Pasha of Redurant

A former owner of the magical sword Kring who was mentioned in The Colour of Magic. He owned it sometime before the Archmandrite of B'Ituni and Hrun the Barbarian took possession of the black blade. The Pasha of Redurant wielded Kring on a battle in the Great Nef, where the sword received a slight nick some two-thirds of the way up its blade, due to an enemy wearing an octiron collar. He also used to keep Kring much sharper then later owners (such as Hrun) and used it to cut silk handkerchiefs in mid-air.

Nothing else is known about the Pasha of Redurant, or what happened to him after the aforementioned battle.

Annotation

Possibly a reference to the desert parley during a Crusade, between Richard 1st of England (the Lionheart) and Saladin the Great, leader of the Saracens. In a spirit of "peaceably demonstrating what we can do", Saladin showed that his scimitar was capable of cutting through a silk scarf as it floated in the breeze, so sharp was it kept. Meanwhile, Richard showed off his broadsword, capable of taking a two-inch thick iron bar and cleaving it in two.

As Kring was capable of the cutting-the-silk-scarf-in-air trick, but appeared to prove utterly incapable in battle of chopping through an enemy's iron collar, a little more brute force and a little less subtlety might have been called for on that occasion.

This also recalls the occasion when Gimli slew his forty-second orc at Helm's Deep: alas, the orc wore an iron collar and thus marred Gimli's axe blade with a slight nick.