Barkus nodded his thanks, his attention fixed on the river where a barge was making its way upstream to Varinshold.

“You want to know,” he said after a while. His voice held none of his usual humour or irony but Vaelin was chilled to detect a faint trace of fear.

“If you want to tell me,” he said. “We all have our secrets, brother.”

“Like why you keep that scarf.” He gestured at Sella’s scarf around Vaelin’s neck. Vaelin tucked it out of sight and patted him on the shoulder before turning to go.

“It first happened when I was ten,” Barkus said.

Vaelin paused, waiting for him to continue. In his own way Barkus could be as closed as the rest of them, he would talk or he wouldn’t, prompting or persuasion would be useless.

“My father had me working in the smithy since I was little,” Barkus continued after a moment. “I loved it, loved watching him shape the metal, loved the way it glowed in the forge. Some say the ways of the smith are mysterious. For me it was all so obvious, so easy. I understood it all. My father hardly had to teach me anything, I just knew what to do. I could see the shape the metal would take before the hammer fell, could tell if a plough blade would cut through soil or get stuck or if a shoe would fall from a hoof after only a few days. My father was proud, I knew it. He wasn’t much for talk, not like me, I get that from my mother, but I knew he was proud. I wanted to make him even more proud. I had shapes in my head, shapes of knives, swords, axes, all waiting to be forged. I knew exactly how to make them, exactly the right mix of metals to use. So I snuck into the smithy one night to make one. A hunting knife, a small thing, I thought. A Winterfall present for my father.”

He paused, staring out into the night as the barge moved further downstream, the shapes of the barge men on the deck vague and ghostlike in the dim light from the bow lantern.

“So you made the knife,” Vaelin prompted. “But your father was… angry?”

“Oh, he wasn’t angry.” Barkus sounded bitter. “He was scared. The blade folded over and over to strengthen it, the edge keen enough to cut silk or pierce armour, so polished you could use it as a mirror.” The small smile forming on his lips faded. “He threw it in the river and told me never to speak of it to anyone, ever.”

Vaelin was puzzled. “He should have been proud. A knife like that made by his son. Why would it scare him?”

“My father had seen a lot in his life. He’d travelled with the Lord’s host, served on a merchant ship in the eastern seas, but he’d never seen a knife forged in a smithy where the forge was cold.”

Vaelin’s puzzlement deepened. “Then how did you…?” Something in Barkus’s face made him stop.

“Nilsaelins are a great people in many ways,” Barkus went on. “Hardy, kind, hospitable. But they fear the Dark above all things. In my village there was once an old woman who could heal with a touch, or so they said. She was respected for the work she did but always feared. When the Red Hand came she could do nothing to stop it, dozens died, every family in the village lost someone, but she never caught it. They locked her in her house and set it on fire. The ruin’s still there, no one ever had the courage to build on it.”

“How did you make that knife, Barkus?”

“I’m still not sure. I remember shaping the metal at the anvil, the hammer in my hand. I remember fitting the handle, but for the life of me I can’t remember lighting the forge. It was as if when I started to work I lost myself, as if I was just a tool, like the hammer… like something was working through me.” He shook his head, clearly disturbed by the memory. “My father wouldn’t let me in the smithy after that. Took me to old man Kalus, the horse breeder, told him he’d tried his best to teach me but I just wasn’t going to make a smith. Paid him a five coppers a month to teach me the horse trade.”

“He was trying to protect you,” Vaelin said.

“I know. But that’s not how it felt to a boy. It felt like… like he was frightened by what I’d done, worried that I’d shame him somehow. I even thought he might be jealous. So I decided to show him, show him what I could really do. I waited until he was away hawking wares at the Summertide fair and went back to the smithy. There wasn’t much to work with, some old horse shoes and nails. He’d taken most of his stock to sell at the fair. But I took what he’d left and I made something… something special.”

“What was it?” Vaelin asked, envisioning mighty swords and gleaming axes.

“A sun vane.”

Vaelin frowned. “A what?”

“Like a wind vane except instead of pointing at the direction of the wind it pointed at the sun. Wherever it was in the sky you always knew what time of day it was, even when the sky was clouded over. When the sun went down it’d point at the ground and track it through the earth. I made it pretty too, had flames coming out of the shaft and everything.”

Vaelin could only guess at the value of such an item, and the stir it would cause in a village terrified of the Dark. “What happened to it?”

“I don’t know. I suppose my father melted it down. When he came back from the fair I was standing there, showing him what I’d made, I felt very smug. He told me to pack. My mother was away at my aunt’s so he didn’t have to explain it to her. Faith knows what he told her when she came back and found me gone. We spent three days on the road then took ship to Varinshold then came here. He spoke to the Aspect for a while then left me at the gate. Said if I ever told anyone what I could do they would certainly kill me. Said I’d be safe here.” He laughed shortly. “Hard to believe he thought he was doing me a favour. Sometimes I think he got lost on the way to the House of the Fifth Order.”

Vaelin shook away the memory of hoof beats and, remembering Sella’s tale, said, “He was right, Barkus. You shouldn’t tell anyone. You probably shouldn’t have told me.”

“Why, going to kill me are you?”

Vaelin smiled grimly. “Well, not today.”

They stood at the wall in companionable silence, watching the barge until it turned the bend in the river and disappeared.

“I think he knew, y’know,” Barkus said. “Master Jestin. I think he could sense it, what I can do.”

“How could he know such a thing?”

“Because I could sense the same thing in him.”

Chapter 6

The next day saw the first practice with their new swords. It seemed to Vaelin that half the lesson was taken up with the correct method of strapping it across the back so it could be drawn by reaching over the shoulder.

“Tighter, Nysa.” Sollis tugged hard at Caenis’s belt strap, drawing a pained grunt. “This thing gets loose in a battle you’ll know about it soon enough. Can’t kill an enemy if you’re tripping over your own sword belt.”

They then spent over an hour learning the correct method of drawing the sword in a smooth, swift motion. It was harder than Master Sollis made it look. The leather strap holding the sword firmly in the scabbard had to be thumbed aside and the blade pulled clear without snagging or cutting its owner. Their first attempts were so clumsy Sollis ran them twice around the field at full speed, the unfamiliar weight of the swords making them sluggish.

“Faster Sorna!” Sollis lashed at him as he stumbled. “You too Sendahl, pick your feet up.”

He ordered them to try again. “Do it right. The faster you can get your sword in your hand and ready to use the less likely some bastard is going to spill your guts out in front of you.”