Eventually, at the cost of unimaginable effort and uncounted lives, they’d have enough for a suit of witch-iron armour, which offered the strength of steel at a fraction of the weight. One day that armour would be worn by some mighty Harrish knight, or bought by a rich erl, or gifted to foreign kings, none of whom would ever consider how it all started here, in a dark, cold tunnel in the earth, with a sliver of stone cut free.
