Sword Saint

by Michael Wallace

  A scattered mind led to a scattered sowen, which could easily degenerate into the very auras of the surrounding world that one was supposed to be gathering.

  When she got in these moods, her father had sighed, instructed her patiently but relentlessly on how to recenter, and then waited—sometimes an hour or more—until she stopped whatever fit of giggles or trivial thoughts that kept her from entering the deep state of meditation. From finding that perfect moment where time slowed, and you could see each curl of smoke rise, hear the ring of each blow as slow and sonorous as a gong.

  There were three tranquil forms of time-slowing meditation at the bladedancer temple—repose, making, and washing—and a fourth, more violent one that came in combat. When wielding the blade instead of forging it, when your enemy seemed to freeze. When a single bead of sweat was poised on his brow and his fingers tightened ever so slowly around the hilt, even as you swept past his defenses before he realized you were on the attack.

  The steel had cooled once more, and she handed Gyorgy the tongs once more. He returned the steel to the forge, and she had him work the bellows while she continued to tap her hammer at the anvil. He couldn’t keep his breathing in sync with the bellows or the hammer. Narina resisted pushing with her own sowen. He must do this himself.

  “Match your inhalations and your exhalations to my beat. Four beats in, four out.”

  “I can’t catch my breath after the hammering.”

  “You will. You must.”

  Gyorgy kept struggling, and soon had something that was close, if not exactly perfect.

  “The steel is hot enough,” she told him. “Begin again.”

  As Gyorgy returned the hot steel to the anvil, she changed her tempo slightly. The boy matched it with his own hammer. Good. His breathing was better now, his sowen tightening. He’d fought past a difficult moment, and in her experience, that was when real progress could be made.

  This particular sword core had already been folded dozens of times. There would be no outer layer, no hilt or hand-carved sheath—those steps wouldn’t come for another six months to a year, depending on the boy’s progress with sword cores. When he could master a single sword, he would then be ready to master the production of the twin blades that marked the highest art in the bladedancer temple.

  Gyorgy had grown discouraged lately, but only because he lacked perspective and patience. Narina saw otherwise. The boy was improving, slowly but surely. So many lessons to learn, but his will was strong. He studied and meditated and listened, and while he was prone to pointing out his exhaustion or confusion, he didn’t fall into outright complaining. Time would yet tell if he would stop at frater, or if one day he would rise to the level of sohn.

  As for Gyorgy’s current attempt, his efforts would have delighted any crowlord. A core imbued with sowen made for a blade that would move in its owner’s hand. Direct it in battle. If someone like Balint or Damanja didn’t wield it themselves, they’d give it to a champion and expect him to stand at the head of his armies, cutting through armor and shield as if they were made of silk, while their war drums boomed the call of battle in the background.

  Good enough for the lowlands. Nothing close to what Gyorgy would need to accomplish before he’d mastered it. Before he was ready to make for himself the weapons wielded by the members of the Divine School of the Twinned Blades. Two master swords, one black and one white: the dragon and the demon. The feathered demigods of the mountains, the beings of fire and lava.

  The boy was growing seriously fatigued, and it wasn’t anything that meditation would help. Narina’s own arms felt no effects whatsoever from her relentless tapping in time. She may as well have been lifting a spoon of soup for all the action tired her. But she slowed her pace gradually, instructed the boy how to hold his breathing steady, moving to three beats per inhalation or exhalation, then two, then one, then two breaths per every hammer tap, and so on, until she finally stopped.

  “Rest your work properly,” she instructed.

  He used the tongs to turn the flat steel core with its point toward the mountain peaks, where the demigods slept in their lakes of ice. He removed his gloves deliberately, set them on the worktable next to the forge, then damped the coals. None of this could be rushed.

  Nevertheless, she sensed a hint of impatience in his posture. The tiny stream that flowed next to their work shed bubbled enticingly. Gyorgy was drenched with sweat, and would be aching to douse his face, then take a scoop of water and drain it. He’d rinse again after each lesson, until finally she’d sent him trudging up the flagstone steps to the sacred pool above the shrine for more meditation while he stripped and ritually washed. But first, more lessons awaited.

  “Close your eyes and center yourself,” Narina said. “Listen for the hum of bees. The wind whistling through the tops of the pines. North, south, east, west. Listen for your heartbeat. Sense their auras. Those are the source of your sowen. Ready? Good. Now listen to me ring the bell.”

  She could hear that his breathing had slowed, and his heart rate, too, and she turned her attention to the big, green-tinted bell that hung outside the open, shed-like structure of the smithy. An oak ringer hung by a rope from the crossbeam, its wood dark from decades of oil polish. Gyorgy had rung the bell once upon beginning his work, and would ring it again after an initial wash in the stream, but the bell was always vibrating at a low level. It caught the sound of the water, of fraters chopping wood up the hillside, and even of their voices.

  They were sounds too subtle for a normal ear to hear, but a sohn bladedancer could pick them out. When a sohn drew swords in battle, he or she could hear her enemy’s heartbeat quicken in fear, no matter the shouts and cries of warriors, the whinny of horses, the boom of drums sending men to plug a gap in the flank.

  At that moment, something caught her attention. It was a discordant note in the bell that she might not have noticed if she hadn’t instructed Gyorgy to listen.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked her pupil.

  “Hear what, teacher?”

  “Never mind. Go to the stream and wash.”

  As he went for the water, she came out of the smithy and bent to the ground to touch the pine needles that had fallen from the surrounding trees and collected in a thin layer. Her fingers pushed through until they pressed into the dirt beneath. There it was again, a vibration moving through the ground itself. A faint tickle of concern worked through her.

  If not for what she’d heard in the bell, the vibration in the ground might have been mistaken for a herd of elk moving through the forest. They were usually in the higher meadows at this time of the summer, but if the wolves were especially aggressive, the herds had been known to come back down the canyon to the forests.

  But Narina didn’t think so. Whatever it was flanked the path and came this way. Too organized to be animals, and she could sense their auras now, too. People.

  And shortly, she could hear them. Whispers, the sound of leather on leather, and a single, telling thud that sounded like a spear shaft clunking against a shield. Soldiers, then.

  Narina cast a glance at her student, who was still refreshing himself at the stream. Gyorgy hadn’t noticed, that much was clear. She hadn’t yet dismissed him, and he’d be wondering if she meant to set him back to hammer and tongs or if his teacher would take them up herself and explain various corrections to his technique, which would be a welcome break.

  Neither, it seemed. Because something had intruded and would interrupt their efforts for the day.

  She didn’t say anything to the boy, but moved into the blacksmithing shed. She shucked out of her work robe and pulled on the lighter training shift with its sashes, which she tied deliberately. She removed her sheathed swords from the hooks on the wall and strapped them to her sides. One white sheath and pommel, one black. She felt her heart slow at the mere touch of the pommels.

  Gyorgy looked at her with alarm when she came out of the shed. “Is something happening, teacher? Why are you armed?”<
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  “Someone is coming. Don’t be alarmed.”

  He ran a forearm across his face to wipe away the last of the water. “Should I ring a warning? Or I could run up to warn the fraters. Yes, that would be safer.”

  Gyorgy made as if to go, but Narina held up a hand. “No time for that, now. Stay here and keep between me and the shed. Most likely it’s nothing. If it is something, remember, we are on our land. On the slope of our mountain. Well-protected. Here we are invincible.”

  She couldn’t be quite sure of that. Of course not. But a calm had settled over her, and there would be no fear or panic whoever these people were. And there were many of them. Perhaps fifty or more, from the feel of it.

  Against that, the temple boasted four sohns and roughly forty students, fraters, and elders. More than sufficient. Except that few of her companions were present at the moment; most were in the high passes, shearing sheep and cutting wood to make charcoal. The timing wasn’t ideal for an unexpected visit.

  Not that she and Gyorgy were alone, by any stretch. Closest at hand, her father, the master sohn, was at the armory, inspecting the craftsmanship of the fraters, forged under supervision of Narina’s sister, Katalinka. The weapons included thirty straight blades, seventy-two spear points, some of which still needed to be set on ash shafts, and fourteen halberds, which were set already. Eleven spiked maces.

  Lord Balint had paid for his purchase in full, gold coins stamped with the visage of some long-dead crowlord, possibly one of Balint’s ancestors, and with little sign of wear. Gold from his vaults, it would seem. Her father intended to hire villagers from Hooffent to make the delivery, escorted by either Narina, Katalinka, or the final sohn, a man by the name of Abelard.

  Narina was curious about her father’s decision in the matter. Balint wouldn’t have paid for temple weaponry in such quantities unless he intended a major war. He must mean to arm his best warriors with it, put them at the point of his army, and challenge his rivals to open warfare. If he won on the battlefield, the booty taken in war would replenish his coffers. If he failed, he’d be ruined, and his enemies would be in possession of his new weaponry. Normally, her father was too cautious to sell weapons in such quantities, knowing how they might upset the balance of power on the plains.

  And Balint was taking a risk, even apart from the sheer cost of the weapons. Even being in possession of such a cache of arms would invite the greedy eye of his neighbors, who might not dare to move against the creators of those weapons, but would be happy to seize temple arms from those too weak to hold them.

  But who were Balint’s enemies? She hadn’t given that much thought, to be honest. It had seemed irrelevant. Now, with men approaching through the forest, she wondered if that answer held some importance.

  Gyorgy moved in closer as Narina’s attention turned to the footpath that led down from the temple grounds toward the post road. The path followed the stream in its little channel as it bent and curved. Below, it flowed through a brick-lined culvert beneath the post road and joined the river on the far side. Fraters used the path to descend to the village to secure linen, cartloads of iron sand, salt, spices, and a handful of other essential items, but for the most part the temple was self-sufficient and grew its own food on terraces above the armory, brewed its own beer, and gathered its own wool. Leather hides, baked earthenware, and of course nails, cutlery, and the like were all manufactured at the temple.

  The lack of foot traffic left the path to the post road overgrown with grass that grew wherever the shade wasn’t too deep. The path now carried the vibrations of footsteps, a heavy-soled boot. But only one. The others had stopped somewhere, or at least she couldn’t hear them moving. Curious.

  A man stepped out of the woods. He was tall and broad shouldered and carried himself with the easy swagger of a warrior, with a coiled, violent tension in his posture. He took in the smithy and its surroundings with a sharp gaze, as well as the sohn and her student.

  The man carried a sword, which rested easily over one shoulder, and it was no mundane, plains-manufactured rubbish either, rather a massive, two-handed falchion of the kind made at the warbrand temple. He wore a boiled leather breastplate ringed with iron. When he saw that Narina left her own weapons sheathed and merely observed him carefully, some of the tension eased from his posture and he put away his falchion. Once sheathed, the sword hilt jutted above his left shoulder.

  Narina continued to stare. The man’s falchion had been temple-made, infused with auras of the master who’d crafted it, but her glimpse of the sheath had revealed a dull, scratched scrap of leather with no artistry to it. Whoever had sold or given it to him had passed along the sword only. Not so different from what the bladedancers intended to do with Lord Balint’s weapons.

  “Why are you here?” Narina said.

  “To make a purchase.”

  “Then you should have left a message at the tavern in Hooffent, where it would have been delivered to us in due course to either respond favorably or not. Surely you know our ways.”

  And why, she almost asked, had he come with an entire company of armed men? She could sense them again, moving in the woods to her left, snug up against the hillside out of sight. Were they trying to encircle her?

  “The matter’s urgent. I don’t have time to idle in some flea-infested tavern, sipping sour ale while waiting for your answer.”

  “If it’s urgent, you’re in the wrong place.” Narina allowed herself a smile. “How long do you suppose it takes to make what you need? It’s weapons, isn’t it? You didn’t come all this way for hides and wool. And if it’s weapons, you don’t want the rubbish we can bang out in a day or two. What we make requires months of labor and craftsmanship.”

  “The weapons I need are already made. It is a simple matter of delivering them.”

  She looked him over more closely, looking for some sign of rank, or even allegiance. He wore no particular livery. There was no chain at his neck or ring on his hand. Balint’s previous agent had worn a heavy brass ring with a sigil on it, though she couldn’t remember at the moment what that sigil had entailed. Her father had done the negotiations.

  “Are you Balint Stronghand’s man, then?”

  “I’ve come for his weapons, yes.”

  “And your crowlord couldn’t wait two weeks for us to deliver them on schedule? Does he doubt we’ll keep our word?”

  A smile touched the man’s lips, and she could see his earlier wariness continue to fade. This fool was growing altogether too confident. Whatever he was up to, he was going to be disappointed in the results.

  “My name is Miklos, and I’m no vassal of Balint Stronghand’s.” His hand fell to his chest, where he pressed it against the boiled leather breastplate with a half-wince, as if an old wound were bothering him below. An unconscious gesture, she thought. The moment passed, and his jaw tightened. “My liege is Lord Zoltan, in fact, and we will have those weapons.”

  She frowned at the name. “The crowlord with holdings south of Balint and north of Damanja?” If she had her geography right, Zoltan’s were the lands they’d need to travel through to deliver Balint his weapons.

  “My liege rules from the canyon to the delta, south through the Golden Plain, and then into the hill country all the way to Manet Havus.”

  “I don’t know the land around the volcano, but if Zoltan has cleared the brigands below the canyon enough to press through with soldiers, then he should know better than to disturb us. He won’t have Balint’s weapons—we won’t break our contract, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “I have coin,” Miklos said.

  “Good. Take it to the village and hire someone who will teach you proper etiquette when dealing with the sword temples. We don’t answer to demands or threats, and I doubt the warbrands or the firewalkers do either.”

  Miklos’s face reddened, and his hand reached back for the pommel of his sword. She gave him a grim look and held his gaze until he looked away and removed his hand from his weap
on, wisely leaving it sheathed.

  “Balint is little better than a brigand himself,” Miklos said. “He’s pillaging villages on the borderlands, not content to be a petty master of his own fiefdom.”

  “I have no idea if that is true or not,” she said, “but I would expect him to tell the same tale of this Zoltan you serve. Your crowlords are all the same—greedy for what is not theirs—and it doesn’t concern us overly, so long as you and your kind keep the squabbles on the plains where they belong.”

  “But it concerns me greatly, woman.”

  Gyorgy drew in a sharp breath behind Narina’s shoulder. “Do you have any idea who you’re addressing with that tone?” She held up a hand for the boy to keep his peace.

  “And if it doesn’t concern you,” Miklos pushed on, “why would you have sold Balint these weapons in the first place? Don’t you know what he’s capable of? What he’d do with that kind of power? He’s a damned villain, demons curse him.”

  She didn’t know why. Her father, in fact, had made the determination after weighing the offer from Balint’s marshal, who’d waited anxiously in Hooffent for several days until the master sohn returned an affirmative answer.

  Balint had offered good coin, but that wasn’t the only determination. Her father would have weighed the balance of power among the crowlords, and had apparently decided either that the man was on the verge of losing his war against his rivals, or that said rivals were dangerous enough that they should be stopped regardless.

  Or maybe Father had merely decided that the balance of power would not be disturbed one way or another, and that the temple needed the coin. Narina hadn’t asked at the time. Her mind had been occupied with training her student and on forging her own master swords, a frustrating process that had already consumed the last three years of her life.