Prologue — The Forge
All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.- Seamus Heaney
All of the elements have their place in the forge: fire and heat; the air from the bellows; the earth of the ore; the oils of the quench tank that cool.
To stare into the flames of a forge, and breath the heavy air, is to observe a raw power that cannot truly be understood. Even the most accomplished blacksmith does little but borrow from this power.
The creations of one forge, long ago, tamed this power more than most ever could. One hammer shaped tools more beautiful to behold than any other. One ore became weapons more destructive than any since.
A tool does not warp its master, a tool amplifies — amplifies strength, nobility, and cruelty alike. These weapons were no different, and the great men that wielded them, as flawed as any; the brightest diamond and the blackest coal are both the same in the eyes of the forge’s flames.
The metal worked by this hammer came to define humanity, for better or worse, and though the metal is lost to us, the stories are not. From the forge comes creation and beauty, but also manipulation and destruction. These are those tales.
