The greatsword weighed nine pounds in its iron-chaped scabbard—heavy enough to split an oak buckler or shear through a horse’s barding, yet balanced three inches above the crossguard so a practiced wrist could turn the point inside a narrow stairwell. As Jon Hale lifted the weapon by its wire-wrapped leather grip, a cold, metallic vibration traveled up his forearms, setting the nine white somatic rings on his fingers humming in brief, discordant sympathy with the Hearth Nail buried beneath the cellar vault.
This was no peacetime security deposit handed across the bar for a night’s lodging under the Last Guest covenant. No tenth ring formed on his bare right index finger, and no fifth band bit into the skin near his elbow. It was an ordinary bailment between two tired men in a besieged town—a piece of sharpened iron placed out of reach because its owner was afraid of his own training.
Jon carried the sword behind the walnut bar, stepping past the tapped casks of bitter ale and the stacked stoneware crocks of salted butter. Screwed into the heavy upright oak post behind the counter—just above the charter chest where the empty, heat-split ash bobbin of the spent copper-iron wire hung on its nail—were two notched iron brackets where he usually rested his long cellar tallow-hooks and the heavy ash bung-mallet. He laid the Ardent greatsword horizontally across the iron hooks, wedging the crossguard firmly against the post timber where Alden Bram had pried it out of the aqueduct…
