The Boy The King Loved (Pt. 2)

The East-Facing Window
The east-facing window, through which the sun had once rose and which was now hidden behind the weight of misplaced tapestry, portrayed an ancient tale of courage. So it was told, a mild local blacksmith had fashioned a great sword. The sword was told to be larger than any man could wield in battle unless he were quite a giant. The man, an heirless widower, crafted it for many years, but only after his paid work was finished and no other matter commanded his attention. Indeed, its manufacture took many years. No one within the gates knew what purpose lay in the construction of such an instrument. Some suggested it was ceremonial, a gift to the King in the place of an heir to continue tribute to the monarch. Indeed, the local man was said to be quite noble in his disposition and loyal in his character. And, indeed, such a ceremonial act from a poor man with no family might have seemed a fitting final labor.
In the autumn of his final year, the quiet tradesman dragged his giant’s sword into the city’s field, at that time left for its Sabbatical rest. In the rolled dirt and browning grass he parked the sled that carried his over-built weapon. He stood over the field and his sword for a day and a night. On the dawn of the second day, a particularly clear chill fell upon the land. Every surface glittered with an infinity of jeweled dew, frozen into frost. The colors of the fall-turned trees refracted each a thousand times and the tall city gates shimmered an iron shimmer. The cloak of our simple worker was itself stiff with ice and his well-kempt beard too. Everything lay frozen, both in matter and in time.
Our simple worker crouched as slowly as anyone had seen his already deft form move. His leather-gloved hands wrapped around the immense handle of the weapon at his feet, one at the lowest point and the other at the top-most. With a groan that shook the ice from every surface, the field suddenly cleaved and coughed up a rich and foul earth which met and intermingled the falling frost. The air was, for that moment, like breathing diamonds from coal.
From beneath the ruptured earth, a hulking form of mud and stone rose up. Its teeth of granite ringed its gaping maw that snatched open fiercely and its eyeless skull lurched forth from the fruitless soil. Simultaneously, a whirling fan of steel shirked its sheeth of crystal frost and lept from its sled. The meager blacksmith’s cloak exploded from his back into a doubled halo of shattered ice as he swung his mighty creation. It’s profound blade cracked through the lower jaw of the earthen nemesis, showering splintered stone across the view. It’s green-black life-blood poured from this wound a stench across the open earth
A rumble escaped the living soil and the steel-worker’s blade hung for a moment in the air upon its second pass. Half of its full length crashed into the crown of the lurking monster and lodged there mightily. The earth sunk beneath the feet of the blacksmith, but he relinquished his creation not. The soil quivered a moment and then fell away all together, swallowing first his blade and then, with it, the swords creator. Only his cloak remained and the sled.
Or so it was told. Indeed, so it was memorialized in colored glass and lead behind a time-dulled tapestry portraying some battle or another.