Legend

Erkinai Aru’s Dagger looked like a jewel – a shield-shaped stone gleamed in its hilt, and its long blade tapered like an icicle. Erkinai always kept it close at hand. With it she cut bonds: hobbles, nets, every cord that held a living thing in place.

At the spring horse fair Erkinai stopped by the pen of a young breeder. He was selling animals he did not love, and kept turning his head after the caravans heading west. On his wrist he wore a worn leather thong – the oath he had sworn to his father never to leave the herd.

“My father’s been in the ground five years, and I’m still minding his horses,” he said.

“Your father is dead,” Erkinai answered. “You are not.”

She drew the dagger and offered it to him hilt first.

“Cut it.”

The young man held the blade against the thong a long while. The leather was hard, grown into his wrist like bark. One stroke was enough.

“Your father wanted you free, not guarding his horses,” said Erkinai. “This blade cuts whatever still holds on, long after it has died.”

That evening a severed thong lay in the grass by the pen, and a lone rider was heading west with two horses. Erkinai wiped the blade on her sleeve and moved on – somewhere on the steppe there was always another cord.