10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

The hilt was unusual and perhaps not attractive, but the true wonder of the weapon was its blade.

Steel becomes more brittle as it becomes harder. The greatest mystery of the swordsmith’s art is the tempering that permits blades to strike without shattering while remaining hard enough to cleave armor or an Opponent’s weapon.

A way around the problem is to weld a billet of soft iron to a billet of steel hardened with the highest possible carbon content. The fused bar can then be hammered flat and folded back on itself, the process repeated until iron and steel are intermingled in thousands of layers thinner than the edge of a razor.

Done correctly, the result is a blade whose hardness is sandwiched within malleable layers that absorb shock and give the whole resilience; but the operation requires the flats to be cleaned before each refolding, lest oxide scale weaken the core and cause it to split on impact like a wand of whalebone. Few smiths had the skill and patience to forge such blades; few purchasers had the wealth to pay for so much expert labor.

But this stranger seemed to think Samlor fell into the latter category- as the caravan master indeed did, if he wanted a thing badly enough-

The blade was beautiful. It was double-edged and a foot long, with the sharpened surfaces describing flat curves instead of being straight tapers like those of the knife in Samlor’s hand. The blade sloped toward either edge from the deep keel in the center which gave it stiffness-and all along the flat, the surface danced and shimmered with the polished, acid- etched whorls of the dissimilar metals which comprised it.