I’ll tell you, there’s something about Minoc’s forge at dusk—when the sun’s bleeding red over the hills and the bellows are still warm from the day’s last fire. I stood there, sweat stinging my eyes, gripping the tongs like they were the only thing holding me upright. Nearly fifty ingots in my pack already, and still I couldn’t leave it be. The ore in my hand was stubborn, dark as a thundercloud, and when I tossed it into the coals, the flame hissed like it didn’t want it either. I’d been at it since dawn—mine to bank, bank to forge, forge back to the mine—round and round like a donkey with a broken mind. But it’s in that cycle, in the ring of pick against stone down in the tunnels near the old shaft west of the city, that I feel most alive. The clink, the shiver up the haft, the way the rock gives just enough to tell you you’re winning.
But today, the forge fought me. Three tries to smelt one lump, and each time the ore just curled and blackened, useless. The fourth, it took—barely—and spat out a single dull ingot, not even worth the coal burned. I dropped the failed heaps on the ground, let them clatter like cursed things. My hands were shaking, not from fatigue but from that quiet rage that builds when the world won’t bend, not even a little. I looked down at my leather apron, split at the seam from weeks of dragging it over anvil edges, and thought about quitting. Just walking west, past the stables, out into the wilds where no one needs a smith or a miner or a man who smells like sulfur and failure.
But then Old Man Crell showed up—the tanner near the south road—and clapped me on the shoulder like he knew. Didn’t say much, just nodded at the ingot in my tongs and said, “Good weight. That’ll feed a family a week.” Something about the way he said it, plain and true, brought me back. So I’ll go again at first light. The mine’s still there. The pick’s still sharp. And Minoc always needs blades, nails, hinges—something to hold the world together.
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