Knives

I have a thing for folding knives. It started when a rancher I was helping when I was 14 years old told me, “A real man carries a knife all the time. It’s a tool, much as a weapon.” showing me his, I bought into that. I can’t remember much else he said, a man of few words. But he taught me to drive an old red pickup truck with a 3-on-the-tree shifter, and how to castrate farm animals. He was cool in beaten-up old cowboy boots, with one Granddad already gone and another a thousand miles away, he was close as I got to that. So, I have a lot of boots.

Over many years, I have collected custom, one-of-a-kind, folding knives, those with Damascus blades, an art itself, and bolsters of petrified mammoth molars or tusks, gold, jewels, sculpted silver, and more.

Angela and I, recently, went to a custom knife show in New York City, where makers from around the world brought their creations. Pieces ranged from hundreds of dollars to fifty-thousand and up. We found a beautiful folding knife with a Pegasus sculpted on it. It is the knife that Blitz borrows from the Tula weapons traders at Shady Market, in The Glimmering. We feature it in the image above.