‘What took you so long?’ his da said as Drem entered the forge. He was working a bellows, the suck and heave of air sounding like a diseased giant’s lungs, the glow of the forge changing from red to orange, yellow-edged.

‘What are we doing here, Da?’ Drem asked.

‘Here, put this on and keep this going,’ Olin said, ignoring the question, shaking a leather apron at him and gesturing for Drem to take over the bellows. Olin wore his own blacksmith’s apron, scarred and pitted black.

Drem did, grunting at the weight of the apron. He’d worked a forge before, though it had been a makeshift one his da had built when they lived in Ardain. He’d enjoyed it, finding a deep pleasure in the rhythm of work, whether with bellows or hammer. Drem’s thoughts of sleep melted away, along with his irritable mood. Behind him there was the clank and grate of tools pulled from racks, buckets moved, iron shifted through.

The charcoal started to glow yellow, tinged with white.

‘Da!’ Drem called over his shoulder.

A silence.

‘Hotter,’ his da said.

Drem scooped more cinder and ash from the ash-pit beneath the forge and banked the fire higher, then set back to work at the bellows.

Olin appeared, put a pile of iron rods on the workbench, and something else, wrapped in sheepskin. The package that had been strapped to his saddle. Almost reverently, Olin unrolled it, revealing the black lump of rock they’d discovered in the foothills of the Bonefells. Drem’s sense of worry returned like an avalanche.

‘Da, please, what are you doing?’

His da looked up at Drem, as if noticing him for the first time.

‘Please, Da, for once, just tell me. I’m not a bairn.’

‘I’m making a sword,’ Olin said, eyes bright with the forge’s glow.

‘What? Why?’

‘There’s nowhere left to run, Drem. Since your mam, we’ve travelled the Banished Lands, always searching, running, fleeing the tide. Five years since, we settled here, and I thought we’d finally found some peace. And now it’s coming here, the curse of the Kadoshim and Ben-Elim polluting everywhere in these Banished Lands. There’s nowhere left to go. I’m tired of it, worn out by it.’ He went back to his gathering of tools, slipping a bag from his shoulder and rummaging through it. Drem reached out and grabbed his da’s wrist, pulling him back to face him.

‘Da, you’re worrying me.’

Olin sucked in a deep breath, blew out slowly.

‘The newcomers in Kergard, the ones you fought. I don’t like them.’

‘I don’t like them either,’ Drem said. ‘No need to make a sword to kill them with, though.’