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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.
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"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.
I suddenly remembered something I've no idea what prompted the memory and
reached into my scrip for the shell I had picked up from the dining table the
night before. My fingers found it and I placed it delicately on the work-bench
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