The days were like coal in a furnace, burning away lump after lump until, before he knew it, the pile had reached the bottom.
Ever since the business with the ten sabers, Zhou Cang had never again said the words "get lost." When Qin Tiexin came to the shed in the mornings, the old man sometimes grunted through his nose. Sometimes he dispensed with even that and merely raised his chin toward the pile of weapons that needed repairing that day.
Qin Tiexin still said little. He refined what needed refining and forged what needed forging. Once his own work was done, he stood beside Zhou Cang's anvil and watched.
He watched the old man repair spearheads.
They were true repairs. Rather than melting them down and starting over, he heated the broken ends red-hot, laid a small piece of good iron against them, and fused them together with a few hammer blows before grinding out the point again. It was fast and saved material.
At first, Qin Tiexin could not quite make sense of it. He could forge sabers and farm tools, but spearheads came in all manner of forms-with tassels, hooks, or ridges-and their breaks were equally varied. Some had split down the middle, some had twisted off at the base, and others had been flattened by heavy weapons.
Zhou Cang did not teach. The old man simply repaired them with his head down, tossed each finished piece into the bucket with a hiss, and asked without looking up, "Understand it?"
Qin Tiexin shook his head.
Zhou Cang fished a similar one out of the scrap pile, heated it red-hot, and hammered it. His movements were a little slower, but he still said nothing. When he finished, he asked again, "Understand it?"
Qin Tiexin stared at the reshaped spearhead, thought for a long while, then nodded.
"Your turn." Zhou Cang stepped aside.
Qin Tiexin's hammer hand was a little sweaty. He chose a spearhead split down the middle, heated it red-hot, and lifted it out with the tongs. Copying Zhou Cang, he aligned the split edges and brought down his hammer.
Clang!
He misjudged the force and knocked the split out of alignment.
Zhou Cang did not curse him. He only said, "Ruined."
Qin Tiexin pressed his lips together, tossed the ruined spearhead back onto the scrap pile, and picked up another. This time, he was more careful, going over the heat, the force of his blows, and the rhythm of his hammering in his mind.
Clang... clang... clang...
The split slowly closed. Though the seam was still visible, at least it had not gone crooked.
Zhou Cang glanced at it and grunted deep in his throat. It counted as a pass.
The days passed like that. Qin Tiexin did his own work in the mornings, then stood beside Zhou Cang in the afternoons, watching before trying his hand. The shed rang with clanging from morning until night. Sometimes two hammers sounded in turn; sometimes only one remained-that was Qin Tiexin trying his hand while Zhou Cang squatted in a corner drinking, his ears pricked.
After a month, Qin Tiexin's spearhead repairs were still unpracticed, but at least he no longer ruined perfectly serviceable spearheads while repairing them. Once, repairing an armor-piercing ridge on a cavalry lance, he stared at its complicated angles for a long time and actually got it into shape on his first try. Zhou Cang drank an extra half-gourd of wine that day.
In early March of the lunar calendar, the wind inside the pass still carried a chill, but it no longer cut so sharply against the face.
At noon, Clerk Wang came to the shed looking for Qin Tiexin and handed him a coarse-cloth money pouch.
"Your monthly pay." Clerk Wang adjusted his glasses. "It should have been two strings of cash, but for the armor-piercing spikes you modified this month and those spearheads you repaired, the higher-ups gave you an extra string. Keep it safe."
The pouch was heavy. Qin Tiexin took it and squeezed the hard copper coins inside. Three strings, three thousand wen. He had never seen so much money in his life.
Nearby, Zhou Cang was sharpening a saber, his whetstone rasping as though he had heard nothing.
After work that afternoon, Qin Tiexin did not go straight back to the barracks. He went to the little street inside the pass-Clerk Wang had mentioned that Zhou Cang bought most of his wine and food there.
The street was short, lined on both sides with crooked shacks selling all sorts of things: needles and thread, coarse cloth, pickled vegetables, dried meat, and two wine stalls. Qin Tiexin walked up to one of the stalls, whose owner was a one-eyed old man.
"Some wine," Qin Tiexin said.
"What kind?" The old man lifted the lid from a jar, and the smell of wine rushed out.
Qin Tiexin knew nothing about wine. He looked over the jars on the stall and pointed at the dirtiest one, with the oldest label-the smell from Zhou Cang's gourd was a little like this.
"Two jin of that."
The old man deftly filled two black pottery bottles and sealed them with oiled paper. "Eighty wen."
Qin Tiexin counted eighty copper coins out of his pouch, laying them on the stall one by one. Once he finished counting, he tucked the wine away and headed back.
By the time he returned to the Craftsmen's Camp, dusk was falling. In the shed, Zhou Cang was fitting a handle to a saber by the last of the daylight.
Qin Tiexin went inside and set the two bottles on the wooden block beside Zhou Cang's feet.
Zhou Cang's hands stopped. He looked down at the bottles, then up at Qin Tiexin. His face showed little expression, but the deep creases at the corners of his eyes twitched.
"What's this supposed to mean?" Zhou Cang's voice was hard.
"Got my monthly pay," Qin Tiexin said.
Zhou Cang stared at him for a few breaths, then suddenly began cursing. "Wasteful brat! Squandering your money the moment you get it! You think money blows in on the wind?"
He cursed fiercely, but did not kick the bottles away.
Qin Tiexin said nothing and turned to put away his tools. Zhou Cang kept cursing behind him. "...Just like your smithing! Perfectly good material, and you have to give it those extra blows! Waste! Nothing but waste!"
Once he finished, the shed fell quiet. A little later, Qin Tiexin heard a soft pop-the sound of a stopper being pulled from a wine bottle.
He did not look back and kept wiping down the anvil.
When Qin Tiexin arrived the next morning, Zhou Cang was already there. The old man's eyes were bloodshot, but he was full of vigor. Seeing Qin Tiexin come in, he pointed beside the anvil. Several weapons lay there: a bent waist saber, a cracked halberd head, and the head of a wolf-tooth mace split down the middle.
"We're fixing these today," Zhou Cang said. "Watch."
He did not have Qin Tiexin look them over first, but set to work himself. As he repaired the waist saber, he spoke for the first time ever during such work. "With a bend like this, you can't force it straight. Heat it through, then tap gently against the bend, working it back a little at a time..."
While repairing the halberd head, he said, "The side blade breaks easily. When you join it, the iron needs to be thin and your blows light. Once it's joined, you still have to temper it, or it'll be brittle..."
Every sentence was solid, practical knowledge. Qin Tiexin listened closely, his eyes following every movement of Zhou Cang's hands.
From then on, Zhou Cang talked a little more. He still cursed, but afterward he would always add a couple of crucial pointers. When Qin Tiexin worked, the old man watched beside him, bellowing whenever he saw something wrong. "Too light!" "Overheated!" "Are those eyes just holes for letting air out?"
The atmosphere in the shed had changed. Before, there had been a contest of wills beneath the silence. Now the clanging continued, but there was something more in the sound.
By mid-March, the weather had warmed. Flecks of green sprouted on the wasteland outside the pass walls.
That morning, Qin Tiexin was sent to the storehouse to collect materials. The requisition listed a hundred jin of crude iron ingots, for forging a batch of arrowheads.
The storehouse stood at the western end of the Craftsmen's Camp, an adobe building half-buried underground. An unfamiliar clerk sat by the entrance, thin and dressed in an ill-fitting old military uniform, his head lowered as he checked the ledgers.
Qin Tiexin handed over the requisition. "Collecting materials."
The clerk raised his head. He was a young man who looked not quite twenty, pale-faced but with bright eyes like two black pebbles steeped in water. He took the requisition and looked it over, then stood. "One moment."
He turned and entered the storehouse. Before long, he came out carrying two large iron ingots-fifty jin each, square and dark.
Though the clerk looked frail, his arms were perfectly steady as he carried the ingots. He set them beside Qin Tiexin's feet in one smooth motion, but seemed to realize something as he lowered them. His hands drew back slightly, and the ingots landed more quietly than usual.
Qin Tiexin noticed.
He also noticed the clerk's fingers-there were several small, fresh burns on the pads of his right index and middle fingers, red and tender and shining, as though he had only recently been burned.
"Check them," the clerk said, his voice a little dry.
Qin Tiexin crouched to inspect the quality of the ingots. The storehouse was dim, so he leaned in close. As he rose, his gaze happened to sweep over the clerk's hands.
The clerk withdrew his hands into his sleeves.
"All correct," Qin Tiexin said. He bent down, lifted the hundred jin of iron with one ingot in each hand, and turned to leave.
"Wait," the clerk suddenly said. "Are you... Master Qin from the Third Section, Seventh Group?"
Qin Tiexin stopped and looked back. "Yes."
The clerk smiled, a little awkwardly, but with light in his eyes. "I've heard about you. Ten sabers in five days, forged from scrap."
Qin Tiexin did not answer. He was not used to being looked at that way.
The clerk, however, seemed to grow interested. He came around the desk, rubbing his hands. "My name's Lin Feng. Lin as in forest, Feng as in wind and rain. I was transferred here to manage the storehouse just half a month ago." He paused and lowered his voice. "Actually, I spent some time in Yunzhou before. There are lots of iron mines there, and I've seen plenty of forging methods-not boasting, really."
Qin Tiexin looked at him. Lin Feng spoke quickly, his eyes shining, as though he had a bellyful of words bottled up and had finally found someone to pour them out to.
"Yunzhou iron has few impurities, but it's brittle. To forge it well, you have to mix in a kind of red clay called 'cinnabar clay.' When you heat it..." Lin Feng went on in a torrent, then suddenly stopped halfway through and scratched his head. "Ah, am I talking too much?"
Qin Tiexin shook his head. "Not really."
Lin Feng's eyes brightened further. "You don't find me annoying? Then... then come here next time you collect materials! It's quiet here. I spend all day with ledgers, bored out of my mind. When you come, I can have someone to talk to-I know lots of things, not just smithing. Medicinal herbs, the stars, the customs of different places-I know a little about all of them..."
As he spoke, he took a small notebook from inside his clothes and opened it. Its pages were densely covered in writing, along with some strange symbols. "Look, these are my own notes. Illustrations of plants inside and outside the pass, which ones stop bleeding, which ones are poisonous..."
Qin Tiexin looked at the notebook. The writing was neat, and the drawings were carefully done. He nodded. "Pretty good."
Lin Feng looked as though he had been given a treasure, his smile widening. He put away the notebook and patted Qin Tiexin's arm. When his hand touched Qin Tiexin's solid arm, it paused. A trace of surprise flashed through his eyes, but he quickly concealed it.
"Then it's settled. Come collect from me next time!" Lin Feng said. "Sometimes I... I can save a bit of good material here, though not much..."
Qin Tiexin nodded again and left with the iron ingots.
After a dozen or so paces, he glanced back.
Lin Feng was still standing at the storehouse entrance, his thin body wrapped in the oversized uniform like a bamboo pole planted in the ground. Seeing Qin Tiexin look back, he waved vigorously.
Qin Tiexin turned back and kept walking.
The ingots weighed heavily in his hands, pressing his palms numb. His mind, however, was on something else-the burned fingers, the unusually light way Lin Feng had set down the iron, and that spark in his eyes when he spoke of forging.
Something wasn't quite right.
But Qin Tiexin did not think any deeper about it. There were plenty of odd people inside the pass. One more Lin Feng was nothing unusual.
Back in the shed, Zhou Cang must have been getting impatient.