"Commander Varrus, you have a nose for secrets that always leads you to the right place. Pecula, show the Commander your sword." The youngest of the four flushed to hear his general address him by his nickname, which meant thief or pickpocket, and grinned in embarrassment as he drew his sword and offered it to me, hilt first. It was an ordinary Roman gladium, or short-sword, with one abrupt difference that I felt as soon as my fingers closed over the hilt. I immediately tightened my grip, looking the young man in the eye.
"What is it? Where did you get it?"
"What, sir?"
"The covering on this hilt. What is it?"
I was answered by Picus himself, who waved to the soldier to say nothing. "What do you think it is, Commander Varrus? Without looking at it."
I turned to him, gripping the hilt of the sword tightly and flexing my wrist hard, testing the grip. "I have no idea what it is," I said. "But I want to know."
"What does it feel like in your hand? Think hard."
I concentrated on what I felt, fighting the temptation to look down and see what it was. "It feels unlike anything I've ever felt before. It's not leather — too rough for that. It's not metal, not bone, not wood. It feels like..." I squeezed my grip again, feeling the texture against my palm. "Like leather covered with fine sand."
"You're nowhere close, and you never would be if you tried all day. Look at it."
I looked. The hilt was covered with a material that was neither black, nor grey, nor silver, but a mixture of all of them. The texture was as rough as a file. This thing would never slip from a sweaty or a bloody palm. Whatever it was, it had been wrapped tightly around the hilt and then bound there with tightly crisscrossed metal wire.
"I give up. What is it?"
"It's fish skin."
"It's what?"
"Fish skin."
I remembered his teasing about the joys of trout fishing earlier in the day and I looked closely at him to see if he was joking with me, but his face was serious. I returned my gaze to the young trooper, Pecula.
"What kind of fish skin?"
The young man shrugged, his open face apologetic. "I don't know, sir. I won it in a dice game. The man I won it from said it was fish skin. Said his father made it. Told me his father was a fisherman."
"Who was this man?"
"Don't know, sir. Just one of the garrison soldiers in Londinium."
"How long ago since you got this?"
"About a month ago, sir."
"Have you seen the man since then? Would you know him again?"
"Yes, sir, I'd know him, but I haven't seen him since that night."
I looked more closely at the hilt of this sword and I knew that I was looking at a thing of great value. This was a milestone discovery. I looked again at Picus, and then back at the soldier.
"I have never seen anything to equal this, and I am a collector of weapons. Would you be willing to part with it? For a good price? And a new sword?"
His eyes flickered to his general and back to me. "Well, sir, I don't know. I didn't know it was valuable."
"It's not, lad, except to me. The blade is a poor thing, nothing out of the ordinary. It's the fish skin that's valuable, but only if we can find out what kind of fish it is and whether or not we can get it here in Britain. How much is it worth to you?"
He was looking uncomfortable, knowing he could name his own price, but hesitant to offend his general by appearing to take advantage of the general's friend. I decided to help him out.
"I'll give you two months' wages and the pick of my own swords in exchange for this."
His eyes flew wide in shock. "Done, sir."
"Good man! Go to the house there and ask for Gallo. He's my major-domo. Tell him Commander Varrus would be pleased if he would show you to the weapons room. You'll find enough of these there to make your day. Take your pick of them. I made all of them with my own hands, so you should find something there to suit you."
Picus spoke up at this point, unsheathing his own sword. "Commander Varrus is one of the finest sword-makers in the Empire, Pecula. He made this one for me, when I first joined the legions. Go, now, and see if you can find one better. But I don't want to see you flashing a sword that looks as though it should belong to an Emperor. Pick a plain one."
"Yes, General!" Pecula snapped a salute and began to turn away, and then he hesitated. "Commander Varrus? You want the sheath as well?"
I smiled. "Yes, Pecula, you'd better leave that with me, too. Your new sword will have a sheath of its own."
He fumbled excitedly at his belt and handed me the scabbard. It was a plain, old scabbard, but well kept.
"Thank you," I said as I took it from him. "By the way, Gallo will also give you your two months' wages, so don't forget to ask him for them."
"Yes, Commander!" He saluted again, turned, and marched away, followed by the envious eyes of his three friends.
I slipped the sword into its scabbard. "General Picus, I'd like a word with you. Will you walk with me?"
As soon as we were out of earshot of the others, he spoke. "I thought that might appeal to you, Varrus, but two months' wages and a Varrus sword? Don't you think you overpaid him?"
"Picus, you know me. I'm an enthusiast, but I never let my enthusiasm get the better of my judgment, if I can help it. If I can discover what this fish skin is, there will probably not be enough wealth in the Colony to pay for its real worth. Believe me. I want to know what this fish is. Where it comes from. If I can find that out, I'll import it all the way across the Empire if I have to. So, I need your help. Find this soldier for me, the one young Pecula won this thing from. Question him. Find out about his father — who he is, where he lives and how he discovered this skin. As soon as you do find out, assuming that he knows at all, get the word back to me. Will you do that?"
"Of course I will."
"Good. Some day I'll make you a sword with a fishy grip."
"Sounds disgusting, but I'll look forward to having it. By the way, can you smell that stuff on your hand?"
I grinned and sniffed my palm. "No. Nothing there at all."
"That's a relief. It must be trout."
As we approached the house again, Pecula came out, bearing his new sword proudly, his face wreathed in a smile. We stopped and admired it, for he had chosen well, picking one of my best. I wished him well in the use of it, and Picus took all four of them off with him in the direction of the stables, leaving me alone. I carried my new sword into the house and made a place for it in my weapons room, then stayed there for an hour, playing with my treasures and letting the atmosphere of weaponry absorb me.
Two hours later, I was back in the forge fiddling with a piece of charcoal and a scrap of Andros's parchment. I had filled every inch of it with sketches of swords, spears, axes and Equus's new spear. Some of the swords I had drawn had leaf-shaped blades, but most of them were straight-edged. Equus was watching me; I could feel his eyes on my back. Finally, he spoke.
"You having problems with something?"
"No more than usual. I can't stop thinking about what Picus said. About shortening the shaft of that spear. He's right, it should work."
"Boudicca's belly, Varrus, I'm surprised at you! You've worked with weapons all your life and you know it can't be done! Make him a long-handled club like the ones the barbarians use, or an axe — something with all the weight at one end, so that he can swing it. But you can't shorten that spear shaft and keep it bal-
anced, any more than you can lengthen a sword blade and keep it balanced!"
"I know, Equus, I know! But still, if there was a way..."
"Horse turds! If there was a way to turn horse turds into apples, no one would ever be hungry! It can't be done."
So I sat there and fiddled, eventually turning the parchment over to use the other side of it. I drew a gladium, the finest, most efficient weapon ever designed. And then I took my charcoal and doubled the length of the blade. What a pity that wouldn't work! With a sword that length, even Picus could reach a man on the ground. But the whole shape was wrong. The straight gladium blade, extended to twice its length, would lose its rigidity and would have too much weight. And then, quite suddenly, I saw what my mind had been trying to tell me with the memory of the leaf-bladed sword. It was not the shape of the boy's old sword that had been important, it was the principle underlying it! Picus had been talking of combining a spear and an axe — rigidity with impetus. It wouldn't work; it was apples and horse turds, as Equus so eloquently put it. But a sword with the length of Equus's new spear...!