The Reluctant Swordsman

by David Duncan

  "I am grateful to you, Ani," Wallie said.

  "And I to you, my lord. You were kind to a fat old woman that evening. Few would not have taken offense."

  "I have been drunk myself," he said. "But I may never get another chance, I fear. What word of Tarru?"

  With a sideways twitch of her head she spat on the floor. "He has ordered a search, my lord. He will not look here. If he does, we can move you around these cellars. You are safe here."

  That would not be true if Tarru ever suspected that the slaves were fighting against him. The damning corpse lay close to a slave entrance, and Tarru was no fool. Slaves could move the body elsewhere, of course, but only at great risk to themselves. Wallie decided not to mention Janghiuki.

  "I need to get word to Lord Honakura," he said. "He is the only one who can help me, I think."

  Ani pouted meaty lips. "Not easy, my lord."

  Of course. No slave could just walk up to a man like Honakura and start a conversation-not without starting a riot. Wallie reached in his money pouch. "Would this help?"

  Ani's eye glinted at the sight of gold. "It might."

  Wallie handed over coins and dictated a brief message. Ani parroted it back at him in preliterate fashion, then rolled away to see what could be done.

  He sat down and sighed. The cellar was hot and fetid and hateful. "Being my slave gives you plenty of variety, Jja, does it not? The royal guest suite... and now this?"

  She smiled obediently. "The women's quarters are a little cleaner, master, but much the same."

  He thought of the women's quarters and was puzzled. They were not ostentatious, like his own accommodation, but they were airy and comfortable...

  "What do you mean?" he demanded. "Not the rooms upstairs, where Janu..."

  She shook her head, smiling slightly. "Only when you came for me, master."

  She meant slave women's quarters, of course. He had been thoughtless. "You mean that when you weren't with me, you were down in some hole like this?"

  She nodded. "Most of the time."

  He took her hands in his. "I had not realized!"

  She started to say that it did not matter, and he cut her off. "Yes, it does! Jja, if we get out of this mess, I shall keep you by me always. We may find nothing better than this, but we'll find it together." She dropped her eyes before his gaze. "Jja... I love you."

  He thought she colored, but the light was too dim to be sure. What could such a statement mean, when made to a slave? "I would marry you if I could, Jja."

  She looked up then, startled.

  "I would give you anything, do anything for you," he said. "I told you that you would make joy with no other men and now I promise you that I... "

  She put her fingers over his lips and shook her head.

  "I mean it!"

  She hesitated, reluctant as always to put her thoughts into words. "Wallie is sure. Lord Shonsu will not let him keep such a promise."

  He started to protest. and again she stopped him. Then she shivered. "Do anything for me, master?"

  "Yes."

  "Drive away the god of sorrows?"

  Vixini had curled up on some straw and was sleepily sucking his thumb.

  It was a tempting prospect-it might be his last chance, ever. "Just being with you is comfort enough, my love. You don't have to drag me into bed to please me. You're much more to me than just that sort of partner."

  She dropped her eyes and was silent.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Forgive me, master."

  "Forgive you for what?"

  "I was not trying to please you. I was asking you to please me."

  Was she being honest? He never could read her thoughts. It did not matter. Two weeks before, she would not have said even that much. Such progress should be rewarded.

  "There will be bedbugs," he warned. But she smiled happily and raised her lips to his, and he quickly decided to risk the bedbugs.

  * * *

  The god of sorrows was unusually obstinate. He was driven away several times, and each time he returned in haste. He won by sheer persistence. When Nnanji appeared at last, the two fugitives were clothed once more and slouched limply on the wobbly wrecks of chairs, hot and weary in the smelly heat.

  Nnanji ducked in under the rafters, looked around with a scowl, and then beamed at Wallie.

  "My liege, may I have the honor of presenting my protégé, Novice Katanji?"

  Courage, Wallie recalled, had been defined as grace under stress. He rose to accept Katanji's salute, using hand gestures because of the lack of headroom. The boy wore a bloody facemark, a brilliant white kilt, and a surprised expression. Nnanji's old hairclip clung grimly in his short black curls, unable to make a ponytail no matter how hard it tried. He looked absurdly young.

  He ought not to be there, of course. Wallie should have guessed what Nnanji had been plotting, but it was too late now to stop the oath.

  Novice Katanji? Perhaps he was a sign from the gods, that the expedition was still going ahead. Number five had just boarded.

  "I bought him a new sword instead of my old one," Nnanji announced, producing the weapon.

  If he had gone up to the room for the old one...

  But Nnanji had dried up in embarrassment, which was rare.

  "And you want me to give it to him?"

  "If you don't mind kneeling to a First..." Nnanji muttered, meaning: Yes, very much.

  "I shall be honored," Wallie said. "I'll still be taller than him, anyway."

  Novice Katanji grinned at that. His mentor scowled at him and told him to remember what he had been told and not to cut off Lord Shonsu's thumbs.

  Wallie knelt to offer the sword with the appropriate words. Katanji took it carefully and made the reply, but he did not look nearly as solemn or impressed as Nnanji did. There was a cynical glint in those dark young eyes.

  "Nnanji, you were not followed here-you are certain?" Wallie asked, easing back to his chair.

  "Quite certain! You told me how, my liege!"

  So Nnanji had been using the spy-story sutra.

  "In fact," Nnanji said, "Popoluini and Faraskansi were on the gate. They tried to warn me not to come back in." He frowned. "I said it was a matter of honor. Then they promised not to have me followed."

  Wallie tried to imagine that conversation and gave up. But it confirmed his belief that the swordsmen were reluctant opponents. They would obey Tarru's orders to the letter and do no more.

  Then he noticed a third person, standing in the background. He had assumed that it was Kio, the favorite barracks girl, but it was no woman he had ever seen before. Nnanji grinned and beckoned her forward into the light.

  "I bought this, too," he said proudly. "We have all those things to carry-foils and spare clothes-and Jja has the baby..."

  Wallie was emotionally jangled and physically satiated, yet he felt himself react. She was voluptuous, clad only in a sort of lace wisp to emphasize her attractions, and they were emphatic enough in themselves. On Earth he would have assumed that such stupendous breasts were the work of an unethical plastic surgeon. In the World only a miracle could be holding them up like that. Her bare arms and legs were sensational. Cascades of light-brown wavy hair framed a perfect face-perfectly blank-with rosebud lips locked in a meaningless smile, big eyes dull as pebbles. A moron.

  Oh, hell! In the excitement of being promoted, Nnanji had run amok. First his brother, and now this. She was incredibly exciting and incredibly wrong, for he would tire of such an imbecile in a couple of days. She belonged in some pampered comer of a rich old man's mansion, not in a swordsman's wandering life. This could never be the preordained sixth member of the team! Never!

  "I suppose I should have asked, my liege..." Nnanji had noticed the reaction.

  "Yes, you should!" Wallie snapped. He sank back on to his chair in black depression. Everything was coming unraveled. As soon as he thought he had hit bottom, he found another layer. "What did you call her?"

  "Cowie, my liege,
" Nnanji said.

  He seemed irritated that Lord Shonsu should find that name so inexplicably funny.

  * * *

  Time dragged along. Nnanji wanted to take his new toy off to a convenient pile of straw and play; Wallie spitefully forbade it. He explained about Tarru and his nets, then reluctantly mentioned that he had killed Janghiuki, but without saying how. Nnanji went as black as the cellar itself and hunched on a stool, scowling. Vixini awoke fretting, hungry and bored. Katanji sat on the straw and stared, probably wondering if this was what a swordsman's life ought to be, perhaps scared of this murdering Seventh. Cowie just sat.

  How to escape from the barracks, from the temple grounds, from the town, from the island?

  Wallie wanted to stand up and pace, but in that squalid hole he could only crouch, so pacing was impossible. He was cornered. Tarru had driven him by inches, like a gangster assimilating a neighborhood, or a Hitler swallowing a continent, relentlessly taking advantage of a peace-lover's reluctance to resort to force.

  Shonsu had known what was happening. So had Wallie Smith and he had let it happen. He had told himself he was playing for time, when time had been helping his opponent more than him. His mind squirmed and twitched in its predicament as he tried to think of an escape. He could not find one, except the slim hope that Honakura might yet have some cards in hand.

  Nnanji seemed to grow grimmer and grimmer. He might be blaming Tarru for corrupting the guard, or he might be reconsidering the man who had said he did not kill unless he must. A guest slaying one of his hosts? Who had started the abominations? Was preparing a trap an abomination, or did the abomination come only when the trap was sprung? Was following a guest around permissible behavior?

  Wallie noted his poisonous expression and wondered if the killer earthworm might now return. Nnanji must be feeling betrayed a second time-first by the guard and now by Shonsu. Tarru was not the only one with morale problems.

  At last the door creaked, and Ani's vast shapelessness floated in. She came to a stop in front of Wallie and shook her head sadly.

  "Lord Honakura?" the swordsman demanded, but he could tell from her expression that he had fallen to a lower level yet.

  "No, my lord," she said. "He is in jail."

  BOOK FIVE:

  HOW THE SWORDSMAN FOUND

  HIS BROTHER

  †

  Murderous noon; the birds were silent in the trees, the gardening slaves moved listlessly, staying out of the light, and even insects were silent. The line of pilgrims kneeling on the temple steps melted and groaned under the lash of a sadistic sun. Only the River continued to move and make noise as the World endured, praying for evening.

  The parade ground was deserted and hot as a griddle. Three people came around the corner of the barracks, past the fencing area. With every man in the guard now searching for Lord Shonsu, there was no one there to notice the trio. They marched unseen across the parade ground toward the jail, floating on their shadows in the white glare.

  The man in front was a swordsman of the Fourth, resplendent in a very new orange kilt. His ponytail was inky black. So was the expression on his face. He had very nearly mutinied against his sworn liege lord and had spoken not a word since the slaves had smeared his hair with lampblack and grease.

  The man at the back was a short, dark-haired First. With awkward gait, sword tilted, facemark swollen, kilt sparkling white, and much-too-short hair, he was an obvious scratcher. Even the stunned look in his dark eyes proclaimed that. He clutched a rope, whose other end was knotted about the neck of the captive being brought in. She was huge and very ugly for a woman. Her black hair was much too long for a slave's-loosely flopping curls, still smelling of hot iron. Her black, all-enveloping garment might have belonged to the infamous Wild Ani, and, it bulged oddly, as though the wearer were deformed.

  The heat inside the pillows was incredible. It was dangerous, Wallie knew. Even if he did not collapse from heat prostration, he was weakening steadily. He could hardly see for the sweat running into his eyes and he dared not wipe them, because he must pretend that his hands were tied behind him. No sane swordsman would ever expect Lord Shonsu of the Seventh to dress like that. He had refrained from faking a facemark, partly out of consideration for Nnanji's feelings, but also because if anyone got that close to him, the pretense would be over. Apart from his size, though, he could pass as a slave at a distance. He kept his stride short, he crouched-and he sweltered.

  Before the jail had been fitted with a new roof, it might have been possible to rescue a prisoner without the guards' knowing, but now the only entrance was through the door, and that led into the guard room. The door was open. The newcomers marched straight through.

  Briu of the Fourth was playing dice at a table with two Seconds. Three slaves were sitting on the floor in a corner, picking lice out of clothes. They looked up and saw swordsmen bringing in a new prisoner.

  Katanji, in his so-brief career, had been taught only one piece of swordsmanship. This was a maneuver that no other swordsman had ever been taught. He performed it now, twirling around and kneeling down with his head bent. The female slave pulled the sword from his scabbard, and put the point at Briu's throat before he could draw.

  "It would have to be you, wouldn't it?" Wallie said.

  "Keep your hands on the table and order your men to do the same."

  Briu's impassive face hardly changed expression. He glanced over Wallie, took in Nnanji with a hint of surprise, and then placed his hands on the table. The Seconds followed suit without being ordered; they looked stunned.

  "Why is it always you that I damage?" Wallie demanded. "I had no quarrel with you, yet every time I do anything I mess up Adept Briu. You are Tarru's vassal?"

  "I refuse to answer that question."

  "He's hunting me down. He plans to torture me to make me tell him where the sword is. Do you deny it?"

  "No. Nor do I confirm it."

  "How does a man of honor feel about this?"

  Briu's eyes narrowed. "What makes you think I am a man of honor?"

  "Nnanji said so, about two minutes before you challenged him that first morning."

  "He was lying."

  "I don't think he was."

  Briu shrugged. "Any crime committed by a vassal is laid to the account of his liege. If I am Tarru's vassal as you claim, then I am sworn to absolute obedience, and my honor is of no account."

  "Why would you swear that oath to such a man?" inquired Nnanji's soft voice from behind Wallie's shoulder. He sounded bitter.

  "I might ask you the same question, adept," Briu said.

  Nnanji made a choking sound, then said, "You saw Shonsu go into the water. You, better than any, know that his sword was a miracle!"

  Briu stared at him stoically. "I did not do a good job of instructing you in the third oath when I was your mentor, adept. Let us see how I did otherwise. If a commander is corrupt, whose duty is it to do something about it?"

  After a moment, Nnanji whispered, "His deputy's."

  "How? What should he do?"

  "Challenge, if he is good enough. Else go and find a stronger force." It was a quotation. He sounded like Briu as he said it.

  Briu nodded. "Yet your Lord Shonsu let Tarru live, when he was obviously guilty."

  That, Wallie knew, had been his first error. The god had told him that harsh measures would be necessary. At their very first meeting, he had warned that an honorable swordsman would feel it his duty to kill Hardduju and to restore the honor of the craft. He had even dropped a broad hint when he mentioned Napoleon, for Napoleon had been king of Elba, briefly. By sparing Tarru, Wallie had betrayed the honest men in the guard. He should have killed Tarru out of hand, taken charge, and put the Fifths on trial right there, calling for denunciations... but he had not.

  "I admit the error," Wallie said. "Nnanji almost pointed it out to me right afterward, on the temple steps. But since then I have been Tarru's guest."

  Briu ran contempt over him like a blo
wtorch. "You had plenty of chances, and excuses. He swore Gorramini and Ghaniri by the third oath, and set them on Nnanji. Then he went to work on the Fifths. Did you not know?"

  A Seventh should not take this from a Fourth, but Wallie was feeling too guilty to be assertive. "I suspected."

  "So?" Briu demanded. "If you had done something and called for help, do you think the rest of us would have stood idly by? We wanted leadership! We wanted our honor back! None of us was perfect, but..." He paused, and then looked down at the table. "There was one. If the rest of us had been half as honorable as he, we would have mutinied years ago."

  Wallie's excuse would never pass a swordsman-he had been trying to prevent bloodshed. He had spared Tarru, one man. When Nnanji had mentioned the stables, he had recoiled from the thought of killing three men. Yet every delay had raised the price. If somehow he could escape now, then the cost in lives must be much higher.

  Before he could speak, Briu looked up again, redfaced and glaring. "Even this morning! Gorramini was betrayed! Yet you did nothing!"

  "I am doing something now," Wallie said firmly.

  Briu looked again at the slave costume and spat.

  Shonsu's temper flamed. Wallie suppressed it with difficulty. "You have a priest here, and I am going to take him. Then I am leaving." How? "The Goddess will attend to the honor of Her guard. It was not the task She gave me."

  Briu shrugged and went back to brooding over his hands on the table.

  "Why did you swear the third oath to Tarru?" Nnanji asked again.

  "My wife had just given birth to twin sons, adept," Briu said. "She needs to eat, and so do they. When you are older, you will understand."

  Swordsmen were addicted to fearsome oaths, but they were human.

  "Briu," Wallie said, "my story is too long to explain here. But I admit my error. If I get a chance to correct it, then I shall. I do have a task for the Goddess. I need honest men to help. Is your wife well enough to travel?"