Life and Limb (The Ebon Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page B

smoke of his shop when we entered.  His blotched balding scalp was gleaming with thick rivulets of sweat in the sweltering room.  He lowered his glasses and wiped them clean against his shoulder and looked again.
    "Wasn't expecting you until tomorrow," he said, picking up a hammer with his single massive arm, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Riderman."
    Cyril had lost his right arm in a farming accident ten years prior, but his other arm had enough knowledge of working steel to justify him still inheriting the smith's shop when his father died.  With twice the work in one arm, it had grown to a prodigious girth, rippling with each beat of his hammer showering sparks onto the ground below.  His other arm was a simple tool, a loop of cloth hanging from his thin vacant elbow for hooking pieces and flinging them out of the fire.
    Most of the shop was filled with heaps of scrap metal.  Long tubular pipes wrapped around columns of concrete before being beaten and thrashed into more useful shapes.  A row of crook's spades hung on the wall.  A pile of rifle barrels lay on a table.  And a cast for molding steel bullets rested next to a large glowing red spoon in the fire.
    Cyril smashed a knife one last time with his hammer before reaching out with his good hand to shake mine.
    "Sorry I shake with my left hand," he said grinning, "Alright, you burden.  Expect no slack here.  You go sit by the fire.  You know how to cast bullets?"
    I shook my head.  Cyril was a friendly man, with a penchant for making the same two jokes over and over again.  The first was about not noticing that he was missing an arm.  The second was calling me an invalid.
    He showed me the art of bullet casting.  The bullets we made, he explained, were cast lead and tin balls, designed to be fired from powder pistols and rifles that used something called Serpentine - essentially gunpowder.  He had received an order from a traveling war party for additional units.  Enough to supply a small army.  Of course that wasn't unusual in unconquered territory such as this.
    What they might be fighting over didn't concern me, either.  If there was any resource worth owning here, the city would have intervened.  And there certainly wouldn't be rifles - or a blacksmith - left behind when it had finished.  Lucky for Cyril and the rest of the village, there was nothing here.  Secretly, I hoped that was true.  For their sake.  I didn't ask what the rifles were for.
    I spent the day casting bullets in the sweltering heat of the forge.  My hands learned quickly, but tired with as much ease.  It was a relief when I felt Cyril's hand on my shoulder, breaking me from my trance,
    "Good work today.  You come back tomorrow and we'll make twice as many."
    Freezy was there as well, ready to carry me back with a round loaf of bread in her hand.  I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and grabbed my crutch, and we headed back.  The old woman Anna nodded with satisfaction when she saw how my leg was healing,
    "The bone is setting well.  In a few months this whole thing will be like a bad dream."
    That night I lay awake on the cot staring at the metal nail holding the pillow net in place.  Another day lost.  I would be healed soon, a whole man in three months.  In a sudden and unexpected moment of rage I reached up and pulled the net holding my head, twisting the nail and pulling it from the ceiling.  I laid flat, holding the net clutched in my hand.  Tomorrow, more bullets.
    In the workshop the next day I found Cyril running a long rolling saw across a plank of wood.  He looked up with his same friendly grin and said,
    "Those soldiers are coming soon.  They'll be real happy with your work.  I'll be sure to give you credit.  You may decide you want to stay after a while."
    Wordlessly I wandered to the fire and started pouring flecks of lead into the spoon, melting them easily as they contacted the red hot vessel.  The liquid spilled into itself, collecting