“There’s blood and hair in the helmet.” The armourer shrugged. “And a bit missing from the chest piece.”
He picked up the piece I pointed at. Tired Lands armour is made of hundreds of small overlapping rectangular pieces enamelled in bright colours laid over leather and held together by wire in such a way to protect the wearer. This piece was harlequin armour, its many colours giving away that it had been cobbled together from bits of other armours. It did not hang well and the chest piece was full of gaps. “I can replace those,” he said. “You can clean the helmet.” I looked over the rest of the armour. The solid shoulder pieces and the fishscale over the leather arm guards were just passable. The leather greaves, inset with iron, and the skirt of canvas and chain were bearable but it was, by any stretch of the imagination, poor armour. I could not say so as the boy I was meant to be would not know enough of armour to know bad from good. In fact, a youngest son with a club foot would probably be over the moon just to receive something as expensive as a full set of armour.
“Gladly,” I said and painted on a smile. “How do I clean it?”
The armourer shook his head. “They teach you nothing in the country? Sand and vinegar will remove rust and dirt, and you can get fat from the kitchen to help protect it from rusting further and grease the hard joints at shoulder and elbow. You’ll be wanting swords too?”
“Yes.”
He looked pained and returned to his room, coming back with two weapons—a longsword and a smaller stabsword, both weapons of very poor quality. “Here, boy, if you can carry them.” He dropped them in front of me.
“No,” I said. I may let him push his worst armour on me but not a poor blade. A good blade was far more important to me than armour. “I might only be from the country but I looked after my brother’s blades. I need good blades, and these—” I nudged the weapons away from me with my foot “—are not good blades.”
He gave me a smile that almost reached the corners of his mouth and walked back into his room. He returned with a selection of blades, laying them out on the scarred and chipped wooden table at the side of his workshop.
“Very well, young blessed,” he sneered. “As you are such a fine judge of blades you may pick your own.”
There were twelve blades set out. Six were not paired, merely orphan swords, and I ignored them immediately. A good smith makes the stabsword and longsword at the same time so they can be weighted against each other for balanced combat. Mismatched blades are better than no blades but it would foolish to choose them when there are other options. In the centre of the remaining six lay a pair of beautiful, shiny, gilded and inlaid weapons. I suspect he thought that, with the thief’s eye of the young, I would take those. I hovered over them for a moment, more to build his expectation than anything else, before passing on. They were too weighty and their ornate curves made them easy for an opponent to snag. Of the two pairs left, one set was perfectly serviceable and the other almost completely covered in a patina of rust and dirt.
I realised that the armourer was an oaf. “These ones.” I pointed at the rusted blades.
“The rusty ones?” He scratched at his stubbly chin.
“Rust can be removed. With sand and vinegar, I believe you said.” I don’t know if he was more annoyed at having his words thrown back at him or by not understanding why I had chosen a pair of rusty blades. In either case I would not give him the satisfaction of an explanation. “A bow now?”
“Bows is in the squireyard. Pick one o’ them.” He reached out for the rusty blades and picked up the shorter stabsword, clearly trying to work out what I saw in it. “There’s writing on this,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “there is.” I held out my hand for the blade and he passed it over, grudgingly.
“These are mine now?”
“Aye, king’s gift if you’re a squire without.” He stared at me suspiciously. “What’s it say on ’em?” his brows furrowed, and he looked like a dog that could see food through crystal but did not understand why it hurt its nose every time it lunged for it.
“I cannot make it out,” I said, “for the rust.” This was a lie. It said Conwy, the name of a bladesmith from before the world soured. I doubted the blade was a real Conwy as they are the blades of kings, but even the copies are held to be excellent weapons. “Shield?”
He shook his head. “In the squireyard.”
“Thank you. Send the armour to my room when you’ve fixed it, my name is Girton ap Gwynr. I’ll take the swords with me,” I said cheerfully, and left him scratching his head.
Chapter 4
Maniyadoc has stood for a thousand years and squats on a hill dominating the land around it. The main keep is a vast square and in front of it is a courtyard and a gatehouse. The towers standing at each corner are covered in the totems of the dead gods, their faces long ago chipped away. Two similarly decorated and defaced towers stand to either side of the gatehouse a hundred or so paces before the keep and are joined to the main building by walls to create a killing zone which turns the whole construction into a rectangle. The keep and its walls rise for six storeys and have enough room within to house an army and all it needs to keep supplied—smiths, bakers, cooks—though no one in the Tired Lands has an army large enough to fill it. Around the keep is the keepyard, which holds the training grounds, and around the keepyard runs the first wall, the keepyard wall, which is twenty paces thick at the bottom, fifteen at the top and as high as ten men. The outer ten paces are solid; the inner part of it is riddled with rooms and stairs, though many have collapsed through lack of use and care.
Around the keep and its wall is a second and much larger space called the townyard. If you mount the battlements of the gatehouse or the keepyard wall you can look down and see the ghost of the town that once filled it. Brown squares of dead grass trace out buildings of almost unimaginable size. In the first years of the imbalance men had more than they had ever thought possible, but now we know only myths of plenty and live lives full of jealousy for what the long-dead once had.