Arming the King

Purpose

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Arma virumque cano

—Virgil's Aeneid

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With a flash of bright steel and the soft, shuffling chink of well-made mail, the knight in the courtyard spun to meet his opponent. He raised his sword to block the attack, then swung to deliver a stunning blow— only to slip, lose his footing and stumble. At once his opponent lowered his sword and stepped back, and the fallen knight, grumbling under his breath, got his feet under him, stood, and pushed back the visor of the light helmet he wore as a face guard.

"Not again, Ed!" Peter, High King of Narnia, slid down from his vantage point on a low wall to confront his brother Edmund. "You're not clumsy; what's tripping you up like this?"

"It's no good," Edmund turned to face Peter in open frustration, "I can't make it come right, it's the same as always. There's just something in the sword that pulls me off centre."

"Then we'll try another. Again." Peter looked unperturbed, and nodded to the schooling-master who had been serving as Edmund's opposition. Edmund pulled a face but complied; the sword he held joined four others he had already rejected, and before the sun began to sink in the sky, he had turned down seven more.

"I don't understand," Edmund scowled, as he and his brother finally took their leave of their schooling-master and headed into the castle to join their sisters for the late afternoon meal. "I can't find one that just fits. You fit yours perfectly; Father Christmas knew what he was at, when he gave you Rhindon. If I found something even half as good, I'd be satisfied; how can it be so difficult?"

"Perhaps it's the style," Peter suggested, holding open the door that led to the small chamber where the new monarchs took what few private meals they had. The table was laid with a lovely tea, awaiting the enjoyment of the four new rulers. "Didn't you say that sword you held last year at the Battle of Beruna felt right? Why not use that one?"

"It was destroyed." Edmund kicked a table leg just as the Queens Susan and Lucy entered. Susan, catching sight of the kick, frowned.

"Edmund, really, please— not the furniture."

"Sorry," he said, and tried hard to look it. "I just . . . this problem with the swords isn't getting any easier."

"Must you have a sword that's particularly your own?" Susan wondered, as Lucy raced to claim her seat and Peter escorted Susan to her place. Edmund said yes, he really did.

"I don't much care to use them," he admitted, "but I'm King; if I lead charges into battle I need something to fight with, don't I?"

"You could use a spear, like the Southern warriors do," Lucy suggested, surveying the offering before them with great satisfaction. "Mmm, raspberries. Is there cream?" There was, and these both occupied the little Queen as Edmund replied to her suggestion.

"I could, I suppose, but a spear is such a tricky thing. It gets lost so easily; if you throw it you'll possibly never get it back, and even thrusting-spears aren't an easy proposition, since if you stick a fellow with it and he pulls away before you can pull it back— oh, sorry, Susan," as his older sister turned quite green, and set down the piece of bread she had been buttering. "I forgot." For Susan had laid a very strict rule that there was to be no discussion of sticking people with swords, spears, arrows or any other like weaponry when they were at the dinner table.

"Quite all right," Susan said faintly, and studied her half-buttered bread with great regret.

"Besides," Peter put in, directing his remark at Lucy as he piled his plate with sandwiches and cakes, "it's sort of a tradition for Kings to carry swords and shields, so it's important that Edmund have a sword of his own. But it's also important he feels comfortable wielding it, so he can't make the decision lightly."

"What about the one you used—" Lucy began, and Edmund shook his head.

"Peter said the same. It was destroyed. For over a year now I've been using a rubbishy one they pulled out of the armoury for me; oh," at seeing some confusion on Lucy's face, "it's not a rubbishy sword, but it's rubbish as my sword. It does the job well enough, but I want one I really feel comfortable working with. It's much like when you ride a horse; they all do basically the same thing if you train them properly, but when you find that one that fits you so well you feel you've found a sort of second skin, that you're almost certain you know what it will do even before it does, that knows you well enough to know what you'll ask of it even before you do . . ."

"I see," said Lucy, who had only just found such a horse of her very own, and looked very solemn. "Well, can't you find a sword that's like the one you used in the battle?"

"I asked around after it was ruined," Edmund picked at a cream cake he would ordinarily have swallowed in one bite. "Apparently it's a style they used hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but you can't find anywhere anymore."

"Surely that can't be true, if that one still existed," Susan observed, having at last recovered herself enough to pick up the bread and finish buttering it. "If there was one, there must be more."

"Oh, yes, I suppose," Edmund acknowledged. "But I expect they're all buried in everyone's armouries somewhere, and since most everybody has only just come home to find their armouries for themselves, they aren't likely to even know they have them."

He was referring to their endeavour of one year before, when all four monarchs had set out to find the descendants of the landowners who had fled Narnia at the start of the reign of a wicked enchantress. Now largely restored and made habitable once more, the grand old manor homes, small castles and other properties were home to many newly-restored noble families, all of them just happy to have a roof over their heads before the first snowfall. As Edmund had observed, they were likely all just settling in, and probably hadn't any intimate knowledge of their own holdings just yet.

"Still," Peter said thoughtfully, "it's a good point. There must be some out there . . . don't such old swords normally have legends told about them? I have some idea that they do."

"Only the magic ones, I think," Lucy said, finally making an end of her raspberries and cream, and surveying the other treats the table had to offer. "And I'm not sure there are such things as magic swords, really; not even in Narnia."

"But might even a normal sword have legends and stories told of it, if the man who wielded it was one of valour?" Susan suggested, finishing her bread and, having gained some confidence in her stomach, starting on a very small biscuit. "And surely even after so long, some of those stories must still be known; that's one thing you can't kill, a story."

"It would be worth at least asking somebody, don't you think, Ed?" Peter said, and Edmund, feeling slightly cheered at the thought, said yes, it would be, and was on the verge of saying he would do just that when Lucy upset her tea, causing all four to leap up from the table, but not before they and a plate of buns got very soggy indeed. In the process of cleaning up (during which two other cups were overturned) it was no wonder that all save Edmund forgot about the prospect of searching for his sword.

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Once tea was done with, Edmund was able to break away from his siblings and head through the castle on his own. He didn't hesitate, but walked directly to the armoury, where the officer and clerk who shared joint charge of the armoury were hard at work, cataloguing a series of new weapons that, to Edmund's relatively-untutored eye, looked much the same as all the other pieces. Yet the officer and the clerk seemed thrilled with these new acquisitions, and were so enthralled by their treasures that they didn't even look up until Edmund cleared his throat three times and knocked on the inside of the door with considerable force.

"Your Majesty!" the officer was the first to look up, and snap to attention. The clerk, considerably more aged and slightly deaf, looked up only when the officer did, and then quickly bowed. "Forgive us, we—"

"—were busy," Edmund finished, smiling. "No, that's all right; these are new, are they?"

It was really the wrong thing to say; they were, Edmund learned, new pieces indeed, and they were so much more than that, too. Every dimension, quirk, flaw and attribute of each piece was listed at length and repeated in detail. The design attributes of the newly-crafted weapons were held up for the King's baffled scrutiny, and the historic charms and flaws of older pieces were also pointed out for his consideration. This, at least, was the opening Edmund was looking for; with as much tact as he could manage, he steered the discourse away from the weapons at hand to his own purpose in approaching them. Explaining the connection he had felt with the sword he wielded at Beruna, Edmund asked if they knew of style he meant and if they knew of any others like it still in existence.

"Ah," said the clerk, when the King had at last stopped speaking.

"Oh," sighed the officer, and exchanged glances with the clerk.

"Well," said the clerk, "it's a proposition."

"A proposition indeed," the officer nodded solemnly. "A fine sword, it was. I remember it well. A fine old style; craftsmanship of that sort hasn't been seen in . . . oh, what would you say, Tirtel?"

"A millennia, at the least, Herman," Tirtel, the clerk, said solemnly. "A millennia, to be sure. I do say our kind—" for Tirtel was a Dwarf— "are the best metal smiths there are, but that's not to say our own ancestors couldn't have taught us a thing or two."

"Back, they say, when the craft was pure," Herman, a big, barrel-chested officer recently arrived from Galma, explained, "the swords as were made then . . . ah, your Majesty, it would take your breath away. Not a week since they'd been born of the earth and already the Dwarfs were hard at it, fashioning some of the finest arms you've ever seen, and they've been at it ever since."

"But the first hundred years, Sire," Tirtel explained earnestly, "oh, the first hundred years, they were the finest. You have not seen finer craftsmanship than you will see in the swords, the crowns, the jewellery— all pieces that were made in those first hundred years. And your sword that you lost at Beruna, Sire, was one of their lot."

"Oh," said Edmund faintly, and felt a sense of hopelessness overwhelming him. "But . . . well, it was a miracle, then, surely, that it survived as long as it did."

"Oh, not at all," Herman negated, shaking his heavily-bearded head with great solemnity. "It's part of the craft, you see; the metals that were mined in those first hundred years were young, and new; something to do with the magic of the place, I expect. Anyhow, those swords hold up better than any you'll see made to this day. It was the Witch's own wand what did yours in, was it not, Majesty?"

Edmund admitted it had been, and Herman nodded knowingly.

"Yes, well, there's no poison like dark powers, is there? Not ten thousand years could do to a sword what a second's worth of evil could; a pity, that, as that was a powerful good sword. But it's another like it you're after, then?"

Edmund said that it was. "But are there any you know of?" he wondered. "Surely there must be some still out there, but . . . do you actually know of any?"

No answer was immediately forthcoming. Instead, Tirtel and Herman exchanged solemn glances and retreated to a large tome shelved with others much like it in the corner of the armoury. Between them the wizened little Dwarf and the massive, broad-shouldered, bearded officer flipped through the heavy book, Tirtel perusing the pages as Herman balanced the book in his broad palms. At last the clerk gave a small cry of satisfaction, read rapidly, then nodded at Herman to shut the book, which was accomplished with a loud bang.

"Now, then, Sire," Tirtel beamed, hurrying back across the floor of the army, with Herman in tow, "we may have come across something. There is a small keep just three leagues to the west of here, a handsome piece of property, with a small wood and a fine lake. It was last the home of one Sir Roland, a good knight, and by all accounts as worthy a man as ever was. He was one of the last to serve Her Majesty, Queen Swanwhite, and is believed to be one of the few who know the true story of what befell that good Queen."

"I see," said Edmund, who didn't, really. Tirtel beamed.

"The sword of Sir Roland," he said, "was renowned in Narnia. It was handed down to him through his father's line, of which Sir Roland was the last. And, as with all humans who live in Narnia, Sir Roland was a descendant of those two humans who first ruled Narnia."

"You mean—" Edmund started, and Tirtel's beam broadened to utter brilliance.

"Yes, Majesty," he said, and looked so happy that he hardly seemed to be a Dwarf at all, "Sir Roland's was the favoured —the first— sword of King Frank of Narnia."

"And— it's still there?" Edmund was stunned. "At the keep, I mean, the sword . . . it's just . . . been there? All this time?"

"Ah," said Tirtel, and a slight shadow crossed his leathery face, "yes, well . . . that's where the difficulty enters into it."

"Story gets a bit murky, like," Herman put in dolefully. "Seems Sir Roland didn't bring his sword with him when he come into the service of the Queen. Seems he shut it up on his property, somewhere near the lake."

"Where?" Edmund asked warily. "Not in the lake, surely?"

"Oh, no, no," Tirtel said quickly. "Surely not. Most unwise, putting a sword in a lake, most detrimental to the sword. But the legend is not very clear, I am afraid . . . simply that the sword was shut up securely, as Sir Roland was determined no forces would take it and use it for evil. As far as anybody knows, the sword has yet to be discovered, and so . . . presuming your Majesty was not averse to the task of searching for it, it is there for the taking."

"I . . . well, I'll have to think about it," Edmund said cautiously. "I thank you for your time, Sirs; don't let me keep you from your work any longer." And, with further appropriate parting salutations, the King took his leave of the armoury's inhabitants and returned to his schooling-master to practice some more.

It didn't go well. He was knocked down five times inside of a quarter-hour, and though this is par for the course when a young man —still not much more than a boy, really— is learning to fight, it gets a little trying for a young King who has been fighting for over a year, especially when he can put his finger on the exact reason for each failure. And only one of them, he knew, was really wholly his own fault.

"It's bad form, isn't it, to always blame one's sword for one's failings?" he breathed, as the schooling-master himself, normally the first to push the Kings to keep trying, finally firmly insisted that they take a short rest.

"Only when it is done to cover the faults of the fighter," the master said gravely. Unlike the Centaur who had first taught Edmund to wield a sword, this schooling-master was human, a man called Fergal. Fergal was a hard-bitten soldier brought back from the south-western wilds of Archenland and Peter and Edmund both worked hard to earn even a word of praise from him, which meant that the words Fergal spoke now stunned Edmund.

"You are not a bad fighter, Sire; you are still raw, but your form is solid, and will be built upon in time. As you grow to manhood you will gain height, and your shoulders will broaden; your reach will increase, and so will your strength. You will be a formidable fighter, King Edmund; but none of this will happen if you do not trust in your sword."

"Then . . . you think I need a new one too?" Edmund stammered, and Fergal considered.

"It is my belief that you could, with dedication and practice, learn to fight with any sword, my King; such is the way men's minds and bodies are made. But to fight with excellence you will need a sword you can trust, and clearly, such a sword is not to be found in our armoury. I only hope it can be found within our borders, else you will have a difficult time of it indeed." And on those words he abruptly ended the lesson, walking away from the yard and the young King.

Edmund did not wait long; no sooner had Fergal passed from sight than did the King rush across the yard as well, heading for the back entrance to the stables. There, he accosted the Head Groom with great impatience.

"I need my horse readied," he said, "at once. I ride to the west."

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A.N.: Well, this is another one of those mostly out-of-nowhere pieces, inspired wholly by (oh, just guess) a song by Heather Dale. This one was called Kingsword, and it's lovely; my personal preference is for the remixed version, found on her CD The Hidden Path, but I do recommend either version.

Not much else to say except that this one is probably going to be a three-part story, since I don't think I can manage it in two parts the way I initially planned, and the next part will be up shortly; a week at most, likely much less. And, of course, Narnia and its best-known inhabitants are not mine, they are wholly the creations of CS Lewis. I just like to give them all sorts of friends to play with, and make their lives generally difficult.