Because he lost his arm in the war against Napoleon, Nicholas cannot return to Society. The ton will reject him.

Now, he lives in solitude in his estate, claiming he prefers it.

Then a child arrives. A young boy who reminds him of his past. A boy who threatens his present. A boy who must be dealt with to ensure Nicholas’ own future.

“Controlling the Sword,” by World Fantasy Award-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch, is free on this website for one week only. The story is also available in ebook through various online retailers here.

Controlling the SwordKristine Kathryn RuschHe preferred the bayonet. A musket shot poorly at best and was likely to blow up in a man’s face. A knife could be knocked free. But a bayonet garroted the enemy well, surprising a man at arm’s length and not giving him time to recover.

But weapons debates were moot now. Nicholas spent his days in the family estates near Kent, hiding from the ton with its missish debutantes searching for a husband and randy widows expecting satisfaction. To them he was a hero. They looked at the poorly healed scar on his cheek, and saw not the edge of a blood-spattered knife that came too close to the eye, but the romantic mark of an untamed rake. They touched his empty right sleeve, pinned to his shoulder, with admiration, wanting the story. But he could not tell a green girl about the heat in Salamanca, the blood lust in the eyes of the Frenchman who slit him from shoulder to wrist, and the awful infection that made his arm swell and ache until the bone surgeons decided to hack it off.

After three nights of witty repartee, he could take no more. He had been in hiding ever since.

He spent his evenings alone in the library, a fire in the hearth, a glass of port clutched in his left fist. He had not realized what a luxury it had been to sit before a fire, a glass of port in one hand, a good cigar in the other—an enjoyment in which he would never again partake. The books around him had been his father’s, Romances and Grand Adventures, monographs from the Colonies, and Histories of everything from the house and family to the Far and Mysterious East. Once he might have read, but these days he did not. He stared into the orange flames burning black against the stone face of the hearth or the two swords crossed beneath his father’s portrait, their red tassels dangling on the dust-covered marble mantle.

The swords frightened him.

At night he would dream that he would hear them clatter against the flagstone before the hearth. Once he had run down the stairs, expecting to see them lying on the floor, dripping with blood, but the library had been as he left it, his empty glass beside the chair and the cherry red embers still giving off a bit of warmth.

*The carriage that pulled into the yard was black with a dray horse, obviously hired. Nicholas watched from the large windows in the hall as the young boy opened the door, then hesitated before stepping down alone.

The boy was slight, his hair dark. As he turned, Nicholas gasped. No doubt. This was his brother’s child.

Not that there had been a doubt before. The letter from the solicitor had arrived almost a month earlier, carrying copies of the boy’s birth records. Richard Adam Lucien Worth, heir apparent to the family fortune. Nicholas would act as guardian until the lad reached his majority.

Nicholas sighed. He went to the door, which Simms the butler had already opened, and stood behind it, sinister lord of the manor. Simms was warmer: he hurried down the stairs to help the boy. The cabbie merely waited until the baggage had been removed from the back, then clucked to the horse and drove away, leaving the boy standing in the dust. The bags were two, patched and poor, certainly not befitting a lord’s son.

A lord’s son. Until a month before, Nicholas had thought he had inherited the family estate.

The boy stared at the house, his thin mouth open. He had Randolph’s face—not the face of the man known throughout London for his way with the ladies, but the older brother Nicholas remembered, the one who hesitated before he acted, lest he incur their father’s wrath.

The house, with its wide turrets and branching wings, probably did look imposing to a boy raised on the Scottish moors. His mother had fled to her family upon discovering Randolph’s indiscretions. But her parents had died some years back, and she had followed them with an ague. Neighbors contacted Randolph’s solicitors when they found the boy living alone.

Nicholas hadn’t even known Randolph was married.

Simms reached the boy and immediately picked up his cases. The wind caught most of the conversation, but Nicholas could catch the deferential tone in Simms’ voice, the way he gently said, “Young Master.” Nicholas nodded. Good. The boy would need someone gentle. Nicholas certainly wouldn’t be it.

As they walked up the stairs, the boy kept glancing back at Simms, as if he expected the older man to drop the cases. The boy’s breeches were torn and his hair needed trimming. The wind brought with it the scent of little boy sweat—he needed a scrubbing, had probably not had one since his mother died, if then. When the boy saw Nicholas, he stopped, his eyes growing darker, just as Randolph’s would have.

“Me lord uncle.” The boy’s voice had a touch of the Scottish burr.

The title and the deference rankled. Nicholas didn’t want the boy here. He wanted to be left alone, with his meager fires, his one arm and his port. “You’re to call me Nick,” he said, “after the very devil himself.”

Then he spun on one booted foot and stalked to the library, slamming the door behind him.

*Simms and Pratt, the housekeeper, had managed to keep the boy away from him for three whole days. On the fourth, Nicholas trotted down the stairs just after noon, his head thick and achy with the drink he had imbibed the night before. He had planned to go to the stables, to work Midnight, but the idea of sitting astride the big black stallion, reins caught in only one hand was ridiculous. An entire bottle of port had not drowned the image.

Still, he wore his riding boots and coat, and carried his short whip. Perhaps after a bit of nuncheon he would have the courage to mount a horse—any horse—one-handed.

As he passed the library, he saw the boy, standing before the cold hearth, staring up at the crossed swords. The boy didn’t hear Nicholas approach. This time the lad looked not like Randolph, but like Nicholas himself a lifetime ago, when he thought the swords a symbol of his future as a warrior.

“’Tis said your great-great-great—ah, I don’t know how many greats—grandfather used those swords against Cromwell.”

The boy jumped at the sound of Nicholas’s voice, and turned, his body snapping to attention.

Nicholas put his left hand behind his back. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to speak to the boy. “The old man was named Richard, which is, I believe, your given name.”

“Me mother called me Dickie,” the boy said.

“Here in England,” Nicholas said, “we shall call you Richard.”

The boy licked his lips. “’Taint a boy’s name,” he said, his voice small.

The desire behind the protest was not lost on Nicholas. “Perhaps you’re right. ’Tis too formal for a boy. But Dickie has no dignity. When we sup tonight, you shall tell me which of your given names you prefer to use.”

The boy’s tongue appeared again, over the tops of his lips. They were chapped. “You want ter sup together?”

“Tonight,” Nicholas said, and bowed once, a slight acknowledgment of his rudeness. The boy looked horribly lonely. And why wouldn’t he be? In a strange country, in a strange home, with a man who in a fit of pique had compared himself to the devil?

“Them swords,” the boy said. “Ya ever use them?”

Nicholas permitted himself a wry smile. “Once,” he said. “When I was a boy.”

“Could ya learn me ter use them?” The boy was stiffly formal, his hands clasped behind his back in an unconscious imitation of Nicholas.

“I was right-handed,” Nicholas said. “I doubt I could show you anything.” He slapped his whip against his boots. “Dinner. Seven sharp.”

Then he went to the stables to see if he could mount Midnight.

*He had been little older than the boy the afternoon he had tried the sword. He had moved one of the stools close to the hearth, and stood on the top. The mantel—kept highly polished in those days—stabbed him in the chest. He had to stand on his toes to reach the hilt of the top sword. He yanked it up and back from its perch. The sword weighed twice as much as he expected. It nearly dislodged his father’s portrait. He swung it down to save the art, and lost his balance in the process.

The fall seemed interminable. His right arm, his sword arm, led the way, and the sword hit first, its clang echoing through the great room. He landed on his back, knocking the air out of him. The hilt jabbed into the soft skin beside his spine. Pain shot up and through him, making him gasp.

Footsteps echoed in the outer hall, but he couldn’t pick himself up, couldn’t force himself to stand and hide his misdeed. Collins, his father’s man, arrived first, and stopped at the door, his wig askew, his heavy features flushed with exertion.

“Lord, young man,” he said. “You done it now. You damned yourself, ’tis what you’ve done.”

“Don’t fill his head with such nonsense.” His father pushed past Collins. His blouse was loose and his graying hair untied and flowing over his shoulders. His breeches were newly cleaned and in one hand he held a matching great coat. He had been about to go out. “What have you done, boy?”

Nicholas was still gasping for air. No words emerged. He rolled off the hilt and onto his side. Each movement brought him agony. Collins stooped beside him, and pried the hilt from his right hand. “’Tis doomed you are,” he said. “You’ll be a cripple for the rest of your days.”

The pain was enough that Nicholas believed him. He might never stand again.

“’Tis a silly superstition,” his father said, “and I’ll not have you speak to him of it.” He took the sword from Collins and rehung it beneath the portrait without benefit of the stool. “I told you not to touch anything in this room, lad.”

“Aye.” Nicholas’s voice wheezed out of him. Slowly the air was coming back. Cool air touched his bare skin as Collins lifted up his shirt.

“He has a nasty bruise, milord. I think we should send for the doctor.”

Nicholas hated the doctor, a man with dirty fingers and a stained coat. “No,” he said, sitting up. “I’ll be all right.”

“Leave us,” his father said to Collins.

“As you wish, sir.” Collins stood and bowed. He left the room.

His father put a hand behind Nicholas and helped him to his feet. The movement was painful, but not unbearably so, now that his wind was returning.

“What did he mean, crippled?”

His father gave him an odd look, as if for the first time, he were seeing his son as a man. “A wive’s tale,” he finally said. “’Tis scratched into the hilt in Latin: he who cannot control the sword is forever at its mercy. My father couldn’t wield it properly, and later lost his leg in fighting the insurrection in the colonies. There was an uncle who played with the swords and lost a finger. The stories go like that. The superstitious always look for ways to explain misfortune.”

Nicholas nodded. The pain in his back ran up and down his spine. He longed for a chair and a cold compress over his eyes. “Are you going to punish me, sir?” he asked, wanting this meeting to end.

“I think your accident was punishment enough,” his father said. “Just remember: this room is not a place for little boys.”

*He had wrestled with the horse and lost. When he came down the stairs for supper, every inch of his body ached. His man had had to clean straw from his hair, and scrub blood from his chin from the time he had bitten his lower lip. He wanted nothing more than a long quiet evening with a lot of port to drown the humiliation from memory.

The boy was already at the table, in what had once been Randolph’s spot, to the left of the master of the house. Head bent, hands clasped in his lap, the boy appeared smaller than he was.

“Heads up, lad,” Nicholas snapped. “This is a meal, not a church.”

“Sorry, sir.” The boy brought his head up, his longish hair falling into his eyes. He brushed it away with one hand.

Nicholas leaned on his left hand as he eased himself into the chair. Each movement made him ache. He was like a child, unused to the saddle. He would be limping for days.

A door banged in the kitchen, then Simms emerged, carrying a silver tureen. Apparently he and Mrs. Pratt had decided to go all out for this meal. Simms set the tureen down and began ladling out the soup. The broth had a savory odor, and Nicholas’s stomach rumbled.

The boy gulped, and bobbed his head, once. “I’ve made up me mind, sir,” he said.

“Yes?” Nicholas watched as Simms set the soup bowl in front of him. Beef, potatoes and carrots floated in the thin brown broth. He didn’t care what the boy had decided. He merely wanted to end the meal and get on with the evening.

“Adam, sir. Do ya think they’ll find it manly enough here in England?”

Simms set broth in front of the boy. Nicholas blinked at him for a moment, confused. Then he remembered the conversation from the afternoon. The boy was choosing his name. He nearly said that anything was better than Dickie, but the boy’s hopeful look stopped him. “I daresay they’ll think it first-rate.”

The boy—Adam now—flushed with pleasure. He dug into his soup, clutching his spoon in his fist and shoveling food in his face like a boy in an orphan’s home.

“Adam, did your mother teach you to eat like that?”

Adam froze. “Nay, sir. She said a lad should eat slow ter enjoy the meal.”

Nicholas nodded. He wished he could dig through the food as Adam had done. “Do as she taught you,” he said. Then he rubbed his remaining hand on his breeches and picked up his own spoon. Eating left-handed still felt awkward to him, and he had never before done it in front of another. His hand shook as he brought it to his lips.

“Did ya kill him?”

Nicholas swallowed the rich soup, and frowned. He set his spoon down. “Kill whom?”

“The man what done it ter ya. Took yer arm.”

Nicholas felt the heat rise in his cheeks. No one had ever asked him a direct question about his injury. Not even the girls of the ton. They had hinted, but never once asked. “Aye.” Nicholas said. It was difficult to get the words past his lips. “I stuck him with my bayonet.”

And the man had screamed before he fell, one more body on top of a pile of bodies in all that smoky heat. Nicholas’s last act with his right arm. He had fainted himself, moments after that.

“Good,” the lad said. “Then yer a hero, like they say.”

Nicholas’s appetite had fled. He swallowed, somehow feeling it important to speak. “No, lad. Killing another man does not make me a hero.”

“But ya made it through one of the bloodiest battles of the war.”

Nicholas picked up his spoon. He had to eat. He made himself dip the spoon in the broth. “Aye,” he said. “And sometimes I wish I hadn’t.”

*That night, he dreamed an old dream, one he first had in Spain. He was feverish, lying on a cot in the heat, men screaming around him. Flies buzzed around his face, and the tent smelled of rotting flesh. His arm hurt so badly that each touch sent him into agony.

The bone surgeon stood over him, his uniform covered with blood. “We have to take the arm.”

“No.” Nicholas’s throat was parched and the words were little more than a whisper.

Then Collins came up behind the surgeon, the sword in his work-roughened hands. “’Tis because of the accident, young man,” Collins said. “If you’d not taken the sword, you’d keep the arm.”

“Superstition!” His father’s voice boomed over the screaming men. “My son cannot control the weapon. He deserves to die.”

“Take the arm,” Collins said. “’Tis the boy’s fate. He’ll live, leastways.”

Nicholas made himself sit up. The darkness was oppressive. He could still feel the heat from the dream. The stench of rotting flesh and too many bodies packed too close together remained in his nostrils. But he felt the bed linens beneath him, and saw the familiar shapes of his armoire, fireplace and chair outlined in the thin moonlight streaming through the window.

With the back of his hand, he wiped the sweat off his brow, then put his head on his knees.

“Marriage is easy in Scotland, you know.”

The muscles in Nicholas’s back tensed. He had heard Randolph’s voice. But that was impossible. He brought his head up. The moonlight outlined his brother, sitting in the chair that had been empty a moment before. Randolph was relaxed, an elbow leaning on the chair back, and his left ankle resting on his right knee. Typical Randolph, all fluidity and ease.

“The girl was pretty, and Father wanted an heir.” Randolph grinned, as if they were having a conversation over dinner. “When she told me she was pregnant, I wed her and brought her back here. All seemed fine, until her eighth month, when she caught me with Lady Alexander in flagrante dilecto. The girl fled, against the doctor’s advice, and since we never heard, we assumed the child had died.”

It was a dream. It had to be. Randolph was dead. Nicholas sat cross-legged. “You lost your soul somewhere, Dolph. ’Twas not the way to treat your wife and child.”

Randolph shrugged. “We never said the banns. She wasn’t landed. Father said we could get it annulled, if it ever really existed.”

Nicholas rubbed his hand over his eyes. The movement made him feel wide awake. “Strange thing to come back from the grave to tell me, Dolph. I care less about your sham of a marriage than you did.”

“I think not, brother,” Randolph said. “There is no marriage on record. You could cut the boy if you like.”

A chill ran down Nicholas’s spine, as if Randolph had run his dead fingers along Nicholas’s skin. “I have no intention of denying the boy his inheritance.”

Randolph stood. As he turned, the moonlight reflected off his white shirt, revealing a small, bloody hole near his heart. “Don’t lie to me, Nicky. ’Tis why you try to drown yourself in drink, to hide the anger you feel at losing the title yet again. This time to a boy.”

“’Tis not why I’m angry!” The words exploded from Nicholas with a force that he hadn’t known he had. “I am angry at you, Dolph. You died while I was gutting Frenchmen for Wellington. You died in a duel you didn’t have to fight, protecting some woman’s non-existent honor—”

“Actually,” Randolph said, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over the hole in his chest, “I died protecting my own non-existent honor.”

Nicholas was shaking. He had lied to himself so effectively he hadn’t realized there was anger beneath the drink. “I came home half a man to find I had nothing to come home to. No family, no one who cared so much as a whit that I survived.”

Randolph shrugged. “You came home to all this. Without the boy, you could be lord here.”

“I have none of your ambitions,” Nicholas said. “I have my own income and no need for the estate.”

Randolph bowed, slightly, in mockery. “Then I had no need to come here. Forgive me, dear brother. As usual, I have misunderstood you.”

Nicholas placed his hand behind him to brace himself on the bed. His outburst had left him shaken. “’Twas a senseless way to die,” he said.

“’Twas a senseless way to live.” Randolph’s voice had an unusual seriousness. He ran a hand through his hair, and then grinned. “You needn’t worry, Nicky. This will be my only trip. No sense in the neighbors thinking the manse is haunted.”

“They wouldn’t think of ghosts, Dolph,” Nicholas said. “They would merely use it as confirmation of my growing insanity.”

But by the time he finished the sentence, the moonlight illuminated a bare patch of wall and an empty chair. Nicholas took in a deep breath. He was still shaking, and he hadn’t moved, but Randolph was gone.

The dreams were over. Nicholas was awake for the rest of the night.

*The next morning, he left his chamber early and went to the stables. He took out the gentlest horse, a mare his father had purchased for guests, and dismissed the grooms. Then he worked at mounting, concentrating each time on retaining his balance. Over the year of his illness and recovery, he had lost much strength. The problem was not really the loss of his arm, but the loss of strength in his body. What had once been effortless now took a great deal of concentration and energy. He mounted on the second try, and controlled the reins with his left, letting the mare set the pace while he relearned how to ride.

He returned to the house at noon, planning to change before nuncheon. As he passed the library, he noted Adam, staring at the swords. The boy stood in the same position he had used the day before: hands clasped behind his back, head up, shoulders back, and brow furrowed as if in concentration.

Nicholas tucked the quirt in his boot, and went into the library. “’Tis truly not a room for boys,” he said, hearing his father’s voice speak through his own.

Adam looked around sharply, as if he hadn’t realized that Nicholas was there. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said.

Nicholas glanced at the swords. They gleamed. Mrs. Pratt kept them cleaned, just like she kept the portrait free of dust. Only the mantel seemed to escape her careful attention. “The swords fascinated me as a boy,” he said.

“And me da?”

Something in the boy’s tone made Nicholas turn. The boy had bit his lower lip in anticipation of Nicholas’s response.

Nicholas chose his words carefully. “Swords were not your father’s weapons.”

“But I thought ya took one each. Ter Spain.” The boy’s face reddened as he spoke. His small body was rigid as a soldier’s before a general.

“To Spain?” Nicholas frowned. The boy thought his father had fought with Wellington. Yer a hero, then. The boy knew nothing of Randolph, nor of his death. “Nay. The blades we use now tip the ends of rifles. I daresay your father was good with a gun.”

But not good enough. Or quick enough.

You could cut the boy if you like.

“A gun?” the boy asked, as if guns lacked romance.

“Aye,” Nicholas said. The air felt fragile between them. The wrong word would shatter the moment.

Adam returned his gaze to the swords. “Me ma did na talk about him, ’cept ter say I got the look of him.”

“In your face,” Nicholas said. “You have the look of him as a boy in your face.”

Adam’s body tensed. “He were a good man, right sir? I asked Father John, and he said he did na know.”

Your father drank too much and cared nothing for you. He made no provisions for you, and probably would have turned you away had he lived. Nicholas licked his lips. One couldn’t say such things to a child. It was hard enough growing up with a real father—a taciturn man who only noticed when a boy did something wrong. Growing up alone in a strange home had to be twenty times more difficult.

“Your father,” Nicholas said slowly, “was the best man he knew how to be.”

The boy whirled, beaming. “I knew it. The old missus next door, she said ’twere a crime the way he treated his family. But she did na know him. Ya knew him.”

“Once,” Nicholas said. A lump had risen in his throat. He had to swallow hard to make it go away. He had been fifteen when he left the house, and already Randolph was lost to him. His big brother had become a man more interested in the gay festivities of the ton than in the political realities of England. Perhaps the ghostly Randolph had been right; perhaps Nicholas had been angry. But it had been the anger of a second son who thought the eldest was squandering the family name. Since Nicholas had made his own name, and had learned that such things were rarely important.

“‘Once?’” the boy repeated. “Then she was right?”

The joy had fled from the boy’s expression. Randolph had never had a face that mobile. Nicholas felt the loss. He hadn’t realized how much he had basked in the warmth of the boy’s emotion. “Ah, lad,” he said. “Men are not saints, no matter how much you want them to be.”

And because he could no longer stand to field the boy’s questions, Nicholas turned and quickly climbed the stairs.

*That night, long after the rest of the house fell asleep, Nicholas sat in the library and stared into the flames. He held a glass of port in his left hand—the same glass that he had poured when he arrived. The port no longer eased the ache or prevented the dreams, and he was tired of waking with a muzzy head and a sour taste in his mouth.

He stared at the swords. Superstition. Yet here he was, crippled for the rest of his life, just as Collins had said. Perhaps if he took the swords down successfully…

He shook his head. The thought was silly. Even if he removed the swords, he would still miss an arm. He would always and forever retain a physical memory of that field in Salamanca.

You could cut the boy.

Rich, landed, and powerful. And still unable to hold a glass of port in one hand and a cigar in the other. He had his commission and his income from his mother’s home near London. More than enough for a man who lived as he did.

A man who for another ten years had to raise a boy not his own.

And me da?

Lad, your da was no better than the rest of us. Nicholas stood, leaving the port on the table, and headed up to bed. As he passed the swords, he touched the tassels lightly with his good hand. A shiver ran up his back.

He who cannot control the sword is forever at its mercy.

Aye. There be truth in that.

*The next morning, Nicholas was up at dawn. He took Midnight on a canter through the property, noting that the servants had kept it up despite his neglect. He would go over the books in the afternoon, making certain all were well paid. He and the stallion returned lathered. The groomsmen offered to take the horse from him, but Nicholas did the work instead. He needed to stretch his muscles, and he needed to learn to take care of himself with a single hand.

He finished mid-morning, and paused outside the stables to take a deep lungful of air. He hadn’t seen this time of day in weeks, perhaps months. The sunlight cast everything in gold, and gave the grounds a freshness they lacked by midday. He stood for a moment, basking in it, then went inside.

As he passed the library, a movement caught his eye. He went to the door, his soldiering instincts making him move quietly. Adam had pulled a stool over to the mantel—the same stool Nicholas had used years before—only Adam had his back to the door. He leaned across, the edge of the mantel pressing against his chest, as he reached for the hilt of the nearest sword.

Nicholas tried to speak, but the words stopped in his throat. If the boy did not try this time, he would try later. Nicholas remembered that much of his childhood. Instead, he positioned himself only a few feet away from the boy, close enough to use his body to break the boy’s fall.

Adam grabbed the hilt and eased the sword off its perch. Its weight unbalanced him and he swayed. Nicholas took a step inward. His heart knocked against his chest. A remembered pain ran up his back, but still he waited.

Adam gripped the top of the mantel with his left hand and steadied himself, the sword pointing downward.

It was nearly as long as the boy. Adam held his place and swung the sword at an imaginary enemy. The sword made a whoosh in the air. He stopped quickly, the back of his clothes suddenly drenched in sweat.

Nicholas swallowed. He had been holding his breath. Something inside him felt envy at the boy’s prowess. Perhaps if he had had such strength, perhaps then, he would not be standing here, like this.

Adam took his other hand off the mantel and swayed precariously. He braced his right wrist with his left hand and tried to return the sword to its place. But its weight was too much for him to lift above his head, and he started to tilt to the side.

Immediately, Nicholas was beside him. He put his arm around Adam’s waist, holding the boy in place. The boy was warm and too thin. Nicholas could feel the knobs of the boy’s spine through his shirt.

“Lor, sir,” the boy said. His voice was breathless. “Ya scared me.”

Then they were even. Nicholas steadied the boy, then took the sword from the boy’s grasp. The sword was lighter than he remembered, with a more elegant feel than a bayonet. With a simple movement, he returned the sword to its place above the mantel. Then he helped the boy down.

The boy’s face was crimson. He kept his head bowed, hunching his shoulders forward as if he expected to get hit. Nicholas returned the stool to its place.

“’Tis sorry I am, sir,” Adam said. “I should na have touched it.”

What have you done? I told you not to touch anything in this room, lad.

Nicholas’s father’s words nearly escaped his lips. But Nicholas stopped them. He had wanted his father to hold him, to reassure him about the bruise that would plague him for nearly two weeks. His father had said nothing more.

The accident is punishment enough.

“You may do as you wish,” Nicholas said. He swallowed the fear and anger that was threatening to overtake him. “You are lord of this place, after all.”

The boy’s eyes widened. He had clearly never thought in such terms.

“But,” Nicholas said. “I am your guardian, and I think it might be wise if you listen to me.”

The boy bit his chapped lips. “I will na touch them again, sir.”

Nicholas crouched in front of the boy, seeing for the first time the fatigue lines beneath the boy’s eyes, the hollows in the boy’s cheeks, the sores on the inside edge of the boy’s lips. Although the boy now lived in rich circumstances, he still had no one to care for him. “The swords fascinate you, don’t they, boy?”

Adam nodded. His wide eyes stared at Nicholas’s face.

“England has no use for swordsmen,” Nicholas said.

“I do na wish ter be a soldier, sir,” the boy said, his flush growing even deeper. “Beg pardon.”

Adam beneath bodies on the fields of Salamanca: flies swarming overhead, the sun beating down with an intensity foreign to England. The boy flailed with his right hand, trying to get someone’s attention, but he did not call for help.

Nicholas swallowed. “No offense taken,” he said.

The boy took a deep, slow breath, as if he were trying to calm himself.

“If I can find someone to teach you, would you like to learn the sword?”

The boy exhaled. His eyes watered. He blinked rapidly, and averted his gaze. “Do ya think I could?”

“Aye,” Nicholas said. “As long as you take other lessons. We’ll teach you to speak the King’s English and find you a tutor so that you can attend Cambridge when the time comes.”

Adam nodded, willing to agree to anything, it seemed, as long as he could touch the sword.

“Go now, and tell Simms we need an early nuncheon. I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

“Aye, sir.” The boy fled as if the hounds of hell pursued him. Nicholas stood and surveyed the swords. Clean, and polished, shining in the daylight, they still had a menace to them.

The boy would learn to control them. And he would learn the history of their use. Weapons did not cripple. Men did.

Perhaps, in time, Adam would understand that.

Perhaps, in time, others would understand as well.

Perhaps a man would no longer need a favorite weapon, and the bloody fields would become a distant memory.

Nicholas stared at the swords, as he had when he was a boy.

One could only dream.

Controlling the SwordCopyright © 2023 by Kristine Kathryn RuschFirst published Excalibur, edited by Richard Gilliam, and Martin H. Greenberg, and Edward E. Kramer, Warner Aspect, May 1995Published by WMG PublishingCover and Layout copyright © 2023 by WMG PublishingCover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG PublishingCover art copyright © Fernando Gregory/Dreamstime