Chapter 35
“But how many years has it been? Have you been well, Sensei?”
“I’ve been doing all right. You look well, too, Balder.”
“You bet. Just look at this body!”
Balder flexed his biceps with a grunt, punctuating his words.
He really did look well. He seemed like the sort who’d never get sick or injured.
“Sensei, do you know him?”
Allucia had watched Balder and me exchange greetings with some surprise. She voiced what was, from her perspective, a perfectly natural question.
Allucia and Balder hadn’t been at the dojo at the same time, after all. It was no wonder she didn’t know him.
“Yeah. This may surprise you, but he was one of my former students, too.”
Balder Gasp.
I remembered him well. Among all my many students, he was the only one older than me.
Just as Kurni was on friendly terms with him, Balder had attended the dojo at the same time as Kurni and Fischel. He’d come after Allucia, which was probably why she didn’t know him.
Well, that might mean something in Beden Village, but there wasn’t much point in loudly proclaiming that he’d studied at my dojo in the capital, Baltrain. People would probably just say, “Who’s that?”
Balder had been at the dojo for a little over a year. Since his goal wasn’t to master the sword, he hadn’t stayed for very long.
It was rare for someone aspiring to become a blacksmith to come to the dojo because they wanted to understand how swordsmen felt about wielding a sword. Though he was older than me, I could only marvel at his insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge.
So rather than teaching him much about swordsmanship itself, I think I mostly gave him lectures about what swordsmen thought about when choosing and wielding swords, and what made a weapon good for a swordsman.
Since he paid his tuition, I had no complaints. But I still vividly remember him watching from the edge of the dojo while my students diligently repeated their swings. Actually, he was the only one who did that. Of course, he participated in training, too.
“You really did get your own shop. Congratulations.”
“Yeah, thanks, Sensei. It was a struggle, though.”
When I voiced my impression, Balder proudly surveyed the shop.
It was a little on the small side, but I thought it was a fine shop.
Given my profession, I often had occasion to visit blacksmiths. I thought I could generally tell by looking around whether a shop—and, by extension, the people working there—did their jobs properly.
Various weapons and pieces of armor lined the walls of the small shop.
Judging by appearances, they were all well maintained, and it was easy to imagine their keen edges. It gave me a glimpse of his skill.
“So, you came all this way. I assume you need something?”
“Yep! I’m here to get my sword sharpened!”
Balder asked, his voice settling into a more businesslike tone.
Kurni was the first to respond.
Well, I could deal with my sword later. I’d come along for Kurni’s sake in the first place.
“All right, let me see it.”
“Here you go!”
Kurni removed the short sword from her waist and handed it to Balder.
He drew it from its scabbard and studied the blade intently for a while.
“...Kurni, this is no good. Buy a new one.”
“Whaaat?! Why?!”
At the verdict, delivered with a small sigh, that her sword had reached the end of its life, Kurni was stunned.
Whether it’s a weapon, armor, or anything else, everything has a lifespan.
Just like my longsword had snapped clean in two, there comes a time when something can no longer be used. Though it’s rare for one to break so cleanly.
And if you’re a blacksmith, you need to be able to judge that lifespan with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Mine was an accident. There was no way anyone could have predicted something like that.
“Did the edge get blunted?”
“Not quite. There are several chips too big to call ordinary nicks. Sharpening won’t fix this.”
“I see.”
When I asked, it seemed the problem wasn’t so much the sword’s lifespan as the way it had been used.
Well, that sort of thing happened fairly often.
Weapons weren’t all-purpose, and that wasn’t limited to swords.
There was always a proper way to use each weapon.
To take an extreme example, no matter how sharp a fine sword is, if you bash someone with the flat of the blade, you won’t be making the most of it—and it’ll break down quickly. That was the idea.
Conversely, if you use a tool properly, especially a weapon, it can last surprisingly long. Weapons are made for fighting, so they’re naturally durable.
In this case, there were three main reasons why the sword might have developed chips.
The sword itself had reached the end of its life, or she’d tried to cut something unsuitable.
Or the weapon didn’t match the user’s abilities.
“Kurni, have you been cutting anything weird?”
“No, I haven’t! I’ve only been using it for training and actual fights!”
I suspected that training and those fights were the problem, but I’d leave that aside for now.
“I watch her sword forms, too, but I don’t think she uses it recklessly.”
“Hmm...”
Allucia came to Kurni’s defense.
Kurni had studied at my dojo, too, and given that she was in the Knights’ Order, she probably wouldn’t use her sword too recklessly.
I’d watched her movements during training as well, and she didn’t strike me as someone who swung her sword around with brute force. If so, perhaps the cause lay elsewhere.
“Even so, you don’t usually get chips like these. How are you using it?”
“I told you, normally! N-o-r-m-a-l!”
“Now, now.”
Kurni bristled and raised her voice in protest, so I tried to calm her down.
It wasn’t as if I wanted to pick on her. If criticizing Kurni helped move the conversation forward, that’d be one thing, but by itself, it wasn’t exactly constructive.
Hmm. It was hard to imagine given her build, but maybe...
“Kurni, how does it feel to wield a short sword?”
“Huh?”
She froze for a moment at my sudden question.
“How does it feel...? I guess it’s nice and light...?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it.”
Balder and I spoke in unison at her hesitant answer.
“Huh?! W-what do you mean?”
“To put it simply, a short sword isn’t the right weapon for you, Kurni.”
I said this to Kurni, who kept exclaiming in surprise.
That was it. The short sword itself didn’t suit Kurni. That was the answer that made the most sense.
Naturally, the right weapon differed from one person to another.
And of course, there were many types of weapons besides swords. Finding the one that suited you might seem easy, but it could be surprisingly difficult.
This was a different matter from having a weapon custom-made.
Custom-made meant narrowing things down further among the types of weapons that suited you. There was no point in having a sword specially made if you were better with a spear.
In Kurni’s case, she’d shown promise even back when she was at the dojo. There was little doubt that a sword suited her. Even I could tell if one of my students was clearly unsuited to the sword.
I hadn’t noticed anything particularly strange when I taught her, so had her strength increased all at once after joining the Knights’ Order?
“If you can’t even feel the weight of your weapon, there’s no way you can swing it properly. That’s probably why you’ve hit a wall.”
“I think he’s right.”
“Mmm...”
Balder folded his arms and spoke with a sigh.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Balder had attended my dojo precisely because he wanted to offer advice like this. I was glad his time there hadn’t gone to waste.
That said, whether Kurni had actually hit a wall was another matter. But judging by her reaction, he probably wasn’t far off.
A weapon only truly functions once you can feel its proper weight.
Of course, too much weight was no good, either.
There was a weight that each individual could wield effectively—not too light or heavy, and with a center of gravity they could gauge. This was difficult to explain in words.
In my case, that was a longsword. And for Kurni, a short sword probably fell outside that range.
“Balder, could I take a look at some of your swords?”
“Sure, go ahead, Sensei.”
I looked over the weapons hanging on the wall, wondering which one might suit Kurni.
If the short sword felt light to her, a longsword probably would, too. The names could be confusing, but the actual blades weren’t all that different in length.
If we were considering weight alone, a spear or an axe might also be candidates, but her movements were optimized for swordsmanship.
I couldn’t rule out the possibility of some other talent lying dormant, but it would be quite difficult to bring it out now. Besides, I didn’t know much about anything other than swords myself.
And when you think of the Knights’ Order, you think of swords. Probably.
“...Oh. How about this one?”
“Huh, seriously?”
After considering this and that for a while, I looked around the shop.
What I picked up was a large sword with a long blade and a distinctive ricasso.
It was a two-handed sword commonly known as a Zweihänder.