Conan the Barbarian (5 page)

Here Conan encountered his greatest challenge, and watching him tightened a fist around Corin’s heart. The boy intended the sword to be perfect, but had no understanding of how much work that would entail.

The hammering on one side had to be matched equally on the other. Stretching the metal made it too thin. Cracks appeared. Pieces broke off. And while the metal could always be reheated, and the pieces folded back in, frustration led to hard blows where subtle were required . . . and subtle always seemed to take too long.

A boy forging a man’s weapon.
Corin smiled as he watched, remembering his own first clumsy efforts. Connacht hadn’t been terribly patient with him, but that was because his father had assumed Corin intended to travel and see the world. Though Connacht had his reasons for remaining in Cimmeria, more than once, when he told tales, Corin was certain his father would vanish again if the slightest chance arose.

Corin’s father had been surprised when he realized the nature of Corin’s goal: it was not to create a sword he could take into battle, but to create
the
sword that was meant to be his in battle. Connacht could never understand that about his son, but at least he respected it. He was as proud of everything Corin did as he was of his own youthful adventuring.

Conan plunged his sword into a trough. The water bubbled and steamed. He pulled the blade out again, rivulets running. Corin felt certain that his son was seeing blood.

“Is it finished, Conan?”

Conan looked over at his father, then nodded.

Corin rose and crossed to the anvil. He took the blade from his son and turned it over. The boy had shaped it well. The forte would turn blades. The tang would not sheer off, yet was not so heavy as to unbalance the blade. It tapered to a point, but not too sharp a one.

“Nicely done, boy.”

Conan smiled, his soot-stained face streaked with sweat trails.

“But let me ask you this: Which is most important when forging a blade? Fire or ice?”

The boy snorted. “Fire.”

Corin raised an eyebrow as he continued to study his son’s handiwork.

“Ice?”

“Are you certain?”

Conan nodded, but hesitantly.

The smith smashed the blade against the anvil. It rang dully, then shivered into fragments. Conan stared down, his shocked expression mirrored in the metal shards. His expression darkened as he looked up at his father.

’Tis a lesson best learned now, my son.
“We’ll begin again, Conan.” Corin knelt and began gathering metal shards. “You’ll learn what makes a great sword makes a great warrior. By the time you know that, you will be ready to wield the blade we shall make together.”

CONAN WATCHED EXPECTANTLY
as his father studied the blade. The boy had hoped it would be finished three weeks previously, but his father had made him rework the blade. “You’re growing too fast,” Corin had complained. He redesigned the blade, lengthening it, making the tang and forte more stout so it would be a worthy sword for the man Conan was to become.

But Conan wanted it now. “What do you think, Father?”

“Close, very close.” Corin bounced the blade on the anvil. The metal quivered and rang sweetly. He stabbed it into the fire again and nodded to his son. “A little more heat.”

Despite the aching in his limbs from all his chores and all the training, Conan pumped the bellows with all the vigor he could muster. Sparks flew and heat blossomed. Using tongs, his father turned the blade over amid the glowing coals, then drew it out. “Get the small hammer.”

Conan did as he was bidden and shaped the weapon where his father pointed. “Gently, boy, but firmly. A smith, a swordsman, must maintain control of his tools. Smooth that out. And there, and there.”

The boy hammered carefully, relishing the peal of metal on metal. Something about it bespoke strength. So unlike the hiss and skirl of steel on steel in battle, where strong blades became vipers. The sound coaxed from the sword and anvil by the hammer meant that he need never fear the blade betraying him. This he had come to understand.

Corin inspected his handiwork, then glanced at the cooling trough. “Go get more ice.”

Conan ran out and chipped ice from a block, then carried it back into the forge and dumped it into the trough. “When you asked me which is more important, fire or ice, you never told me the answer.”

Corin raised the blade, and in the shadows beneath the forge’s roof, the metal still glowed dully. “A blade must be like a swordsman. It must be flexible. A sword must bend, or it will break. And for that to happen, it must be tempered.”

The smith plunged the sword into the trough. Ice melted, and water bubbled and steamed with the hiss of a thousand snakes. “Fire
and
ice. Together. This is the mystery of steel.”

“Is it done, Father?”

Corin nodded. “Yes, but you’re not.”

“But you have taught me much.”

“Do not misunderstand me, Conan. You have learned much—more than boys half again your age. But it is not in what you know, but how you apply it, that we will see how great a swordsman you will become.” Corin folded his arms over his chest. “Do you remember when I asked you that question? When I shattered your sword?”

Conan’s face flushed. He had been so proud of what he’d done, and then found it was worthless. In an instant he had gone from victorious to defeated. “I remember.”

“Did you think the question fair?”

The boy shrugged.

“Did you wonder why I had let you proceed without giving you the answer, and telling you something so important?”

Conan glanced down. “You wanted me to learn to hammer before I could make a sword?”

His father leaned back against the anvil. “In part, you are correct. But there is something you need to know, about men, about yourself. Men learn in one of two ways. Some observe, ask questions, think and act. Others act and fail, and if they survive their failure, they learn from it. Clever though you are, my son, you do not ask questions. You think of your ignorance as a failure.

“So you failed at your first attempt to make a sword. Have you learned from it?”

Conan could not bring himself to meet his father’s gaze. He considered the man’s words and wanted to deny their truth. He couldn’t, at least not about men in general. But Conan wanted to be more. He was destined to be something special. Great warrior and more, as his mother desired. And yet his father was right. He didn’t like asking questions just in case he revealed ignorance about something everyone else knew.

Does that make me weak?
Conan frowned.
Maybe just stubborn.

He looked up. “Which were you, Father?”

Corin roared with laughter. “Your grandfather was a man of great passions and tempers. He did not reward failure in himself or anyone else. So I would watch. I would maybe ask a question—though, I admit, with him I asked for a story to hide my intention. I learned to do things correctly and sought never to fail. When I have, however, I survived and have learned.”

A certain melancholy had entered his father’s voice. Conan’s eyes narrowed. “Is this why you have never taken another wife?”

Corin folded his arms over his chest. “Your mother, and her death, were not a failure. We have you as proof of that. But when she died, my heart ached terribly. I survived. It may make me a coward, but I never dared love again. When you find that one woman, Conan, the one who fires your heart, who makes you feel alive and makes you want to be a better man than you are, never let her go. I was that fortunate
once
. It would not have been fair to hold anyone else up to comparison with your mother.”

Conan’s father fell silent, and the boy said nothing to break the silence. He’d seen his father turn reflective before—often while watching him, but at times when Conan didn’t think his father knew the boy could see him. His father had always displayed serenity and wisdom, but this time pain creased his brow. Conan did not see this as weakness, however. To
surrender
to it would have been weakness.

Survive. Learn
. The boy nodded solemnly. “I will make you proud, Father.”

Corin’s expression lightened. “You already have—even though there are times you disappoint me.”

“Father, I won’t ever again.”

Corin crouched and looked up at his son. “Don’t make promises you cannot keep, Conan. We all disappoint others. If we never do, it’s because we never take a chance, we never live. What your mother wanted, what I
want
, is for you to live and live wonderfully large.”

The smith rose to his full height and tousled the boy’s hair with a scarred hand. “You’re not yet the man for that sword, but tomorrow we begin getting you there.”

OVER THE NEXT
month Corin began training his son. “The first thing you must remember, Conan, is that men call it ‘sword fighting’ but it is really ‘man fighting.’ A blade is only as keen as the mind driving the arm.”

To make his point, Corin extended the sword they’d made full out, resting the tip at the top of his son’s breastbone. “Cut me with your sword.”

The black-haired boy, eager, thrust toward his father. The man’s longer reach, and the length of his sword, brought Conan’s effort up short. The boy ducked away from Corin’s sword, but Corin merely retreated a step and again pressed the tip to his son’s chest. The boy’s eyes narrowed, then he beat Corin’s blade aside with a great clang and clash of metal.

Yet before he could get close, Corin had slipped back again. He met every harsh parry with a retreat, every bulllike rush with a sidestep. Conan’s face flushed. Lips peeled back from teeth in a feral snarl. The boy knocked the blade aside, then spun, but Corin likewise pivoted, then slapped the boy across the buttocks with the flat of the sword. Conan slipped and flew headlong into a snowbank.

He came up sputtering, spitting out snow. “You’re not fighting fair!”

The smith stabbed the blade into the ground and rested his hands on the pommel. “Do you think anyone you ever face across a blade will fight fairly?”

“Men fight honorably.”

“No. If you choose to believe that, you’ll die in your very first battle.” Corin shook his head slowly. “Men who
survive
tell other men that they fought honorably. They lie. Remember all the tales your grandfather has told? Has he ever mentioned a Kothian or Gunderman or Shemite who fought honorably?”

Conan shook himself like an animal, flinging snow off his clothes. “No.”

“And you do think anyone who survived fighting against him ever described him as honorable?”

“No.”

“If you remember nothing else, my son, remember this: it’s not the man who slays the most who wins a battle; it’s the man who
survives
who wins it.”

The boy, frowning, rubbed his bottom. “And what if I kill them
all
?
”

“Then you are the only survivor.” Corin pulled the blade from the snow. “So, first I shall show you how to survive, then I shall train you in how to kill.”

Conan watched him warily, but did as he was told. Corin began by showing his son how to retreat and keep his footing. He showed him the four gates—up-right, up-left, down-right, down-left—that would block all slashes. He showed him the five sweeps to turn lunges and the brushes to guide blades wide.

The boy’s natural speed and agility made him adept at all of them, but his impatience to strike back diluted his focus. More than once, when Conan tried a clumsy riposte, Corin bound his sword and knocked him to the ground. The boy would bounce up again, fury blazing in those blue eyes, and would come on. Because of his size, skill, and reach, Corin never feared injury. He knocked his son down again and again, until the boy could no longer rise—which took well into the night on some occasions.

Corin stood over him one night as large snowflakes drifted down. “Do you know why I keep beating you?”

Conan spat blood from a split lip. “Because you will not teach me to attack.”

“It takes no skills and no intelligence to stick something sharp into someone. A scorpion can do it. A wasp. An elk.” The smith sighed. “All the times we have trained, what have you learned?”

“You don’t fight fair.”

“The whispers of ghosts bother me not at all. What have you learned?”

The boy sat up in the snow, his sullen eyes covered in shadows. “You have a longer reach than me. You move too quickly for me to close.”

“And what does that tell you?”

“I have to be quicker. I have to be stronger.”

“No, son.” Corin shook his head. “It means you shouldn’t be fighting me with a sword.”

The boy blinked.

“Every man you face will have his strengths and weaknesses. Every group of men. Every army—anything you will ever fight will have strengths and weaknesses. If you attack his strengths, you will lose. If you bring your strength to bear on his weakness, you will win.”