The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois
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fetch the swords and be right back.”
I’m telling this story, so you know what happened.
He had the best sword ever made, and I’d taught him everything I ever knew, and he ended up better than me; he was always better than me, just like his father. Nearly everybody’s better than me, in most respects. One way in which he excelled me was, he lacked the killer instinct.
But he made a pretty fight of it, I’ll give him that. I wish I could have watched that fight instead of being in it; there never was better entertainment, and all wasted, because there was nobody to see. Naturally you lose all track of time, but my best educated guess is, we fought for at least five minutes, which is an eternity, and never a hair’s breadth of difference between us. It was like fighting your own shadow, or your reflection in the mirror. I read his mind, he read mine. To continue the tedious extended metaphor, it was forge-welding at its finest. Well; I look back on it in these terms, the same way I look back on all my best completed work, with pleasure once it’s over but hating every minute of it while I’m actually doing it.
When I wake up in the middle of the night in a muck-sweat, I tell myself I won because he trod on a stone and turned his ankle, and the tiny atom of advantage was enough. But it’s not true. I’m ashamed to say I beat him fair and square, through stamina and the simple desire to win: killer instinct. I made a little window of opportunity by feigning an error. He believed me, and was deceived. It was only a tiny opportunity, no scope for choice; I had a fraction of a second when his throat was exposed and I could reach it with a scratch-cut with the point, what we call a stramazone. I cut his throat, then jumped back to keep from getting splashed all over. Then I buried him in the midden, along with the pig-bones and the household shit.
He should have won. Of course he should. He was basically a good kid, and had he lived he’d probably have been all right, more or less; no worse than my father, at any rate, and definitely a damn sight better than me. I like to tell myself, he died so quickly he never knew he’d lost.
But; on the day, I proved myself the better man, which is what sword-fighting is all about. It’s a simple, infallible test, and he failed and I passed. The best man always wins; because the definition of best is still alive at the end. Feel at liberty to disagree, but you’ll be wrong. I hate it, but it’s the only definition that makes any sense at all.
Every morning I cough up black soot and grey mud, the gift of the fire and the grindstone. Smiths don’t live long. The harder you work, the better you get, the more poisonous muck you breathe in. My pre-eminence will be the death of me, someday.
I sold his sword to the Duke of Scona for, I forget how much; it was a stupid amount of money, at any rate, but the Duke said he wanted the very best, and he got what he paid for. My barrel of gold is now nearly full, incidentally. I don’t know what I’ll do when the level reaches the top. Something idiotic, probably.
I may have all the other faults in the world, but at least I’m honest. You have to grant me that.
Robin Hobb
New York Times bestseller Robin Hobb is one of the most popular writers in fantasy today, having sold more than one million copies of her work in paperback. She’s perhaps best known for her epic fantasy Farseer series, including Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest, as well as the two fantasy series related to it, the Liveship Traders series, consisting of Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, and Ship of Destiny, and the Tawny Man series, made up of Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, and Fool’s Fate. She’s also the author of the Soldier Son series, composed of Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade’s Magic, and the Rain Wild Chronicles, consisting of Dragon Keeper, Dragon Haven, City of Dragons, and Blood of Dragons. Most recently she’s started a new series, the Fitz and the Fool trilogy, consisting of Fool’s Assassin, Fool’s Quest, and, in 2017, Assassin’s Fate. Hobb also writes under her real name, Megan Lindholm. Books by Megan Lindholm include the fantasy novels Wizard of the Pigeons, Harpy’s Flight, The Windsingers, The Limbreth Gate, Luck of the Wolves, The Reindeer People, Wolf’s Brother, and Cloven Hooves, the science-fiction novel Alien Earth, and, with Steven Brust, the collaborative novel The Gypsy. Lindholm’s most recent book is a “collaborative” collection with Robin Hobb, The Inheritance: And Other Stories.
In the chilling tale that follows, FitzChivalry Farseer visits a village caught up in the Red Ship Wars, where the unhappy villagers face some very hard choices, none of them good—and some of them worse than others.
Taura shifted on her lookout’s platform. Cold was stiffening her, and calling two skinny logs tied across a couple of outreaching branches a “watchtower platform” was generous. A flat surface would have been kinder to her buttocks and back. She shifted to a squat and checked the position of the moon again. When it was over the Hummock on Last Chance Point, her watch would be over and Kerry would come to relieve her. In theory.
They’d given her the least likely point of entry to the village. Her tree overlooked the market trail that led inland, to Higround Market where they sold their fish. Unlikely that Forged would come from this direction. The kidnapped people had been forced from their homes and down to the beach. Past their burned fishing boats and the ransacked smoking racks for preserving the catch the captured townsfolk had gone. A boy who had dared to follow his kidnapped mother said the raiders had forced their folk into boats and rowed them out to a red-hulled ship anchored offshore. As they had been taken to the sea, so they would return from the waves.
Taura had seen them go from her hiding place in the big willow that overlooked the harbor. The raiders hadn’t seemed to care who they took. She’d seen old Pa Grimby, and Salal Greenoak carrying her nursing baby. She’d seen the little Bodby twins and Kelia and Rudan and Cope. And her father, roaring and staggering with blood sheeting down the side of his face. She had known the names of almost every captive. Smokerscot was not a big village. There were perhaps six hundred folk here.
Well. There had been perhaps six hundred. Before the raid.
After the raid, Taura had helped stack the bodies after they’d put out the fires. She’d stopped counting after forty, and those were just the people in the stack on the east end of the village. There’d been another pyre near the rickety dock. No. The dock wasn’t rickety anymore. It was charred pilings sticking out of the water next to the sunken hulks of the small fishing fleet. Her father’s boat was among them. The changes had all happened so fast that it was hard to remember them. Earlier tonight, she’d decided to run back home and get a warmer cloak. Then she’d recalled that her home was wet ash and charred planks. It wasn’t the only one. The five adjoining houses had burned, and dozens of others in the village. Even the Kelp’s grand house, two stories, not even finished, was now a smoking pile of timbers.
She shifted on her platform and something poked her. She’d sat on her whistle on its lanyard. The village council had given her a cudgel and a whistle to blow if she saw anyone approaching. Two blasts from her whistle would bring the strong folk from the village with their “weapons.” They would come with their poles and axes and gaff hooks. And Jelin would come, wearing her father’s sword. What if no one came to her whistle? She had a cudgel. As if she were going to climb down from the tree and try to bash someone. As if she could bear to club people she had known since she was a babe.
A rhythmic clopping reached her ears. A horse approaching? It was past sundown, and few travelers came to Smokerscot at any time, save the fish buyers who came at the end of summer to dicker for the fall run of redfish. But in winter, and after dark? Who would be coming this way? She watched the narrow stripe of hard-packed earth that led through the forested hills to Higround, peering through the darkness.
A horse