by David Duncan
Worst of all, he did not know what dangers he faced. Could a man outrun a spell? Even if he were facing only knives or swords, he would have little hope of escaping by dodging and taking to his heels, although the sorcerers' gowns would impede them if it came to a chase. If all they had to do was blow into that fife, or they could chant some words to turn him into a charred corpse...
"Just curious, adept," Tomiyano said in a voice unusually humble. "We hadn't seen anything like them before."
"Curiosity is dangerous, sailor," the Fourth replied, without looking at him, "especially for swordsmen of the seventh rank. Would you not agree now... Wallie?"
††† †††
Impossible! Jja knew that name, and Honakura, and Nnanji. No one else in the World. Even had one of them been captured, there had been no time to extract information, by torture or... or by any means that Wallie could imagine.
Jja had spoken his name at the top of the gangplank. There had been no one within earshot. Not even Brota could possibly have heard that. It had to be invisibility. Or telepathy.
But if the sorcerers had either of those abilities, then they were unbeatable.
"Oh, you do look worried!" The sorcerer smirked. "And you told Jja that you would trust in the Goddess?"
No one could have overheard that.
Wallie knew he had gone pale and he was struggling desperately to keep himself from trembling. Fear, yes. Fear of the unknown, more so. But mostly fury at his own utter brainlessness. Idiot!
"Move!" the Fourth snapped. "Move over there!" He nodded toward the plank.
The ship's captain was perhaps not as stupid as he seemed―he had fled up to the safety of his deck. Work had stopped.
Wallie hesitated, then shrugged and turned. He picked his way through the pots, halting when he reached the plank to look back at the sorcerer.
"The other side―against the ship!" the Fourth commanded in his squeaky voice.
Obediently Wallie moved to the edge of the dock and ducked under the plank.
The sorcerer nodded in satisfaction. "I don't like the smell of swordsmen." His laugh was as shrill as his voice.
The junior sorcerer grinned. 'Take off that headband!" he ordered. He had folded his arms like his superior, and the flute had disappeared. Was that perhaps a short-range magic?
Wallie shook his head and spoke for the first time. "I am a Nameless One, serving the Goddess." His voice sounded steadier than he had expected.
"You are a swordsman of the seventh rank! And here we honor the Fire God. Take off that rag and tie your hair back."
Wallie obeyed in silence.
Why did both sorcerers now have their hands hidden inside their voluminous sleeves? They seemed to be holding something in there, either a weapon or some sort of magical charm, Wallie assumed. A knife would be bad enough, and he had no idea how to fight magic. Their eyes were cold in the shadow of their cowls, but they seemed more relaxed, now that their captive was farther away. Could that mean that their spells would take time to operate, and they needed distance between them and their victims? If so, then Wallie had already been outsmarted, for now he was even more hemmed in than before, by the drop to the water on one side, the rolls of cloth behind him, and the chest-high plank in front.
He glanced down. The fenders and the curve of the bow left a gap between the dock and the peeling wood of the ship. There was room enough to jump there, into the deceptively innocent water. On Earth he would not have hesitated, but here even in harbor the water was free of floating litter except for a few fragments of wood. He could no longer trust to the gods to recognize his ignorance and save him from the piranha. He had been warned―miracles were never performed upon demand. That way of escape was closed.
"Jump if you wish," mocked the senior sorcerer. "It will save me a spell and save the trouble of pushing you over afterward."
"I'll wait," Wallie replied, as calmly as he could manage.
The sorcerer sneered at him triumphantly. Then he spoke to his companion without taking his eyes off the swordsman. "We should deal with the sailor accomplice first."
"Leave him out of this!" Wallie shouted. "He never met me before today. I took his ship at sword point."
"He tells fibs, swordsman. The usual penalty for perjury is a mouthful of hot coals."
"He had no choice, adept! I was listening, in the deckhouse, with my sword at his sister's throat."
The Fourth hesitated. "I think you are lying, swordsman. But we shall be merciful. Show him what we use the kettles for, since he is so curious."
The Third moved toward Tomiyano, gliding through the copperware pots like a ghost, seeming not to touch the ground. He went very close, peering into the captain's eyes, causing him to step back warily, hard against the copper stills.
"So you want to know our business, do you?" The sorcerer sounded amused. He seemed the more confident of the two, and therefore by comparison the older sorcerer was not confident. That must mean there was hope―but where, and how?
Wallie could not see Tomiyano's face, only his back, but he could hear the anger in his voice: "I apologize. I did not know they belonged to you."
There was devilry brewing; the sorcerer's voice was mocking. "Well, pick one up, and I will show you."
"No," Tomiyano snapped.
The sorcerer snapped also: "Pick it up!"
The sailor put his hands on his hips. "No!"
The sorcerer muttered something and waved a hand before the captain's face. Tomiyano recoiled angrily; then he screamed and clutched at his cheek. He doubled over, cursing and stamping his feet.
Wallie clenched his fists and glanced at the Fourth. He was still watching the swordsman, apparently enjoying his impotent rage and fear.
Furiously Tomiyano straightened and grabbed for his knife.
It had vanished. The shock seemed to sober him; he turned a fear-filled face toward Wallie. He was pale with pain and there was a hideous burn at the side of his mouth. He was shaking his left hand as if the fingers hurt, also.
"Swordsmen cut off ears when people annoy them," the Third said. "We are not so barbarous, but we like to remember those who transgress. That will warn any of my brethren who meet you in future that you are not to be trusted. Now, Captain Tomiyano, pick up that kettle!"
A crowd was gathering at a respectful distance behind the sorcerers, and the sailors were watching from above. Tomiyano shot Wallie a glance of fury. He knelt and wrapped his arms around the big pot. It was not heavy, and he straightened up, turning again to face his tormentor.
"We use them, Captain, to breed birds in," said the Third. "You don't believe me? Look!"
He reached out and pulled off the lid. With a loud flutter, a white bird flew up into Tomiyano's face. Startled, he stepped back, tripped over a cauldron, and crashed to the ground in a clamorous rattle of metal and bouncing pots. The two sorcerers laughed heartily, and after a moment there was laughter from the sailor audience on the ship and also from the steadily growing crowd at the end of the wagon. Tomiyano rose shakily, while the bird circled away into the sky.
The junior sorcerer turned and floated back to the side of his superior, and they both looked across at Wallie.
"Now it is your turn, swordsman," the Fourth said in his high voice. Wallie's heart was racing, and he was wondering how long a spell took and how fast he could jump. He should have done it while the other was busy tormenting the sailor.
There was a pause, an agonizingly long pause, while sorcerers stared at swordsman, and swordsman stared back. Wallie kept his breathing slow and tried not to tense his muscles, but he was soon wishing that they would get on with whatever they planned.
"You were astonishingly stupid, Wallie," said the Fourth. "Even for a swordsman, you were very stupid."
"I don't dispute that," Wallie said. What was going on here?
The Fourth nodded faintly inside his cowl. "This is a very humble swordsman, Sorcerer Resalipi."
Studying the shadowed face, Wallie
thought he saw beads of sweat on it―the man did not want to kill. Perhaps if Wallie were to attack them, he could do it; but killing in cold blood is not to everyone's taste. Wallie knew.
The brown hood turned toward the orange and whispered something inaudible. Was the Third offering to perform the execution?
"No, Resalipi," the Fourth said, "I think a humble swordsman could be instructive. I give you a choice, Lord Wallie. You can die now, or you can crawl back to your ship on your belly, as a demonstration of your humility."
Hope! Hope like a small flame rising in dead embers. Wallie Smith would rather crawl than die any day. "And then I and the ship may leave safely? You will give me your oath?"
Even that tiny show of resistance was almost enough to change the sorcerer's mind. "You are in no position to bargain!" he squeaked. Then the junior prompted him again. "Good idea! Know, swordsman, that we of the sorcerers' craft swear by fire. Take off that sack and throw it over."
Wallie hesitated for a fraction of a second as realization of what was coming began to dawn. Then he reached down to rip off his loincloth. He wadded it and threw it over the plank toward the sorcerers. As long as they played with him, he was still alive. He glanced ruefully at Tomiyano, watching in angry and surprised silence. He did not look at the crowd.
The Third glided forward and picked up the burlap, carried it back and dropped it in front of his superior, who held out a hand and mumbled something over it. It began to smoke, then burst into flames. Both men looked at Wallie to see if he was impressed, so he looked impressed.
"I so swear," the Fourth said. "Now―over there and lie down." He pointed at the bottom of the plank.
Again Wallie was momentarily tempted to refuse. The Shonsu part of him was rebelling violently at the thought of a swordsman humiliated. Naked except for the tie around his ponytail, feeling mortally ashamed and vulnerable, he walked to the place indicated, knelt, and then lay down, head raised to watch them.
The sorcerer stared at him for a minute, apparently surprised. "Well! Start crawling! If you stop, then you will die."
Wallie looked to his companion and even he was astonished. "I have a hot-blooded junior on board," he said. "Captain, please go back to the ship and warn them. Nail Nnanji to the mast if you have to. I want no more trouble."
"But tell him to watch," the junior sorcerer said. He laughed, and the captain jumped over some pots and ran.
"Crawl, swordsman!"
Wallie rose to his hands and knees.
"On your belly, I said!"
Wallie lowered himself flat and began to drag himself along the cold, lumpy, and incredibly foul road. They used a lot of horses on that road. He passed the litter of copperware and the end of the wagon, and the crowd parted for him.
He had only five ship-lengths to go.
It took about ten years.
"Keep your head up, swordsman!"
The sorcerers followed behind him, shouting to the crowd to make way for a swordsman. A corridor opened in front of him, a corridor lined with surprised, mocking faces and loud with ribald comment. He detoured around the piles of goods on the dock. He passed by the wheels of the hawkers' carts and the legs of the display tables. He told himself to be pragmatic―humiliation was greatly preferable to death.
The laughter started before he reached the end of the first ship. Then the throwing: filth and rotted fish and a few harder things.
"Keep your head up, swordsman!"
He saw bare feet and boots and sandals and then gowns that reached to the ground, so he knew that more sorcerers had arrived. The crowd told him to move faster and to be careful not to scrape anything off. The children started building an obstacle course with bales and boxes, so that he had to drag himself around them.
"Keep your head up, swordsman," said that high-pitched voice behind him. He had been mocked by a crowd before, when he was on his way to the Judgment of the Goddess, but then he had been Wallie Smith, a confused Wallie Smith and in pain. Now he was a swordsman of the Seventh and already accustomed to thinking of himself as such. Now the scorn cut deeper.
"Make way for a swordsman!"
The corridor of people and boxes twisted around until it led to a wagon, and he obediently crawled through underneath and was cheered when he emerged. He wondered what he was crawling away from―music? A white bird or a burning cloth? Perhaps the sorcerers had been bluffing all the time. Yet Kandoru had died. The garrison in Ov had died, and probably the garrison of Aus. The fat sailor had run up his gangplank.
He might not have made it at all had he not suddenly thought of Nnanji. Nnanji had denounced him to Imperkanni for using a disguise. Disguise was not honorable, but this―Nnanji could never forgive this. And Wallie had made the kid swear the fourth oath, Your honor is my honor. So he had destroyed Nnanji's honor as well as his own. Nnanji would kill him, strike him down unarmed as a reprobate, without as much as a warning... except that Nnanji in his own eyes would be a reprobate also and hence not have the right. Perhaps Nnanji was more likely to kill himself, proper behavior in a shame culture. Frantically Wallie scanned sutras. What was the World's equivalent of the Roman falling on his sword, or the Prussian officer cleaning his pistol? He could find nothing in the sutras to show that the Goddess expected seppuku. Swordsman slang, then: "He washed his sword." Of course.
Now he saw the full extent of his stupidity. Shonsu or Nnanji would never have gone ashore unarmed, but had either somehow been trapped as Wallie had been trapped, men he would have jumped from the dock. That had been what the sorcerers expected; probably what the gods expected, too. He should have had more faith. He had tailed not once, but twice.
Nnanji valued his honor above all else in the World, and Wallie was literally dragging it in the dirt. There could be no forgiveness, no forgetting, no understanding. The fourth oath was irrevocable. He could not have been more cruel had he planned it, and it was entirely possible that he would arrive back at Sapphire to find Nnanji already dead. He was still frantically hunting for a solution when he realized that he had reached almost to the end of his torment and in worrying about his protégé he had been crawling automatically and had forgotten to listen to the jeering around him.
Sapphire's gangplank was in view: an oasis, the Holy Grail. He finished the distance and dragged himself onto the plank. He rose to his knees and then to his feet, waiting for some final treachery, but all he got was a derisive cheer from the onlookers.
He was filthy beyond words, scraped and shaking. He turned and looked at the sorcerers. He thought they were watching him with satisfied amusement, but it was hard to tell under the cowls. He nodded his head in a hint of a bow, then he spun round and walked up the plank.
One: Sorcerer sees swordsman. Two: Swordsman crawls.
But not end of story.
* * *
At the top of the plank a very pale Jja handed him a cloth, and he wrapped it around himself. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then he glanced around the deck. There were sailors there, and Brota and Thana, but there were no faces. No one was looking at him. He was invisible.
Except to Jja. Slaves were supposed to keep their eyes lowered. Jja never looked him in the face unless they were alone together.
"Only you!" he whispered. "Only you do not care about honor?"
"Honor? Honor to a slave?" She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the fo'c'sle. Astounded, he let himself be led through the door and into a cramped shower cubicle, dark and smelling of mold. She pulled the wrap away from him and worked the pump handle, getting almost as wet as he did as he rubbed away the filth.
"Jja... I'm sorry," he said.
"Sorry? I told you!"
She was furious with him, terror turned to rage, and the transformation in a meek and obedient slave was more unexpected than all the sorceries he had witnessed.
"Where is Nnanji?" he asked.
"I have no idea!"
Clean at last, he clutched her and kissed her, and she tried to str
uggle against his vastly greater strength―and that was another sorcery―but he forced his kiss on her until she acquiesced and returned it. When they parted she stared at him again for a moment in the gloom and men burst into tears. He held her tightly, both of them soaking wet.
"You did tell me, my love, and 1 should have listened. I am very sorry,"
She leaned her head against his chest and whispered, "No, it is I who must be sorry, master, for speaking to you so."
"You will never call me 'master' again! Never!"
"But..." She looked up in dismay. "What can I call you?"
"Call me 'lover' when I deserve it," he said, "and 'idiot' the rest of the time―and that is positively the last order I shall ever give you. Oh, Jja, you are the only sane person in the World, and I love you madly. Come. Let's go and see what we can rescue from this mess I've made."
She handed him his kilt and his boots. He ran a comb hastily through his hair and then braced himself to go out on deck once more in the stark, pitiless sunshine. Brota, Thana, Tomiyano, other sailors... still none of them was acknowledging his presence, the invisible swordsman. His appearance provoked a cheer from the dock. He did not look that way.
His hairclip and sword were in the deckhouse. He marched across. As he rounded the aft hatch cover, the door opened, and Honakura came out, very wearily, reminding Wallie of the stereotype of the kindly old country doctor leaving the sickroom. You may go in now. The old priest walked forward and tried to go by Wallie, who moved to block him.
"Well, old man?"
He looked up, his face giving nothing away. "That young man has a head like a coconut. I have never met a harder. But he understands now."
"I am very grateful, holy one."
The bleary old eyes seemed suddenly to flash. "I did not do it for you. You are a contemptible lunatic." The old man walked away.
Wallie went in and pulled the door closed.
Cowie was sitting on one of the chests at the far side, staring blankly into space. Nnanji stood in the middle of the floor, very pale... young and hurt and vulnerable. He was still holding the seventh sword in its scabbard, the straps and buckles of the harness dangling. Wallie walked over to him. He should have prepared something to say, but for a moment he could only stare at the strangely bruised look in Nnanji's colorless eyes.