“From now you stand at my shoulder.” “Yes, master.” So the maid became a sworn shadow, and after the sorcerer the days in Lonehill went quiet and found their old shape.
The forges sat in the mountain’s heat.
Domeric took Benita and a ring of steel down a long cut in the rock, toward the loudest work the hills owned.
Stone shops clung to the cliff.
The air coming off them had been baked.
Fire looked out of every door.
They had opened the rock and packed sword-rooms into it until the place was one shouting shop.
A master at a single fire kept eight or nine boys: the start of the heat, the bloom, the clay, the hammer, the quench, the grind.
Each piece had to meet the next on time or the metal forgot what it had been told.
He walked the heat to the last room.
The guards put their weight on a thick door.
Hammer and coal came up sharp.
“Gods.
Which fool opened that?
The heat’s walking out.” “And who in the seven hells are—” The apprentice turned, bare to the waist, ready for a fight.
His eyes went wide.
“My lord.” “I came to see the work.
Stay on your feet.” They did not.
Tools hit stone.
They came in a press and went to their knees.
Broken folk.
Clansmen who had been bled by their own.
Wildlings who had lived on whatever the hills did not eat first.
He had given them a fire and a wage and a winter that did not have to kill them.
The country ran thin.
Outside a lord’s walls a full belly was a rare trick.
Men fell down in the streets and stayed there.
Even King’s Landing kept a trade in it: the ones who dragged the dead off the stones and put them in the fire.
“Thank you for the work, my lord.
Thank you for the food.” “The lord is the gods’ own hand.” “Without him the realm has no light.” The praise stacked, each man trying to outdo the last.
Domeric let it amuse him and had copper put in their hands.
“Quiet.
You know the rule of this shop?” The voice cut the room in half.
The boys froze where they stood.
A thick old man came out with his good hand at his back.
Donal Noye.
Chief smith of Lonehill.
The nose was wide and flat.
Black hair stood on the jaw.
The left sleeve was pinned at the shoulder.
The arm was gone there.
He listed when he walked, the way a man lists when the balance has been stolen and never given back.
He had been the Watch’s smith once.
The work had not left him with the cloak.
One arm or not, he was still a hard piece of meat.
He could put a hammer in the air that most men wanted two hands for.
“Gods.
You lot deserve an empty bowl.” He cursed them for leaving a blade to flatter a lord.
They took it with their heads down.
No one was fool enough to answer.
Noye looked them over and still had anger to spend.
“Get to it.
I’ll prove every piece you laid today.
The man whose work fails me can start looking after his stones.” They broke and ran as if he had opened a gate.
Domeric took a letter from his coat.
“The Lord Commander wrote you.” Noye glanced, made a sound in his nose, and left it.
He had never owned many letters.
Someone who could read would give it to him later.
Before the Watch he had been a Baratheon man.
He had put Robert’s warhammer in the world, and the first sword Stannis ever wore.
He had a way of talking about the three stags that men still repeated when the brothers’ names came up.
Robert was the true steel.
Stannis was iron: black, hard, strong, and brittle, a thing that broke before it bent.
Renly was copper: bright, pretty, and not worth the shine.
Noye tipped his head.
The good hand found his hip.
The words came through his nose.
“You’re pleased with yourself, my lord.
I hear you’ve taken a pretty thing to stand at your shoulder.
When the books are done, does she rub your feet?
Does she warm the bed?” A wet little laugh sat under it.
Benita went red.
The guards liked it less than she did.
Even Wendel, who had never been shy of a dirty mouth, put his brow down.
“Noye.
You don’t speak to Lord Domeric that way.” “Leave it.” Domeric did not look injured.
“That is his nature.
He makes a joke of lords.
Here.” He held out an iron flask.
Noye took it, turned it, cracked the cap, and sniffed.
His face changed.
“Milk of the poppy.” “Oldtown’s better sort.
Be stingy with it.
Come back when it’s gone.” A white draught.
Maesters cooked it from the poppy.
It took pain off a man and put him under even when the pain was trying to keep him awake.
Noye had been a soldier first.
He had stood the Siege of Storm’s End for the Baratheons.
An axe had opened the left arm.
The arm had gone rotten and then gone.
Years later the weather found the rest of him.
On a wet night the rheumatism turned him in the bed until morning.
He put the flask away inside the coat.
The long eyes eased.
The voice came down with them.
“You’ve a mind on you, boy.
You didn’t climb all this rock to bring an old man a drink.” “Not only that.
There is work.” “Then don’t waste it.” He hooked an apprentice with a look and kicked the boy into motion before the order had finished leaving his mouth.
“The samples.
Now.
Let his lordship see what we’ve been making.”