Carel had half risen from his seat to reclaim the pipe when Isak slipped it under the cooling metal and smashed the hammer down again, shattering the fired clay and sending pieces clattering out around the room. Carel opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. Isak had clearly done that for a reason, just as there had to be sense in the way the boy had repeatedly gestured towards Carel as though he was wafting the scent of the sword towards him.

Abandoning the Krann to his labours, Carel went into the frosty night air, a heavy fur draped over his shoulders, and sat himself down on a rough wooden bench against the wall. It gave him a good view of the deserted training field, which glistened frostily in the moonlight. Mihn's eyes swept over the veteran, then he returned to his own distant thoughts. The foreigner had left the door of the forge only to fetch a fur for himself once the cold night air started to bite. As a cloud covered the gibbous face of Alterr above, Carel fumbled through his pockets for his tobacco pouch, which also contained the scratched wooden pipe that had accompanied him on every campaign of his life. He filled and lit it before offering the pouch to Mihn.

'Come and sit down, man,' he said, patting the bench. 'Isak doesn't need a guard at this time of night.'

Mihn stared suspiciously at both Carel and his offering, shaking his head to the pouch, but he did leave his post to cross the few yards to the bench. He made no noise as he walked, even across the iced grass. Carel was a Ghost; he had worked with the biggest and best of the Farlan, men who combined skill and grace with more deadly skills. Mihn was shorter than every soldier there, and slender too, but he stood out to the trained eye. The man reminded Carel of the black leopard he'd seen once in Duke Vrerr's menagerie in Tor Milist. The animal had hypnotised Carel: it moved with an almost supernatural elegance. A drunken soldier had got too close to the enclosure and in the blink of an eye the leopard's pose had changed from lethargy to lethal purpose.

'Have you been watching him?' asked Mihn suddenly, bringing

Carel back to the present with a jerk.

'1- ah, yes. I don't know what he's doing now, but that'll be one fine weapon when he's finally satisfied. The shape's there already, but

he keeps beating at it.'

'Is he speaking?' There was a slight anxiety in Mihn's voice, but Carel saw nothing in his face.

'Nothing 1 could hear, but I saw his lips move from time to time. Why?'

'No matter. Is he going to engrave it too?'

'If you're so interested, what're you doing out here?'

Mihn ducked his head slightly and Carel immediately regretted his

tone.

'Sorry, lad, my mind's still waking up. Feels like I've been in a trance while watching him. I think he's going to engrave it, yes. He's got some tools beside him – though I've never seen him do anything like it before.'

'I doubt he has.'

Carel drew deeply on his pipe. 'Being as mysterious as ever tonight,

1 see. Care to tell me?'

The smaller man shook his head, blinking away the smoke.

'Then let me tell you something then,' said the veteran, his voice a low growl. Mihn caught the tone immediately and sat stock-still, his body almost quivering with readiness. Had it been almost any other man, Carel would have grabbed him by the tunic, but the image of the leopard rose in his mind once more. The drunken soldier had

died.

Mihn had already proven his skill publicly. A friend of one of the soldiers he had felled in the barbican tunnel tried to secure some measure of revenge. He was a hulking brute, but a skilled one. His wrist was so badly dislocated the surgeons at the College of Magic had to be called in to repair the damage. A rib, snapped under a well-placed knee, was still giving him trouble. Carel had seen that Mihn had the killing blow ready and waiting. Luckily, it had not been needed.

'Whatever penance you're doing, I don't care, see? I've smacked his arse and wiped his eyes; I've taught him when to fight and when to stand back. Even if you'd give your life for him, that's nothing big to me. If you know something, if you even suspect it, don't you dare hide it, not from me. In case your nose has been so far up his arse you haven't noticed, Isak's a white-eye. He's a stubborn and wilful shit for much of the time, but I love him like a son and I know his mind better than he does. He can protect himself from others, but he's no defence against himself.'

Mihn stared into Carel's eyes and then, without warning, wilted.

'I understand,' he said quietly. 'And I apologise. I held my tongue because there are those who expect great things, or fear them. I should trust you as he does.'

‘And so?' replied Carel, a little mollified.

‘And so I believe he is beating magic into that sword. Whether he recognises it or not, Lord Isak seems to be something of a mage-smith.'

'How can he not know it?'

'If he has the skill, it will come naturally – not the complex spells of Eolis, which would take weeks of preparation, but a white-eye's version. I've heard that mage-smiths go into a near-trance when they forge. I think Lord Isak is pouring raw magic into the blade to help it last, or be lighter to use. With a mind for forging, and his powers developing very recently, it's an unsurprising outcome, but-'

'But that's not what people are likely to think,' breathed Carel. They'll see the greatest mage-smith in history, practising his craft once more.'

'Exactly. Does Lord Bahl have mages he can trust? Could we summon one to be here? It would be best if it were someone willing to take any credit if the sword does have any magic in it.'

'I'm sure there will be. Go and wake Lesarl – he should be able to organise something like that.'

As Mihn slipped off into the chill darkness, Carel turned back to the closed door of the forge. The memory of Isak labouring away, his eyes closed and a smile on his lips, confirmed Mihn's suspicions in his own mind.

'Ah, my boy, you'll be the death of me yet. I should be abed by now. Instead I'm playing nursemaid and waiting about in the dead of night for some fat mage.' He chuckled to himself, pulling his fur tighter around him and taking slow puffs on his pipe until the night air grew too cold for him and he retreated inside the forge. Isak was as he had left him, but this time Carel sat closer and paid greater attention. He still couldn't make out the words Isak was muttering over that blade, but they didn't sound Farlan.

When the old man did finally retire for the night, it was with worry etched into his brow.

CHAPTER 23

Two days later they were ready. The cold heart of winter seemed to have thawed for a moment, and a rare sparkle of sun had lit up the previous afternoon when Isak finally emerged from the forge, happily exhausted. Fetching a mage from the College of Magic had turned out to be a real blessing, for Chirialt Dermeness, a strong, fit man of forty summers, was an authority on magical forging.

The man was not what Isak had expected. Even the battle-mages tended towards the portly, but Dermeness had realised that to be a mage-smith meant first of all being a capable smith. He himself had beaten out every piece of Count Vesna's armour before engraving the necessary runes into its surface.

Mage Dermeness had, in a brief time, taught Isak much about the basics of the art. Isak had an image of the end result in his mind, and the mage had improved the reality. It had taken a full day of engraving, sharpening, sharpening again, and finally detailing with gold-leaf before the sword was ready. Then Isak had staggered away to sleep while Tila prepared his baggage and got everything ready to be off the next morning.