Something flickered in Henarald’s blue eyes, like pale sunlight upon a blade. ‘Born of smoke – I never imagined how it would feel, this imprisonment. Is it any wonder we cry? Wrapped in flesh, drawn down, muscle to match the fuller’s peen, bent and swaged, the patina writ like poetry, yearning for a voice that might be music, only to yield nothing but cries of anguish. Iron is a prison, my friend, and escape is impossible when you are the bars.’

‘I never believed them alive, milord. In all my years, wielding this sword at my side, I told myself that I heard nothing living in its voice. Others swore otherwise. Many winced upon releasing the blade from its scabbard. They marched into battle with visages of dread. For one man, a fine soldier, that voice became his own cry of terror—’

Henarald waved dismissively. ‘Terror lives a brief span. When there is no possible escape, madness proves a quick and sure refuge.’ An odd smile twisted the old man’s gaunt features. ‘Iron and flesh alike.’

‘Milord—’

‘The forges are dying. The age of the Hust ends. We burned our way into a world of ash. Could you even imagine, my friend, how it felt? The day I walked a forest of stumps and holes, of ravaged ground, roots clawing the sky, and saw upon all sides the ledger of my enterprise, my sordid fever? Did I think the new vistas promised escape? Did I set my gaze upon distant hills, verdant with nature, and but lick my lips?’ He shuddered suddenly, and the wool slipped down to reveal the bones of his shoulders prominent beneath thin skin. The man was naked beneath the robe. ‘I might have. I might have. Mother bless me, but I might have.’

The madness of iron was a difficult, terrible thing to witness. Galar Baras looked away, chilled by the stone bench, the frigid, flake-filled air, this mocking knot of garden. After a moment he rose, stepped close to his lord, and returned the robe to its place upon Henarald’s shoulders. He saw the tears running down upon the man’s spalled cheeks, freezing white and glistening in the deep wrinkles.

‘Industry, milord. The demands of progress. These are forces the tide of which we cannot withstand. There is no single man or woman to blame. The crime, if such a thing could be said to exist, is our nature, and our nature we cannot deny, nor defeat.’

Henarald looked up with watery eyes. ‘You believe this thing, Galar Baras?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper.

‘I do, milord. If not the Hust bloodline upon the anvil, then another, or yet another. The Jaghut alone displayed the proper courage, to refuse their own natures, to turn their backs upon progress, but even then, milord, their final congress was one of destruction and abandonment.’