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Thankless Tasks

Matthias lowers his hammer and stares at the sword on the anvil before him. It still needs to be sharpened, but he can already tell it isn’t perfect. A hairline crack runs the length of the blade. He didn’t manage to compress the cold iron tightly enough to make it bond. Even after hours of hammering. His arm feels like it’s about to fall off.

Matthias feels the disapproval of his gray-bearded mentor settling on him like a prickly blanket. He doesn’t look, because that’s what sets the old blacksmith off. For another moment, he wants his crotchety master to keep his mouth shut. He doesn’t want the tiny spark of satisfaction to be fully doused, even though it deserves to be.

Not for the first time, Matthias inwardly curses his country’s choice to war with the elves, instead of something sensible like the other human country across the strait. Elves, whose perfect pearlescent skin can only be marred, can only be pierced by a blade of cold iron. Cold iron must be alloyed and forged without heat. Without being softened, the force required to meld and shape it is all the greater. There is a furnace in Matthias’ master’s forge. Matthias has never seen it lit.

When Matthias first came to take up the hammer as a teenager, his limbs were thin, like the crooked fence posts around his father’s dismal farm plot. The blacksmith had scoffed at the idea that this “little twig” could ever forge a weapon. But Matthias showed him up by becoming a big, broad man; by putting on almost twenty pounds of muscle through years of toil and pain. It didn’t feel much like getting the last laugh, though. Even this seemingly wasn’t enough.

“What a waste of material! Just like you. Break it down and start over,” the blacksmith scoffs, his patience exhausted. “No dinner until you get it right.”

“So no dinner tonight,” Matthias mutters gruffly.

“What was that?!” the old man barks.

“Yes, sir,” Matthias enunciates, gripping his hammer ever tighter.

Later that night, Matthias lies awake in bed, his stomach still seizing with unsatiated hunger, his arm still burning from his labors. He stares up at the slanted ceiling of his windowless attic room with a frown and wonders if all of this is worth it. If the satisfaction of pounding the metal into shape has any value at all, if at the end it’s still useless. What use are his feelings, contrasted against the grimy backdrop of war?

As if crawling through the uncertainty in his mind, something else steps into the room. Matthias’ ears prick up at the sound of bare feet padding almost noiselessly on floorboards, at a quiet exhalation that might’ve been wind if he couldn’t hear the smile in it. Glittering reflections play across his ceiling. The scent of fresh forest moss snakes up his nose and takes residence there.

Sneezing reflexively, Matthias sits up.

Standing there, at the end of his bed, is what can only be an elf.

Despite the darkness in the room, light dapples her body. The shadows of sunlit forests cling to her as if unable to tear themselves away from her beauty. Her long, slender limbs and torso are draped carelessly in thin fabric, garments only in the loosest sense. Matthias averts his eyes embarrassedly.

She opens her mouth to speak, but Matthias hears only a chorus of bright peals, the notes of crystalline bells dripping from her lips in place of speech. Elven language? Words echo in his mind alongside them, but they slip out as soon as they arrive, like he’s trying to hold cold, clear spring water. He realizes he hasn’t taken a breath since the elf appeared and gasps.

I want to offer you a deal, the ethereal being’s voice repeats in his mind as she leans forward, and this time Matthias knows to snatch the meaning of the words before it boils away again. One which will benefit us both.

Matthias wants to leap to his feet, to cry out, to attack what he’s always been told is an enemy. But his body will do none of those things. Instead, he inhales another lungful of dizzyingly fresh air and mumbles, “What do you want.” He can’t even make it come out as a question.

Later, he will wonder how something so delicate and frail-seeming could utterly cow him like this, but in the moment her presence is overwhelming in a way Matthias has never experienced before. He suddenly understands why the helmets worn by his country’s soldiers have always seemed so impractical to him. The vision-restricting visors, the thick full-face plating that covers the nose and mouth and makes the men have to shout to hear each other… They’re blocking out the intoxicating presence of their foes.

The elf smiles brilliantly, and Matthias feels like a stake has just been driven into his chest. His heart skips one beat, two, and then remembers its duties again and hastens to catch up. I want you to kill your master for me.

Matthias’ eyes widen. “What?”

He’s always surrounded by cold iron. He keeps a blade on him at all times. Paranoid. But he won’t expect you. The elf walks around his bed, coming to a stop right next to him. She leans down to put her face right beside his ear. Matthias shivers. He’s grown used to you just sitting there and taking his abuse. But you shouldn’t have to suffer that any longer. She raises her hand to cup his cheek, and his skin tingles violently. Take up one of your blades, and show him that it really is fit for purpose.

An elegant, tinkling laugh, and she straightens to her full height once more. Matthias realizes she’s taller than him, despite his burly six-foot frame. He forces himself to take another breath. “No, I mean… why do you…”

Shouldn’t it be obvious? The elf laughs again, tauntingly. Matthias has to admit there’s only one reason she could want this. One coldly tactical reason. His master is a lynchpin in the army’s crucial supply chain.

Do this for me, and in exchange, I will show you something no mortal woman ever could. She winks, and Matthias hurriedly tears his eyes away. He hears her footsteps again, and turns back, but she’s already vanished again.

His face still feels cold where she touched it, but the rest of him is uncomfortably warm. He throws off the bedclothes with a groan.

Matthias doesn’t sleep at all that night, head too full of ponderous, misshapen thoughts. FInally, the morning comes reluctantly, at the bidding of a rooster’s crow. Matthias drags himself out of bed for a breakfast of tasteless gruel and another long day of inadequate smithing. Another day of hammering his frustrations into cold iron in hopes of making a dent shaped like progress.

Before dirtying it with his meal, Matthias tries to check his reflection in the spoon, to see if the burning-cold touch of the elf’s skin left marks on his cheek. It certainly felt like it should have. But his reflection scowls back at him, unmarked.

As he bangs away at the same sword for hours, striving fruitlessly to meet his master’s exacting standards, Matthias mulls over what the elf said to him. Does he deserve the shouting and the punishment? He’s never considered it that way before. This was just the way of things, to him. He fails, and he’s berated. Cause, effect.

And yet, this time, as the old man shouts at him yet again, Matthias feels the spark of resentment kindle a flame of anger. He’s trying. He’s trying, damn it. Isn’t that worth anything at all? Nothing about the progress he knows he’s making. It’s never good enough! What’s good enough?!

“Why does it have to be perfect?!” he finally shouts, standing up. The old man blinks, taken aback. Matthias looks down at him - when did he get taller than the blacksmith? He’s always felt dwarfed by the man - and cuts off his master’s retort with a finger jabbed into his chest. “The sword will be useless after it’s stained with elf blood anyway! It only has to survive one strike!”

The old blacksmith turns ruddy with fury. “Stupid child!” he shouts back. “You think every blow our army strikes is a killing one? I told you to scour those tall tales from your head. A glancing cut will still corrupt part of the blade, but if there is a crack, the blood will spill inside and ruin the entire thing! We don’t peddle shoddy merchandise here, boy! That’s not how you win the King’s contract!”

Matthias dimly registers that the old man has a point, but he is too incensed to stop now. Why couldn’t he make that point more kindly? “You could’ve taught me that years ago, you shitty old man!” He clenches his fists. This rage can’t be quenched anymore, except by, except by–

“I thought it was obvious! Are you really that much of a drooling cretin? Ugh!” The old blacksmith turns away, preparing to storm out of the room. “That’s it, we’re done for the day. Needless to say, you won’t be eating tonight either, you–”

Matthias interrupts him by plunging his latest imperfect blade clean through the blacksmith’s chest from behind.

The surge of victory Matthias wrenches from his master’s aghast corpse quickly drowns in a torrent of dread. Rich arterial blood runs down his hands, down his apron, dripping down onto the dusty floor. He can’t take this back. He can have all the second thoughts he wants, but he can’t unkill the man.

But he has to do something, he realizes, after five minutes of motionless panicking.

Matthias gathers up the body into a bundle of cloth, cleans himself up as best he can, and harnesses his master’s horse to the little carriage he used to bring back materials from the market. Now, the old blacksmith’s wagon will carry him to his final resting place. Somewhere no one will ever find him, Matthias hopes, glancing down at where the murder weapon sits sheathed on his hip.

Matthias sweats the whole way out of the town. Only when he’s put two hills between himself and the gazes of anyone else he knows does he truly catch his breath again.

Miles and miles away from the town, Matthias arrives in a forest whose evening light reminds him of the elf. He picks up his master’s bundled corpse in his arms and hauls it off the beaten track, following the sound of water through the undergrowth. At last, he locates the leaf-strewn river he’s looking for and unceremoniously dumps the old man in. After watching the body sink into the murky depths, he sits on the bank for an hour in numb contemplation, bloodied sword at his side.

He considers fleeing. He considers sleeping out in the forest. But, ultimately, Matthias decides his own disappearance would be noticed more quickly than his reclusive master’s. And either way, the king’s men are coming next week for their latest order of weapons. If that’s not met, the matter will definitely be looked into, and the king’s men are surely smarter than Matthias, he reasons. The risk is simply too great.

Matthias considers tossing the sword into the river, but instead hugs it close to himself. Letting out of his sight feels wrong, somehow. It’s his partner in crime, and if they go to their graves, they’ll go together.

Finally, when the sun begins to dip beyond the horizon, he gets unsteadily to his feet and rides the horse back into town. It’s dark by the time he arrives.

Once home, he serves himself a dinner that tastes of bitter spite but blessedly fills his yawning stomach. The entire time, the sword (his sword?) rests beside his place, a grim pantomime of a third utensil. After his meal, Matthias once again climbs the stairs to his bedroom and collapses into bed. He fully expects another night of sleeplessness and discomfort, but he’ll make a token effort.

He’s right, but not for the reasons he expected.

Once again, as his thoughts boil to a turbulent peak, he feels the wild forest protrude unnaturally into his room. He sees those scintillating colors that should not be there. He hears her laugh as she returns.

The elf sits down on the edge of his bed this time. Bolder. Her smile makes his skin crawl. Ugh, you stink of cold iron and blood, her voice chimes into his mind. But you really did it. Good boy. How did it feel?

“Awful,” Matthias grumbles, not dignifying her by sitting up.

Oh, poor you! she croons, leaning over and beaming her overwhelming aura into his face. Don’t worry. I’ll help you feel better.

Matthias barely has time to brace himself before the elf presses her lips to his.

For a moment, Matthias can’t move at all. If just her presence is overwhelming, this is an order of magnitude beyond that. His lips give up on conveying the sensation to him entirely and go numb. He closes his eyes to get away from her dazzling perfection and is left in the dark.

With those two senses cut off, Matthias can marshal his thoughts. The first thing he realizes is that he does not want this reward very much. The second thing he finds in his jumbled mind is that same defiant spark.

Matthias opens his eyes again, to find the elf’s eyes closed in blissful focus. Good. He inches his hand up the bedsheets, reaching under his pillow. His fingers close around the hilt of his blade, stashed there for safekeeping, and squeeze it. Torn between the impulse to wrench it free right away and the fear of alerting her with the noise, the latter wins out. Inch by painful inch, he withdraws it from its scabbard. The entire time, Matthias is petrified that she will open her eyes or hear, especially with how much his body’s trembling. But the elf seems to assume that she is the sole cause of those tremors, and doesn’t open her eyes once.

It’s the last mistake she ever makes. Once the sword’s tip slides free, Matthias drives it into her chest in the next moment.

Her scream is cut short by a bloody cough. She spits her blood into his mouth. It makes his taste buds revolt with its sourness. Matthias can hear the ugly, fizzing reaction as the blade burns the elf’s innards, and the elf’s innards in turn eat the blade. With a grunt, he shoves the elf off of him onto the floor, and spits the foul blood back out. It splatters against her wilting cheek.

“It wasn’t for you,” Matthias pants, realizing only now how vigorously his heart is hammering. Like it, too, is trying to forge cold iron. “I didn’t do it for you.”