attached,” Asroth pointed out.
“Aye. You must take it and give it to me.”
Asroth smiled, brushing his fingertips over the cleaver upon Fritha’s table of tools, then nodded at Choron.
The Kadoshim dragged Vald forwards, but somehow, despite his condition, he gathered untapped reserves of strength and threw his body towards Choron, taking the Kadoshim by surprise. Choron fell onto Fritha’s table and Vald rose with an iron spike in his fist, stabbed two-handed at Choron, burying the spike deep into Choron’s shoulder.
The Kadoshim shrieked, stumbled backwards.
Bune and other Kadoshim surged forwards, but Asroth was ahead of them. He slammed a fist into Vald’s face, pulping the man’s nose, then wrapped his fist in Vald’s hair and smashed his face into the flat of the anvil. Vald went limp, a pool of blood spreading around his face.
“Hold him,” Asroth snarled, and Bune and others pinned Vald to the anvil.
“His hand,” Asroth said, reaching for the cleaver with his left hand and raising it.
Choron gripped Vald’s right hand and pulled it forwards, then Asroth’s arm was rising and falling. A thunk and crack as the cleaver carved through meat and bone, blood sprayed. Vald screamed.
Fritha licked blood spatters from her lip.
The cleaver rose and fell again, crunching into Vald’s skull, his scream cut abruptly short.
Asroth lifted the severed hand and gave it to Fritha. Vald’s corpse was released to slide off the anvil and fall in a heap to the ground.
“Thank you, my King,” Fritha said. She took the hand, measuring it against the iron gauntlet, and smiled to see her calculations and measurements matched perfectly.
“What now?” Asroth said.
“Now I will bind this hand to your flesh,” Fritha said. She offered him a strip of leather. “You may want to bite on this,” she said. “I suspect this is going to hurt.”
Asroth took the leather, looked at it and tossed it on the ground. “Pain will not master me,” he said, curling a lip.
“Put your arm on the anvil,” Fritha instructed.
Asroth did, eyes fixed on hers.
“Do not fail me,” Asroth said.
Fritha wrapped leather cords about Asroth’s forearm, binding it to the anvil. Then she turned to her table and selected a saw. She touched the sawblade to the puckered flesh of Asroth’s stumped wrist, hardly hearing Asroth’s words, her focus on the task ahead, her blood pounding with the thrill of it.
Bune wrapped a hand around her wrist.
“If any harm comes to our King, you will know pain you could never imagine.”
She ignored him.
“My King?” Fritha said, looking into the black pools of Asroth’s eyes.
“Make me whole. Make me more,” he said. “Your rewards will be… great.”
“An chéad ghearradh, breith na maitheasa,” Fritha chanted into the chamber, her voice echoing, then a silence fell.
Fritha began to saw.
Asroth opened his mouth and screamed. Then, slowly, the screaming shifted to laughter.