The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois

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СКАЧАТЬ come compass in the vise, if you’re prepared to take the risk.

      I lose track of time when I’m forge-welding. I stop when it’s done, and not before; and I realise how tired and wet with sweat and thirsty I am, and how many hot zits and cinders have burnt their way through my clothes and blistered my skin. The joy isn’t in the doing but the having-done.

      You weld in the near dark, so you can see what’s going on in the heart of the fire and the hot metal. I looked to where I know the doorway is, but it was all pitch-dark outside the orange ring of firelight. It’s just as well I have no neighbours, or they’d get no sleep.

      He was asleep, though, in spite of all the noise. I nudged his foot and he sat up straight. “Did I miss something?”

      “Yes.”

      “Oh.”

      “But that’s all right,” I said. “We’ve barely started yet.”

      Logic dictates that I had a life before I went to Ultramar. I must have had; I was nineteen when I went there, twenty-six when I came back. Before I went there, I seem to recall a big comfortable house in a valley, and dogs and hawks and horses and a father and two elder brothers. They may all still be there, for all I know. I’ve never been back.

      Seven years in Ultramar. Most of us didn’t make it past the first six months. A very few, the file-hard, unkillable sort, survived as long as three years; by which point, you could almost see the marks where the wind and rain had worn them down to bedrock, or the riverbeds and salt stalactites on their cheeks; they were old, old men, the three-year boys, and not one of them over twenty-five.

      I did three years and immediately signed on for another three; then another three after that, of which I served one. Then I was sent home, in disgrace. Nobody ever gets sent home from Ultramar, which is where the judge sends you if you’ve murdered someone and hanging is too good for you. They need every man they can get, and they use them up at a stupid rate, like a farmer with his winter fodder in a very bad year. They say that the enemy collects our bones from the battlefields and grinds them down for bonemeal, which is how come they have such excellent wheat harvests. The usual punishment for really unforgivable crimes in Ultramar is a tour of duty at the front; you have to prove genuine extenuating circumstances and show deep remorse to get the noose instead. Me, though, they sent home, in disgrace, because nobody could bear the sight of me a moment longer. And, to be fair, I can’t say I blame them.

      I don’t sleep much. The people in the village say it’s because I have nightmares, but really I simply don’t find the time. Once you’ve started welding, you don’t stop. Once you’ve welded the core, you want to get on and do the edges, then you want to weld the edges to the core, then the job’s done, and there’s some new pest nagging you to start the next one. I tend to sleep when I’m tired, which is roughly every four days.

      In case your heart is bleeding for me; when the job’s done and I get paid, I throw the money in an old barrel I brought back from the wars. I think originally it contained arrowheads. Anyway, I have no idea how much is in there, but it’s about half-full. I do all right.

      Like I told you, I lose track of time when I’m working. Also, I forget about things, such as people. I clean forgot about the boy for a whole day, but when I remembered him he was still there, perched on the spare anvil, his face black with dust and soot. He’d tied a bit of rag over his nose and mouth, which was fine by me since it stopped him talking.

      “Haven’t you got anything better to do?” I asked.

      “No, not really.” He yawned and stretched. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of this. Basically, it’s the idea that a lot of strands woven together are stronger than just one. Like the body politic.”

      “Have you had anything to eat recently? Since you stole my apple?”

      He shook his head. “Not hungry.”

      “Have you got any money for food?”

      He smiled. “I’ve got a whole gold besant. I could buy a farm.”

      “Not around here.”

      “Yes, well, it’s prime arable land. Where I come from, you could buy a whole valley.”

      I sighed. “There’s bread and cheese indoors,” I said, “and a side of bacon.”

      At least that got rid of him for a bit, and I closed up the fold and decided I needed a rest. I’d been staring at white-hot metal for rather too long, and I could barely see past all the pretty shining colours.

      He came back with half a loaf and all my cheese. “Have some,” he said, like he owned the place.

      I don’t talk with my mouth full, it’s rude, so I waited till I’d finished. “So where are you from, then?”

      “Fin Mohec. Heard of it?”

      “It’s a fair-sized town.”

      “Ten miles north of Fin, to be exact.”

      “I knew a man from Fin once.”

      “In Ultramar?”

      I frowned. “Who told you that?”

      “Someone in the village.”

      I nodded. “Nice part of the world, the Mohec valley.”

      “If you’re a sheep, maybe. And we weren’t in the valley, we were up on the moor. It’s all heather and granite outcrops.”

      I’ve been there. “So,” I said, “you left home to seek your fortune.”

      “Hardly.” He spat something out, probably a hard bit of bacon rind. You can break your teeth on that stuff. “I’d go back like a shot if there were anything left for me there. Where were you in Ultramar, precisely?”

      “Oh, all over the place,” I said. “So, if you like the Mohec so much, why did you leave?”

      “To come here. To see you. To buy a sword.” A decidedly forced grin. “Why else?”

      “What do you need a sword for in the Mohec hills?”

      “I’m not going to use it there.”

      The words had come out in a rush, like beer spilt when some fool jostles your arm in the taproom. He took a deep breath, then went on, “At least, I don’t imagine I will.”

      “Really.”

      He nodded. “I’m going to use it to kill the man who murdered my father, and I don’t think he lives round here.”

      I got into this business by accident. That is, I got off the boat from Ultramar, and fifty yards from the dock was a forge. I had one thaler and five copper stuivers in my pocket, the clothes I’d worn under my armour for the last two years, and a sword worth twenty gold angels that I’d never sell, under any circumstances. I walked over to the forge and offered to give the smith the thaler if he taught me his trade.

      “Get lost,” he said.

      People don’t talk to me like that. So I spent the thaler on СКАЧАТЬ