The Reluctant Swordsman

by David Duncan

  "You will challenge?" Nnanji asked nervously, licking his swollen lips.

  "Challenge, hell!" his mentor said, almost ready to start grinding his teeth again. "That's an abomination! I shall denounce them and cut off their thumbs... I assume that they threw the first punch?"

  Well, no... Nnanji had thrown the first punch.

  One of the things Wallie had learned in his disastrous night with Jja was that Shonsu's vocabulary was greatly lacking in terms of endearment. He now discovered that it was rich in oaths, insults, obscenities, and vituperation. He told Nnanji what sort of idiot he was in sixteen carefully selected paraphrases, without repeating a word. Nnanji somehow managed to cringe while lying flat on his back.

  "Well, two against one is still bad," Wallie concluded, and then looked suspiciously at his battered liegeman. "It was two against one?"

  Well, not exactly. Ghaniri had insulted Nnanji. Nnanji had punched him and then been well punished for it. Ghaniri was a powerful fighter, as Wallie already knew-shorter than Nnanji, but much wider and heavier, with the crumpled nose and puffed ears of a bruiser. Then, when Nnanji had managed to get back on his feet again, Gorramini had repeated the insult, and Nnanji had tried to swing at him-and suffered an even larger disaster.

  Now Wallie was too furious and astounded even to swear. "So instead of denouncing them, I have to go downstairs and crawl on my belly and apologize to Tarru for you? But what in the World could they have said to you that would make you behave so stupidly?" he demanded. "What insult is worth two beatings in a row?"

  Nnanji turned his face away.

  "Tell me, vassal. I order it!" Wallie snapped, suddenly very intrigued.

  Nnanji turned his head back and looked up, grief-stricken. Then he closed his right eye and pointed at his eyelid, repeated the gesture with his left eye, and after that just stared in total misery at Wallie, who did not understand at all.

  "I said 'tell me!' In words!" he said.

  For a moment he thought his vassal would refuse, but he swallowed hard, and then whispered, "My father is a rugmaker and my mother a silversmith." He might have been confessing to incest or drug trafficking.

  Fathermarks? Jja had mentioned fathermarks, and Wallie had not dared to ask her what they were. The god's riddle: First your brother... Wallie was instantly frantic to run to the mirror and inspect his eyelids-who ever looks at his own eyelids?

  "So?" Wallie said. "They are honest? Hard-working? Kind to their children?" Nnanji nodded. "Then honor them! What does it matter what craft your father belongs to, if he is a good man?" The culture gap was staggering. Wallie opened his mouth to say that his father had been a policeman-and stopped just in time. In his mind he heard the shrill laugh of the demigod when he had made that statement to him. That might mean that the god had foreseen this very conversation, for policeman would translate as swordsman, so Wallie must not tell Nnanji.

  However, Wallie Smith's father's father had dabbled in a great many fields in the course of a dubious career, including a couple of years in a carpet factory.

  "It's an odd coincidence, though, Nnanji-my grandfather was a rugmaker, too."

  Nnanji gasped. If hero worship were measured on the Richter scale, then Wallie had just registered nine and a half or ten.

  "What does it matter, though? It's you who's my vassal, not your father. He obviously does a good job of making sons. Except for brains, of course, you witless cretin!"

  At that moment a healer came bustling in. While he was examining the patient, Wallie slipped back into the main guest room and hobbled as fast as he could across to the mirror. Both his eyelids were blank. So much for that idea.

  As he walked back, he thought about Nnanji. This absurd sensitivity about his nonswordsman background would explain his exaggerated ideals of honor and courage; overcompensation, although there was no such term in the World. Obviously a little psychiatry was required. If a hundred-kilogram, smooth-faced hunk of muscle could manage to imitate a cultured, bearded, Viennese doctor, it was time for Sigmund Freud. So, once the healer had reassured the valorous lord that there was no serious damage to his protégé, had accepted his fee, and departed, Wallie told the victim to continue lying where he was and perched himself back on the stool by the bed.

  "Let's have a word about your fencing problem," he said. "When did it start? Have you always had it?"

  Certainly not, Nnanji said, staring at the ceiling and speaking with difficulty because of his swollen mouth. As a scratcher, Novice Nnanji of the First had been a model recruit. Briu had said that he was the best natural-born swordsman he had ever seen. Briu had said that no one learned sutras faster or more accurately. Briu had told him after two weeks that he was ready to try for promotion-except that the guard had a rule requiring Firsts to be Firsts for at least a year. So it was on the anniversary of his induction into the craft that Nnanji had proved his swordsmanship with two matches against Seconds... "Boy, did I make a mess of them!" he lamented nostalgically.

  Then he had plunged ahead, hoping to make Third in record time, also-and disaster had struck. One morning he had found that he couldn't connect with his foil against anyone, no matter what he did. And he had been that way ever since.

  Now, Wallie thought, we are getting somewhere!

  "Tell me," he asked, "did anything else important happen about that same time?"

  The unbruised corners of Nnanji's face paled, his fists clenched, and his whole body went rigid. "I don't remember!" he said.

  "You don't remember? Nnanji doesn't remember?"

  Either he was lying, or the very act of trying to remember was enough to terrify him. No, he did not remember, he said, and he rolled over and buried his face in the pillow, and that was that.

  Wallie was very sure that he could guess what had happened. The new Second had suddenly learned that the guard was not as pure and incorruptible as he had thought in his innocence. He was still idealistic and romantic-how much more so he must have been before that! How he had learned, whether or not he had been intimidated into silence, what he had been expected or forced to do... none of those things mattered. What did matter was that Wallie was no psychiatrist, that the language did not contain the right words, and that any attempt to explain all this to him would almost certainly make things worse instead of better.

  "Right," he said, rising. "I can't denounce Gorramini and Ghaniri, and I shall have to crawl to Tarru. But I'm going to get even with them, anyway. With you."

  "Me?" said a muffled voice, and Nnanji rolled over again.

  "You! In a week or so, I'm going to put you up against them in fencing as part of your promotion to Fourth, and you are going to trash them in public."

  "That isn't possible, my liege!" Nnanji protested.

  Wallie roared. "Don't you tell me what isn't possible! I'm going to make a Fourth out of you if it kills you."

  Nnanji stared, decided that his mentor was serious, and closed his eyes in ecstasy. Nnanji of the Fourth?!

  "Now," Wallie said, "you have been incredibly stupid! You have embarrassed me and endangered my mission and delayed me. You are going to be punished."

  Nnanji gulped and returned to the real World apprehensively.

  "You are to stay in that bed until noon-no food, flat on your back. It is the best treatment for your bruises, too. And while you're there, you can try to remember what it was that happened just before you lost your lunge."

  Wallie turned and strode to the door, leaving his vassal openmouthed. Then he remembered Nnanji's dogged willingness and fired a parting shot. "That doesn't mean you have to pee in the bed," he said, and left.

  * * *

  Breakfast was not a fun meal that morning. Tarru was waiting for him, holding court at a table in the center of the big hall with four Fifths flanking him, across from an empty space obviously reserved for Wallie. There were secret smiles all over the room as he entered-this was what happened to swordsmen who chose rugmakers' sons as protégés.

  Wallie apologized for his
vassal's behavior and assured his host that the man was being suitably punished. Tarru grudgingly accepted the apology and smiled. Why his smile always made Wallie think of sharks was a mystery, for the man's teeth were not pointed. His eyes were embedded in wrinkles like an elephant's, not glassy and smooth like a shark's. Gray hair was not sharklike. Perhaps it was just the way he eyed the seventh sword, giving a mental image of circling and waiting.

  "Of course, insulting and provoking a guest is not good behavior for hosts, either," Wallie said as his bowl of stew was laid before him. "Perhaps I should have a word with those gentlemen's mentors. Who are they?"

  "Ah!" said the acting reeve, with a curiously unreadable expression on his face. "They are not hosts, my lord, but guests, like yourself. They were protégés of Lord Hardduju. They asked to stay on for a while, and I agreed."

  Clever! They had thought that Wallie would take Hardduju's place. If they had sworn to a new mentor within the guard, they would have been vulnerable. So they had obtained privileged status as guests, just as Wallie had done. A guest must behave himself toward another guest, of course, but now the Shonsu emergency was over...

  "So they have no mentors?" Wallie asked, sensing something wrong.

  "They have not sworn the second oath to anyone," Tarru agreed, face still blank.

  Red flags were waving at the back of Wallie's mind, but he did not have time to search them out, for Master Trasingji of the white eyebrows suddenly turned to Tarru and said, "How is the work on the jail progressing, mentor?" in a singsong voice, as though he had been rehearsed.

  "Quite well," Tarru replied. "It will go faster when we have more carpenters. Most of them are busy with the new work at the stables."

  "I didn't know you had stables," Wallie said. "Is there anything that the temple does not possess?" He wasn't fooling anyone. Tarru had seen that escape hole and was plugging it, fortifying the stables and probably increasing the guard on them.

  There was something wrong with the Fifths, too. Yesterday they had thawed out as soon as they learned that Shonsu was not going to replace Hardduju. This morning only Trasingji was meeting his eye.

  Then Tarru rose, made his apologies, and departed. The four Fifths went with him like a bodyguard. So he had seen that way out, also-no blood oath was going to be imposed on him.

  Wallie had been left alone in the middle of the hall. He sat and ate in solitary misery, feeling as though he were in a zoo, surrounded by secret grins. Ignorant iron-age barbarians! Bloodthirsty prehistoric thugs! He had promised the demigod that he would be a swordsman, but he had not said he would enjoy it. He despised this primitive, ignorant culture and its murderous hoodlums...

  As soon as dignity allowed, he stalked from the hall and headed for the women's quarters. There he summoned Janu and gave her money so that his slave could make a dress. Janu's disapproving expression implied that he ought to make up his mind; did he want a whore or a seamstress?

  Then he wandered out to the front steps and stood in black anger, glowering across the parade ground. Faint hammerings drifted over from the jail, and that was one small comfort. He was doing a small good there. But Nnanji was a hopeless psychiatric case, and his attempts to reward Jja were only loading her up with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity-perhaps she would have been happier left where she was, tending pilgrims, doing what she could manage. As for Tarru-if that small-time barbarian gang leader thought he was going to outwit Wallie Smith, then...

  Revelation like a sheet of lightning!

  Wallie uttered an oath that was half a wail. Trap!

  Injured feet forgotten, he rushed down the steps and hurried off to the temple in search of Honakura.

  ††

  The heat was incredible. Every day seemed to be hotter than the last, and now invisible waves of fire lashed the grounds, seeming to sear Wallie's flesh from his bones whenever his path led him into sunlight. At the temple he was escorted once more through the dim corridors and into the gloomy jungle courtyard, but even that felt like an airless oven. His harness straps were sticking to his skin. In a few minutes the tiny priest hurried in, and his blue gown was patched with sweat, as though to prove its occupant had not been totally mummified.

  Today there were no polite pleasantries after the salutes. As the two men settled down on stool and wicker chair, Wallie blurted out, "I wish I had taken the job you offered, even if only temporarily."

  "That might be arranged," the priest replied cautiously.

  "It is too late," Wallie said. "Tarru has forestalled me. He is swearing the guard to the blood oath."

  He explained what had suddenly become so obvious. Ghaniri and Gorramini had not sworn the second oath; they had sworn the third. Nnanji's ordeal had been ordered by Tarru, as a punishment for being honest and winning a bet for his liege.

  The attitude of the Fifths had changed because they also had been made into Tarru's vassals, probably at swordpoint. They would resent it and feel guilty. That was why they had been unable to meet the eye of a man they might have to kill in dishonor.

  Tarru had not merely seen all Wallie's possible moves and countered them, he had made one of his own-a beauty. Unbeatable! He was probably even then working . . his way down through the ranks, and when he had sworn every man in the guard, then he would be ready to spring his trap. "If I make any move now," Wallie concluded, "then he will promote a coup. How many of the guard he has already sworn I cannot tell, but I expect it would be enough. The rest would obey their mentors first. I would be a reeve with no swordsmen."

  He scowled. "I can't even kill the bastard now. Vassals are pledged to vengeance. Damn, damn, damn!"

  Honakura comprehended at once, as he always did. "He has moved efficiently in his new post, my lord. He is repairing the jail and the stables. He has increased the guard on the gate. I understand the stables, but I admit that the jail puzzles me."

  Wallie snorted and explained, although even the priest seemed surprised over his concern for mere prisoners. "So what do you do, my lord?" he asked.

  "I don't know," Wallie confessed. "Sit tight and wait for my feet to heal, I think. It is too late now to think of recruiting more followers. Even if I knew the good men, they may have been preempted by the blood oath and ordered to keep silent about it. The damned thing takes precedence over anything."

  "Ah!" Honakura said. "Then you will have to find followers who are not swordsmen. You must have six, you know." He stopped as a junior priestess scampered in to place a tray on the table between them, then nervously fluttered away again between the trees like a white butterfly. "Tell me what you think of this wine, my lord-it is a trifle sweeter than the one we had yesterday."

  The goblets were silver instead of crystal, the little cakes even richer and creamier, clustered on a silver plate.

  "Six? Why, for gods' sakes?" Wallie demanded.

  "Seven is the sacred number." Honakura frowned at Wallie's expression. "The god told you to trust me, you said? Then trust me-it must be seven."

  "Me and Nnanji and Jja and the baby... do you count babies? Do you count slaves?" Religions need not be logical.

  The old man leaned back in his wicker cage and surveyed the airy canopy of branches above him for a few moments. "Normally I would not count slaves, but I think you do. So, yes, I think you could say that makes four." He waved the flies off the cakes and offered the plate to Wallie, who declined.

  "How is your protégé?" the priest asked. "You tested his swordsmanship?"

  "He couldn't fight his way across an empty courtyard!" Wallie sipped politely at wine he did not want. It tasted faintly like diesel oil. "Indeed Nnanji's problem has me baffled, and I would have your advice as an expert on people." Leaving out his theory that some traumatic experience had caused Nnanji's paralysis, he tried to explain the earthly concept of a mental block, finding suitable words only with difficulty.

  Honakura nodded. "I have no name for that, but I have met it. I had a protégé once who got similarly tied up in certain sutra
s. He wasn't stupid, but on that one point he seemed to be totally obtuse."

  "That's right! Did you find a cure?"

  "Oh, yes. I had him flogged."

  Wallie thought of the whipping post and shuddered. "Never! That is no way to make a swordsman."

  "And your slave, my lord? Does she perform her duties assiduously?"

  Conscious of those penetrating eyes upon him, Wallie smiled blandly. "She needs more practice, and I shall attend to the matter personally."

  As well try to smuggle a plump antelope through a cage of lions. The priest studied him thoughtfully and said, "She is only a slave, my lord."

  Wallie did not want to discuss his sex life, but he resented something there. "I intend to make her into a friend!"

  "A slave? The gods have picked a man of ambition, I see." Honakura sat back with his eyes closed for a while and then smiled. "Have you considered the possibility that this slave girl and this young swordsman have been given to you as a test, my lord?"

  Wallie had not. He disliked the idea very much.

  "I sacrificed my principles by buying a slave girl," he said. "If the god was behind that, then he tricked me. But I am not going to flog Nnanji! Never, never, never!"

  Honakura cackled. "You may be looking at it the wrong way. Perhaps it is a test to see if you are ruthless enough to have him flogged. Or perhaps it is a test to see if you are patient enough not to have him flogged?" Now he had made Wallie thoroughly confused and looked very pleased with himself.

  Wallie changed the subject-there was so much to ask. "Tell me about fathermarks, my lord. I see that I have none."

  The priest smiled. "I had noticed. That is very unusual; I have never met it before. Right eye shows father's craft and left eye the mother's, of course. Were you not a swordsman, people would ask you about it."

  He smiled and let Wallie catch up with him. "But you met Shonsu that first day..."

  "And then your eyelids had parentmarks," the priest agreed. "I don't remember them, but their absence is so unusual that I am sure I should have noticed."

  "And I am supposed to find my brother! The god removed them?"