by David Drake
"Stick to your silk, merchant," the soldier replied with a chuckle, and took the sword from Dama. He whipped the blade twice through the air.
"Oh, yes," he went on, "it's been a long time since I saw one of these."
Setting the point against the wall, the big soldier leaned his weight against it. The blade bowed almost double. The point shifted very slightly and the steel sprang straight, skidding along the stone. The sword blurred, humming a low note that made both men's bowels quiver.
"Thought the way it bends was magical, hey?"
Dama nodded. "I thought it might be."
"Well, that's reasonable," Vettius said."It doesn't act much like a piece of steel, does it? Just the way it's tempered, though. You know about that?"
"I think I know how this blade was tempered," the merchant answered.
"Yeah, run it through a plump slave's butt a few times to quench it," Vettius said off-handedly. His fierce smile returned. "Not very… civilized, shall we say? But not magic."
"Not magic?" Dama repeated with an odd inflexion."Then let me tell you the rest of the story."
Vettius raised his cup in silent consent.
"I was in Amida…" the merchant began, and his mind drifted back to the fear and mud-brick houses overlooking the Tigris.
"We knew that Shapur was coming, of course; that spring, next spring-soon at least. He'd made peace with the Chionitae and they'd joined him as allies against Rome. Still, I had a caravan due any day and I didn't trust anyone else to bring it home to Antioch. It was a gamble and at the time it seemed worth it."
Dama snorted to himself, "Well, I guess it could have been worse.
"Aside from waiting to see whether my people would arrive before the Persians did, there was nothing to do in Amida but bake in the dust. It had never been a big place and now, with the shanties outside the wall abandoned and the whole countryside squeezed in on top of the garrison, there wasn't room to spit."
The merchant took a deep draught of his wine as he remembered. Vettius poured him more straight from the jar. "Mithra! There were two regiments of Gaulish foot there, half-dead with the heat and crazy from being cooped up. That was later, though, after the gates were shut.
"Wealth has its advantages and I'd gotten a whole house for my crew. I put animals on the ground floor and the men on the second; that left me the roof to myself. There was a breeze up there sometimes.
"The place next door was owned by a smith named Khusraw and I could see over his wall into the courtyard where his forge was set up. He claimed to be Armenian but there was talk of him really being a Persian himself. It didn't matter, not while he was turning weapons out and we needed them so bad."
"He made this?"Vettius asked, tapping the sword with his fingernail. The steel moaned softly.
Dama nodded absently, his eyes fixed on a scene in the past. "I watched him while he worked at night; the hammer ringing would have kept me awake anyway. At night he sang. He'd stand there singing with the hearth glaring off him, tall and stringy and as old as the world. He had a little slave to help him, pumping on the bellows. You've seen a charcoal hearth glow under a bellows?"
Vettius nodded. "Like a drop of sun."
Dama raised his eyebrows."Perhaps," he said, sipping at his thick wine, "but I don't find it a clean light. It made everything look so strange, so flat, that it was hours before I realized that the plate Khusraw was forging must have weighed as much as I did."
"Siege armor?" the soldier suggested.
"Not siege armor," Dama replied."There were other plates too, some of them that he welded into tubes, singing all the time."
The blond Cappadocian paused to finish his wine. He held out the cup to his host with a wan smile. "You may as well fill it again. I'm sweating it out faster than I drink it."
He wiped his brow with a napkin and continued. "It was a funny household in other ways. Khusraw, his wife, and his son-a boy about eight or ten. You can't really say with Persians. Those three and one slave boy I never heard to speak. No other servants in the house even though the woman looked like she was about to drop quints.
"I saw her close one day, trying to buy a sword for my foreman, seeing the way things were tending. Her belly looked wrong. It didn't shift like it ought to when she moved and she didn't seem to be carrying as much weight as if she were really pregnant. Padded or not, there was something strange about her.
"As for my own problem, that was decided the morning the Persians appeared. Oh, I know, you've fought them; but Lucius, you can't imagine what they looked like stretched all across the horizon with the sun dazzling on their spearpoints and armor. Mithra! Even so, it didn't seem too bad at first. The walls were strong and we were sure we could hold out until Ursicinius relieved us."
Vettius made a guttural sound and stared at the table. Dama laid his hand on the big soldier's forearm and said, "Lucius, you know I meant nothing against you or the army."
Vettius looked up with a ghost of his old smile, "Yeah, I know you didn't. No reason for me to be sensitive, anyhow. I didn't give the orders.
"Or refuse to give them," he added bitterly after a moment's reflection. "Have some more wine and go on with your story."
Dama drank and set his cup down empty. "Until things got really serious I spent most nights on my roof. Khusraw was working on a sword, now, and I forgot about the other stuff he had been forging. But everytime he had the metal beaten out into a flat blade he folded it back in on itself and started over."
The soldier nodded in understanding, running his finger along the watermarked blade. The merchant shrugged.
"Very late one night I awakened. Khusraw stood beside the forge and that evil white light flared over the courtyard every time the bellows pulsed. Tied to the anvil was a half-filled grain sack. The only noise, though, was the thump of the bellows and perhaps a whisper of the words Khusraw was chanting, and I couldn't figure out what had awakened me. Then another moan came from the house. That sound I knew-Khusraw's wife was in labor and I thought I'd been wrong about her belly being padded.
"Out in the courtyard the smith laid one hand on the grain sack. With the other, all wrapped in hides, he took the blade out of the hearth. The slave let the bellows stop and for an instant I could see both pairs of eyes reflecting the orange steel of the sword. Then Khusraw stabbed it through the sack. There was a terrible scream-"
"I'll bet there was!" Vettius interjected, his eyes glittering like citrines.
"-and inside the house the woman screamed too. Khusraw drew the blade out, half-quenched and barely visible, then plunged it back in. There was no scream but his wife's, this time. The slave had fallen to his knees and was making gabbling noises. When the smith drove the sword into the sack a third time, the woman bawled in the last agony of birthing and there was a crash of metal so loud I thought a Persian catapult had hit Khusraw's house. He ran inside shouting, 'My son! My son!' leaving the sword to lie crossways through that sack."
Dama paused. Vettius tossed him a fresh napkin and poured out more wine. "His own son," the soldier mused."Strange. Maybe Romulus really did sacrifice his brother to make his city great the way the old legends say."
The merchant gave him a strange smile and continued."That was the last night I spent in the house. Our garrison was too worn down to hold out any longer and every able man in the city had to help on the walls.
"Seventy-three days," Dama said, shaking his head."It doesn't sound like much to hold out, does it? Not in so strong a city. But there were so many Persians…
"No matter. The end came when a section of wall collapsed. The Persians didn't bring it down, we did ourselves-built it too high and it toppled. We tried to mass in the breach as the Persians poured through."
Dama paused with a wry grin. "Oh, you would have liked that, Lucius; the dust was sticky with blood. The armory had been buried when the wall fell and because the Persians were pushing us back, whenever a man lost his weapon he was out of the fight. I dodged out of the melee when
my sword shattered on a shield boss. Then, when I had caught my breath I ran to Khusraw's shop, thinking he might still have some weapons I could carry back to the fighting.
"The front of the shop was empty, so I burst into the back. The smith was alone, holding a slender box open on his lap. When he saw me he slammed the lid shut, but I'd already caught the glint of steel inside. 'Give me the sword!' I said. 'No!' he cried, 'it's for my son to carry to King Shapur.' I grabbed the box, then, and knocked him down with my free hand. There was no time to talk and gods! but I was afraid.
"I tore the box open and drew this sword while Khusraw shouted something I didn't understand. Something clanged in the inner room. I turned to see the door swing open, and then I knew what the smith had made of his forgings.
"It was about a man's height, but from the way the ground shook there must have been twenty manloads of iron in it. I took a step back and the thing followed me. Even with the weight I might have thought it was a man in armor, but the eyes! They were little balls of cloudy orange. No one could have seen out through them, but they swiveled as I moved.
"I cut at the head of the… the iron man. The sword bounced off.
As sharp as the blade was, it only scratched the thing. Khusraw was backed against the wall to my left. He began to cackle, but I couldn't take my eyes off his creation long enough to deal with him.
"I thrust at the thing's throat. The point caught where the neck joined that black iron skull, but I didn't have enough strength to ram it home. Before I could recover, the iron man closed its hand over the blade. I yanked back and the sword shrieked out of its grip, slicing the metal fingers as neatly as it would have flesh."
Dama laughed grimly and tossed down his wine."I've mentioned how Khusraw was giggling at me? Well, he stopped then. He shouted, 'Son!' and jumped at me, just as his toy tried to smash me with its fist. I ducked and the steel hand caught Khusraw on the temple and slammed him into the wall. I tried to dodge through the door then, but my boot slipped in the blood. I scrambled clear of the thing's foot, but it had me backed against the wall.
"I thrust again, at the face this time. The tip skidded into an eye socket without penetrating, and the weight of the iron drove the hilt against the wall behind me. The blade bent but the very weight on it held the hilt firm. Then, as the thing reached for my head, the swordpoint shifted and the blade sprang straight, driving itself through the skull. The remaining eye went black and the thing crashed to the floor.
"There wasn't time to think then. I tugged the sword free and ran into the street to find the Persians had… well, the rest doesn't matter, I suppose. I was one of the lucky ones who slipped out of the city that night."
The soldier sighted down the length of the blade."So your smith put his own son's soul in the sword and it wrecked his machine for him," he said at last.
The slender merchant ran a hand through his blond hair, the tension gone from him now that he had finished his story. "No, I don't think so," he said quietly. "You're forgetting Khusraw's wife."
"Her pregnancy?" the soldier asked in bewilderment.
"She wasn't pregnant," Dama explained, "she was just a vehicle. The smith had his materials, a soul and a body. Somehow his wife's pretence of labor allowed him to join them. The thing was alive, an automaton."
Vettius shook his head."What you're calling an automaton-there must have been a dwarf inside with some very clever machinery."
Dama smiled gently. "There was no man inside. Lucius, when I pulled that sword free it was as clean as you see it now; no blood, no brains sticking to it."
The soldier looked from his friend to the sword. The blade had a faint green cast to it now as it caught the reflection of the gaming pieces so finely carven by some Persian craftsman.
The Shortest Way
Before I sent off my first story, I told myself that someday a story of mine would be published. After that first sale, I decided I'd like to sell another so that I wouldn't be a one-shot author.
Let me tell you, selling stories is an addiction. The need just gets worse.
I did well enough in law school that I was offered a place on the Duke Law Journal at the beginning of my second year. The upperclassman describing the journal told me that if I was really lucky, in my third year I might be able to publish a one-paragraph Note under my own name. "It's a real thrill to see your name in print!'' he said.
And I thought, "You twit. People pay to put my name in print!''
But that wasn't true: August Derleth had paid to put my name in print, and he was dead. I was going to have to find another market if I hoped ever to sell again.
Two professional magazines in 1971 published some fantasy. I sent Fantastic a story which vanished utterly, an event perhaps concerned with the problems that later got the editor a felony conviction for drug dealing. After that experience, Fantastic was no longer a potential market for me.
And there was The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, an excellent periodical which at about that time published a heroic fantasy novella by a writer with a high literary reputation. (It wasn't a very good story per se, which should have warned me.)
I wrote "The Shortest Way" and submitted it to F amp;SF with a covering letter that said, "I know you don't publish much heroic fantasy…'' It came back with a nice personal rejection from the editor, Mr. Ferman, agreeing that they didn't publish much heroic fantasy though this was a good story.
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And indeed, my friend Karl had an even closer brush: one of his heroic fantasies ("The Dark Muse") came back from F amp;SF already copyedited. Mr. Ferman had decided very late in the game not to publish.
"The Shortest Way" is based on the Sawney Beane legend. I'd heard of Sawney Beane many years before, but I first got the details when I read The Complete Newgate Calendar in the Duke Law School library. (I didn't like law school, but there were compensations.) The road itself is a real one in Dalmatia, torn up in the third century BC for reasons archeology can't determine. And I used the same two characters for the story as I had in "Black Iron": I'd started writing a series.
Stu Schiff-Stuart David Schiff, DDS-started Whispers magazine in 1972 with the stated intention of replacing the Arkham Collector (which had died with Mr. Derleth) as a home for new fantasy-themed fiction, poetry, and articles. (Stu would've used the title Whispers from Arkham if Arkham House had agreed. They didn't.) He bought the story and published it in the third issue of the magazine, with a wonderful Lee Brown Coye cover illo.
At the time I wrote "The Shortest Way," I wasn't sure "Black Iron" would ever be printed. (It finally came out in 1975 as part of an anthology Gerry Page put together for Arkham House, using all the material Mr. Derleth had acquired before his death, filled out by the considerable amount Gerry himself bought for the volume.) The stories don't have to be read in any particular order; they're just part of the same world.
Even so, the decision to write these stories in series probably had something to do with me a little later writing a second story about a group of future mercenaries called Hammer's Slammers. That was the choice that got me started on a real career writing, though I didn't know it at the time.
The dingy relay station squatted beside the road. It had a cast-off, abandoned look about it though light seeped through chinks in the stone where mortar had crumbled. Broken roof slates showed dark in the moonlight like missing teeth. To the rear bulked the stables where relays for the post riders stamped and nickered in their filthy stalls, and the odor of horse droppings thickened the muggy night.
The three riders slowed as they approached.
"Hold up," Vettius ordered. "We'll get a meal here and ask directions."
Harpago cantered a little further before halting. He was aristocrat enough to argue with a superior officer and young enough to think it worthwhile. "If we don't keep moving, sir, we'll never get to Aurelia before daybreak."
"We'll never get there at all if we keep wandering in these damned Dalmatian
hills," Vettius retorted as he dismounted. His side hurt. Perhaps he had gotten too old for this business. At sunup he had strapped his round shield tightly to his back to keep it from slamming during the long ride. All day it had rubbed against his cuirass, and by now it had left a sore the size of his hand.
The shield itself galled him less than what it represented. A sunburst whose rays divided ten hearts spaced around the rim had been nielloed onto the thin bronze facing: the arms of the Household Cavalry. Leading a troop of the emperor's bodyguard should have climaxed Vettius's career, but he had quickly discovered his job was really that of special staff with little opportunity for fighting. He was sent to gather information for the emperor where the stakes were high and the secret police untrustworthy. There was danger in probing the ulcers of a dying empire, but Vettius found no excitement in it; only disgust.
Dama chuckled with relief to be out of his saddle again. He used his tunic to fan the sweat from his legs, looking inconsequential beside the two powerful soldiers. Though he was a civilian, a sword slapped against his thigh. In the backcountry, weapons were the mark of caution rather than belligerence. He nodded toward the still-silent building, his blond hair gleaming as bright in the moonlight as the bronze helmets of his two companions. "If it weren't for the light, I'd say the place was empty."
The door of the station creaked open, making answer needless. The man who stood on the threshold was as old and gnarled as the pines that straggled up the slopes of the valley. He faced them with wordless hostility. The last regular courier had passed, and he had been dozing off when this new party arrived. Like many petty officeholders, the stationmaster reveled in his authority-but did not care to be reminded of the duties that went with his position.
Vettius strode forward holding out a scroll of parchment. "Food for us," he directed, "and you can give our horses some grain while we eat."
"All right for you and the other," the stationmaster rasped. "The civilian finds his own meal."
"Government service," Harpago muttered. He spat.
Vettius began kneading one wrist with his other hand. The little merchant touched his friend's elbow, but Vettius shook him away. "I'll take care of it my own way," he said. His temper had worn thin on the grueling ride, and the stationmaster's sneering slovenliness gouged at his nerves.