Brisingr [en]

shouldn’t have to think about how you want it to move; you should simply move it as instinctively as an egret his beak or a dragon her claws. The perfect sword is intent incarnate: what you want, so it does.”

“You sound like a poet.”

With a modest expression, Fredric half shrugged. “I’ve been picking weapons for men who are about to march into combat for twenty-six years. It seeps into your bones after a while, turns your mind to thoughts of fate and destiny and whether that young fellow I sent off with a billed pike would still be alive if I had given him a mace instead.” Fredric paused with a hand hovering over the middle sword on the rack and looked at Eragon. “Do you prefer to fight with or without a shield?”

“With,” Eragon said. “But I can’t carry one around with me all the time. And there never seems to be one handy when I’m attacked.”

Fredric tapped the hilt of the sword and gnawed on the edge of his beard. “Humph. So you need a sword you can use by itself but that’s not too long to use with every kind of shield from a buckler to a wall shield. That means a sword of medium length, easy to wield with one arm. It has to be a blade you can wear at all occasions, elegant enough for a coronation and tough enough to fend off a band of Kull.” He grimaced. “It’s not natural, what Nasuada’s done, allying us with those monsters. It can’t last. The likes of us and them were never meant to mix... ” He shook himself. “It’s a pity you only want a single sword. Or am I mistaken?”

“No. Saphira and I travel far too much to be lugging around a half-dozen blades.”

“I suppose you’re right. Besides, a warrior like you isn’t expected to have more than one weapon. The curse of the named blade, I call it.”

“What’s that?”

“Every great warrior,” said Fredric, “wields a sword — it’s usually a sword — that has a name. Either he names it himself or, once he proves his prowess with some extraordinary feat, the bards name it for him. Thereafter, he has to use that sword. It’s expected of him. If he shows up to a battle without it, his fellow warriors will ask where it is, and they will wonder if he is ashamed of his success and if he is insulting them by rejecting the acclaim they have bestowed upon him, and even his enemies may insist upon waiting to fight until he fetches his famed blade. Just you watch; as soon as you fight Murtagh or do anything else memorable with your new sword, the Varden will insist upon giving it a title. And they will look to see it on your hip from then on.” He continued speaking while he proceeded to a third rack: “I never thought I would be fortunate enough to help a Rider choose his weapon. What an opportunity! It feels as if this is a culmination of my work with the Varden.”

Plucking a sword from the rack, Fredric handed it to Eragon. Eragon tilted the tip of the sword up and down, then shook his head; the shape of the hilt was wrong for his hand. The weapon master did not seem disappointed. To the contrary, Eragon’s rejection seemed to invigorate him, as if he relished the challenge Eragon posed. He presented another sword to Eragon, and again Eragon shook his head; the balance was too far forward for his liking.

“What worries me,” Fredric said, returning to the rack, “is that any sword I give you will have to withstand impacts that would destroy an ordinary blade. What you need is dwarf-work. Their smiths are the finest besides the elves’, and sometimes they even exceed them.” Fredric peered at Eragon. “Hold now, I’ve been asking the wrong questions! How was it you were taught to block and parry? Was it edge on edge? I seem to recall you doing something of the kind when you dueled Arya in Farthen Dur.”

Eragon frowned. “What of it?”

“What of it?” Fredric guffawed. “Not to be disrespectful, Shadeslayer, but if you hit the edge of a sword against that of another, you will cause grave damage to both. That might not have been a problem with an enchanted blade like Zar’roc, but you can’t do it with any of the swords I have here, not unless you want to replace your sword after every battle.”

An image flashed in Eragon’s mind of the chipped edges of Murtagh’s sword, and he felt irritated with himself for having forgotten something so obvious. He had become accustomed to Zar’roc, which never dulled, never showed signs of wear, and, so far as he knew, was impervious to most spells. He was not even sure it was possible to destroy a Rider’s sword. “You need not worry about that; I will protect the sword with magic. Must I wait all day for a weapon?”

“One more question, Shadeslayer. Will your magic last forever?”

Eragon’s frown deepened. “Since you ask, no. Only one elf understands the making of a Rider’s sword, and she has not shared her secrets with me. What I can do is transfer a certain amount of energy into a sword. The energy will keep it from getting damaged until the blows that would have damaged the sword exhaust the store of energy, at which point the sword will revert to its original state and, odds are, shatter in my grip the next time I close with my opponent.”

Fredric scratched his beard. “I’ll take your word for it, Shadeslayer. The point being, if you hammer on soldiers long enough, you’ll wear out your spells, and the harder you hammer, the sooner the spells will vanish. Eh?”

“Exactly.”

“Then you should still avoid going edge on edge, as it will wear out your spells faster than most any other move.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Eragon snapped, his impatience overflowing. “I don’t have the time to learn a completely different way of fighting. The Empire might attack at any moment. I have to concentrate on practicing what I do know, not trying to master a whole new set of forms.”

Fredric clapped his hands. “I know just the thing for you, then!” Going to a crate filled with arms, he began digging through it, talking to himself as he did. “First this, then that, and then we’ll see where we stand.” From the bottom of the crate, he pulled out a large black mace with a flanged head.

Fredric rapped a knuckle against the mace. “You can break swords with this. You can split mail and batter in helms, and you won’t do it the slightest bit of harm, no matter what you hit.”

“It’s a club,” Eragon protested. “A metal club.”

“What of it? With your strength, you can swing it as if it were light as a reed. You’ll be a terror on the battlefield with this, you will.”

Eragon shook his head. “No. Smashing things isn’t how I prefer to fight. Besides, I would never have been able to kill Durza by stabbing him through the heart if I had been carrying a mace instead of a sword.”

“Then I have only one more suggestion, unless you insist upon a traditional blade.” From another part of the pavilion, Fredric brought Eragon a weapon he identified as a falchion. It was a sword, but not a type of sword Eragon was accustomed to, although he had seen them among the Varden before. The falchion had a polished, disk-shaped pommel, bright as a silver coin; a short grip made of wood covered with black leather; a curved crossguard carved with a line of dwarf runes; and a single-edged blade that was as long as his outstretched arm and had a thin fuller on either side, close to the spine. The falchion was straight until about six inches from the end, where the back of the blade flared upward in a small peak before gently curving down to the needle-sharp tip. This widening of the blade reduced the likelihood that the point would bend or snap when driven through armor and lent the end of the falchion a fanglike appearance. Unlike a double-edged sword, the falchion was made to be held with the blade and crossguard perpendicular to the ground. The most curious aspect of the falchion, though, was the bottom half inch of the blade, including the edge, which was pearly gray and substantially darker than the mirror- smooth steel above. The boundary between the two areas was wavy, like a silk scarf rippling in the wind.

Eragon pointed at the gray band. “I’ve not seen that before. What is it?”

“The thriknzdal,” said Fredric. “The dwarves invented it. They temper the edge and the spine separately. The edge they make hard, harder than we dare with the whole of our blades. The middle of the blade and the spine they anneal so that the back of the falchion is softer than the edge, soft enough to bend and flex and survive the stress of battle without fracturing like a frost-ridden file.”

“Do the dwarves treat all their blades thusly?”

Fredric shook his head. “Only their single-edged swords and the finest of their double-edged swords.” He hesitated, and uncertainty crept into his gaze. “You understand why I chose this for you, Shadeslayer, yes?”

Eragon understood. With the blade of the falchion at right angles to the ground, unless he deliberately tilted his wrist, any blows he caught on the sword would strike the flat of the blade, saving the edge for attacks of his own. Wielding the falchion would require only a small adjustment to his fighting style.