Anrier studied the beast held by the two paladins that had ridden out to hunt with him. He nodded and placed a collar around its neck then connected a muzzle to it. "I think five beasts is enough for today."
The collar and muzzle forced the creature to heel and follow commands and it meekly followed them back to where four more dark beasts were staked to a tree. They roped them all together then rode back to town, the two paladins with him waving at a paladin and cleric riding with a fey looking woman some distance away.
"Was that the Mayor's daughter?" Anrier asked.
"Aye."
"Pretty lass."
"Very," one of the paladins said. "She isn't walking out with anyone if you want to give it a try."
Anrier shrugged. "My mother will outlive my father by two hundred years easily. I'll outlive most humans by at least a century as well. If I mate, it'll be with a fey I think."
They nodded thoughtfully. Each knew they could easily leave their own wives widowed young.
Back at the village, they helped him build temporary pens around the beasts. "What next?" one asked.
"I'll make a knife expressly for bleeding them out, hang them, then use the knife to cut into their necks and insert tubules for directing the blood into a specialized tempering trough."
"Sounds ghastly."
"Sadly, it's needed to properly enhance the constructs. It can be done without but they don't last as long nor as effective."
The paladins made their goodbyes as he began setting out the materials he would need. An old broken sword would be his base for the knife, he decided.
Stripping down to just his trousers and boots, he began working the bellows with his foot as he disassembled the sword so he had just the blade. He admired the tang when he saw it. Whoever had made the sword had twisted multiple times and flatted it, giving it a beautiful screw like design. Anrier decided to use the tang as the handle and placed the broken blade in the fire then set a rod into the fire as well.
As they heated, he poured a gallon of leviathan oil into his quenching pan and turned back to the forge.
When the metals were hot enough, he pulled the blade out and scraped it down then poured flux on it and scraped it down again. It went back into the fire and he took out the rod then began hammering it flat on the hot end and scraping it down.
Anrier repeated the process a dozen times as children from the village began to arrive to watch him through the fence. He mostly ignored them since they weren't distracting him and soon he began pounding the tang and the rod together. Fifteen reheats and hammerings soon had the two items forge-welded together and he could begin reshaping the blade and tang itself.
Within a few minutes, most of the children had been runoff to go home and now all that were left were the curious adults of the village who had no hurry to return to their homes.
He began carefully twisting the tang, following its original twists but not hammering it down.
Within the hour, he had the new handle done, a twisted shape just long enough to be held in one hand, and the blade reshaped into a diamond shaped stabbing device.
Anrier placed it in the leviathan oil and moved away from the smell of the smoke as it quenched in the rendered fat.
He walked over to the few adults remaining and introduced himself to those he hadn't met yet then answered the questions he received.