Hobb turned the billet on the anvil while Ferra checked the intake marks and Kessa lifted their first finished spearhead.
She set it beside the cooling vat as the morning's siege horn drifted down through the opening above the bellows. Outside, the disruptor waited on its carrying stand, which left every bench inside clear for forging the replacement spearheads instead.
"Easy on that draft, steel's a stubborn mule, so feed it properly before you ask it to bend," Hobb rumbled, watching her hand creep toward the damper.
Ferra rolled her eyes, nudged the handle a finger's width anyway, and jabbed her chalk at the beam's figures, "Thirty degrees higher gives us four hundred more."
"Your mule could finish the whole rack before their rams even reach the ditch."
Kessa laughed as one apprentice copied the spearhead's stamp, and Hobb's smile showed beneath the soot anyway.
"She did halve our smelting time," she snickered, lifting her tongs toward the chalk line.
