The Book of Swords Read online

  “What are they supposed to be, then? Skewers?”

  I’d forgotten he was there. Patient, I’ll say that for him. “I’ll be at this for hours yet,” I told him. “Why don’t you go away and come back in the morning? Nothing interesting to see till then.”

  He yawned. “I’ve got nowhere in particular to go,” he said. “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “I still don’t see what those bits of stick have got to do with my sword.”

  What the hell. I could use a rest. It’s a bad idea to work when you’re tired, you make mistakes. I tipped a scuttle of charcoal onto the fire, damped it down, and sat on the swedge block. “Where do you think steel comes from?”

  He scratched his head. “Permia?”

  Not such an ignorant answer. In Permia there are deposits of natural steel. You crush the iron ore and smelt it, and genuine hardening steel oozes out, all ready to use. But it’s literally worth its weight in gold, and since we’re at war with Permia, it’s hard to get hold of. Besides, I find it’s too brittle, unless you temper it exactly right. “Steel,” I told him, “is iron that’s been forged out over and over again in a charcoal fire. Nobody has the faintest idea how it works, but it does. It takes two strong men a whole day to make enough steel for one small file.”

  He shrugged. “It’s expensive. So what?”

  “And it’s too hard,” I told him. “Drop it on the floor, it’ll shatter like glass. So you temper it, so it’ll bend then spring back straight. But it’s sulky stuff; good for chisels and files, not so good for swords and scythe-blades, which want a bit of bounce in them. So we weave it together with iron, which is soft and forgiving. Iron and steel cancel out each other’s faults, and you get what you want.”

  He looked at me. “Weave together.”

  I nodded. “Watch.”

  You take your five rods and lay them side by side, touching; steel, iron, steel, iron, steel. You wire them tightly together, like building a raft. You lay them in the fire, edge downwards, not flat; when they’re white-hot and starting to hiss like a snake, you pull them out and hammer them. If you’ve got it right, you get showers of white sparks, and you can actually see the metal weld together—it’s a sort of black shadow under the glowing white surface, flowing like a liquid. What it is, I don’t know, and not being inclined to mysticism I prefer not to speculate.

  Then you heat the flat plate you’ve just made to yellow, grip one end in the vise and twist your plate into a rope, which you then forge flat; heat and twist and flatten, five times isn’t too many. If you’ve done it right, you have a straight, flat bar, inch wide, quarter-inch thick, with no trace of a seam or laminations; one solid thing from five. Then you heat it up and draw it out, fold it and weld it again. Now can you see why I talk about weaving? There is no more iron or steel, no power on earth will ever separate them again. But the steel is still hard and the iron is still yielding, and that’s what makes the finished blade come compass in the vise, if you’re prepared to take the risk.

  I lose track of time when I’m forge-welding. I stop when it’s done, and not before; and I realise how tired and wet with sweat and thirsty I am, and how many hot zits and cinders have burnt their way through my clothes and blistered my skin. The joy isn’t in the doing but the having-done.

  You weld in the near dark, so you can see what’s going on in the heart of the fire and the hot metal. I looked to where I know the doorway is, but it was all pitch-dark outside the orange ring of firelight. It’s just as well I have no neighbours, or they’d get no sleep.

  He was asleep, though, in spite of all the noise. I nudged his foot and he sat up straight. “Did I miss something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “But that’s all right,” I said. “We’ve barely started yet.”

  —

  Logic dictates that I had a life before I went to Ultramar. I must have had; I was nineteen when I went there, twenty-six when I came back. Before I went there, I seem to recall a big comfortable house in a valley, and dogs and hawks and horses and a father and two elder brothers. They may all still be there, for all I know. I’ve never been back.

  Seven years in Ultramar. Most of us didn’t make it past the first six months. A very few, the file-hard, unkillable sort, survived as long as three years; by which point, you could almost see the marks where the wind and rain had worn them down to bedrock, or the riverbeds and salt stalactites on their cheeks; they were old, old men, the three-year boys, and not one of them over twenty-five.

  I did three years and immediately signed on for another three; then another three after that, of which I served one. Then I was sent home, in disgrace. Nobody ever gets sent home from Ultramar, which is where the judge sends you if you’ve murdered someone and hanging is too good for you. They need every man they can get, and they use them up at a stupid rate, like a farmer with his winter fodder in a very bad year. They say that the enemy collects our bones from the battlefields and grinds them down for bonemeal, which is how come they have such excellent wheat harvests. The usual punishment for really unforgivable crimes in Ultramar is a tour of duty at the front; you have to prove genuine extenuating circumstances and show deep remorse to get the noose instead. Me, though, they sent home, in disgrace, because nobody could bear the sight of me a moment longer. And, to be fair, I can’t say I blame them.

  —

  I don’t sleep much. The people in the village say it’s because I have nightmares, but really I simply don’t find the time. Once you’ve started welding, you don’t stop. Once you’ve welded the core, you want to get on and do the edges, then you want to weld the edges to the core, then the job’s done, and there’s some new pest nagging you to start the next one. I tend to sleep when I’m tired, which is roughly every four days.

  In case your heart is bleeding for me; when the job’s done and I get paid, I throw the money in an old barrel I brought back from the wars. I think originally it contained arrowheads. Anyway, I have no idea how much is in there, but it’s about half-full. I do all right.

  Like I told you, I lose track of time when I’m working. Also, I forget about things, such as people. I clean forgot about the boy for a whole day, but when I remembered him he was still there, perched on the spare anvil, his face black with dust and soot. He’d tied a bit of rag over his nose and mouth, which was fine by me since it stopped him talking.

  “Haven’t you got anything better to do?” I asked.

  “No, not really.” He yawned and stretched. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of this. Basically, it’s the idea that a lot of strands woven together are stronger than just one. Like the body politic.”

  “Have you had anything to eat recently? Since you stole my apple?”

  He shook his head. “Not hungry.”

  “Have you got any money for food?”

  He smiled. “I’ve got a whole gold besant. I could buy a farm.”

  “Not around here.”

  “Yes, well, it’s prime arable land. Where I come from, you could buy a whole valley.”

  I sighed. “There’s bread and cheese indoors,” I said, “and a side of bacon.”

  At least that got rid of him for a bit, and I closed up the fold and decided I needed a rest. I’d been staring at white-hot metal for rather too long, and I could barely see past all the pretty shining colours.

  He came back with half a loaf and all my cheese. “Have some,” he said, like he owned the place.

  I don’t talk with my mouth full, it’s rude, so I waited till I’d finished. “So where are you from, then?”

  “Fin Mohec. Heard of it?”

  “It’s a fair-sized town.”

  “Ten miles north of Fin, to be exact.”

  “I knew a man from Fin once.”

  “In Ultramar?”

  I frowned. “Who told you that?”

  “Someone in the village.”

  I nodded. “Nice part of the world, the Mo
hec valley.”

  “If you’re a sheep, maybe. And we weren’t in the valley, we were up on the moor. It’s all heather and granite outcrops.”

  I’ve been there. “So,” I said, “you left home to seek your fortune.”

  “Hardly.” He spat something out, probably a hard bit of bacon rind. You can break your teeth on that stuff. “I’d go back like a shot if there were anything left for me there. Where were you in Ultramar, precisely?”

  “Oh, all over the place,” I said. “So, if you like the Mohec so much, why did you leave?”

  “To come here. To see you. To buy a sword.” A decidedly forced grin. “Why else?”

  “What do you need a sword for in the Mohec hills?”

  “I’m not going to use it there.”

  The words had come out in a rush, like beer spilt when some fool jostles your arm in the taproom. He took a deep breath, then went on, “At least, I don’t imagine I will.”

  “Really.”

  He nodded. “I’m going to use it to kill the man who murdered my father, and I don’t think he lives round here.”

  —

  I got into this business by accident. That is, I got off the boat from Ultramar, and fifty yards from the dock was a forge. I had one thaler and five copper stuivers in my pocket, the clothes I’d worn under my armour for the last two years, and a sword worth twenty gold angels that I’d never sell, under any circumstances. I walked over to the forge and offered to give the smith the thaler if he taught me his trade.

  “Get lost,” he said.

  People don’t talk to me like that. So I spent the thaler on a third-hand anvil, a selection of unsuitable hammers, a rasp, a leg-vise and a bucket, and I lugged that damned anvil around with me—three hundredweight—until I found a half-derelict shed out back of a tannery. I offered the tanner three stuivers for rent, bought a stuiver’s worth of rusty files and two barley loaves, and taught myself the trade, with the intention of putting the other smith out of business within a year.

  In the event it took me six months. I grant you, I knew a little bit more about the trade than the foregoing implies; I’d sat in the smithy at home on cold mornings and watched our man there, and I pick things up quickly; also, you learned to do all sorts of things in Ultramar, particularly skills pertaining to repairing or improvising equipment, most of which we got from the enemy, with holes in it. When I decided to specialise, it was a toss-up whether I was going to be a sword-smith or an armourer. Literally; I flipped a coin for it. I lost the toss, and here I am.

  —

  Did I mention that I have my own water-wheel? I built it myself and I’m ridiculously proud of it. I based it on one I saw (saw, inspected, then set fire to) in Ultramar. It’s overshot, with a twelve-foot throw, and it runs off a stream that comes tumbling and bouncing down the hill and over a sheer cliff where the hillside’s fallen away. It powers my grindstone and my trip-hammer, the only trip-hammer north of the Vossin, also built by me. I’m a clever bugger.

  You can’t forge-weld with a trip-hammer; you need to be able to see what you’re doing, and feel the metal flowing into itself. At least, I can’t; I’m not perfect. But it’s ideal for working the finished material down into shape, takes all the effort out of it, though by God you have to concentrate. A light touch is what you need. The hammer-head weighs half a ton. I’ve had so much practice I can use it to break the shell on a boiled egg.

  I also made spring-swedges, for putting in fullers and profiling the edges of the blade. You can call it cheating if you like; I prefer to call it precision and perfection. Thanks to the trip-hammer and the swedges I get straight, even, flat, incrementally distal-tapered sword-blades that don’t curl up like corkscrews when you harden and quench them; because every blow of the hammer is exactly the same strength as the previous one, and the swedges allow no scope for human error, such as you inevitably get trying to judge it all by eye.

  If I were inclined to believe in gods, I think I’d probably worship the trip-hammer even though I made it myself. Reasons; first, it’s so much stronger than I am, or any man living, and tireless, and those are essential qualities for a god. It sounds like a god; it drowns out everything, and you can’t hear yourself think. Second, it’s a creator. It shapes things, turns strips and bars of raw material into recognisable objects with a use and a life of their own. Third, and most significant, it rains down blows, tirelessly, overwhelmingly, it strikes twice in the time it takes my heart to beat once. It’s a smiter, and that’s what gods do, isn’t it? They hammer and hammer and keep on hammering, till either you’re swaged into shape or you’re a bloody pulp.

  —

  “Is that it?” he said. I could tell he wasn’t impressed.

  “It’s not finished. It has to be ground first.”

  My grindstone is as tall as I am, a flat round sandstone cheese. The river turns it, which is just as well because I couldn’t. You have to be very careful, with the most delicate touch. It eats metal, and heats it too, so if your concentration wanders for a split second, you’ve drawn the temper and the sword will bend like a strip of lead. But I’m a real artist with a grindstone. I wrap a scarf three times round my nose and mouth, to keep the dust from choking me, and wear thick gloves, because if you touch the stone when it’s running full tilt, it’ll take your skin off down to the bone before you can flinch away. When you’re grinding, you’re the eye of a storm of white and gold sparks. They burn your skin and set your shirt on fire, but you can’t let little things like that distract you.

  Everything I do takes total concentration. Probably that’s why I do this job.

  —

  I don’t do fancy finishes. I say, if you want a mirror, buy a mirror. But my blades take and keep an edge you can shave with, and they come compass.

  “Is this strictly necessary?” he asked, as I clamped the tang in the vise.

  “No,” I said, and reached for the wrench.

  “Only, if you break it, you’ll have to start again from scratch, and I want to get on.”

  “The best ever made,” I reminded him, and he gave me a grudging nod.

  For that job I use a scroll monkey. It’s a sort of massive fork you use for bending scrollwork, if that’s your idea of a useful and productive life. It takes every last drop of my strength (and I’m no weakling), all to perform a test that might well wreck the thing that’s been my life and soul for the last ten days and nights, which the customer barely appreciates and which makes me feel sick to my stomach. But it has to be done. You bend the blade until the tip touches the jaw of the vise, then you gently let it go back. Out it comes from the vise, and you lay it on the perfectly straight, flat bed of the anvil. You get down on your knees, looking for a tiny hair of light between the edge of the blade and the anvil. If you see it, the blade goes in the scrap.

  “Here,” I said, “come and look for yourself.”

  He got down beside me. “What am I looking for, exactly?”

  “Nothing. It isn’t there. That’s the point.”

  “Can I get up now, please?”

  Perfectly straight; so straight that not even light can squeeze through the gap. I hate all the steps on the way to perfection, the effort and the noise and the heat and the dust, but when you get there, you’re glad to be alive.

  I slid the hilt, grip, and pommel down over the tang, fixed the blade in the vise, and peened the end of the tang into a neat little button. Then I took the sword out of the vise and offered it to him, hilt first. “All done,” I said.

  “Finished?”

  “Finished. All yours.”

  I remember one kid I made a sword for, an earl’s son, seven feet tall and strong as a bull. I handed him his finished sword; he took a good grip on the hilt, then swung it round his head and brought it down full power on the horn of the anvil. It bit a chunk out, then bounced back a foot in the air, the edge undamaged. So I punched him halfway across the room. You clown, I said, look what you’ve done to my anvil. When he got up, he was
in tears. But I forgave him, years later. There’s a thrill when you hold a good sword for the first time. It sort of tugs at your hands, like a dog wanting to be taken for a walk. You want to swish it about and hit things with it. At the very least, you do a few cuts and wards, on the pretext of checking the balance and the handling.

  He just took it from me, as though I’d given him a shopping list. “Thanks,” he said.

  “My pleasure,” I replied. “Well, good-bye. You can go now,” I added, when he didn’t move. “I’m busy.”

  “There was something else,” he said.

  I’d already turned my back on him. “What?”

  “I don’t know how to fence.”

  —

  He was born, he told me, in a haybarn on the moor overlooking his father’s house, at noon on midsummer’s day. His mother, who should have known better, had insisted on riding out in the dog-cart with her maid to take lunch to the hawking party. Her pains came on, and there wasn’t time to get back to the house, but the barn was there and full of clean hay, with a stream nearby. His father, riding home with his hawk on his wrist, saw her from the track, lying in the hay with the baby on her lap. He’d had a good day, he told her. They’d got four pigeons and a heron.

  His father hadn’t wanted to go to Ultramar; but he held of the duke and the duke was going, so he didn’t really have any choice. In the event, the duke died of camp-fever a week after they landed. The boy’s father lasted nine months; then he got himself killed, by his best friend, in a pointless brawl in a tavern. He was twenty-two when he died. “The same age,” said the boy, “as I am now.”

  “That’s a sad story,” I told him. “And a very stupid one. Mind you, all stories from Ultramar are stupid if you ask me.”

  He scowled at me. “Maybe there’s too much stupidity in the world,” he said. “Maybe I want to do something about it.”

  I nodded. “You could diminish the quantity considerably by dying, I grant you. But maybe it’s too high a price to pay.”

  His eyes were cold and bright. “The man who killed my father is still alive,” he said. “He’s settled and prosperous, happy, he’s got everything he could possibly want. He came through the nightmare of Ultramar, and now the world makes sense to him again, and he’s a useful and productive member of society, admired and respected by his peers and his betters.”