He limped away to his council house up beyond the church. The fork had been broken just above where the handle joined the tines. One long strip of iron still ran up the front of the wood, but the wood itself was snapped and the strip of iron behind had rusted right through.
Uncle Chacha turned the tool over discontentedly in the shelter of the hedge and listened to Nicky’s story.
“I do not know,” he said. “Perhaps Jagindar can mend it, but it does not look easy. This is not my trade; I am a checker in a warehouse, not a blacksmith. Does your head hurt where the man hit you?” “I’m getting used to being hit,” said Nicky, fingering the bruised bone. “He wasn’t quite so quick as you are, but his hand was much heavier.”
Uncle Chacha nodded, put the fork over his shoulder and started on the trudge up the lane. After a while he said, “This man sounds interesting. A smaller fighter can sometimes defeat a bigger one because he is quicker, but a man who is very big and quite quick will usually win.”
“If you were a checker in a warehouse,” said Nicky, “how do you know so much about fighting, and why are you so good at it?”
“I am very quick,” said Uncle Chacha, “because all my life I have played squash. I am quite good — I have played in the national championships, though I did not get very far. I have also learnt some judo, because I was not very popular at the warehouse when I first went there. The other men were racially intolerant, and I wished to be able to defend myself. A Sikh should know how to fight.”
“But swords and things,” said Nicky.
“Oh, we will have to see.”
They got the forge going two days later. Nicky stood in the doorway of the shed, where the stolid sun beat brilliant against the brick, and watched a pair of uncles pumping rhythmically at the bellows bar in the dusky interior. The pulses of air roared with a deep, hungry note as they drove through the glowing charcoal, turning it from dull red to orange and from orange to searing yellow. Uncle Jagindar stood in the orange cone of light from the furnace door, shading his eyes as he gazed against the glare. He was stripped to the waist and the weird light cast blue shadows between the ridges of his muscles. At last he grunted and nodded, and Mr. Gurchuran Singh picked up a pair of pincers and lifted a short bar of white-hot metal from the furnace. When it was firm on the anvil Uncle Jagindar smote steadily at it with a four-pound hammer. The brightness died out of it as though the blows were killing the light; the crash of each blow rang so sharp, and the next crash followed it so quickly, that Nicky’s head began to ring with the racket and she put her hands to her ears. Kewal took her by the elbow and led her away.
“Is it all right?” he said. His anxiety seemed to make his squint worse than ever.
“Oh yes,” said Nicky. “Only it’s so noisy. What are they making?”
“Just a practice piece, a small sword for one of the children. It may not be very good because Jagindar is not sure of the quality of the steel he is using. Steel is a mixture of iron and carbon in exact quantities, and the hot charcoal adds more carbon to the iron, so you achieve steel of a different temper. In primitive conditions like this it is all a matter of judgment, so the first few things he makes will probably be flawed or brittle.”
Nicky looked down the slope to where two extraordinary figures were prancing on the unmown lawn behind the farmhouse. Their padded necks and shoulders made them look heavy and gawky, but they skipped around each other like hares in March, taking vicious swipes at the padding with short curved staves. Few of the swipes reached their target because the figures ducked and backed so agilely, or took the blow cunningly on the little round leather shields which Uncle Chacha had cut from old trunks in the farmhouse attic. Suddenly Nicky realized that the six-yard folds of fine linen from which the Sikhs contrived their turbans would be almost as useful in battle as a steel helmet. The fencing practice stopped, and Uncle Chacha and Mr. Harbans Singh leaned on their staves and discussed what they had learnt.
“Yes,” said Nicky, “I suppose a brittle sword wouldn’t last long with that amount of bashing. But I thought proper fencers prodded at each other with the points of their swords, instead of swiping like that.”
“It is a different type of sword,” said Kewal. “We Sikhs have always used the tulwar, which you call a saber. The curve of the blade helps the cutting edge to slice through whatever you strike at. You Europeans invented the dueling sword, using the point to pierce your enemy before he could reach you, but even European cavalry has always used the saber, because the horse carries a man to close quarters where the cutting edge is handier than the point.”
“I hope he doesn’t make Mr. Tom’s fork brittle,” said Nicky. “Let’s go and help in the hayfield.”
Kewal made a face, but walked up the path beside her. Nicky was learning all sorts of surprising differences between the Sikhs, who had at first seemed so like each other. Kewal, for instance, was quick and clever, but lazy and vain; most days he seemed to have some reason to wear his smartest clothes, and the clothes then became a reason for not doing any hard or dirty work — though he was usually on the fringe of any working party, criticizing and giving advice. If Nicky had suggested going up to the wood to help in the endless job of carting charcoal down to the forge, he’d have found a reason for doing something else. The black and brittle treasure from the opened mounds filled all the air around with a fine and filthy dust. That was work too dirty for Kewal.
Suddenly Nicky laughed aloud. She was going up to the hayfield as an excuse for not taking her turn at the flour milling, which she thought the dreariest job on the whole farm: you pounded and rubbed and sieved for an hour, and finished with two cupfuls. Kewal looked to see if she would share the joke, but she shook her head.
The toy sword was given to Kaka, and he swaggered about with it stuck into his straining belt, looking just like a miniature version of the giant down in the village. Uncle Jagindar was pleased with it, because it didn’t snap when you bent it or banged the anvil with it, and the edge came up killing sharp. He practiced all next day at the forge and on the third day he mended Mr. Tom’s fork, welding a new length of steel up the back. The risaldar shaped a new handle, and the finished job looked almost as good as a fork from a shop. Nicky was ready to take it down at once, but Gopal said, “No, listen!”
The bells were going in the church tower, tumbling sweetly through their changes. It must be Sunday. The Sikhs didn’t keep Sunday or any other day as special; instead they had long prayers and readings from their holy book morning and evening. Yes, it would be a mistake to go down on a Sunday, another sign of how different the two communities were.
She found Mr. Tom at his house on Monday morning. He fingered the weld and the new handle with hands so harsh that you could hear his skin scrape across the surface.
“Clean and sturdy, Fd say,” he said. “We’ll show the Master. He’s in court, Mondays.”
They found the giant in what had been a classroom in the school. Mr. Tom led Nicky quietly in and pointed to a bench where she could sit. Twenty other villagers were there, cramped behind childsized desks; the giant sat up on the dais, also cramped, though his desk had been made for a grown man. Maxie sat at a table below the dais, scribbling in a ledger. A dark, angry-looking woman stood in front of the desk complaining about something. When she stopped she sat down. The giant looked at the room in silence for a full minute.
Then he nodded to Maxie, who had stopped writing. Maxie leaped to his feet and crowed like a cock.
“Now hear this!” were the words he crowed. The giant purred into the silence.