“An Unwound would have been here by now,” Rosheen said. “They do not rest.”

“I know what I saw.” Deglan glared at her. “It walked from Bwenyth Tor. Heading for the village. What else could it be?”

“The Forge Born did not fight at Bwenyth Tor,” Rosheen claimed.

Deglan strode fiercely towards her. “You think to tell me? I was there, piskie! At the siege and well before. Trapped on that blasted hill for months, Red Caps all around, starving us out! It would be folly to charge, too many of them. We were Wart Shanks, born in the saddle, every last gnome, riders to the blood. We vowed we would die before we ate our mounts and we choked on that vow as we choked down toad meat! Faabar was there too, he’ll tell you. But I didn’t see you there! No Forge Born at Bwyneth Tor? True. But they were coming. We had word. A runner got through, little fella, drunk a lot, you might have met him. He told us they were on the march. Liked to have pissed ourselves. Better to have died in a charge then suffer those metal monstrosities!”

“But they never came,” Rosheen said. It was not a question.

Deglan lost some of his wind. “No. They never came. Thank Earth and Stone. I don’t have to tell you, you seem to know your history. Might be you lived some of it yourself. The spell against the Forge Born was completed and they quit the battlefield. The Gaunt Prince recalled the Red Caps from the Tor to fight at his side and…we were saved. That sorcerer’s bastard got himself good and killed. Gnome King did that, thank you very much, and the Rebellion ended. Irial Elf-King was put back on the throne and we were heroes one and all.” He looked at the whisky skin scornfully and threw it into the bushes. “Heroes who rode to the Tor…and walked away from it.”

“Dark days,” Rosheen whispered.

“Dark days,” Deglan agreed.

“And nine hundred years in the past,” Rosheen said.

Deglan laughed bitterly at that. “That’s the thing about living iron. When a Forge Born goes Unwound, it goes more than blood crazy. It seeks to do what it was meant to do before the burden of a heart…of a conscience. Carries out its last order, killing everything as it goes, never stopping. Far as I’m concerned, those things were on their way the day Two Keg told us they were coming. It’s just taken them nine hundred years to get here.”

“What will you do?” Rosheen asked.

Deglan tried to answer, but the words would not come. He did not know.

“We hunt it down,” the harsh growl came from above them.

Deglan looked up. Faabar stood looming in the doorway, large and powerful, a blanket around his shoulders, a burning behind his bestial eyes.

S IX

SIX