Unable to contain his pride, Corin laughed heartily, then clapped his son on both shoulders. “By Crom, that is a declaration I believe even the gods will honor. Now finish your stew.”
As his son returned to eating, Corin got up and crossed the small hut. He reached up and pulled a cloth-wrapped package from atop a rafter, then returned and laid it on the table. “While you were dreaming of glories, I made this for you. Ah, no, finish your meal first.”
There could be no mistaking what lay within the gray woolen wrapping. Long and slender, with the obvious projection of a cross hilt, it had to be a sword. Not a great sword or a long sword, but more than a knife.
Conan, showing more restraint than his father would have credited him with, finished the stew, then gathered both bowls and the wooden spoons with which they’d eaten and set them in a bucket. He looked expectantly at his father, clearly willing to do the washing up if the order would be given. Corin hesitated for a moment, then shook his head and smiled.
“Open it.”
Conan lifted the sword in his hand, hefting the weapon before its unveiling. Then, slowly, with the same care Connacht had described using when unwrapping a harem wench in Koth, Conan freed the sword from its confines. With a steel blade half again the length of the youth’s forearm, a bronze cross hilt and pommel, and a leather-wrapped grip, it clearly was no toy. Though the edges remained dull, and the tip rounded, if needed to kill a man, it would suffice.
Conan reached for the hilt, then hesitated, looking at his father.
Corin nodded. “Understand some things. I hammered this from an Aquilonian short sword a scavenger dug out of Brita’s Vale. It’s not Cimmerian steel—you’ll earn that—but it is better than a stick for practicing.”
The youth nodded, lifting the blade, slowly moving it around in lazy circles. He only half listened to his father—Corin really had expected nothing less. The smith knew he would be repeating the rules to his son many times, and that more than once he’d have to take the blade away from him to instill discipline. Still, the care with which the boy studied the weapon’s weight pleased him. Any other boy—including those being trained by the warriors—would have first looked for something to cut, then would have run into the middle of the room, fighting phantoms and shadows.
“Conan, you will shape a scabbard for your blade. You will oil it and care for it. You will
not
put an edge on it until I give you leave to do so. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded, then sighted down the length of the blade.
“It is true and straight, my son.”
Like your spirit.
Conan looked up. “Father, I—”
Corin held a hand up. “Do not thank me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is a terrible thing I have done here, my son.”
I hope your mother will forgive me.
“Know this. Because of this blade, you will be very angry with me—more times than either of us will care to remember.”
“No, Father—”
“Accept that is so, Conan. And this is the other terrible part: in giving you that sword, I will let the man you will become slay the child you have been.” Corin took the blade from his son. “A weapon like this is only good for killing men.”
Conan smiled. “I shall destroy our enemies.”
“So I hope, but you must remember, my son, that this sword cannot tell friend from enemy.” Corin flipped it around and offered the hilt to his son. “
And
it can kill the man at either end of it. Sometimes both.”
Conan accepted the sword, then returned it to its wrappings. “I shall make a scabbard. I will not sharpen it. And I will train only after my chores are done.”
“Very good.”
The boy looked up. “Will you train me?”
The question caught Corin off guard. “When the time comes, Conan, the warriors—”
“Father, I see them look to you. They see you as their master.” Conan’s eyes widened. “You shape the sword to suit the swordsman. I would have you shape the swordsman.”
“If you do every chore I set for you, complete every task I give you, then, yes, I will train you.” Corin nodded solemnly. “I’ve given you the means to kill men . . . and I shall train you so you know when to do it, and how to do it well.”
CHAPTER 3
CROUCHED IN THE
shadow of an evergreen, Conan watched the invaders march through his forest. The weight of his sword tugged at his left hip. His hands, palms leathery with a winter’s work with his blade, flexed; their pain forgotten. He kept his breathing shallow, exhaling so his misty breath would dissipate in the branches above. He shifted slowly, allowing no movement, no sound, to betray is position.
Ardel led the other young men through the forest. They’d been sent on a patrol, but it was really little more than a game. Winter had blanketed Cimmeria with deep snows. Even the most determined invader would wait for walls of snow to melt before heading north. The patrol was a fool’s errand, but Ardel led the troupe as if he were a king intent on vanquishing a horde. Each of them carried a sword—blades longer by half than the one Conan bore—but he comforted himself with the knowledge that none of them could use the blades as well as he could.
That winter, which should have been intolerable for all the snow, had been glorious for Conan. The snow made some chores impossible, which gave him just that much more time to practice with his sword. He’d spent more time with it in his grasp than out, and the first blood it had tasted had been his from the blisters it raised on his hands.
His father had devised a training routine for him. Conan had expected it to mirror what the other warriors put Ardel and his troupe through. It did not, and Conan suspected his father did things differently simply to challenge his son. Conan became bored quickly, which led to inattention—and that would get him killed faster than anything else. Some of the exercises led to frustration, but every time Conan reached the point of being disgusted, his father gave him another task.
Little by slowly, Conan began to understand what his father was doing. At midwinter, Corin had tasked him with hauling a large block of ice from a nearby pond, then crushing it into thumb-size shards, using the pommel. Conan had beaten the ice for hours, making great headway at first, but slackening as his muscles tired and he grew cold. Then his father had him gather up all the ice chips, place them in a small leather trough, and add water.
And the next morning, when the ice had frozen solid, he commanded his son to break the ice up again. For three mornings running, he gave Conan that job. On the fourth, Conan kept his sword in its scabbard and fetched a hammer from the smithy.
Corin, tall, his massive arms folded over his chest, studied the boy. “What are you doing?”
Conan brandished the hammer. “This is the better tool for that job.”
“But I want you to use your sword.”
“Why?”
“Because”—his father’s eyes narrowed—“in battle you may not be able to find a hammer. If you think that a blade’s edge or point are the only useful parts, you might as well go to war unarmed.”
Conan set the hammer down and drew his sword. He smashed ice with the pommel, taking care this time to study not the size of the shards that flew off, but the cracks that remained. He shifted his aim, pounding a crack at its tip. A larger piece broke away. Again he struck, and within an hour had reduced the block as instructed.
He entered the forge. “It’s done, Father.”
“And what did you learn?”
“Some tools are better than others for some jobs, and that the blade is not the only or even best part of the sword for some jobs.”
Reddish hell-light played over his father’s features. “What else? Why did you finish faster?”
The boy thought. “I learned about the enemy. I learned its weakness and attacked it there.”
“Very good, boy.”
Conan smiled. “Now, Father, will you fight with me?”
Corin looked over and faintly grinned. “Not yet, Conan. You’ve learned enough for a day. You have chores.”
“Father!”
“Loughlan brought his ax for sharpening.” The smith pointed at the wheel in the far corner. “Put a keen edge on it.”
“Yes, Father, and then I can put an edge on my sword?”
Corin sighed. “You’ve barely learned what you can do with the weapon’s blunt edge, Conan. When you know that sword as an eagle knows its talons,
then
, and only then, will you sharpen it. For now, however, you’ll learn how to put an edge on other things, so you won’t dishonor your sword when the time comes.”
Conan had wanted to rebel, but his father’s reminder about honoring the blade appealed to him. It gave him a reason to be patient, so he was. He performed every exercise a hundred times, then two hundred and a thousand. When Corin pronounced himself satisfied and offered a new exercise, Conan would perform previous exercises to prepare for the new.
Some of the things his father asked of him seemed outlandish. Corin fitted a lead-filled sheath over the blade’s tip, shifting the balance and doubling the blade’s weight. He ordered his son to trace smoke as it rose through the air, or slash at sparks rising from the hearth. The exercise left Conan bathed in sweat. When he tired and tumbled, soot and dust caked him. But always he got back up and kept doing as commanded until his father called a halt.
Just as Conan was about to complain about the futility of this exercise, Corin slid the sheath from the blade. “One more time.”
Conan ran his forearm across his brow, smearing black soot. His father pumped the forge’s bellows, launching sparks. The sword whipped out quickly, hitting one, then another and another. Conan, the steel an extension of his arm, whirled and leaped, stabbed and slashed. Even when he stumbled, he cut through a spark, rolled, and came up to impale another.
“Enough, son.”
Day after day, and through the long nights of winter, Conan trained. Each exercise built upon the one before it. Once he learned how to do something well, the lead sheath returned, or his father might secure his ankles with a short length of chain, forcing him to maintain his balance. Not yet strong enough to send his blade crashing through another fighter’s guard, he learned that a quick cut could be just as deadly as a crushing blow.
Conan worked with two goals in mind. The first was to be granted permission to sharpen the sword. His slash would move faster than the eye could see, and his blade would open throats or thighs, slit bellies, and pierce any flesh his enemies left unguarded. He’d always known he’d grow into a powerful man, but being fast with a razored sword in hand would make him even more powerful.
The second goal—and he acknowledged that his father might grant it before the first—was for his father to spar with him. Corin’s refusal wasn’t born out of fear. Conan’s father didn’t know fear. But each refusal suggested to Conan that he was somehow unworthy of being a warrior in his father’s eyes. Conan wanted that recognition desperately, and would stop at nothing to earn it.
I have to show him.
Conan looked out from around the tree again as Ardel and his patrol plodded along a game trail. The boy smiled, and removed the satchel in which he’d placed a grouse that had been caught by a deadfall trap. He looped the strap over a low branch, then took a handful of snow and packed it down into a ball. He made two more, then slipped from his hiding place.
Remaining low, he moved quickly to a spot beneath the ridgeline, and came upon a rocky outcropping that overlooked the trail. The rocks hid him from the trail below. As Ardel started up and made the turn where the trail switched back, Conan popped up and hurled the first snowball. Ardel, who had slipped for a moment, looked up at the last second. The white explosion obliterated his florid expression.
“It’s Picts. We’re under attack!”
Conan rose again and threw. The second snowball caught another boy in the side of the head. He’d already begun to turn back down the trail. Unbalanced, he toppled into another youth. They went down in a tangle of limbs, falling off the trail and rolling deeper into the ravine.
“Picts! Picts!” Ardel’s orderly band dissolved amid the panic.
Conan, ducking back, and barely able to contain his laughter, gave the call of a raven in the Pictish manner. The sound alone prompted more shrieks, which grew fainter as the youths ran off, back toward the village. Conan chased them with another raven’s call, then sat in the snow and laughed.
. . . Until he heard a raven’s call himself.
He froze, pressing himself back against the stones. Wary eyes studied his surroundings. Nothing moved. The air remained still, sunlight through trees dappling the snow with white stripes and spots. As far as Conan could see, the snow remained undisturbed save for his footprints and those of Ardel’s troupe.
That does not mean they are not out there.
Conan rested his left hand on his sword’s hilt for reassurance, then hunkered down into a crouch. He wanted to go back for his grouse, but that would involve backtracking. That could lead to an ambush. That realization sent a jolt through him.
He swallowed hard, then took a single step forward.
A raven called again.
Conan looked up to the right.
The large black bird eyed him coldly.
“Are you just a crow, or has a god sent you to watch me?” Conan spoke to smother the spark of fear in his breast, realizing he was speaking as his grandfather did while storytelling. “Which is it?”
The bird, or the god who had sent it, became bored. The raven called once again, then opened its black wings and took to the sky.
Still cautious despite being confident he was alone, Conan circled around to he tree where he had hung the grouse and recovered it. He then went down the hill and cut across the trail Ardel’s war band had blazed through the snow. What had been amusement at how easily they had panicked turned to disgust, since they made no attempt to hide their trail or deceive trackers. They headed straight for the village.