“Amazing banter and a wonderful ending.”
Grimdark Magazine
They called her a witch.
The only daughter of a long line of bladesmiths, Orsa had no choice but to take up the hammer and forge when it was her turn. But she was unlike those who came before her. Her swords are legendary—said to be undefeatable. And when she makes them, she can see their future...and the truth of the warriors who wield them. Brutal. Cruel. Unworthy of her skill. Until him.
They called him a mercenary.
A warrior with unmatched strength, Bruin has fought on the side of justice for a lifetime, a legend in his own right, he aids those in need, wherever, whenever he is called. He has no past and no future, living day to day for nothing but battle, until he finds a legendary sword—forged by the witch from the North—that reveals that he does have a future, and it is full of her...
The Bladesmith Queen
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Orsa & Bruin’s story was originally published in the Sword Stone Table anthology
Get it now as a standalone novella at Amazon
Excerpt from The Bladesmith Queen
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The first fell through the ice and could not swim.
The second drank from an old well and was gone in a fortnight.
The third set sail for fortune and was lost to the sea.
And that was when she stopped kissing them.
Or maybe it was they who stopped kissing her, as it seemed the whole village learned the bladesmith's daughter was cursed at the same time she discovered it herself.
Not cursed. A curse. Which was a different thing altogether.
Receiving a devastating blow engendered pity. Being the instrument of the blow? Fear.
And so, despite the fact that she was only fifteen when Rowan fell through the ice, only sixteen when Henry drank from the well, only seventeen when Garreth—beautiful, strong, kind-eyed Garreth—was lost to the sea, she became the face of the village's fear. Mothers clutched their children tight when they saw her in the street; fathers invoked her name when those same children misbehaved; the priest, in his ominous black robes, made the sign of the cross when she passed the stone church on her way into town. Women averted their eyes when she neared, and men—they steered clear altogether.
After all, they were the ones in the most danger.
If she had been another woman in another town, she would not have been allowed to stay. She would have been run out and sent on her way to wreak her havoc on a different place with different sons. But she was the daughter of a bladesmith, who'd been son of a bladesmith, who'd been son of a bladesmith, and so on, as far back as steel could be forged in flame, and so she was invaluable to the town for her skill.
As she was a curse, so, too, were the weapons born in her fire. Any soldier who marched into battle with a blade made by the Bladesmith Witch on his hip would fight stronger and smarter than ever before. At least, that was the tale whispered on battlefields and in taverns the land over.
Like all tales told by terrified boys and drunken men, however, it was more myth than fact, just as she was.
But myths made for boasting, and boasting made for danger—especially to their subjects—and she learned young that when a woman was a myth, her danger was magnified. Because myths bestow power as well as fear.
And men do not like women with power.
Worse, still, those who wield it.
She spent her days alone in the forge, her only companion the wolf who shadowed her on weekly trips into town, when the whole village took inside to watch warily through the edges of their distorted glass windows. The baker, the grocer, and the butcher were the only ones brave enough to come close—but even then, they charged her triple the cost: a risk tax. A curse tax.
She paid it without complaint.
It was not the first tax she had paid for this village that feared her, nor was it the most devastating.
In her solitude, she wielded hammer and flame and forged the most glorious steels the world had ever seen. And the men who heard her story came from all across the land, each promising to conquer The Bladesmith Witch in his way. Each vowing to leave with the greatest of her swords.
A sword that could cheat death.
A sword that could make them kings.
When they came, she sold them blades. And some, she charged exorbitant sums. A curse tax. Most paid without complaint, and it was proof enough that it was deserved.
Until him.