“Temperature’s not high enough,” Mirri said, suddenly helpful.
She pulled a small clay jar from her robes and offered it to him.
“This is bitterthorn sap, gathered from the ridges near the Sorrow Crest.
It will push the furnace hotter.” Rahallo glanced at her, half doubtful, half curious, and opened the jar.
A sharp, acrid smell hit him at once.
This was a world of magic.
Dragons filled the skies.
The dead rose again.
Even Valyrian steel blades carried enchantments.
There was no telling what surprises the sap might bring.
In the story he remembered, Mirri had destroyed Khal Drogo and the child in Daenerys’s womb out of hatred for what the Dothraki had done to her people.
But in this timeline she had no grudge against him.
If anything she was something like an ally against Drogo.
He stopped hesitating.
Carefully, he poured a small amount of the thick liquid into the fire.
The flames suddenly leaped three feet high, burning with a strange blue-green light that looked eerily like wildfire.
Maybe the bitterthorn grew near phosphorus deposits.
Maybe the plant itself gathered the element.
Rahallo knew nothing about plants, but it was far more likely the sap carried some kind of magic.
That would make sense, coming from a maegi.
The furnace temperature rose sharply.
The crucible began to glow a deep, angry red.
Then it kept rising.
Too hot.
Far too hot.
Joy turned to alarm.
Rahallo stumbled back, hands flying up to shield his face.
Gods, don’t let me get burned blind— A deep rumble shook the ground.
The entire furnace collapsed with a crash.
The crucible split down one side with a sharp crack.
Molten iron poured out through the fissure, spraying sparks wherever it landed.
Grass withered and blackened in an instant.
“Fuck!” Rahallo cursed and scrambled for water buckets to douse the spreading fire.
By the time the flames were out, his forearms were covered in small, angry burns from flying sparks.
The injuries were minor.
The real loss was the failed smelt.
At least his face was untouched.
A master smith’s most important tool was his looks, after all.
Mirri walked over, took in his soot-streaked, disheveled state, and smirked.
“See?
I told you you couldn’t do it.” Rage flared hot in Rahallo’s chest.
He was sick of this woman.
Maybe he should just kill her and be done with it.
He didn’t need her blood magic.
Melisandre could birth shadow assassins with nothing but her cunt and a little ritual.
That woman carried far more weight than Mirri ever would.
And then there was Quaithe, the one whose face was hidden behind a lacquered mask like a painted tile.
Pity Martin wrote so slowly.
No one really knew what powers she held.
But the other two were out of reach.
Mirri was the only maegi standing in front of him right now.
More magic on his side wasn’t a bad thing.
The more the better.
He wanted all of it.
He swallowed the anger.
He would prove her wrong with results.
Later he would slap that smug look off her face so hard she would feel it for a week.
A vein throbbed at Rahallo’s temple, but he said nothing.
He simply began cleaning up the wreckage in silence.
The crucible had cracked because the temperature had spiked too violently.
The bitterthorn sap had been far more potent than expected, and the furnace had no way to control airflow or cut off oxygen.
Next time he would use less sap and improve the vents.
He rebuilt the furnace stronger and made a thicker, more durable crucible.
The second smelt went smoothly.
The furnace temperature climbed steadily.
The crucible held.
After a while Rahallo opened the furnace door.
A blast of heat rolled out, strong enough to make his hair start to curl and smell of burning.
Inside, the hematite had become dark red molten iron.
Tiny blue flames danced across the surface where carbon monoxide burned off.
Using a long ladle he carefully skimmed the slag floating on top.
Then he took a long iron rod and stirred the melt vigorously before sealing the furnace door again.
Roughly two hours later he tilted the crucible and poured the iron into the mold he had prepared.
The metal cooled and solidified into a glowing red ingot.
Rahallo lifted it with tongs and examined it.
The surface was pitted and full of impurities, but it was iron.
Real iron he had made himself.
The hardest work was still ahead—repeated folding and hammering to drive out the slag, increase density, and improve toughness.
Without the unusually high-grade ore he had found, the process would have taken much longer.
While the second batch of ore smelted, Rahallo worked the first ingot without pause.
Sparks flew in every direction.
Sweat poured off him like rain.
Drawing on every memory of smithing from his previous life, he folded and hammered, folded and hammered, slowly purging impurities and building strength into the metal.
The labor was brutal.
He kept feeding in fresh iron from the new smelt, repeating the cycle again and again.
But every time the blank took on a clearer shape, a fierce satisfaction filled him.
After countless folds the ingot had become a long, straight bar—the rough shape of an arakh blade.
He heated the blank until it glowed red, then plunged it into a barrel of oil for quenching.
The oil hissed and smoked.
The metal cooled rapidly, becoming glass-hard.
He returned it to the furnace for tempering.
For days he worked almost without sleep.
When hunger came he gnawed on dried meat.
When thirst came he drank from the river.
He repeated the same steps over and over—heat, hammer, fold, quench, temper.
On the sixth night he took out a small bowl filled with dark, sour-smelling slurry.
It was a mixture of volcanic ash and certain rotted humus, fiercely corrosive.
He coated the blade with the slurry and began rubbing it vigorously with a piece of rough hide.
He worked through the entire night.
When the first light of the seventh morning touched the steel, the miracle appeared.
Black and silver lines emerged across the blade, interwoven in flowing patterns.
Layer upon layer, smooth as cream, shifting like water.
Proof of every fold and every hammer blow.
In the sunlight the steel gave off a cold, almost living gleam, as though some hidden power moved inside it.
Rahallo lifted the finished arakh and turned it slowly, watching the patterns seem to flow and ripple.
“From now on,” he said quietly, “your name is Ascala.” In the Dothraki tongue the word meant a river of blood.
The blade answered with a low, vibrating hum, like a great beast growling deep in its chest.
Rahallo set the edge against the head of a nearby hammer, drew a deep breath, and brought the arakh down in one clean stroke.
A sharp whistle cut the air.
Then a crisp crack.
The hammer head split cleanly in two, the fracture face mirror-smooth.
The blade itself showed not the slightest nick or roll.
Rahallo lowered the weapon and stood still.
Ascala was the product of everything he had brought from another world—knowledge that did not belong to this age of iron and fire.
A weapon that could carve a new future.
In his mind he already saw it: ranks of heavy cavalry thundering across the field in ordered formation, arakhs flashing in the sun, flintlock guns spitting fire and death.
Proud knights of the Seven Kingdoms screaming beneath Dothraki hooves.
The Red Keep itself reduced to smoking rubble.
On that day the horse lords would no longer be dismissed as savages and raiders.
They would be the force that carried civilization itself.
The First Men had broken the Children of the Forest.
The Andals had broken the First Men.
The Dothraki could break the Seven Kingdoms just as surely.
But every plan, every vision, came down to the fight that waited for him today.
Kill Drogo.
Take Daenerys.