Thomas “Iron Tom” Dace

Former Enginewrights hammerman turned prize fighter, the best-known ring name in Sarrum and the one Sarrum man whose likeness is sold on cheap cards to boys who have never seen a furnace.

Thomas Dace, called Iron Tom, was a hammerman of the Enginewrights until he lost two fingers and discovered that the injury mattered less in a ring than at a bench. He has since fought in London, Cambridge and most of the southern fairs, and is the best-known current name in Sarrum’s great spectator sport — a sport that suits the city’s rooms, wages and sense of fairness, since it needs only a yard, a crowd and a result everybody can understand even when nobody agrees with the referee.

His fame is not respectable, but it crosses class better than the Mayor’s. Works managers bet on him, rubble children imitate him, and his likeness sells far beyond the county; he and the singer Nell Vetch, the Cinder Lark, are known well outside Sarrum in ways its officers are not. The Enginewrights deny responsibility for every fight arranged in their yard while renting the lamps. Many of his southern bouts are made by Caleb Rusk, bookmaker and matchmaker, who can fill a hall yard by noon if he begins taking wagers at breakfast.

Iron Tom is most at home in the Red Shed at Fleecegate, the old wool store turned drinking, music, speaking and fighting house. Around the ring he is said to be patient with boys and short with gamblers who try to talk to him before a bout.

Companies meet him in the Red Shed, on fair days, or among the men who bet on him. His good opinion opens doors among hall men and rubble alike, and a quarrel with him or his backers closes them again just as quickly.

In person

Iron Tom is enormously broad and heavily muscled, around forty, with cropped dark hair, a short dark beard and a battered face — broken nose, heavy brow, dark eyes. Two fingers are missing from one hand, and furnace burns and old fight scars are written across his arms. He favours a sleeveless or rolled-sleeve shirt, braced forearms, heavy boots and his Enginewrights belt and hammerman’s token, and looks equally at home at a forge or under the ring lamps.