The Place
Ironstock Bastion is a fortress of riveted iron standing on a bare ridge, and the ridge is the fortress, and the fortress is the drill. The ridge rises two hundred meters above the grey moor, a knife-edge of bare rock two and a half kilometers long, and the whole ridge is the yard, and the yard is the wall. The walls are plate, iron riveted in courses, three meters high at the walk and five at the gate, and the plate is the color of cold steel, a blue-grey that does not rust because the forge keeps it oiled and the oil is the law. The drill-yards are wide enough to hold a line, a hundred meters of packed iron-gravel, and the gravel is the yard, and the yard is the day. The forges are never cold, seven of them set in a row along the spine of the ridge, and the smoke comes off the ridge in a single black line that the moor reads like a flag. The sky above is a hard grey, the color of the plate, and the light on the iron is mean and flat, the kind of light that does not flatter a face or a seam. It smells of hot oil and iron filings, a smell that gets into the coat and stays, and the one sound is the drill, a step on the gravel that is the bastion's only word, and the word is the day. There is no landmark the way a fortress has a landmark, but there is one: the Anvil Gate, a low door of riveted plate at the north end of the ridge, and the gate is the door, and the door is the drill. What makes Ironstock itself is the line: the line is the wall, and the wall is the day, and the day is the line, and the line is the ridge.
How They Live
The Hobgoblins keep this place in the line, building their bastion in the iron, their chambers of riveted plate and forge-heat, their entrances low, and a chamber is riveted one course at a time, because a course is the season and a course is the calendar. Light comes from the forge, the iron-heat of the seven forges, which glows orange in the dark and keeps the plate honest, and the orange is the color of the day. Food is the ration: the iron-ration, the small game of the moor, the scrap, and the drill that keeps the line honest, and the honest is the meal, and the meal is the kept. Water is drawn from the ridge's springs, two black threads on the north face, which the drill-masters tend the way you tend a weapon, because the springs are the ration and the ration is the law. Heat comes from the forge, which is to say the forge does everything, and the forge is the reason the ridge is bare. The defense is the iron itself: a visitor who steps onto the ridge is already in the line's path, and the line is the alarm, and the alarm is the welcome, and the welcome is the sentence. The day is measured by the drill, because the drill is the only clock the iron has, and the clock does not lie about the count. Every hobgoblin that is born must stand in the line for one full drill before the ridge will call it one of its own, and the standing is the naming, and the naming is the only thing the iron ever gives back.
People
Home of the Hobgoblins, whose bastions are counted by forge. Seven forges burn at last count, and the count is kept in the oil, which is to say the count is as fixed as the plate, which is to say it does not change. The drill-masters lead, and rank is decided by the count, because a master who can count a line the moor has never seen is the master the ridge trusts. Nothing that cannot hold a step is welcome, and the step is not needed, because the ridge has a line, and the line has a count, and the count has a ledger. A surface soldier who once stood in the yard, the last one to be let past the Anvil Gate, called it the only place where the ground makes you count before you take a step, which is the truest thing he said and the thing the drill paid the least attention to.
In Stories
The place where the rank is the only honest promise, and the promise is the drill, and the drill is the line, and the line is the end. The Forgotten have not been to the bastion, but Uaellaen has read the line once, from the moor, and the line read him back, and the reading was the first thing he has ever paid for that he could not buy back.