The Destiny of the Sword (5 page)

The lad gave him a pert and incredibly innocent smile. “Yes, thank you, my lord.” Katanji could be angelically polite or diabolically vulgar, as circumstances required.

“I need a speck of additional wisdom from you, novice,” said Wallie.

“I am always at your service and at that of the Goddess, my lord.”

After the service of his own money pouch, of course.

Brota is now bent on buying leather. I should like to know how much she spends on it.”

Katanji grinned. “Is that all?” He nodded and walked away. He could probably discover details of the tanner’s grandfather’s sex life if Wallie needed them.

Wallie stayed by the rail, watching his spy trail after Brota. There were no swordsmen in sight. Then Nnanji reappeared at his side, suspicious of what his oath brother had wanted with his true brother. Nnanji’s protg was a constant trial to him, with his unswordsmanlike tendencies, and his mentor almost as bad. Wallie decided not to explain, out of pure perversity.

“Did you find Adept Kionijuiy?” he inquired.

Nnanji scowled. “Someone else got to him first, my lord brother.”

On their previous visit to Tau, Kionijuiy had been de facto reeve. He had been absent from his post, leaving the town in the care of an inadequate garrison, and that lapse had offended Nnanji’s ideals of swordsman honor. While the subject had not been discussed since, Wallie knew that Nnanji never forgot anything. He would certainly have sought to rectify the matter that morning.

“The new reeve is the Honorable Finderinoli,” Nnanji added. “He and his band arrived at the lodge just before your message got there. So he came on to Tau and put things to rights at once. I did not meet him, but he seems to be doing a fine job.” He nodded approvingly.

“What did he do to the old man?” Wallie asked. Kionijuiy’s father had failed to resign when he grew too old to be reeve. Much worse, though, he had taught his civilian sons to fence. That was an abomination, a breach of the sutras, a violation of the swordsmen’s closed,shop union rules.

“Drained him, too,” Nnanji said simply, studying people on the dock road below.

Wallie shivered. “And the brothers?”

“Cut off their hands,” Nnanji said. “Ah! Here she is!”

Thana was coming along the road—Brota’s daughter, tall and slim and ravishing in a yellow wrap. Thana had a classic Grecian profile and dark curls. Whenever Wallie saw her with her sword on her back, as now, he thought of Diana the Huntress. When

Thana was in sight, Nnanji would not think readily of anything else.

Beside her was the tiny form of Honakura, ancient priest and one of Wallie’s company—indeed, Honakura was the first person he had spoken to when he awoke in the World in Shonsu’s body. Today the old man had gone to visit the temple hi search of news. He was still wearing his anonymous black robe, hiding his craft,marks under a headband, and so being a Nameless One. Wallie had half expected Honakura to end this charade now, but apparently not. He had never explained its purpose; possibly he did not wish to admit that it had none.

Jja was comforting Vixini, who was fretting over another tooth. Katanji came strolling back from the warehouse. Honakura climbed wearily up the gangplank. Nnanji headed toward it to welcome Thana. Seven was the sacred number. When Wallie had left the temple at Harm to begin his mission for the gods, seven had been the number in his party. The seventh, Nnanji’s moronic slave, had gone. If Nnanji had any say in the matter, Thana was destined to replace her. That would bring them back to seven again...

Sapphire had taken Wallie to all the cities of the RegiVul loop; its crew had provided his army for the battle of Ov. With Sapphire he had unmasked the sorcerers and discovered their secrets. Now someone—and he still did not know who—had called a tryst in Casr. To Casr he must go. Looking at Nnanji beaming idiotically as he held Thana’s hands, he wondered if his party was about to be restored to the sacred number. Possibly Sapphire’s part in his mission was ended, and he was about to leave this easy, informal River life and complete his quest ashore.

Yet Apprentice Thana was showing few signs of cooperating, although Nnanji now proposed to her regularly—three times a day, after meals, Wallie suspected. She clearly had no illusions about that redheaded idealist who regarded honor as life’s purpose, kilting as his business, fencing and wenching as the only worthwhile recreations. Looking at the two of them, lost in their private conversation, Wallie would not have been surprised to learn that his lusty young protege* was describing his rooming’s exploits in the brothel. He was quite capable of doing so and then

wondering how he had offended. Yet certainly Nnanji had some major part to play in the gods’ mission, for Wallie had been directed to swear the fourth oath with him, the oath of brotherhood.

Oath of brotherhood or not, Nnanji would be reluctant to leave Sapphire without Thana. Suppose she would not go? What would the gods do then?

He must discuss that possibility with Honakura.

Two hours later, reeking like a tannery, Sapphire cast off. As she did so, another ship pulled into an empty berth ahead and two nimble young swordsman Seconds jumped ashore without even waiting for the plank. They were at once accosted by a Fourth and three Thirds, whom Wallie had already identified as followers of the head,hunting Sixth. By nightfall that Sixth would have collected all the loose swordsmen in town.

Wallie had gone up on the fo’c’sle to stay out of the sailors’ way. He was leaning on the rail with Nnanji beside him. Thana was next to Nnanji.

“On to Casr!” Nnanji said in a satisfied tone.

“We may be back!” Wallie warned him, watching the two Seconds being marched off to meet the absent Sixth and swear their oaths.

“What! Why, brother?”

Wallie explained his theory that the Goddess might be wanting him to recruit a private army. Nnanji pouted mightily—he would be greatly outranked by a Sixth.

“I hope that is not the case,” Wallie assured him. “But why else would she have brought all these swordsmen to Tau? It is a long way to Casr. I am sure that the Goddess is capable of better aim than that.”

“Ah!” Nnanji looked relieved. “It is not only Tau! Swordsmen have been arriving at Dri and Wo, also. And Ki San, appparently. Even Quo.”

The ways of gods were inscrutable. Perhaps, though, the docks at Casr could not handle the traffic, and the Goddess was using these outlying ports as way stations...

“Quo?” Wallie echoed.

Nnanji chuckled and glanced sideways at him. “It is on die

next loop of the River! There is a wagon trail over the hills from Casr to Quo, brother! One day by road and twenty weeks by water, so I’m told.”

“Where did you hear this?”

“During intermission!” Nnanji leered. Then he remembered that Thana was present, and his face suddenly matched his hair; perhaps his social skills were improving, slightly.

There was also a trail from Ov to Aus, Wallie knew, although land travel was very rare in the World. There were no maps in the World, because there was no writing, and because the geography was subject to change without notice, at the whim of the Goddess. But Wallie had a mental picture of the usual form of the landscape, and he now sought to adjust it. What had Nnanji thought of, to put that grin on his face?

“Another loop?” Wallie said. “Then Casr is strategic!”

Nnanji looked vaguely disappointed that his mentor had worked that out so quickly. He would have had to consult the sutras.

“Right!” he said. “It has three neighbors, instead of two, like all the other cities.”

“And therefore it may just be the sorcerers’ next target?”

Nnanji nodded. The sorcerers had been seizing another city every two years or so. Now they had control of all the left bank, the inside of the loop. River travel was difficult or impossible through the Black Lands, so the RegiVul loop was closed. Their next move must to be to cross the River.

“Casr is very old,” Nnanji added. “It’s mentioned in some of the most ancient sagas. Been burned and sacked and rebuilt dozens of times, I expect.”

“And it has a swordsman lodge,” Wallie said.

Nnanji grinned and put his arm around Thana for a firm hug.

Wallie returned to watching the docks as they dwindled astern, masked now by a picket fence of masts and rigging. As the details became less visible, Tau seemed to become ever more like a scene from Tudor England.

Nnanji sniggered. “Still want to be reeve, brother?”

“Me?” Wallie said with astonishment, turning to stare at him.

Nnanji flashed his huge grin. “Forgotten? Last time we were here you said...” His eyes went slightly out of focus, and his

voice deepened to mimic Shonsu’s bass. “’Eventually, I suppose, I’ll settle down in some quiet little town like this and be a reeve. And raise seven sons, like old Kioniarru. And seven daughters, also, if Jja wants them!’ And I said, ‘Reeve? Why not king?’ And you said, ‘Too much bloodshed to get it, and too much work when you do. But I like Tau, I mink.’”

His eyes came back into focus and his grin returned. Neither commented on the feat of memory—they both knew it was child’s play for Nnanji—but Thana was disgusted. “You weren’t serious, my lord? Reeve? In a place like that?” She turned to stare at the thatched roofs of vanishing Tau.

“It’s a nice little town,” Wallie protested feebly.

“You can have it, brother,” Nnanji said generously.

tttt

The next day the wind god deserted them. A strange golden haze settled over the River, smelling faintly of burning stubble, while the water lay dead as white oil. Directly overhead the sky was a pallid, sickly blue, and all around mere was only blank nothing. Tbmiyano did not even hoist sail, and Sapphire drooped at anchor. Other becalmed vessels showed faintly at times in the distance, like flags planted to mark the edge of the World, but for most of me day Sapphire seemed to be abandoned by both men and gods.

This ominous change made the crew uneasy. Lord Shonsu was needed at Casr, they believed, to take command of Her tryst. Why was She not speeding him there? Had they offended Her in some way? Not putting their worry into words, the sailors performed the usual chores in nervous silence. They cleaned and polished and varnished; they made clothes for the coming whiter; they instructed youngsters in the age,old ways of the River and the sutras of the sailors; they waited for wind.

Honakura was as distressed as any. He liked to think that he had been sent along on Shonsu’s mission as pilot, a guide to interpret the will of the gods as it might be revealed from time to time, and he did not know what to make of this sudden

change of pace. It was strange that She had not taken Shonsu directly to Her tryst from Ov after the battle with the sorcereis, but likely the swordsman was just being given time to think. There seemed to be many things worrying the big man, things he had trouble discussing, or preferred not to discuss, and he brooded relentlessly, quite unlike his normal self. And the wind god had buffeted them along in spanking fashion—until today.

This was not the first tame Sapphire’s progress had been stayed, and each time there had been a reason for it. Either the gods had been waiting for something else to happen, or the mortals had overlooked something they were supposed to do. Honakura had no way of knowing which was the case now, but he suspected that the next move was up to the mortals—why else would the ship have been encased hi mist? It was as if they had all been shut in a closet, as he himself had many times in the past locked up an errant protege to meditate upon his shortcomings. By afternoon he was becoming seriously concerned.

He sat himself on his favorite fire bucket and surveyed the deck. Up on the fo’c’sle, the adolescents were clustered around Novice Katanji. From their antics, he guessed mat the boy was telling dirty stories. The women had mostly gathered on the poop, knitting, mending, and chatting softly. A couple of men were fishing... without much success, he noted glumly.

For once there was no fencing lesson in progress. Adept Nnanji was sitting on the forward hatch cover with Novice Matarro and Apprentice Thana, grouped around three crossed swords. That was a stupid swordsman custom for reciting sutras. Priests taught sutras while pacing to and fro—much healthier and more sensible, letting exercise stimulate the brain.

Lord Shonsu sat alone on the other hatch. The crew understood that he needed to think and they left him alone when he wanted privacy, as now. He did have his slave beside him, so he probably would not think of himself as being alone. They were not talking, however, and that was unusual. Shonsu was probably the only swordsman in the World who talked with his night slave —except of course to say “Lie down.”

Shonsu was whittling. He had taken up whittling after Ov, spending hours with scraps of wood and tools pilfered from the

ship’s chest. He refused to say what he was doing and he obviously did not enjoy doing it. His hands were too big for delicate work—they fit a sword hilt better than a knife handle. He scowled and chewed his tongue and nicked his fingers and spoiled what he was doing and started again. And he would not say why.