Sir Elias de Montfort

Favourite_sword

The blade he calls "Redemption's Edge" is a hand-and-a-half longsword forged from Damascene steel captured after the Battle of Arsuf. Its fuller is etched with tiny Latin verses—"Non nobis Domine" along one side and "In hoc signo vinces" along the other—while the cross-guard is shaped from two knotted olive branches of silver, a gift from a grateful Armenian smith whose daughter Elias once saved from raiders. The pommel holds a single ruby the size of a dove’s heart, said to glow faintly when the wielder’s cause is just; Elias privately believes it dims whenever his own certainty falters. The leather grip, originally black, has darkened over years of sweat and blood to a deep burgundy, and nicks along the edge mark each of the thirty-seven Saracen cavalry he felled during the rearguard at Jaffa. He sharpens it every dawn with a whetstone blessed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, whispering the 91st Psalm as sparks fly, and sleeps with the sword across his knees like a pilgrim’s cross.