I’m not very good with math. My own, pet theory on this is that people start by learning to count on their fingers, and I don’t have any. Regardless, I’m not any good with dates sort of by association, and thus you’re going to have to forgive me some vagueness.
I was initially forged back in the Good Old Days, when killing was up close and personal – unless you were some persnickity little fuck with a longbow; luckily, they weren’t everywhere yet.
My creator, a thorough and passionate admirer of this stirring feature of his time, proclaimed me his masterwork, and gifted me to his lord in lieu of rent, or tribute, or whatever they called it in those days. His Lordship (I think his name was something that started with “s”… Stewart? Sven? Sam?) was highly pleased with me, but, clumsy-though-well-muscled sod that he was, managed to snap me in two with a misaimed practice stroke that smashed me into a wall. Livid, he flung me at my creator’s feet and proclaimed him a worthless toady, then forced him to pay double.
My creator, though a remarkably skilled and cunning man, was quite human (thank goodness I’m not like that) and took this hurt as a matter of pride. He promptly took himself into seclusion for several months, turning away all business, during which time he re-forged me in a cauldron of boiling blood obtained from his brother-in-law (he was a butcher and sold him some cattle blood. What were you thinking?).
When I came out, gleaming fresh and bloody, he used me to sacrifice a lamb to something with far too many consonants in its name and declared me alive, at which point I woke up quite suddenly. Very shocking, really. You people get a nice slow start to sentience, transforming from screaming feces machines to illogical, self-centred brats to semi-logical, self-centred jerks gradually over many years. I got a fully developed and working intellect in a split second, with a handful of memories from being a metallic implement. It shocked me dreadfully, and I’m very thankful for the many weeks I spent hidden away in a locked trunk in my creator’s cabin. It gave me some time to sort things out: a few tricky existential questions that most people don’t think about when they’re young and never recall when they’re old, and many, many, many hours of elaborate speculation upon the nature of knots in pine wood, and on what sort of noises cockroaches made depending upon their relevant health (my hypothesis on limping roaches hissing more was never confirmed or debunked to my satisfaction).
Anyways, after quite a long period of trunkishness, I was unearthed by my creator and used once more as tribute to the lord. My creator explained, with a twinkle in his marvellously canny little eyes, that I had been specially re-forged to be tougher so that none of his Lordship’s little high-spirited moments would split or sunder me. Being the oaf his Lordship was, he proceeded to test this by ramming me into the floor. I was the most surprised person there when I not only didn’t snap, but clove almost full-length into it (through a stone block, might I add).
Needless to say, his Lordship was most impressed. My creator was given full room and board in his castle, a dingy little thing that was nevertheless the height of luxury compared to his squalid shack. He moved on to smithing many intricate and clever things, like torture implements and other weapons. I was never possessive towards him or jealous about them; they were mere instruments with no minds of their own. It would be like a human becoming envious of a beloved’s dog. Also, my creator had virtually no redeeming values, something I was aware of from the start. He was greedy, petty, vengeful, and unappreciative of his own gifts. I was incapable by design of many of those flaws, but I was determined to avoid those that I could.
His Lordship eventually used me in actual battle, an exhilarating experience for him and me both. My incredible cutting edge allowed him to stand against almost anyone, and I must admit, there is something seriously thrilling about being the only reason an otherwise average schlup is capable of performing any of his deeds. He himself didn’t see it that way, of course, but he still boasted long and loud of his “miraculous magic sword.” Of course, it was only a matter of a few more weeks before a hired cutthroat performed the duty of his name upon his Lordship whilst he slept and absconded with me, which was pretty much what my creator had planned for in the first place. I never heard of him again, but I like to imagine that he died in a painful and undignified manner, which, given the era, was probably betting with the odds.
The cutthroat gave me to another petty tyrant (possibly a baron?) who’d decided that one of his immediate underlings possessing an undefeatable blade was poor planning. He promptly paid the cutthroat by lodging me in his chest cavity. I’m not sure why he didn’t expect that.
My new wielder was a far craftier man, one who reminded me uncomfortably of my creator, only of higher birth. Being crafty, he wasn’t dumb enough to fight anyone unless he absolutely had to, which meant that I didn’t see use past ending the life of my burglar for several years. Than one day one of my wielder’s rivals set the peasants to rebelling, using the cunning argument that his unjust rule was preferable to my wielder’s capricious regime. My wielder’s guards were swarmed on the ramparts by angered peasants, and I was soon being used inside the keep’s walls in a truly exciting melee. It was magnificently entertaining after such a lengthy period of boredom, and I daresay I was the deciding factor in the baron’s victory, allowing him to smite down brawny foes and those better-skilled than he with ease. He was so pleased by his snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat that he promptly led a counterattack against his rival’s keep, which sadly doomed him to, well, doom. He’d forgotten in the heat of the moment that his nemesis had sent only a few of his henchmen out to whip up the mobs, and that he still possessed a sizable stable of thugs as opposed to the baron’s scanty and much-depleted band of brutes. I still performed more-than-adequately, but the baron, alas, did not. I can’t say I mourned him that much; he’d been an odiously boring schemer and then a hot-headed fool, exchanging one vice for another in a most silly and carefree manner. I believed I might’ve had something to do with it, but I didn’t care at all. Still don’t.
Well, after that things got sort of hectic. I moved from hand to hand like the world’s most temperature-enhanced potato, my speed of ownership-changing hastened by greased palms. The preferred grease was blood. Most of my owners were unmemorable, violent scum, and by the time I realized that the amount of fascination I commanded couldn’t simply be the result of my more-than-impressive capabilities, I was quite happy to learn that I cursed almost all of my carriers to violent deaths. Quite frankly, the sort of person who seeks out an object of pure violence and then revels in using it for its intended purpose should scarcely be surprised when he dies violently, don’t you agree?
Now and then, given the fullness and abundant lengthiness of time, I ended up being used by someone halfway decent. I couldn’t really prevent my curse from functioning, however, and more than often I didn’t want to. Most of the nicer ones weren’t as prone to using me, which I must admit I found quite annoying. Being picked up by some maniacal hacker was almost refreshing after spending a year or two hanging on a wall. The most egregious example led to a truly startling revelation on my part.
My current wielder was a truly bloodthirsty man, a skilled combatant, a warlord on the rise, who had the bad luck to try to charge a man with a longbow. Guess who won that one. I was looted from the battlefield and spent a few months being traded, sold, and resold, with occasional murderous theft, before ending up in a monastery under the possession of the abbot, a renowned scholar. I was placed back into wall-hanger status for twelve years, during which time I was meticulously scrutinized by the man so many times that to this day the very sight of anyone with any of his facial features (beaky nose, square jaw), makes me feel ill.
The one blessing out of the whole incident was that it gave me a very long time to think, and even that was offset by the depressing truth that there wasn’t much for me to think on. I don’t have existential questions. For me, it all boils down to “I’m a sword.” I was made to hurt people, I do my best to keep my function going, and the fact that I inevitably lead violence to my owner is a mere side-dish on the dinner-for-one table arrangement of my existence.
At any rate, I found myself witness to all the comings and goings of the monastery’s important business, due to my wall-hanging position within the abbot’s chambers. Quite a lot of this business was done through the abbot’s right-hand man (his name eludes me, as does that of the abbot), who was much more savvy in real-world matters, although he wasn’t as well-educated. He was whole-heartedly devoted to the well-being of the monastery, but he held a very small spark of resentment quite close to his soul, that he, the man who held the place together as much as its mortar, was put beneath the man who was at best a vague overseer, and who, despite the best efforts of his advisor, would occasionally ignore his advice.
One day, this overlooked and underappreciated man was leaving the abbot to his contemplations after a somewhat fruitless attempt at persuading him to take a certain diplomatic tack. As he walked beneath my place of hangment, I could almost smell the pent-up frustration and anger streaming off him (I have no nose, but you will, of course, allow me figures of speech). In what seemed the most simple and natural thing in the world to do, I reached and suddenly he realized that all of his problems would be solved if he simply became abbot. Then the monastery would be led properly. He shook off this disturbing turn of thoughts immediately, of course, but it remained in his head as he departed.
I was left with spinning thoughts of my own. No longer would I have to suffer through months or years of inactivity! Now I would control my own fate, wielding my owner as he did me, choosing the next in line for my use! The exclamation points of triumph roiled through the paragraphs of my imagined future in an epic of joy!
From then on, every visit planted seeds of annoyance, peevishness, and general furiousness in his head at the tremendous ineffectuality of his superior. Eventually, I had him musing that the only method of promotion sure to work would be murder. But how to murder a fit and tough man, certainly stronger than he was? He knew little of poisoning, and hiring cutthroats would leave a trail. Of course, immediately after that he couldn’t help but remember the marvellous antique sword mounted upon the abbot’s wall, upon which the man himself had frequently and earnestly expounded, lingering upon its incredible cutting capabilities…
It was a bit messier than he thought it’d be, and he was caught trying to clean up after himself. I’d planned that too… a lack of turmoil meant I was doomed to wallhangingdom. I was used to hack through the nearby witnesses (a moment of mental nudging was required there), and then I was in the possession of a newly-minted and aged-soul’d outlaw, where I remained for several exciting years of hack-and-slash robbery before he committed suicide for me, a new and bothersome event. Luckily, he had the good grace to kill himself within snooping distance of a fairly well-traveled road (he was a highwayman, after all), and so I only had to endure a few days of being stuck through the ribcage of a rapidly-putrefying corpse.
The owners came on, and the times moved on. Once gunpowder weapons began to really proliferate, I began to change wielders much more frequently, an event that was not without risk. On the other hand, the black powder of death wasn’t the only step forwards… I began to see more and more of the world as humanity became more well-travelled, and some of it even before the metallic sceptre of the gun overshadowed all; I saw the crusades firsthand, for instance, and flipped from side to side almost every battle.
I made it to the new world at the side of a conquistador, and eventually found myself slipped between the ribs of Montezuma the second, although as to who my wielder was I will remain silent. What’s the romance of history worth when all its secrets are laid bare?
I ended up in the Caribbean, and was used with admirable effect by someone named something like Edmond (Edwin?) Torch, one of the few of my owners I deign to even attempt to remember properly, for, despite his vulgar vices, he was exceedingly deadly. He died headless, and I was claimed by a British sailor in the confusion after his death. This led to a somewhat perilous existence for many decades, being used by naval men of all nationalities and stripes, constantly in fear of being lost overboard, a fate which very nearly occurred more than once.
Eventually I came to the great wars of Europe, and I found a world that had left me behind quite badly. Guns were everywhere, but there was still a place for me in the brutality of close-up combat, where still nothing could match a good cutting edge, and my cutting edge made “good” appear as dull as the louts I was slicing. It was interesting for me to find, as the lead-spitting dragons gained prominence, that here was the time in which I acquired the greatest body count, this special era before the utter predominance of the ranged weapon, when the ability to carve your enemy’s face off was still more than merely useful in some situations. Several times I came within spitting (well, sighting anyways) distance of Napoleon himself, on various sides. Despite the enormous pileups of corpses that were frequent, I never was left on a body long enough to be missed – even if no one’s eye was caught and dragged to me (as often happened, and easily), I would snag their interest by force.
The times moved on, and the wars did too, going ever-farther away from the age of the blade. I saw some action in colonial Africa, but alas, that was the last of the big battles for me. There was no place for me in the War To End All Wars, nor its hate-fuelled successor, and at last I saw that the guns had won. What did I do then, you ask? Why, the obvious: crime! As I was no longer the weapon of choice for official slaughter, I would humble myself enough to engage in outside-the-box stabbing. Although somewhat archaic-looking compared to the switchblades and shivs of the modern thug, my effect was unquestionable. The only major downside was that I was immeasurably harder to conceal – a two-and-a-half-foot blade as opposed to a five-or-six-inch one. In retrospect, my eventual confiscation by the authorities seems inevitable, but at the time I was too busy cursing my luck to think about that.
I was taken to several different experts of medieval arms, who were able to date me and half-guess at my place of origin (I think they were correct, but I’d forgotten both by then). After all this, I was hauled off to a museum, where I remain to this day. The ultimate wall-hanging.
The security around here is too intense for me to try and tempt any passer-bys to taking me, and those who could disable the alarms and remove me without incident too rarely pass by. I’ve been here for twenty years or more, and it may be my fate forever.
The time of swords is over. There is no place for me now except as a wallhanging, and while I used to dread that fate, it is what is expected of me now, and so I accept it gladly. This situation is by no means permanent, anyways. I hear bits and pieces of the world as it walks by my display case, and who knows? In ten years, twenty years, thirty years, a hundred years, there could be a time when the blade will be needed once more. Whether because the black powder dragons have had their day and died in the pyres of a fading civilization, or because one of the old horrors you no longer believe has awoken from a great sleep.
Oh? You don’t know of them? Ha! You’ll believe in a sword with a mind of its own, but not in dragons, trolls, giants? Don’t be so devastatingly grounded in the present – it very well could end badly. You can fight fire with fire, blade with blade, gun with gun, and achieve stalemate, but to seize victory you must bring other tools to bear. Fight fire with water, blade with bow, bow with gun… and beast with blade.
I had a place in this world. Now I have another, and likely not the last.
“A sword and its story,” copyright 2008 Jamie Proctor.