by Dave Luckett
Alissa rolled an eye up at him. "He's a swordsmith," she replied, as though that was a complete answer.
Perhaps it was, reflected Gerd. He leaned his elbows on the table. "Well, anyway," he said, picking up the thread of a previous conversation, "we're off day after tomorrow, at dawn. Just exactly where, I don't know." He frowned, looking down into his mug. Well, what was different about that? He had never actually known where he was going, from the first moment he'd left the inn.
"If what I've heard is true, you were lucky to find a real mage at all, in the city," offered Alissa. "Seems they don't like the place much." She considered, head on one side. "Master Thullow was surprised to hear that you'd come to Walse to get apprenticed to a mage at all. An odd trade for a man of his hands, he said."
"Did he?" Gerd glanced at her. Clearly, Alissa had been talking about him to her new master. He had not done the same. He had said nothing about Alissa to Nela. Nor, for that matter, anything of Nela to Alissa, either. Well, why would he? He wondered what Alissa had said about him.
She fidgeted with her mug. "He also said there's not so many mages left now. Well, there never were many, it seems. But he also said they're not what they were when he was a boy. There were real mages then, he said."
Gerd shrugged that off. "Everybody always thinks things were better when the world was young, and they were young, too."
Alissa bridled. "Master Thullow isn't past thirty-five. And he wasn't saying that things were better then. He was actually saying that things are better for a craftsman now. Mages were a lot more important, once. Now they're just a mumbling tangle of long beards."
Gerd picked up his mug again. He thought of Nela, tall and slim, of the quick impatient flick of a hand by which she kept her dark hair out of her eyes, and of the depth of them. "Not all mages are like that."
"No, really." She turned her head to regard him. "This might not be such a good idea, becoming a mage. I've been listening. Things are changing, hereabouts. Even on Loriso you could hear the echoes. Things are moving."
Gerd snorted. "I'm one of the things that are moving, it seems. I'm moving the day after tomorrow." He couldn't have said why the question of how things were moving was of no importance whatever. He was moving, and that was enough.
She was silent for a while. "When will you be back?" she asked.
Nela hadn't said. Gerd could only shrug. Perhaps, he thought, he didn't care because the changes he'd seen were not so wonderful as all that. Or perhaps it was something else. He remembered the tears on Nela's face, the first time he had seen it. He didn't like changes that gave a fat merchant the power to make a mage weep. Maybe that was it.
"My master would like to see that sword of yours," said Alissa, breaking into his thoughts.
Gerd flicked a glance at her. "Eh?"
"I described it to him. He said he'd like to look at it."
"Oh?" Gerd frowned down into his ale. "I suppose..."
"We could go and see him first thing in the morning. It's not far from the market, and he'll know the best places to buy metalwork, anyway."
He glanced at her. It seemed important to her. He nodded, and retired into his own thoughts again.
*
Master Thullow’s workshop was up a muddy lane off a grimy street in the district of Basden. Hills frowned down, but three fast streams flowed down through the clefts between them. That was the reason for the ironworkers' quarter being here. The streams powered waterwheels that lifted huge drop hammers and turned rolling mills. The streets shook with the heavy beat, just as they glowed with the light of the forges and rang with the music of metal on metal, a treble melody laid over the bass roar of the furnaces in the foundries.
There were smaller, more specialised shops, too. Alissa led him to one of them, a narrow frontage, built of new brick with a clay floor. It was sharp with the scent of burning charcoal, and it went further back than was apparent from the front. She passed three benches where craftsmen in leather aprons fitted fixings to blades and polished and put the final edge to them, working without looking up, absorbed as if the steel in their hands was the only thing in the world.
But Alissa barely glanced aside at them. She led through to the back. A small, balding man hammered a glowing bar of metal. No, thought Gerd, averting his eyes from the glare, it was several bars of metal, all hammered together until they were one. The only expression on the smith's face was the slitting of his eyes against the glare and the sparks. His hammer rose and fell, and the steel obeyed him, folding over itself, matching edges with a precision that was oddly cold, considering that it was wrought out of straw-hot metal.
The bar reached some sort of stage that the smith recognised. He held it up in the tongs, inspected it, and then slid it into a long brick box beside him. Little licks of flame issued from its mouth. He beckoned to a younger man who had been waiting in the gloom beyond the forge and gave instructions, by gesture as much as by word. The other nodded. Then the first wiped his face with a handful of tow, and gestured again, this time to Alissa. She followed him through to the back of the building, and through an opening, and Gerd followed them both.
It was a small, square office. The smith - Gerd knew that this must be Master Thullow - ushered them through, and closed the door. Another door stood open, on a pathway that led to the street. The customers' entrance, thought Gerd.
"Please, sit." Master Thullow's voice was tenor, lighter than convention would dictate, but his arms were knotted and ridged with hard muscle. "You will be Gerd Penrose. I've heard a good deal about you." He smiled at Alissa.
Gerd sat in an elbow-chair, hitching the sword around into his lap in the manner that had become second nature now. The master smith's eyes went to it immediately, while his eyebrows climbed.
"Shagreen," he murmured, "Sharkskin, but not from around here. That's far finer. I've never seen the like. May I?"
He had half-reached out. Gerd unhitched the frog by releasing the toggle at the back, and passed the sword in its scabbard over to him. Just as Alissa had, Master Thullow weighed it in his hands for a moment, and caressed the sheath, his eyes half-closed.
"Yes," he murmured, almost a hiss between his teeth. Then he held it at arm's length to look at the hilt, prodding with his thumb at the wound-wire grip and the pommel. "Ah."
He half-drew the sword and squinted down the blade, holding it slantwise in the light. "Forgive me," he remarked conversationally, to Gerd, and drew it fully from the sheath, setting that aside on the table. He tested the balance. "Such a daring forte," he remarked, though he seemed to be speaking only to himself. "Such subtlety and judgement! A half-span longer, and..." He shook his head, making a dismissive puffing sound. "But for you, there is no doubt." He measured Gerd with the rake of an eye. "It would give you another hand-span of reach on the extension, not a doubt of it, and yet the balance is perfect for you. And such steel...!"
He returned the sword to its scabbard and thrust it home. "You do know what you have here, don't you?" he asked, caressing the pommel.
"It's a fine blade," Gerd said uncertainly, glancing at Alissa.
"Fine...?" Master Thullow seemed taken aback. "Fine? Most certainly it is. I have never seen a finer. I doubt that there is one. Nothing could improve on it. Oh..." he puffed out his cheeks for a moment. "... you could send it to a goldsmith to have the guard gilded. Or to a jeweller, I suppose, to have the hilt adorned with seed-pearls and rubies. The scabbard could no doubt be set with gems. But the swordsmith's art can go no further than this. This is... a masterpiece." He looked down at it. "That wasn't what I meant, though. It isn't simply a wonderful sword. It's old, very old. A family sword. One of the ancient families."
Gerd felt a prickle in the back of his neck, a drying at the throat. He simply stared at the swordsmith in enquiry.
Master Thullow nodded, and it was not simply confirmation of what he had said to Gerd. He was confirming something to himself. "A family sword," he continued. "Which brings me to matters that are
none of my business."
Gerd thought about that confirmatory nod. "You're wondering why I should need to be told about it by you, if I came by it honestly. If it's a family sword, I should know all about it. It should be my family's."
Master Thullow handed the sword back, hilt-first, in its scabbard. He shook his head. "It's your sword now. It hasn't been in a grave, or out in the weather, that much is clear. So you took it off a fresh corpse, or you took it from someone who had done as much themselves and didn't know what it was." He watched while Gerd slipped the frog around his baldric and fastened it again. "Or who maybe did know what it was, and also knew, in some fashion, that it wasn't something they could carry themselves. It would appear that you can carry it, from what Alissa says. Whichever way it came to you, it's the Penrose sword now."
Gerd blinked. For a moment he was back on that bleak mountainside, with the wind wailing through the Pass and across the grave of his master, and Master Hawken was shoving the sword into his hands again, a sudden push, as though he were glad to be rid of it.
He found himself staring at the smith. It was the Penrose sword. It had always been the Penrose sword. It was still the Penrose sword.
Master Thullow was speaking again. "There's nothing further I can do with it. Indeed, I wouldn't meddle. Alissa has cleaned it and done a little light burnishing, touched up the edge a trifle. That's all it needs. I see you keep the scabbard lightly oiled, and that's good, but not too much. That shagreen has natural oil of its own ..."
Gerd listened, nodding. The Penrose sword.
Now he had a place to go, and something to find.
*
He said his goodbyes to Alissa at the top of the street. She had already moved out of the inn, and he could see that she was anxious to get back to work. To start learning. Well, and it was a worthwhile thing to learn, and Master Thullow was a good master, no doubt. So Gerd shook hands, a little awkwardly, and she turned and walked away down the narrow little vale again. He snuffed the cinder-smelling air, shook his head, and walked off uphill, glad to get away from the smoke. It was her life, and he had no part of it, whatever he might have thought before.
He spent the afternoon in the market, partly at the permanent horse fair. He was no judge of horseflesh, but even he could see that there was nothing here up to the quality of Rousset. Even if there had been, he wouldn't have bought a saddlehorse. He had the notion that Nela couldn't ride, any more than Alissa could. Still less did he want or need a warhorse. There was nothing up to the size of Hugo, anyway.
It came down to a selection of stolid pack ponies or a mule. Shoes were a problem, but not too bad a one. Anywhere there was an actual road, there'd be smithies. If they really had to go into pathless terrain, well...
Trouble was, people on foot can go places where even a mule would baulk, or a horse - even a pony - can't be fed. Gerd frowned, and added weights together in his head. Even with a week's food - and he wouldn't be buying that until they were at the fringe of the farmed land - the load would be less than half a man's weight, considering what they would be carrying themselves.
So he bought a donkey. A jenny, calm and easy, two or three years old, about ten hands, named Jane. He checked her over, tried her on a leading rein - she was biddable and broke to that and to pack - and then he spent time at a saddlers getting pack harness made for her and getting it fitted right, with straps to take odd bits of equipment.
Then it was a matter of filling a list and making sure that he got value.
He stabled her overnight at the inn. In the morning he paid his score, shrugged into his pack - it felt oddly heavy - and started his journey again.
He found Nela at the bottom of the steps to her place, her pack on her back over a dark coarse robe three sizes too big for her. She stared at him as he approached along the crowded street, her eyes shifting from him to the donkey, who was placidly walking behind.
"H'va ti?" she asked, as if Gerd were towing a hippogriff. Or no. That was in the expression on her face. Her words had implied that it was merely a thing.
"Her name is Jane," said Gerd, gravely, in the Mages' Tongue, insisting on the feminine.
"Why her?" she demanded, conceding the point.
"We need ..." Again his stock of words failed him. He mimed carrying a load.
She passed an eye over the panniers on Jane's back. Then she snorted, turned and walked away, leading. "Too many things," she said, over her shoulder.
Gerd half-smiled, clucked to the donkey, hitched up his own pack, and followed.
He'd learned to march with the Company, and the Company rate was twenty-two road miles a day, under load. To remain used to the weight, he'd even retained his mail shirt, and was wearing it now, under his cloak. But Nela was as uncompromising as any drillmaster, and she was long-striding, with an easy swing that ate the miles. Gerd set his shoulders and his pack, working the knots out of his legs. Sea voyages were no good for them.
She was uncompromising about learning, too. As they passed stalls, bake-shops, forges, a chandlery, she said their names and the names of the goods they sold. He had to repeat them, again and again, until he had it right, and they went over it again and again, until the words were fixed.
They left the official part of the city through the landward gate. It was no more than a marker now, a single stone span connecting two squat towers and a narrowing of the street. Beyond that, the roadway widened again. The houses on either side were larger the further they went, and gaps and then gardens began to appear between them. Slowly, the city stuttered and spluttered out, like a dying fire.
"Time was, you knew where Walse ended," grumbled Nela. "Now it just goes on and on up the road. Places that were outlying villages only a few years ago are all connected." She spoke slowly and amplified her words with gestures, and Gerd got the gist of it.
He nodded. The traffic on the road was lessening, though, as they moved away from the city. They had left the paving behind at the gate, and the surface was now dusty, pounded dirt. He moved up to Nela's right shoulder, with Jane pacing easily behind.
The road led generally upwards. They passed dribs and spurts of houses, then an inn with a large yard. Shortly after that they were walking between hedgerows. At the tops of rises they could see fields and gardens in crop, and orchards. All the time, other travellers were passing them going in the opposite direction, a flock of sheep, a herd of swine, horses sweating as they hauled wagons loaded with barrels, sacks, packs.
"So many people to feed," remarked Gerd, at the top of one long hill. He looked down into the valley beyond. It was farming country: fields in crop or with reapers working, or fallow; meadow; copses; a few patches of real woodland.
"Too many people," said Nela.
Gerd glanced back. Behind Jane, who plodded on without complaint, the towers and rooftops of Walse were sinking below the roll of the hills. Soon there would be nothing but the stain of smoke in the sky to say that there was a city there. Ahead, the hills rose. He wiped sweat from his brow, set his shoulders, and marched.
Noon halt. There was a farmhouse nearby. Gerd exchanged a couple of coppers for bread, cheese, a bowl of soup and grazing rights. He took off Jane's panniers and let her crop the grass on the adjoining fallow, still on the lead. He ate his meal, then inspected the hedgerows, finding sweetherb and pumphrey, which he cut and used to fill a nosebag.
"How did you know those herbs?" asked Nela, who was watching. She had accepted the food, apparently thnking that Gerd had begged it.
He smiled. "A man paid me to find them, once. He said they were good for... for..." It had been a muleteer, and he had paid a copper. Gerd remembered, but he didn't have the word for mule. He made a hee-haw noise and used his fingers to indicate long ears.
"Lahkod."
Ah. A mule was lahk. "I thinked Jane will like them, too."
"Thought. You thought Jane would like them. So." She sorted the leaves into bundles. "This is sherret. This cupras. Both have sta." Force, power, virtue
. Gerd nodded.
She pulled off a leaf and put it in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "Good," she allowed. Gerd took that for permission to fill the nosebag. He sprinkled a little salt on the leaves, for good measure, before drawing water from the farmer's well for all three of them.
The sun was past its height. They got back on the road again.
18
A week passed. They took their time. Gerd found himself getting into the rhythm of the road, feeling the surge of his pack against his shoulders as it shifted to his strides, hearing the creak of his leather, the soft jingle of his mail. By that time he was beginning to think in the Mages' Tongue. Even to dream in it.
The road steadily diminished. The folk they met were quiet enough, but Gerd knew enough about roads to know that there were robbers on them, especially in the outlands. He continued to wear his mail shirt and to carry his sword.
"Why do you put dead iron on yourself?" asked Nela, one evening. She had eaten what Gerd called a decent supper. It had taken some time.