Chapter 5 - The Night of the Iron Gate
The lower harbor of New Avalon at midnight looked like the mouth of an active volcano.
Three companies of city pikemen, their steel breastplates gleaming dully under the yellow glare of pitch-soaked torches, formed a solid wall across Smithy Row. At their head sat Captain Rolf—a veteran mercenary with a scarred cheek and eyes like cold grease—leaning on a heavy partisan spear. Behind them, the sparks of iron tools hitting stone and the splintering crash of oak benches signaled the systematic destruction of the only home Elias had ever known.
"Halt!" Captain Rolf roared, raising his spear as a single figure walked out of the thick salt fog rolling off the docks.
Elias didn't stop. He walked straight down the cobblestone street through the drizzle, the heavy meteoric hammer resting casually across his right shoulder. The copper-wrapped runes pulsed with a steady, oily green light that cut through the torch smoke like a laser.
"I said halt, blacksmith!" Rolf shouted, his men lowering their pikes into a bristling hedge of sharp steel tips. "You're in violation of the emergency curfew and the anti-sedition ordinance of the City Council. Lay down the weapon and crawl back to the mud where you crawled from!"
Elias stopped twenty paces away. He looked past the pikemen toward the small stone tool shed at the end of the alley. Thick black smoke was already curling from beneath its wooden eaves.
"Where is Chancellor Vane?" Elias asked. His voice was conversational, almost gentle, but it carried clearly over the sound of breaking timber.
"The Chancellor is sleeping in his bed, where sensible men are," Rolf sneered. "Now drop the iron before my boys turn you into a pin cushion."
"Tell him he picked the wrong metal to break," Elias said.
Before Rolf could shout an order, Elias didn't charge—he swung the hammer in a massive, horizontal arc and slammed the flat head directly into the granite paving stones beneath his feet.
The impact didn't just crack the stone. It sent a shockwave of kinetic force shivering through the subterranean drainage and steam tunnels that ran beneath the entire lower harbor—tunnels that had been dug two centuries ago to vent the ironworks furnaces directly into the sea.
With a deafening roar, a dozen massive iron steam-vents burst open along the cobblestone street. Scalding white steam and sulfurous pressure rocketed upward into the night air, instantly enveloping the city pikemen in a blinding, choking fog of superheated mist.
"Hold the line! Hold the line!" Rolf screamed, but his voice was drowned out by the terrified shouts of soldiers dropping their heavy pikes as the hot steam scorched their leather boots and wool uniforms.
Elias walked straight through the whiteout as if he were taking a Sunday stroll through an apple orchard. The steam parted around the green-pulsing runes of his hammer like water around the prow of an icebreaker.
He reached the burning tool shed, kicked the heavy oak door off its rusted iron hinges with a single casual boot-heel, and reached inside through the smoke, pulling out an elderly woman coughing violently into her apron.
"Got you, Mrs. Gable," Elias said, lifting her easily over his shoulder.
"Elias?" the old woman wheezed, patting his arm frantically. "The ledgers—the ones your uncle left under the forge hearth—did you get them?"
"They're in my pack," Elias said, turning back toward the wall of retreating pikemen.
Captain Rolf was stumbling out of the steam cloud, his face red and blistered, his sword half-drawn from its scabbard. "Kill him! Cut him down!" he roared to the few soldiers who hadn't fled toward the upper docks.
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Elias set Mrs. Gable down behind a water trough, turned back to the remaining guards, and lifted the hammer high above his head. The copper runes flared with a blinding, emerald brilliance that lit up the entire harbor from the water's edge to the distant limestone cliffs of the royal terrace.
"Tell Vane the audit is tomorrow," Elias said. "And tell him to bring extra ledgers. He's going to need them to write down his confessions."
