Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy)

by Bell, Hilari

  Everywhere around her the bushes, the grass, and even the spiny plants were shedding old leaves and putting on new growth. Some sprouted buds that would soon be in bloom. She had learned when she lived with the Suud last year that winter, the time of the rains, was the desert’s time of growth. It was in the summer, when the sun struck down, that plants went dormant. Now everything hummed with returning life. Soraya couldn’t help but sense it, and she too rejoiced.

  By the time she reached the mine, she had calmed down enough to greet the workers with genuine good cheer.

  When Soraya finally convinced Maok that the peddler might be able to use his gift to create swords as good as those the Hrum used, and that he would teach the Suud smithcraft into the bargain, men who wanted to learn the secrets of making stone into iron had come from all the tribes in the desert. Soraya knew how valuable the ability to work metal would be to the Suud; that was one of the reasons she’d been willing to reveal the secret of their magic to the treacherous peddler. That and the knowledge that if he showed any sign of betraying their secret she could kill him.

  But having watched him teaching his apprentices the craft he loved, she didn’t believe he would give them away. The peddler was the one person whose emotions she always allowed herself to sense—Ahriman, djinn of lies, could take “magical ethics” where he was concerned! Yet sensing his emotions was allowing her to know him. To know for a fact that he had been as surprised, and even more appalled than she was by the sight of the slaves chained to the siege towers. That was why she hadn’t killed him.

  She still hated him—she could never give that up, nor did she want to—but she could endure him long enough to make full use of him before she allowed Jiaan to avenge their father’s death.

  It was because she refused to take orders from the traitor that she had gotten involved in mining the ore. The peddler was in charge at the forge whenever metal was being worked, and he kept a close eye on the smelter as well. But he paid no heed to how the ore was gathered, once he had taught the Suud to identify the iron-bearing rocks.

  The men who had come to be trained as smiths all took their turns at digging, and other members of the tribe helped out too. Soraya recognized Abab and several of the others. It was hard, unpleasant work, swinging a pick in the confines of the narrow canyon where they had found the best vein of ore—though Soraya thought “vein” was a ridiculous word for the huge band of rock streaking across the canyon wall. Rock dust covered the Suud’s white skin, and small rocks bounced off the thick cloths they had wrapped around their heads to provide a bit of protection. But no one shirked the work. Even the tribe’s children were there, carrying baskets of ore off to the smelter, and the children’s presence made any task light.

  In the beginning, Soraya had thought to supervise the digging, but there was little to supervise, and she found that there was nothing quite as boring as sitting and watching others work. She had tried swinging one of the miner’s picks, which the peddler had ordered shipped down to the desert along with the bellows, the anvil, and the load of “soft” iron bars he hoped would mix with the Suud’s ore to produce something like the Hrum’s famous watersteel. She was strong enough to swing the pick—after a summer spent working as a servant in the Hrum’s camp, she should be—but she couldn’t swing it as long or as strongly as the men did.

  Now she no longer bothered with a pick but went straight to the baskets, filling them with bits of shattered ore and passing them to the children, making sure none of them took too heavy a load. Proud Walking clan was excited to be the tribe that had brought the secrets of metal to their people, and the children were eager to be a part of it.

  Dust sifted into her hair. The rock roughened her fingers and tired her arms and shoulders, but Soraya kept working until Abab put down his pick and approached her.

  “We’ve going to rest awhile,” he said. “You can’t fight the rock all night—it might start winning!”

  Soraya laughed, and he pulled her to her feet and led her out of the canyon with the others.

  The night air was fresh and cool on her sweaty skin, and the moon glowed like a lamp. Clouds obscured the stars in a few places, but they were small. The winter rains mostly took place during the day, leaving the night skies clear, for which Soraya was grateful. The nocturnal Suud, with their wide-dilating pupils, could see perfectly well by starlight alone. But on moonless or cloudy nights, Soraya was restricted to the firelit camp—one aspect of living with the Suud that she found most annoying.

  On the other hand, she liked the fact that only a few men of the tribe were taller than she was, and then only by inches. Abab was tall for a Suud, and he stood eye to eye with her. Growing up Farsalan, she’d become accustomed to being a small woman. When she came to live with the Suud, it had taken some time for her to feel that their lack of height was normal. When she went back to Farsala, she accepted being short again. It was only when she returned to the Suud once more that she realized how nice it was not to have men looming over her.

  Abab sat down on a rock, becoming even shorter, and offered her a skin bag filled with water.

  “Kavi says they’re getting close with the swords. That the metal is good, and the metal-Speakers are making them feel more and more like watersteel. Our smiths have already made some good knives. They don’t look like much”—Abab grinned—“and the blades are a bit lumpy. But they hold an edge, and Kavi says the metal is sound.”

  Kavi says. He had charmed most of the tribe, just as he’d charmed so many Farsalan peasants into aiding Sorahb’s cause. And once the slaves he’d freed from the tower told their tale, his reputation—Sorahb’s reputation, she corrected herself sourly—would grow even greater.

  She closed her eyes, letting the soft, changeable shilshadu of water into her own shilshadu, soothing away her anger, sinking herself into the water’s mindless pleasure in even the small movements it made inside the bag. She took a moment to remind it of cool streams, of melting snow and the cold of the highest sky where it had formed.

  The shilshadu of water was the easiest to affect, for water loved to change. When she handed the skin bag back to Abab it was cold.

  He smiled his thanks absently, eyes fixed on her face. “Why don’t you like him?”

  “Like who?” said Soraya.

  Abab snorted. “I heard that he killed your father, but I’ve also heard that your father died in battle against the Hrum. Besides, your father was a great warrior. Kavi can’t even grip fire tongs in his right hand, much less a weapon. And he’s not left-handed, either. So I have trouble believing that he could have killed your father—in battle or any other way.”

  A flash of rage surged through Soraya. “Believe what you like!”

  She turned and stalked away. In the old days, she’d have thrown something at him, something hard, and he deserved it too! Who was he—

  Water splashed on the back of her neck, startlingly cold against her hot skin.

  She spun to glare at Abab, who stood with the water bag still raised, ready to defend himself.

  “Just helping you cool that temper of yours,” he said innocently.

  Anger fractured her control, but Abab was one of the people she found easy to read. Beneath his laughter, Soraya could feel his concern like an outstretched hand. She closed off her shilshadu sensing as soon as she noticed it. She agreed with Maok that it was rude to spy into people’s hearts without their knowledge. It was only for enemies that she made an exception. And Abab, though he exasperated her mightily sometimes, was far from an enemy. He was worried about her.

  Soraya went back and sat down on the rock beside him. For the first time, she realized that he had led her away from the others; if she didn’t lose her temper and yell, they would have privacy.

  “He didn’t kill my father with his own hand,” she said. “He did it with lies and treachery.”

  “But what did he do?” Abab asked. “Exactly.”

  Soraya’s heart flinched from talking about it. But pe
rhaps it would be good for the Suud to know the details. To know who and what that charming traitor really was.

  “My father hired him,” said Soraya, taking a deep breath. “Caught him, really. He had committed crimes in the city of Setesafon, selling gold-coated bracelets and other things as if they were solid gold. He tried to sell one to me and my cousin Pari, but my father caught him.”

  Pari had been taken by the Hrum to be sold as a slave. Soraya worried more about her than she did about her mother, for Sudaba was stronger and tougher than sweet-natured Pari could ever be. And she feared for Merdas more than either of them. He’d be three years old now. Just a toddler when she’d seen him last. After so many terrifying changes, would he even remember the big sister who had taken him on horseback rides and blown buzzing kisses into his baby-soft skin?

  Abab’s hand settled over hers, his palm as rough and dirty as her own. “Your father caught him,” he prompted firmly. He might sympathize, but he wasn’t going to let her off. He and Elid and the others had probably decided that talking about it would be good for her. Soraya wondered if Abab had drawn the short straw—although the Suud settled that kind of thing by drawing different-colored pebbles. In any case, it was clear he wasn’t going to give up.

  “My father could have turned him over to the city guard,” she said, “but he was foolish enough to give him a chance. I was going to stay in the croft, to hide from my father’s political enemies.” Abab nodded, for he knew about that. “Well, my father hired the peddler to visit the croft as a part of his rounds. To bring any supplies we needed and then to take my father news of me. How I was faring.”

  She had to stop then, to swallow down the lump in her throat. Her father had loved her. It had been the central fact of her existence—the one thing in the universe nothing could ever change. But death changed everything, and the Hrum had brought plenty of death.

  “He used his position to go into the Farsalan army camp,” she said. “He learned about my father’s battle plans, and gave them to the Hrum. So they were ready for the deghans’ charge. Just as the Farsalan horses reached their line, the Hrum brought up lances, hundreds of lances, long enough and well enough braced to kill a horse. I was told they killed half our men, and almost all the horses, in the first few minutes of the battle. After that they were on foot, and the Hrum are the finest infantry fighters alive. The deghans’ swords broke on the Hrum’s watersteel, and anyway, they were horsemen. Without their horses …”

  She turned her face away. She could see it clearly in her imagination. She’d had nightmares about it.

  “Was your father killed by the Hrum lances?” Abab asked. “I can see why you’d hate Kavi for that.”

  “No,” Soraya admitted. “My father survived the charge, survived almost all the battle that followed. In the end—a soldier who saw it told me this—when it was clear the Farsalans had lost, my father drew a circle in the earth at his feet, challenging the Hrum commander to single combat. But Garren didn’t fight. He … he had his archers kill my father instead. The soldier said my father saw them coming, but he never flinched. He said it was quick.”

  Tears fell now. Odd, for she hadn’t cried for her father in months. She pulled her hand from Abab’s to wipe her face. She would have revenge, as she had sworn to. Revenge against the Hrum, and the traitor. That was better than weeping.

  “So it was the Hrum who killed your father,” said Abab slowly, working it out. “But Kavi made it possible, showing them how to use these lances?”

  “Not exactly,” Soraya admitted. “They already had the lances. The traitor just told them when and where to use them. And he told them where the Farsalan archers would be, and some other things.”

  “So what Kavi did … he didn’t actually kill your father, but he made it easier for the Hrum to win the battle where they killed your father. He helped them.”

  “Exactly,” said Soraya. “He gave aid to the enemy while he was pretending to work for us. That’s what treason is.”

  Abab eyed her soberly. “I can see why you’re angry. But have you asked him why he did this?”

  “I don’t care why,” said Soraya, meaning every word of it.

  “But he’s helping you now, and betraying the Hrum. Doesn’t that …” He paused to search for words, but Soraya didn’t care how he phrased it.

  “No,” she said, “it doesn’t. It only makes him a traitor twice over.”

  She went back to work then, gathering up rocks from the canyon floor, and soon the others rejoined her. She could feel Abab’s gaze on her as she filled the baskets, but he said nothing more, working beside her in silence until they returned to camp for the final meal of the night.

  • • •

  SORAYA WATCHED THE peddler as he wandered from one family’s cooking fire to another in the Suud way of eating a meal. He talked more than he ate, she noticed. The camp’s food had tasted strange to her once, but now it tasted right—even when the cook put too much belish in the stew, it was something she was … accustomed to. The lamplight glowing through the patterned silk that made up the sides of the hutches looked right, and the bouncing babble of the language sounded right to her ears. Watching the peddler’s struggles, she realized how much Proud Walking clan had come to feel like home. But she was a deghass. Her home was elsewhere. She remembered the burned-out shell of the manor where she’d grown up, and shivered.

  When Merdas returned, when she had her brother back, she could make a home anywhere. That was worth anything, even tolerating the traitor, as long as he helped keep the Farsalan rebellion alive.

  For according to the Hrum’s own law, if Garren didn’t complete his conquest of Farsala within a year, the Hrum army would leave, and all the people who had been captured and made slaves would be returned. It had seemed absurd to Soraya, when she first learned of this strange custom. Then she spent the summer working as a servant in the Hrum’s main army camp near Setesafon, trying to learn where in their vast empire her mother and brother had been sent. She had come to know the Hrum, and above all else they were a people of law. If their law gave Garren a limit of one year to complete his conquest, then one year was all he had. Only four months left now that Mazad had to hold out.

  A shadow fell across her, and she looked up into the peddler’s—the traitor’s face.

  “We done one other sword,” he said in his clumsy Suud—no doubt to further charm the Suud apprentices who gathered behind him. “We will test sword, dinner is done. I want you to talk for me, if you want.”

  “I’d be happy to translate for you,” said Soraya in her smoothest Suud, though when she’d only been here a month, she’d sounded much like he did now. “Though why you think another broken blade requires translation I don’t know. How many swords have failed so far?”

  The peddler frowned, trying to work out what she’d said.

  “Uvadu,” said one of the apprentices, grinning. “But we’re just beginners, you know. We’re getting better.”

  “How much ‘uvadu’ mean?” the peddler asked.

  Soraya had finally mastered the Suud’s expressions for various amounts—but it hadn’t been easy. “Between thirty-two and fifty,” she said. “It’s only used when you don’t have a precise count.”

  “Uvadu mean between thirty-two and fifty?” the peddler asked incredulously.

  “No, Uvaydu is between sixty and a hundred and fifty. Uvahdu is between thirty-two and fifty.”

  “You’re kidding me,” said the peddler, dropping into Faran. And he must have said it before, for even the apprentices who didn’t speak Faran laughed.

  “Just say ‘much’ and ‘big much,’” Soraya told him. “Why do you need a translator?”

  She might be prepared to tolerate his presence to defeat the Hrum and get Merdas back, but she didn’t want to be around him tonight.

  “This one sword …” The peddler groped for words again, then shrugged. “This one right.”

  “Right?” Soraya raised her brows.


  “It feels right,” he said, lapsing into Faran again. “The shilshadu of it. The trick of watersteel is something to do with the quenching, I think. When metal cools, I can feel …” His hands moved again, and Soraya nodded understanding. It was hard to find any words, Suud or Faran, to describe what you found inside the shilshadu of a thing. But she had seen him, standing behind his apprentices as they worked the steel with their hammer and tongs, his hands on their shoulders. Much as she despised him, it was impossible to ignore his skill at his craft. If he said he felt something, she had to believe that he felt it.

  “It’s like something is moving, swimming in the metal as it cools,” he went on. “In watersteel, I finally figured out, it’s swimming in lines, in formation along the edges of the blade, but in the middle it’s just … just milling around. I don’t know how to put it more clearly than that,” he added. “But I’m certain of it now. And Lupsh here can feel it too.” He clapped one of the grinning apprentices on the shoulder. “The sword he just made feels like everything is swimming in the right way, in the right places. Some of the other lads are honing an edge on it now. By the time dinner’s over, it will be ready to test.”

  “I’ll be there,” Soraya told him coolly. “Though I still think that one more broken blade won’t need a translator.”

  THE SUUD WERE BEGINNING to yawn, and Soraya felt sleep creeping up on her, too. The graying sky in the east showed that soon the sun would rise, but after the meal was over she went with the rest of the tribe to the edge of the camp, where the peddler had sunk a post into the sandy soil. He had bought it from the miners, along with the rest of his equipment, and it stood almost as high as a Suud man—which left it a hand span shorter than his own curly head, and he wasn’t particularly tall. About seven inches thick at the base, the wood was rough and unpolished—rougher now, with the sword cuts in it. That ordinary post had broken every sword the Suud had made so far.