The Reluctant Swordsman

The temple jail was long, narrow, and very, very damp. It seemed to Wallie, once he had recovered his wits enough to study it, like a cross between an open sewer and an empty swimming pool. The timber roof had mostly rotted away, leaving a furry trellis from which long strands of moss hung dark against the blue brightness. The stones of both floor and walls were covered with brown and yellow-green slime. There were rusty grilles at both ends, but the stairs were unbarred. An agile man could have clambered out through the roof.

He did not comprehend much of his own arrival, but he watched the procedure when others were brought in later. If the prisoner was neither unconscious nor sufficiently docile, he was adjusted to one state or the other, then stripped and laid on the floor. A large stone slab was then stood on edge across his legs, pinning his ankles within notches cut in its base.

It took him some hours to recover sufficiently to sit up, bruised, swollen, and aching all over, coated with vomit and dried blood both inside and out. He would have exchanged all the treasure in the temple for a glass of water and he thought he was going to lose about six teeth. Through half-closed eyes, he peered groggily at the line of sitting men, all rooted to the low wall of slabs that ran down the middle of the room. There were five of them, apart from himself, and he was at the end of the line.

His neighbor smiled at him nervously and then attempted the greeting to a superior as well as he could in a sitting position, naming himself as Innulari, healer of the Fifth.

Wallie took a few minutes to gather his thoughts. “I am Shonsu, swordsman of the Seventh, my lord,” he said. “I regret that I cannot give you a formal reply, but I am so confused that I do not recall the words.”

The healer was a short and pudgy man, his flabbiness displayed by his nudity. He had limp, almost feminine, breasts and a globular belly. The top of his head was bald and the hair at the sides was plastered in all directions. He looked disgusting, but then they all did, and Wallie perhaps worst of all.

The healer simpered. “Oh, you must not address me as ‘lord,’ my lord. ‘Master’ is the correct address to a Fifth.”

Five teeth for certain, Wallie concluded glumly. “My apologies, Master Innulari. I wish I could engage your professional services, but I regret that I seem to be out of funds at the moment.”

The fat little man was regarding him with interest. “Do this,” he said, moving an arm. “Now this . . . ”

Wallie obeyed, moving as much of himself as he could with his legs pinned to the ground, and every twitch hurt.

“A few broken ribs, perhaps,” the healer decided with satisfaction. “You didn’t pass much blood, so the internal damage may not be too severe. Obviously the work of experts, for when I saw you I expected worse.”

Wallie thought back to Hardduju’s instructions to his goons before the punishment had started. “They were told not to reduce my value too much,” he explained. “The reeve expects to get five golds for me.”

“A denunciation?” Innulari asked, shocked. “Oh, I beg pardon, my lord; none of my business.”

Wearily Wallie explained, as well as he could, that he had received a blow on the head the previous day and had lost his memory. He had, therefore, failed to return the correct reply to the reeve’s greeting.

“So he thought you were an imposter!” The little man looked shocked and sympathetic. Apparently he was so honored to be sitting next to a Seventh that he was reluctant to make the same assumption. “That is a serious abomination, of course. As he was the one to denounce you, then he gets the slave, you understand.”

Wallie nodded and then wished he hadn’t. “What do they do about my facemarks?”

“Branding iron,” Innulari explained cheerfully. “They’ll probably use it to add your slavestripe, too, and save the cost of having it done professionally.”

At that moment the two men next in line to Innulari started to fight, flailing sideways and one-handed at each other, yelling obscenities. After a few minutes a boyish looking swordsman of the Second came trotting down the stairs. He walked along the other side of the slabs to them. The men screamed, one after the other, and fell silent. The swordsman walked briskly out again.

“Kicked their feet. It’s very effective.” Innulari glanced around the jail with approval. “The whole system is most efficient. Don’t try to move the slab. You can probably push it over, but then it will fall on your feet and crush them.”

Wallie lay down again, the only other position available to him, and wondered why the floor was so very wet. The smell was even worse than the stink of the town. He thought of the mysterious Shorty and his remark about a sample of hell . . . In some ways the little boy had seemed to make more sense than anyone or anything else in this insanity, but in other ways he had been even less believable. That trick with the beads, now . . .

The healer lay down also. He was obviously a natural chatterbox, Wallie concluded, and therefore one more pain to add to the others, but he might also be a valuable source of information.

“Your blow to the head is very interesting, my lord. I have never met the symptoms before, but they are mentioned in one of our sutras.” He frowned disapprovingly. “I am surprised that they did not allow the priests to attempt an exorcism, for that is the treatment of choice. Clearly a demon has gained admittance.”

“That seems to have been the problem in the first place.” Wallie sighed, and explained. He was trying to remember the argument that had taken place after he had been dragged from the nave of the temple into a back room, with Hardduju claiming the imposter as a slave, Honakura insisting that he was a blasphemer, and others—priests, he thought—talking demons. He had gained the impression that there had been a power struggle going on over his gasping, retching self. He tried to explain that also.

The healer seized on this as an important piece of temple gossip. If the holy Honakura’s exorcism had failed, then the old man had been repudiated by the Goddess and had lost face. It might signify an important shift in influence, he said.

“Well, at least they didn’t try to call in a healer,” Innulari said. “I know that I would not take your case, with respect, my lord.”

“Because the prognosis is discouraging, of course.” He waved a plump hand at the skeleton roof above them and the slimy walls. “That was what brought me here: I refused a case, but the family had money and kept raising the offer. Finally I got greedy, may She forgive me!”

Gingerly Wallie turned his head. “You mean a healer who loses a patient goes to jail?”

“If the relatives have influence.” Innulari sighed. “I was avaricious. But it was my wife’s idea, so she must cope now as best she can.”

The fat little man shivered in spite of the steamy heat. “Oh, I expect to go tomorrow. I’ve been here three days. The temple court usually decides faster than that.”

Go where? To the Judgment, of course. Wallie levered himself up once more and looked at the line of naked men. Not a beautiful virgin among them. Not human sacrifices, then, but executions. Those had been criminals he had seen thrown into the falls, had they? Mostly, the healer said. Or slaves no longer useful, of course. And sometimes citizens went voluntarily to the Goddess—the very sick or the old.

“About one in fifty, I suppose,” the healer said. “Once every two or three weeks. Most She chastises severely.”

Further questions established that the chastisement consisted of being battered and maimed on the rocks—it was very rare indeed for anyone to return unscathed. Nevertheless, the healer seemed quite cheerful about his prospects, convinced that his lapse into avarice was a minor sin that his Goddess would forgive. Wallie could not decide if the little man was putting up a brave front or really had such faith. It seemed like a very long shot to Wallie.

Later in the day, a young slave was brought in and pinned under the next slab. He regarded Wallie’s facemarks with dread and would not speak. Wallie eventually decided that he was a congenital idiot.

The day dragged on in pain and heat and ever increasing stink, as the inmates fouled themselves and the sun turned the damp cell into a sauna. The pudgy Innulari chattered aimlessly, thrilled at meeting a Seventh, insistent on recounting his life story and describing his children. Eventually he returned to the subject of the temple court. The accused person did not appear before it—he thought that an extraordinary idea—and usually learned of the verdict only when he was taken away to execution. Acquittals did happen, he admitted.

“Of course you can hardly expect one in your case, my lord,” he said, “because several of the members of the court, like the most holy Honakura, were present to witness your crime.” He paused and then added thoughtfully, “It will be interesting to hear the decision, though: demon, imposter, or blasphemer?”

“I can hardly wait,” Wallie said. Yet had he a choice, he would go for another exorcism—if they had exorcised him into this madhouse, perhaps they could exorcise him out. But a little later he learned from some remark of Innulari’s that a second exorcism was very unlikely. Obstinate demons were usually referred to the Goddess.

A woman was brought in by the guards. She stripped and sat down obediently, and was pinned in the stocks next to the slack-jawed slave boy. She was middle-aged, graying, flabby, and loose-skinned, but the boy twisted round to stare at her and remained in that position for the rest of the day.

That certainly was not Wallie’s problem—maybe never again. He pondered further about the sample of hell that the little boy had mentioned. Had that been a threat, a prophecy, or a lucky guess? If heaven was to be defined crudely as sexual ecstasy in a man’s groin, then his hell had started appropriately with unbearable agony in the same place.

There were, he concluded, three possible explanations. The first was Wallie Smith’s encephalitis, meaning that the World was all delirium. Somehow that was seeming less and less convincing as time went on.

A second was Shonsu’s head injury—he was Shonsu, and Wallie Smith was the illusion. He lay on the hard wet stone and pondered that idea for a long time, with his swollen eyes shut against the sun’s glare. He could not convince himself. Wallie Smith’s life was too detailed in his memory. He could remember thousands of technical terms, for example, although when he tried to pronounce them he produced nothing but grunts. He could remember his childhood and his friends and his education. Politics. Music. Sports. Earth refused to die for him.

That left the third explanation: both worlds were real—and he was in the wrong one.

Sunset arrived, and a sudden rattling noise from the grille at one end of the cell.

“Clean-out time!” Innulari announced, sounding pleased. “And that drink you wanted, my lord.”

Water began to flow along the cell, surging rapidly deeper. It had passed five men by the time it reached Wallie, and its filth made him retch—with agonizing consequences for his bruised abdominal muscles—but soon it ran deeper and relatively clean and gratifyingly cool. The inmates lay back in it and splashed and laughed . . . and drank. The twice daily clean-out was the only water he would get in the jail, Innulari assured him.

The court sentences you to a week’s amoebic dysentery and two weeks’ probationary septicemia. It will try your case shortly.

When the water had drained through the other grille, the evening meal was passed along in a basket—leftovers, mostly moldy fruit with a few stale crusts and scraps of meat that Wallie would not have touched even if his teeth had felt firm in his head. Anything better had gone before the basket reached him. A week in this cell would be a death sentence.

Then the sun vanished with tropical swiftness; the cello chorus of the flies yielded to massed violins from the mosquitoes. Innulari’s determined optimism seemed to fade also, and he began to brood. Wallie steered him around to the details of his faith and heard the same simple reincarnation belief that he had heard from the slave girl.

“Surely it is evident?” asked the healer, sounding as if he were trying to convince himself as much as Wallie. “The River is the Goddess. As the River flows from city to city, so our souls flow from life to life.”

Wallie was skeptical. “You can’t remember previous lives, can you? What is a soul, then, if it is not your mind?”

“Quite different,” the little man insisted. “The cities are lives and the River is the soul. It is an allegory to guide us. Or like beads on a string.”

“Oh, hell!” Wallie said quietly. He fell silent. You could not move a city on a river, but you could untie a string, move beads around, and then retie the string.

The light faded and the incredible beauty of the rings filled the sky above him, thin ribbons of silver that would make a mere moon seem as uninspiring as a light bulb. He thought of the glory of the waterfall they called the Judgment. This was a very beautiful world.

Even without the pains of his injuries he could have slept little. Leg cramps were common to all the inmates; there were more groans than snores in the jail. The ring system, which the slave woman had called the Dream God, made a good timepiece. The dark gap that marked the shadow of the planet rose in the east soon after sunset and moved across the sky. At midnight he saw it mark off two exactly equal arcs, and he saw it fade at dawn.

Morning dawned fair, promising to be as hot as the day before. The healer Innulari seemed disappointed and eventually confessed that on very rainy days, when the Goddess could not see the Judgment, there were no executions.

Clean-out came and went. The inmates fretted in uneasy quiet, whispering nervously.

Then two priests, three swordsmen, four slaves came clattering down the stairs, pulling faces at the stench.

As a priest called each name, a swordsman pointed. Slaves levered up the block and pulled out the victim. Each screamed at the pain when his stiffened legs were bent, each in turn was dragged away. Thus Wallie’s immediate neighbors and another man farther along the line were taken away for execution, and the Death Squad departed. Then the fruit basket was passed again.

Wallie realized that he was going to miss the talkative Innulari. An hour or two later he heard the bell tolling. He wondered if he should say a prayer to the healer’s goddess for him, but he did not.

In the middle of the morning, another five men were brought in. Although there was space beyond for many more, the place seemed suddenly crowded. Wallie acquired two new neighbors, who were delighted to see a swordsman of the Seventh in jail. They jeered at him and replied with obscenities when he tried to make conversation. He was exhausted by pain and lack of sleep, but if he seemed to nod off they would reach over and punch him from spite.

There was a sudden quiet. Wallie had perhaps been dozing, for he looked up to see the reeve regarding him with satisfied contempt from the safe side of the wall of slabs. He was holding a bamboo rod in both hands, flexing it thoughtfully, and there was no doubt as to his intended victim. Wallie’s first decision was that he must show no fear. That would not be difficult, for his face was so swollen that probably no expression at all could show on it. Should he attempt to explain or should he remain silent? He was still debating that when the questioning began.

Before he could say more, the reeve slashed the bamboo across the sole of Wallie’s left foot. It was bad . . . the pain itself, as well as the reflex that jerked the top of his foot against the stone and skinned his ankle. Hardduju studied his reaction carefully and seemed to approve of it.

Back to the left foot for the third sutra. How many could there be? After the sixth sutra, though, the sadist stopped asking and just continued beating, watching Wallie’s agony with a growing smile and obvious excitement, his face becoming red and shiny. He switched from one foot to the other at random and sometimes faked a stroke to see the foot yank back against the stone in anticipation.

Wallie tried to explain and was given no hearing. He tried remaining silent until blood from his bitten tongue filled his mouth. He tried screaming. He tried begging. He wept.

He must have fainted, for he had no clear memory of the monster’s departure. He probably went into shock, too, because the rest of the day was a confusion—a long, shivery, disjointed hell. Perhaps it was good that he could not see his ruined feet lying in the furnace beyond the stone slab. The sun moved, the shadows of the lattice roof crawled over him, and the flies came to inspect his wounds. But his neighbors punched and jeered no more.

The evening basket had been passed down the line, and he had sent it on without eating or caring. The sun had set. The sky was rapidly growing dim when Wallie felt himself snap out of his shocked lethargy. He heaved himself up to a sitting position and glanced around. All the other inmates seemed to have become curiously listless and were lying down in silence. The slimy room was hushed, steaming from its latest inundation, shadowy in the fading light.

The little brown boy was leaning against the slab that held Wallie’s ankles, watching him. He was still naked, still as skinny as a bundle of sticks, still holding a leafy twig in one hand. His face was expressionless.

“Yes, it does,” Wallie said. Those were the first words he had spoken since Hardduju departed. His feet were balls of screaming agony that drowned out all the other pains and bruises.

The little boy did not speak for a while, studying the prisoner, but eventually he said, “The temple court is in session, Mr. Smith, considering your case. What verdict will you have it reach?”

“Me?” Wallie said. “How can I influence its verdict?” He felt drained of all emotion, too battered even to feel resentment.

The boy raised an eyebrow. “All this is happening inside your head—it is all your illusion. You said so. Can’t you dictate the verdict?”

“I don’t think that I can influence the temple court,” Wallie said, “ . . . but I think that you could.”

“Ah!” the boy said. “Maybe we’re getting somewhere.” He put his hands on the slab behind him and sprang up to sit on it, his legs dangling.

“I’m sorry!” Wallie shouted. “I didn’t know!” He glanced both ways along the line of prisoners. No one stirred.

“They won’t notice,” the boy said. “Just you. All right, let’s get back to faith, shall we?”

Wallie took a moment to gather his thoughts. He had to get this right, or he was going to die. Or worse.

“It was the horses,” Wallie said. “They’re like horses but not quite. I always believed in evolution, not creationism, but the People are . . . people. They don’t belong to any Earthly race, but they’re human. Two worlds couldn’t both produce real people by convergent evolution. Something similar for a similar ecological niche, perhaps, but not so similar. I mean, birds and bats both fly, but they’re not the same. Noses and earlobes? They’re not necessary, but the People have them, too. So in spite of what all the science fiction stories said, another world would not have an intelligent biped that was indistinguishable from Homo sapiens . . . ”

“Gods!” Wallie said quickly. “It has to be gods, hasn’t it? Purpose! Direction! That was what you meant with the beads, wasn’t it? ‘Every one is the same yet slightly different,’ you said. Many worlds, variations on a theme. Copies of an ideal world, perhaps.”

That was the big question and now Wallie thought he knew. “I’m Wallie Smith and I am Shonsu . . . Wallie Smith’s memories and Shonsu’s body. Soul . . . I don’t know about souls.”

“Then don’t worry about them,” the boy said. “And Hardduju? How do you feel about capital punishment now, Mr. Smith?”

“Yes,” Wallie confessed. “Get me out of here and let me kill that bastard, and I’ll do anything you want—anything at all.”

“Well, well! Will you?” The boy shook his head. “Revenge? Not good enough!”

“But I believe in the Goddess now!” Wallie protested, his voice breaking. “I will repent. I’ll pray. I will serve Her, if She will allow it. I’ll be a swordsman if that is what She wants. Anything!”

“My!” the boy muttered mockingly. “Such unexpected devotion!” He fell silent, staring fixedly, and Wallie had the strangest fancy that he was being skimmed, perused—read as an accountant might run his eye down a balance sheet to the bottom line. “It’s a very small faith, Mr. Smith.”

“It’s a sort of chink of doubt in your disbelief. You will have to prove it.”

The boy pulled a face. “You don’t want to be Hardduju’s slave, do you? He wouldn’t sell you in the end—it would be too much fun to have a Seventh chained in the cellar. He has many other entertainments to try! So you’d rather go to the Judgment, wouldn’t you?” He grinned his gap-toothed grin for the first time. “The trick is this: if you resist, they bang you on the head and drop you over the edge. Then you land on the rocks. But if you run and jump far out, then you come down in deep water. It is a test of faith.”

“I can’t run on those feet,” Wallie said. “Is there anything left of them?”

The boy twisted around briefly to look down at Wallie’s feet and then shrugged. “There is a shrine at the Place of Mercy. Pray for the strength to run.” He was becoming indistinct as the light faded. “I told you that this was important. It is a rare opportunity for a mortal.”

“I haven’t had much practice at praying,” Wallie said humbly, “but I will do my best. I thought of praying for Innulari. Would it have helped?”

The boy gave him an odd look. “It wouldn’t have helped him, but it would have helped you.” He paused and said, “The gods must not provide faith in the first place, Mr. Smith. I could have given you belief, but then you would have been a tool, not an agent. A mortal’s service is of no value to the gods unless it is freely given—free will may not be dictated. Do you see? But once you have faith, the gods can increase it. You have found a spark. I can blow on a spark. I will do this much for you, in return for your kind thought about the healer.”

He pulled a leaf off his twig. At once the raging fires in Wallie’s feet seemed to be plunged into ice water. The pain died away, and all the other pains also.

Wallie started to gabble thanks, stuttering in his relief. “I don’t even know what to call you,” he said.

“Call me Shorty for now,” the boy said, and his gaptooth grin was just visible in the growing light of the Dream God. “It’s been a long time since a mortal was so impudent. You amuse me.” His eyes seemed to shine in the shadow. “Once you played a game called chess; you know what happens when a pawn reaches the end of its file?”

The mockery was obvious, but Wallie quickly repressed his resentment. “Sir, it can be converted to any other piece except a king.”

The boy chuckled. “So you have reached the end of your file and you have been converted. Simple, isn’t it? Remember, jump as hard as you can tomorrow, and we shall meet again.”

Thus, on his second night in the jail, Wallie slept soundly, but toward morning he found himself sitting at a table. It was a memory, a scene from his youth being played back to him so vividly that he could smell the cigarette butts and hear distant jazz from a radio in another room . . . green baize in darkness with a light shining down on it; playing cards, ashtrays, and glasses. Bill sat on his left, Justin on his right, and Jack had gone to the john.

He was declarer in a game of bridge, doubled and drunk and vulnerable in a crazy contract, in one of those crazy deals where the cards were distributed in bunches. Clubs were trumps, and he still held the last one, the deuce. Bill led a spade to Wallie’s solitary ace on the table, then obligingly moved the ace forward for him. Justin followed suit. That would force Wallie to lead from dummy, and they were waiting for him.

He trumped his own ace, and a voice said “Barf!” Then he could lead out seven good hearts from his hand. The defenders were squeezed—whatever they discarded, he could keep. He heard himself yell in triumph . . . slam, bid, made, doubled, redoubled, vulnerable, game, and rubber. He reached for the scorepad. He felt it between his fingers. Then it was gone, he was back in the jail, and the first glimmer of dawn was starting to brighten the eastern sky.

Believing in gods, he discovered, led one to believe in sendings. Who had made a bad lead? Chess and bridge . . . did the gods play games with humanity to while away eternity? The spades of a bridge deck were descended from the swords of tarot—had the Goddess trumped Her own ace of swords, Shonsu, with Wallie Smith, the deuce of clubs, the smallest card in the deck?

As the light grew, the pains returned. But that was as the little boy had predicted, and he could believe that today he would be taken from the jail.

The temple court had been busy. The Death Squad took six of the prisoners that day, and the first name on the list was: “Shonsu, swordsman of the Seventh, possessed of a demon.” If Innulari’s interpretation was correct, then old Honakura had lost out in the power struggle.

Wallie was dragged roughly up the steps, through a guard room, and allowed to fall limply on hard, hot paving under the blistering sun. He had not screamed. He lay for a moment, fighting down nausea from the pain in his joints and his bruises, screwing up his eyes against the glare. Then he struggled to sit up as the others were hauled out and dropped beside him, whimpering or yelling. After one glance at his feet, he tried not to look at them any more.

He was at the edge of a wide court, like a parade ground, and the heat danced within it in ripples. Behind him was the jail, and he could hear the River chattering happily behind that. Two sides of the yard were flanked by massive buildings, with the great spires of the temple rising in the distance. The fourth side lay open to a heaven of parkland and greenery.

The priests departed, their job done. A bored-looking swordsman of the Fourth seemed to be in charge now. Efficient and shiny-smart, he was tapping a whip against his boot, looking over the victims.

“Ten minutes to get your legs back,” he announced. “Then you walk across the square and back. Or crawl, as you please.” He cracked the whip loudly.

A yellow-kilted, fresh-faced Second came around, tossing each condemned man a black cloth to wear. When he came to Wallie he frowned and looked at his superior.

Wallie said loudly, “I am a swordsman. I shall walk.” He took the loincloth and ripped it in half, started to bandage one foot.

Wallie tore a small strip from the other cloth and tied us hair back so that his facemarks were visible. “Not according to the temple court, swordsman.” That was probably the wrong form of address, because the man flushed and raised his whip threateningly.

The man stared at him for a moment, then grabbed another cloth from the Second and tossed it to Wallie to wear.

Wallie wasn’t sure that he was being very smart, but he was required to prove his faith, and the only way he could see to do that was to prove his courage. Whether he proved it to the gods or the swordsmen or himself hardly seemed to matter. When the time came to cross the square, a couple of the men began by crawling and got whipped. Wallie walked. He walked very slowly, and as he put down each foot he gasped with the pain, but he lurched all the way across and back. And he held his head up.

Then the six were chained together to be led along the riverbank, past buildings he could not see for tears, past the busy, noisy waters, which in a short while might be carrying his mangled carcass, round to the steps of the temple. There they had to stand for a while until a priestess came out and gabbled a blessing over them.

The guard consisted of nine swordsmen and four hulking slaves. Wallie had been given the place of honor in the front, the chain from his neck held by one of the Seconds.

Every step was a torment. How much of the water in his eyes was sweat running in, and how much tears running out, he did not know or care. He was only vaguely aware of the long road through the park and the big gate, but the chain gang was not far into the slums and alleys of the town when he heard a child’s voice cry, “Hey! They got a swordsman!”

He knuckled his eyes clear to look, and there was an instant crowd. It had not occurred to him to wonder what the townsfolk thought of the daily death march. Innulari had told him that a majority of the condemned were slaves or criminals sent in by nearby cities, this being a meritorious service to the Goddess for some obscure and ancient reason, but some of the victims must be from the town and perhaps there might sometimes be attempts at rescue. That might explain the size of the guard, for nine to shepherd six in chains seemed excessive.

But this was no rescue attempt. The crowd was jeering, running along ahead, and following behind—children and adolescents and young adults. A swordsman of the Seventh going to the Judgment was great sport. The noise and confusion in the narrow passageway grew rapidly, heads popped out of windows and doors, and the curious flocked in from side streets. The guard grew nervous and angry and increased the pace, jerking at the chain. Wallie kept his head up and his teeth clenched, and staggered along.

A soft lump of filth struck him, and then more, not so soft. The shouting was being directed only at him, the noble lord, the valorous swordsman. Did you lose a battle then? Where’s your sword, swordsman? Have this one for me, my lord . . .

The Fourth in charge drew his sword, and it seemed for a few moments as if there might be bloodshed, with a riot sure to follow. But one of the slaves had been sent for help. Another troop of swordsmen arrived at the double, and the crowd was roughly dispersed. Wallie was in too much pain to be frightened, but he could read the message; swordsmen of the Seventh were not popular. With Hardduju as the local standard, that was easy to understand.

The jail had not been hell at all, barely purgatory, for the journey was worse. A million times he cursed himself for not accepting the cart, however undignified that might have been, or rough on his bruises. He saw nothing of how he left the town or of the scenery beyond, noticing only that the path was climbing steeply. He was terrified that he might faint, for then he would either be dragged along to his destination or swiftly run through with a sword and dropped into the water. The rags on his feet were blood-soaked and chafing on raw flesh, the pain and heat unendurable. Every muscle and joint seemed to scream.

A blast of cold air revived him when they had rounded a corner of rock and were approaching the falls, on a path flanked by a sheer drop on one side and overhanging cliff on the other. The ground trembled, the wind swirled a mist of cold droplets, and the roar hammered at his ears. The falls hung like a wall ahead. When he peered over the edge of the path, he saw white fury and rocks and churning tree trunks far below. His frail new faith faltered—could anyone at all ever come through that alive? Even if he managed to do so, would he not end up in the temple again, still not knowing the first sutra? But then the pain drove away the doubts, for deep inside he was raging, raging at the injustice and gratuitous cruelty, slobbering with his desire for revenge on the sadistic Hardduju—and just possibly raging against the little boy, the miracle-working mystery boy who found Wallie Smith amusing. Wallie was going to show them all, and every flame tempered his resolve.

Now the pain in his feet was subsiding into numbness as if they had died, but that might have been the effect of the cooling spray, or partial loss of consciousness, or even because he was now so terrified at the ordeal ahead that he was mumbling a continuous stream of prayer. It was inarticulate and confused and made very little sense even to him, but perhaps it was being heard.

The path ended suddenly, emerging from a gully onto the gentle grassy slope at the top of the jutting rocky spine. The prisoners were shoved forward, unchained, and allowed to collapse on the grass. A slave went around to collect the loincloths.

Two guards with drawn swords remained by the gully, but the rest seemed unconcerned, so clearly that gully was the only way down. No—the only safe way down. Wallie fought off waves of nausea. He tried not to think of the future, to think instead how well he had done to arrive here at all. The little boy should be pleased with him.

At the highest point of the slope stood the shrine, a blue stone baldachin over a small replica of the statue in the temple. Behind that was the shiny bare rock of the cliff. The lower edge of the meadow ended in empty air, the far wall of the canyon obscured by billowing clouds of mist. The falls were magnificent—terrifyingly close, a vertical river rushing from the heavens far above to hell far below, shaking the earth in fury, unforgettable, merciless white death.

He turned his back on them and sat quietly, looking down the canyon toward the temple, still astonishingly large, even at this distance. Set like a jewel within its enameled park, it was a truly beautiful building and an astonishing tribute to the deity it honored. Somewhere down there was Hardduju. He owed Hardduju something.

The town was not visible, but he could see the road angling up the valley wall and even make out the minute specks that were the pilgrim cottages. He thought of that sweet slave girl. Crushed at the bottom of the social structure, without status or freedom or possessions of any sort, condemned to whore for others’ gain, she had offered him solace and kindness, the only person in the World who had yet done so. If he survived and by the intervention of the gods was given freedom to act, then there was another debt he had to repay.

For some time nothing happened. The naked prisoners, the guards, and the slaves all sat around in the sunshine as if they were having a cigarette break. The wind played coyly around them, bringing one moment the icy touch of death from the falls and next the warm scents of damp earth and tropical flowers. Nobody looked at anybody else. The boom of the falls would have made conversation almost impossible anyway.

The Fourth in charge had been keeping an eye on the temple and must have caught a signal, for he suddenly yelled that it was time. Apparently the honor of marching first in the chain gang was matched by the honor of dying last. Wallie felt no great urge to argue this precedence. The first man squealed and tried to shrink into the grass as the guards approached him. They shouted at him and kicked him until he rose, ran to the shrine, and wrapped himself around the Goddess. After about thirty seconds, a guard hit him with a wooden club, and he went limp. The slaves carried him over to the edge and swung, and if the bell tolled for him in the temple, then the roar of the falls drowned it out.

The prisoners were trying to inch themselves away from the guards, clinging desperately to an extra few moments of terrified life. It made no difference. One by one they went over the edge. Then it was Wallie’s turn.

The Fourth came himself and alone. He had to stoop and shout to make himself heard. “You did walk, my lord, like a swordsman. Will you also jump?” His eyes said that courage could be admired in anyone, imposter or not. He was only a soldier doing his duty; Wallie managed to smile at him.

“I shall jump,” Wallie said. “I wish to pray first, but tell me when my time is up. I do not wish to be thrown.” He hoped that his voice sounded calmer to the swordsman than it did to him.

He limped up to the statue in the shrine and knelt down. Feeling very self-conscious, he prayed aloud to the idol for the physical strength to be able to run, and for the mental strength to want to.

There was no reply, and there was nothing else to say. He was very much aware of the sun on his bare skin, the blue sky with white clouds, the temple at the bottom of the valley, the spectacular wall of water on the other side, and birds wheeling freely in the air around. The World was very beautiful and life was sweet . . . and why did this have to happen to him?

Wallie rose and turned. He started to hobble down the slope. Amazingly, his legs and feet supported him. He increased speed to a run. There were a few cheers behind him. He reached the edge almost before he expected it, threw out his arms, and sailed off into space in a ragged dive. There was a great wind, and spray in his face, and then nothing.

He was hung over a beam like a towel, head down and feet down. The noise was calamitous, beating at his head and swinging him around by sheer force of sound, in darkness with just enough glimmer to show the beam wedged in a wall of jagged rocks, with a monstrous wave sweeping along it, rising. He grabbed his knees and hung on grimly as the water engulfed him, lifted him, and spun him over like a hoop on a stick. It sucked at him voraciously and then dropped him again with a sickening impact, until the next one could arrive.

Gasping and desperate, he clambered onto the top of the beam as the water began rising again. He lunged from the beam to the rocks in which it was jammed, found a handhold, pulled himself higher, and grabbed a rock with both hands and his knees. The next wave surged waist-deep around him. His fingers had started to slip before it sank back.

There was no hope of being heard, but he would not be able to withstand another wave. He tried to shout, but managed only an urgent croak: “Shorty! Help Me!”

He thought he had gone deaf, or died. The pain in his chest was killing him. He had lost half his hide on the rocks.

Light began to creep in around him. He blinked, then made out the shape of the rocks and the beam below and then more rocks, a steep slope of jumbled talus, boulders as big as houses or small as a desk, plastered with debris like the beam—which was obviously a piece of a ship’s mast—and planks and tree trunks and branches, heaped and piled in steep chaos. It was a hillside, a giant’s junk pile, with him clinging on it like a fly.

There was no source for the light, but it blazed up brighter and brighter like a winter sun. All the rocks glittered with it, and the lumber shone like mirrors. The roof was a jutting ledge of rock. The space below was enclosed in brilliant draperies of crystal and silver, frozen white splendor—iridescent jagged ice curtains. And downward, almost directly below his feet, the monstrous waves churned by the waterfall were stilled into immobile chasms of dark blue-green obsidian, encrusted with timbers and other deadly flotsam, grading to indigo and black in their depths. The air shimmered with myriads of brilliant specks, a mist of airborne diamonds. This was a space behind the falls, frozen by miracle.

He was in no state to appreciate a miracle. He saw a flat rock, pulled himself onto it, and collapsed. Torrents of water gushed from his lungs in spasms of pain. He retched and puked and then lay still, breathing once more in huge, rasping lungfuls.

At length his mind cleared. The pain subsided enough for him to raise his head and look around at this silent crystal-and-stone cathedral, this glacier cave shining whitely like the palace of the Snow Queen. The rugged drop below his rock perch was horrifying. The petrified waves were enormous—angry giants momentarily balked of their prey.

“You have arrived, then,” said the voice of the little boy, “safe if not quite sound?” He was sitting cross-legged on a nearby rock, higher, flatter, and more comfortable-looking than Wallie’s. He held his leafy twig. He was showing his tooth gap in a mocking grin.

“I think I’m dying,” Wallie said weakly. He no longer cared. Every man must have a limit, and he had passed his. The gods could play with someone else.

Wallie hesitated and then obeyed, staggering to his bloody and pulped feet, unable to straighten, swaying dangerously.

“My! You are a mess!” the boy said. He looked Wallie over and then pulled a leaf from his twig.

Wallie felt himself heal. A wave of healing pouring through him. It started at the pounding pain in his head, washing that away. His vision cleared, then his loose teeth seemed to grip tightly into his skull, his ribs knitted, his sprains soothed, cuts closed, bruises eased, and his swollen testicles shrank back to normal size. The miracle reached his feet and died out.

He looked himself over, sat down, and inspected his feet. They were better than before, but a long way from being cured. His eyes remained puffed and swollen, his bruises visible, if no longer very painful. The insides of him no longer felt too bad, but the outside was still an obvious catastrophe, and walking on those feet would still be hell.

“Give me another shot!” he demanded. “You ran out of juice about halfway.”

The boy frowned warningly. “Hell does much more for you than heaven, Mr. Smith. I’ll leave you a few reminders.”

There was no way to argue with such power. Wallie looked anew at the strangely vitrified waterfall. It had taken a miracle to bring him here alive. It would certainly take another to get him out. He wondered where the light was coming from. But he was stiff in pain, angry, and resentful.

“You proved your faith,” the boy said. He leaned his reedy forearms on pointed knees, staring thoughtfully down at Wallie. “You told me that faith was an attempt to explain suffering by postulating a higher meaning. Does that help?”

“Proving you. You proved yourself. That is a tough body, but being tough is more than muscles and bone.” He chuckled. “The Goddess does not need a swordsman who will sit down and convene a committee at every emergency. You displayed great courage and persistence.”

“And I suppose that I wasn’t capable of that three days ago?” Wallie squirmed on the rock, trying to find a smooth spot to kneel on. He assumed he should be kneeling.

“Of course you were,” the god said, “but you didn’t know it. Now you do. Enough of that! You proved your faith and you have agreed to undertake the task, right? The rewards can be whatever you want—power, riches, physical prowess, long life, happiness . . . your prayers will be answered. If you succeed. The alternative is death, or worse.”

“Certainly. And now you know both. But from now on you must earn your rewards.”

The boy smiled and jumped to his feet. He bowed, sweeping his twig over the rock as a courtier might have swung a plumed cap over a palace floor. But he was only a skinny, naked little boy. “I am a demigod, a minor deity, an archangel—whichever you wish. You may call me ‘Master’ as it is forbidden for you to know my name.” He dropped back to his seat. “I choose this shape because it amuses me and will not alarm you.”

Wallie was not impressed. “Why play games with me? I could have believed in you sooner if you had chosen a more godlike form—even a halo . . . ”

He had gone too far. The boy pouted in anger. “As you wish,” he said, “just a small one.”

The cave had been brilliant before. Now it blazed with glory like the face of a star. The boy remained a boy, but some small part of his divinity gleamed through for an instant, and that was enough to reduce a mortal to abject terror.

In that flicker of majesty, Wallie was shown age beyond imagining, enduring since before the galaxies and continuing long after such transient fireworks would have faded; mind that would register an IQ in the trillions and could know every thought of every being in the universe; power that could snuff out a planet as easily as clean a fingernail; a nobility and purity that made all mankind seem bestial and worthless; cold, marble purpose that could not be withstood by anything; compassion beyond human conception that knew the sufferings of mortals and why they suffered, yet could not prevent those sufferings without destroying the very mortal essence that made their sufferings inevitable. He also sensed something deeper and more terrible than all of those, a presence for which there were no words, but which in a mortal might have been boredom or resignation, and was the dark side of immortality, the burden of omniscience and of having no limit to the future, no surprises in store, no end even beyond the end of time, forever and ever and ever . . .

He became aware that he was groveling and writhing on the rock, gibbering with terror and contrition, wetting himself, howling, begging for mercy and forgiveness. His limbs shook uncontrollably. He wanted to hide, to die, to bury himself in the ground. He would have run all the way back to the jail, had that been a way to escape from that memory of glory.

It took him a long time to regain control. When his eyes cleared and he could rise to his knees, the little boy was still sitting in the same place, but had turned his attention to the curtain of coruscating crystal that had once been a waterfall. He was pointing a finger at it and fragments moved at his bidding, building themselves into a tall lattice of mind-warping multidimensional complexity. Divine sculpture . . . even a glimpse at it was enough to make Wallie giddy. He looked away quickly.

“Ah!” The skinny little boy turned back to him with a satisfied and gap-toothed smile. He did not wait for any attempt at apology. “You have recovered! I see you have scraped some more skin off. Well, now that we have straightened out your soul, more or less cured your body, and improved your attitude, perhaps we can get down to business?”

“Yes, Master,” Wallie said as humbly as he could. Obviously gods did not take kindly to smart-aleck mortals.

The boy put an elbow on a knee and wagged a finger in the air, as though telling a story. “Now—Shonsu was a very great swordsman. There is perhaps no greater in the World at the moment.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Possibly one about equal. Hard to say—we shall see.” He grinned mischievously. “Shonsu had a mission, a task. He failed, and the penalty was death.”

Wallie opened his mouth, and the little boy said, “You must not question the justice of the gods!” in a voice that stopped anything Wallie might have been about to say.

How far dare he question? “Master, why me? How and why was I brought here? How can I succeed where the greatest—”

The boy held up a hand and snapped, “You expect an explanation? You could not even understand the politics of the temple, let alone what all this is about. I have stopped time so that we may talk, but I haven’t stopped it for you, and if I tried to explain the whole thing, then you would die of old age before you got out of here.” He sighed.

“Truth is like a fine jewel, Mr. Smith, with a million facets. If I show you one facet of this jewel, will you be content, but remember that it is only one and that there are many others?”

“I shall try, Master,” Wallie said. He squirmed some more on his rock and eventually sat on the edge and dangled his legs over the abyss.

The boy eyed him thoughtfully. “After all,” he said, “you believe that life is worth living, yet you know that death is inevitable. You believe that an electron is a particle and a wave at the same time, don’t you? You know that love and lust are the finest and most base of human motives, and yet are frequently almost inseparable. You do have some capacity for reconciling incompatible truths?”

“Chess and bridge? The gods play games?” Wallie did not want to believe that; all human history merely a game to amuse the gods?

“That is one facet of the jewel,” the boy said. “Think of it as an allegory. And somebody made a bad lead, as your dream showed you. There is no rule against profiting from a bad lead! In the affairs of gods, you see, there is no coincidence and no unexpected, but sometimes there is the unusual. You were unusual. It explains why you were available. That is all I can tell you.”

He gave Wallie a disgusted look. “And don’t go rushing off to found a religion over this—that is a hazard for mortals who are told things by gods. You see, whereas that one facet means that certain . . . powers . . . are opponents, on other facets of the jewel, they are partners. Confusing, isn’t it?”

“And on many other facets there is no game at all. So don’t think my parable means that you are unimportant. In your former world, when the tin-chested, square-jawed warriors gathered to play war games, were they playing games?”

The boy looked relieved. “All right, then. Let’s go on, and not worry about explanations. You have shown that you have courage. You have Shonsu’s body and his language and you can be given his skill. Are you worthy?”

Wallie thought that this had to be the strangest job interview in the history of the galaxy—whatever galaxy this was. A small naked boy interviewing a large naked man on the side of a cliff behind an immobilized waterfall? “I am a better man than Hardduju. He is the only standard I have to judge by.”

The boy snarled something inaudible about Hardduju. “All the crafts have their sutras,” he said, “and in most cases the first one contains a code. When a boy becomes a swordsman he swears to follow the code of the swordsmen. Listen!”

He reeled off a long string of promises. Wallie listened with growing dismay and skepticism. The swordsmen, apparently, were something between Knights Templar and Boy Scouts. No mortal could ever live to such a standard . . . at least, not Wallie Smith.

#1 THE CODE

I will be evermore true to the will of the Goddess, the sutras of the swordsmen, and the laws of the People.
I will be mighty against the mighty, gentle to the weak, generous to the poor, and merciless to the rapacious.
I will do nothing of which I may be ashamed, but avoid no honor.
I will give no less than justice to others, and seek no more for myself.
I will be valiant in adversity, and humble in prosperity.
I will live with joy.
I will die bravely.

“I will swear it,” he said cautiously. “And I hope I will keep it as well as any man may, but it is more a code for gods than mere humans.”

“The swordsmen are addicted to fearsome oaths,” the boy said ominously and stared at him for a time, until he trembled. “Yes,” he said at last, “I think you will try quite hard. You are starting at the top, as a Seventh, and you not have the advantage of a long apprenticeship to teach you the proper attitudes. Your past life has hardly been a suitable training. You need to understand that the battle against evil may require harsh measures, and that sweet reason is not enough.”

“Well, I have some idea,” Wallie protested. “My father was a policeman.”

The little god leaned back on his pipe-stem arms and laughed a long and childishly shrill laugh, for which Wallie could see no cause at all. The crystal echoed it back until the ice cave rang.

“You are learning, Mr. Smith! Very well, then. The first thing you have to do is to go back to the temple and kill Hardduju. That is not your task! It is your duty to the Goddess, and a favor from Her to you. He is insufferable. Obviously the Goddess could dispose of him—a heart attack or a poisoned finger—but he is so bad that he must be made an example. She could throw a lightning bolt at him, but that would be a very crude miracle. Miracles should be subtle and unobtrusive. There is justice in having a better swordsman come along and execute him in public. Can you do that?”

“It will be a pleasure,” Wallie said, surprising himself, but remembering that fat, red face sweating with joy in the jail. “I shall need a weapon, preferably napalm.”

The boy smiled slightly and shook his head. “You may use this weapon,” he announced. He pulled another leaf from his twig.

The hilt was silver, trimmed with gold, and the guard was shaped like some heraldic beast, so finely wrought that every muscle, every hair was visible. Held between the beak and the tiny claws of the forelegs, forming the top of the hilt, an enormous stone shone like a blue sun. The artistry was superb.

Reverently Wallie raised it and drew it from the scabbard. The blade was a ribbon of winter moonlight, chased with scenes of battles between heroes and monsters. It flashed and shone more brightly than anything else in the shiny crystal cave. It was a Rembrandt, a da Vinci of swords. No, a Cellini: it belonged with the crown jewels of a world empire.

Wallie was not sure which impressed him more—the artistic beauty or the sheer monetary value of such a marvel. He looked up at the boy and said wonderingly, “It’s magnificent! I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

The demigod sneered. “You may find that it comes at a heavy price. Every alley thief will sharpen his knife as you go by. Every swordsman in the World will be ready to challenge you to get it.”

“I can guess,” Wallie said apprehensively. What would the god do to him if he let the sword be stolen? “And the first one up is going to get it. I can handle a pool cue better than this. I’m just not a swordsman, Master.”

Wallie felt nothing in himself, but the sword was transformed in his hand. It was still a masterpiece of art, but now he could see that it was also a masterpiece of the swordmaker’s craft—a da Vinci, but also a Stradivarius. It was no longer heavy, it was amazingly light. He jumped to his feet and swung it.

The balance was perfect, the grip firm. Now he could see the superb combination of flexibility for strength and rigidity for sharpness. He could have shaved with it, had he any need now to shave. It was an incredible triumph of metallurgy and design and beauty, and a fingerlength longer than most swords, to balance the ornate hilt. Yet the metal was so fine that he need not fear that the extra length would weaken the weapon. With his long arms he could draw such a sword—and he would have a fearsome advantage in reach. Instinctively he quoted from the fourth sutra, “On the Care of Swords:” “The sword is the life of the swordsman and the death of his foe.”

Then he stopped and stared in astonishment at the cross-legged boy on the rock. There were eleven hundred and forty-four sutras. He could have recited any of them. Together they gave him all he needed to know . . .

The child giggled like a child. “One rarely gets the chance. But be warned—that is a mortal sword. It has no magic powers. It can be lost or broken, and you are a mortal. I have given you the skill and knowledge of Shonsu, that is all. You can be defeated.”

Wallie picked up the harness, slipped it on, and slid the sword expertly into the scabbard. He fastened the buckles, and the fit was perfect. Faith and confidence poured through his veins, and now, suddenly, he could revel in this unfamiliar but wonderful youth and strength and ability that he had been given. His terror of the god had faded to a wary respect. For the first time since he had awakened in the pilgrim cottage he could look forward to the future. He discovered that he even had some idea of what those seven swords on his face meant—in medieval earthly terms he was roughly a royal duke. The World was his to enjoy. Small wonder that the god had questioned his ability to handle such absolute authority. All power corrupts! The townsfolk had shown their feelings toward swordsmen of the Seventh.

“May I swear that oath to you now, Master?” he said, taking a firm grip on his excitement.

“That oath is not sworn to me!” the boy snapped. He sprang up. “But I will witness it for you. Go ahead.”

So Wallie drew the sword again. He raised it to the oath position and swore to follow the code of the swordsmen. The ancient words filled him with reverence, and he felt very satisfied as he sheathed the blade once more. Now he need not worry about keeping it straight on his back—Shonsu’s reflexes would handle that for him.

The boy has resumed his seat on the rock, now dangling his legs over the edge. He pondered for a moment, studying Wallie.

“First your brother you must chain.
And from another wisdom gain.
When the mighty has been spurned,
An army earned, a circle turned,
So the lesson may be learned.
Finally return that sword
And to its destiny accord.”

The boy laughed. “You expected to be told to go and kill a dragon, or put down a revolution or something, didn’t you? Your task is much more important than anything like that.”

Wallie lowered his eyes, standing on his rocky perch, his recent euphoria withered away. Why give a man a task and then not tell him what it is? He could think of only one reason—the demigod did not trust him. What did he not trust—Wallie’s courage or his honesty? Then his neck muscles jerked, so that his head came up to face the grinning boy on the higher rock.

“It is like the faith thing,” the boy said gently. “You will have to make your own choices. A great deed done of your own will is more pleasing to the gods than one done to order.”

That sounded to Wallie suspiciously like a rule in a game. The god seemed to read the thought and he frowned, then laughed.

“Go and be a swordsman, Shonsu! Be honorable and valorous. And enjoy yourself, for the World is yours to savor. Your task will be revealed to you. You will understand my riddle at the right time.”

The boy snorted. “Why not use the temple to store onions? The temple doesn’t need a Shonsu.” He gave Wallie one of his intensely penetrating glances and said, “As well make Napoleon Bonaparte king of Elba.”

“But this brother?” Wallie protested. “You have given me language and skill, Master, but what about all the other memories? Home and family? I don’t know where to start or what my brother looks like. I’m going to be making mistakes all the time, things like table manners—”

Once more the child screamed with laughter. “Who will complain about a Seventh’s table manners? If I gave you all of Shonsu’s memories then you would be Shonsu and make the same mistakes he made. You don’t think like Shonsu, and that pleases me. You will be guided.”

“Remember what I said about miracles,” the boy warned, frowning. “The gods do miracles when they choose, rarely upon request, and never on demand. Honakura is a good man—him you may trust. Get him to tell you the anecdote from the seventeenth sutra. It fits your case rather well.” He smiled at some private joke, and Wallie wondered if the sutra had just been changed by a miracle. He was not about to ask.

The boy frowned again, looking him over. “You still don’t look like a hero, more like one of his victims. The sword came from the Goddess, but here is a present from me.”

He scooped up a fragment of the crystal and tossed it down. Wallie caught it. In his hand glittered a silver hairclip bearing another giant sapphire, a twin to the jewel on the sword, blue light flickering and flaming within it. He could bear those knives being sharpened behind his back again, but he thanked the god, scooped up his hair, and clipped it.

“Better!” the boy said. “You did not approve of the World when we walked through the town. What do you think of it now?”

“I know better now, Master,” Wallie said, hastily but sincerely. “There was poverty like that on Earth, and I did nothing about it there. It is not so long since thieves were put to death there also, or prisoners tortured. They still are, in many places. I shall not presume any more to tell the Goddess how to run Her world.”

The boy nodded. “You seem to be improving. And you do look more like a swordsman. Now—expenses.” He pulled off another leaf. Nothing at all happened, so far as Wallie could see. The demigod gave Wallie a long stare. “The beast on the hilt of that sword is a griffon: the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. Appropriate, would you say?”

“The body, certainly,” Wallie said. “I shall try to think like an eagle.”

The god did not smile. “Eagles can see farther than lions,” he said. “The griffon is a symbol much affected by the petty kings. To the People it means Power wisely used. Remember that, Shonsu, and you will not fail!”

The boy rose. “And now it is time for time itself to start again. Less than one heartbeat has passed since you came in here. The priests are still waiting by the pool.” He pointed down to the icy blue mountains of glass below. “Go and do your duty, Lord Shonsu. Jump!”

Wallie glanced down at that dark and jagged chaos far below him. He turned to stare in horror at the little boy. He received a mocking smile—another test of courage and faith, obviously. He drew the sword and made the salute to a god. Then he sheathed the sword, stepped to the edge of the rock, took a couple of deep breaths, and closed his eyes.

There was no question of swimming—he was whirled around like a berry in a blender, dragged down in darkness until he thought his head would burst, flung up again into foam and lifesaving air. His journey down the canyon was much faster than the journey up. Then the current slackened, and he had reached the temple pool.

The harness was no impediment. Using a butterfly stroke, making all the speed he could, he headed straight for the mighty facade of the temple, marveling at the power he could summon from his new shoulders.

When he dropped his feet, they reminded him that they were still badly battered, but he limped up out of the water onto hot shingle beneath the glare of the tropical sun, hardly aware of his nakedness, feeling like Columbus wading ashore in a new world. He was a swordsman! No more jails and maltreatment for him! Yet Hardduju was still a threat and must be the first order of business, before clothes or food or anything else. All his new swordsman knowledge was bright and sharp in his mind. He could tell what was needed as easily as he could have pulled a book from a shelf, back in his previous life. As the god had told him, he need only challenge. No swordsman could refuse a formal challenge. But a duelist ought to have a second—not essential, but advisable. Even before his feet had left the water, therefore, Wallie was scanning the group waiting on the beach.

A dozen or so people there were staring at him in amazement. For a man to return from the Judgment unharmed was rare enough and to return bearing a sword must certainly be unique. The watchers did not know whether to cheer or run. Most were elderly priests and priestesses, but there were a couple of healers—and one swordsman.

Wallie had hoped for a Third or higher, and this swordsman was merely a lanky and bony adolescent of the Second, but he would have to do. He had a light skin and unusually red hair, almost copper. He looked as startled as the rest of the bystanders, but while they were retreating he was standing his ground, which was a good sign. Wallie hobbled over the shingle to him and stood, panting.

The kid gulped, looked at those Shonsu facemarks. The apparition from the River might be wearing nothing but a sword and a sapphire, but the facemarks were what counted. He drew. With eyes wide, and in a soft tenor voice, he made the salute to a superior: “I am Nnanji, swordsman of the second rank, and it is my deepest and most humble wish that the Goddess Herself will see fit to grant you long life and happiness and to induce you to accept my modest and willing service in any way in which I may advance any of your noble purposes.”

His sword was a travesty of a weapon, pig iron, not fit to stop a charging rabbit, but he had wielded it surely. Wallie drew his miracle blade in reply.

“I am Shonsu, swordsman of the seventh rank, and am honored to accept your gracious service.”

The swords were sheathed, and the priests were coming forward, beaming, with hands raised to start their greetings.

The boy flinched and paled as much as one of his skin color could pale. Mortal challenge from a Seventh to a Second would be an execution, not a fight. Hastily he made the sign of obeisance.

None of this was apparent to the happily smiling onlookers—only a swordsman of second or higher rank would have understood the signals. Thus might challenge be given and averted without loss of face. The senior priest was attempting to catch Wallie’s eye so that he could start his own salutes. Ignoring him, Wallie continued to face the young swordsman.

The youth’s eyes flickered again to Wallie’s sword hilt. Reluctantly he drew his own again. “I, Nnanji, swordsman of the Second, do swear to obey your commands and to be faithful, saving only mine honor. In the name of the Goddess.”

Now Wallie realized that the first oath was too frail for his needs; it was used mainly to impress civilians, as when a small-town mayor might hire a mercenary to clean up a nest of brigands. In this context it was little more than a public acknowledgment of Wallie’s higher rank. It reserved the oath-taker’s honor, and that could mean anything.

That was much more serious, the oath of tutelage. Young Nnanji’s eyes bulged, then seemed to count the intruder’s facemarks once more. Slowly he sank to his knees, offering his sword in both hands. He lowered it with a worried frown.

Of course he was, and for Wallie to demand his oath was mortal insult to Nnanji’s present mentor, whatever his rank, and that must lead to bloodshed. For Nnanji to swear to another mentor, moreover, was technically betrayal, although few would have argued the point with a Seventh.

Wallie put what he hoped was a stem expression on Shonsu’s face—uneasily aware that it was probably a terrifying grimace. “What rank is your mentor?”

Wallie drew his sword, and a loud rattle of shingle announced that the priests and healers were leaving.

The lad started to proffer his sword again, then again he lowered it. He stared up at Wallie with tortured eyes. His sword was junk, his yellow kilt had been washed to a threadbare beige, and he had patches on his boots, but he set his jaw in hopeless defiance.

Wallie was baffled. All he needed was a junior to second him in a duel and here he had run into a death-before-dishonor idealist. A mere Second talking back to a Seventh? The rank stupidity of such obstinacy suddenly infuriated him. He felt a blaze of anger. He heard an angry snarl . . . his arm moved . . .

He stopped it just in time—his sword an inch from Nnanji’s neck. Nnanji had closed his eyes, waiting for it.

Wallie was horrified. What had happened there? He had very nearly—very nearly—lopped off the kid’s head. Just for displaying courage? He moved the blade away, to a safe distance. Nnanji, evidently discovering that he was still alive, opened his eyes again warily.

But it was still a stand-off. Even that narrow escape had not wiped the sullen obstinacy off the lad’s face, and Lord Shonsu of the Seventh obviously could not withdraw his demand. Being a highrank swordsman was not quite as simple as the demigod had made out. Hastily Wallie began to rummage through his new knowledge of the swordsmen’s craft and he found an escape.

“Very well!” He gave the command for battle: “Blood needs be shed—declare your allegiance.”

Nnanji nodded vigorously. He did not ask for details, although in theory he could have done so. It was a lifesaving solution to his scruples. “Yes, my lord,” he said eagerly. Laying his sword at Wallie’s feet, he prostrated himself totally on the shingle.

“I, Nnanji, do swear by my immortal soul and with no reservation to be true in all things to you, Shonsu, my liege lord, to serve your cause, to obey your commands, to shed my blood at your word, to die at your side, to bear all pain, and to be faithful to you alone for ever, in the names of all the gods.”

If that wasn’t slavery, Wallie thought, then what was? The god had spoken true when he said that the swordsmen were addicted to fearsome oaths. He gave the reply: “I take you, Nnanji, as my vassal and liegeman in the names of all the gods.”

Nnanji uttered a loud gasp of relief and scrambled to his knees. He picked up his sword in both hands and looked up expectantly. “Now you can order me to swear the second oath, my lord!”

Wallie almost laughed. Here he was trying to start a mortal combat, and this kid was tying him up in Jesuitic quibbling. Still, there had better be no ambiguous loyalties. “Vassal,” he said solemnly, “swear to me the second oath.”

Keeping pale eyes firmly fixed upon Wallie’s, the lad swore: “I, Nnanji, swordsman of the Second, do take you, Shonsu, swordsman of the Seventh, as my master and mentor and do swear to be faithful, obedient, and humble, to live upon your word, to learn by your example, and to be mindful of your honor, in the name of the Goddess.”

Wallie touched the sword and gave the formal reply: “I, Shonsu, swordsman of the Seventh, do accept you, Nnanji, swordsman of the Second, as my protégé and pupil, to cherish, protect, and guide in the ways of honor and the mysteries of our craft, in the name of the Goddess.

“Well done,” he added cheerfully and helped him rise. Now he had a protégé as well as a sword. With a few clothes, he could even start to look the part.

All the onlookers had gone, except for two brawny slaves who were watching the scene with carefully impassive faces. Slaves, being property, would never be in personal danger.

“Thank you, my lor . . . my liege.” Nnanji looked like a man who had jumped out of bed and found himself knee-deep in snakes. He slipped his pathetic sword into its scabbard, blinked, and straightened his shoulders. Obviously he was making some mental adjustments. He had just changed mentors, which was no small matter in itself, and he had also just become a vassal—a dramatic event for a swordsman of any rank. The third oath was very rare, given only on the eve of battle and hence never required of a Second. A mere apprentice would not be expected to fight in such things. Perhaps it had never been sworn within the temple grounds before.

He stared at Wallie doubtfully. He had gone from dull routine to the brink of death—or so he must believe—and then into high adventure. And this highly dangerous opponent was now, if his facemarks were true, a formidable protector. “My liege,” he repeated, tasting the unfamiliar word.

Wallie gave him a moment to collect himself, then said, “Right! Now, Nnanji, there is going to be bloodshed. You will second me. Under no circumstances will you draw your sword. If you are attacked you will make obeisance instead. I waive onus of vengeance.” There would be no point in having both of them die if things did not go according to the book. “You know the duties of a second?”

That was lucky—they came from a sutra much higher in the list than the minimum required for second rank.

“My liege, I think he is in the temple. He was watching the Time of Judgment.”

Of course! He would. Wallie raised his eyes to look across the heat-blurred courtyard to the great steps. The top was crowded with multicolored spectators watching this unexpected drama. Somewhere in there Hardduju must be thinking hard.

Nnanji wrinkled his snub nose. “I saw him earlier, my liege, with Honorable Tarru and two Fifths.”

“Go to him now,” Wallie said. “Do not salute! Then say, ‘Lord Shonsu sent me with this message.’ Keep your right arm at your side with the fist closed, your right foot forward, and your left hand flat on your chest. Show me.”

Nnanji did as he had been instructed, frowning with concentration. The lack of salute was the insult, of course, but the other was the sign of challenge to a Fifth. Nnanji might guess what it meant, but he must not be told its meaning, nor what rank it addressed.

Wallie nodded. “That’s it. Remember—no salute! If you find him alone, then go and get a highrank witness first. And don’t answer any questions. He may say that he is coming, but that’s all.”

Nnanji nodded solemnly, his lips moving in silence. Then, unexpectedly, he grinned a huge and juvenile grin—he understood.

“Yes, my . . . at once, my liege!” Nnanji shot off across the shingle with his long legs flailing.

Wallie watched him for a moment. It would be unfortunate, but understandable, if the kid just kept on going through the temple grounds, through the town, up the hill, and over the horizon.

Then Wallie turned to stare at the two slaves slouching under the meager shade of an acacia. They flinched slightly. He chose the larger.

“Strip!” he said. The man jumped in alarm, ripped off his black loincloth, and kicked off his filthy sandals. “Scram!” Waffle said, and both men scrammed. He dressed with relief, tired of wearing nothing but bloodstains. The hot sun had already dried him.

He crunched up the beach to step onto the fiery flags of the courtyard. He had forgotten how very large it was—a city block wide and at least twice that in length. The priests and healers from the beach were strung out across it in order of age, with the youngest and fittest halfway up the steps beyond. Nnanji was still going, past the sixties and fifties, closing in on the forties. Pilgrims and priests were lined up four or five deep along the top, their backs now to the Goddess, studying the drama unfolding at the water’s edge. Those vast steps looked like one side of a stadium. That seemed very appropriate under the circumstances. A pity that he could not sell tickets.

Then he identified Hardduju, starting down from the temple arches. With him were four other swordsmen. Nnanji had reached the steps and was angling up toward them.

Wallie recalled with guilt his first impressions of the temple. He had thought then of megalomania, a rapacious priesthood aggrandizing itself from an impoverished peasantry, but that had been when he was an unbeliever. Today he had talked with a god, and now the temple seemed a magnificent tribute raised by generations of faithful worshipers. Magnificent it certainly was, although its architectural style was alien to him; the columns perhaps from Karnak, with Corinthian capitals supporting Gothic arches and, above those, baroque windows and, ultimately, reaching for the very sky itself, Islamic minarets of gold. Undoubtedly the builders’ plans must have been changed and revised many times over centuries of construction, yet the disparate elements had aged into one harmonious, splendid, and reverent monument of mossy, weathered stone.

Nnanji and Hardduju had met. Wallie wondered if the lad would have enough breath left to give his message. Apparently so, for he turned and started bounding down the steps again, returning to his liege. Please don’t break a leg, young Nnanji! Now, would the reeve accept the invitation to a challenge, or summon reinforcements, or advance with his present force? Good—he was coming down with a single Fourth. The other three were following more slowly. The shoot-out was about to begin.

Nnanji was down to the courtyard again, running back through the waves of heat that now danced above it. Somewhere in Wallie a small voice of conscience was complaining that thou shalt not kill, being told that a god had commanded this killing, grumbling back that at least you shouldst not be looking forward to it. For Wallie was very conscious that his pulse was speeding up and he was relishing the coming fight. Bastinado? I’ll show the bastard! It helped when a god had told you that you were going to win.

Spectators were still spilling from the temple and spreading over the top of the steps like mold. Anxiously Wallie scanned the courtyard, wondering when the rest of the guard would start arriving.

“Well done, vassal!” Wallie said. “Next time I’ll find you a horse.” The boy grinned and kept on panting.

Hardduju was following at a leisurely pace. He must be a very puzzled man—how had the prisoner obtained a sword? The most obvious answer would be treachery in the guard—the condemned man had not been taken to the Judgment at all. Was this stranger an imposter as he had appeared, or a swordsman? The signal that Nnanji had given him must have come from a highrank swordsman, therefore Shonsu. If he was not an imposter, then why had he behaved like one in the temple? Yes, Hardduju must be very puzzled. Of course he might suspect something close to the truth, a miracle. Now Wallie could see why the demigod had only partly cured his wounds—Hardduju had seen him just the previous day, and a visibly miraculous cure would be a clear sign that there was divine intervention at work.

Wallie stood his ground and let the reeve advance to normal conversation distance. The florid face was redder than ever in the heat. The beefy belly was as sweaty as Nnanji’s ribs. The man was out of condition, and his weight would slow him. But some of the sweat running down his face must be from fear, and Wallie found that idea very pleasant.

Nnanji moved to Wallie’s left, the Fourth to the other side. Wallie smiled, paused a moment for the tension to grow. Now he knew the rituals. As the younger and the visitor, he was expected to salute first. Then he drew. He spoke the flowery and hypocritical words, flashing his wonderful sword in the gestures. He sheathed it and waited.

Yes, there was fear. The reeve’s eyes flickered around too much. He was delaying his response, knowing what must follow as soon as the preliminaries were over.

Wallie went ahead anyway and made the sign of challenge—not challenge to a Seventh, but public challenge.

“Just a moment!” Hardduju said. “You were under sentence of the court. You didn’t get that sword at the Place of Mercy. Until I’m satisfied that the sentence has been carried out, I do not recognize your standing.”

Hardduju glanced behind him, then looked at his second. “Go and fetch some guardsmen,” he barked. “A prisoner has escaped.” The Fourth gaped at him.

He had brought the wrong henchman, thought Wallie; he had not worked out a strategy in time. Nevertheless, he must not be allowed to delay this contest any longer, or he might manage to evade it somehow.

“Stay!” Wallie barked. “Lord Hardduju, will you return my salute in the ways of honor? For if not, I shall denounce you and draw anyway.”

“Very well,” the reeve snapped. “But then you will explain that sword to me.”

He drew and began the response—and then lunged. He would have fooled Wallie, and probably nine out of ten swordsmen, even Sevenths, but Shonsu was the tenth. His instincts had been watching Hardduju’s left shoulder. When it started to swing away from him, he threw back his own left foot and drew, the superb blade bending like a bow to give him a few precious milliseconds. He parried quinte, but he was off balance, and his riposte failed. Yet it was Hardduju who backed off.

He stared narrowly at Wallie for a moment; this was no imposter. Then he lunged again. Parry, riposte, parry—for a few seconds the metal rang, and again it was Hardduju who recovered, but he guarded quarte, too low for Wallie’s advantage in reach and height. One mistake is enough. Wallie cut at the outside of the wrist. It was an unusual move. Had it been parried successfully, it could have left him open. It was not parried. Hardduju’s sword clanged to the ground, and he clutched at his wounded arm.

“Yield!” shouted the Fourth, although he should have waited for an offer from Nnanji. Nnanji had remained silent as instructed, so the yield was invalid.

Wallie saw the horror in his victim’s eyes, and his resolution wavered. Then he remembered the power of the little god as it had been revealed to him. With more fear than hate he carried out his orders, ramming the god’s sword into Hardduju’s chest. It slid free easily as the body crumpled.

The clashing of swords was succeeded by Hardduju’s death rattle, a brief drumming of heels on flagstones—and then silence, broken by a shrill whoop from Nnanji. He started to come forward, then froze when no one else moved. Wallie, not daring to take his eyes off the Fourth, made the acknowledgment of an inferior. The Fourth swallowed a few times, looking back and forth from the dead man to this nemesis from the River. For a few more seconds the issue hung in the balance—would he accept this as a fair challenge under the rules, or shout for the guard and die? There were grounds for dispute, for the rules had not been perfectly observed, but the errors had not been Wallie’s, and the man knew it. He drew his sword and made the salute. Wallie responded. It was to be peace—for the moment.

Now Nnanji could stalk forward to pick up the dead man’s sword. In proper form he dropped to one knee and proffered it to Wallie, marring the solemnity of the ritual with an ear-to-ear grin. To be dragooned into service by a naked unknown intruder was one thing; to be suddenly on the winning side in a notable passage of arms was something else entirely.

Wallie hardly glanced at the sword being offered to him. It was a gaudy weapon with too much elaborate filigree on the hilt to be properly balanced, but it was now his and would be worth a great deal of money. It would also be a much better sword than Nnanji’s, and by custom the winner in a duel gave an honorarium to his second.

“You can keep that,” he said. “And see that that thing on your back is returned to the kitchen where it belongs.”

Wallie wiped his sword on the dead man’s kilt in the traditional sign of contempt. “We’re not done yet,” he said. “Who were Lord Hardduju’s deputies?”

“He’s coming now, my liege.” And Nnanji pointed to the three men Hardduju had left on the steps. One green kilt and two reds—a Sixth and two Fifths. They were halfway across the court. More swordsmen were streaming down the temple steps, and others into the court from both ends.

“Then let’s go!” Wallie led the way, leaving the Fourth to dispose of the body, one of the duties of a second. There could be more trouble. Tarru might seek to avenge Hardduju. As acting reeve, he might even be justified in using the whole temple guard against an intruder, although that was unlikely under the code of the craft. Reaction had set in, and Wallie was feeling incredibly weary.

They met and stopped in silence. Tarru was a scarred and gray-haired veteran, but his slight body was wiry and his eyes were sharp. His green kilt was clean and smart—he sported no jewels or finery as Hardduju had done. Deeply etched lines on his face made him appear weathered and seasoned. He might be a rank lower than Wallie, but he would be no pushover and he was in much better trim than his superior had been.

The two of them studied each other for a long moment, and those sharp eyes flickered to the sword hilt with the sapphire and then down to the blood-soaked sandals. There was no call of honor if Hardduju’s second had accepted the duel as a fair fight, but the lure of that sword was too great, just as the demigod had predicted. Kill a cripple and win a fortune—it must seem like a good gamble.

Tarru cut at sexte, and Wallie parried—and then pulled his riposte just before he killed his opponent. Again that blaze of fury? Tarru parried much too late and tried a lunge, a very slow lunge. Wallie turned it without difficulty. Seeing that he was in no danger, he relaxed and kept parrying those incredibly obvious strokes, directing the next wherever he wanted, making no effort to riposte.

Tarru danced forward and back. Wallie rotated slowly to face him, the seconds edged around like planets. A crowd was gathering, and the other Fifth kept shouting to keep them back.

Boots slapped on the stones and raised dust. Metal rang. Cut . . . parry . . . lunge . . . Tarru’s breathing became loud below the furnace sky, and his face grew fiery also.

Wallie was discovering how it felt to be the greatest swordsman in the World: it was fine sport. He need hardly move his battered feet, and his arm could keep this up all day. Tarru was a fair Sixth—so Shonsu’s eye told him—but there was no upper limit on Seventh rank, and Shonsu might well be an eight or nine on the same scale. He utterly outclassed the older man. He dare not look away, but he knew that there were swordsmen among the gathering spectators and he wondered how Tarru was feeling. The effort was telling on him, his breath starting to rasp. He had been the challenger—by not being able to get close he was appearing ridiculous. What emotion had succeeded his greed—anger? Fear? Humiliation?

At last Tarru backed off and stood gasping, obviously beaten, eyes wide and almost glazed. Wallie pretended to smother a yawn. A few sniggers and one very faint boo emerged from somewhere in the crowd.

“Draw?” called Tarru’s second. A nice try, but he could not have much hope.

By the rules, Wallie should not speak and he dared not move his eyes from his opponent, but he made a quick nod.

There was a pause. Nnanji had been given fatally explicit instructions. For mortal challenge not to lead to blood was almost unthinkable. Would the lad understand?

Wallie sighed with relief, flashed his second a smile of approval, and sheathed his sword. For a moment Tarru was too winded to move, then he came forward for the ritual embrace.

He made no apology, offered no congratulations, and hid any shame he might—and should—be feeling in the formalities of introducing his second.

“May I have the honor of presenting to the valiant Lord Shonsu my protégé, Master Trasingji of the Fifth?”

Wallie accepted his salute and said innocently, “I believe you may have already met my second, Honorable Tarru? Apprentice Nnanji of the Second, my liegeman.”

Tarru glowered, and Trasingji choked. A Second bound by the blood oath? Nnanji swelled visibly and saluted.

They could probably spend all day on this sun-blasted griddle, mouthing meaningless formalities like a convention of Chinese mandarins, but Wallie was exhausted and finding these rituals absurd. “You will see that the remains of the noble Hardduju are attended with all due respect?” he asked, and Tarru bowed. “I am somewhat in need of the attentions of a healer myself. Could it please you to direct me to some place where I may rest?”

Tarru bowed again, still panting. “The barracks of our temple guard provide but the most humble quarters for a so distinguished warrior, but if your lordship could graciously deign to accept our poor hospitality, we should be most honored.”

Wallie retrieved the sutra “On Hospitality” from his new mental databank and saw that the lions’ den might indeed be the safest place to be. “You are most kind. I must summarily attend upon the Goddess and then I shall come at once.”

Tarru gestured. Wallie became aware for the first time that the crowd was composed entirely of swordsmen. There were at least thirty of them. He sighed. There would have to be more formalities.

Tarru presented another protégé. Then that protégé and Trasingji presented theirs in a sort of iron-age chain letter. Two other Fifths appeared and had to be presented and present their juniors. Wallie went through the gestures on automatic, the names sliding past him in a blur. He was vaguely aware that he was a celebrity. If Hardduju had ever inspired loyalty, it had now dissolved in professional admiration. They were genuinely respectful.

And of course they all assumed that he was about to become the new reeve. He had not thought to deny it. Should he do so or wait until later? He was too weary to solve such convoluted problems.

Then his wanderings were interrupted, the routine broken. The Fourth standing in front of him was not admiring—he was terrified, his sword visibly trembling. Wallie forced his eyes to focus. The man’s face was familiar. He was one of the three who had beaten him up before he was taken to the jail. He searched back a few moments for the name . . . Meliu.

Meliu was beefy, about Shonsu’s age, and did not look too smart, although it was hard to tell in his present condition. What would Shonsu have done? Answer: Shonsu would never have allowed himself to get into the sort of mess that Wallie had. Yet Shonsu’s reaction had expressed itself in that now-familiar blaze of anger—challenge and kill this hoodlum for having had the temerity to strike a Seventh. Wallie Smith’s inclination was to forgive, for the man had been acting under orders, and he who had given the orders had now paid the penalty. But to act like Wallie Smith was to risk trouble. He must stay in character. A sheep in wolf’s clothing should not bleat within the pack.

Compromise, then. Forcing down his fury, he ignored the salute and turned to the Fifth who had made the introduction.

It was a crushing insult. The crowd waited to see what Meliu would do. He had the option of suicide—he could challenge. Instead he turned and fled. Believing Shonsu to be the next reeve, he would probably be gone from the temple before dark. Satisfactory!

Eventually they reached the end, the last stammering Third. All those Seconds and Firsts at the rear, thank the Goddess, did not count.

Tarru bowed slightly. “If I might make so bold, my lord, as to ask what dispositions you wish to make for the temple guard?”

This was it, then. He decided to procrastinate, some uneasy instinct telling him that he should not explain their mistake.

“Until the priests see fit to appoint a replacement reeve, I am sure that you will do whatever is best, Honorable Tarru.”

“Lord Shonsu is most gracious . . . and Apprentice Nnanji of the Second? He is, er, detached from duty with the guard?”

Wallie turned to look at young Nnanji, who was attempting to stand at attention, but could not help sending Wallie an agonized plea out of the corners of his eyes.

“I shall retain Apprentice Nnanji in my personal service for the time being.”

Tarru bowed again. Wallie was feeling more tired by the minute and was frightened his fatigue might make him start to tremble. He made a curt farewell. Forty swords flashed out in salute as he started toward the steps, his liegeman strutting proudly beside him.

As soon as Lord Shonsu’s destination became clear, a tornado of activity developed within the multitude at the top of the great staircase. Wallie climbed slowly, being gentle to his throbbing feet, and halfway up he stopped altogether so that the priests could complete whatever they were organizing. He turned to admire the view. The Judgment looked much better from a distance than it did close to.

The guard had been formed up and was being marched away, arms swinging and heads high to impress the newcomer. A dust of pigeons was settling on the great courtyard behind them. Two slaves scrubbed the flags where the reeve had died.

Life was sweet—on any world. Wallie felt satisfied. The unpleasant matter of Hardduju he had disposed of easily, and even the knowledge that he was now a killer distressed him little. He was safe under the aegis of the swordsmen’s ways of honor. The only wrinkle in his comfort blanket was the memory of those sudden flashes of rage that had surged up every time his prickly Seventh’s status had been invoked—by Nnanji’s defiance, by Tarru’s impudent challenge, and by the chance to level scores with Meliu. That fury had not come from Wallie Smith, and he suspected that Shonsu, had he been there in his place, would have left four bleeding corpses behind, not one. Anger was fueled by adrenaline. Adrenaline came from somewhere near the kidneys. He had not been given Shonsu’s personality, but he did have his glands, and he must take care in future that his Wallie Smith mind stayed in firm control of his Shonsu body.

Then he glanced at Nnanji and encountered a glazed smile of high-octane hero worship that annoyed him at once.

“You did very well to interpret my signal about the draw,” Wallie added. “I should have given you more careful instructions beforehand.”

Wallie discovered his memory transplant included swordsman slang, but he could have worked that one out—a left armpit was an impossible target in a right-handed opponent. There was a suggestion in Nnanji’s manner, though, that Wallie should have gone for a kill. Bloodthirsty young devil!

The hero worship grew more irritating the longer Wallie thought about it. The honor for a superbly trained body and virtuoso skill belonged to the late Lord Shonsu, not to him. But that distinction he could hardly hope to explain. This youngster obviously had the instant adhesive loyalty of a puppy, and Wallie would have to find some gentle method of detaching him.

He glanced up at the arches. The pilgrims had been herded into two wedges at the sides, leaving the center free for his entrance. “I think we’ve given them enough time to fix their hair,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The guards at the center arch were now two of the Fifths he had just met, still puffing slightly from their run to get there before him. They saluted as he stepped into the cool shadow of the arch, receiving an acknowledgment from Wallie and an impudent smirk from Nnanji.

So Lord Shonsu entered the great nave for the third time, Wallie Smith for the second. Its cool vastness was still overpowering, the blaze of lights from the windows still resplendent. There was no priest there to conduct him, and he strode straight forward as well as he could on his blood-soaked sandals. Halfway along the nave he came to the beginning of the priesthood, a double line stretching from there all the way to the altar. Priests on one side, priestesses on the other, Firsts in their white at the front, yellow Seconds after them.

As he passed, each one knelt down, making him feel like a storm blowing through a forest—it was embarrassing and horrible to him. He felt unworthy and phony. He wanted to shout at them to stop it, but all he could do was hurry on as fast as he could and not watch.

Nnanji gulped when the kneeling started and whispered, “Should I wait, my liege?” in an urgent tone.

“You stick to me like rust!” Wallie commanded in the same sort of whisper, and the two of them made the royal procession along the nave together, liege in a slave’s dirty rag and liegeman in a threadbare yellow kilt. Only Wallie’s sword and hairclip were in the right company.

Then, several hundred priests and priestesses later, they reached the end, and their way was blocked by a group of incredibly ancient women in blue, toothless and wrinkled in the extreme, some of them in carrying chairs. They, too, began to kneel.

“Do not kneel to me, ladies,” Wallie protested. “I am but a simple swordsman come to do homage to the Goddess.”

Red-faced and angry, Wallie stepped through a small gap in the middle of the line and over to the edge of the dais. And there stood the minute figure of Lord Honakura, smiling proudly at him. Wallie gave him a quick nod. Then in silence he dropped to his knees and made his obeisance to the Goddess. All the proper swordsman prayers and ritual were there in his head—he begged forgiveness, he pledged his sword to Her service, he vowed obedience. He waited, but there was no reply, and he had not expected one. His real dedication had been done elsewhere; this performance was not for the Goddess, it was for the spectators, and perhaps for him. Frightened that he might go to sleep on the floor, he scrambled up, followed again by Nnanji.

He took a farewell glance at the wealth of centuries glittering on the dais. Nothing he saw there would compare with his sword, yet what had once seemed to him a shameful jackdaws’ hoard of extortion now struck him as a magnificent tribute. Worshipers for thousands of years had brought their most beautiful possessions, their greatest treasures, to lay before their beloved Goddess. Who was he to question their purpose? Strange how what one saw depended on how one looked.

He turned to Honakura. Him you may trust, the god had said, implying that others might not be trustworthy. Before Wallie could speak, however, the priest beat him to it.

“The council is prepared to induct you as reeve at once, my lord,” he said, beaming, “although we should prefer to arrange something more formal for tomorrow, or the day after.” He glanced sympathetically at Wallie’s feet and the bloodstains they had left on the floor where he had knelt.

There was no one else within earshot. “I shall not be accepting the office of reeve,” Wallie replied quietly.

That was a shock, and for a moment the tiny old man was at a loss for words. Then he blurted out, “But, my lord, we talked of this . . . ”

Wallie fought down a devilish temptation to say, “You made that deal with Shonsu, and I am Wallie Smith.” He resisted it, but only just. “My regrets, holy one.”

Honakura was looking astonished, worried, and even betrayed. Wallie recalled the god’s snide remark about temple politics.

A swordsman of the Seventh? Then understanding dawned, and the old man’s eyes went to the sword hilt.

Wallie nodded. “Today I talked with a god,” he explained gently. “He gave me this sword and told me to kill Hardduju. But he also forbade me to remain in the temple. I have been given a task to perform for the Goddess, a matter of greater importance to Her, and I must go hence.”

There was certainly no appealing that authority. Honakura bowed. “That is the greatest honor that could be given a mortal, my lord. I count myself fortunate even to have met you.” It was flowery politeness, but there might be some sincerity in it.

“I shall go to the barracks now,” Wallie said. My feet are killing me! “Perhaps we may talk tomorrow, holy one?”

“Of course, my lord.” The old man dropped his voice to a whisper. “Beware of treachery, Lord Shonsu!”

Wallie nodded again and turned to find his vassal. Nnanji was in position, immediately behind his left shoulder. And staring at him.

Apprentice Nnanji was in grave danger of having his eyeballs fall right out of their sockets.

Wallie hobbled, barely able to keep up as his stork-legged vassal stalked ahead of him, leading the way through a serpentine rear exit. The glances Nnanji was sneaking back toward his liege now were so full of wonder and admiration that they almost burned.

Wallie’s exhausted mind could easily visualize a comic-strip balloon coming out of Nnanji’s head. It read something like, “First Hardduju then Tarru, then the Holy Mothers, and he talks with gods! Zounds! What a boss!”

Hopefully there would be no more dueling, so Wallie no longer needed him; but how did one dispose of such a follower without insult and hurt?

They trailed along corridors, down staircases, through more passages, and eventually emerged into the glare at the back of the temple. There were several great houses there, with slaves pandering flower beds, polishing velvet lawns with scythes, and dragging watercarts. They reached the edge of a place that Wallie knew—the parade ground he had crossed and recrossed that morning.

“Hold it!” he croaked. He limped over to a low wall around the last of the flowery gardens. He flopped down on the wall under a shade tree and let himself melt. Heavy blossoms sent him a murmur of bees and a soporific scent. He must have been on his feet for hours, for the sun was already stooping and the shadows starting to stretch. He put his head in his hands for a while. Exhaustion, lack of food, emotional reaction . . .

In a little while he looked up and saw a deathly worried expression on his vassal’s face.

“I’m all right,” Wallie said. “I’ve had a busy day.” He got an uncertain nod. “I said I talked with gods, dammit, not that I am one!” That produced a very weak smile. “Sit down, Nnanji. Tell me why no one is mourning Hardduju.”

Nnanji folded his stringy form down on the wall beside his liege. Caution and contempt chased each other over his face until contempt won. “He was despicable, my liege, untrue to his oaths. He took bribes.”

Then Nnanji plunged ahead. “My liege? Why would the priests have ever appointed such a man to be reeve? He was a disgrace to our noble craft!”

“Power corrupts, Nnanji!” It was a problem much on his mind that day, but obviously a new idea to Nnanji, so Wallie explained, telling how he had been jeered by the crowd.

“Thank you, my liege,” said his vassal solemnly. “I shall remember that when I attain high rank.” Nnanji was, of course, an idealist, and hence a romantic.

Wallie said hopefully, “Nnanji, the trouble seems to be over. Do you want me to release you from your oaths?”

Nnanji’s expression indicated that he would rather be ground up in a corn mill or fed to vampire moths. “No, my liege!”

“Not even the third? That’s a pretty horrible oath, apprentice. I can order you to do anything at all—crimes, perversions, even abominations.”

Nnanji just grinned—his hero would do no such a thing. “I am honored to be bound by it, my liege.” He was probably happier than he had ever been in his life, shining in his own eyes by reflected glory.

“All right,” Wallie said reluctantly. “But any time you want to be released from that oath, you just ask! The sutra says that it must be annulled when the immediate need is past.”

Nnanji opened his mouth, closed it, looked at Wallie, then at his feet; then decided to risk it.

“You have a task for the Goddess, my liege,” he said quietly. He had not made it a question, but he was obviously tortured by curiosity.

So Nnanji thought he was in on that, did he? Wallie sighed. He would have to find a few good swordsmen to guard his back and the fortune he bore on it, but the last thing he would choose on a quest would be to have a lubberly adolescent underfoot. A mere apprentice would be no protection, more nuisance than use. Again his fatigue brought on absurdity: Nnanji, just run up to the cave and ask the dragon to step outside? Nnanji, trot over to the castle and warn them to start boiling the oil . . .

Then he remembered that there might be treachery afoot. How would he find swordsmen whom he could trust, who would truly guard his back and not stick a knife in it? He would have to find loyalty, and there it was, glowing at him. Moreover, Nnanji could advise him on who else in the guard would be safe to recruit. He heard his own voice, Shonsu’s voice, quoting: “It’s a poor road that doesn’t run two ways.”

Nnanji produced his enormous grin. “Second sutra,” he said. “’On Protégés.’”

Wallie stared at him for a moment—shabby dress; lanky and ungainly, but a good reach, red hair, snub nose, invisible eyelashes, and every bone showing; inexperienced as a newlaid egg, but as willing as it was possible to be. Already he had shown courage to the point of insanity, talking back to a naked sword. Nnanji was indeed entitled to consider himself in on the god’s task, for Wallie also had sworn an oath that day, to cherish, protect, and guide. In a preliterate world, he had signed a contract. He could hardly just vanish and abandon the lad to the vengeance of Hardduju’s friends. Like it or not, he was stuck with this Nnanji.

Nnanji beamed. “Yes, my liege.” And before Wallie could stop him, he gabbled it off at high speed.

#175 ON SECRECY

The Epitome

A protégé shall not discuss his mentor, his mentor’s business, his mentor’s orders, his mentor’s allies, nor any report that he himself may have made to his mentor.

The Episode

When Fandarrasu was put to the torment he did not speak, but his breath smelled of garlic. Thus Kungi learned that supplies had reached the besieged city.

The Epigram

The tongue is mightier than the sword, for a single word may destroy a whole army.

“Right,” Wallie said, amused at his eagerness—if nothing else, this Nnanji was going to provide entertainment! “Everyone is assuming that I’m going to be reeve—let’s leave it at that for the moment. As to the task, I know nothing about it. All the god told me was that . . . a certain very great swordsman . . . had tried and failed, and I’m next. It is important to the Goddess . . . ”

“I was told to go out in the World and be an honorable and valorous swordsman. The task will be revealed to me. It will mean leaving here and traveling. I suppose danger. Possibly honor.”

He paused then, relishing the sight of Nnanji’s wide eyes and open mouth. “I don’t suppose . . . would you like to come along as my protégé?”

Obviously it was a silly question. Protégé to a Seventh? On a mission for the gods? It was an offer Nnanji could not have equaled in his wildest fantasies. His reply was blurted out in more of the barracks slang: “And keep my baubles, too?”

Wallie laughed, feeling better for his rest. “I hope so,” he said. “I certainly plan to keep mine! But listen, vassal, I know that I’m a good swordsman, and some strange things have been happening to me. I shall try to be a good mentor to you, but I’m not a superman. I’m not one of those heroes you find in epics.”

BOOK TWO:

HOW THE SWORDSMAN RECEIVED THE SWORD