by Damien Lake
Marik pounded a hand against the paper on the counter, obviously repeating an earlier statement. “I’m not asking for a master sword! The swords I’ve gotten from your armory are fantastic! They’re quality, and I’ve never needed better! You can put that same skill into this!” He jabbed at the paper anew.
The weapons master pulled the sheet from under the impaling finger. “First of all, you should have enough experience to know what you’re asking with this. This sounds fine, but after five swings you’ll be exhausted.” He pulled the sheet closer to his nose, eyes darting left and right across the surface. “A blade like this will weigh twenty pounds if an ounce, and only if I use every trick I’ve learned. Utterly useless!”
“Twenty pounds doesn’t matter,” Marik assured him. Dietrik’s curiosity peeked while he listened. “Or twenty-five, for that matter. The weight is not an issue. Only the other specifications.”
Sennet remained silent. He continued his study of whatever Marik had written.
Marik pursued his cajoling. “You’ve made blades on order from band members before. I know it. Arlin in the First Unit was showing off the sword you made for him, and I heard men in other squads have custom blades as well.”
“Custom blades.” Sennet lowered the paper to look Marik fully in the eye. “Yes, but in those cases we crafted a standard blade with specific alterations. A double-wide fuller three-quarters the blade’s length. Hilt-width tangs. Extra or less curve to a Perrisan scimitar. Even serrations to the first foot on one blade. What you want,” he pointed out, re-crossing his arms, “is a completely new design from pommel to tip.”
“But it’s simple! It…” Marik paused to reconsider. Dietrik could hear him breathing hard through his nostrils. “It wouldn’t take much skill, I think, but I know you would craft an excellent blade of it.”
“Simple?” Sennet waved the paper. “I see you don’t know anything about smithwork at all. Nothing is simple!”
“Please,” Marik pleaded, the imploring tone in his words surprising Dietrik greatly. What did Marik want so badly? “Please, Sennet! I need this!”
Sennet remained quiet, and Marik apparently knew well enough when to leave a matter be so a chap could convince himself.
After long moments, the weapons master finally uttered a quiet oath to no one. “Oh, gods curse it.” He uncrossed his arms, took one last glance at the paper, then commented offhandedly, “Well, it won’t be the first one I’ve made anyway. Fine.”
Dietrik felt pleased for friend, but then felt equally puzzled by the astounded expression exploding across Marik’s face.
“What?” Sennet stopped folding the paper in mid-crease. Marik continued, utterly flabbergasted. “What do you mean it’s not the first one?”
Opening the paper to study the writing upon it, Sennet answered, “Very well, perhaps it’s not exactly the same. The specifics are different, but overall—” Sennet stopped sharply, looked hard at Marik, then asked, in a tone loaded with suspicion, “Wait. Where exactly did you get the design for this?”
“Get? I didn’t get it from anywhere! I put that together on my own!” When Sennet continued staring at him, Marik countered, “So how could you have made anything like this before?”
Sennet’s hand rose to his face. His fingers caressed the cheek under his eye as his thumb rubbed across the opposite side of his nose. “Is that the truth?”
“Gods damn it, yes!”
Dietrik glanced between the two, his head swinging as he listened. He did not want to interrupt for fear that might interfere with Marik’s efforts to convince the smithy chief to the course he wanted. An unforeseen obstacle had obviously cropped up.
The weapons master emitted a far stronger oath than before, no less vitriolic for his soft voice. Dietrik thought he heard a reference to goats, farmers and parasols. Perhaps he had misinterpreted the muffled words.
“I thought…” Sennet trailed off, coughed, glanced away and pursed his lips before very reluctantly stating, “I thought you’d gotten this design from Rail.”
Marik blinked. He remained frozen for nearly five heartbeats, then exclaimed forcefully, “My father? What…are you talking about?”
Sennet watched the reaction carefully through lidded eyes. “Hmm. I assumed…I suppose not. Well, shit.” His shoulders sagged a tad from an unseen weight. “That first day you came asking about Rail, I thought Janus had doubled on his word and told you about me. But you never pushed the matter, so I was unsure. Now…reap what you sow. I should have held my tongue.”
“Janus…” Dawning comprehension illuminated Marik’s eyes. Watching it fascinated Dietrik. “It was you, wasn’t it? With him in Spirratta? Wasn’t it?”
“No use denying it.” Apparently that was Sennet’s idea of an admission.
“But, then what hap—”
“Nothing happened,” Sennet overrode Marik’s words. “When you showed up asking about him the first time, you said all you knew was that he’d left for the north. Janus told you that much, because that’s what I told him. You wanted to know if I knew anything that might have explained why he never came home.”
“Yeah,” Marik admitted, still completely off balance. “You know most everyone in the band, by sight at least. I was hoping you might have known about any strange contract that he might have mentioned.” He scowled suddenly. “But you dodged the question! I remember that now. You went off to the side and distracted me by talking about visualization training and how it could help a fighter work on his technique when he’s too tired to fight physically.”
The weapons master nodded. He stepped over to sink into a chair by the wall on his side of the counter. “I did. I don’t like becoming involved with the men on a personal basis. It gets too messy in the long run. That’s why I was angry at first, when I thought Janus told you my name. But you never came right out and said he did, so I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to shift your attention and see if you followed the new trail or stuck fast to your original questions. Since you hared off after the weird training method, I decided you coming to me was nothing except one of life’s odd coincidences.”
“That’s why you taught me about visualization training? Because it was the most unusual thing you could think of to distract me?” Marik sounded both annoyed and betrayed.
“No, not precisely. I wanted anything that might divert your attention, and since Rail was fresh in my mind, the visualization thing was the first possibility to pop in.” He looked Marik up and down, his height leaving his head still high enough over the counter to do so while he sat. “From the way you’re acting, I guess you actually found a way to make that nonsense useful.”
“Wh…nonsense?”
“I’ve always thought it a load of yellow manure, personally. Rail told me about it the last time I saw him. He seemed to think it an incredible technique, but no one else I’ve talked to in the band has ever heard of such.”
Marik, stunned, sank into a matching chair against the wall. Dietrik felt odd, being the only man standing, so took the furthest chair in the line. If Dietrik had found his mate looking like that out in a training area, his first assumption would be that Beld had been thumping the top of his head. He almost reached out a hand to offer a comradely squeeze to the shoulder, except that might break the moment’s strange magic. For years Marik had searched for answers to his many questions, using what limited knowledge and options were available to him as best he could. Today, most unexpectedly, they arrived as a lightning bolt from a cloudless sky. It captivated Dietrik to observe this unveiling.
“Tell me what you know.” Marik’s voice came out flat, soft, without a commanding edge.
“Not much, to tell the truth. I only spent time with him twice. The first was the trip to Spirratta. I chose to visit my family there for a month that winter. Rail and another King also meant to travel west during the down season. We shared the road since we happened to be on it together. Never spoke much. We had little interest in each other’s lives.”
“But he left you in the city.”
“Yes. My brother’s house is small, and always crowded, so I meant to stay at a nearby inn. They both shared my room the first night and intended to go their own way with the morning. I was having an ale in the common room later, to unwind from the trip, when he returned and gathered his belongings. He told us he meant to move on right then, night or no. It seemed odd, but his decision had no bearing on us. He left.”
Marik turned his gaze to the man, eyes intense. “But you saw him later! You saw him after that, and didn’t tell Janus when he asked, did you?”
“He came back to Kingshome about five months later.” Sennet consulted his memories. “Yes, because it was about a month after the squads marched out that season. He’d kept his Crimson Tag, so the guards let him through. He came straight to me and asked me to make him a sword.”
“A sword?” Marik rose slowly. His stunned disbelief had gradually become narrow-eyed speculation. “A sword like this. A sword…like this…and the visualizations…a custom sword…”
When Marik’s mumbling faded, Sennet confirmed, “Yes. I don’t know why. He asked me not to tell anyone. It struck me as exceedingly odd, him coming to me. He was no longer a band member, and we hardly knew one another.”
“No longer a band member…but you might have been the only one he knew well enough to trust with the task. And he must have known you liked your privacy in the armory.”
Sennet shrugged. “I have never made a secret of it. Perhaps that was so. I laughed at first, but he kept on until I finally agreed to try crafting such a peculiar blade. He came back six eightdays later, exactly on the day I told him it might be ready. I still needed two days to finish the hiltwork so he bunked upstairs in my rooms. He didn’t want anybody to know he was here. I shared my dinner, and he told me about this mental trick he’d learned of.” The weapons master shrugged. “He was like a different man, excited and nearly bursting at the seams, but also as careful and professional as before, usually. Rail paid for the work and materials, then left as soon as he held the sword in his hands.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because Rail didn’t want anyone to know he’d been back. And also because, as I said, I choose not to become involved with the band’s men and their personal business. If Rail left you behind, I have no intention of being caught between you two, especially if you’re following a man who does not want to be found.”
“He never said anything about…about what he’d been doing?”
“No. And I never asked.” Sennet stood, folding the paper into thirds. “I’ll work on this sword of yours, but these are my busiest months. I won’t finish until after the squads march. Given what you want, the cost for materials, and what I know from Rail’s sword…this blade will set you back a good ninety silvers.”
Dietrik, unable to hold it in, exploded with, “Ninety silvers? By the Twelve, man! You could purchase half a village for that amount of coin!”
Sennet glance at Dietrik. Marik never flinched. The weapons master replied, “Indeed. And I’m not charging any labor coin, strictly materials cost, which makes it less than half what a qualified smith would charge. I’m doing that because he’s a band member and because, after this, I wash my hands of him and his father both. Their troubles are their troubles, not mine.” He addressed Marik directly. “You’re lucky I have already made your father’s blade. With that experience, I won’t waste material on unanticipated mistakes.”
“My father paid you a gold for his blade?”
The tall armory chief had started to depart. He glanced back to answer this last question. “No, not quite. He gave me a pair of pure gold nuggets as payment.” Sennet shook his head, still unable to believe it after all the years. “Large damned nuggets, larger than any I’ve heard tell of. I sold them to a caravan merchant buying our extra looted blades that season, and got over twice as much coin for them as I’d meant to charge Rail. But he’s never returned. The gold is still sitting on my shelf until he does.”
Dietrik opened his mouth to say the extra coin Rail had left behind ought to be bloody enough to pay for his son’s sword…except Marik spoke before he could form the words.
“I’ll pay it. If you can make the sword I want, then I’ll pay it. I have enough saved up.”
Sennet nodded. He left for the armory’s deeper recesses, ordering the normal assistant to return to the counter in case any band members needed service.
Marik exited. He walked with his head down, Dietrik on his heels. “That was your greatest example of foolishness yet, mate! If he’s been saving that coin all this time, he would have given it to you since you are Rail’s son!”
“It belongs to Sennet.” Marik glanced sideways, his face unreadable to Dietrik. “I know father that much. He left too much on purpose, to pay Sennet for keeping his silence about the sword and about his return after leaving the Kings.”
“But Sennet just turned over that bucket. Now you know.”
“I know? What do I know, Dietrik? I have more questions than I ever did before! What’s in the hells is going on?” He directed this last upward, as if to implore the gods for the answer. Marik lowered his head when his foot stumbled over a stone. “Sennet can do whatever he wants. He can keep the coin for his years of protecting father’s secrets, or throw it down a well for revealing what he knew. I don’t care.”
“Still, that’s bloody near all the coin you own, isn’t it? And all on one sword?” Dietrik placed his palm to Marik’s forehead as they walked. “Are you feeling well?”
Marik jerked his head away from Dietrik’s reach. “Knock it off!”
Dietrik shrugged. “It is your coin, but you don’t have any solid gold nuggets to sell off when your purse’s walls pinch together.”
“Nuggets again…” Marik resumed mumbling. “What does all this mean?”
“I can’t say, mate. But I do know one thing.”
“Oh?”
“If you do not stop scowling like that, you and Colbey will be a matched set.”
Marik stopped. Dietrik could see him pull his mind with an effort from whatever pit Sennet’s story had dropped him into. “Not possible. No one could match Colbey for that.”
“You were giving it a decent go. Come on. I smelled Luiez cooking up his mushroom gravy. There will be pork chops aplenty tonight, unless he has changed his lineup. You can’t solve any mysteries fresh the first day. Let’s go have a raring spar, then a good meal.”
His friend shook off the last of his frustrations as a dog shakes water from its fur. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Together they walked to the Second Training Area, Marik seeming his old self, but Dietrik wondering what new sack of worms the armory master’s words had untied.
* * * * *
In mid-winter, a courier with his guard escort rode at a gallop from the front gates straight to the command building. The hard ride over such a short distance instantly started rumors through the men, speculating on issues Torrance already knew of. This courier’s arrival had been expected. Tollaf had learned the facts long since from Celerity. She contacted him with new questions every few days.
The courier stayed in the command building only a few candlemarks. He departed before evening could obscure the roads too heavily for speedy travel. Mercenaries taking their ease along Ale House Row noticed every lieutenant follow clerks into the building for a hasty meeting. No one liked it. Whatever that might mean, there was no chance it could be good news.
During the dining mark’s last quarter, the lieutenants each entered their respective barracks. Marik sat with Dietrik and Edwin. None of the new recruits shared the table. Colbey occupied the table’s other end alone, his space unviolated by outsiders. None usually sat at Marik’s table since his mage abilities were common knowledge.
They noticed Fraser the moment he stepped into the dining area, as did every other veteran. Sergeants Bindrift, Sloan and Giles entered as well and stood to the side. Kinet
a always ate with her squad, mostly, Marik believed, to keep them under her thumb by constantly subjecting them to her hard presence.
The new men kept eating and talking until Fraser stepped to the kitchen window, shoved aside the water pitchers and lifted the tin tray underneath. He slammed it smartly against the countertop. It’s loud flat slap cut through the conversations.
Once satisfied he had everyone’s attention, Fraser spoke in a loud, authoritative voice. “I hope you all enjoyed this fine meal tonight, because it’s the last you’ll be having for a long time! Everyone get to sleep when you finish eating! We’re marching out tomorrow morning!”
Several surprised cries and inquiries rang out. Fraser ignored the lot until a First Unit man shouted over everyone else. “What the damn hells you mean we’re marching? All of us? These green fish D’s, too?” He pointed with his spoon to several new recruits at the next table.
“All of us,” Fraser confirmed. “They might still be D Class fighters, but they’ll get the chance to prove their metal soon enough.” He addressed the D Classes as a whole. “You’ll either live or die. Pull through, and you’ll prove worthy of the Crimson Kings.”
Before anyone could ask further questions, the First Unit man erupted from his bench. “You’re crack-brained! Ain’t no gods damned D Class going to leave my back open to a Nolier sword! Either kick their arses out the gates or test them over, ‘cause I ain’t letting fresh fish dance into the band after all the training I went through!”
Kineta had been sitting at the next table, behind the man’s back. She stood in order to slap him across the back of his head without gentleness. “Drop your butt down on that bench, Hackett! I haven’t received any notice that you’ve been promoted.”
Hackett glared at her, and she returned the unfriendly gaze with twice as much challenge. Marik remembered Hackett had been one of the men who’d challenged her the longest before the repeated beatings finally kneaded him into a grumbling acceptance.