Chapter 115
The forge-village counts its losses. Smoke. Apprentices sweeping oil off the paths. A small cairn of stones at the summit door with Glöd's hammer laid on top.
sitting beside the cairn, humming Glöd's three notes, hm-hm, hm-hm, hmmm, polishing a blade that doesn't need polishing.
sitting beside him, Ivar across his knees, the reforged gold seams glinting.
rising from the rifle, uncharacteristically quiet, taking off a ghostly hat.
standing up, wiping his face with a soot-black hand.
dug into the mountain behind the great anvil. A long stone hall, lamp-lit, lined floor to ceiling with racks: hundreds of weapons, swords, bows, axes, guns, all humming faintly, all turning very slightly as Kompis walks in.
eyes gold, and the vault blazes with souls: hundreds of small lights inside the metal, curious, shy, hopeful, looking at him.
standing very still in the middle of the vault, Ivar on his back, Mingus at his heel. Hundreds of little souls peering at him.
bright, loud, crackling like a fuse:
A dusty flintlock pistol: long-barrelled, brass-fitted, with a cracked mother-of-pearl grip painted with tiny stars. Inside it, as Kompis sees it, an old woman: white hair piled high and singed at the ends, spectacles, a soot-smudged apron, a twinkle like a lit match.
lifting the flintlock down carefully. It's warm. It fizzes in his hand.
a ghost of a smile.
Shouting at the vault entrance. Iron on stone. The lamps flicker as the door is forced.
Melters pour into the vault, cauldrons of black oil on poles, gauntlets dripping. Twenty of them, heading for the racks. Every waiting soul in the vault shrinks back; the humming turns into a terrified whine.
The Melters dunk the nearest swords into a cauldron. Hiss. Two small soul-lights go out, under. The racks scream.
raising the flintlock, eyes going grey. Subtick. But it's a flintlock: one shot, slow to load, a spark in a pan.
Kompis aims up, at the vault's high stone ceiling, and pulls the trigger. Flint strikes, the pan flashes, and out of the long barrel comes not a bullet but a firework: a streaking rocket of white-gold that hits the ceiling and bursts.
A chrysanthemum of fire blooms across the whole vault ceiling: gold, crimson, emerald, violet, silver, rose and amber, all the colours of the sins at once, sparks raining down, dazzling. Every Melter is blinded, staggering, cauldrons dropping, oil spilling harmlessly onto stone. Every waiting soul on every rack lights up in the glow, cheering.
In the middle, Kompis with a smoking flintlock, and an old woman's soul laughing like a lit fuse.
While the Melters stumble blind, the crew pours in: Vigolas bowling them over, Smurjan's palms, Rougeina Swapping with sparks from the firework, Malm hauling cauldrons out of their hands and pitching them out the door.
The vault is clear. The two quenched swords lie dark on the floor. Malm picks them up gently and sets them on the anvil-bench to work on later.
reloading the flintlock clumsily. Powder, ball, a fiddly little flint.
grinning, wedged between two arguing gun-souls.
sniffing toward the far corner of the vault, the darkest one, where the lamplight doesn't reach. His ears are up. Not growling. Listening.
On a rack by itself: a long, thin rifle, plain dark wood and blackened steel, no decoration at all. It doesn't hum. It doesn't glow. In Kompis's gold sight there's a soul in it, small and very still, with no soul-text at all.
The long silent rifle turns itself on its rack, slowly, without a sound, until its barrel points at the vault door. It says nothing.
slammed shut after the fight. The iron is starting to glow red from the other side, hotter and hotter, and a slow drip of black oil is seeping under it.