(The Imperial Fleet Converted into Grain and Medical Transports)
The roar of the open-air forges echoed across the Great Marsh Plain like nonstop thunder on a summer afternoon.
Where two hundred thousand armored legionnaires had once assembled their bristling phalanxes of dragon-tooth pikes, Old Man Tie Shan had erected three titanic fiery smelting kilns. Heated by underground earth-heat channels tapped directly from the earth’s veins, the massive brick-and-dark rock furnaces burned with blazing bright white-hot fury. Thick stone chimneys belched plumes of shimmering heat into the pale blue morning sky. The scent of ozone and glowing iron filled the air for leagues around.
Line after line of heavy ox-carts, driven by demobilized royal soldiers, rolled toward the smelting pits.
Inside the carts lay the discarded instruments of conquest. Two hundred thousand iron sabers, curved axe-spears, serrated spears, and heavy iron-heavy crossbows. For weeks, these weapons had been intended to pierce flesh, shatter beast bone, and harvest glory for warlords. Now, soldiers tossed them by the bundle into the roaring kilns with ringing, metal crashes.
“Toss them right in, boys!” a young former squad leader called out, dumping a bundle of forty iron pikes into the fiery mouth of the fire. “No more polishing spear tips until midnight while the captain screams in our ears! Today we smelt away the misery!”
