The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) by Kit Maples Read Free Book Online

away from the tree and through the cave and flung me like old soup bones into the melting snow, the silent hound watching.
    “Wash yourself, you filthy beast, and put on cleaner rags,” he commanded.  “We go to make your sword despite your ignorance, you savage, and may every goddamn god grant you some sort of blessing out of your stupidity because I won’t.”
    “What have I done now?” I cried, flailing upright in the dripping snow.  “All of this fresh misery because I can’t name one stinking tree?”
    “Take this,” Galabes said, flinging out to me a worn scramasax.  A Saxon sword longer than a Roman gladius but shorter than a British battle sword.  Single-edged for better hacking through helmets and armor.
    “It’s chipped and rusted,” I said.  “What do I want with this wretched thing?”
    “It won the battle of Camlann.  What more honor do you want in a weapon?”
    I threw it aside.  “It’s all iron, barely any steel in it.  I don’t want it, battle-winner or not.  I want my promised greatsword.”
    “Take it up,” commanded Galabes, his voice again like a sword slamming on a shield.
    I did, hastily.
    “Wipe it dry.”
    I wiped it on my furry cloak.
    “Bless the damn thing.”
    “It’s Saxon.  I don’t want to bless it.”
    “It’s in your hand to save your life.  Bless it.”
    I blessed it, for whatever good my blessing could do this old iron.
    “Is this foreign garbage all you’ll give me?” I said.  “After a winter’s misery sleeping in the snow warmed only by that voiceless hound and eating the muck you allow me and making my weapons and armor from stone?  For all the gods’ sake, I want more.  I paid Arthur’s coin for more.”
    “Shut up,” said Galabes.  “Grind and polish the blade and slide it under your belt.”
    “What belt?  You never granted me a belt.”
    He threw me a moldy old belt from his collection of ruined armor.
    Why not ask for more? I thought.
    “You never gave me a shield, either,” I said.
    “There’s a shield waiting for you at the end of all this.”
    “That checkered shield with my face on it?”
    “Shut up and grind the sword.  Then follow me.”
    “When am I no longer a slave?” I cried in fury.
    “When you are something else.”
    “What something else?”
    Galabes and the hound stared at me in silence.
    I ground the blade.  I honed the blade.  I polished the blade.  I sewed a scabbard and belted it across my back.  It is astonishing how fast one can work when a madly murderous beggar-knight and his insolent silent hound stare at you.
    “I’m ready,” I said to them.
    “I’ll know you are when Llew tells me,” said Galabes.
    The hound led across the still ice-crusted mountains toward Prince Llew’s swordmaking factory in its citadel.
    The first warmth of spring sun splashed in my face.  I breathed in the freshening air and expanded my chest.  I felt the rush of hot blood through my arms and legs.  I was fifteen and full of the energy of youth.  I swung my gleaming scramasax, slicing in half invisible monsters in the air.
    I suddenly felt I was truly on my way to freedom, power, and my promised destiny, whatever that was.
     
    * * *
     
    I was strong.  I was powerful.  I was ready for the future.
    I stood before the withered old Prince Llew in his wind-blown citadel on the first day of spring and the swordmaking season.  The wind no longer carried into the forge the howling cold.  It brought the scent of spring grass.
    “She’s grown,” said Llew, in a startled, young man’s voice.  “She has a certain first toughness of spirit, all right, but her muscles” – he grabbed and squeezed my thighs and arms – “are still wiry and light.”
    He peered at me out of cataracted eyes.  I was startled to see in them two bright blue spots of pupil I had not noticed when I first met him a half year ago.
    “She’s still a skinny barbarian,” Llew said to Galabes, suddenly angry.  “What have you