Blood Song

“Um,” Caenis said, clearly wondering if this was an honour or a curse. “Thank you master.”

Jestin carried the blade to the far end of the smithy, laying it on a bench next to a large pedal-driven grindstone. “A new forged blade is only half born,” he informed them. “It must be sharpened, polished, honed.” He had Caenis stand at the grindstone and set it turning with the pedal, demonstrating how to get a good rhythm going by counting “one two, one two” before telling him to increase the speed and hold the blade to the stone. The instant fountain of sparks made Caenis step back in alarm but Jestin ordered him to keep at it, guiding his hands to get the correct angle then showing him how to move the blade across the stone so that its whole length was honed. “That’s it,” he grunted after a while when Caenis grew confident enough to move the blade on his own. “Ten minutes for each edge then show me what you’ve done. The rest of you back to the forge. You and you on the bellows…”

And so they worked and sweated in the forge, seven long days of heaving bellows, grinding edges and working polish into the blades so that the soot disappeared and they gleamed like silver. None of them escaped unscathed, Vaelin bore a livid scar on the back of his hand where a speck of molten metal landed, the pain and the smell of his own skin burning was uniquely sickening. The others suffered similar injury, Dentos coming off worse with a scattering of sparks into his eyes during a careless moment on the grinder. The sparks left a cluster of blackened scars around his left eye but luckily there was no damage to his vision.

Despite the exhaustion, the risk of disfiguring injury and the tedium of the work Vaelin couldn’t resist a certain fascination with the process. There was a beauty to it; the gradual birth of the blades under Master Jestin’s hammer, the feel of the edge against the grindstone, the pattern that emerged in the blade as he polished it, dark swirls in the blue-grey of the steel, as if the flames of the forge had been frozen in the metal somehow.

“It comes from the merging of the rods,” Barkus explained. “Different kinds of metal coming together leaves a mark. I guess the star silver makes it more noticeable in Order blades.”

“I like it,” Vaelin said, lifting the half polished blade up to the light. “It’s… interesting.”

“It’s just metal,” Barkus sighed, turning back to the stone where he was putting an edge on his own sword. “Heat it, beat it, shape it. There’s no mystery there.”

Vaelin watched his friend work at the wheel, the way his hands moved expertly, honing the edge with perfect precision. When Barkus’s turn came Master Jestin hadn’t even bothered to show him, just handed him the blade and walked away. Somehow Barkus’s skill was obvious to the smith, they said little, barely exchanging more than a few grunts or mumbled agreements, as if they had been working together for many years. But Barkus showed no joy in his work, no satisfaction. He stuck to it readily enough, the skills he displayed putting them all to shame, but his face was an uncharacteristic mask of grim endurance whenever they were in the smithy, only brightening when they escaped to the practice field or dining hall.

The next day saw the fitting of the hilts. These were ready made, almost identical, Master Jestin fitting them to the blades and securing them with three iron nails hammered through the tang that extended into the hilt. They were then set to work filing down the nail heads so they were flush with the oak handles.

“You are done here,” Jestin told them at the end of the day. “The swords are yours. Use them well.” It was the closest he had come to sounding like the other masters. He turned back to the forge without another word. They stood around uncertainly, holding their swords and wondering if they were supposed to say anything in return.

“Erm,” Caenis said. “Thank you for your wisdom, master.”

Jestin lifted an unfinished spear-head onto his anvil and began to work the bellows.

“Our time here was very…” Caenis began but Vaelin nudged him and gestured at the door.

As they were leaving Jestin spoke again, “Barkus Jeshua.”

They stopped, Barkus turning, his expression guarded. “Master.”

“There door’s always open to you,” Jestin said without turning. “I could use the help.”

“I’m sorry master,” Barkus said tonelessly. “I’m afraid my training leaves me little time as it is.”

Jestin released the bellows and lifted the spear-head into the forge. “I’ll be here, so will the forge, when you get tired of the blood and the shit. We’ll be here.”

Barkus missed the evening meal, something none of them could remember happening before. Vaelin found him on the wall after paying his nightly visit to Scratch’s kennel. “Brought you some leftovers,” Vaelin handed him a sack containing a pie and a few apples.

Barkus nodded his thanks, his attention fixed on the river where a barge was making its way upstream to Varinshold.

“You want to know,” he said after a while. His voice held none of his usual humour or irony but Vaelin was chilled to detect a faint trace of fear.

“If you want to tell me,” he said. “We all have our secrets, brother.”

“Like why you keep that scarf.” He gestured at Sella’s scarf around Vaelin’s neck. Vaelin tucked it out of sight and patted him on the shoulder before turning to go.

“It first happened when I was ten,” Barkus said.

Vaelin paused, waiting for him to continue. In his own way Barkus could be as closed as the rest of them, he would talk or he wouldn’t, prompting or persuasion would be useless.

“My father had me working in the smithy since I was little,” Barkus continued after a moment. “I loved it, loved watching him shape the metal, loved the way it glowed in the forge. Some say the ways of the smith are mysterious. For me it was all so obvious, so easy. I understood it all. My father hardly had to teach me anything, I just knew what to do. I could see the shape the metal would take before the hammer fell, could tell if a plough blade would cut through soil or get stuck or if a shoe would fall from a hoof after only a few days. My father was proud, I knew it. He wasn’t much for talk, not like me, I get that from my mother, but I knew he was proud. I wanted to make him even more proud. I had shapes in my head, shapes of knives, swords, axes, all waiting to be forged. I knew exactly how to make them, exactly the right mix of metals to use. So I snuck into the smithy one night to make one. A hunting knife, a small thing, I thought. A Winterfall present for my father.”

He paused, staring out into the night as the barge moved further downstream, the shapes of the barge men on the deck vague and ghostlike in the dim light from the bow lantern.

“So you made the knife,” Vaelin prompted. “But your father was… angry?”

“Oh, he wasn’t angry.” Barkus sounded bitter. “He was scared. The blade folded over and over to strengthen it, the edge keen enough to cut silk or pierce armour, so polished you could use it as a mirror.” The small smile forming on his lips faded. “He threw it in the river and told me never to speak of it to anyone, ever.”

Vaelin was puzzled. “He should have been proud. A knife like that made by his son. Why would it scare him?”

“My father had seen a lot in his life. He’d travelled with the Lord’s host, served on a merchant ship in the eastern seas, but he’d never seen a knife forged in a smithy where the forge was cold.”

Vaelin’s puzzlement deepened. “Then how did you…?” Something in Barkus’s face made him stop.

“Nilsaelins are a great people in many ways,” Barkus went on. “Hardy, kind, hospitable. But they fear the Dark above all things. In my village there was once an old woman who could heal with a touch, or so they said. She was respected for the work she did but always feared. When the Red Hand came she could do nothing to stop it, dozens died, every family in the village lost someone, but she never caught it. They locked her in her house and set it on fire. The ruin’s still there, no one ever had the courage to build on it.”

“How did you make that knife, Barkus?”

“I’m still not sure. I remember shaping the metal at the anvil, the hammer in my hand. I remember fitting the handle, but for the life of me I can’t remember lighting the forge. It was as if when I started to work I lost myself, as if I was just a tool, like the hammer… like something was working through me.” He shook his head, clearly disturbed by the memory. “My father wouldn’t let me in the smithy after that. Took me to old man Kalus, the horse breeder, told him he’d tried his best to teach me but I just wasn’t going to make a smith. Paid him a five coppers a month to teach me the horse trade.”

“He was trying to protect you,” Vaelin said.

“I know. But that’s not how it felt to a boy. It felt like… like he was frightened by what I’d done, worried that I’d shame him somehow. I even thought he might be jealous. So I decided to show him, show him what I could really do. I waited until he was away hawking wares at the Summertide fair and went back to the smithy. There wasn’t much to work with, some old horse shoes and nails. He’d taken most of his stock to sell at the fair. But I took what he’d left and I made something… something special.”