The Unwilling Warlord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “They may come back,” Sterren interrupted.

  Lady Kalira held up a hand. “Yes, they may, but at present they are not here. Let me continue.” She glared at him.

  “Go on,” Sterren said.

  “As I was saying, you have very cleverly disposed of two-thirds of your escort already, and acquired two of the magicians you sought, to confuse matters and perhaps, for all we know, to deceive the two guards remaining. We have no very clear idea what you have been discussing with them throughout this meal, since we don’t know Ethsharitic; you could have been planning your escape, with their connivance, under our very noses.”

  Sterren wished he had been bold enough to try it.

  “Now, you are demanding an effectively unlimited opportunity to stroll about the city, looking for a chance to slip away and hide from us in a city you know far better than we could ever hope to. I am sorry, but as your unwilling gaoler, I can’t allow it. We must set a term, at the end of which we will depart this place and sail homeward with all due speed. I would suggest that by noon tomorrow we be under way.”

  Sterren sat back and used a fingernail to pick the last remnants of his supper from between his teeth as he considered this.

  “I see what you mean, my lady,” he said at last, “and I truly do understand. I do not suppose that you would accept my word that I will not escape, or delay until it’s too late.” To his own surprise, he realized that he really would be willing to give his word, and that he would keep it, as he always had. Semma was not really as bad as all that, and the idea of his soldiers being slaughtered was not an appealing one. If he could just find the right magic, he was sure he could win the war. It was a challenge, a gamble, and he wanted to meet it head-on. He wanted to see if a little magic really could change a sure defeat into victory.

  And after it was over, maybe then he could desert.

  “No, my lord,” she said, “I’m afraid I couldn’t accept your word. After all, despite your noble ancestry, and your apparent good intentions, what are you really but a merchant’s brat, brought up in the streets, accustomed to cheating at dice to earn your bread? How much honor can I expect from such as you?”

  Sterren smiled wryly, to hide how much Lady Kalira’s clinically-exact description hurt him. “More than you might think,” he said. “But if you will not take my word, there is little I can do to make you believe me.” He sighed. “Until noon, though, is not enough. If you could give me three days...”

  He let his voice trail off.

  “Three days?” It was her turn to sit back and consider.

  “Today is the twenty-first of Snowfall,” she said. “You will agree, then, that we must all be aboard ship by nightfall on the twenty-fourth, ready to set sail with the next tide?”

  Sterren nodded. “Agreed,” he said.

  “You’ll promise not to attempt escape?”

  “You said that you can’t accept my word, but all the same, I’ll give it. I won’t try to escape before nightfall on the twenty-fourth of Snowfall.”

  “All right,” she said. “Three days, and then we drag you back to the ship.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  By morning the month of Snowfall was living up to its name. It was snowing, and Sterren decided that Shiphaven Market was not going to be worth another visit. Instead, he left Annara and the warlock aboard ship while he, Lady Kalira, Alder, and Dogal all set out in the early gloom for the Arena and the Wizards’ Quarter.

  None of the other four soldiers had turned up yet, and that meant Lady Kalira was in a very bad temper. Sterren made no attempt at conversation as he led the way up Warehouse Street, through Shortcut Alley to North Street, and on out of Spicetown.

  As they neared the Grand Canal, however, the overlord’s palace gradually became visible ahead, and Sterren noticed all three Semmans staring at it.

  They weren’t being quite attentive enough to encourage escape, and besides, he had promised not to, but he did venture to remark, “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Is that where the wizards live?” Lady Kalira demanded.

  Startled, Sterren said, “No, of course not! That’s Lord Azrad’s ... ah ... castle.”

  “How far to the magicians, then?”

  “Well, North Street forks ahead and we go left on...” He hesitated, and then switched to using Ethsharitic for place names. “...on the Promenade, and then on the other side of the Palace Plaza we take Arena Street, and then it’s about a mile to the Arena, I guess.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “A mile?”

  “About that.”

  “I will never get over the size of this city,” Lady Kalira said, more to herself than to Sterren. “What a mess!”

  Sterren did not consider his home city a mess, but he knew better than to say anything. They made the rest of the journey in silence.

  The streets were almost empty because of the snow, and the city’s normal odor was largely suppressed by the pale-gray blanket that covered the rooftops and most of the streets, but the scent of spices, wood-smoke, and charcoal was still strong. The mansions of the New City were silent and elegant, the snow hiding much of the damage time had done them; even the slums of the outer Arena district were quieter and less offensive in such weather.

  They passed Camp Street, and then the Arena itself, and came to the plaza just south of the main entrance.

  There, to the right of the rampway into the Arena, was the message-board that Sterren had remembered, a six-foot-high wall of rough pine planks weathered grey, fifteen feet long, plastered over its entire surface with faded and torn bits of paper, parchment, and fabric.

  Sterren had written up his notice the night before, aboard ship, but he realized as he looked for a place to put it that he had not thought to bring any tacks or nails. With a shrug, he found a notice that had been attached with unusually long cut nails, announcing an estate auction that had taken place a sixnight before, and he rammed the corners of his own message over the blunt ends of the nails.

  Satisfied, he read it over again.

  “Magicians,” it said in large letters at the top, and then continued in smaller writing below, “Employment opportunity for magicians of every school. The Kingdom of Semma is recruiting magicians for government service for a term of several months, but not to exceed one year. Room and board furnished, and transportation both ways, as well as payment in gold and gems. To apply, or for further information, contact Sterren, Ninth Warlord of Semma, aboard the Southern Wind, now docked at the Tea Wharves in Spicetown. Final application must be made by nightfall, 24 Snowfall, 5221.”

  He stepped back, and realized that his fine, big page was almost lost amid the jumble of paper and cloth.

  There was, however, nothing he could do about it.

  He looked at some of the other messages on the board, wondering what they were all about. One caught his eye immediately.

  “Acclaimed prestidigitator seeks part-time employment. Leave message with Thorum the Mage, Wizard Street.”

  Sterren was unsure exactly what a prestidigitator was; some sort of magician, surely! “Part-time employment”—that wasn’t exactly what he was offering, but still...

  Thorum the Mage, he told himself, on Wizard Street. That wouldn’t be too hard to find.

  He was about to start looking for more notices when he was reminded of his companions by the sound of feet shuffling in the slush.

  “Hai, you three,” he said. “Come here and help me read these! Some of them are from magicians looking for work! I should have come here in the first place, instead of bothering with Shiphaven!”

  Dogal shook his head. “I can’t read,” he said.

  Lady Kalira and Alder started forward, but then Alder stopped. A moment later, as she got close enough to make out the messages, so did Lady Kalira.

  “We can’t read them, either,” she said. “They’re all in Ethsharitic.”

  “Well, of course they...” Sterren let his voice
trail off as he realized that he was the only one present who could read Ethsharitic. He turned back to the board and drew a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh.

  “I’ll read them, then,” he said.

  Two hours later he felt he had covered the board adequately. Snow, meanwhile, had attempted to cover Alder and Dogal; Lady Kalira had taken shelter in the arched entrance of the Arena.

  “Doesn’t this stuff ever stop falling?” Dogal asked.

  “Of course it does!” Sterren retorted, instinctively leaping to the defense of his native city.

  “And then what happens to it?” Alder asked. “What do you people do with it all?”

  “Nothing; it melts, of course,” Sterren said. “This isn’t Sardiron, where it piles up all winter.”

  “Well, how would we know that?” Alder replied angrily, his temper obviously shortened by the long, cold wait.

  “From experience, of course. Haven’t you ever seen ... seen it before?” He could not think of a Semmat word for “snow.”

  Alder and Dogal both stared at him, startled. “No, of course not!” Alder replied.

  “How could we have seen it before?” Dogal asked.

  It was Sterren’s turn to be startled. “Oh,” he said. “Doesn’t it ... I mean, don’t you have this stuff in Semma?”

  “No,” Alder answered.

  “It doesn’t fall in the winter, like this?”

  “No, it rains in the winter in Semma. We don’t have snow.”

  Sterren noted the word for later use, and then dropped the subject. “Oh. Well, I have a dozen messages here from magicians looking for work, and I want to follow up on them, before I forget any names. Come on.”

  The “dozen” was actually fifteen, though there was some overlap in the message drops they used.

  With much grumbling, the soldiers came. Lady Kalira emerged from the entryway and joined the party as Sterren led them back out to Arena Street and on to the southeast, toward the Wizards’ Quarter.

  Five blocks took them to Games Street, a thoroughfare that Sterren remembered well, even though he had rarely played there. The times when he tried it had all been remarkable enough to stay very clear in his memory.

  And Games Street, of course, marked the line between the indeterminate streets between the Arena and the Wizards’ Quarter, where various performing magicians made their homes, and the heart of the Wizards’ Quarter proper, where virtually all the city’s magic shops were clustered.

  In fact, just one more block south on Arena brought them to Wizard Street. There was no marker, but it was unmistakable. “TANNA the Great,” advertised a signboard at the corner, “Wizardry for Every Need, Love Charms a Specialty.” Peculiar odors mixed with the inevitable smell of woodsmoke—the city’s famous spices had been left behind a mile to the north, but here there were strange new scents that might have been spices, or herbs, or something else entirely.

  Two doors down on the right was a signboard announcing the presence of Thorum the Mage, which was one of the names Sterren had memorized. He headed directly for it.

  Two hours later they took a break for a midday meal, and bought bits of beef fried in dough from an open-front shop between two gambling halls on Games Street. They ate in silence, leaning against a wall, as snow drifted by and Sterren, between bites, considered what he had learned.

  For one thing, he now knew what a prestidigitator was—little more than a charlatan, really. A great deal of magic appeared to be fraudulent. Never having had money to spend on spells and amulets, he had never had occasion to find this out.

  Other magic, of course, was completely real and authentic and could be enormously powerful.

  Unfortunately, while the frauds would often work cheap, for the more serious magicians a pound of gold would not pay for a sixnight’s work, let alone the month or more that might be necessary for a trip to Semma and back with a war in the middle.

  He had been turned down by two witches, two theurgists, a wizard, a warlock, and someone who called himself a thaumaturge, a term Sterren was not familiar with.

  On the other hand, he had turned down a prestidigitator, an illusionist, a sorcerer whose talents seemed genuine but hopelessly inappropriate for the job at hand, and an herbalist.

  Not all of these were from the advertisements at the Arena; the theurgists and the sorcerer had turned up on their own while Sterren and his party were discussing matters with Thorum the Mage, a pleasant old fellow who, thanks to his central location, made a significant income as a message center and referral service, in addition to what his wizardry brought him.

  The morning, Sterren had to admit, had been a washout. He chewed his last bite of dough, pulled his coat collar tighter, and stared longingly through the snow at a dice-game visible through a tavern window on the opposite side of the street.

  He wished that he could just go back to playing dice, and thinking entirely in his native tongue, without having to switch languages every few minutes, without worrying about wars or wizards or warlords or warlocks, hereditary duties and summary executions. He wanted to forget that Semma had ever existed, forget that he had ever met any of the inhabitants of that silly little kingdom.

  He couldn’t, of course. Semma was real, and somehow or other he had the misfortune to be its warlord now, rather than just a tavern gambler.

  Joining that game across the street was a tremendous temptation, but a glance at Lady Kalira’s sour expression convinced him that it wasn’t even worth asking if he could take a few minutes to replenish their finances.

  He sighed, swallowed the last traces of his meal, and said, “Come on.”

  The three Semmans looked at him, uncomprehending.

  “Oh, come on,” he said, in Semmat this time.

  They came.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The afternoon was more successful than the morning. For one thing, the snow stopped and the sun came out, which improved tempers all around.

  For another, the neighborhood grapevine was working for them now, and when they checked back in at Thorum’s they found a young witch, eager for adventure in foreign lands and willing to work cheap.

  Another cooperative and promising witch turned up a few stops later, and then a sorcerer by the name of Kolar, whose collection of talismans included a few that clearly had some military usefulness—and, fortunately for Sterren, not all that much commercial value, so that Kolar was willing to accept Sterren’s offered job.

  All three of these individuals were instructed to report to the chartered ship, the Southern Wind, by midday on the twenty-fourth.

  At the next stop an argument broke out. The magician in question here was ready and willing to take the job, but Lady Kalira recognized the emblem she wore at her throat.

  “She’s a demonologist!” she said. “We can’t take a demonologist!”

  “Why not?” Sterren demanded. “She can probably do more for us than the rest put together! Demons love war! They created it!”

  “And that’s one reason that using a demonologist is too dangerous!” the Semman aristocrat shouted.

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “It is not...” Lady Kalira began; then she caught herself, and continued with enforced calm, “It is not ridiculous, my lord Sterren. And in any case, the reasons do not matter. If I might remind you, His Majesty specifically forbade the inclusion of sorcerers or demonologists. Are you going to defy a royal edict? Might I point out that the penalty for doing so is entirely up to the king’s discretion, even to beheading, for a member of the nobility?”

  Sterren opened his mouth to argue, and then stopped.

  Phenvel III was more than a little foolish, and prone to whims. For all Sterren knew, he really might order Sterren’s execution if he was angry enough, and only think better of it after it was too late.

  And he had specifically forbidden demonologists and sorcerers.

  Sterren had forgotten that for a moment. He had not made the connection when he hired Kolar—Kolar the
Sorcerer.

  “Oh, damn,” he said.

  He apologized to the demonologist, a woman by the name of Amanelle of Tirissa, and led the way back to the house where Kolar rented an upstairs room.

  When that little problem was dealt with, Sterren continued with his search.

  When the sun was below the rooftops and the shopkeepers began lighting the torches out front, he called it a day and headed back toward Spicetown, the Semmans trailing along behind him.

  He didn’t even think about trying to slip away. The quest for magicians had caught his interest.

  It was full dark well before they reached the wharves, and Sterren had to ask directions twice before locating the Southern Wind. He was asleep within seconds of falling into his hammock.

  That was the twenty-second of Snowfall.

  On the twenty-third, once again, the day was spent in the Wizards’ Quarter, recruiting. Word had gotten around, however, and this time Sterren was able to sit at Thorum’s table, drinking cheap ale and making jokes with old Thorum about the Semman barbarians he was saddled with, while candidates presented themselves.

  The Semmans sat idly by, wondering what Sterren and the fat old wizard found so funny.

  The weather was warmer, too, and the snow had melted away completely by mid-afternoon.

  Even the now-familiar walk back to the ship seemed easier, especially since Sterren took care to set out well before dark. Lady Kalira brightened considerably when she discovered Alar aboard the vessel, waiting for her, apologetic about both his own extended absence and having completely lost track of Kendrik, Bern, and Zander.

  Sterren thought he was a fool for coming back, but did not say so.

  Sterren did not bother to leave the ship on the twenty-fourth, but instead began the preparations for the journey back to Akalla of the Diamond.

  He had found no chance to slip away, and he was not at all sure he would have taken it if he had. Princess Lura’s grin and Shirrin’s blush lurked in the back of his memory, and he did not want to leave them defenseless.

  When the ship sailed on the evening tide she had aboard her Sterren, Lady Kalira, Alder, Dogal, and Alar, of the original party of eight; the other three had never turned up. Sterren hoped that they would get by, stranded in a foreign city where they didn’t speak the language or know the customs. They had chosen to desert, but they had not necessarily known what they were getting into; life in Ethshar was much more complex than their simple existence back in Semma.