Natural Ordermage

Luba
LVI

Despite the clouds overhead, the late-winter afternoon was almost as hot as fall or spring, and the hint of a breeze was acrid and carried the heat from the furnaces to the west.

“Move that shovel, Blacktop!”

The man knew his name was not Blacktop, but, for all the time he had been in Luba, he did not remember what it was. Until he remembered his name, he would answer to Blacktop. Then again, he had no idea how long he had been in Luba, only that he had been there at least for most of what the overseers called winter, hot as it seemed to him. For the moment, all he knew was that every single time he lifted the shovel, his arms and back ached, and every time that he took a deep breath, the air itself burned through his nostrils and all the way into his chest. He sweated all the time, and half the time, his beard itched from the salt that dried in it.

“Keep the chute full!”

He kept shoveling, evenly and just fast enough so that the overseer would not flick out his lash. He already had more than a few rents in the back of the sleeveless canvas working tunic, and scars on his back beneath those rents. He did not remember how he had gotten them.

“Stand back! ‘Ware the wagon!”

Another wagon-pulled by heavily muscled sloggers-rolled to a stop in the unloading dock next to the chute that funneled the coal down into the coking furnace. The loading dock had been cut into the hillside, so that the wagon bed was level with the ground on which Blacktop stood. The top end of the coal chute was barely a span above the ground.

The wagon guide pulled a rope, and the side of the wagon dropped down. A portion of the hard coal rolled out of the wagon and onto the blackened and hard-packed ground some four cubits wide, where Blacktop and the five others stood between the wagon and the chute.

“Loaders! Back to your places! Get those shovels moving!” The overseer’s whip cracked into the hot air.

Blacktop stepped closer to the side of the wagon and slipped the shovel under a pile of coal, then turned and lofted it in a low arc into the chute. So did the loaders on both sides, all working with the same motion-out of necessity.

Scoop, turn, and release…scoop, turn, and release…

Blacktop kept with the others until the wagon was empty. Then he lowered the shovel but did not otherwise move.

“Loaders back!”

He stepped back.

“Short rest, and I mean short.”

Blacktop sat down on the concrete-and-stone support to the chute feeding the coking furnace below, a furnace whose stacks rose far above his head, even though the chute ran down the hillside for more than thirty cubits. He turned his head slightly, to let the slight movement of hot air help dry the sweat on his face.

Farther to the west, the furnaces of the ironworks rose up the hill, stair-step fashion, with the large iron pipes that fed the exhaust gases of one furnace into the belly of the next. On the west end of the valley were the mills. He’d been told they were mills, but he’d never been there. His job was simple. He had to shovel coal when he was told to, rest when it was permitted, eat when he could, and sleep the remainder of the time.

The great blast furnaces radiated heat and light into a sky that was gray by day and sullen red by night. Day and night molten iron poured from the furnaces into the sand molds, and when the molds were cool enough, the pigs were moved. At times, from a distance, he had seen wagons moving some pigs when still red-hot to the rolling mills and drop-forges to the west of the furnaces. When his crew worked close to the furnaces, the combined clanging of the forges and the roar of the furnaces was deafening. Other wagonloads of pigs went elsewhere, but he had not seen where that might be.

Depending on where he was loading coal or shoveling broken slag into the disposal wagons, Blacktop could occasionally see the red-hot intensity of the furnaces and feel the heat. The reddish color that he only glimpsed reminded him of something…but he could not remember what it might be. It felt important, and nagged at him, in the few moments when he had time to think, but he could connect it with nothing before he had to go back to shoveling.

“Wagon away!”

The sloggers took up their traces, and the empty coal wagon creaked out of the unloading dock and back toward the black mountain of coal toward the east, even while another team of sloggers plodded forward, pulling the next wagon into the unloading area.

“Loaders! Stand by.”

Blacktop stood and walked back to his position, second in the line of five.