Chapter 12 of 23·8 min read·The few minutes after the north fire line failed
The Forge’s Last Heat
The alarm rope jerked twice, stopped, then began hammering against the Spire wall.
Kaelen was already at the stairs. Through the broken roof, black snow blew across the bell chamber and hissed on the iron rim. Elora stood beside the hanging rope, one hand wrapped around it, her face turned toward him.
“That means the north line?” she asked.
“It means someone’s below.” He took the lantern from its hook. “Stay here.”
She followed him to the stairhead. “You said that last time.”
The words landed harder than she’d meant them to. Kaelen stopped. He could not summon the memory she meant. He knew it had happened because she had told him; the knowledge sat beside his other notes, clean and useless as a mark on a slate.
“Then stay because I’m asking you now,” he said.
A fist struck the lower door. The old hatch shuddered in its braces.
Kaelen went down. Elora stayed at the top of the stairs, watching him go.
Oren waited below with Vey. His injured arm was bound against his chest, and his face was gray with cold. Kaelen knew the name. He knew the man had a wife and a son. He did not know the face that went with either fact.
“The north line’s gone,” Oren said. “We lost the last fire. They’re through the upper street. Three, maybe five. The rest are behind them.”
“How far?”
“Near the cooper’s row.”
Vey held out a short iron hook and a bundle of oilcloth. “The smith’s charcoal store is still full. We can draw them there.”
“Full enough to burn?”
“Full enough to waste everything we’d use to mend the line.” Vey’s gaze stayed on him. “Or enough to kill what comes through.”
The bell hung above them, its dark inner curve barely visible beyond the stairwell. Kaelen could reach the main clapper in a few breaths. One Cinder-Burst might clear the streets. It might also take something he had not yet lost. He had no way to measure what remained except by what he could still say to Elora.
“Where are the people?” he asked.
“Oren sent them into the stone hall,” Vey said. “Two families were still moving when he came up.”
“Then we get them clear first.”
Oren nodded. “I’ll bring them to the Spire.”
Kaelen looked up the stairs. Elora had come down two steps, lantern held in both hands. Behind her the roof gap let in a ribbon of black snow.
Next
With the forge and the town’s last charcoal gone, can Kaelen use the main bell to stop the advancing mass without losing the memories that bind him to Elora?
“Oren stays with you,” Kaelen told her. “You go down to the lower room and bar the door. He’ll bring people in. You don’t open it for anyone else.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to the north ward.”
She pinched the lantern handle between her fingers. “You’ll come back?”
“I’ll try.” He reached for her mitten and pulled it tight around her wrist. The knot had come loose. He tied it again, too firmly, then eased it with his thumb. “Keep the lantern low. Don’t go near the roof.”
Elora looked from him to Oren. “You’ll stay with her?”
Oren’s good hand settled on the stair rail. “I will.”
Kaelen did not remember the face, but he remembered the account Oren had given him. His wife. His boy. The way he had spoken of holding the gate. Kaelen let go of Elora’s mitten.
“Go with him.”
She went, though she kept her eyes on Kaelen until the stair turned between them.
Vey led him down through the lower door and into the street. The alarm still rang from somewhere uphill, pulled by someone who had not stopped to count the beats. Smoke lay low between the black-stone buildings. At the north end, the fire line showed only a scattered chain of red coals, too far apart to touch. Beyond it, the dark shapes moved between walls.
“Four,” Vey said. “I saw four.”
A heartbeat pulsed in Kaelen’s throat. He lowered his lantern until its shutter showed only a sliver of light. The Skahl-skin turned anyway. They tilted their brittle heads toward the street, searching for the living beneath stone and wool.
The nearest one dragged a hand along a wall. Its hide flaked where it struck the stone. It left no blood.
“Get behind me,” Kaelen said.
Vey did not move. “The store’s there.” She pointed to a low building beside the smithy. Its doors stood open, one hinge hanging by a strip of iron. “The charcoal’s stacked to the back. We draw them in, then light it from the forge mouth.”
“And get out?”
“Through the smithy’s coal hatch. If it hasn’t frozen shut.”
The plan depended on the creatures following warmth and sound into a dead end, and on the hatch opening when they needed it. Kaelen had no better plan and no time to make one.
He and Vey moved through the narrow side passage. The smithy stood dark, its furnace cold. The smith had gone with the other families, but a shallow bowl of coals remained under ash. Vey uncovered it with the iron hook. A faint red line showed through.
“Not enough,” Kaelen said.
“It will catch the charcoal.”
“If the wind gives it air.”
“If the wind doesn’t, we’ll be trapped beside a smoking pile.”
He looked at her. She had already pulled the oilcloth from the coals. “You could have said that sooner.”
“I did.”
Outside, a scrape crossed the street. One creature had found the smithy’s warmth. It came toward the open door with a steady, dragging pace. Another followed. The other two had turned toward a nearby house where someone was calling for the missing families.
Vey took the coals in the bowl. “You get the stragglers.”
Kaelen moved before she could cross the doorway. He struck the stone beside the smithy with the iron hook. The clang rang down the street. The two Skahl-skin turned toward him.
He ran.
They followed without haste, certain of their prey. Their feet crunched over grit and blackened ice. Kaelen kept to the middle of the street, making enough noise to draw them past the smithy. A shutter banged open ahead. A woman stumbled from a doorway, one child under each arm.
“Inside!” Kaelen shouted.
The woman froze at the sight behind him. He did not slow. He turned hard into the alley beside the charcoal store. The creatures followed, drawn by the beat of his heart.
At the far end, Vey waited by the coal hatch, the ember bowl in one hand. She had opened the narrow door just wide enough for a person to pass. The smithy’s back wall was stone. Beyond it, the store’s side door stood ajar.
Kaelen slipped past her into the store. The first Skahl-skin crowded after him. Its shoulder caught the frame. The others pressed behind it, their black hands reaching.
Vey thrust the bowl through the side door and kicked it into the charcoal. A red spark vanished beneath the heap.
“Now!”
Kaelen squeezed through the hatch. The iron door dragged against the frozen sill. Vey followed, then hauled it shut with both hands. The creatures hit the other door from inside. The wood jumped in its frame.
The charcoal gave a small, dry crackle.
“Go,” Kaelen said.
They ran along the wall. Behind them, the store door burst open. One of the Skahl-skin came through, its head scraping the lintel. Vey stumbled on the frozen ground. Kaelen caught her beneath the arm and dragged her forward.
A low orange light showed under the store’s eaves. The wind found the gap in the door and fed it. Smoke poured out, then a narrow tongue of flame. The creature turned toward the fire. It stepped back into the store, reaching for the heat.
The second creature came out after it. Kaelen heard its claws on stone. Vey had reached the smithy door. She struck the iron latch, missed, and struck it again.
The Skahl-skin crossed half the yard.
Kaelen could ring the outer ring from the street. He knew the reach of its shock and the price it would take. A trivial thing from the last few weeks, something his mind had not yet marked as important. But the main bell waited above him too, and he would not pay its deeper toll to solve a problem the town still had hands enough to meet.
He grabbed the door latch and hauled. Vey slipped inside. Kaelen followed and dropped the bar into its brackets.
The creature struck the other side. The door bowed inward. The forge was cold; the charcoal store was burning hotter by the breath. Heat gathered in the wall and pushed smoke through the smithy’s seams.
“Back,” Vey said.
They moved away from the door, toward the open furnace mouth. A thin, bright flame flared inside the charcoal store. The wood frame began to burn. The Skahl-skin hit the door again.
The bar cracked.
Kaelen pulled the furnace’s iron door open. It was empty and black, but the ember bowl had carried enough heat. The fire took the charcoal store’s spilled dust and leapt across the narrow gap. The outside door burst apart. A black hand came through, fingers scraping at the stone.
Vey shoved the long iron poker into the hand and pinned it to the floor. The creature did not cry out. Its arm snapped at the elbow, brittle as burned wood. The body forced through after it.
Kaelen threw the furnace door wide. The gust drew flame from the charcoal store into the smithy. Vey released the poker and ran for the front entrance. Kaelen reached it behind her. Together they dragged the heavy door closed and dropped its bar.
The fire roared through the building.
He heard the Skahl-skin batter the walls from inside. The stone held. Flames climbed the timber roof and burst through the snow load. Kaelen and Vey ran toward the square, where Oren was guiding the last families uphill. The children were wrapped in blankets; one woman had lost a boot and left a dark trail on the snow.
The smithy’s roof collapsed behind them. Heat shoved through the street. A line of flame swept across the charcoal store and consumed the black shapes inside it. The Skahl-skin stopped moving.
The north ward had gone quiet.
Kaelen’s lungs hurt from the smoke. He counted the people at the square. Twelve adults, five children. All the faces turned toward him, but none of them cheered. Oren lifted his uninjured hand, counting too, and lowered it only when he reached the end.
“Everyone?” Kaelen asked.
“Everyone we found.” Oren’s voice scraped. “The smithy’s gone. The charcoal too.”
Kaelen watched the forge roof fold in. The store had held enough fuel to keep the line mended and the town working through another hard stretch. Its loss had bought them one street.
Vey wiped soot from her cheek with the back of her glove. “You didn’t ring.”
“No.”
“Next time may not give us a choice.”
He could not argue with that. The people around them had heard her. Their eyes went to the Spire, where the roof gaped above the bell chamber. Nobody asked him to promise he would use it. Nobody asked him not to.
Oren came beside him. Kaelen recognized the voice before he turned. He could not find the face in it.
“Elora’s safe,” Oren said. “She’s got the lantern and the bar across the lower door.”
Kaelen nodded. His hand had gone to the small knife at his belt, though there was nothing it could do to the creatures they had burned.
Then the flames at the north end bent sideways.
A gust tore down the street, carrying ash. Beyond the last black-stone roofs, the black snow was shifting across the open ground. Shapes emerged from it, not four or five, but a packed line that filled the space between the fire posts. Their brittle hides caught the forge glow in dull red flecks.
Oren looked at the ruined smithy, then at the Spire.