Page 83

Before them, the Scar sprawled, all churned earthen furrows and a stretch of treeless land that Fenrir remembered well—would, in fact, never forget. Gone were the bodies. Gone was the blood. Gone was the deep deep deep hole Fenrir had dug, the spitting violet fire that had erupted from it, and the clawed furrows of the undead army that had crawled out of it. But one thing did remain, and it was that which Fenrir could not tear his eyes from, despite the enormous tower rising out of the shadow cast by Orpheus’ drill head.

“It’s still here,” Fenrir whispered. Beside him, Mercer held his arm.

“The drill? Yeah, no way to move the thing, it’s buried good. Believe me, we tried. You know what they were digging up?”

Fenrir laughed, a sour, wretched thing. “Just an army from Hell.”

Mercer flinched—actually flinched, and when next their eyes met, that uncomfortable scratch from before had become a stab. They came to a stop beside the tower, but it was the drill they both stared up at.

“You were there?”

“I led the dig team.”

Mercer sucked at his teeth. “Lost a few good men when those skellies turned on the Stacks.”

“I’m sorry,” Fenrir said, “for what it’s worth.”

Mercer shook his head. “Ain’t your fault.”

But who else was left to take responsibility?

“Sometimes I wonder if I couldn’t have stopped her earlier.” Mercer wasn’t someone who needed to hear this, but that nebulous nothing inside Fenrir insisted he say it to someone, even if it only helped himself. “Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t.”

“Ain’t no going back in time now, is there?” Mercer said. “You saved a good many people when you did finally take her out.”

“I could have saved a lot more, though. If I’d acted sooner.”

Mercer sniffed. “Or gotten yourself killed and then where’d we be? I’ve met plenty of men like you, and the rest are all dead.”

“Men like me?” Fenrir asked, catching Mercer’s eyes.

“Men who think they’re heroes.”

Fenrir flinched, but that didn’t stop Mercer.

“Men like that think they can do it all. Truth is, we all have our limits. Ain’t no shame in asking for help or tapping out when you’re in over yer head.”

Fenrir put a hand to the tower and watched the world spin.

“But maybe that’s why you’re still here and they’re not. You went and got that mage on your side, and now here we are. You’d not have gotten far without him, right?”

“Right,” Fenrir whispered, staring up at the drill. “No, you’re definitely right.”

They returned to the forge in silence, the heat of the fires a welcome warmth to the clammy chill that had overtaken Fenrir’s skin. He spent a long time standing before the fire, Mercer showing how their beams were made, the rollers they used and how the lengths were measured, how each were to be welded together, and the strapping they wrapped to provide support, how the bolts needed to fit so the structure could move with the wind, rather than fight against it.

And as he watched Mercer hammer a support strap out of a melted down ingot, hammer swinging down down down in a metallic pound, he wondered…

“Can I try?” came out before he could think better of it.

“The hammer?” Mercer wiped the back of his hand across his brow and looked him up and down. “Don’t see why not.”

To be fair, Mercer should have said no. A man with a missing arm would never make a great blacksmith, but then again, that wasn’t what Fenrir was after. He wanted to see if he could. Prove something…not to Mercer, but to himself. Not that he could do it all, but that he could do something—still—and it just so happened that Mercer needed hands and Fenrir had at least one left.

Fenrir was surprised at how strange the hammer felt. It was different from a sword: top heavy, meant for momentum, rather than speed. He hefted it a few times to get a feel for the balance of weight, then turned to the forge. “Show me what to do.”

They spent the next hour going over the process. How much steel to use, how hot to get it, how hard to bring the hammer down and then how precisely to hit it. When the time came for Fenrir to try himself, Mercer had brought over a workhorse with a vice he lowered to a height to match the anvil.

“Should work as good as a hand,” he said. “Heat your steel and give it a try.”