I opened my eyes, fighting the waves of pain-filled nausea that swirled over me, and eventually regained my senses. My right arm was devoid of feeling except at the shoulder, where the socket felt as though it had been wrenched apart. I was sitting on the ground, my back against the practice post, and Equus was on his knees in front of me, his face concerned.
"What happened?" I asked him.
He spat off to the side again, seeming to savour the time it took him to respond. "Same as happened to me, except I hit you harder. If Joseph had hit me that hard, he'd have taken my arm off."
"My arm?" I looked down. The layers of leather apron around my forearm were still there, but three thicknesses of the stiff, grease-coated hide had been sliced open. I had an immediate vision of what my arm would have looked like had that toughened leather not been there, and my stomach heaved. It took me several more minutes to recover. Equus watched me retch, making no move to aid or succour me. Finally I swallowed the taste of bile one last time and got myself under control.
"I think my arm is broken."
He shook his head. "No, it's not, but you won't use it too easily for the next few days. I caught you just below the elbow. Hammered the big muscles there. You'll bruise badly, I expect, but there's nothing broken."
"What caused it, Equus? What did you do?"
He shook his head again, abruptly this time. "Nothing. It's the swords themselves. They're different. They behave strangely. The blades bounce away from each other uncontrollably. Bounce right over the boss of the hilt and hit the arm or the wrist."
I moved to get up, but I still couldn't feel my right arm. He pulled my to my feet by my left, still talking.
"It must be a combination of the temper of the metal and the force and angle of the swing, Publius. Whatever causes it, it's damn dangerous. I can't see our people using these for a while yet. Not until we can figure out a way to stop them losing arms and hands in practice."
I took one of the new weapons in my left hand and examined it with a new awareness. It still felt good to hold. I examined the edge of the blade. There was a nick in it.
"Equus? What's this? It looks like a nick."
"It is a nick." Equus's voice sounded reflective. "That's my finest iron, but it's too soft. Look." He held the other blade towards me. It, too, was nicked. He brought it close to his own eyes. "I don't know how hard these two blades were going when they met, Publius, but I'm glad my fingers weren't between them when they did. I've never see a new sword of ours take a nick before."
"Neither have I." I turned away and moved back into the smithy, trying to flex my fingers. They responded, but my whole arm was still numb. "My God, Equus, that thing bounced before it hit my arm! Imagine what a full-strength swing would have done!"
"Aye, imagine if it had hit you in the neck."
I nodded to the statue, which still stood where the soldiers had left it. "I brought the Lady down. I think it's time she went to work for us."
He looked at her and then back at me. "You mean you're going to use her to make one of these?"
"Why not? If she's of the stuff of my skystone dagger, she won't nick."
He shrugged and patted her on the rump. "I wonder if she'll shine."
"God, my arm hurts! Let's go and have a cup of wine, and then I'm going to find the hottest steam room in the place. As soon as I regain the use of my arm, if I ever do, we'll find out whether she can shine or not."
He caught hold of the statue's faceless head and tilted the whole thing sideways. "Does Caius know you're going to melt her down? He's had her for a long time."
"Too long," I said. "No, he doesn't know yet, but he's always dropping hints about using her for something." I grimaced with pain, feeling the sensation starting to flow back into my hand. "Anyway, he can have her back later, part of her at least. I'll only need about half of her the first time."
That night I frightened my wife half out of her wits by shouting aloud and jerking upright in bed, wide awake, during the blackest part of the night. The shout was one of pain, for my injured arm had somehow become tangled in the bedclothes, but the vision in my head when I awoke was bright and clear. I had been dreaming of Claudius Seneca, seeing him leap at me, his eyes glazed in fury, his sword flashing down to end my life, and then had come a jarring blow that sent lances of pain up my arm as the edge of his blade slammed into the arm of Alaric's silver cross.
The vision kept me awake for the rest of the night, and when Equus arrived at the forge next morning, I had already been there for hours, alternately heating the Lady statue and hammering it into a rough, rectangular ingot, ignoring the pained protests of my outraged arm.
From that time on, I worked on the new sword every day for four months, giving it every minute I could spare and much time that I really could not. Equus was content to leave me alone for the greater part of that period, but he helped me considerably with the delicate, time-consuming, meticulous job of fashioning and extending the double taper of the blade. This sword, right from the outset, was to be perfect. I burned a forest of charcoal over those months, heating and reheating the metal as it changed from a rough ingot to an elongated bar, and from that to a recognizable, blade-shaped length of blackened iron. And then, almost unnoticeably, it was almost finished, waiting only for the final temper to be added to it.
"Equus," I said to him one day, "go out and find me a virgin."
"A virgin? Here?" He shook his head in mock dismay. "There's your daughters, that's it. And when Veronica gets wed there'll be one less. Virgins are scarce in armed camps. I'll go and look for one, but don't stay awake waiting for me to come back. What's an old goat like you want with a virgin, anyway?"
I was squinting along the edge of my new blade, admiring it. "Blood. Don't you remember? The ancient smiths used to quench their new blades in virgin blood, for purity."
"I didn't know that! Are you serious?"
I looked at him. "That's what the legends say. They believed that blood-quenching — virgin blood, of course — would impart the secret essence of the white iron."
"Horse turds!" His voice was rich with scorn. "Anybody with a brain knows it's the charcoal that makes the difference."
I put the blade down. "You know that, Equus, and I know it, but the ancients didn't. Not for centuries."
He came to my side and picked the blade up, squinting at it critically, looking for flaws that weren't there. "Looks good, Publius. How are you going to hilt it?"
I hadn't told him about the cross-hilt idea in my mind. "Oh, I've got a few ideas. First I have to temper it. I wonder if it will have a shine?"
"It has already, look! You can see it, can't you?" He angled the blade into the light.
I nodded. "There's something there, all right, but I'd hardly call it a shine, Equus."
"Then don't! But I'm telling you, that's what your dagger looked like at this stage, and I've never seen another piece of metal look like this, have you?"
I shook my head. "No, I have to admit I haven't."
He dropped it with a clang. "Well then, get on with edging it. It won't temper itself."
He walked away and I picked the blade up again and started to scale it with a file, whistling under my breath and feeling good about life in general. We had been untroubled by raiders of any kind throughout the autumn. The walls of our fort were completely finished in some places, and the new Council Hall was nearly completed, too, lacking only the thatching of a portion of the roof. The new year coming would be the eleven hundred and fifty-fourth year of Rome, but it would be the four hundredth year of the Christian era, and the usage of the latter method of marking time was increasing rapidly. This new year, then, would mark either the close of a century or the beginning of a new one. I had heard arguments over which was which: was 400 the last of the old or the first of the new? Personally, I did not care; the year ahead looked good for the Colony.