03 - Warblade, page 18
part #3 of Konrad Series
The quillons were welded in place, solid steel, dark and functional, slightly upswept. The handle was wrapped in brown suede. It gave a good grip, being absorbent enough to soak up blood and sweat, and it could easily be replaced when it became saturated. The pommel was screwed into place on the end of the tang, a simple brass ball. Quillons, handle, pommel, they were as ordinary as could be. But the blade, the blade itself…
“Unless it’s a two-hander,” explained Barra, “a sword should be balanced about three inches from the quillons. The way a blade is made affects its balance, of course, the size and cross-section, but so does the weight of the pommel. Barra believes it is always best to have a small pommel, and this should be exactly right for the sword—and for you.”
Konrad was itching to hold the weapon, but Barra kept a firm grip upon it, explaining various points of its construction.
“By hollowing out these grooves on either side, the blade becomes lighter, yet without losing any strength. All the different layers of metal make the sword far more flexible and stronger. There is warpdust in there, as you know. There is also silver.” Barra sucked in his lower lip, baring his upper teeth. “Good for vampires!” he laughed.
“Yes,” agreed Konrad, reaching out towards the polished weapon.
“And because of all the layers,” said Barra, drawing the blade away, “the edge itself is far tougher and lasts longer. Resharpening is not too difficult, you’ll find. Make sure that it’s done evenly on both sides, slowly, a few inches at a time.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Barra will give you a whetstone, at no extra charge.”
Barra gripped the sword in his right hand, holding it up, turning it, inspecting it for flaws. It glinted in the red glow from the furnace. He walked outside, and Konrad followed. There was a wagon in the courtyard, and Lodnar was holding the blinkered horse which stood between the shafts. The animal seemed very nervous. Whatever was on the back of the wagon was hidden by a huge piece of canvas. Lodnar handed Barra a key.
“You must have heard stories of swordsmiths plunging new blades into living flesh to temper the metal,” said Barra, as he went towards the rear of the wagon.
Konrad nodded, and by now he knew what was under the canvas. He could smell it.
“It doesn’t work. Barra has tried it. Heat softens a blade, and although a body might seem soft it’s full of bones which can damage the hot metal. And after all that work, who wants that? A quenching tank filled with blood, however, can be quite effective.”
He pulled the canvas from the back of the wagon to reveal a cage—and inside the cage was a beastman.
The ugly creature roared at the sudden light, and rattled the solid bars with the claws of one arm; the lower joint of its other front limb had mutated into a curved blade. Over six feet tall, with a snake-like tail, it was covered in greenish scales. There was a crest of yellow spines on its head and its face was like that of a bird, with a sharp beak and tiny black eyes. Venom dripped from its fangs, and the claws and the talons on its feet were all razor sharp.
“This thing was captured last week,” said Barra. “It got into the city through the sewers and killed three children who were playing by one of the canals. Or at least Barra hopes it killed them before it ripped them open and ate their guts.”
“Why wasn’t it destroyed when it was caught?”
“Because it’s valuable. They’re used in sporting contests, battles against others of their kind, or against a pack of dogs, perhaps even against humans. Beast baiting. Sometimes fighting mutants are bred in captivity. It’s illegal, but there’s a lot of money to be made from gambling.”
“What’s it doing here?” asked Konrad, although he was beginning to suspect.
“I bought it,” said Barra, glazing up at his growling captive. “It may be a myth about plunging a red hot blade into living flesh, but it’s a nice idea. Barra is a traditionalist, as you’ll have noticed, which is why it takes so long to make a sword—and why Barra’s swords are the best. And, although Barra says so, your blade is one of the very best. Barra makes the swords, then they are gone. That does not seem right. Barra ought to use this blade before you do, because it was Barra’s blade before yours. Barra claims the right of first blood, to sacrifice it as an offering to Barra’s own gods—the gods of Barra’s ancestors, the gods of fire, of steel, of weapons.”
He reached up to the cage and slipped the key into the lock, turned it, then quickly sprang back as the barred door burst open and the reptilian mutant leapt free. Its ravenous jaws parted and its forked tongue rippled, loudly voicing its inhuman challenge.
Before its legs even touched the ground Barra darted forward again, the gleaming blade slicing through the scales of its deformed torso. A geyser of bestial blood erupted from the wound, and only then did the monster scream. The blade was so sharp it had not felt it slide through its repulsive body.
Spurting blood and spitting venom, howling out its anger and its agony, the brute towered above Barra. With a single slice of its mutated forelimb it could have split the dwarf in twain; a blow from its lashing tail could have crushed his skull.
The sword-limb slashed, but Barra dodged aside with agility, fending off the chitinous blade with the new weapon. The beastman’s jaws snapped, its claws grabbed, its tail whipped, and Barra answered every assault with a thrust or a slice from the warpblade. He seemed to have grown in skill as a swordsman, his expertise increasing to match the magnificence of the blade which he wielded.
The mutant bellowed more loudly each time that Barra spilled more of its poisonous blood, and it grew more reckless in its assaults. But every advance was in vain, and the brute was unable to defend itself; attack was all it knew, what every primeval instinct commanded.
Roars of defiance were transformed into cries of desperation as it suffered more remorseless punishment. The beast’s movements became slower and more clumsy as it was gradually cut to pieces, screaming out its alien agony as it slowly bled to death.
The dwarf did not hack at the thing, dismembering it by sheer force, but instead he carefully dissected its living body as a butcher would divide a carcass: flaying the outer layers, eviscerating the offal, carving the flesh, stripping the bones.
And the creature would not die. It was still screeching, still twitching, even though its body was a gory mass of flesh and blood and bones, when Barra ceased his vivisection and stepped back to examine the sword. Then he advanced once again, raised the blade and brought it down fast, severing scale and sinew, breaking bones and blood vessels in the final execution. The beastman’s head rolled away, still screeching, while the body kept twitching in an ugly parody of life.
Barra leaned the sword against the wagon wheel, and the blade was greasy with fresh blood. He moved back, gazing at the weapon, then gestured towards it.
“It’s yours,” he said, and he walked away towards the armoury.
“Here,” said Lodnar, and he handed Konrad a rag in exchange for the last payment of gold crowns.
Konrad walked across the cobbles, which were sticky with gore, and he took hold of the sword hilt in his right hand. Without lifting the weapon from the ground, he knelt down and slowly wiped it clean with a single downward sweep of the rag. As he did so, he saw the blade in close detail for the first time.
It was truly magnificent.
The surface was like quicksilver, seeming to shimmer if viewed from a slightly different angle. There were ripples upon the blade, like jewels with infinitely different facets, some of them whirlpools of iridescence which became more intense as they spiralled inwards, others coruscating prisms which radiated across the whole length of the metal.
The hollow down the centre was like a valley worn away over the aeons, revealing different strata of ancient rock: a whole rainbow of colours which had been formed from the original five layers of metal.
And the tip of the blade, so sharp, and the edges, so keen, they were a colour beyond the spectrum. Far more than the sum of their original hues, they had been multiplied by the addition of fire and air, by the water to quench and the coals to burn; the elements of the world. Every constituent layer of metal could still be distinguished where the blade narrowed at its killing edges: all three hundred and sixty levels, the five component metals tripled and doubled and doubled, then tripled and doubled once again.
Finally Konrad lifted the sword, feeling its weight, sensing its balance, holding the weapon firmly in his grip.
He raised the new sword high above his head, as though triumphant victory were already his.
It was as if the warblade had always been a part of him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Until the previous week, Konrad had paid little attention to whatever sword he carried. It was simply a weapon, and it was of no consequence how it had been made or where it came from. He had possessed many blades, but the only thing that mattered was whether they served their required function.
After what he had seen recently, he would view even the lowliest of daggers with respect. It, too, had once been a piece of shapeless metal, given form by the skills of a village blacksmith. And long before that, the metal had been a lump of ore, dug out of the ground and refined and made into ingots. Konrad had some knowledge of that kind of process, having seen the way that gold was produced at the mine in Kislev.
He thought about the five metals which had gone to make up his new sword, and he wondered where they had been originally mined. Had each come from a different region of the world, brought from distant continents and across vast oceans so they could be welded into one blade?
On the frontier, metals from broken weapons were often melted down and used again. But the blades of defeated Chaos renegades were never used, because they would corrupt any untainted metal, causing it to corrode and rust very swiftly. All kinds of metal were precious, and it seemed likely that some of the materials which Barra had fabricated into the new sword had once formed part of other weapons, weapons used by warriors in far-off lands who had fought in ancient battles. The men who had carried such blades were long gone, nothing but dust, and yet their weapons had been reincarnated in Konrad’s exquisite sword.
And some day, long after Konrad was dead and forgotten, his own blade would have become part of a whole armoury of weapons carried by a legion of tomorrow’s fighting men: spears and axes, lances and swords, knives and arrowheads.
All Konrad could hope was that such a time was very distant, and that his new blade would postpone the final day when he must inevitably fall in battle.
As he gazed up the River Reik, however, he realized that the voyage was bringing that day closer and closer. He was convinced that Skullface and Elyssa were still in Altdorf. As if he still had the gift of premonition, he knew that he would meet up with them both once he reached the Imperial capital. He also knew that he would not survive his confrontation with Skullface. But this encounter was what his whole life had been leading up to, and he could no more prevent himself from completing the voyage than he could have made himself stop breathing.
Konrad spent as much time as possible on deck, because he felt too confined if he remained below. His hand was on the pommel of his blade as he glanced up at the sails of the pirate vessel.
Just as he had never given any thought to how a sword was made, neither until now had he considered how a ship could sail upriver, against the flow of the water and also against the wind.
His first boat ride had been along the River Lynsk, upstream from Erengrad to Praag, and Konrad had paid very little attention to the ship and how it operated. He was too interested in watching the new land through which he was passing. Now, however, he was studying the vessel all the time, because that was preferable to considering what lay ahead once he reached Altdorf.
Wolf had arranged for two corsairs to sail towards the Imperial capital, persuading them that the city was vulnerable to assault because the army had been so depleted by the number of troops who had been sent to defend the Kislev frontier. He had also convinced the pirate chiefs that he was the only person who could unlock the secret of the city’s untold wealth. Each ship was an ordinary merchant vessel, but its cargo was far from ordinary. The lower decks were packed with ruthless desperadoes, men whose whole life was devoted to death and destruction, to attacking helpless ships and looting their cargoes. They normally had two enemies, the craft they attacked and also the ocean. The sea could be a more implacable and dangerous opponent than the pirates themselves, but upon the Reik they had no such enemy with which to contend.
Instead, they were hidden beneath the hatches, kept quiet by uncounted barrels of ale, and whatever amusements they themselves had brought on board. They were not very quiet, however. Only at night were they allowed on deck, when the two vessels had tied up during the hours of darkness.
The ships stayed far apart, as if they were unconnected. Wolf’s plan was that the first vessel should enter Altdorf and tie up at one of the port’s many berths. The second would then show its true colours, reveal the guns which had been disguised as deck cargo, and begin firing upon the capital. The cannon had been transferred on board from the fast ocean-going ships in which the pirates usually set sail; they were huge, cast from solid metal and decorated with dragons and strange hieroglyphics. They had been built in Cathay, and the gunners were also from that fabled continent. Both ships were crewed by men from all over the world.
The cannon attack would be a diversion, during which the pirates on board the first vessel would begin their assault from within the city walls. Or that was what Wolf had told the pirates…
He and Konrad, Litzenreich and Ustnar, were on board the first of the two ships. Marienburg was very lax in its regulations, and the vessel had weighed anchor and sailed upstream without being inspected. There were a number of places on the Reik where it halted under the shadow of a fortress and was made to pay river dues. The fees payable depended upon the cargo being carried, but the majority of customs officials preferred to negotiate without having to board the vessels they should have examined. They were used to dealing with smugglers, and as long as their own personal charges were met they were happy to impose arbitrary official rates.
The Reik was the most important river in the Empire, in all of the Old World. Its headwaters lay far to the south-east, within the World’s Edge Mountains. One of its sources was a spring in Black Fire Pass, which according to legend had originally bubbled to the surface when Sigmar first set down Ghal-maraz after his triumphant victory over the goblins.
This made the Reik the longest of all rivers, and it also carried the greatest number of vessels, craft of every type and dimension. So wide and so deep were its waters that ocean-going ships could navigate as far as the capital. Even the tallest of masts did not need to be lowered to pass beneath bridges, because every bridge on the river had a central section which could either be raised or swung aside to permit passage.
The pirate ship made its way slowly upstream, past the villages and towns which had grown up on the banks of the great river. All of them must have been tempting targets for the raiders, despite the brooding castles which stood high on the outcropping rocks above each centre of habitation. They passed isolated farmsteads, lonely windmills, terraced fields where vines grew, and mile after mile of impenetrable forest. The river was seldom straight for very long, was always twisting between high valleys or meandering across fertile pasture, and all the time it carried the vessel closer to Altdorf.
The days passed, and the nights, and Konrad was glad that his sword seemed so ordinary. Any one of the pirates would have slain him for his blade, even though they were meant to be allies. They must all have killed for far less, and the same was true of their officers. Konrad seldom saw the captain of the ship; it was the first officer who handled all the daily routine.
He came from the Estalian Kingdoms, and he gave his name as Guido. He said he could not reveal his family name, because he was of royal blood and preferred to hide his identity. The best way to have hidden it, thought Konrad, was not to admit that one was trying to do so.
“I ran away to sea,” said Guido, “and now I’m surrounded by land. It makes me ill looking at it, the way it keeps still all the time.”
Guido was about thirty years old, of medium height but slender build, and he was far removed from Konrad’s idea of a pirate. He was cultured and educated, and perhaps really was of high birth. Always dressed in the finest of clothes, which he changed every day, the others on board the ship obeyed his every order with utmost alacrity. His authority came from his position, not his physical strength. The only time there had been any trouble on board was when a topsail was not rigged to Guido’s satisfaction. The two men responsible were immediately flogged, and Guido watched while the cabin boy gave him his regular morning shave. Even Captain de Tevoir treated his first officer with respect, almost as if it were Guido who were the ship’s master.
“My ancestors were bandits and brigands,” said Guido. “They carved out a slice of Estalia hundreds of years ago, and established themselves as rulers. But there was no place for me there. My eldest brother inherited the throne from my father before I was even born. It was lucky he let me survive. Lucky for me, but not for him. One day I’ll return, depose Alphonso and seize my father’s kingdom for myself.” He shrugged. “If I can ever be bothered going back to that dump.”
He watched as a sailing barge passed slowly by, heading downstream. His gaze was predatory, and he must have wished that he could drop his vessel’s masquerade and loot the passing vessel.
At first, Konrad tried to avoid Guido. He did not want to have too many dealings with a man he would have to betray, and perhaps even kill. But it was difficult to stay far away on the deck of such a small ship, and they began to spend more and more time in each other’s company. Guido loaned him books, histories the like of which Konrad had never imagined.
