Anira was sitting by the window, looking out through the curtains. She heard her mother, who was sitting in the hallway next to her door, quietly hum to herself. Out in the courtyard, the members of the village council were gathering. The head foreman of the workers was also among them.

Captain Yelgar and his son Diyur were standing beside Tiyodor. When Anira opened her window, Diyur looked up and Anira saw the same possessive craving in his eyes that she had seen when fending him off on the ferry.

Ervingal hadn’t even taken the effort to change his clothes and was sitting on the ground in front of the wood fire, staring into the flames. The clay around the blade had turned black and was covered in little cracks. Ervingal stood up, smiled, and spread his arms. ‘Welcome,’ he said to the chairman of the village council. ‘Thank you all for coming. I have important news.’

‘Your brother Tiyodor said that you could explain best why you wanted to see us,’ the chairman said, not hiding his irritation.

Ervingal nodded slowly. ‘That might indeed be a good idea,’ he said, casting a nervous glance at Tiyodor. He gestured at the blade in the wood fire. ‘All right, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.’

‘That’d be nice,’ the chairman said. ‘We do have other business to attend to today, as you might imagine.’

‘I understand, and I’d like to apologize for shirking my responsibilities the past few days.’

The chairman made an impatient gesture with his hands.

‘All right…’ Ervingal knelt down in front of the fire and pulled the blade out of the flames. ‘As you know, I was the palace master swordsmith for many years.’

The chairman nodded.

‘Ever since I came to Varna, I’ve been experimenting with different forging techniques in order to improve our weaponry, and finally I’ve succeeded.’ He drew his dagger, placed its point into the groove of the clay casing and pressed the blade down. The clay split open and revealed the blackened blade. ‘Wait,’ he said before anyone could say anything. He produced a cloth and started to wipe the blade clean.

Everyone held their breath. Anira saw the surprise in her father’s eyes when the cloth revealed a smooth, shining surface. Tiyodor stepped forward and put a hand on Ervingal’s shoulder. Gods, I’ve never seen anything like it!’

The chairman joined them. His gruff expression disappeared. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

Ervingal couldn’t keep his eyes off his creation. ‘A gift from the Gods,’ he said. ‘Iron... a metal unlike any other, and such that will make us mighty, my friends!’

Everybody crowded together around the three men. Ervingal held the weapon up in the air, so that everyone could see it. The iron glittered in the late afternoon sun and Anira caught a glimpse of the seductive shimmer that made the weapon somehow irresistible. It had a blue hue undoubtedly bestowed to it by the grinded Ether crystal that was mixed with the iron, which became all the more striking when it caught the light of the sun. It was mesmerizing and hard for her to look away.

‘Show me,’ ordered Captain Yelgar, who was edging his way through the crowd together with Diyur. He reached out towards the blade, but just before his fingers could touch the iron, Ervingal pulled his creation back to himself. ‘Wait,’ he said. He drew forth a hilt that he had made out of antlers. It fit the blade perfectly. He then attached a bronze pommel to the bottom of the hilt and fastened it with a pin. As a final touch, he wrapped the hilt in deer leather. Everybody moved out of his way when he walked in the direction of the birch tree and raised the blade. With one stroke, he cut clean through the trunk, and there wasn’t a splinter in sight. The tree didn’t move, almost as if the deadly stroke had been nothing but a dream. Anira could hear the vibrating iron sing. Then the tree slowly started to move and fell to the ground with a clatter. There was a strange glow in Ervingal’s eyes.

‘Listen,’ Ervingal turned to face the crowd, ‘I might not have taken my duties as Governor of Varna seriously enough, but that will change now. The discovery of iron offers us the chance to arm ourselves against the escaped loggers. In addition, Varna will become known as the birthplace of this divine metal and grow into an important and flourishing trading village.’ He addressed the chairman of the village council. ‘With your permission, I would like to call upon the entire village to help with the gathering of iron, with the aim of forging it into the deadliest weapons in the history of the Mano people. Of course, I shall be the one to oversee all activities, with the help of my brother and his guard.’ He stole a sidelong glance at Tiyodor. ‘To ensure that everything happens safely and successfully, I propose prohibiting the use of nightshade, effective immediately.’ Ervingal smiled. ‘What say you, chairman?’

‘I didn’t expect this, Ervingal.’ The chairman looked him in the eye. Then he gave a satisfied nod and laughed. ‘Tell me what you need me to do, and I’ll immediately mobilize the villagers.’

‘Very well.’ Ervingal clenched his fist and looked up at Anira’s bedroom window. Anira recoiled in fright.

‘I’ll need the biggest and strongest men in the village to help with the forging,’ Ervingal continued. ‘The other men will start gathering bog iron and iron ore immediately. The women and children can go about making hilts out of bone and leather, along with helping us make the bellows and hammers needed for the process.’

‘Excellent,’ the chairman said. He gathered his colleagues. ‘Let’s waste no more time. I’ll see to it that all villagers are ready to start work tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn.’ He nodded a goodbye to Ervingal and proceeded with the other council members to the village square.

Anira stared after them with mixed feelings. The sun was setting in the west, as if the day had now ended because the God of War had gotten what he wanted.

Tiyodor clasped his brother’s shoulders. ‘Ervingal, I’m sorry to have doubted you, but you’re exhausted. You need to eat something and then get some sleep, so you’ll be ready to lead the villagers tomorrow.’

Ervingal nodded but couldn’t seem to peel his gaze away from his creation.

The following days went by slowly. Three times a day, Irma brought Anira’s food to her room. She did not, however, answer any of her daughter’s questions and never stayed longer than necessary. Anira was not permitted contact with any of her other family members either. She could only watch helplessly out of her bedroom window as Ervingal put his plans into motion. He had made a beautiful scabbard for his sword and proudly wore the weapon on his belt, where everyone could see it, but he wouldn’t let anyone else touch it. Not even his own brother.

Under the command of Tiyodor’s guard, the villagers gathered sacks of earth and sand for the bog iron, and lumps of red stone for the iron ore. Nobody wondered how Ervingal knew where these materials could be found in the vicinity of Varna. His discovery had renewed the villagers’ confidence in him as their governor. Even though nobody doubted his sincerity, Anira noticed that the head foreman of the workers was never far away. Sometimes she saw him hanging around the camp of Tiyodor’s guard, staring at her uncle while making conversation with Captain Yelgar and Diyur.

At Ervingal’s instructions, the sacks were brought to the courtyard where the women of the village were assembling hammers and bellows. When enough bog iron and iron ore had been gathered, dozens of clay ovens were built on the pastures behind the house, in order to extract the iron from the sand and stones. The charcoal being used for this produced gray wisps of smoke, and the molten sand and stone flowed from the openings in the ovens in small, red-hot streams. Next, the ovens were forced open to collect the newly smelted iron.

After two days, the strongest men in the village were then able to get preparations underway for the actual forging process. The pieces of raw iron were required to be folded multiple times using brute force. The piercing sound of hammers raining down on anvils continued well into the night and drove Anira mad. The following morning, Ervingal addressed the villagers who were tasked with forging the iron and showed them the process that Merg had revealed to him. Dozens of broadly-built men began forging numerous iron swords that were to save Varna from destruction. Ervingal made sure that everyone followed his instructions to the most minute detail, but, whenever his presence was not required, he would retire to his shed with his own Ether-steel sword, sometimes staying there for hours on end.

That night, Anira could hear her uncle singing quietly to the sword in his bedroom across the hall. His voice was hoarse and sometimes shaky, as though he was having trouble holding back his tears. When she carefully opened her door in the middle of the night and saw that the chair next to the doorway was empty, she sneaked across the hall and entered Ervingal’s bedroom. She didn’t move and held her breath. Ervingal was sleeping with the sword in his embrace. He had a blissful expression on his face.

Anira’s eyes were drawn to the weapon and its subtle blue hue. She cautiously walked towards the bed and reached out her hand. While she ran her fingers over the hilt, she noticed the strange attraction the sword exerted. Was it the Ether crystal powder that was mixed in with the iron? She felt envious. Her uncle wasn’t worthy of this weapon. She was the only one willing to face the truth. Didn’t that mean that she was entitled to Merg’s gift? She slowly closed her fingers around the blade and trembled with pleasure. Suddenly Ervingal shifted in his sleep. Anira’s brow was beaded with sweat as she tried to draw her hand back. She blocked out the disconcerting thoughts and pulled her hand free.

Reeling from a feeling of emptiness, she walked back to her room and fell down on her bed, gasping. The rapid pounding of her heart kept her awake for quite some time. She couldn’t rid herself of the strange feeling of longing that shrouded her thoughts. She couldn’t get the sword out of her head and slowly she sank into a delirious dream. And it was there, in the recesses of her mind, that he appeared before her.

‘Ervingal, I need to help him…’ Anira mumbled while tossing in her sleep. ‘The Ether-steel sword he made… Is it cursed?’

‘Blessed or cursed, there really isn’t much difference.’ Merg laughed. ‘You can’t help Ervingal anymore. He’s lost. Ever since his wife died, he’s been hurtling towards his doom.’

‘But why?’ she asked. ‘He was a good man. Why would you want to hurt him?’

‘That is not your concern.’ The voice of the God of War echoed in her head. ‘But don’t be afraid. The Mano will proudly remember him as the man who discovered iron. That’s how he’ll go down in history.’

‘Is he going to die?’ Anira asked. ‘Are we all going to die, all because nobody believes me?’

Merg’s laughter suddenly sounded far away. ‘You should never have come here.’