The Sword of Morning Star

by Richard Meade

  Now the hunter and dog-breeder who was master of this pack came to make them welcome. Gad Dano was not a lovely person; living alone in this remote valley, there was much of the wild animal in him, too; it flickered in his yellowish eyes and in the way his teeth gleamed white from time to time in the midst of a ratty beard. His costume was completely furs, wolfskins that smelled, as Sandivar whispered to Helmut, as if the wolf were still within them; and his voice was a hoarse croak, as if it were so rarely used that it had rusted. “Aye,” he said, pointing to the forest on one mountainside. “There is still light left for hunting—these hounds hunt best by sight, you know. Now, if you are not too tired, I doubt not but what we can start a few gray devils from their lairs.” Behind the hut, he chained all the dogs but those two grim-jawed giants and then saddled a mule for Sandivar while Waddle went into the other forest to forage for supper. Dano swung into the saddle of his own sturdy mountain nag. “Come, Death,” he said. “Come, Destruction.” And the two great dogs swung alongside him to lope by his stirrup-irons.

  Higher and higher into the forest they climbed. This was all spruce of great antiquity and dark as the inside of a saddlebag. Clouds, at this altitude, drifted by like fog, and there was a constant drip, drip of moisture from the trees, so that the forest floor and every piece of fallen timber was coated with velvety moss. Beneath Helmut, the big war-horse, Vengeance, ascended the steepest slopes with ease.

  Presently Dano spoke to the two hounds, and they ranged out ahead. The horsemen held their mounts in a clearing, waiting. “Lately,” Dano observed, “wolves are getting scarcer. Almost as if they’re leaving this range for somewhere else.”

  The words had barely left his lips when sound exploded up ahead, a terrible snarling and growling. Then something big and gray shot into the clearing, and Sandivar’s mule brayed and reared as a gaunt gray wolf dashed straight under its belly. Another like it dashed beneath the nose of Dane’s mount and was gone. A third, a fourth, as Helmut reined his steed around, and then the wolves had vanished in the timber.

  But hot on their heels came the hounds. Like two gray blurs, Death and Destruction streaked across the clearing and disappeared.

  “Gone away!” yelled Dano and kicked his nag. “Come on!” And, oblivious of risk to life and limb, he put the horse at full gallop down the mountainside, after dogs and wolves alike. Helmut and Sandivar, no less recklessly, followed close behind.

  It was a wild, breakneck journey down that mountain, the horses sliding on their haunches, leaping high and clean over the spiked obstacles of ancient logs, and catching the excitement of the hunt, so that now the men could not have stopped them even if they’d chosen to. Helmut soon outdistanced Dano, for Vengeance’s huge hoofs were sure, and his great stride ate up the ground. Then they broke from the edge of timber, and Helmut pulled up so quickly that Vengeance reared and pawed the air.

  Below them, on the untimbered slope the wolves were in a race for life. They grew big, this mountain species, not much smaller than the hounds, and equally as savage. For now they chose to flee, four gray fleet blurs against the green, but Helmut wondered what would happen when they turned at bay and it would be two to one against the dogs.

  Death and Destruction ran side by side, in hot pursuit, a couple of hundred meters behind the wolves. Like marvelous machines, they ate up distance with a steady, untiring pace. But they did not gain on the wolves; obviously they were enjoying this race and prolonging it until they’d had their fill.

  Then, beside Helmut, Gad Dano rose in his stirrups and gave a cry like a falsetto trumpet call. High, shrill, brassy, it rang across the valley, echoing and reechoing from cliff and crag above the forest. And an amazing thing happened. Without apparent effort, the hounds exactly doubled their speed.

  They were on the valley floor now, the wolves stretching every nerve and muscle, running for their lives, bellies to the ground. But steadily, inexorably, with almost mathematical precision, the hounds moved up on them.

  “By the Gods!” Helmut whispered in admiration. “Look at those beasts go!” This, at least, could rouse emotion in him—combat.

  “My dogs are the greatest wolfers in the Lands of Light,” said Dano proudly, “and yon two are the greatest hounds that ever I have raised. Now watch—”

  For the gap was closing quickly. The wolves looked back and saw that, gave every ounce of strength they had—and failed. Still running with that inexorable mechanical rhythm, the implacable hounds gained on them. Now the gap was fifty meters, then thirty, twenty, ten—

  And the wolves gave up. Seeing they could not outrun the hounds, they skidded to a halt and turned at bay, then threw themselves at the oncoming dogs. Even at this great distance, the sound they made was blood-chilling. Growling, they went two to a hound, one seeking the throat, the other to break a front leg or hamstring a back one.

  But the massive jaws of the wolfhounds killed with a single chop, and unerringly each found the throat of that wolf seeking his; and all this so swiftly that it was a haze, a blur, of motion. Those great jaws chopping shut, something limp like a big gray rag waved and thrown away; and then the hounds launched themselves at those wolves who’d take them from the rear, eluding their fangs with a lightning shift, crashing into them with massive chests and forequarters, knocking them backward with sheer weight, and then, as soft throats were for an instant vulnerable, chopping with those terrible jaws again.

  One wolf howled, a sound of death agony choked off abruptly. Then the valley was silent. On its floor lay four limp, gray shapes. Unmarked, the hounds trotted up to meet the men who rode down toward them…

  Thus, on Vengeance, with Death and Destruction loping at his stirrup-irons, Helmut rode back to Neoroma, with Sandivar alongside on Waddle. The huge dogs, savage as they were in hunting, were otherwise a pair of lambs, and they caused no trouble on the thronging city streets nor in the alley to which Sandivar now led Helmut.

  Here the air was musical with a strange ringing—the hammering of smiths at their forges. This was the Lane of Armorers of Neoroma, where the finest craftsmen in the world turned out the finest ironwork. Their signs beckoned, one after the other, and so did the exquisite samples of their wares, but Sandivar ignored them all, seeming to know where he was going.

  These were rich establishments, these Armorers’ Houses, in large buildings well kept up. Only toward the end of the row did any shabbiness appear; there, to a house so old it might have dated from the Worldfire, under a sign aged and cracked until it was well-nigh illegible, Sandivar led Helmut. No ring of hammer or puff of bellows came from here; all was silence. The servant who answered the door was old and half-blind and more than half-deaf. But at last Sandivar got through to him what they wanted. Finally he agreed to lead them to his master.

  They found him in a small garden behind the house. Nearby, under a shed roof, was a forge, long stone-cold; much iron in bars and plates, now very rusty; and various anvils and forms which had also gathered rust.

  The giant was old now. But once he had been an authentic giant indeed. Even slumped in the chair beneath the lemon tree, his white beard reaching to his waist, it could be seen that, erect, he would stand better than seven feet; and each of his shoulders was as wide as a sword blade was long. His upper arms, bared by his tunic, were as big around as Helmut’s thighs, and his hands were massive. But even after his servant had shaken him and called to him, “Master Norst. I say, Master Norst—” he went on drowsing, in the way very old men do when the past is more real than the present.

  Sandivar smiled at the sleeping figure. “Never mind,” he said. “Please leave us.” Dubiously, the aged servant hobbled off. Sandivar led Helmut to the forge. “Now,” he said, “that sheet of iron yonder—pull it out.”

  With his one good hand, Helmut jerked the heavy sheet from its stack and leaned it against the stone wall of the forge. “Now, yonder hammer,” Sandivar grinned.

  It was short-handled, blunt-headed, and very heavy. Sandivar took it, raised
it high, swung it down, and slammed the sheet of iron. The plate rang like a massive gong; and at the sound, the giant Norst came wide awake and leaped from his chair. “Who uses my forge and strikes my iron?” he bellowed, blinking groggily. Then his eyes focused on Sandivar, and he squinted. “By the Gods,” he whispered. “Do I see aright? Is it truly you?”

  Sandivar laughed. “Aye. Hello, good Norst, armorer to kings and emperors. It’s I, Sandivar. And how many years now has it been?”

  “Too many!” the big old man exploded; and he and Sandivar embraced, uttering oaths of gladness at their reunion. Then Norst squinted at Helmut. “By the Gods! News I had of Sigrieth’s death long ago! Yet here he is, and younger than when last I saw him!”

  “Not Sigrieth, but his son Helmut.”

  Norst’s white brows went up. “The bastard? I thought he was not yet grown.”

  “When Wolfsheim sits on the throne of Boorn, men age fast.”

  “Whatever… welcome!” Norst thrust out a giant hand, and when Helmut took it with his left, saw for the first time the stump of the right. He said nothing, but his eyes darted once more to Sandivar. “I think there is something afoot.” He turned toward the back door of his house. “Nagio! Bring wine, you hear? The best, much wine!” He motioned them to other chairs beneath the lemon tree. “We have much to talk about.”

  “But little time in which to talk,” said Sandivar. “You rest, I notice, and your forge is cold.”

  “For many years now. So many cheapjacks have opened shop, calling themselves armorers and barely knowing a tasset from a greave, that I decided in disgust to rust the rest of my days along with my hammer. Only for the mightiest kings would I now fire my forge, and then the color of their gold must be true indeed. But this is Sigrieth’s son, you said, and—”

  “And you have here still some of the iron that Sigrieth wrested from the dwarfs of Dolo and brought to you two decades ago, for his own use and that of no other—the Dolo dwarfs possessing a vein of ore,” he went on, looking at Helmut, “of properties almost unbelievable; hardness, yet workability, with which a master artisan like Norst can perform real miracles. Three of the great serpents that dwell in the caverns of Dolo had he to slay before the gift was made to him; and of the smelted iron, twelve packhorse loads brought he down from the mountains.” Sandivar turned to Norst. “How much is left?”

  “Why, all,” said Norst. “All after I had made his armor, his sword, and his morning star. Six loads; think you I would use Sigrieth’s iron on a lesser commission? Besides, as I have said, I work no longer. Unless—”

  “We shall require, first of all,” said Sandivar, “a sword. Not a broadsword, but a fighting sword for a horseman, a knight, made with all your art. Then there shall be armor, understand you? Armor of the Dolo iron, light as wool and strong as granite, perfectly fitted and most flexible in every joint. And last of all, for a war-horse, armor, too; but that need not be the Sigrieth iron.”

  “No,” said Norst.

  As the servant came with the wine, Sandivar frowned. “You mean you will not make it?”

  “Oh, I will make all that. But no, I meant you were not yet finished.” Norst took a massive swallow of wine and leaned forward, gesturing: “A warrior goes into battle, so: sword in one hand and mace in the other, guiding his horse by the pressure of his knees. He is deadly then with both hands, but this young man has only one. Now, certain warriors who have lost their hands have from time to time come to me, and I have fitted them with a hook—”

  “No hook,” said Sandivar.

  Helmut turned on him. “No hook? I have told you that—”

  Sandivar raised his hand. “No hook. Instead, Norst, you will fashion, most cleverly and perfectly fitted to the young man’s wrist in a cup of iron lined with silver, the ball of a mace—a morning star. Not so large or heavy as the ordinary one swung at a chain’s end, yet neither light nor flimsy either, and extra long of spike. For, know you, the hand that’s missing was cut off at instigation of Wolfsheim, now King of Boorn, and what shall replace it must be far deadlier weapon still than the simple hand that was taken thus away by Albrecht’s ax. The missing hand cries out for vengeance; when spiked steel is there instead, if Albrecht be encountered on the right, then vengeance is not far off.”

  “A strange commission, and original,” Norst said, but his eyes were lighting, leaving the past and coming into the present. “Then he shall wield my sword with the left, my morning star with the right.”

  “Aye,” said Sandivar. He looked at Helmut. “Understand you now?”

  Helmut thought of it all: of the horse named Vengeance and the two dogs named Death and Destruction, and now of the sword and armor and the morning star. He said, quietly, “Yes, good Sandivar. I understand, I think, all. And my thanks go out to you. Although I do not know why—”

  “Why? I have told you why,” and there was an edge of anger in Sandivar’s voice—the first that Helmut had ever heard. “Every man who would live in this world free and in sunlight must stand against Wolfsheim and his beasts.”

  “But I think there is more to it than that,” said Helmut.

  “If there is, you shall know it in good time,” snapped Sandivar, and turned away. Then he said to Norst: “When can you begin work?”

  “Today I fire my forge,” said Norst. “Perhaps also I will take some measurements. When you come back tomorrow, the iron glows orange and clangs under the hammer. The sword shall I make first.” He told Helmut, “Stand and test your left arm against my right.” Towering over both of them, he put out his massive, callused hand. Helmut locked hands with Norst, and then the two of them strained at each other, until veins bulged in their foreheads and cords in their throats, and yet neither conquered the other. At last, as Helmut summoned the remnants of his strength seemingly from his very toes, Norst’s hand flopped over. The blacksmith gasped.

  “By the Gods!” he wheezed. “One who can do that is possessed indeed of strength; not since Sigrieth has a man so conquered me. All right; now I know the weight and balance of your sword; I felt it course through me as every tendon of your arm and shoulder strove against mine.” He poured more wine. “I will light the forge presently; now I shall hear talk of politics from Sandivar…”

  Kling, kling, kling! Thus rang the heavy hammer against the orange-heated iron. Then the giant Norst turned away from the anvil, tested the temperature of the water in the vat, and, satisfied, plunged in the blade. Hot iron sizzled and steam rose; presently, Norst withdrew the sword from the quenching, tempering bath, and waved it judicially in his hand. “No,” he said at last. “Not quite. It’s a touch heavy here.” And he indicated the blade six inches above the haft The sword reheated, he struck at it with his hammer, and a shower of sparks leaped into the air. Then he quenched the sword again, hefted it, and swung it widely. Its hilt was solid, unenriched by jewels, but corrugated to give a hand fair grip. Suddenly the blade flashed through the air to Helmut. “There. Try it!”

  Helmut caught it nimbly with his left hand. Then he swung it. His eyes widened. “By the Gods!” he rasped. “It’s part of me!”

  “Of course it’s part of you!” Norst gave a deep, chuckling laugh. “Think you that I can feel any man’s grip, look at any man’s arm, survey his depth of chest, his length of leg and strength of thigh, and not produce a sword that’s part of him? Whyfore do you think I have left the business: only because fighting men become scarcer. A real one knows a sword when he holds it for the first time; he feels the iron in it make connection with the blood in his veins and the nerves that go to the very soles of his feet. But how many real fighting men remain?”

  “I don’t know,” said Helmut. “All I know is that this sword is me and I am the sword, and what it feels, I feel.”

  Norst leaned forward, bracing his huge hands on the great stump which held his anvil. “And tell me, one-armed knight for whom I soon shall make a morning star, what do you feel as you swing this sword?”

  “Rage,” said He
lmut. “Against Wolfsheim feel I great rage; and my desire is to disembowel him with this blade.” Then he stiffened. “Yea,” he said. “Rage.”

  “Aye,” said Sandivar, and his face was grave. “With Rage shall you lay about you.”

  “There shall be a scabbard perfectly fitted,” Norst said. “And, as you have requested, armor for your steed and yourself. But first, good Helmut, do me favor to impress where once your right hand was into this soft wax…”

  That was done. When Helmut and Sandivar returned the next day, with Rage swinging like a feather at Helmut’s side, Norst asked: “Did you try the sword?”

  “Did I try it? Aye, in half a dozen mock battles with the best men of King Carus’ court. And each disarmed I promptly and could have, had he been real enemy, slit his weasand without difficulty. In truth, Norst, never have I lifted before a sword which did its own fighting!”

  “I am glad it pleases you. Now… let me have your right wrist.” Opening a cabinet, he took out a strange and novel-looking object: a round, spiked ball, like that of a chain mace, with a sleeve attached, and the inner part of that lined with heavy silver. “This is your morning star,” said Norst. “And if I have judged aright in matters of weight and fit, from now on it shall be as much part of you as that left hand that wields the sword, and, I hope, not less comfortable or useful. If you please—”

  “Yes,” said Helmut, and he held out his wrist. Every nuance of its scarred flesh had been captured in the wax and allowed for in the silver. He could tell that in the way the thing slipped on and seated itself. Weight at the end of his right arm seemed curious, though, and he could hardly control himself until Norst had buckled the contrivance of leather straps that was designed to secure the thing. But before Norst was done, he had also fastened a thick leather wrapping around part of Helmut’s right thigh. “Your flesh also must be guarded from the spikes,” he said. “Now, test it.”