by David Duncan
Pity! Wallie took the fife and looked at it. There were only three finger holes, so it would not be capable of much music, but drilling finger holes without spoiling the bore must be tricky. He tried blowing, achieving a wince from himself and nervous cries from the others.
"Kandoru didn't draw his sword, Nnanji, and he could have done, easily. He reached up and then he turned around, but he hadn't drawn. He hadn't been trying to draw!"
Nnanji looked blank.
Wallie sighed. "He thought he'd been bitten by a mosquito. But his fingers found a little dart sticking in him, and he turned round to see where it had come from."
Of course, it had come from a blowpipe, a convenient short-range weapon. Good indoors, or when there was no wind―that was why he had seen one in Aus. The air had been still that afternoon, when the sorcerers had cornered Shonsu. It would have been as reliable as a pistol at close quarters, and more dramatic to the onlookers. The sorcerers were showmen, murderous tricksters!
Quietly the crew was gathering around, and Wallie explained the blowpipe, and poison darts.
"Give me my sword."
They passed him his harness. In the middle of the decorated leather of the scabbard was a round hole, the edges burned. Wincing again, he drew the sword out, and there was a dark burn mark on the blade, very close to the image of a maiden stroking a griffon.
"Is that where the thunderbolt struck?" Nnanji asked solemnly. "I suppose a sorcerer's spell couldn't prevail against the Goddess' sword?"
"Nor against Brota's ingots. Did you look behind them?" Wallie asked. Nnanji shook his head and went to do so.
Wallie squinted along the blade, but there was no kink in it―a fine tribute to the metallurgical skill of Chioxin, for a lesser sword must surely have broken when hit by a musket ball. He would have to test it to make sure that the steel had not been fatally weakened. A fraction to the left or right and the ball would have missed the blade. Indeed if he had not been carrying Katanji, the scabbard would not have been pushed over to the left so far... hastily he dropped that line of thought.
He eased himself around and looked at the rail. There were two holes through it and big chunks had been blown out. Then Tomiyano saw him looking.
"We'll have to charge for repairs," he said solemnly. "Passengers aren't supposed to damage the ship." Then he laughed, which was almost unheard of.
"Don't!" Wallie said quickly. "They're honorable battle scars."
Nnanji had managed to drag one of the ingots aside. He came back holding two shapeless lumps.
"I found these," he said wonderingly. "They look like silver."
"They're lead," Wallie told him.
"Why would you not let us go on to the tower, my lord brother?" Nnanji asked regretfully. "Fighting sorcerers wasn't so difficult after all! Fifteen dead!" Then he paused and smiled suspiciously. "Or was it only fourteen?"
"Fourteen," Wallie agreed. "I don't think I killed the Fifth." Nnanji shook his head in affectionate disapproval of this swordsman who didn't like killing.
"We were lucky, Nnanji, very lucky! They aren't much good at fighting are they? Did you count their mistakes?"
"Dozens!" Nnanji snorted. "Lining up across the path of a charging wagon? They should have let us go by them, then commandeered a ship. They should have dropped you in the River before we arrived, brother! Amateurs!"
That was worth knowing, though. The swordsmen were trained fighters, the sorcerers merely armed civilians. They had lost their heads. Yet Nnanji could not suspect a fraction of it. The tower doors were certainly booby-trapped. Defenders could drop antipersonnel grenades. A skirmish on a jetty was one thing; an assault on a tower would be another matter altogether. Then another piece of the puzzle fell into place―Katanji had reported bronze gratings at the tower doors and had seen a big gold ball on a column―an electrostatic generator, of course. Burglars were electrocuted.
"You saved my life again, brother," Wallie said. "I thank you."
Nnanji grinned. "I was rather good, wasn't I?"
"Not good―magnificent!"
Once Nnanji would have blushed scarlet at that. Now he just chuckled and said, "Thinking?"
"Very fast thinking!"
"Judgment?"
"Great judgment!"
"Tactics?"
"Superb tactics!" Wallie laughed with him, and then wished he hadn't. "Sum it up in one word, brother: leadership! You're not just a Fifth in fencing, Master Nnanji, you're a leader. You'll be a Fifth and a good one!"
Where now was the gangling, awkward kid whom Wallie had found on the temple beach? Few swordsmen of any rank could have reacted fast enough and efficiently enough to have organized that rescue. Wallie had not thought of calling on the water rats as reinforcements, but Nnanji had, and thought of taking a wagon, too.
Thana was standing beside him; they had their arms around each other again. Now she spoke for the first time. "Sixth?"
Wallie tried to shrug and regretted that, also. "Soon," he said. "Very soon."
Nnanji's eyes glinted. "We are going, on to Casr, then, brother?"
Yes, Lord Shonsu would have to return to Casr. He might have to face a denunciation for what he had done in Aus―but now he had a victory to set against it. He wondered what other time bombs might be ticking there, what buried mines his predecessor had left. "We are, if She wills it. You will get your promotion. You've earned it, and it will be our first business there."
The rest of the crew was standing or sitting around―smiling in approval, waiting for him to recover, patient to hear what fate he had in store for them. He was admiral, he had been granted wisdom, he was the Goddess' champion, he would decide their fate.
"And the tryst, brother?"
Wallie sagged his shoulders to seek a more comfortable position. Tryst? Now he knew how to fight sorcerers, but that did not mean he would succeed.
Nor was the god's riddle much help now. First your brother... fine, he had done that. From another wisdom gain―that was his new insight into the sorcerers. He had been spurned in Aus, turned the circle back to Ov, earned his army for the battle on the jetty...
Finally return that sword, And to its destiny accord. But what did that mean? When was "finally"? Destiny? The destiny of the sword might be to lead the tryst, but the sword had never truly been in Casr, so returning it to Casr was not the answer. Was be truly supposed to return it to the Goddess at Her temple there, so that some other leader could have it? He gazed lovingly at that superb hilt, the silver griffon, and the sapphire. Over my dead body!
Lead a tryst? Other Chioxin swords had done so. Somehow he felt that the destiny of the seventh should be more than that.
"The tryst?" Nnanji asked again.
"I don't know." Wallie sighed. "Maybe we'll join the tryst―and if we do, then I don't intend to be assistant quartermaster. I'll be leader, and you'll be my deputy!"
Nnanji's teeth gleamed as he smiled at Thana―fame and glory!
"Or maybe we'll have to stop the tryst, to prevent a massacre."
"Stop the tryst!" echoed Nnanji in horror.
It was Cortez versus Montezuma again, a few firearms against a primitive civilization. The smart money went on Cortez. The swordsmen were at about the level of the Greek phalanx, the sorcerers were Early Renaissance―and that was a different league.
One thing was certain: if the tryst of the Goddess' swordsmen went heads-down against the Fire God's sorcerers using their traditional tactics, they were going to be devastated. Wallie's duty―to his craft, to the Goddess, to his own conscience―was clear. He must prevent disaster.
How?
He would have to do some hard thinking before he got to Casr. Four or five weeks' sailing to Casr... unless the Goddess wanted him there by lunchtime. The crew's smiles were fading, and he could see that his doubts had alarmed them.
He put his arm around Jja and grinned to reassure them all. "Or perhaps the tryst is just a blind to distract the sorcerers, Adept Nnanji, while you and I do something
else?"
"Do what, brother?" Nnanji asked, eager to hear and willing to follow his oath brother into hell if he was asked.
"Ah!" Wallie had no idea. "That's the big question, isn't it?" He mused for a while, but his mind was a blank. "Answer that one, friend, and you win an all-expense-paid trip for two."
Nnanji looked puzzled. "To where?"
"To Vul, I suppose," Wallie said, and then he laughed. "No, that's just an expression. Don't take me seriously."
Wisdom seldom gave answers; it only redefined the questions. He had not known how to lead an army of swordsmen against sorcery. Against technology, though... well, that was another story altogether.
That other story is
THE DESTINY OF THE SWORD
which concludes the saga of
The Seventh Sword
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Duncan was born in Scotland in 1933 and educated at Dundee High School and the University of St. Andrews. He moved to Canada in 1955 and has lived in Calgary ever since. He is married and has three grown-up children.
Unlike most writers, he did not experiment beforehand with a wide variety of careers. Apart from a brief entrepreneurial digression into founding―and then quickly selling―a computerized data-sorting business, he spent thirty years as a petroleum geologist. His recreational interests, however, have included at one time or another astronomy, acting, statistics, history, painting, hiking, model ship building, photography, parakeet breeding, carpentry, tropical plants, classical music, computer programming, chess, genealogy, and stock market speculation.
An attempt to add writing to this list backfired―he met with enough encouragement that he took up writing full-time. Now his hobby is geology.