Chapter 9: Banaby’s Discovery

Barnaby had not slept a single wink.

The blacksmith was sitting on his iron anvil using a thick wool blanket to wrap around his shoulders. The small oil lamp on his workbench was casting a flickering light across the interior of the freezing shop. But Barnaby wasn’t looking at the shadows. He was staring at the two burlap sacks sitting in the center of his floor.

Outside, the morning sky was just beginning to turn a pale, signaling the end of the blizzard. The howling wind had finally died down.

Barnaby stood up, and walked over to the open sack. He reached inside and pulled out a fist-sized lump of coal.

He walked to the window, pushing open the wooden shutter just a crack to let the morning light fall onto the rock. It was beautiful. It didn’t have the dusty, crumbly texture of surface coal, nor did it leave greasy soot all over his calloused fingers. It was hard, and shiny, catching the faint light like a piece of polished black glass.

Barnaby brought the lump to his face and sniffed it. There was no sharp, bitter stench of sulfur. He raised it to his mouth and gently bit down on the edge with his back teeth. A cheap piece of coal would have crumbled into gritty dust instantly.

“Fifty years,” Barnaby whispered to the empty room.

He hadn’t seen coal like this since he was a small boy, back when the deep veins of the Frost-Grip mines were still open, before the lower shafts collapsed and filled with toxic choke-damp.

Where had Lord Jack gotten it? The boy was sickly, frail, and barely able to walk with a cane. He certainly hadn’t dug it himself. Had he hired smugglers? Found a forgotten, sealed vault in the castle cellars?

Barnaby shook his head, tossing the lump of coal into his empty hearth.

It didn’t matter. The young lord had kept his word. He had delivered the coal, and now it was Barnaby’s turn to deliver the iron.

The blacksmith moved with a frantic energy. He gathered a small pile of dry wood shavings and a handful of dry straw he kept in a sealed barrel. He arranged the kindling in the center of the hearth, striking his flint and steel together with heavy strikes.

A spark caught the straw. A small, orange flame flickered to life.

Barnaby carefully arranged a dozen lumps of the coal over the growing fire. He grabbed the wooden handles of his leather bellows and began to pump. The whoosh of air fed the flames.

For a moment, nothing happened. The coal was so dense it required immense heat just to catch. But as Barnaby kept pumping, his arms flexing, the edges of the black rocks began to glow.

Suddenly, the coal caught.

It didn’t burst into a smoky, wildly thrashing orange fire like wet wood. Instead, it burned with a steady, intense, and incredibly clean flame.

The heat radiating from the hearth was instantaneous and overwhelming. It hit Barnaby in the chest like a heat wave, chasing away the freezing chill that had settled in his bones for the weeks.

Barnaby let out a booming, joyful laugh. He tossed his blanket aside, grabbed a pair of iron tongs, and thrust a rusted carriage band directly into the center of the forge.

High above, from the tall stone chimney of the blacksmith shop, a triumphant plume of dark smoke began to pour into the pale winter sky.

Up in the castle courtyard, Merchant Gary was in a terrible mood.

His men were struggling to tighten the leather saddles on the pack mules. The beasts were miserable, stomping their freezing hooves on the packed ice and braying loudly. Gary stood near the gates, wrapped tightly in his expensive beaver pelts, his boots sinking into the fresh snow.

He had the ancestral silver safely packed away in his personal lockbox, and his men had unloaded the grain into the castle cellars the day before. By all accounts, it was a highly profitable trip.

But Gary wasn’t satisfied.

He looked toward the oak doors of the castle. He had expected the young Lord Jack to come crawling out this morning, begging on his knees. Gary knew perfectly well that raw grain was useless if you couldn’t boil the water to cook it. He knew the castle had no firewood left. He had fully anticipated that Jack would surrender the title deed to the southern timber woods in exchange for a few bundles of the merchant’s own travel-wood, or perhaps beg for a ride back to the southern cities.

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Instead, the oak doors opened, and Jack walked out.

The young lord was leaning on his cane, wearing a wool cloak. Karen walked closely beside him, her face anxious but her posture straight.

“Leaving so soon, Gary?” Jack asked, his voice calm, carrying easily across the crisp, cold air of the courtyard.

Gary forced a greasy smile, stepping forward. “Indeed, Lord Jack. The blizzard has broken, and my men are eager to return to the warm taverns of the south. I must say, it brings me great sorrow to leave you here. You have food, yes, but raw wheat will break your teeth without a fire to boil it.”

Jack stopped a few feet away, resting both hands on his cane. He looked at the merchant with an expression of absolute, deadpan boredom.

“We will manage,” Jack said.

Gary let out a dramatic sigh, shaking his head. “Pride is a terrible thing to freeze for, My Lord. I am willing to offer you two of my mules and a place in my caravan. It will cost you the deed to the timber woods, of course, but your life is surely worth more than a patch of trees.”

“I am not leaving my fief,” Jack said.