“It is true and straight, my son.”
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.”
“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. “
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,
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
