Honour

Make me a blade

Light as wind on winter laid.

Make it long

As the wheat at harvest song.

Supple, swift

As a snake, without a rift

Full of lightning, thousand eyed!

Smooth as silken cloth and thin

As the web that spiders spin.

And merciless as pain, and cold.

~ Solomon Blumgarten,

translation by Marie Syrkin

My dear Corin,

I was very pleased to receive your correspondence yesterday week and have spent some time thinking about how I would best answer your question, because, when you ask where I got my sword and what I felt when I first saw it, there is more than just a simple answer.

Swords are more than swords and, since I have very good reason to expect you will be getting a knighthood of your own quite soon, I will endeavour to explain.

Rhindon, means light in the old speech and I've always thought it one with my hand, longer than the sunbeams, colder than ice. I first saw the sword on a winter's day, grasped in an old man's hand and it was as if it spoke to me as the sun burned tendrils of fire through the ruby pommel stone.

When I was younger and still living in that other place we once called home, swords were things on display in museums and I remembered loving them to my very core. My hands itched to hold one and often Edmund and I would fence on the lawn with sticks. Later on, father made us wooden cudgels and mother would shake her head over the bruises we inflicted on each other.

But none of it prepared me for the day I drew my sword.

In our world, in the Middle Ages, swords were honour. They travelled down families, passing from one hand to the next to carry on the good name of those who wielded them. The Vikings died with their swords in their hands, the Saxons swore on their hilts; swords stood for freedom and death, life and victory and the unbreakable word of warriors.

They are simple things, swords, made up of a weighted pommel, grip, tang and at last, the keen, two edged blade, grooved with a blood channel. As you know, Rhindon is undecorated, except for the pommel stone; swords are meant to buoy the hand up, not weigh it down. They are first instruments of death, but they are only simple slaves in the hands of their masters.

When you carry such a formidable weapon as a sword, choices must be made. In your hands a sword is death and when you are skilled, certain death. If you must use it, let it be a sacred calling, a blade of justice. Swords, like pruning hooks, are tools and nothing more. Some men fight for their own credit and glory; they become warriors and wield their swords for themselves. I have seen many such men live for their swords and later fall by them. Do not let the lust of battle rule you, because nothing is more terrible.

I've learned that like the clean, long lines of Rhindon, my life ought to be clean and free of decoration, or else the balance will be off. In my years wielding my sword, I have learned that many things don't matter, arguments over small things are only distractions, strife is like a wound. Nothing is more beautiful than a kind word, or a clasp of a hand when one is about to face death. Someday, you will understand why knights climb up into the mountains to pick tiny woodland flowers to wear to battle. A warrior's life cannot be troubled with frivolities, it must be only this; a single minded devotion to country and family. Nothing else matters so much, because when the battle commences and the black tide sweeps down to overwhelm you, you will sink if your heart is heavy.

Let your sword be Aslan's.

I hope, as I write this, that I will die with my sword clasped in my hands, defending the honour of my country and keeping her soil clean of enemy feet. I cannot think of a better way to pass on; to tell the truth, I would be ashamed to go any other way.

I have written, as well as I can, what it means to have a sword, but you will not fully understand it until you have been in battle yourself, which I hope, will not be too soon.

In response to your Post Script, I will wish Queen Susan, Queen Lucy and King Edmund a good day and pound them all on the backs most heartily; I'm sure you will do the same for your excellent father from me.

Yours,

Peter, HK

These are the duties of a king; first in peace and last in every desperate retreat.