“They say Stefan and his nobles already fight the Turk,” he said, “although why he asks for the aid of Vladeran and Draculea, I’ll never know. The King’s too trusting, I think. They rumour Vladeran has other ambitions for the lands that lie about his own, while Draculea is a law unto himself.”
Lescu grunted, but went on filing down the horseshoe he had just attached to the stranger’s animal. Lescu did not want to hear anything of the world beyond the forge.
“Vladeran’s savagery is legendary now. His persecution of the Helgra grows worse by the day.”
Lescu snorted and scraped harder.
“You’d have thought the Order of the Griffin would rise up in their defence. They’re sworn to protecting the earth, and the people in it. Or were, at least.”
The man, seeing the blacksmith didn’t want to talk, changed tack.
“It’s good, strong shoes you make,” he said admiringly, “and we all need strong armour nowadays. I trust you’ve prepared your son to fight properly,” he added, looking over to Catalin, who was setting out more nails for his father. “You live out of the way, it’s true, but I doubt any will be able to avoid the fighting, even here.”
Lescu stopped working and looked up guiltily at his boy. Tenderness, and fear for Catalin, pierced his heart. Lescu wanted nothing for his son but happiness and peace, but he suddenly thought that we may wish all the peace and love we can on the world, and for the people in it whom we care for, but what if the world changes suddenly? Isn’t it our duty then to prepare them for what might be? To prepare them to fight. Yet as he stood there, the blacksmith wasn’t thinking just of Catalin.
The shoeing was done, and the stranger paid Lescu in silver and mounted his horse.
“I wish you well, Fierar,” he cried. “Perhaps finer lords will bring you better pay than I can afford. I met two riding a fortnight back, who would bring you much gold. They served the Order of the Griffin.”
Catalin looked up with interest, but Lescu hardly reacted at all.
“They were on some strange mission too, but then that Order is always cloaked in plots and secrecy. Their leader’s identity is as well hidden as the Old Man of the Mountain. Yet I heard them talking. They seek out a girl.”
Catalin looked sharply at his father, and Lescu’s brow furrowed, though only slightly.
“Some redheaded child,” said the garrulous fellow, “and very important by the sounds of it.”
The blacksmith was silent, but the hammer in his hand was trembling.
“Important?”
“So they said. I don’t envy her, if what they rumour now of the Order is true,” said the man, pulling on the reins and turning his horse’s head. “You know Lord Vladeran cleaves to the Griffin. Perhaps he leads it. Yet if he does, why should he persecute the Helgra?”
As the stranger rode away, a figure stepped from the shadow of the forge. Alina had heard everything. Lescu saw the fear and resentment in her clever eyes. Then Alina Sculcuvant simply turned, her thick red hair swinging about her shoulders, and walked scornfully away.
Three mornings later she was in the forge, cleaning out the coke from the bottom of the fire, and trying not to get it on her dress, when she heard a clanking beside her and turned to see a pair of shears clattering across the stone lip of the fire. Lescu was standing behind her.
“What are those for?” she asked sullenly.
“To cut your hair again, of course,” answered the blacksmith, looking at the pretty young woman and shaking his head. “It’s grown too long for a lad who journeys into such danger, and one who would wield a sword, I think.”
Alina’s hazel eyes opened wide and her heart began to beat faster.
“Then … then you’ll make me a sword, Lescu?”
“I’ll do more than that,” answered Lescu reluctantly. “I’ll teach you the skills of a warrior, as you asked. Or start to anyway.”
Alina wanted to hug him, but something held her back. Perhaps the very arts he was talking of.
“Thank you, dear Lescu.”
“Don’t thank me, Alina,” said Lescu gruffly. “Simply learn and prepare, as carefully as for a visit to Baba Yaga.”
Alina smiled.
“I will. I promise.”
She didn’t pick up the shears though, and instead grasped her hair and began to bind it in a knot behind her head.
“If the Order of the Griffin is searching, we may not be able to hide you here, Alina,” said Lescu. “But they look for a girl, so you may hide as a boy again. And if you’re set on your course to Castelu, I must help you indeed. Now calm yourself and listen,” added the blacksmith, striding forwards and picking up a piece of metal and his hammer. “Bring me my apron and light the fire.”
Soon a blaze was burning in the forge, as Lescu worked the bellows, and when it was hot enough, he plunged the metal roughly into the flames.
“When metal has not been hammered out properly,” said Lescu, as he lifted his hammer and started his lessons, “it will be brittle and break easily, and so it is with a man’s heart. Or a woman’s, perhaps. We’ll see, but a warrior must be tempered like good steel.”
Alina nodded enthusiastically.
“So temper both warrior and blade, I say, before you send her into battle. I’ll not have you going into the Griffin’s lair unarmed.”
“The Griffin’s lair?”
“Perhaps Vladeran does lead the Griffin Order. Perhaps he is your father. Whatever the truth of it, we must prepare you to face him.”
“How?” asked Alina, wondering now what it really meant to be a warrior. Lescu put down the sword and pulled the apron from his chest, uncovering his leather jerkin. He leaned forwards suddenly and gave Alina such a shove that the girl went flying backwards and fell over in the dirt, startled and winded.
“Get up, silly child,” cried Lescu furiously, “and if you have the guts for it, learn to defend yourself to the death.”
Lescu’s eyes were blazing, and Alina was so startled by the change in the man that she felt sick and terrified. She just sat there, staring back in amazement, and Lescu kicked some dirt towards her.
“Up, child. Or are you really just a thief and a murderer?” he hissed. “You say you killed Malduk in defence, but I say you’re a liar, a word weaver, or else put a knife in his back. It seems you’re a coward too.”
“I’m not a—”
Lescu kicked more dirt.
“Fool. Coward and liar. I say you didn’t cross the mountains without help. Have you allies in the hills? But I’ll tell you my truth. To me you’re nothing, whelp, and it’s time I showed you.”
Alina felt that furious, bristling anger inside her again, that almost lifted her to her feet on its own. She remembered Ranna and Malduk’s constant insults and petty punishments, and how she had always hated herself for feeling so guilty in their presence, and for not fighting back.
Somewhere Alina realised that Lescu was simply goading her on, but her anger flared up like the forge, with the injustice of it all. With a cry of fury, Alina WovenWord hurled herself at the blacksmith.
“No. Stop it. I hate you.”
Lescu simply stepped to the side and brought a hand down heavily on her back, not intending to injure her, but to add to the momentum that was already carrying Alina on.
The girl went sailing past him and crashed into a bag of corn in the far corner of the forge, in a painful heap. She struggled round to face Lescu. Alina was furious and ashamed. Her hair had tumbled down about her shoulders again, and she felt scalding tears on her cheeks. Lescu strode over to her, put a hand on her arm, and helped her gently to her feet.
“Peace now, Alina. I’m sorry.”
Months and years of fear, frustration, and confusion were welling up inside her, and suddenly the tears came gushing down her face, as they had often done in the barn on Malduk’s farm when she had been alone.
“No,” she sniffed miserably, “you’re right, Lescu. What I ask is foolish and stupid. I’m just a girl.”
Alina dropped her head.
“Perhaps,” said Lescu, with a kindly smile, “but know yourself, girl. You’ve other things than a man’s strength. You’ve wit and intelligence, heart and instinct. And you have great courage too, that has brought you this far, against the odds. Brute strength is far from everything.”
Alina looked up hopefully and tried to smile. No one had called her brave before, and she felt proud.
“There, Alina, I was too strong on you, too soon,” said Lescu softly. “That’s the bully’s way, and it’ll not happen again. But it was good to see the anger flow from you at last, Sculcuvant, and self-respect too. Come here.”
He led Alina over to the water bucket by the forge and stared into it.
“Look there, Alina. My father always taught me that although, as we grow, we desperately seek others’ approval—our friends’, our parents’, the world’s—what really matters is what we see when we look there, and see ourselves. That’s the true judge we always wake to in the morning. The mirror of ourselves.”
Alina looked down too.
“I’ve watched you many times at work, Alina, and in the house telling your stories. So thoughtful and melancholy, so timid often, when you’re not consumed with anger. You feel deeply, and it’s bad for you to hold in your feelings too much. You’ve a right to them.”
Alina was surprised by the idea that she had a right to her feelings, but by something else too. She looked pretty in the water.
“Yes,” she sniffed, wiping her face on her sleeve and trying to smile, “I suppose I have.”
“Don’t suppose, Alina. Be yourself.”
“Yes, Lescu, I’ll try, I promise.”
Alina wondered what that meant though. What does it really mean to be oneself?
She looked back at the water, and suddenly a jolt of fear went through her. There she could see herself, but not in reflection. She was sitting at a great oak table, and Catalin was next to her, and the table was heaped with rare meats and beakers of blood red wine.
Alina blinked in astonishment at the magic of it. Tales of changelings and Baba Yaga may have been false, but this seemed a deep power indeed. What’s happening to me? she wondered, and almost immediately the picture changed.
Alina trembled. There was Ranna, and her face was rapt with fury, as she ran through the snows. She was moving through the night, and at her side was Mia. The little child looked frightened and lost, and Alina suddenly felt a terrible guilt that she had found no fairies or goblins to cast a spell to protect her friend. But Mia kept stopping and seemed to be helping her angry old aunt. Then the picture changed again.
There was Alina again, not in a fine hall but sitting on a stone floor, surrounded by filthy straw, her hands chained. The place looked terrible and Alina felt a shudder of terror. Was this her future? It was a prison.
“Alina. What’s wrong?”
The pictures in the water vanished, and Alina shook her head.
“Nothing, Lescu.”
“You must listen carefully to what I tell you now, Alina. It’s how you control and direct your anger and the force inside that matters,” the smith went on. “Discipline’s everything, especially for a girl, naturally weaker than a man. Though not all men, it’s true.”
Alina’s tears had dried and she realised that Lescu was saying something very important. She stepped towards him.
“You stumbled at me in a blind rage,” said Lescu. “So I turned your own power against you with the brush of a hand. Calm and purposeful. As
you
must be. To master the art of fighting, a true warrior must first master himself. Or herself.”
Lescu again picked up the sword he had been making. It had begun to cool, and he swung it cleanly through the air.
“To know a true threat,” said Lescu, looking at her keenly, “and then to let the anger come like a directed flame, that’s the skill. To control it and strike with a calm, clear mind, like the blacksmith wielding his hammer, turning another’s force against him.”
Lescu swung again, jabbed, and then turned and struck at Alina’s face. But he brought the blade to a stop just short of the young woman’s forehead, and smiled again.
“And do you know what the best skill that I could ever teach you is?” he asked.
Alina raised a hand slowly and pushed the blade away from her face. It was cold to the touch now. The gesture made Lescu look at her admiringly, for it had pride and dignity and strength.
“A cut, Lescu? A thrust? How to parry?”
“Oh, no,” answered the blacksmith softly, lowering the sword completely, “how to stand on one leg. Perhaps for an hour at time.”
Alina almost laughed at her friend. “One leg?”
Lescu sank slightly and lifted his right leg completely off the ground, as he held the sword. “Balance is everything. Balance of body and mind and spirit.”
Standing there in this strange way, Lescu was perfectly still, but he suddenly moved the sword and swung it over his right shoulder. He brought it to a halt at a perfect right angle, like a compass needle reaching a meridian, and hardly swayed at all.
“With balance and control comes clarity and power,” said Lescu, “and the ability to move at will, and to be aware of all around you. Always come back to the centre then, and be connected.”
“Connected?”
Lescu brought his foot down heavily on the ground.
“With the earth,” he said loudly, “for it is that which saves the warrior. The earth is the stage on which all our arts are played out. Like a flower, or a plant taking nurture from the soil, the warrior connected to the force of the ground will find life and power flowing through him.”
Alina thought of the ice field and the wild power she had felt out there, and of the black wolf too. Were humans really connected to that power? The power of nature?
“But I see that I’m telling you things you think silly, or do not yet understand. Well, we’ll see. My own teacher, who travelled far to the East, taught me things our brutal Western knights do not know,” said the blacksmith. “How to turn an attacker’s own force against him, how to shift a hundred pounds with three ounces, and how everything begins in here.”
Lescu touched a finger to his forehead, as the gypsy woman had done by the fire, when she had spoken of the Gift.
“In the mind, Alina. A real battle is all won here first. Or lost. And sometimes it’s as if a fight is all played out here first, before it even happens. Your true enemies are not only the soldiers waiting to face you, but fear and uncontrolled anger, lack of precision and self-doubt. For all the natural paradoxes and confusions of life, for all the times we long for the instincts of the wild animal, never forget what lies here. Higher mind.”