Dey’s first answer was no.
Iven laid the two wrapped steel tips on the bench and waited while the fitter looked at the proposed shaft. It was a sound length of ordinary tool steel, short enough to carry through a doorway, with a proper shoulder for the coupling. It was not the rejected socket from yesterday. That remained in the marked tray beside the cracked ram shoe.
“No long shaft on a shallow collar,” Dey said. “You’d put the load where the old one slipped.”
He drew a deeper collar on the board, with a key bearing against the shaft’s shoulder instead of asking friction alone to carry the stroke. They cut the collar from sound stock, fitted it and checked its seat against the actual coupling. The removable tip received its own retaining pin. Iven could change a damaged point without trusting a fresh hole drilled in the middle of a fight.
On the morning of day 1221, the forge charged him for the metal and the ordinary fitter’s time. A physical weapon did not appear inside an imprint merely because he had learned how force might travel through one.
They tested the short lance against the guarded scrap bed. Iven planted his feet, aligned the shaft and spent ten charges on a controlled stroke. The tip marked the steel plate. The collar stayed seated. Dey checked the key and pin before letting him wrap the point.
