The Brick Kiln

Little Hada and Noren left the wizard’s hut and ventured deeper into the forest.

After walking half a mile, a gravel path appeared in the forest, its snow swept clean.

Noren’s expression shifted. ‘These three couldn’t have been busy paving a road all this time, could they? Where did they get so much gravel?’

The gravel path was a foot and a half wide, stretching at least a hundred yards.

She started to speak, ‘You…’

‘We’re almost there,’ Little Hada said. With his dwarf stature, he waddled like a long-legged roly-poly toy.

Noren suppressed her impatience.

After who knows how long, they rounded three marked beech trees and crossed a frozen mountain stream before climbing a small slope. At the top was a flat area.

Before Noren even reached the top, she heard the grunts of men working and the clink of stones striking.

‘What are you…’ She saw Henry smashing rocks with a hammer, with a large pile of stones and a small pile beside him.

‘Heh, I thought you weren’t coming,’ said Big Ang, the eldest of the wizards.

Noren didn’t reply. She carefully surveyed the area.

The flat area was about the size of the smithy’s backyard, perhaps a bit smaller. At its center stood a thatched roof shed. Around the shed were several white mounds and a gray kiln in operation.

Under the shed was a pool-like structure, next to which were stacked white stones. Big Ang was picking up white stones, crushing them in a wooden bowl, and pouring the powder into the pool.

She leaned in to see a white slurry inside.

‘Give it a stir,’ Big Ang said.

Noren found a wooden stick by the pool. She inserted it into the slurry and stirred clockwise. Big Ang added crushed white stones while Noren stirred.

‘Little Hada, come here,’ Noren called.

Little Hada, who had been grinding herbs in a mortar, put it down and approached. ‘What is it?’ he asked, puzzled.

Noren frowned and handed him the stick. ‘You do it.’

‘No,’ Little Hada refused. ‘This pool is higher than my chin. I can’t do this job.’

‘Then how do you usually manage?’

‘Henry helps.’

Noren couldn’t be bothered to argue. She dropped the stick. ‘I need an explanation.’

Big Ang didn’t look up, continuing to add white stones. ‘What explanation?’

‘We have less than five months before the deadline, and I haven’t seen a single iron ingot. How do you plan to forge my weapon?’

Big Ang looked at his younger brother. ‘You didn’t tell her?’

Little Hada was back at his mortar. ‘I did. About the magic fish.’

Big Ang snorted, two puffs of white steam escaping. ‘You’re obsessed with your damned magic fish!’

Little Hada nodded thoughtfully while working the pestle. ‘Yes, yes, cursed people eat cursed fish. You seem to eat more than I do.’

Enraged, Big Ang reached out to throttle his brother. ‘You little brat…’

Noren pressed her lips together and held Big Ang’s forehead, stopping him. ‘He forgot. You explain it to me.’

With his head pinned, Big Ang’s short arms flailed comically.

Once he’d calmed down, he wiped the white dust off his hands and pointed at the kiln outside the shed. ‘Come out, and I’ll tell you how we’ll forge your weapon.’

Noren followed Big Ang out. He first went to one of the white mounds.

He brushed off the snow, revealing a cracked clay kiln. ‘See? A brick kiln.’

‘Brick kiln?’ Noren crossed her arms. ‘What’s the brick for?’

Big Ang looked back at her with suspicion. ‘Isn’t your father a blacksmith? Don’t you know what the brick is for?’

‘What does brick have to do with blacksmithing?’ Noren asked.

‘Of course it does!’ Big Ang shouted, feeling it was obvious. ‘If a blacksmith wants to smelt iron, shouldn’t he first build a furnace?’

‘That’s true, but as everyone knows, a blacksmith’s furnace is a clay furnace that doesn’t need bricks. It’s discarded after one use.’ Noren’s gaze turned suspicious. She felt this wizard was unreliable.

Big Ang bit his lip, deep in thought. ‘That can’t be right. A blacksmith’s furnace is disposable? Then that furnace I saw in my dream…’

Noren watched him silently. Finally, she asked, ‘Can you actually forge the weapon I need?’

Big Ang looked up solemnly. ‘Yes, absolutely!’

‘Hmm…’ Noren covered her mouth, pondering. After a moment, she realized she had no other choice. A seven-foot iron rod—within the entire Opava fief bishopric, only Svein had the skill to forge it. Even if she could find a smith who knew how to smelt iron, just refining and forging the qualified wrought iron for the rod would take a year or two. Even buying finished wrought iron, the subsequent forging would be extremely laborious, and there wasn’t that much high-quality wrought iron available.

‘Forget it,’ she relented. She had nothing to lose anyway. She might as well continue trusting these two wizards…

Wait—considering the investments so far, whether it was the wizards’ procurement list or the ‘Wolf Bone’ artifact, the cost was already staggering. Even without counting the artifact, the supplies alone had cost about five pounds of silver, equivalent to roughly 1,200 silver coins. One silver coin could buy ten pounds of unhulled wheat, so the purchasing power was about 12,000 pounds of unhulled wheat, nearly two hundred bushels.

A quality riding horse was worth about five qualified war swords.

‘If you fail to produce what I want in the end, I’ll send you to the church. I’m sure the bishops would be willing to spend some silver on two wizards.’

Noren threatened with a thin smile.

But she was only bluffing. She would rather kill these two wizards and leave their bodies in the wilderness than send them to the church, as that would surely reveal her collusion with wizards to those shepherds. She might even be ‘excommunicated’ or labeled a heretic.

Big Ang paled but quickly regained composure. ‘If you’ll let me continue, you’ll understand that I can definitely forge the weapon you need.’

He seemed to remember something and asked Noren, ‘Did you see the gravel path?’

Noren nodded.

‘And did you see this shed, this flat ground, these clay kilns, and the brick kiln in front of Henry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you should trust our ability. In just a few months, we’ve achieved all this. Doesn’t that speak for itself?’

Noren nodded thoughtfully, acknowledging, ‘You are indeed efficient workers.’

Just as Big Ang’s face lit up with joy, Noren added, ‘I just wonder if it’s all for nothing.’

Big Ang’s expression darkened.

‘But go on, continue,’ she said.

Noren brushed the snow off a clay kiln and peered inside through the slanted opening. Inside was a honeycomb-like firing platform.

‘She’s willing to listen to me… hah…’ Big Ang breathed a sigh of relief. They had been ‘kidnapped’ by Noren to Ostrava, losing the protection of the giant Bru and their indirect connection with the mayor of Kroměříž. Now their lives were in the hands of this blonde woman.

Calming himself, he began to explain.

…