Ironhold smelled like metal and sweat and the particular chemical sharpness of molten slag, and it smelled like these things at all hours, in all districts, in all weathers, because Ironhold did not stop. The forges did not bank. The hammers did not rest. The city that had once been a conquered fortress was now the kingdom's industrial heart, and industrial hearts did not take breaks.
The city sat in the Ironfields — the highland plateau where Thyrak's Minotaurs had built their original civilization before being absorbed into the Eternal Anvil. The plateau was iron-rich, the soil saturated with mineral deposits that made farming difficult and mining profitable, the geology of a region that had decided, at some tectonic point in prehistory, that it would be useful rather than beautiful.
