The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois
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to see at this stage,” I told him. “You might want to go away for a while.”
“That’s all right.” He sat down on the spare anvil and bit into one of my apples, which I hadn’t given him. “What are you doing with all that junk? I thought you were going to start on the sword.”
I told myself; he’s paying a lot of money, probably everything he’s got in the world; he’s entitled to be stupid, if he wants to. “This,” I told him, “isn’t junk. It’s your sword.”
He peered over my shoulder. “No it’s not. It’s a load of old horseshoes and some clapped-out files.”
“It is now, yes. You just watch.”
I don’t know what it is about old horseshoes; nobody does. Most people reckon it’s the constant bashing down on the stony ground though that’s just not true. But horseshoes make the best swords. I heated them to just over cherry red, flipped them onto the anvil, and belted them with the big hammer, flattening and drawing down; bits of rust and scale shot across the shop, it’s a messy job and it’s got to be done quickly, before the iron cools to grey. By the time I’d finished with them, they were long, squarish rods, about a quarter-inch thick. I put them on one side, then did the same for the files. They’re steel, the stuff that you can harden; the horseshoes are iron, which stays soft. It’s the mix, the weave of hard and soft that makes a good blade.
“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,