The invader slashed at Iben with vicious certitude. Iben raised his axe to block.
The axe had been lovingly crafted by Iben's great-grandmother Neref one hundred and two years ago. Its handle boasted an arm-and-a-half's length of shadestone ebony, rare wood prized for its durability and beauty. Neref had felled the tree herself, then treated the wood with precious minerals to amplify its resilience while reducing its weight. Intricate calligraphy wreathed the black haft, chronicling the artisanal skill rich in Iben's ancestry. The result was an implement light as balsa and hard as steel, capable of cutting through a mighty trunk as smoothly as a tailor's shears might glide through paper.
The invader's sword had been forged by a novice coppersmith over four thousand years ago. Its edge bore myriad ugly notches, and those millennia of oxidation had corroded the weapon's outer layer. The result was a sickly blue-green patina deformed by ashen bumps and ridges.
But the invaders' archaeologists* had discovered, laboring in their abominable museums**, that this blade had been shaped for war, and that made all the difference.
The invaders' records of the ancient war had been barren, nothing more than a few strange hieroglyphs scratched on shattered pottery. But years ago, a translation breakthrough revealed a piecemeal story: the sword's coppersmith was from an aggressive empire that had conquered an impressively-large peninsula. Its design carried no trace of passion or beauty -- its sole intent was to subjugate through violence.
It was no surprise to the invader, then, when her sword chopped through Iben's axe handle like a butcher's cleaver through fatty tissue, sundering the ebony with ease. Its momentum barely halted; it continued on through Iben's leather pauldron (made ten years ago to commemorate a memorable hunt -- it enhanced Iben's storytelling, but offered no protection), then his clavicle, biting wickedly though ribcage and lung and spinal column, finally emerging just above the hip. Iben's dying scream squelched out as a choked gurgle.
Iben's daughter Remsa, eight days away and oblivious to the carnage, was busy carving out the handle of a specialty chisel. She felt her hands go clumsy.
Iben's ally Hopet lunged at the invader in wild ambush, spear-point flashing in the sun. But the invader's soft leather boots had been plundered from a centuries-old dancing culture, so it was trivial for the swordswoman to twirl away from the attack, dodging with balletic grace. Abovewater, Hopet's fishing-spear thrust hopelessly slow and missed by a full arm's length. Before Hopet could recover, turquoise-grey copper sliced again, parting head from shoulders.
The invader loosed a guttural shout, half-battlecry, half-chuckle. The ceremonial belt around her waist -- delicate gold with conch-shell buckle, wrought for a long-dead clan's doomherald -- amplified the sound, anointed it with the imperious grip of fear. Wisps of nightmare slithered out from the subconscious minds of the invader's enemies, paralyzing the remaining ten midstride. Another shout, and a ramshackle assortment of bows, daggers, and handsaws clattered to the ground.
Before the invader could exult in victory, her eye caught on Iben's axe. She strode over to it, picked it up, admired its elegance and lightness. A shame it had been damaged -- but no matter, the archaelogists would restore some of its functionality.
"This," she said, waving the axe in front of another tribesman's frozen rictus, ignorant of the language barrier between them. "How old is it? What is it for?"
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Story Notes
The inspiration for this short story came from someone I met in a writing group yesterday. Her story takes place in a world where items become more powerful the more they're used for their intended purpose. I absolutely loved the idea!
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