Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

The first Rhonish town we came to coincided with our first evening. A sizable place with the dull but worthy name of Milltown. We rode at gentle pace along the muddy high street, a thoroughfare crowded with traders, travellers, and townsfolk. Snorri reined in towards a smithy open to the street and loud with hammers.

“We should get you a sword, Jal.” He’d taken to calling me Jal, not “my prince,” or “Prince Jalan,” or even “Jalan,” but “Jal.” I didn’t let him know it annoyed me because he’d just do it exactly the same amount of times but with a broader grin. “How are you with a blade?”

“Better than you are with a horse,” I said.

Snorri snorted and his mare joined in. He’d called her Sleipnir after some heathen nag, and they seemed to be getting on despite him riding like a big log stuck on a saddle, and weighing about the same as his steed. He dismounted, the effect not dissimilar to the aforementioned log falling off its perch.

“Show me?” He pulled out his sword and offered it hilt first.

I looked around. “You can’t just go swinging swords on the main street. Someone will lose an eye! And that’s only if the town-law aren’t on you first.”

Snorri looked puzzled, as if on the ice-coated slopes of the North it would be the most natural thing in the world. “It’s a blacksmith’s.” He waved to the ironmongery laid out beside us. “The smith makes swords. People must try them out here all the time.” The sword hilt poked my way again.

“I doubt it.” Hands firmly on the reins. I nodded down to the display tables-scythe blades, baling hooks, nails, and other domestic goods were all that lay before me. “Town this size might have a weapon-smith somewhere. This ain’t it, though.”

“Ha!” Snorri pointed to a sword hanging up back in the gloom under the awnings. “Smith!”

The smith emerged at Snorri’s booming, a short man, ugly with sweat, thick in the arms of course but with a surprising bookish look to him. “Evenin’.”

“I’ll test that blade.” Snorri pointed to the hanging sword.

“Repairing that for Garson Host,” the smith said. “Taking out the notches, putting a fresh edge on it. T’aint for sale.”

“Don’t humour him.” I nodded my approval at the man.

The smith bit his lip. I’d forgotten that Rhonish men always look for a chance to put a Red March man on his arse, and that common men like nothing better than seeing their betters knocked about. I would have been wiser to hold my tongue. Snorri might be a foreigner but at least he hadn’t committed the cardinal sin of being a foreigner from the country next door.

“Don’t s’pose Garson’ll mind if it’s three notches I knock out of the blade or five notches.” The smith went back and reached up to retrieve the sword.

Resigned to my fate, I dismounted and took the hilt that Snorri poked at me again. It happens that I’m not that bad a swordsman when my life’s not in danger. In the practice yard with dull blades and sufficient padding I could always hold my own well enough. More than well. But all those lessons went running down one leg on the only day I was ever called on to swing a sword in earnest. As we crashed in amongst those Scorron soldiers up in the Aral Pass, raw terror washed away all my training in an instant. Those were great big angry men with sharp swords actually wanting to cut pieces off me. It’s not until you’ve seen a red gaping wound and all the complex little bits inside a man all broken up and sliced open, and known that they weren’t ever getting back together again, and vomited your last two meals over the rocks. . it’s not until then that you understand the business of swords properly and, if you’re a sensible man you vow to have nothing to do with it ever again. I remember nothing from the battle in the Aral Pass but frozen moments shuffled together-steel flashing, crimson arcs, horrified faces, one man choking on blood as he backed away from me. . and the screaming, of course. I still hear that today. Everything else about the battle is a blank.

Snorri took his new sword in his uninjured hand and jabbed at me. I swatted it away. He grinned and came at me again. We traded thrusts and parries for a few moments, the clash of steel bringing much of the street to a halt, heads turning our way. Usually strength, while important, is not the prime factor in swordwork, even with heavier blades of the type we employed. The rapier is all about quickness, but even the longsword is more about quickness, once you have the strength to swing it, than it is about excess strength. Properly trained, a swordsman will benefit more from a small increase in skill and speed than from a large increase in strength. The sword is, after all, a lever. With Snorri, however, strength was a factor. He used basic enough moves, but blocking them made my hand hurt, and the first blow he put any real effort into nearly took the blade from my grasp. Even so, it was clear quite early on that I had more sword skills in my right hand than the Norseman had in his left.

“Good!” Snorri lowered his weapon. “You’re very good.”

I tried not to simper under his praise. “Grandmother requires that all her family be well versed in the arts of war.” Whether they want to be or not. . I recalled endless training as a young prince, gripping a wooden blade until I got blisters, and being beaten mercilessly by Martus and Darin, who saw it as part of their duties as elder brothers.

“Keep the sword,” Snorri said to me. “You’ll make better use of it than me.”

I pursed my lips. As long as having the sword didn’t mean I had to use it, then I was fine with the arrangement. I certainly cut a better swagger with a longsword at my hip. I tilted the blade and let the light run along it. At one point the metal had taken on a dark stain. Perhaps where it had bit into the unborn when Snorri swung at its body. I pushed the memory away.

“What about you?” I asked, concerned with my safety rather than his.

“I’ll buy a replacement.” He turned to the smith, who made no effort to hide his disappointment at not seeing the giant Viking squash me.

“You can’t afford another sword!” He couldn’t afford anything-he’d been a prisoner for months until his recent escape. Not the most lucrative of occupations.

“You’re right.” Snorri handed the smith’s sword back. “It’s not for sale in any case.” He nodded into the forge. “Do you have a good axe? A war-axe, not something for cutting wood.”

As the smith headed in to delve through his stock, Snorri pulled a pouch on a string from about his neck. I crowded over to see what he had. Silvers! At least five of them.

“Who’d you murder for those?” I frowned, more at the thought of Snorri being richer than me than at the thought of robbery with violence.

“I’m not a thief.” Snorri lowered his brows.

“All right, we’ll call it pillage,” I said.

Snorri shrugged. “Viking lands are poor, the soil sparse, winters cruel. So some do reach out and take from the weak. It’s true. We Undoreth, however, prefer to take from the strong-they have better stuff. For each longboat launched against distant shores there are ten and more launched to raid close neighbours. The Viking nations waste their main strength on each other and have always done so.”

“You still haven’t answered the question.”

“I took from the strong!” Snorri grinned and reached out to take the axe the smith brought him. “That big man with Taproot when we left? The Amazing Ronaldo! Circus strongman.” No Norse axe this, but a serviceable footman’s axe, a single triangular blade, the ash haft iron-banded and dark with age. The axe was ever a peasant’s weapon, but this one at least had been made for a peasant signed to some lord’s levy. Snorri twirled it, coming alarmingly near to the stock tables, me, and the smith. “The Amazing Ronaldo made a wager with me regarding a feat of strength. He didn’t win. That dwarf said they’ll call him the Amazed Ronaldo now!” Snorri hefted the axe and held the blade close to his ear as if listening to it. “I’ll take it.”