A cold forge was a depressing thing, thought Brandt. He’d only been the smiths apprentice for six months, and yet in that time he’d learned how the hot forge and steady clink-clang of the smiths hammer was like the beating heart of a town. Farmers came for new scythe blades and to straighten bent plows. Soldiers came to purchase new weapons or to have dents planished from breastplates. Tailors, butchers, and all skilled tradesmen, unskilled peasants, skilled knights and noble lords all might pass through the open arch of the smiths forge. They dropped off and picked up, commissioned and socialized with others doing the same.

Even when they relocated from the village to the small motte and bailey castle, the forge and anvil were a popular spot in the small courtyard behind the walls. That was early on, however. In the first weeks of the siege, a shell from a mortar caught his master, Gerald the Smith, in a blast of shrapnel. Since then Brandt’s paltry skills had been put to the test. Truth be told, he thought he’d done quite well considering the sudden end of his tutelage. The full mysteries of metallurgy hadn’t been part of Gerald’s rough and rambling curriculum and so Brandt wouldn’t be able to create much from rough stock iron, but he knew enough to fix and repair and replace with inferior components. Well enough to get by in the circumstances.

The siege had dragged on, however. Lorch Keep was well supplied, but weeks had turned to months. Now any wood was fuel for cooking, and the forge would no longer be fed. Brandt was resigned to pounding out dents in helms and breastplates and sharpening blades. As the attackers had settled in, however, there was less and less of that to do, and now Brandt had mostly taken to meandering strolls along the inner wall, and polishing tools in the smithy. As he cleaned a pair of tongs of ash and tarnish that seemed older then he was, Brandt couldn’t help but think that a cold forge was a sad sign of a town in decline. The thought was made all the more bitter, when he heard the familiar ringing of a hammer from the other side of the wall - from his own forge being used by their enemies.