Nightfall

A Valyrian blade in the hands of the ironborn's most thoughtful house.

The blade itself

Nightfall is a longsword, dark-bladed and rippled in the usual way, with a crescent moon worked into the pommel in mother-of-pearl and moonstone ÔÇö a pale ornament on a black weapon, and a very deliberate piece of design. Beyond that the descriptions are thin. It is light, it holds an edge nobody has ever had to restore, and it is one of a small handful of such blades anywhere in the islands.

That scarcity is the whole story. Valyrian steel cannot be forged any more; the craft burned with the Freehold and no living smith can do more than reshape a blade that already exists. The Iron Islands are poor, rocky and proudly hostile to the idea of paying for anything, so a Valyrian sword there is a considerably rarer object than in the green lands to the east ÔÇö rare enough that owning one is a permanent argument in your favour at a kingsmoot.

House Harlaw of Ten Towers

Nightfall belongs to House Harlaw, the largest and steadiest of the ironborn houses, whose lord ÔÇö Rodrik Harlaw, called the Reader ÔÇö is famous throughout the islands for the eccentric and slightly shameful habit of reading books. He has the finest library on the Iron Islands and is regarded by his own countrymen as a bit of an embarrassment for it, which is a fair summary of ironborn intellectual life.

That the islandsÔÇÖ most bookish lord holds one of their few Valyrian swords is a nice irony, and one the ironborn largely fail to appreciate. Rodrik is not a coward and has fought when it was required of him; he simply thinks the reaving is a dead end and has said so, calmly, in rooms full of men who wanted to hit him for it. The sword does not, in the end, hang at his own hip ÔÇö the Harlaws have kept it in the hands of a kinsman known for using it, which is the sort of arrangement a practical family makes.

A short record

There is very little else to tell, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Nightfall has no famous duel attached to it, no theft, no disappearance, no king who carried it into a ruin. It has simply been a Harlaw possession for a long time, on an archipelago whose histories are largely oral and largely boasting. What it does have is a future: the Iron Islands sit on the western sea, the ironborn have lately been taking an interest in matters far outside their usual reach, and a named Valyrian blade in the hands of an ambitious house rarely stays quiet for long.

What became of it ÔÇö if an ending is written, it is here. Spoilers.

The chronicle records no ending here ÔÇö or none the maesters have set down.