The Book of Swords

He just took it from me, as though I’d given him a shopping list. “Thanks,” he said.

“My pleasure,” I replied. “Well, good-bye. You can go now,” I added, when he didn’t move. “I’m busy.”

“There was something else,” he said.

I’d already turned my back on him. “What?”

“I don’t know how to fence.”

He was born, he told me, in a haybarn on the moor overlooking his father’s house, at noon on midsummer’s day. His mother, who should have known better, had insisted on riding out in the dog-cart with her maid to take lunch to the hawking party. Her pains came on, and there wasn’t time to get back to the house, but the barn was there and full of clean hay, with a stream nearby. His father, riding home with his hawk on his wrist, saw her from the track, lying in the hay with the baby on her lap. He’d had a good day, he told her. They’d got four pigeons and a heron.

His father hadn’t wanted to go to Ultramar; but he held of the duke and the duke was going, so he didn’t really have any choice. In the event, the duke died of camp-fever a week after they landed. The boy’s father lasted nine months; then he got himself killed, by his best friend, in a pointless brawl in a tavern. He was twenty-two when he died. “The same age,” said the boy, “as I am now.”

“That’s a sad story,” I told him. “And a very stupid one. Mind you, all stories from Ultramar are stupid if you ask me.”

He scowled at me. “Maybe there’s too much stupidity in the world,” he said. “Maybe I want to do something about it.”

I nodded. “You could diminish the quantity considerably by dying, I grant you. But maybe it’s too high a price to pay.”

His eyes were cold and bright. “The man who killed my father is still alive,” he said. “He’s settled and prosperous, happy, he’s got everything he could possibly want. He came through the nightmare of Ultramar, and now the world makes sense to him again, and he’s a useful and productive member of society, admired and respected by his peers and his betters.”

“So you’re going to cut his throat.”

He shook his head. “Not likely,” he said. “That would be murder. No, I’m going to fight him sword to sword. I’m going to beat him and prove myself the better man. Then I’ll kill him.”

I was tactfully silent for a moment. Then I said; “And you know absolutely nothing about sword-fighting.”

“No. My father should’ve taught me, it’s what fathers do. But he died when I was two years old. I don’t know the first thing about it.”

“And you’re going to challenge an old soldier, and you’re going to prove yourself the better man. I see.”

He was looking me straight in the eye. I always feel uncomfortable when people do that even though I spend my life gazing at white-hot metal. “I asked about you,” he said. “They reckon you were a great fencer.”

I sighed. “Who told you that?”

“Were you?”

“Were implies a state of affairs that no longer prevails,” I said. “Who told you about me?”

He shrugged. “Friends of my father. You were a legend in Ultramar, apparently. Everybody’d heard of you.”

“The defining characteristic of a legend is that it isn’t true,” I said. “I can fight, a bit. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You’re going to teach me.”

I remember one time in Ultramar, we were smashing up this village. We did a lot of that. They called it chevauchee, but that’s just chivalry talk for burning barns and stamping on chickens. It’s supposed to break the enemy’s will to fight. Curiously enough, it has exactly the opposite effect. Anyway, I was in this farmyard. I had a torch in my hand, and I was going to set fire to a hayrick, like you do. And there was this dog. It was a stupid little thing, the sort you keep to catch rats, little more than a rat itself; and it jumped out at me, barking its head off, and it sank its teeth into my leg, and it simply would not let go, and I couldn’t get at it to stab it with my knife, not without stabbing myself in the process. I dropped the torch and danced round the farmyard, trying to squash it against walls, but it didn’t seem to make any odds. It was the most ridiculous little thing, and in the end it beat me. I staggered out into the lane, and it let go, dropped off, and sprinted back into the yard. My sergeant had to light the rick with a fire-arrow, and I never lived it down.

I looked at him. I recognised the look in his silly pink face. “Is that right,” I said.

“Yes. I need the best sword and the best teacher. I’ll pay you. You can have the fifth coin.”

A gold besant. Actually, the proper name is hyperpyron, meaning “extra fine.” The enemy took so many of them off us in Ultramar that they adopted them in place of their own currency. That’s war for you; the enemy turn into you, and you turn into them, like the iron and steel rods under the hammer. The only besants you see over here are ones that got brought back, but they’re current everywhere. “I’m not interested in money,” I said.

“I know. Neither am I. But if you pay a man to do a job and he takes your money, he’s obliged.”

“I’m a lousy teacher,” I told him.

“That’s all right, I’m a hopeless student. We’ll get on like a barn on fire.”

If ever I get a dog, it’ll be one of those rat-like terriers. Maybe I just warm to aggressive creatures, I don’t know. “You can take your coin and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine,” I told him. “You overpaid me for the sword. We’ll call it change.”

The sword isn’t a very good weapon. Most forms of armour are proof against it, including a properly padded jerkin; it’s too long to be handy in a scrum and too light and flimsy for serious bashing. In a pitched battle, give me a spear or an axe any time; in fact, nine times out of ten you’d be better off with everyday farm tools—staff-hooks, beanhooks, muck-forks, provided they’re made of good material and properly tempered. Better still, give me a bow and someone in armour to hide behind. The fighting man’s best view of a battlefield is down an arrow, from under a pikeman’s armpit. For self-defence on the road, I favour the quarterstaff; in the street or indoors, where space to move is at a premium, the knife you cut your bread and peel your apples with is as good as anything. You’re used to it, for one thing, and you know where it is on your belt without having to look.

About the only thing a sword is really good for is sword-fighting—which in practice means duelling, which is idiotic and against the law, or fencing, which is playing at fighting, good fun and nobody gets hurt, but not really my idea of entertainment—and showing off. Which is why, needless to say, we all went to Ultramar with swords on our hips. Some of us had beautiful new swords, the more fortunate ones had really old swords, family heirlooms, worth a thousand acres of good farmland, with buildings, stock, and tenants. The thing is—don’t say I told you so—the old ones aren’t necessarily the best. There was even less good steel about two hundred years ago than there is now, and men were stronger then, so old swords are heavier, harder to use, broader, and with rounded points for cutting, not thrusting. Not that it mattered. Most of those young swashbucklers died of the poisoned shits, before the desert sun had had a chance to fade the clothes they arrived in, and their swords were sold to pay their mess bills. You could pick up some real bargains back then, in Ultramar.

“I don’t know how to teach,” I said, “I’ve never ever done it. So I’m going to teach you the way my father taught me, because it’s the only way I know. Is that all right?”

He didn’t notice me picking up the rake. “Fine,” he said. So I pulled the head off the rake—it was always loose—and hit him with the handle.

I remember my first lesson so well. The main difference was, my father used a broom. First, he poked me in the stomach, hard, with one end. As I doubled up, gasping for breath, he hit my knee-cap, so I fell over. Then he put the end of the broom-handle on my throat and applied controlled pressure.

I could only just breathe. “You didn’t get out of the way,” he explained.

I was five when I had my first lesson, and easier to teach to the ground than a full-grown man. I had to tread on the inside of his knee to get him to drop. When eventually he got his breath back, I saw he was crying; actually in tears. “You didn’t get out of the way,” I explained.

He looked up at me and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I see,” he said.

“You won’t make that mistake again,” I told him. “From now on, whenever a fellow human being is close enough to hit you, you’re going to assume that he’s going to hit you. You’ll keep your distance, or you’ll be ready to avoid at a split-second’s notice. Got that?”

“I think so.”

“No exceptions,” I said. “Not any, ever. Your brother, your best friend, your wife, your six-year-old daughter, it makes no odds. Otherwise you’ll never be a fighter.”

He stared at me for a moment, and I guessed he’d understood. It was like that moment in the old play, where the Devil offers the scholar the contract, and the scholar signs it.

“Get up.”

I hit him again when he was halfway to his feet. It was just a light tap on the collarbone; just enough to hurt like hell without breaking anything.

“This is all for my own good, I take it.”

“Oh yes. This is the most important lesson you’ll ever learn.”

We spent the next four hours on footwork; the traces, which is backwards and forwards, and the traverses, which is side to side. Each time I hit him, I laid it on a bit harder. He got there eventually.

My father wasn’t a bad man. He loved his family dearly, with all his heart; nothing meant more to him. But he had a slight, let’s say, kink in his nature—like the cold spot or the inclusion you sometimes get in a weld, where the metal wasn’t quite hot enough, or a bit of grit or crap gets beaten into the joint. He liked hurting people; it gave him a thrill. Only people, not animals. He was a fine stockman and a humane and conscientious hunter, but he dearly loved to hit people and make them squeal.

I can understand that, partly because I’m the same though to a lesser degree, and I control it better. Maybe it’s always been there in the blood, or maybe it was a souvenir from Ultramar; both, probably. I rationalise it in forge-welding terms. You can heat the metal white-hot, but you can’t just lay one bit on top of the other and expect them to weld. You’ve got to hit them to make the join. Carefully, judiciously, not too hard and not too soft. Just enough to make the metal cry, and weep sparks. I hate it when they burst into tears, though. It makes me despise them, and I have to take pains to control my temper. Anyway, you can see why I like to stay out of people’s way. I know what’s wrong with me; and knowing your own flaws is the beginning of wisdom. I’m sort of a reverse fencer. I stay well out of distance, partly so that people can’t hit me, mostly so I can’t hit them.