The jagged eight-inch shard of gold-silver metal lay between the Man Who Returned’s knees.
It was no longer shaking. The time hum that had accompanied its razor edge for four hundred years had decayed into complete, inert silence. Upon its mirrored surface, the grey storm clouds of the seven skies were fading, replaced by the amber glow of twenty matching men standing together in the mountain light.
The older man reached down with both hands. His palms were blistered from the moving recoil. His fingers were stained with ancient dark oak-ink and fresh slush. He picked up the weapon that had defined four hundred years of solitary slaughter.
He didn’t raise it to strike. He held it horizontally across his open palms, like an artisan presenting a completed commission to his master for check.
“I kept it sharp,” the older man whispered, his voice cracking into quiet, helpless laughter that turned right away to tears. “Every night, in the trenches... In the catacombs... In the void... I took out the whetstone. Master Garrow always said a dull tool tears the sheepskin. I thought that if the cut was clean enough, it wouldn’t hurt.”
He looked up at the circle of his nineteen younger brothers.
