The Unwilling Warlord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  On the other hand, Semmans weren’t accustomed to magic, and if Sterren could keep the gold and gems with him when he slipped away, perhaps he could buy himself some decent magical protections.

  Could a true name be changed?

  He didn’t really think it could, but he didn’t know.

  He realized he was standing there looking stupid in front of his four men, and he cut off his thoughts abruptly.

  “All right, then, I’m calling for volunteers—do any of you four want to sail to Ethshar?”

  The four looked at each other, and then one by one, answered.

  “No.”

  “No, my lord.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Not really. Not sail. I don’t trust boats.”

  Sterren was not surprised.

  “All right, then, I want all four of you to separate and go find my other soldiers, all of them, and ask for volunteers. Then meet me back here, with the volunteers. And if you don’t find enough volunteers, I’ll take you four, instead. Understood?”

  “Yes, my lord,” they chorused raggedly. One by one, they straggled away on this unwanted errand. One of them, Arra Varrin’s son, thought to bow as they headed for the stairs.

  Sterren watched them go, and pretended not to hear the grumbling that began as soon as they were out the door.

  When they were out of sight, he sank down onto a convenient bed and began thinking, planning, and weighing possibilities.

  Could he really slip away in the streets of Ethshar?

  Did he want to?

  Which death was more certain—commanding a grossly-outnumbered army, or being an escaped traitor?

  That was a very hard question to answer, and it was one he had to consider carefully. He had no interest in dying.

  He had plenty of time to consider the question, of course. He would have the entire journey to Akalla, and then the voyage across the Gulf of the East, to decide what to do and make his plans.

  Of course, he knew he might never have a chance to slip away—his soldiers might not desert, he might be closely watched at all times. Still, he also knew he would be thinking about an escape all the way to Ethshar.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As the rooftops of Ethshar grew slowly nearer Sterren leaned on the ship’s rail and stared at them hungrily. He could smell the city as well as see it, a scent of smoke and spices with an undertone of sewage, a wonderfully familiar odor that he hadn’t smelled in far too long. He had never realized, until this moment, that the city had a distinctive odor—he had never left the city until being dragged off to Semma, so the smell had always been there, unnoticed.

  Now, though, he knew that he had missed that smell during his absence, that to him that scent meant home, as the salt spray of the ocean or the hot rotting-grass smell of Semma never could.

  To his left, Dogal the Large—Dogal d’Gra, that is—sneezed.

  To his right, Alder the Very Large—Alder d’Yoon—said, “May the gods keep you well!”

  Dogal snuffled in reply, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and then spat at the ocean below.

  Alder, apparently interpreting Dogal’s response as a negative one, said, “Well, at least we’re finally here. Not much longer now before we’re off this damned boat.”

  “Except that we’ve got to sail back,” Dogal muttered.

  “But going back, the wind should be with us, rather than against us,” Alder said.

  Sterren took no part in the conversation, but he thought that it was certainly true that the wind had been against them. He understood now why Lady Kalira, on her previous voyage to Ethshar, had bought herself a storm from the weather-wizards in Akalla of the Diamond, and why she had wanted to spend two-thirds of his meager hoard of treasure on another one for this trip—after, of course, she had used up most of her own resources in hiring a ship that would sail when and where she wanted, rather than one that would treat the Semman party as ordinary passengers.

  Sterren had absolutely forbidden wasting their funds on a storm; the little gold he had would not really be enough as it was, he was sure. He had refused to listen to any argument from Lady Kalira; it was easy enough to simply stop thinking in Semmat, so that her words became meaningless noise. His mind was made up.

  Of course, he had not realized that the prevailing winds of the season were from the northwest, and that it would take their chartered ship a month and a day to tack up the Gulf of the East to Ethshar of the Spices. To make any progress to the northwest at all against the cold, steady autumn wind, they had had to beat back and forth, zigzagging across the Gulf from one side to the other.

  The only good thing about the delay was that it had given him considerable time to practice his Semmat.

  Sterren was heartily sick of the cramped shipboard life and the ship’s constant wallowing and rolling, and his feet were almost itching at the thought of walking on dry land again.

  The fact that the land in question was his homeland, and that he might yet have a chance to slip away to freedom, made waiting all the harder.

  Of course, he might not have a chance to slip away. Lady Kalira, when informed of the expedition, had insisted on bringing the two soldiers she most trusted, Alder and Dogal, and had gotten royal backing for this demand. Sterren had had no choice but to yield.

  He thought that Alder and Dogal liked him, at least slightly, but he was also quite certain they would not willingly let him desert and leave Semma to its fate.

  This was unfortunate, since the other four in the party might well desert, themselves. They were genuine volunteers—Kendrik, Alar, Zander, and Bern were their names, and Sterren was not impressed with any of them.

  He knew Kendrik’s type from his gambling days; the man was obviously convinced that he was smarter than anybody else, and only needed the right opportunity to make himself rich, famous, and powerful. Semma certainly didn’t provide many such opportunities, Sterren had to admit—but he suspected that Kendrik wouldn’t find them in Ethshar, either, because he wasn’t anywhere near as clever as he thought he was.

  People like Kendrik had been among the most generous suppliers of Sterren’s funds before his abrupt departure from Ethshar’s taverns—but they were also bad losers and very likely to accuse him of cheating. Sterren didn’t like Kendrik any better than he had liked those old opponents.

  Alar appeared to have volunteered just because somebody asked him. He was easy-going, not too bright, and highly suggestible. Sterren suspected that he had wound up a soldier at somebody else’s suggestion, and that he might well desert along with one of the others because he wouldn’t see any reason not to, until it was too late.

  Sterren might have suggested it to Alar himself if Alder and Dogal hadn’t been present. Once they were ashore he might well make a few suggestive comments in Alar’s hearing. For now, though, he was keeping Alar close at hand. He didn’t really like the poor fool, but such people could be useful to have around—they could be talked into doing all the unpleasant tasks one inevitably encountered.

  Zander had joined the army to get away from a boring life as a peasant farmer. He had volunteered for this trip to get away from a boring life as a soldier in Semma Castle. Ethshar, whatever its flaws, certainly wouldn’t look boring to him, and he could easily decide against returning to his boring old homeland.

  Sterren thought Zander was pretty boring, himself.

  Bern was a mystery; he had said nothing beyond the necessary minimum for politeness ever since he answered the call for volunteers. Sterren had absolutely no idea what to expect from Bern—desertion, loyalty, insanity, anything might be possible.

  Alder and Dogal, of course, had not volunteered. Alder might have, given a choice, but Dogal was clearly fed up with travel after his previous journey, and would greatly have preferred to have stayed home, where he had a friendly understanding with one of the cook’s more attractive female assistants, and where he didn’t have to worry about seasickness or foreign languages and cu
stoms.

  Alder was a bit more adventurous, and seemed genuinely, if inexplicably, fond of Sterren. Sterren suspected it might be an emotion similar to what one might feel toward a stray puppy one had taken in; after all, Alder had found Sterren, and taught him Semmat, and helped him settle into his job as warlord.

  Lady Kalira would never have volunteered; on her previous journey she had discovered, to her surprise, that she hated travel, and hated Ethshar. Neither one fit her romantic preconceptions; the stories never mentioned seasickness, rude sailors, smelly crowds, and all the other inconveniences she had encountered. Furthermore, she thought the whole idea of using magic to fight a war was revolting. She did, however, have a powerful sense of duty, which accounted for her cooperation, such as it was. The king had sent her, and she did as her sovereign ordered.

  She had surely heard the call from the lookout when the city came into view, but she was ignoring it, staying in her cabin below.

  To some extent Sterren thought he could sympathize with her, but at the sight of the city spreading across the World before him, its smell in his nostrils, he found his eyes filling with tears, and felt a swelling in his chest as if he were about to burst.

  He swallowed, and to distract himself, he called to a sailor who was hanging from the forestay, “Hey, there! Where will we tie up?”

  The sailor glanced at him, but shook her head.

  Sterren realized he had spoken in Semmat, since Alder and Dogal had been speaking it.

  “Where will we tie up?” he called in Ethsharitic.

  “The Tea Wharves,” the sailor called back. “Near the New Canal!”

  Sterren was unsure exactly where the Tea Wharves were, but he knew the New Canal—which, despite its name, was about four hundred years old; it was new only in comparison to the Grand Canal, which was no longer particularly grand, but had been there for centuries before the New Canal was dug.

  The New Canal divided Spicetown from Shiphaven, in the northwest corner of the city. The Wizards’ Quarter was near the southeastern corner. Sterren’s party would need to do some walking, it appeared.

  That was no problem; it might provide more opportunities to escape from his escort. If there was a crowd at the Arena, for example, he could easily become separated “accidentally.” The Arena was directly on the way, too; Arena Street was certainly the best route to the Wizards’ Quarter from either Shiphaven or Spicetown.

  That assumed that he actually wanted to slip away. After a month of debating that with himself, he still hadn’t really decided.

  It would seem an easy enough decision to make, really—life as a fugitive in his homeland, or near-certain death in a nasty little kingdom in the middle of nowhere—but whenever he thought he had settled on escape he kept finding himself reconsidering, thinking of what might happen to the people he had come to know in Semma. Would Princess Lura wind up starving somewhere? Might Nissitha and Shirrin be raped by their victorious enemies? Would Alder and Dogal and all the soldiers he had diced with get themselves killed in a futile defense?

  None of this, he told himself, really ought to be any responsibility of his—he hadn’t volunteered to be warlord.

  Still, he was the warlord, like it or not, and abandoning Semma to its fate seemed wrong.

  Of course, not abandoning Semma might get him killed, and that seemed even worse.

  Perhaps, he thought with sudden inspiration, he could hire his magicians, and then disappear into the city streets. Semma could still win its stupid war, but he would be free and home. True, he would be guilty of treason under Semman law, but surely, nobody would go to all that much trouble looking for him under those circumstances. The Semman nobility would have no very strong reason to hold a grudge against him if he won their war for them, whether he was present at the time or not.

  And if his magicians didn’t win—and given his estimate of the purchasing power of his available funds, that seemed likely—at least he would have made an honest effort, and would be no worse off than if he had deserted before recruiting anybody.

  He would have tried, and if the Semman princesses were still raped or murdered, if the Semman army was still slaughtered, he would have done the best he could.

  He liked that approach. He would carry through on his promise, hire the best magicians he could—and then, if the opportunity arose, he would escape on the way back to the ship.

  That shouldn’t be too difficult, he thought. He smiled and blinked away the tears of homesickness.

  He would hire magicians—but how did one go about hiring magicians for something like this?

  His smile vanished again as he realized that he had no idea at all.

  To buy a love spell or a curse, to cure warts or foresee the future, he knew exactly what to do. He would take his money to the Wizards’ Quarter and pick a likely magician by reading the signboards.

  None of the signboards had ever advertised “Wars won,” though. How would he know which magicians to approach? Trial and error would not work; there were hundreds of magicians in the Wizards’ Quarter, and asking each one in turn would take years. Most surely wouldn’t be interested.

  Recruiters of various sorts always worked in the city’s markets, particularly Shiphaven Market and Westgate Market, calling out their offers to the passing crowds; anyone who wanted to take up a career as an adventurer, or any other particularly hazardous and messy job, could go to the markets and pick from several options.

  But there was no market in the Wizards’ Quarter. There was Arena Plaza, but Sterren had never seen a recruiter there. The nearest true market was in Southgate—and Sterren had never been there at all. The taverns and gaming in Southgate were organized, and freelancers like himself were not welcome.

  Or would Southmarket, by the reservoir, be closer to the Wizards’ Quarter than Southgate? He had passed through there once. He didn’t remember seeing recruiters, but he could not be absolutely sure they hadn’t been there.

  And there was always Eastgate Market, and Hempfield Market, and Newmarket, and Newgate—he had gambled in inns and taverns near all those, at one time or another, before settling back into his home turf around Westgate and the two Merchants’ Quarters. Those other markets had no recruiters, generally, and weren’t particularly close to the Wizards’ Quarter, but should he rule them out completely?

  For the first time, Sterren began to see the city’s immensity as a serious drawback.

  He blinked, shook his head, and reconsidered.

  None of the various markets seemed exactly right, but pretty obviously, Shiphaven Market would be the best if he decided to go that route. It was the traditional place to recruit people interested in traveling by sea, after all, and it would be closest to the Tea Wharves, wherever they might turn out to be. That would mean less walking through the city streets, but on the other hand Shiphaven Market was always crowded, was not too far from his old stamping grounds, and was surrounded by places to hide.

  He didn’t know all those places as well as he might, since he had usually avoided Shiphaven in order to avoid drunken sailors who might be prone to violence, or ships’ officers who might stoop to kidnapping to complete their crews, but he thought he could manage to find something.

  But would there be any magicians around Shiphaven Market?

  The Arena Plaza was certainly much closer to the Wizards’ Quarter, and he thought he remembered a signboard there that he could post a message on—that was a second possibility that did not deserve to be discarded out of hand.

  For that matter, simply asking around in the Wizards’ Quarter, or walking the streets calling for volunteers, might produce results. Perhaps he could inquire after ambitious near-term apprentices, or even journeymen. The magicians surely gossiped among themselves, and would know who might be desperate enough for work to be interested in such an adventure.

  And what’s more, there was no reason he couldn’t try all three approaches.

  He smiled again. That would certainly be reasonable, and
would call for a good, long stay in Ethshar, with visits to two of the most crowded places in the city—Shiphaven Market and Arena Plaza. The Wizards’ Quarter was less crowded, but full of nooks and crannys and odd little byways where a person could easily lose sight of his companions.

  That seemed very promising indeed.

  As the city loomed before him, heart-twistingly familiar, his resolution to stay until he had hired magicians evaporated. He decided instead that he would take any opportunity to escape that arose, because any opportunity might be the last.

  If the opportunity never came at all, he would live with that.

  He was a gambler, after all. He was accustomed to accepting what the gods of luck sent him and making the best of it. If his luck let him slip away, he would; if he never got a chance, he would go through with the hiring of magicians and play out his role as warlord.

  He could see the docks ahead, now, and the mouth of the New Canal. Three wharves projected out at an angle, across a band of mud, a few hundred feet to the left of the canal; the ship seemed to be headed directly for them, and he guessed that these were the Tea Wharves.

  That was the Spicetown side, but getting across to Shiphaven would be easy enough. Spicetown had no market square; the spice merchants did their bidding right on the docks. Shiphaven Market would still be the first stop in the search for magicians.

  This expedition, he thought, might even be fun.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sterren stopped walking and pointed. “That’s the New Canal,” he said, speaking loudly to be heard over the wind, “and Shiphaven Market’s just the other side. That’s where we want to start looking.”

  Lady Kalira glanced at the row of shops on the opposite bank and sniffed. “I don’t see any market over there,” she said, a trifle petulantly.

  “It’s not right on the canal, it’s a few blocks in.” In truth, Sterren was not at all sure how far it was; he was not overly familiar with this part of the city, and had never before needed to get from Spicetown to Shiphaven Market. “Are you still sure we should start looking immediately, and not find ourselves a good meal or a place to sleep?”