[Ironworks] Forging Alliances (Eanos)

[Hadrian]

Since Hadrian's time in Syliras was so limited, he didn't see any reason why they should not begin immediately and while Eanos seemed a bit surprised, he also seemed amenable to it, which was all to the good so far as Hadrian could see. Not knowing how an apprenticeship for smithing began, he could only go based on his previous experience, which was but one lesson. "Marcus Braeden, one of the smiths here, taught me the very rudiments of blacksmithing. That amounted to a bit of instruction, but my only practical applications consisted of getting a feel for a hammer and hitting on an ax head. I didn't really create anything except scrap metal, but he assured me it could be melted down for the iron." Hadrian did hate wastefulness. "Pardon my ignorance, but it seems that all smithing must start from the same root basics... I am willing to learn whatever you will teach. Whether that be to make weapons and armor, fashion things out of gold and silver... Whatever you teach me I will try to work into what I can do."

[Eanos]

It seemed that his student for the day had a degree of humility and added to his obvious interest in the smithing was enough to please Eanos enough to break his expression into something approaching a smile. "You are close enough with that," he replied, "the basics of all metal working is much the same no matter what metals you are using. A good smith is often different from an apprentice only because of his experience and the knowledge that has given him." He waved them back to his workbench and cleared it off of the materials he'd been working on, setting it all aside in a small pile on the top of which he placed the dagger blade. "My interest is mainly in iron," he commented with a glance under his brows at the man, "but it all works the same. You can work metal either cold on the bench here," he said slapping the vice casually, "or hot over there," he said pointing over at forge and anvil. "But make no mistake, it is easier to work iron when it is hot than when it is cold. We have a saying which is that an additional heartbeats work at the anvil saves six heartbeats at the vice." Now he did smile, "I'll let you in on a secret. People think that the hard work of a blacksmith is at the anvil with a big hammer, but the really hard work is done here at the vice with the file." "But enough of that, first we should start with the fire." He walked over to the forge assuming that Hadrian would follow. There was so much he could say but he knew that much of it would be meaningless to the man at this stage, so instead he stood by the forge and stuck his left hand into the red hot coals and pulled out handful which he waved at Hadrian. "To become a good smith you'll need to understand how to use heat. Heat can soften iron, but it can also harden it so that it becomes as brittle as glass." He gave a pause to see if Hadrian had any questions or comments before he started with something practical.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian nodded and was silent, paying Eanos the respect he paid most of his teachers. When they spoke, he listened. If he disagreed on some particular point, he would bring it up in the proper manner, with the requisite humility. After all, if he knew more than his teachers, there was no good reason to seek out their instruction in the first place. While Eanos shared trade secrets with remarkable openness for an Isur, Hadrian blinked, concentrating in that ineffable manner that brought new spectra of information into his eyes and into his mind, that new Sight. Chlorine blue eyes flickered a bright, watchful orange in the light of the forges, but he saw more than the dull smolder of embers and the salamander glare of the open flames. He saw the djed intensified by the heat. He saw how the patterns of Eanos' aura changed around his arm. He saw some of the intent behind his glyph. "The heat's the thing," he agreed, letting Eanos know he was paying attention. And he was. Hadrian had an excellent memory or he would not have been such a good student at the University. His professors had been extremely exigent with those who showed promise. The heat really was the thing. While Eanos was probably used to it by now, Hadrian was not. He sneaked a bit of wastefulness into the time as he listened to Eanos' impromptu lecture. Pushing res through the pores of his hand, he quickly brought it up to his forehead while Eanos' eyes were occupied elsewhere and quickly transmuted it into water, wiping at his brow and raking it back through his dark hair. The res clung to his skin and his hair and was quickly clarified by his will, and the dampness helped ease the heat as they stood so close to the forges. This was definitely not the type of work he was used to, but he did not complain. Eanos knew what he was talking about and Hadrian intended to learn as much as he could from this situation, as he sought to do from every opportunity.

[Eanos]

There had been in the mind of the smith the question of just what would be a useful thing for Hadrian to make and in part it was what had occupied that mind as he'd filled time by talking about the fire. Since he spent his time by choice in working with blades of various sorts that had been his initial thought, but there was not time for the blade to normalise and in truth it needed either a careful hand with the shaping or a considerable time with the file, neither of which seemed appropriate in this case. By the time he'd finished speaking and waited for Hadrian to answer, his choice had been made. A straightforward piece, a classic of the blacksmiths art and simple enough that even the most untidy finish would still be usable. With no specific answer he walked over to the area where the bar stock was stored and selected a piece of round bar that was half the thickness of his thumb and about as long as his arm. "We'll make a hook," he said, the paused realising that Hadrian was not dressed for working the forge. His racial immunity to heat was something he took for granted and sometimes he was oblivious to the advantages that gave him. He grabbed a heavy leather apron and tossed it to Hadrian. Whilst his student dealt with that Eanos slipped the end of the bar into the forge. "Slide the metal in, try not to disturb the coals too much because it will take the forge time to come back up to heat." They had a moment while the steel heated so Eanos rifled through the hammers which were racked near the anvil and selected one he reckoned that the man would be able to handle and was not too heavy for the bar. He placed it on the anvil and handed a pair of tongs to his student. "Pull the bar out and see what colour it is. If it's a nice red then we can start, we don't want it too hot and after red it will head into orange. It should be hot enough by now. If it is then I want you to bring it back here and put a point on the end. Just lay the end on the anvil and give it a whack with the hammer, turn it a quarter turn and whack it again and repeat. Try not to miss and hit the anvil, because that is never good." Trial and error, that was the the way of the smith to learn something new.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian's hand dropped to his side when Eanos looked his way, the last of the res turned quickly into water and evaporating almost at once. He smiled, though, glad of Eanos' decision. A hook would be something usable, and with his practice at simply hammering, he thought he could manage this much, especially under the watchful eye of an Isur smith. He caught the apron and pulled it over his head, tying it behind his back. Then he went for gloves because he already knew about the heat of things and how the blows of the hammer sent reverberations through the hands into the body. He didn't speak much. It was better to listen, he had found, and Eanos had not asked him any new questions. With the tongs, he pulled the bar out of the fire and looked at it. Cherry red as Eanos had guessed, and too Hadrian could see how the heat had altered the djed of the thing, exciting parts of it, quickening it. The metal was more open to change now, but from blows of a hammer and likely for enchantment as well. This was interesting. Taking the glowing rod of iron to the anvil with the tongs, he picked up the hammer Eanos had selected, getting it out of the way, and carefully set the superheated end of the rod on the anvil. He shifted his grips both on the tongs and on the hammer, trying to get a feel for things. Hadrian was not the sort of person who was comfortable with his body, but he could not afford to be awkward in this. Every blow had to be determined and certain. Given the order to begin, he raised the hammer and struck. It didn't miss the anvil, but it did miss the iron rod. The shock ran up his arm. He didn't dare look at Eanos; he had done this before, and that was just embarrassing. Instead, he focused, raised the hammer again, and brought it down with what he hoped was more concentration. This time he connected, sending sparks flying. He wanted to grin and congratulate himself, but he choked that all down, instead turning the rod a quarter turn and repeating. Again, he managed to hit the end of the iron rod. Another turn, success. One more, good. When he turned it again, it had gone through a full rotation and he could see how the end of it was starting to taper down toward a dull point. Then he looked up to see if Eanos had anything else to say before he began the repetition of the cycle.

[Eanos]

Eanos had noted the gloves somewhat wryly and realised that there was more to teaching than met the eye. The apron had been an afterthought and one that he'd not taken the moment needed to follow it through to its conclusion. Fortunately it seemed on this one his student was ahead of him, and it also showed initiative which pleased him greatly for it could be the fulcrum on which success or failure pivoted. The first missed strike did not surprise him and there would be more of those he was sure while Hadrian got his eye in. It would not cause noticeable damage since this anvil was of good quality, but he was also sure that Hadrian wouldn't want to do it too often because while the hot iron acted as a cushion to absorb some of the force the anvil merely bounced it mostly back into the hammer. "Good," he commented as the point started to form. He waved Hadrian on to continue, speaking between blows. "The faster you work the more blows you will get in before the iron cools, but for you it's more important that you work carefully than quickly, speed comes with practice. You'll find as the iron cools that it will become harder and harder to work. I suggest that you put it back in the fire to heat once you've hit it once more." Leaving Hadrian to it for a moment, he selected a new rod and slipped it into the fire to heat. He knew the next stages would be easier to demonstrate than to describe, though he didn't want to make it look easy.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian nodded and set to hammering again, striking one last blow, glancing of the very tip of the iron bar, and not doing all that much to further his work. Grimacing sheepishly, he fixed his grip with the tongs and carried it back to the fire. While they waited for the metal to heat up, he made a cautious interruption. "Excuse me for interrupting," he said, "but is it true that too much heating and cooling of the metal will make it brittle? I believe I heard that somewhere, but I might have missed a detail..." He was not in the habit of interrupting a teacher unless he thought his question had merit, or there was something he wanted to know perfectly before moving on, and this was such a case. So far, Eanos seemed a rather level-headed and forgiving teacher, which was all for the better since this was so far outside the realm of Hadrian's skills. Though, with magical mentors, Hadrian tended to push himself more even than they did. Excellence was hard work.

[Eanos]

Satisfied that Hadrian was working well, Eanos worked the bellows to bring the fire to a higher heat so that his bar was ready for the demonstration. "A good question, and though I didn't make it clear before, feel free to ask questions if they occur to you. We are here to exchange skills and an Isur always provides the highest quality product that he can." It was something of a facetious boast but racial pride pushed the words out of his mouth before he even had chance to consider just how true it might be. "There is some truth in that," he allowed, answering the question, "it is not so much the repeated heating which is a concern but if you overwork iron then the grain become too fine and too well aligned which can make it weak and easy to fracture. Alternately if you heat it too hot and then quench it, then it can become very hard but also very brittle, brittle enough that it could shatter if you dropped it." He shrugged, "iron is forgiving on the whole though and if that were to happen it would still be possible to rework it into something else, but it would be then a lower quality iron." He was pleased with the question for it meant that his student was thinking but talking sometimes meant not working and he was happy with the point which Hadrian had created. "I'll show you the next stage," he said pulling his bar out of the forge with his left hand and laying the glowing steel on the anvil. "You can ask me more once I've done if you want, but your point is well enough made to be able to move on." His hammer came down hard on his rod and he quickly made a rough point on it before sliding it back into the coals and pulling on the bellows for a moment. "The bellows add air and make the forge hotter, but with a bar like this you need to be careful not to make it too hot. Now I'm going to make two bends in the bar and I'd like you then to copy me." He placed the now reheated bar on the anvil allowing the point to overhang the edge by half a hands width. He struck the bar just where it overhung and quickly bent it down into a right angle, then turned the bar over so that the point now was raised into the air and hammered it down so that it was folded along down tight against the rest of the bar. He grinned, "not much use as a point now is it? Now I could continue but by this time you'll need to be heating it again, so I'll just do that quickly." He left the bar in the fire only for a moment and laid it back on the anvil so that the folded over point lay on top of the bar. "Just give it a little bit of overhang," he instructed and slid the bar so that just under a third of the folded over part hung over the edge. Then he struck the overhanging piece of bar and bent it down into another right angle. He held up the still glowing bar and pointed to what he'd done. "If you get this right, what you now have is a lopsided T shape at the top of the bar. One end of which is longer and has the point on it, the other is short but thick. This means you'll be able to hammer the thick end and drive the point into something to hang your hook up." He waved at the anvil. "Give it a go, and see how you do."

[Hadrian]

Being a bit of a thinker, of course Hadrian thought about the things Eanos said on a philosophical level as well, whether people were like iron, if they could be tempered and honed into blades or other instruments the way poets often claimed they could. But he banished those thoughts to a separate compartment of his mind where his unconscious could mull it over to populate his dreams while his conscious mind focused on the practicalities of what the Isur was teaching him. Still another part of his mind envied Eanos his strength and skill, another wondering what it would be like to be the beloved of Izurdin, to pour a bit of himself into his work on a whole other level. When Hadrian pulled his own bar out of the forge, it was glowing rather hotter than Eanos' had been, both to his regular sight and on the auristic spectrum. The excited energies coursing through the iron and emanating from it were as fascinating as a candle flame in the dark. He wondered if this energy signature was to Ivak what a drop of water was to the ocean. It was a curious and exciting thought. After the iron had cooled just enough that it matched what he had seen of Eanos', he laid it on the anvil and began to make right angles of it in the manner in which he had just been taught. Inevitably, each angle required more hammer blows from Hadrian's weaker arms. He was careful not to put so much energy into it that he lost control, as well. The young enchanter was fond of precision, though there was a heady excitement to this particular sort; unused to utilizing the strength of his body, it was a new energy to bring into focus, to control and contain. He found he liked it, though he was unsure still if he would ever be skilled at it. His technique was still quite awkward, but he was clearly trying to remember everything he had been taught by Marcus and Eanos and not form bad habits. He was careful and focused, and that made up for a bit of his inexperience. He only missed a couple of blows now, so mindful was he. When he thought his work a fair semblance of Eanos' own, having had to reheat the metal twice to Eanos' once, he held it out in the tongs for his teacher's perusal. To his eyes, the djed of the thing was following new pathways, though not quite as it did in a proper enchantment. Still, he focused on it while Eanos looked over his work, thinking he might alter future fire glyphs based on this experience. There was a bit of intuition involved there, too.

[Eanos]

If the lack of questions bothered Eanos then he didn't show it. If Hadrian had shown the slightest evidence that he hadn't been listening or hadn't understood then the smith might have been a little disappointed. As it was though his student seemed to have an admirable grasp of what it was that he wanted to do and if his hammer blows lacked in technique then it was only what Eanos would have expected from anyone who was still new in the craft. "Good, well done," he gave the compliment, taciturn as was by nature once his mind was occupied by something which interested him. "We have done much of the work needed for this," he said taking up his own partly worked steel bar. "From here the next part is just a continuation of what we did before." He held the bar up so that the point was sticking towards the wall. "If you imagine that the point is hammered home, or at least tight enough to hold, and this sort of thing is often used by travelling smiths, what we need is to bring this bar," he now pointed at the longer part which hung down, "up into a hook. So long as you get it roughly in line it will work well enough, but the more aligned it is then the more pride you will feel with it once it is done." "Put it back in to heat but this time the other way round in the fire, we want the section this side of the worked steel to heat this time. Once it's hot enough to work then bring it back to the anvil." He laid his own bar on the anvil for all that it was cold, holding it by the point which now stuck straight up. "For the intial curve you don't want to be using the curved horn there," he pointed with his hammer at the end of the anvil, "Just hit it here," he tapped a hands span down the bar, "then as the bar starts to bend, slip it a bit more over the edge of the anvil and hit it again and repeat until you have a rough curve. Only then use horn to tighten up the curve and get it more even. Don't worry about having too much metal at the end of the hook, we'll cut that off." He waved Hadrian into continuing.