'A notch here I could hammer out, and the blade is a little out of true. It has seen hard service, this weapon.' He ran a finger down the edge appreciatively, for a moment wholly a craftsman, the other part of him hidden. His habit was covered by a leather apron and his face was aglow with exertion in the cold, as red-cheeked as Santa Claus.
'It was a Knight's weapon. I killed him,' Michael said, tired of the game.
'I know.'
Nennian set the blade in the charcoals and Michael began pumping the crude leather bellows. The stone hearth became a little sun of white and red heat in the mist of the cold morning and soon Michael was sweating, his forehead hot and the heat soaking through his jerkin. Cat was singing somewhere across the clearing. The coals flared and blazed.
'Enough.'
Nennian hooked the blade out of the fire and slapped it down on his stone anvil. He took a surprisingly small bronze hammer and began tapping gently, his face close to the white-hot edges of the blade. Sparks jumped, but he ignored them. He squinted and examined, his face shining with sweat, then replaced the blade in the coals and wiped his temples. Michael began plying the bellows again.
'How do you know?'
The Brother smiled: his natural expression, Michael was coming to think. 'No one save the Knights and a few nobles has a weapon as fine as this. Ulfberht died a generation ago. These things become heirlooms, the sword passing from father to son. I could name you perhaps three families with a sword such as this.'
'You don't seem bothered that I killed a Knight of your church.'
'I am always bothered by bloodshed, but you do not strike me as the murdering type. Our Knights can be over-zealous at times. You and your lady have the look of people who have lived among the tribes. My guess is that you maybe became embroiled in a tangle that was not your own.'
'Maybe we did,' Michael admitted.
Once again the sword was hooked out of the fire, and this time Brother Nennian plunged it into the mound of clay he had built up. There was a hiss and bubble and a small spume of steam rose up. The Brother regarded it with satisfaction.
'Water forms a barrier of steam too easily, and the metal does not cool down rapidly enough. Clay is better, and urine, also. And some say the best quencher of all is blood.'
Michael wiped the sweat from his eyes. The forge fire was a blare of heat, shimmering the air.
'Why did you really come to the Wolfweald?'
'I might ask you the same question. I might also ask you where you came from.'
'As far as I can guess'—and this time it was Michael who smiled—'I come from the same place that you Brothers first came from. A place called Ireland.'
It had taken a while for him to realize, but he was convinced now that it was true. These monks or priests were from his own world, all right, and his own country, too. The angular tonsure, more complete than that of British monks of the period, proved it. A long-past century had bred them—perhaps that of the Viking raids—but they had Slipped through a door as easily as he had, a community of them fleeing the Norsemen, perhaps. The stories he had heard thus far in the Wildwood said that they had been fleeing something or someone.
Brother Nennian digested this in silence for a long while, retrieving the sword from the day and replacing it in the fire. He tapped his hammer on the stone anvil, his round face closed.
'What do you hope to do at his castle?'
'I'm looking for someone from my own world. He took her there, I'm sure. He has her soul.'
The Brother's eyes quickened at that, but he retrieved the blade without a word and plunged it into the clay again. Cat was still singing, walking with a crowd of chickens at her feet and feeding them with barley grain.
'So you bear this Horseman no love? You or your lady?'
Michael was puzzled. 'Of course not. Who does?'
Nennian stared across at the slim, dark girl singing near the trees, She had stripped off much of her heavy clothing and her arms were bare. She looked like some long-limbed animal, a beautiful gazelle. Her hair had swung to cover the pointed tips of her ears and in the daylight the fire of her eyes was less pronounced.
'She comes of two worlds, your lady, and the deeper she travels into this wood the more she will be drawn to the world of the trees and the Horseman. I have seen things in the wood's memories. The Wyrim and the grymyrch fighting side by side, wolves and TreeFolk at each other's shoulders, to expel what was the first expedition. This near to the centre of things the differences fall away. It is as she said: they are children of the same father. It is what has preserved you both, I think.'
'I am not one of them. I can't even drink the water in this wood.'
Nennian smiled his customary smile, warm but faintly condescending. 'Yet the blood of the Wyrim flows in you also. It has not yet taken root, but it is there.'