The Coming Of Wisdom

The Fourth Oath

Fortunate is he who saves the life of a colleague, and greatly blessed are two who have saved each other’s. To them only is permitted this oath and it shall be paramount, absolute, and irrevocable:

I am your brother,
My life is your life,
Your joy is my joy,
My honor is your honor,
Your anger is my anger,
My friends are your friends,
Your enemies are my enemies,
My secrets are your secrets,
Your oaths are my oaths,
My goods are your goods,
You are my brother.

Whoever was shouting was also banging on the outer door. Quili rolled over and buried her head under the blanket. Surely she had just come to bed?

The outer door squeaked. The banging came again, now on the planks of the inner door, nearer and much louder.

The trouble with summer was that there was never enough night for sleeping, yet the little room was still quite black. The roosters had not started yet . . . No, there was one, far away . . . She would have to waken. Someone must be sick or dying.

Then the inner door squealed open, and a man was waving a rush light and shouting. “Priestess! You must come—there are swordsmen, Quili!”

Salimono was a roughhewn, lumbering man, a farmer of the Third. Normally imperturbably placid, he was capable on rare occasions of becoming as flustered as a child. Now one of his great hands was waving the sparking rush light all around, threatening to set fire to his own silver hair, or Quili’s straw mattress, or the ancient shingles of the roof. It scrolled brilliance in the dark. It flickered on stone walls, and on his haggard face, and in Quili’s eyes.

“Swordsmen . . . coming . . . Oh! Beg pardon, priestess!” He turned around quickly, just as Quili fell back and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

“Yes, priestess. In a boat. By the jetty. Piliphanto saw them. You hurry, Quili . . . ” He headed for the door.

Quili wished she could take off her head, shake it, and put it back on again. She had walked away most of the night with Agol’s baby, surely the worst case of colic in the history of the People.

Swordsmen? The rush light was filling the tiny room with fumes of goose grease. Piliphanto was not a total idiot. No thinker, but no idiot. He was a keen fisherman, which could explain why he had been down on the jetty before dawn. There would be more light down by the water, and a swordsman’s silhouette would be distinctive. It was possible.

Standing in the doorway with his back firmly turned, Salimono said. “Getting the women out, of course!”

That was wrong. That was all wrong. Quili knew little about swordsmen, but she knew more about them than Sal’o did. Hiding the women would be the absolute worst thing to do.

She was not a priestess. She was only a Second, an apprentice. The tenants called her priestess as a courtesy because she was all they had, but she was only seventeen and Sal’o was a farmer of the Third and a grandfather and Motipodi’s deputy, so she could not possibly give him orders, but she was also the local expert on swordsmen, and she knew that hiding the women would be a terrible provocation . . . She needed time to think.

“Yes, Quili,” Sal’o said, and the room was dark. Plumes of phantom light still floated on blackness in her eyes. The outer door banged, and she heard him shouting.

Quili threw off the blanket and shivered herself a coating of goose bumps. The flags were icy and uneven as she padded across to the window and threw open the shutter. A faint glow entered, accompanied by a hiss of rain and dripping sounds from the roof.

One of her two gowns was muddy, for yesterday she had been thinning the carrots. Her other was almost as shabby, yet somewhere she still had an old one she had brought from the temple. It had been her second best then and was better than her other two now—gardening ruined clothes much faster than being an acolyte did. She found it in the chest, yanked it out, and pulled it over her head in one long, shivery movement. It was surprisingly tight. She must have filled out more than she had thought. What would swordsmen think of a priestess who wore a tight-fitting gown like this? She fumbled for her shoes and a comb at the same time.

Her wooden soles clacked on the paving. She opened the squeaky outer door even as she reached for her cloak, hanging on a peg beside it. The bottom edge of the sky was brightening below a carpet of black cloud. More roosters screamed welcome to the dawn. She was still dragging the comb through her long tangles; her eyes felt puffy and her mouth dry.

On the far side of the pond, four or five of the smoky rush lights hissed amid a crowd of a dozen adults and some frightened children. Two or three more people were heading toward them. Light reflected fuzzily in the rain-pebbled water; other lights danced in a couple of windows. There was no wind, only steady, relentless drizzle; summer rain, not even very cold.

She splashed along the trail, around the pond to the group. Rain soaked her hair and dribbled into her collar. Silence fell at her approach. She was the local expert on swordsmen.

Several voices started to speak, but Salimono’s drowned them out. “Is it safe, priestess?”

“It isn’t safe to hide the women!” Quili said firmly. Kandoru had told stories about deserted villages being burned. “You’d provoke them. No, it’s the men!”

“Hush!” she said, and they hushed. They were all older than she, even Nia, and yet they hushed. They were all bigger than she—husky, raw peasant folk, gentle and bewildered and indistinct in the gloom. “Sal’o, did you send a message to her ladyship?”

“Quiet! I know that. I’ll testify to that. But I don’t think it was reported.”

There was a silence. Then Myi’s voice growled, “How could it be reported?”

When an assassination went unreported, was it all the witnesses who were equally guilty, or was there some other, even more horrible formula? Either way, she was sure that the men were in danger. Swordsmen rarely killed women.

“I’ll go and greet them. They won’t hurt me.” Quili spoke with as much confidence as she could manage. The priesthood was sacrosanct, wasn’t it? “But I think you men should all go off wood cutting or something until we know why they’ve come. Women get food ready. They’ll want breakfast. They may go straight on to the manor, but well try to keep them here as long as we can, if there aren’t too many . . . How many of them are there, Sal’o?”

“Well, go and tell Adept Motipodi. Wood cutting, or land clearing up on the hill until we find out what they want. Arrange signals. Now, off you go!”

All the men ran. Quili huddled her cloak about her. “Myi? Prepare some food. Meat, if you can find any. And beer.”

“What if they want us to . . . to go to bed?” That was Nia, and her man Hantula was almost as old as Kandoru had been.

Quili laughed, surprising herself. She was having nightmares of bodies and blood all over the ground, and Nia was dreaming of a tussle with some handsome young swordsman. “Do it, if you want to! Enjoy yourself!”

Quili paused to drag up memories of lessons in the temple. But she was sure. “Yes. It’s quite all right. Not any swordsman, but with a free sword it’s all right. He is on the service of the Goddess and deserves all our hospitality.”

Kandoru had always said that it was a great honor for a woman to be chosen by a free, but when Quili had known him he had been no longer a free sword. He had been a resident swordsman, limited to one woman, limited by age; limited also by failing health, although sometimes he had sounded as if that had been her fault.

“He should,” Quili said. “If you have a baby within a year, it can have a swordsman fathermark.” She heard them all hiss with sudden excitement. She was a city girl and expected to know all these things. She was also their priestess; if she said it was all right, then it would be all right. Swordsmen never raped, Random had insisted. They never had to.

Quili did not know, but she glanced up at Nona’s face. The flicker from the dying rush lights was too blurred to show expression. If she were pregnant, then that wasn’t showing, either. “Hold on to it for a couple of weeks, and I’ll testify to the facemarker for you.”

Nona blushed, and that did show, and the others laughed. They had little to give their children, these humble folk. A swordsman fathermark would be worth more than much gold. To a girl it would mean a high brideprice. To a boy, if he were nimble, a chance for admission to the craft. Even a young husband would swallow his pride for those and talk of being honored, whatever he truly felt. The laugh broke the tension. Good! Now they would not flee in terror or unwittingly provoke violence.

But Quili had to go and meet the swordsmen. She shivered and clutched her cloak tighter yet. Suddenly she realized that she had met only one swordsman in her whole life—Kandoru, her murdered husband.

The rain might be faltering. Dawn was certainly close, the eastern sky brightening. The roosters were in blatant competition now. Leaving the twittering women, Quili splashed off along the road. One way led to the manor, the other to the River and the jetty. Beyond Salimono’s house and the dam, the track dropped swiftly into a little gorge, and into darkness.

She went slowly, hearing the slap of her shoes in puddles, trying not to imagine herself tumbling into the stream and arriving at the jetty all covered in mud. Going to meet swordsmen . . . She should have brought one of the rush lights.

They might be coming by chance, but few ships or boats came downstream, because southward lay the Black Lands—rough water and no inhabitants. It was even less likely that swordsmen would have come upstream, from the north, for that way lay Ov.

They might be coming to avenge Kandoru. Swordsmen were utterly merciless against assassins, swordsmen killers. Kandoru had told her so, many times. She would have to convince them that they were looking in the wrong place. A priest or priestess must never tell a lie and was therefore a favored witness, even if she had been his wife and not disinterested. And there were a dozen others. The killers had come from Ov.

But the assassination had not been reported—or at least, she did not think it had been. She did not need to repeat the code of the priesthood to know that prevent bloodshed came very high on her list of duties to the Goddess.

A pebble rolled under her foot, and she stumbled. Even in daylight this bend of the gorge was a tunnel, confined between steep walls and overshadowed by trees. The stream bubbled quietly at her side. The rain had stopped, or could not get through the canopy. She picked her way carefully, testing every step, stretching out her hands to feel for branches.

If these swordsmen had come by chance, then they might not know about Ov. They might not know that they would soon be in terrible danger themselves.

Or they might have been brought by the Hand of the Goddess. In that case, their interest must be more than just one murdered old warrior. Their objective might be Ov itself—war! There might be a whole army down by the jetty. That was what Kandoru had said to the first rumors of the massacre in Ov: “Sorcerers are not allowed near the River!”

Then, when the rumors had became more solid, he had said, “The Goddess will not stand for it. She will summon Her swordsmen . . . ”

Two days later Kandoru had himself been dead, felled before he even had time to draw his sword, slain by a single trill of music. He had been a good man, in his way. He had lived by the code of the swordsmen, an honorable man, if not a very understanding or exciting husband for a juvenile apprentice priestess. She wished she could have helped him more. She should have pretended a little harder.

The local expert . . . but all she had were vague memories of the stories Kandoru had told her, rambling on for hour upon hour, an old man with nothing but his memories of youth and strength, of wenching and killing; an old man clasping his child bride in clammy embrace in a barren bed through endless winter nights. She should have listened more carefully.

Quili stopped suddenly, heart thumping. Had she heard something ahead of her? A twig snapping?

She listened, hearing only the stream and pattering dripping noises. It must have been her imagination. She went on, more slowly, more cautiously. She had been crazy to come without a light, for she knew that her night vision was poor. The priesthood was sacrosanct. No one, not the worst brigand, would harm a priestess. So they said.

She ought to be rejoicing at the thought of Kandoru being avenged. At fifteen she had been married; at sixteen a widow. At seventeen she found it hard to mourn, however much she reproached herself. She could perhaps have gone back to the temple, when Swordsman Kandoru had no further need for her services, but she had stayed. The tenants had made her welcome and they needed her. So did the slaves, much more so. Her ladyship had let her remain in the cottage and she provided basic fare—sacks of meal and sometimes even meat. She sent small gifts once in a while: sandals not too badly worn, leftover delicacies from the kitchen.

If the swordsmen did know about the sorcerers—if they were planning an attack on Ov—then there must be a whole army of them.

Floundering in the darkness, she almost walked into a vague shape standing square in her path, waiting for her.

She yelped and jumped backward, losing a shoe. “Priestess!” she squealed. Then she managed a slightly lower: “I am a priestess!”

“Good!” said a youth’s soft tenor. “And I am a swordsman. In what way may I be of service, holy lady?”

It was an absurd situation. Standing on one leg in the dark, with her heart still bounding wildly from the surprise, Quili could yet appreciate the absurdity—neither she nor the stranger could see the other’s rank. Who saluted and who responded? But of course swordsmen would never send a mere First to scout, nor a Second either. He must outrank her.

So she made the greeting to a superior, managing not to fall over, even in the final bow: “I am Quili, priestess 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.”

The swordsman retreated one pace, and she heard, rather than saw, his sword whip from the scabbard on his back. She almost lost her balance again, before remembering that swordsmen had their own rituals, flailing their blades around in salute.

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

The sword shot back into its scabbard again with a hiss and a click. Random had not handled his so slickly.

She had not thought he would have been able to see. “I’ve lost a shoe, adept.”

He chuckled and moved, and she felt a firm grip on her ankle. “Here it is. Stupid-looking thing!” Then her foot was pushed back where it belonged, and the swordsman straightened up.

“I do most things very well,” he remarked cheerfully. He sounded so young, like a boy. Could he really be a Fourth? “Now, where is this, apprentice?”

“And what does a builder of the Sixth build? Well, never mind. How many swordsmen on this estate?”

It was not a question, so she need not say that the resident swordsman of Pol had died on the same day as her husband, or that his assassination could not have been reported, either. Prevent bloodshed!

He was dead, also, and all his men. To answer just “No!” would be a lie. Before she could speak, the swordsman asked another question.

“Is there trouble here, Apprentice Quili? Brigands? Bandits? Work for honest swordsmen? Are we in any immediate danger?”

He sighed. “Well, if it’s safe, then we must have been brought here to meet someone. Like Ko.”

“Have you never heard the epic How Aggaranzi of the Seventh Smote the Brigands at Ko?” He sounded shocked. “It’s a great tale! Lots of honor, lots of blood. It’s very long, but I’ll sing it for you when we have time. Well, if there’s no danger, then I’d better go back and report. Come on!”

He took her hand and began to lead her down the road. His hand was very large, his grip powerful; but his palm felt oddly soft, unlike the hands of the farm workers—or even her own hands, these days.

Strangely, she did not feel nervous at being hauled into the unknown by this tall and youthful stranger. She stumbled in the ruts. He muttered, “Careful!” but he slowed down. There were three stream crossings on the trail, and she could barely see the stepping-stones, but he could, and he guided her.

“We were! The sailor says he’s never heard of a ferry being taken before. We’ve come a long way, too! Very far!” He sounded satisfied, not awed at all. Of course the River was the Goddess, and any ship might arrive at an unexpected destination if it bore a Jonah, someone She wanted elsewhere. Free swords were notorious Jonahs, always being moved by Her Hand. Such manifestations of Her power happened too frequently to be truly miracles, but they were not something that Quili could ever regard as lightly as this brash young swordsman seemed to.

The trees thinned out, the valley widened to admit grayness, and now she could see better. He was even taller than she had thought, lanky and astoundingly young for a Fourth. He seemed no older than herself, but perhaps that was just his carefree manner—he chattered. Random had been a Third. Few in any craft advanced beyond that rank.

“Shonsu could tell. He knows everything! And we didn’t come all in one jump. He woke at the first one—I think he must sleep with both eyes open.” Whoever Shonsu was, Adept Nnanji seemed to regard him with more respect than he did the Goddess. “I woke at the third—the cold woke me.” The swordsman shivered. “We came from the tropics, you see.”

“I’m not sure,” he confessed. “Hot lands. Shonsu can explain. But the Dream God is very high and thin there. He got wider as we jumped north. And lower. You can see seven separate bands here, right? When we started, he was fainter and most of the arcs too close together to separate. And we moved east, too, Shonsu says. The rain only came with the last jump.”

Shonsu must be a priest, she decided. He certainly did not sound like any swordsman she had ever heard of.

“The stars—and the eye of the Dream God! It happened about midnight, and dawn kept coming closer and closer. You’ll have to ask Shonsu. He says it’s still the middle of the night in Hann.”

He glanced down at her, surprised at her reaction. She could see well enough now to tell that his face was filthy, smeared with dirt and grease. “Well, not Hann itself. We were trying to cross to Hann, from the holy island.”

“The temple!” she exclaimed. “You were visiting the great temple, then?”

“Yes!” He grinned hugely, big white teeth gleaming. “My mother was near her term. She went to pray for an easy labor, and—whoosh! There I was. They only just had time to get her into a back room. The priests thought it might almost rank as a miracle.”

He was teasing her. Then the grin grew even wider. “My father had put six coppers in the bowl, and if he’d made it seven, he says, then I’d have been born right there, in front of the Goddess Herself.”

That was pure blasphemy, but his grin was irresistible. Quili laughed in spite of herself. “You should not joke about miracles, adept.”

“Perhaps.” He paused and then spoke more humbly. “I’ve seen a lot of miracles in the last two weeks, Apprentice Quili. Ever since Shonsu arrived.”

“Well, not just at the moment. He released me from my oaths before the battle . . . but he says I may swear to him again.”

“Watch this puddle!” Nnanji let go her hand and put his arm around her, guiding her by a muddy patch. But he kept his arm there when they were past, and the light was quite good now. She began to feel alarmed. She was glad of the protection of her cloak. She had rarely spoken to a Fourth before and certainly never been hugged by one. He was smiling down at her, being very friendly. Very.

There were few free men close to her age on the estate, only two unmarried. They all treated her with awed respect, because of her craft, and they had nothing to talk about anyway, except the crops and the herds. She had forgotten what real conversation was like. But she had never had a real conversation with a man, only with other girls, her friends in the temple, years ago. He was speaking to her as an equal. That was flattery, and she was worried by how good it felt.

Why would the Goddess send such a filthy swordsman? It was not only his face. Now they had reached the bottom of the gully. Ahead of them lay the River, stretching away to the eastern horizon, brilliant below the cloud. Color was returning to the World, The sun god would appear in a few moments. Rain was still falling, but gently, and she could see water streaking the dirt on the swordsman’s bony shoulders and chest. Even his kilt . . .

“Not mine!” He grinned again, proudly. “Yesterday we had a battle—a great feat of arms! Shonsu did six and I drained two!”

She shivered, and his arm tightened around her, so she could not break loose. She pulled her cloak tight. This intimacy was appalling behavior for a priestess, but that steely grip gave her no choice. Kandoru had never held her in public this way. He had expected her to walk one pace behind him.

“Three, yesterday. Two in the battle, but earlier I had to challenge for my promotion, and one of them chose swords instead of foils. He was trying to scare me, so I killed him. I didn’t like him much, anyway.”

She began to laugh, and then stared up with growing horror and belief at his satisfied smirk. Two of the swordmarks on his forehead were swollen, obviously new. His hair was black and greasy, but there were patches of red showing through the filth. His eyes were pale, the lashes almost invisible, and the runnels of clean skin washed by the rain were very light-colored. Apparently this murderous, callous youth was normally a redhead. The black in his hair had been applied deliberately, and then it had smeared all over him.

“Please, adept!” She struggled to break loose. They were almost at the jetty. The banks of the River were sheer cliffs of pebbly sand, and the only level land was the patch of shingle in the notch cut by the stream. When the River was high, there was barely room to turn a wagon, but today it was low, the flats were wide, and the landward end of the pier stood completely out of the water.

A small single-masted boat was tied up at the far end. There was no great army of swordsmen waiting, then, but there might still be a couple of dozen of them. Suddenly very frightened, Quili squirmed harder.

But the swordsman held tighter, still smirking down at her as he propelled her toward the jetty. The edge of the sun god’s disk rose over the wide waters of the River. “I like you!” he announced. “You’re pretty. The Goddess didn’t make much of you, but She did very good work on what there is.”

Quili wondered if she could slip out of the cloak and run. But he would run much faster than she would.

“I was only a Second in the temple guard,” Nnanji remarked, “until the Goddess sent Shonsu. But starting today, I’m a free sword.”

“Why do you suppose the Goddess sent you to meet me? See, I’ve always had to pay for women until now—except the slave girls in the barracks, of course. I bought a slave of my own yesterday, but she’s no fun. Your Honorable Garathondi will offer us hospitality for a few days . . . ”

She had shouted, trying to bolster her courage. Nnanji looked hurt. “I thought you were enjoying it. Why didn’t you ask sooner? Do you mean . . . well, I’ll wait until I’ve got cleaned up. I am a mess, aren’t I?”

Quili straightened feathers. “I’ll think about it,” she said tactfully. Apparently he had meant no violence. He was like a large puppy, fresh from a mudhole somewhere, wanting to romp. She had told Nia that it was her duty. That advice no longer sounded as easy to take as it had been to give, but it would be her duty, also, if he wanted her. Given time to adjust to the idea . . .

“I’d better wait until you’ve had a look at Shonsu,” he said sadly. “Women go glassy when they see him. Well, come on! He’s waiting.”

What? Did he think she had come down to meet the visitors , just so she could get first choice of the swordsmen? Arrogance! Unbelievable arrogance! Speechless, she followed more slowly as Nnanji went striding along the pier. He whistled a four-note signal, although now the sun was shining through the rain, and he was quite visible to whoever was in the boat.

She listened for a reply and was astounded to hear a baby crying. Swordsmen bringing babies?

Nnanji stopped at the end of the jetty, peering down and speaking to whoever was waiting there, doubtless reporting that there was no danger. Immediate danger was what he had asked about, so she had not lied. But Quili had not had time to work out how her ladyship might be reacting to these visitors. Uneasily Quili now concluded that Lady Thondi might already be sending word to Ov that swordsmen had arrived. How long did it take a horse to reach Ov? How long for sorcerers to ride back? Perhaps the swordsmen would not interpret immediate in quite the same way she had.

Nnanji reached out his arms and caught a baby, as if plucking it out of the sky. He cuddled it to him, and the yells stopped.

As Quili reached him, he turned round and grinned. “This is my friend Vixini.” The baby was about a year old, obviously teething. It was a slave baby—Quili’s mind staggered.

Then this so-bewildering swordsman reached down a helping hand, and another man sprang up on to the jetty. Nnanji remarked offhandedly, “My lord, may I have the honor of presenting Apprentice Quili?” Then he went back to tickling the naked baby, as if he were unaware of what he had just produced.

A giant! He was taller even than Nnanji, vastly wider and deeper, thickly muscled. His hair was black, and his black eyes fixed on Quili with a cruel, ruthless intensity that turned her bones to straw. Rape and death and carnage . . .

Nnanji was young to be a Fourth. This huge menace was a few years older, but far too young to be a Seventh. Yet there were seven swords marked on his forehead, and although his kilt was dirty, rumpled, and obviously bloodstained, it had undoubtedly started out as the blue of that rank. He must have been sheltering somehow from the rain, for the faint smears of gore on his chest and arms were quite dry.

Momentarily Quili trembled on the verge of turning and fleeing before this terrifying barbarian giant, then she began to stumble through the greeting to a superior, remembering that Nnanji had said women went glassy when they met Shonsu. She did not feel glassy, she felt like an aspen; her hands shook in the gestures. Kandoru had told her that never in his long career had he ever met a swordsman of higher rank than Sixth. She herself had never spoken to a Seventh of any craft—except her ladyship, and everyone knew that her husband had bought that rank for her years ago. But no one would or could buy seven swordmarks.

She bowed, then straightened. The deadly gaze did not waver or shift from her face. The giant’s arm rose. The sun god streaked and flashed on a sword blade. “I am Shonsu, swordsman of the seventh rank, and am honored to accept your gracious service.” His voice seemed to rise from depths unimaginable. Then the muscles of his arm bunched again as he shot the sword back into its scabbard.

The transformation was miraculous, as if another man entirely were standing before her. He had a wide, friendly grin, absurdly boyish for his size. Hardness suddenly became male good looks; thoughts of barbarians vanished. This enormous young lord was the most incredibly masculine man she had ever seen.

“My apologies, apprentice!” He had the deepest voice she had ever heard, too, a voice that seemed to echo all through her with shivery promises of confidence and competence, of protection and consideration and good humor. That smile! “We are not in a fit state to come visiting unannounced like this, and at such an unsociable hour.”

The smile grew warmer still, like the rising sun. “You show great hospitality in coming to meet us . . . and no small courage?” His eyes twinkled, “I hope that my gory friend did not startle you too much?”

“Then you are our hostess for now, at least until this Honorable Garathondi appears.”

“He lives in Ov, mostly, my lord. His mother, Lady Thondi, is in residence . . . ”

“You’ll do every bit as well,” the giant said with a heart-melting chuckle. “Nnanji tells me that you know of no task that may be awaiting our swords here?”

Lord Shonsu nodded in satisfaction. “I am glad to hear it. We had our fill of slaughter yesterday, as you can see. Perhaps the Most High has sent us here for some rest and relaxation, then?” He boomed out a laugh and turned back to the boat.

Quili doubted that Adept Nnanji had had his fill of bloodshed. She saw that he was watching her with quiet amusement, rather wistfully. She felt herself blush, and looked away.

Her eyes returned of their own accord to Lord Shonsu, and now she noticed the sword on his so-broad rippling back. The hilt beside his black ponytail was silver, gleaming in the rays of the sun god and the rain. There was a huge blue stone on the top of it, held by a strange but magnificently crafted beast—a griffon. She knew that the griffon was a royal symbol, so that was a king’s sword. The great gem could only be a sapphire, and there was another, matching stone, in Lord Shonsu’s hairclip.

But these men were supposed to be free swords. Free swords were men of poverty. Random had explained often—free swords served only the Goddess, wandering the World to stamp out injustice, to regulate other swordsmen and keep them honest, to guard the helpless. Having no masters, they would accept no reward except their daily needs. A genuine free sword took pride in his penury.

A king’s sword? The gem alone was worth a fortune, and the craftsmanship was superb, priceless.

How could any honest swordsman acquire something like that? Bewildered, she looked at Nnanji’s sword to compare it. Nnanji was still holding that incongruous baby, which was gurgling and enjoying his attention, but Nnanji’s eyes were on Quili.

He nodded solemnly. “It is very old and very famous, probably the finest sword ever made. The man who crafted it was Chioxin, the greatest of all swordmakers, and it was the last and best of his seven masterpieces. He gave it to the Goddess.”

Quili turned away to hide the horrible suspicion that flared up in her, which must not show in her face. These men had come from Hann, from the mother of all temples. They had fought a battle. Had someone tried to prevent their leaving—the temple guard that Nnanji had formerly belonged to? Was that sword the reason? Had this Shonsu stolen that royal sword from the treasury of the Goddess’ temple?

But if he had, then why had She let the boat leave the dock when he boarded? And why had She moved it here, where there were sorcerers? Swordsmen of the Seventh were very rare and very terrible. Nnanji had said that Shonsu had killed six men in the fight—perhaps the Goddess had few swordsmen capable of bringing such a colossus to justice. But sorcerers certainly could.

She felt sick with indecision. Was she supposed to aid these men, or not? What of preventing bloodshed? Whose blood? A mere apprentice should not be faced with such conundrums.

The woman smiled shyly, and Quili received another shock. Jja was a slave; her face bore a single stripe from hairline to upper lip, and she wore a slave’s black. His love? The woman was tall and only that hateful badge of slavery and the close-cropped maltreatment of her dark hair stopped her from being spectacularly beautiful. No, she was beautiful in spite of those. Her figure was magnificently proportioned to her height, yet she moved with a sensual grace: strong and competent and serene. Even a Seventh could not change a slave’s rank, but it seemed ironic for a man of such power to love a mere chattel. He was introducing her as if she were a person, though, and watching for Quili’s reaction. She smiled carefully and said, “You are welcome, also, Jja.”

A faint blush spread over the high cheekbones, the dark eyes were lowered. “Thank you, apprentice.” A good voice. Jja turned to take the baby, who was now sitting on Nnanji’s shoulders, wedged in place by his sword hilt. Little Vixini resisted, screaming angrily and clutching the swordsman’s ponytail.

Then Lord Shonsu’s strong arm pulled another woman up from the boat. “This,” he said, “is Cowie.” There was an odd note in the way he spoke, as if he had said something funny.

Cowie was another slave, and another sort of slave. If Lord Shonsu was the epitome of masculinity, then Cowie was the ultimate sex partner. Quili had never seen a figure so exaggeratedly female, and it was barely concealed at all by the flimsy wisp of garment. Her breasts strained against it, her arms and legs were soft and voluptuously rounded, her face was a lovely and sweet nothing. At the sound of her name, the provocative lips parted in an automatic smile, but her eyes continued to stare blankly at the shore.

Quili remembered her misgivings about her own too-tight gown. In this company she was not going to be noticed.

Nnanji had said something about buying a slave. She glanced at him, and he turned away.

Then another black-clad figure was lifted up by hands below, accepted, and gently set down by Lord Shonsu. He was very tiny and very old, his head totally hairless, his neck a crumple of wrinkles. The gown he wore appeared to be both too large for him and also a woman’s garment. A black headband covered his brow. Quili blinked in astonishment at this apparition—babies, slaves, and beggars? What other surprises would Lord Shonsu produce?

“This is Honakura, who prefers to conceal his rank and craft,” the swordsman said. “I don’t know why, but we humor him.”

The little ancient wheeled around angrily, waggling an arthritic finger to scold the giant swordsman towering over him. “You must not speak my name, either! A Nameless One is exactly that—no craft, no rank, no name! Address me as ‘old man’ if you wish.”

Lord Shonsu regarded him with mild amusement. “As you wish . . . old man. Apprentice, meet one old man.”

Honakura, if that was really his name, turned back toward Quili. He chuckled and smiled, revealing a mouth devoid of teeth. “Thus I also serve Her,” he said.

Lord Shonsu boomed a laugh. “And this . . . ” He dropped on one knee and reached down into the boat. Then he sprang upright, hoisting a youth bodily into the air, a First. He floated there, his shoulders gripped in Shonsu’s great hands, and he beamed down at Quili as if there was nothing undignified about such an unorthodox arrival, or as if Sevenths clowned with Firsts all the time.

The big man’s voice came from somewhere behind the boy’s grubby white kilt. “This is our mascot. Apprentice Quili, may I have the unparalleled honor of presenting the dreaded Novice Katanji, swordsman of the first rank?”

Then he let go. Novice Katanji landed unevenly, stumbled, recovered, and grinned. He tumbled for his sword hilt, which was canted over behind his left shoulder.

“Leave that!” Shonsu said quickly. “You’ll decapitate someone—probably yourself.”

Katanji shrugged, still grinning, and made the salute to a superior in civilian fashion. Bewildered, Quili responded. It was very rare to make formal presentation of a First; slaves and beggars were always ignored. Lord Shonsu not only had a peculiar sense of humor, he must also dislike formalities and ritual.

The young Katanji was a dark-eyed imp. His single facemark was raw and new, his curly black hair cropped short like a child’s. There was a hairclip precariously balanced in it, but no ponytail resulting. He was grubby, but not as filthy as Nnanji, and innocent of bloodstains. Remembering Nnanji’s story, Quili could guess that Novice Katanji had sworn to the code of the swordsmen only the previous day. Nnanji must be his mentor, for surely no Seventh would take a First as protégé. Yet perhaps this unconventional Shonsu was capable of even that.

His big eyes’ regarded her solemnly. “Your gracious hospitality is already evident, apprentice.” Then those eyes dropped, to linger over her cloak.

Quili glanced down and saw that the right side was stained, the faded yellow cloth marked by streaks of grease, and even perhaps blood, where Nnanji had hugged her against himself. She looked up in mingled shame and anger, as Novice Katanji turned away with a deliberate smirk showing on his face. Impudent little devil!

“No more strays, sailor?” Lord Shonsu was addressing the two men still in the boat. “Then you will come ashore for food and rest before you seek to return?”

“Oh, no, my lord.” The captain was a fat and obsequious man. He would probably be very glad to be rid of so strange a cargo. To carry a Jonah reputedly brought good fortune to a vessel and normally the Goddess sent it home again promptly, but Lord Shonsu would be an unnerving passenger.

“May She be with you, then.” Shonsu reached in a pouch on his harness and flipped a couple of coins down. They glinted in the sunlight. Free swords paying gold to mere boatmen?

“There we are, apprentice. Seven of us looking for a bite of breakfast.” Lord Shonsu had turned to Quili again with high good spirits. He was amused—her astonishment must be showing. Two swordsmen, two slave women, a boy, a baby, and a beggar? What sort of army was that?

Then the menacing frown snapped back, and he stared along the jetty at the road vanishing into the notch of the gorge. He swung around to Nnanji.

Horror fell over Nnanji’s face, and he jerked to attention. “I forgot, my lord.”

For a moment Shonsu’s eyes flicked to Quili, then back to Nnanji. “I suppose there has to be a first time for anything,” he said darkly. “Apprentice, we have a problem. I assume that we need to climb at least as high as the top of that cliff?”

Shonsu turned back to the boatmen, who were fumbling with sails. “Wait! Toss up a couple of those pallets . . . and the awning. Thank you. Good journey!” He stooped to untie a line. Nnanji jumped for the other, watching to see exactly what Shonsu did and copying him.

Kandoru would never have played at being a deckhand, nor a porter, yet now this incredible Seventh gathered up the pallets and tarpaulin and went striding landward along the jetty, the astonished Quili having to trot to keep up with him.

“Apprentice, can you find us a wagon? The old man can probably manage, but Cowie . . . ” He smirked again as he said that name. “Dear Cowie has lost one of her sandals. I should hate her beautiful soft feet to be damaged.”

“I am sure I can find a cart, my lord,” Quili said. A cart for a lord of the seventh rank? And would there be any men left to harness the horse? She had watched it being done often enough . . .

“That would do very well,” Shonsu said cheerfully. They had reached the land, where the jetty stood above dry shingle. Quickly he spread the tarpaulin over the planks, then he jumped down and put the pallets below it. As his companions arrived, he reached up and lifted them down effortlessly. “We shall be comfortable enough in here until you return.”

“There’s no hurry. I need to have a private talk with Nnanji, and this seems like a good chance.” He flashed that heart-melting smile again.

Confused and unhappy, Quili mumbled something—she was not sure what—and headed for the road. As she entered the gorge, the sun tucked itself up into the clouds, and the World became gloomier and more drab. She had not lied, but she had left these swordsmen in ignorance of their danger. She must try to prevent bloodshed. Merciful Goddess! Whom was she supposed to shield—the workers, or the sorcerers, or the swordsmen?

Wallie paced slowly back along the jetty, gathering his thoughts. His boots made hollow drum noises on the weathered planks, and beside him Nnanji’s kept time. Nnanji was waiting in excited silence to hear what revelations the great Lord Shonsu was about to impart.

The jetty was stained with cattle dung—probably the estate exported cattle to the nearest city, Ov. The River was very wide, the far shore a faint line of smudge, and no sails marred the empty expanse of gray and lifeless water. At Hann the River had been about the same width, yet Hann lay a quarter of a World away. The River was everywhere, Honakura had said, and in a lifetime of talking with pilgrims in the temple, he had never heard tell of source or mouth. Apparently it was endless and much the same everywhere, a geographical impossibility. The River was the Goddess.

Wallie shivered at this evidence of divine surveillance, then forced his mind back to the matter at hand. Twice before he had told his story, but this time would be harder. Honakura had accepted it as an exercise in theology. Believing in many worlds and a ladder of uncountable lives, he had been puzzled only that the dead Wallie Smith should have been reincarnated as the adult Shonsu, instead of as a baby. That was a miracle, and priests could believe in miracles. Honakura had wanted to hear about Earth and Wallie’s previous existence, but those would not interest Nnanji.

Jja had not cared about the mechanism or the reason. She was content to know that the man she loved was hidden inside the swordsman, an invisible man with no rank or craft, as alienated from the World as she was. Only thus could a slave dare to love a Seventh. Nnanji’s attitude would be very different.

“Nnanji, I have a confession to make. I have never lied to you, but I have not told you the whole truth.”

Nnanji blinked. “Why should you? It was you the Goddess chose to be Her champion. I am honored to be allowed to help. You need not tell me more, Lord Shonsu.”

Wallie sighed. “I did lie to you, then, I suppose. I said my name was Shonsu . . . and it isn’t.”

Nnanji’s eyes grew very wide, strange pale spots in his grimy face. No man of the People could ever look unshaven, but his red hair had been blackened the previous day with a blend of charcoal and grease. Later adventures had added guano and cobwebs, road dust and blood. Now thoroughly smeared, the resulting film made him look comic and ridiculous. But Nnanji was no joke. Nnanji had become a very deadly killer, much too young to be trusted with either the sword skill his mentor had taught him so rapidly or the power that came with his new rank—a swordsman of the Fourth had the potential to do a mountain of damage. Nnanji would have to be kept under very close control for a few years, until maturity caught up with his abilities. That might be why the gods had ordered that he be irrevocably bound by the arcane oath to which the present conversation must lead.

“I did meet with a god,” Wallie said, “and what he told me was this: the Goddess had need of a swordsman. She chose the best in the World, Shonsu of the Seventh. Well, he said that there was none better, which is not quite the same thing, I suppose. Anyway, this swordsman failed, and failed ‘disastrously.’ ”

“The god wouldn’t say. But Shonsu was driven to the temple by a demon. The priests’ exorcism failed. The Goddess took his soul—and left the demon. Or what Shonsu thought was a demon. It was me, Wallie Smith. Except I wasn’t a demon . . . ”

He was not telling this very well, Wallie thought, but he was amused by the puzzled nods he was being given. Others might mock at so absurd a yarn, but Nnanji would want very much to believe. Nnanji had a ruinous case of hero worship. It had suffered an agonizing death the previous day, but then the Goddess had sent a miracle to support Her champion, and Nnanji’s adoration had sprung back to life again, stronger than ever. He would grow out of it, and Wallie could only hope that the education would not be too painful, nor too long delayed. No man could live up to Nnanji’s standards of heroic behavior.

“Another way of looking at it, I suppose, is as a string of beads—that’s one of the priests’ images. A soul is the string, the beads are the separate lives. In this case, the Goddess broke the rules. She untied the string and moved one of the beads.”

“No, I can’t explain it. The motives of gods are mysterious. Anyway, I am not Shonsu. I remember nothing of his life before I woke up in the pilgrim cottage with Jja tending me and old Honakura babbling about my doing a fast murder for him. Before that, as far as I recall, I was Wallie Smith.”

He did not try to explain language, how he thought in English and spoke in the language of the People. Nnanji would not be able to comprehend the idea of more than one language, and Wallie himself did not know how the translation worked.

Manager of a petrochemical plant? How did one explain that to an iron-age warrior in a preliterate world? Wallie sighed. “No, I wasn’t. Our crafts and ranks were different. As near as I can tell you, I was an apothecary of the Fifth.”

But there had been Detective Inspector Smith, who would have been so horrified by his murdering, idol-worshiping, slave-owning son. “My father was a swordsman.”

Yes, Wallie thought. He had been law-abiding, and a decent sort of guy, honest and conscientious. “I think so. I tried to be, as I try here. Some of our ways were different. I did my best, and I promised the god that I would do my best here also.”

“But when the reeve of the temple guard claimed that I was an imposter, he was correct. I did not know the salutes and responses. I did not know one end of a sword from the other.”

Nnanji spluttered. “But—but you know the rituals, my lord! You are a great swordsman!”

“That came later,” Wallie said, and went on to relate how he had met the demigod three times, how he had managed to find belief in the gods, and how he had then been given Shonsu’s skill, the legendary sword, the unknown mission. “The god gave me the ability to use a sword, he gave me the sutras. But he gave me none of Shonsu’s private memories at all, Nnanji. I don’t know who his parents were, or where he came from, or who taught him. On those things, I am still Wallie Smith.”

“I have one now.” He showed Nnanji the sword that had appeared on his right eyelid the previous night, the sign of a swordsman father. “It wasn’t there yesterday morning. I think it is a sort of joke by the little god, or perhaps a sign that he approves of what we did yesterday.”

Nnanji said he liked the second possibility better. The idea that gods might play jokes did not appeal to him.

They reached the landward end of the jetty and turned to pace Riverward again. It was a strange story, almost as strange in the World as it would have been on Earth, and Wallie took his time, explaining as well as he could how it felt to be two people, how his professional knowledge differed from his personal memories.

“I think I understand, my lord,” Nnanji said at last, frowning down ferociously at the rain-slicked, rough-cut planks. “You greatly puzzled me, for you did not behave like other highranks. You spoke to me as a friend when I was only a Second. You did not kill Meliu and Briu when you had the chance—most Sevenths would have welcomed an excuse to cut more notches in their harness. You treat Jja like a lady and you were even friendly to Wild Ani. That was the way of honor in your other world?”

“It was,” Wallie said. “Friends are harder to make than enemies, but they are more useful.”

Wallie laughed. “No, it is just a little saying of my own, but it is based on some of our sutras. It works, though: look how useful Wild Ani turned out to be!”

Nnanji agreed doubtfully—swordsmen should not have to seek help from slaves. “I would swear the second oath to you, my lord, if you will have me as protegé. I still wish to learn swordsmanship from you, and the ways of honor . . . ” He paused and added thoughtfully, “And I think I should like to learn some of this other honor, also.”

Wallie was relieved. He had half feared that his young friend would understandably flee from him as a madman. “I shall be proud to be your mentor again, Nnanji, for you are a wonderful pupil and one day you will be a great swordsman.”

Nnanji stopped, drew his sword, and dropped to his knees. There were other things that Wallie wanted to tell him, but Nnanji was never plagued by hesitations or deep reflection, and he now proceeded to swear the second oath: “I, Nnanji, swordsman of the Fourth, 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 spoke the formal acceptance. Nnanji rose and sheathed his sword with some satisfaction. “You mentioned another oath also, mentor?” The demigod had warned that swordsmen were addicted to fearsome oaths, and Nnanji was no exception.

“I did. But before we get to that, I must tell you about my mission. When I asked what the Goddess required of me, all I was given was a riddle.”

“I wish I knew that! He said that it was a matter of free will; that I must do what seemed right to me. If I only followed orders, then I would be less a servant than a tool.” Another explanation, of course, might be that the demigod did not trust Wallie—either his courage or his honesty—and that was worrisome.

“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.”

Nnanji pouted in disgust for a moment, his lips moving as he thought over the words. “I’m no good at riddles,” he muttered. Then he shrugged. It was Shonsu’s problem, not his.

Ah! Nnanji had been waiting to hear this. “Eleven forty-four? The last sutra?”

Wallie nodded. “It concerns the fourth oath, the oath of brotherhood. It is almost as terrible as the blood oath, except that it binds both men equally, not as liege and vassal. In fact it is even more drastic, Nnanji, for it is paramount, absolute, and irrevocable.”

“Apparently She does for this one. I think that is why the riddle says chain. If we swear this oath, then we’re both stuck with it, Nnanji!”

“But . . . you don’t know your—Shonsu’s—history, mentor. You—he—may have a real brother somewhere?”

“That’s what I thought, too, at first: that I had to seek out a brother. But the god did remove Shonsu’s parentmarks, and perhaps that was a hint. The oath is restricted, Nnanji. It may only be sworn by two swordsmen who have saved each other’s lives. That can never happen in the ways of honor, only in a real battle. I think that is why we were led into that slaughter yesterday. I saved you from Tarru, you saved me from Ghaniri. So you have a part in this mission also, and now we are free to swear the oath.”

Given the chance, Nnanji would have sat down cross-legged to hear a sutra, so Wallie began it before he could do so. It was short, as sutras went, and much less paradoxical or obscure than some. He needed only say it through once—Nnanji never forgot anything.

Then they continued to walk in silence, while Nnanji scowled again at the planks and moved his lips. Obviously the fourth oath was causing him trouble, and Wallie began to feel uneasy. He was certain that he had solved the first line of the riddle, and that he was supposed to swear that impossible oath with this gangly young swordsman. But what could he do if Nnanji refused? And why was he not eager to swear? He should be jubilant at the opportunity to be brother to the greatest swordsman in the World.

“It does not seem right, mentor,” he said at last. “I am only a Fourth. That oath sounds as if it should be sworn between equals.”

“Yes! I am a great swordsman, but I am a stranger in the World. I know less about it than Vixini. There are so many things I do not know. For example: why did you keep your sword on your back all night in the boat? That must have cramped your style a little with Cowie, did it not?”

Nnanji smirked. “Not especially.” Then he gave Wallie a startled look. “It is the custom of the frees, mentor.”

“Then it is just a tradition, I suppose. But a free sword never removes his sword. Except for washing—or to use.” He frowned, worried that his mentor did not know something so elementary.

If Shonsu had been a free sword, then the information had not been passed along—Wallie’s memory had been cut off in strange places. Even in bed? That would be part of the free swords’ mystique, of course, but it must be a very inconvenient habit.

“Well, that shows you how ignorant I am. If you are only my protégé, you will not want to criticize me, or offer advice when you think I am making a mistake. Those are the sorts of things that a brother will do that a mere protégé would not.”

“If you would let me swear the blood oath again, mentor,” Nnanji suggested hopefully, “then you could order me to advise you.”

“And I could order you to shut up, too! As my vassal, you were little better than a slave, Nnanji. I may never accept the third oath from any man again and certainly never from you.”

Nnanji frowned some more. “But how will I address you? A Fourth can’t call a Seventh ‘brother’!”

It was not a trivial question. A term of address advertised relationships between swordsmen and could warn a potential challenger that there was an onus of vengeance involved. As soon as they had sworn the second oath, he had begun calling Wallie “mentor” instead of “my lord.”

“ ‘Brother’ will be fine. Use any term you like. Probably you’ll want to call me ‘Stupid’ half the time.”

Nnanji smiled politely. “It is a great honor, mentor . . . if you’re sure?”

Wallie hid a sigh of relief. “I am certain—and not all the honor is yours, Adept Nnanji.”

“There doesn’t seem to be one. Why don’t we just say the words and shake hands?”

So, while the waters of the River slapped gently at the base of the jetty beneath them in subtle applause, Shonsu and Nnanji swore the oath of brotherhood and then shook hands. Wallie felt a sense of accomplishment. He had satisfied the first line of the riddle . . . what happened next, though?

Nnanji grinned shyly. “Now I have Shonsu as a mentor and Wallie Smith as a brother?”

They continued to stroll along the battered little jetty. Rain continued to ooze in summer drizzle from the low, gray-flannel clouds. Gray also was the River, gray were the cliffs that shut off all view of what might lie ahead. This soggy, barren little place ought to be depressing, especially before breakfast and after an extremely short night, yet Wallie’s mood remained stubbornly euphoric. He had escaped from the temple, from the dangerous trap that had held him for all of his brief existence in the World. He had proved that he could be a swordsman and could satisfy the Goddess in that role, playing it as he felt it should be played and not necessarily as the native iron-age hoplites played it. Now he was going to be given a chance to see a whole new planet and an ancient and complex culture, albeit a primitive one. He felt like school was out at last.

Furthermore, the priestess had said that there were no swordsmen around. Swordsmen held a monopoly on violence. Without swordsmen, danger was unlikely. Whatever his mission might prove to be, it would surely involve swordsmen, so it had not started yet. There might be more tests or lessons to come, but he might also be due for a vacation. He repeated to himself the instructions of the demigod: Go and be a swordsman, Shonsu! Be honorable and valorous. And enjoy yourself, for the World is yours to savor. A male fantasy of that elflike priestess flickered momentarily across his mind, and he hastily reproached himself for being as bad as Nnanji. He had Jja. No man could want more.

They had reached the tarpaulin that covered the rest of the party. “Let’s go and see!” Wallie dropped nimbly to the shingle and peered in under the jetty.

Novice Katanji moved hurriedly away from Cowie. Cuddling was a good way to keep warm, but his brother would not approve. Nnanji arrived at Wallie’s side a second later.

The Goddess had selected a strange assortment of companions to accompany Her champion. Seven was the sacred number, so Wallie’s party had to number seven. Nnanji was understandable, and old Honakura was going to be a peerless source of wisdom and information—if he chose to be, for he could be inscrutably obscure at times. But two slave women, a boy, and a baby did not make much sense. On Wallie’s back was the seventh sword of Chioxin, which Honakura had defined as the most valuable piece of movable property in the World. The demigod had warned him that alley thieves would prowl after it. Why the mission required such a priceless sword was a mystery in itself; any ordinary blade would suffice when wielded with Shonsu’s unsurpassed skill. So why give him a treasure, and then withhold adequate protection?

What he needed, Wallie thought, was a half-dozen hard-eyed, hard-muscled swordsmen, not boys and women; yet he had been balked when he tried to enlist swordsmen from the temple guard. He had hinted to Imperkanni that he needed a few and had almost been challenged on the spot. Now he had been brought to a place with no swordsmen at all. Curiouser and curiousest!

He took a careful look at Honakura. The frail and incredibly ancient priest was accustomed to luxury, not this outdoor adventuring in damp clothes. Nevertheless, he seemed to be in good spirits, beaming his gums at the swordsman. Vixini was fretting, and his mother smiled rather wanly at her owner.

Nnanji directed a bleak gaze toward Katanji, perhaps suspecting what had been going on in his absence. “Lord Shonsu and I have just sworn the oath of brotherhood!” he announced.

“It does?” Wallie said. “ ‘Your oaths are my oaths’? Yes, I suppose it does. And also my brother, perhaps? Well, we shall have to make sure he is a credit to us both, shan’t we?” He stepped over and settled on the pallet beside Jja, having to tilt his sword at an angle across his back and keep one leg twisted under him. If this was how free swords had to sit all the time, then he disapproved. Nnanji moved in under cover and squatted on his heels.

“So you have solved the first line of the riddle,” Honakura said. “Now what happens?” He smirked mockingly.

Nnanji bristled. In so formal a culture, a mere First must not address a Seventh without invitation, but Katanji had already summed up Lord Shonsu and knew he was in no danger.

Hastily Wallie said, “I don’t know, novice. I was explaining to Nnanji that I was not told exactly what my mission is to be. It may have begun, but—”

“My lord brother! He is only a scratcher. He does not know one seventy-five yet!”

Wallie nodded. “Nnanji will instruct you in the sutra ‘On Secrecy,’ ” he told Katanji. “Meanwhile, just remember that this is in confidence, all right?”

The boy nodded, wide-eyed. He had already packed more excitement into his first day as a swordsman than most men would achieve in years. He had even saved Wallie’s life the previous evening—and probably Nnanji’s, too. Obviously he had a part to play also, but whatever it might be, it would not likely require a sword. Nnanji, in his first flush of excitement at being promoted, had impetuously rushed off, bought that ludicrous slave, and sworn his young brother as his protégé. Cowie might make some old man very happy in a comfortable home somewhere, but she was not a swordsman’s woman. Katanji, likewise, was not swordsman material. He completely lacked his brother’s natural talents as an athlete, as Wallie had confirmed with his horseplay on the jetty. Katanji had almost fallen over, even in a straight drop of three feet or so. Nnanji would have landed like a cat.

Nnanji was scowling, playing middlerank as he had seen it played in the temple barracks, wearing his topkick-facing-grunt face.

“Then let’s try him on this one.” Wallie explained the riddle that defined his mission. Katanji frowned. Honakura had heard it before. Jja was certainly trustworthy. Cowie would understand little more than Vixini . . . and yet Cowie had also played an unwitting part in the gods’ plans, a reminder that mortals should not jump to conclusions.

“So the question is: what happens now? I do have a couple of clues. No, three, I think. Two of them are things that . . . my predecessor said, just before he died. He said he had come very far. Well, we were moved very far in the night. Secondly, he mentioned sorcerers.”

“Rot!” snapped Honakura. “I will never believe in sorcerers. Just legends!”

Wallie knew that he would take a great deal of convincing himself, but he had come to believe in gods and miracles, so he was not going to close his mind on the subject of sorcerers. Shonsu had said they existed.

“There would be no honor fighting sorcerers,” Nnanji said grumpily, which was what he had said when Wallie had asked him once before. Then he grinned. “And there aren’t any here! I asked Apprentice Quili! No sorcerers and no dragons.”

Wallie laughed. “I wanted to enlist some good men to guard my back and my sword. I was blocked. I only got one. Of course that one is remarkably good.”

“But one is not enough! I’m sure that my mission must involve swordsmen. Now we’ve been brought to a place where there are no swordsmen, and there can’t be many places like that in the World, can there?”

“So I don’t think my mission has begun yet,” Wallie said cheerfully. “There must be a few more tests or lessons to come first.”

“But this sounds like a very safe place. So maybe we’ve been brought here just to relax for a few days.”

“Have you never heard . . . It’s a great epic!” Nnanji drew a deep breath, a sign that he was about to start singing. Even if the epic was inordinately long, even if he had only heard it once, or even if that had been years before, he would be capable of rendering the whole thing without a stumble.

“Oh!” Nnanji deflated and pondered for a moment. “Lord Aggaranzi and his band were moved by Her Hand to Ko but the villagers had no work for their swords, and then Inghollo of the Sixth and his band were brought the next night, and the following day two more . . . ”

The Goddess had collected an army at Ko, apparently, and then ambushed a large brigade of brigands, who had been chopped into small fragments. Nnanji approved.

“Sounds reasonable,” Wallie said. “So possibly we have been brought to a safe place to meet someone.”

Then he heard a distant clanking and jingling that must be the long-awaited transportation arriving.

“So there you are, novice,” he said quickly. “Now, why did I tell you all that?”

In the shade, Katanji’s eyes gleamed so bright that they almost glowed. “Because ‘another’ might mean ‘another brother,’ my lord?”

Nnanji smiled sheepishly, and then shot another baleful glance at his young brother. “I don’t approve of Firsts thinking,” he said ominously.

The cart was drawn by one of the strange camel-faced horses of the World, and driven—surprisingly—by the little Apprentice Quili herself. She was clearly having some trouble, but she managed to turn the creaking old vehicle, and then she jumped down and bowed to Wallie.

“Lady Thondi sends her respects, my lord. She will be honored to receive you at the manor at your convenience.”

Quili smiled, seeming almost relieved. “You are most welcome to stop at the tenancy to clean up, my lord. The women have prepared a meal. It will be humble fare, compared to what her ladyship could offer, but they would be greatly honored if you cared to partake of it.” She waited hopefully.

“Then let’s do that.” Wallie began assisting his companions into the cart. There was straw to sit on, and a heap of shabby cloaks and blankets for cover.

He liked this diminutive child priestess. Her long hair was matted by the rain, and her yellow cloak a shabby, disreputable thing, but there was a quickness about her that told of humor and intelligence. Of course she was nervous and jumpy, which was quite understandable, merely emphasizing her youthful charm. Better groomed and garbed, she would be at least pretty and possibly sensational. She probably deserved a better life than the one she was having, if he read correctly the dirt ingrained in her fingers. With her mentor living half a day’s walk away, she could have little chance of working toward promotion.

Nnanji was obviously attracted, and she glanced nervously at him as he edged close, beaming down at her . . . no, leering down at her. When she scrambled up to the driver’s bench, awkward in her cloak and priestess’ long robe, he moved as if to join her. Wallie coughed meaningfully and jerked an imperious thumb at the back. He climbed up and sat beside Quili himself.

She slapped the reins and shouted. After a moment’s reflection, the horse decided that there were more interesting places in which to be difficult, and the cart creaked forward.

Tree trunks, valley walls, and streambed crowded in upon their path. The road was no more than a stretch of cleared ground, rough and rutted and spiky with roots. A little work with a dozer and a few truckloads of gravel would work wonders on it, Wallie decided. Twice the horse balked at fords, giving Quili trouble. The stream was rising, encroaching on its banks.

Quili was concentrating on the horse, but she stopped biting her tongue long enough to say, “Very, my lord. At this time of year. And the first real rain since winter.”

Wallie wondered if there could be any relation between the rain and his own arrival. Then he decided that the thought was absurd—he was becoming as bad as Honakura, who was full of weird superstitions. Nevertheless, much more rainfall, and the track to the jetty would become impassable.

The trees were less lush than the tropical varieties at Hann, and he could not identify any of them—hardly surprising, for he was no botanist. Apparently Shonsu had not been much interested in vegetation, for his vocabulary seemed to contain none of the names. Perhaps some had Earthly equivalents, similar but not the same, like the odd-looking horses. Or like the People themselves—a neat, brown-skinned folk, cheerful, fun-loving and lusty, certainly human, but not exactly matching any Earthly race.

He moved his sword to a more comfortable position and stretched out his arm along the backrest. Quili jumped and then blushed furiously.

Damn! Wallie had forgotten that he was no longer the man he had been on Earth. Women looked at Shonsu in a way women had never looked at the nondescript Wallie Smith. Wallie Smith might have received odd glances had he paraded around bare-chested in a kilt and leather harness, but not those sort of looks.

Which raised the problem of Nnanji’s attentions to Quili. Nnanji had never made any secret of his ambition to become a free sword—it had been about the first thing he had imparted to his liege lord Shonsu when he had begun to relax enough in his company to talk at all. Wallie had parried the hidden questions about their joint future until he had gained time to learn from Honakura just what a free sword was. He had been disgusted to learn how much those wandering warriors expected in the way of hospitality. It was not a sutra, it was a universal custom, which meant a law—free swords could have anything they wanted, including access to their hostesses’ beds.

That prospect was at least as attractive to Nnanji as the opportunities for bloodshed. Since the onset of adolescence, he had lived within the narrowly male world of the barracks, naively absorbing all the macho bragging, believing the tall tales of breathlessly grateful maidens. Now he saw his chance. He had no desire to be a routine policeman in some quiet little town or city. He dreamed of the open road—or, to be precise, open River—and honoring beautiful damsels would be a large part of the romance of it all. Here he was, a free sword at last, and this pretty young priestess had the misfortune to be the first woman he had encountered.

Wallie could admit a certain barbaric logic in the custom. Free swords were the good guys and brigands were the bad guys, but at times the distinction between them must become blurred. So hospitality was given without limits—unstinted generosity could avert pillage, and there was one sure way to avoid rape. Another benefit might be an increase in genetic diversity among the People, for likely few of them ever moved very far from their birthplaces in this primitive culture, and inbreeding would be a problem.

But that was the general case. In the specific instance, young Quili was being molested. Wallie could hardly change the laws of the World, but he could certainly divert Nnanji this time. He glanced back at his companions in the cart, noting his new oath brother’s glum expression. Satisfied that the squeaking axles and the roar of the stream would drown out his words, he turned to Quili and remarked, “Adept Nnanji seems very attracted to you, apprentice.”

“No, no! That wasn’t what I meant!” Wallie floundered. “I am very much in love, Quili. I am totally infatuated by Jja. Like a starry-eyed boy! I seek no other woman.”

Understandably, she made no reply to such insulting gibberish. She kept her eyes on the plodding horse, although it seemed to be managing without any guidance from her.

“What I meant . . . I mean, if I seem . . . Oh, damn! If Nnanji thinks that I want you, then he will leave you alone. Do I make myself clear?”

He moved close and put his arm around her. Nnanji would certainly notice. She looked tiny in her yellow cloak, like a half-drowned canary, but there was a surprisingly firm young woman in there. He felt Shonsu’s disorderly glands begin to stir and repressed them with thoughts of Jja.

At first the meal went quite well. The visitors had been squashed in around a group of tables in one of the cottages, while six or seven women flustered around, serving the food by squeezing tactfully past between the guests’ backs and the walls. Half a dozen children had managed to slip in, also, and the tiny room was packed and stuffy and dark. The fare was plain, as Quili had promised, but the fresh bread and lean ham were delicious. With farm butter and bright vegetables, warm beer in earthenware pitchers, and a mysterious stew, no one was going to complain about the food.

Nor could anyone object to the quality of service. All the women were brown-clad farmers of the Third, from two white-haired matrons in long-sleeved gowns, down to the youngest, whose name was Nia. Nia wore nothing but a short, simple wrap .and looked very good in it.

And there was another young lady named Nona, whose wrap was so breathtakingly and impractically brief that it must surely have been shortened for the occasion. At first everyone had fawned humbly over the swordsmen, but soon Nona found courage, and then even Nnanji’s Trojan appetite could not distract him from her obvious availability. The two of them began smirking, cracking lewd jokes, and almost striking sparks. Wallie concluded with relief that Quili was out of danger. He intercepted a few eyelash flutters from Nia, which he discouraged by feigning interest in Quili. Only one swordsman fathermark would be authorized by this visitation.

That point might have to be stressed to Novice Katanji, who had made fast progress with a couple of the preadolescent girls, naked and flat-chested and definitely off-limits in Wallie’s view. There were no girls of his own age around, so perhaps Katanji was merely being friendly—or perhaps not. As the eating progressed, though, his socializing slowed down, and he began directing sharp glances around the whole company and then at Wallie, who had just made the same discovery himself: there was too much tension. Something was wrong.

Until that realization struck, Wallie had been fairly content. He and his companions were clean at last. Their garments had been rushed away to be laundered and temporary replacements provided. At first an abbreviated brown loincloth had made him feel as shameless as Nona, but once he was seated at the table he forgot about it and tucked into the spread with genuine appetite.

Then two minor problems appeared almost simultaneously. As he ate, he began to feel a strange lethargy. Honakura yawned. Jja followed suit—and so did Nnanji, in the middle of his animated flirting. He blinked in surprise and carried on. Wallie smothered a yawn himself. It had been a short night, but . . . jet lag! They had been moved the equivalent of several time zones by the Hand of the Goddess. Now it was not yawning but laughter that struggled for possession of Wallie’s throat. The thought of jet lag in this primitive culture was ludicrous, and the idea of trying to explain it to anyone else even more so. Nevertheless, it was worth remembering, for the resulting mental confusion could seriously warp a man’s judgment for a day or two.

The tenancy was a clutter of cottages, all small and mostly shabby, interspersed with barns and sheds, and standing among vegetable patches. Pigs and chickens roamed underfoot, while background noises told of dogs and at least one discordant donkey. The setting was pleasant, centered on a pond that served for washing, stock watering, and irrigation, but in all directions the surrounding countryside was concealed by little bare hillocks and copses of scanty trees.

It was a humble settlement, and the people who inhabited it were humble, also. But they outranked the estate owner’s slaves, who lived elsewhere, and they were uncomfortable at having to entertain Jja and Cowie and Vixini. Cowie was quite unaware of the conflict, looking content for the first time since Wallie had met her, stuffing food into herself, apparently impervious to jet lag. Jja had become very quiet. She sat close by Wallie and attended to Vixini and spoke only in reply to questions. He fumed, but there was nothing he could do. The women were trying the best they could. Doubtless Quili had warned them, and the hostility was being suppressed, but it was there. Wallie had not met this prejudice in the temple—Nnanji made no value distinction between free woman and slave—but for these people slaves were a threat to livelihood. The difference was not racial, it was purely an accident of birth, yet the free could not hide their contempt of the unfree. The World of the Goddess was an imperfect place.

So he tried to reassure Jja without at the same time offending the attending women, and he made the best of it. He also made conversation with Quili, on his right. She had discarded her bulky cloak, revealing a threadbare lemon gown that curved satisfactorily in all the right places. Feigning interest called for no effort.

He established that the manor house stood farther up the hillside, hidden by trees. There were cattle sheds there, and slave barns, and more cottages. The inhabitants of this tenancy seemed to have intermediate status, not quite farmhands and not quite free farmers themselves. They paid their rent in work for the landlord, but they also grew vegetables for sale to the manor. Wallie at once suspected a company store economy and soon confirmed his guess—to obtain imports, like nails and rope, or local products such as lumber, the tenants must deal with Honorable Garathondi’s manager, Adept Motipodi. Everything went back to Garathondi in the end.

The ham had vanished. Fresh strawberries appeared, with cream thick as butter. Not for the first time, Wallie mourned the absence of coffee in the World.

Honakura was enthusiastically attacking the dessert, while attempting to discover more about the landowner and his mother, Lady Thondi. Katanji had set out to charm everyone, not merely the young maidens. Jja was being monosyllabic. Cowie was not communicating with anyone. Nnanji was describing the best ways to push a sword into a man and how it felt to do so, making Nona breathe deeply over his courage and the nobility of his motives.

Then Wallie noticed, and Katanji followed a moment later—Quili and the other women were as jumpy as a pondful of frogs.

Somebody had said something. Perhaps it had been only Nnanji’s gruesome attempts at shop talk, but something was wrong.

So more than Nnanji’s advances had been disturbing the young priestess earlier. Even the older women were nervous, and they were obviously deferring to her, in spite of her youth. Of course in Earthly terms they were peasants entertaining a general or a duke, and some tension was inevitable. Their menfolk were not there to support them, having been called away by Adept Motipodi for a land-clearing project, or so Wallie had been informed. But the guests had not raped or murdered anyone, they had praised the food and hospitality, and the tension was not decreasing. It seemed to be getting worse.

Wallie tried to establish a little local geography. East lay the River, and there were no significant settlements on the far bank. Westward the mountains of RegiVul were normally visible, he was told, but they were hidden today by the rain clouds. To the north lay the hamlet of Pol and then the city of Ov. Perhaps he was expected to head for Ov, but he decided to put off any decisions until he had met with Lady Thondi.

Southward there seemed to be nothing. The Black Lands, Quili said vaguely . . . no people. And even the Black Lands were inaccessible, the older women explained, because there were cliffs. So this place was a curiously isolated dead end? Wallie did not need sutras to warn him that dead ends could be traps. Common prudence would suggest that a move to Ov might be very wise—except that he had no one but Nnanji to guard his back from the alley thieves the demigod had warned about. Stymied!

Quili shook her head. “Not at the moment, my lord. His honor has one, of course, but he is in Ov.” She mentioned a couple of fishing boats that were usually present, and a cattle boat, and one or two others, but for this reason or that reason . . .

Wallie’s scalp prickled—too much coincidence. There was a test coming. The Goddess had boxed Shonsu in for some purpose.

And it was then that he remembered the rain and guessed what was happening. He glanced at his companions. Honakura had felt the unease, but seemed more puzzled than worried. Honakura did not know about the climate. He had not heard Quill’s comments about it, and his skill was people—he would not have been able to read the appearance of the semiarid landscape as Wallie had done when he arrived at the tenancy, or even to appreciate that irrigation for vegetables meant poor rainfall.

Katanji was suspicious, but a city boy did not have the botanical knowledge, either. He likely did not even know enough about the swordsmen’s sutras. Of course old Honakura would not know the actual words of the sutra in question, but he would know what must result from it. Quili obviously did—she was masterminding the deception.

Nnanji naturally suspected nothing and would have to be kept that way . . . and then Wallie remembered the oath he had just sworn. My secrets are your secrets. He could keep nothing from Nnanji now.

No! He was not going to commit a massacre. It was not fair. He had killed six—no, seven—men the previous day. He had proved that he could be bloody if he had to be. How much slaughter did She want from Her champion?

Then he realized that the room had fallen into a horrified silence. He had been glaring at Nnanji, and even Nnanji was wilting under that glare.

“You don’t want me to tell about the battle, my lord brother?” he asked nervously. Nona was standing beside him, and he had his arm around her.

Wallie had not heard a word. He pulled his wits together. “I don’t care,” he said, “although I doubt that these gentle ladies will be interested in such a tale. No, something you said reminded me of another battle. That’s all.”

Everyone relaxed, including Nnanji. He leered up at Nona. “You don’t need me for a little while then, do you, my lord brother? Farmer Nona has offered to show me her house.” For him, this sudden interest in domestic architecture was a surprisingly tactful way of describing what the two of them obviously had in mind.

“Yes, I do need you,” Wallie said. “I’m putting you in charge for . . . for a little while. I want to see Apprentice Quili’s house.”

Quili blanched. Then she bared her teeth at Wallie in an attempt at a smile. “I shall be greatly honored, my lord.” It came out as a whisper.

“Then let us go right away. Ladies, I thank you for the meal. It was superb.”

With varied expressions of surprise and amusement, approval and disapproval, the company moved out of the way as Wallie followed Quili around to the door. The outside air seemed cool and fresh after the stuffy room, flapping his loincloth as if to mock such unswordsmanlike dress. The rain seemed heavier.

Huddled again in her cloak, the priestess pointed to the far side of the pond. “That one, my lord. We should run!”

Hers was the smallest of the cottages, badly in need of a new roof from the look of the sag in the present one.

She would not run very fast in her gown, so Wallie announced that he would carry her. He scooped her up and ran, mud splattering below his boots. She weighed very little, less than Katanji.

The door was not locked. She lifted the latch, and he carried her across the threshold, wondering as he did so if that gesture had the same implications in the World as it did on Earth. He set her down and closed the door and looked around.

It was very small and, obviously, very old. One of the walls leaned inward, and the floor was uneven. Probably the present bowed roof was far from the first that these ancient stones had supported. There were two stools and a chair, a table, and a rough dresser. The floor was made of flagstones, with straw on them by the entrance. Cooking would be done on the fire, of course, and there was an oven built into the fireplace. Faint scents of woodsmoke gave the place a homey air. A bucket and two large baskets stood in a corner; a couple of garments hung on pegs; a small and very rough image of the Goddess sat on a shelf with flowers laid before it . . . There was no great comfort, but the room was clean and friendly.

He looked around to speak to Quili, and she had vanished. Quiet creaking of ropes came from the other room. He ducked through the other doorway in time to see her stretching out on the bed.

“Very pretty,” he said harshly, aware of his sudden physical response. Her body was every bit as fine as the tight gown had promised.

She twisted a smile and held out her arms to him, but he could see her hands shaking.

“You’re very pretty, apprentice, but you’re trying to distract me. Now put your gown on again and come out here. I want to talk to you.”

He went and sat on the more solid looking of the two stools. In a moment Quili crept in from the other room, dressed again in her threadbare yellow robe, but barefoot. She lit on the edge of the chair, hands clasped, eyes staring down at the floor, long hair falling to hide her face.

Wallie forced his mind back to business. “Tell me about the murdered swordsmen.”

She slid to her knees. “My lord, they were not at fault! They are good people!”

Quili crouched over and began to weep, covering her face with her hands. That was another approach, and probably the last she had left to try. It might be very effective, though—Wallie was not good at bullying little girls.

He let her sob for a while and then said, “That’s enough! Quili, don’t you see that I’m trying to help? I want to hear this story before Adept Nnanji does. Now tell me the truth—and quickly!”

Nnanji was sworn to uphold the sutras. His reaction to an assassination would be as automatic as blinking. A cover-up made it much, much worse, and there was no other explanation for the men’s absence. Nnanji would snap out a denunciation. He was far too impetuous and idealistic to look for extenuating circumstances first. In fact, to a swordsman, there could be no extenuating circumstances for assassination. Nnanji would be prosecutor and Wallie both judge and executioner. He also was sworn to obey the code of the swordsmen, and if he found against Nnanji, then Nnanji had brought false charges and must pay the penalty. The only penalty in such a case was death.

Once before Wallie had tried to avoid the Draconian responsibilities of a man of honor, and that attempt had merely led to much worse bloodshed. It was another test. He could only hope that the wrong answer the last time would be the right answer now.

“He . . . he said he was about fifty, my lord. But I think be was older than that . . . he had bad rheumatism.” She fell silent, again staring at the floor. “He was very fond of animals . . . Adept Motipodi called him the finest horse doctor . . . ”

“Quili, I am trying to help! I do not want to kill anyone, but I must have the facts.”

She straightened up slowly and looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. “He was my husband.”

He had never guessed that she could have had a husband, alive or dead—she seemed too absurdly young. But why would she protect his killer? To save a lover? Then why were the other women aiding her? Why had the men not reported the assassination to the nearest swordsman?

Wallie groaned in horror. “You know what that means? One a week, Quili!” It was utterly barbaric, but that was what the sutras demanded. Of course it would rarely be needed—with that kind of slaughter in the wind, everyone would rush to expose a swordsman killing immediately. That was what the threat was for, to prevent cover-up. But to keep the threat believable, once in a while it must be used.

So Wallie Smith, who had been so reluctant to be a swordsman for the Goddess, was going to be required to prove his bloodthirstiness again? Wholesale, this time.

That was a relief . . . and a surprise. “Then why not . . . For gods’ sakes, apprentice, tell me!”

She was weeping again, broken by the strain, unable to betray fifty lives. He rose, lifted her by the shoulders, and sat her roughly on the chair. Then he began to pace, his head barely clearing the rafters.

She could talk about herself more easily. She had been an orphan, taken in by the temple at Ov. At puberty she had been accepted as a novice in the priesthood. She had expected to progress to Third, for that was normal, and then a decision would have been made for her—whether she should continue her studies in the temple, or be given a job somewhere, in some hamlet that needed a priest.

When she had gained second rank, Quili had been enrolled in the priestess’ choir. One day soon afterward, following a service in which she had taken part, she had been led by her mentor to a meeting with some highrank temple officials. Swordsman Kandoru had been present, and Lady Thondi also.

Thondi, or her son, had recently hired the retired free sword as estate guard. They had supplied a cottage—and now a wife. The owners wanted a swordsman; the workers and slaves would be happier with a priestess in residence; providing one cottage was better economics than providing two. It had been a very convenient arrangement for everyone . . . except Apprentice Quili. By nightfall her oaths had been transferred to a mentor in Pol and she had been legally installed in a stranger’s bed.

Wallie wondered what Honakura would think of the tale. It revealed a very sleazy picture of the priesthood. Like swordsmen, priests were corruptible . . . and perhaps even the temple itself had benefited from Thondi’s generosity. He wondered briefly if his mission was to clean up a venal local clergy, but that task seemed much too trivial to justify so many miracles. The Goddess had held the Chioxin sword for seven hundred years—surely She would not have returned it to the mortal World for any cause so petty.

For the first time there was fire. “He is a senile old drunk! He should be replaced.”

Wallie’s approach had been noted, and the cottage door swung open as he arrived. He stepped inside and wiped the rain from his eyes. Nnanji was on his feet, his face aflame with fury. Nona had been forgotten and only two of the locals remained—the two oldest women, both looking terrified. Cowie was dozing in a corner, Jja and Katanji were being quiet and still and apprehensive, crouched on stools. The room seemed larger and much brighter than it had earlier.

“I know! But you can’t make a denunciation to me, Nnanji. We’re oath brothers. I’m not impartial—how could I find against you?”

Nnanji growled angrily. His lips moved as he worked out the complications; then he did not dispute the point. But a priest could act as judge, also. He swung around to Honakura and met a toothless smirk below a black headband—there was no priest present. Had the old man somehow foreseen this? Was that why he was remaining incognito? No, that was ridiculous . . . but very convenient at the moment.

It was Honakura who answered. “I could see that there was something wrong, my lord. I asked Adept Nnanji to tell me the exact words that had passed between him and Apprentice Quili when they met.”

That would have been no problem for Nnanji. Even Quili had been able to recount enough of it.

Nnanji had failed abysmally in his first assignment as a Fourth. Had he questioned Quili properly, then the ferry boat would still be tied to the jetty. He knew that. He came rigidly to attention. “My lord brother—”

“Never mind!” Wallie said. “Do better next time. Meanwhile we have a small problem. Lady Thondi was undoubtedly an accessory to the murder. She is in league with the sorcerers. She has had plenty of time to send word to Ov. Quili knows of no other way out of here than the Ov road.”

This might be another test, or it might be the start of Wallie’s mission. In either case, the danger was obvious—and extreme.

“Apparently.” Wallie looked over his resources: two swordsmen, two slave women, a boy, a baby, and a beggar. Not much to fight an approaching army of swordsmen killers. He nodded at the woman he thought was called Myi. “Fetch our clothes, please.”

“They’re coming,” Nnanji said snappily. “These two were witnesses to the assassination.”

“Well, old man,” Wallie said to the evilly grinning Honakura, “it seems that you and I must both start believing in sorcerers.”

Swaddled in a blanket and looking like nothing more than a bundle of trash, Honakura was perched on the driver’s bench beside Quili. Wallie had put him there and firmly told him to stop playing stupid games, to bring the girl onto the team. A priest of the Seventh from Hann was the World’s equivalent of a Curial cardinal. Once he revealed his identity, he would be able to convince Quili of anything.

Wallie and the rest sat on wet straw in the back under cloaks and blankets. The rain was getting worse, breeding the rivulets of milky mud that ran down the roadway. Patches of silver light in the fields spoke of standing water, while trees in the distance were washed to a pale blue gray. Unfortunately, the road from Ov would still be passable, or so Quili had said.

The cart lurched and squeaked and jingled. It had no springs, but then it was not moving very quickly. Wallie and Nnanji could have reached the manor sooner on foot, had that not meant leaving the rest of the party at the tenancy, potential hostages. A swordsman was both a soldier and a cop, and Wallie was not sure which of his two roles was dominant at the moment. He was likely to be attacked soon by a brigade of sorcerers, but he was also morally certain that Lady Thondi was guilty of murder. Kandoru had been blatantly betrayed, and Nnanji was not the only swordsman hankering for justice. Whether or not Wallie Smith could now bring himself to decapitate a helpless old woman would be an interesting discovery.

He still was seeing very little of the World. Many stretches of the road had been deepened into a trench by long use. It was flanked by hedges—more practical than fences in the absence of barbed wire—and thus he caught few glimpses of the fields. He could tell only that they were small, irregular, and inset in woodland. The country was rising, and surely the manor could not be far off now.

“This must be your mission, my lord brother.” Nnanji was in a sulk, furious with his own shortcomings. He was holding the edge of a blanket tight round his neck, leaving his head free, but made him look hunchbacked where it humped over his sword hilt. His wet ponytail was dark red, and even his normally invisible eyelashes were showing more than usual.

“Perhaps.” Wallie wore his cover right over himself like a tent, peering out from under it. “But there were only forty or so swordsmen slaughtered in Ov—”

“Bad enough, but not much worse than that battle of Ko you were quoting.” Miracles and the Chioxin sword suggested something more vast than that. Even if Shonsu had somehow been responsible for the loss of Ov—and the reeve had not been Shonsu, but Zandorphino of the Sixth—that would hardly count as a disaster from a god’s viewpoint. “On the other hand, two of the three clues have turned up now—we did come a long way and we are in sorcerer country.”

Vixini slapped cheerfully at the edge of the cart; it made interesting splashes. Wagon rides were exciting.

“That’s what I meant,” Nnanji said. “Sorcerers being found near the River!”

Nnanji tugged his blanket into greater comfort. “Coming down from the hills.”

“Only the usual stories.” Nnanji reached out a hand and patted Cowie’s thigh encouragingly.

“He wouldn’t, would he? I mean, they worship the Fire God, so no one who had any dealings with a sorcerer would tell a priest. They’d tell a swordsman, though!”

This was a complete revelation to Wallie. Just in time, he restrained a blast of temper: why had Nnanji not told him this sooner?

Then Nnanji’s eyes widened. “I thought you would know about them, my lord brother! Did you not have sorcerers in your other—”

Nnanji rubbed wet eyelids. “Well, the only man in the barracks who had met a sorcerer firsthand was Honorable Tarru. I never heard him tell it, but Briu had.” His gaze seemed to go out of focus as he recalled the words . . .

Tarru? Ironic—Wallie had almost enjoyed killing Tarru. “Just the outline, please, Nnanji.”

“Well . . . it was when he was a Second. Long ago. They caught sight of a sorcerer on a donkey and chased him to a village. They surrounded it, but when they searched, he’d vanished. They found the donkey, and his gown, but that was all. They go invisible.”

Nnanji nodded glumly. “Seems so. There are other stories. Two frees came on pilgrimage on Leatherworkers’ Day last year, and one of them said . . . ”

With effortless recall, be rattled off a dozen tales, all retold at least once—yarns spun by members of the guard who had been frees in their youth, or by pilgrim swordsmen granted hospitality in the barracks, or merely tales that had been lying around there for years. The basic theme was always the same. One: Swordsman sees sorcerer. Two: Swordsman kills sorcerer. Three: End of story. A swordsman’s invariable reaction to a sorcerer was instant attack—dog versus cat. If there was a contrary story that began with sorcerer seeing swordsman, then the survivor had not reported it to the barracks.

Sorcerers wore gowns with cowls. Sorcerers’ facemarks were feathers . . . No, no one knew why. Why were farmers’ facemarks triangles? Sorcerers were never found near the River, only in the hills or mountains. There were legends of sorcerer cities—Kra and Pfath and Vul and others—and a few isolated towers. Swordsmen stayed away from those . . . or, again, did not return to report.

Jja caught Wallie’s eye, looking very solemn. “There was a place called Kra south of Plo, master. No one ever went there, but I don’t remember anyone mentioning sorcerers . . . it was in the mountains.” Plo lay far to the south, so that could have nothing to do with these sorcerers.

Nnanji moved on to minstrel ballads. The sorcerers were an evil bunch in those—killing, bewitching, laying on curses—but the minstrels would have selected their material to suit their swordsman audience, so the sampling could be biased. Yet if sorcerers wielded a fraction of the powers attributed to them, then Wallie was facing an impossible situation. The swordsmen’s standard murderous reflex would be the only defense—hit him first, before he knew you were there. But almost certainly Lady Thondi had already reported his arrival, so that would not work this time.

Despite Honakura’s doubts, there really were sorcerers in the World, only not near Hann.

“Vul?” Wallie said. “That was one of the cities? The mountains here are called RegiVul. Maybe Vul is in these mountains.” He thought for a while. “So sorcerers attacked Ov and killed the swordsmen . . . but why? I mean, why now? If they’re half as good as your stories say they are, then they could have done this centuries ago.” The culture of the World was old beyond imagining.

So She had sent Her champion to drive them back into the hills? Nnanji was right—this must be his mission. But Her champion had no idea how to fight invisible killers armed with magic. In fact, Wallie was perhaps the worst swordsman the Goddess could have chosen—his mind retched at the thought of sorcery. All his training was against it. Yet two weeks ago he had not believed in miracles, either.

Then he saw the manor ahead. There were other structures visible in the background—slave quarters, perhaps, and farm buildings—but he ignored those. The big house was doubtless very grand by local standards, but its architecture jarred on him. The proportions were all wrong, and the colors. Most of the stonework was a checker of white and red, its lines cluttered with black or gray pilasters, balconies, and buttresses. The high roofs were tiled in many colors, shining wet, and fussily embellished with green-copper dormers and onion domes. Big windows in the facade looked out over formal gardens, and the rough roadway changed abruptly into a gravel drive leading to a low but imposing staircase. There was his destination, and he could move faster on foot.

He rose, throwing off the cloak. “Nnanji, help the others out when you get there. Katanji, come with me.”

He vaulted over the back of the cart. Katanji scrambled and jumped, and Wallie steadied him as he slipped in the mud. Then the two of them ran ahead.

At the foot of the steps, Wallie paused. “Stay here and keep watch,” he said.

Wallie trotted up the staircase, his boots slapping in shallow puddles. The double doors were large enough to take the horse and cart, and very firmly closed and solid. But this was no castle—big mullioned windows reached to the floor on either side.

He kicked the door three times with the sole of his boot, and it boomed like a drum. Then he peered through one of the windows. The panes were small and leaded, glass manufacture still being primitive in the World, and he could see nothing within. The cart had almost reached Katanji, who was rotating slowly, like a lighthouse beacon.

Squat statuettes of dancing nymphs adorned the red granite balustrades. Wallie selected one of the smaller figures and confirmed that he could move it. He could even throw it well enough to collapse a window in a satisfying crash of shattered glass and twisted lead.

He ducked in through the chasm and saw a black-clad woman hesitating irresolutely ahead of him. She was white-haired and matronly, but a slave nevertheless. Send a slave to greet a Seventh, would they? Normally slaves were safe from violence, being property, but this intruder was obviously not respecting property.

“At once, or I start smashing things!” Wallie turned his attention to the door, swinging the bar up and pulling. His companions were descending from the cart at the bottom of the steps.

The woman had gone scampering across the wide marble floor toward a grandiose staircase. The entrance hallway was impressive, and evidently intended to be so. Tall black pedestals supported statuary—mostly very ugly, bloated nudes—and the walls were clothed in elaborate tapestries. Wallie had seen true luxury in the temple at Hann; this was rank ostentation. Angrily he compared it with Quili’s damp little cottage, but there was probably as much difference again between her humble abode and the estate’s slave quarters. He had promised not to tell the Goddess how to run Her World and he knew that many places on Earth had a similar disparity of wealth, but this conspicuous display enraged him. Lands were always the ultimate riches.

Quili was helping Honakura up the steps and the others were following. Katanji came last, walking backward. Surprisingly, he did not trip.

“No need for apologies, apprentice.” He took hold of her elbow and raised her. “You could not have known, and it was not all your fault. Now lead me to this great hall you mentioned.”

If the entrance had been vulgarly ostentatious, then the great hall was obscenely so, quite large enough to be the throne room of a palace. Acres of parquet floor were dotted with sumptuous rugs, the fireplace could have garaged a car, and the opposite wall was mainly composed of high windows, their centers emblazoned with medallions and sunbursts of gaudy stained glass. On a clearer day, they would have provided a fine view of the River. Huge chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, and there was even a minstrels’ gallery at the far end, above the baronial dining table. Despite several expansive groupings of furniture scattered around, the dominant impression was one of emptiness—a vulgar display of unused space, inhabited only by many more statues. Either someone in the family was a collector, or they were a symbol of wealth in the Ov area.

The visitors paused in the doorway, stunned into silence by such luxury, a truly opulent setting for treachery and murder.

Wallie growled, then said, “I want to see how this crime was committed, Quili. These double doors—were they both open like this?”

Wallie edged his companions out of the way and closed the right flap. “Is that normal?”

“No! I’d never seen it closed before, my lord. I haven’t been here very often, but usually both doors are open.”

Wallie nodded. That sounded like evidence to him. “Now, put Jja where the Lady Thondi was, and Cowie will be the sorcerers.”

Puzzled by this unorthodox procedure, Quili led the women along the hall and placed them near the great fireplace.

Quili frowned, remembering. Then she indicated where the honored guests from Ov had been grouped, and the senior tenants, including the women who had described the crime to Nnanji. Adept Motipodi had been here, several senior workers there . . . Kandoru had been slaughtered before a distinguished audience.

Jja and Cowie remained by the fireplace, where a cheerful blaze crackled, although the room was not cold by usual standards. Vixini had dozed off in his sling. Wallie led Quili back to the door. Nnanji was fretting, Katanji twitching nervously. “Now, where was the other sorcerer?” Quili pointed and Wallie positioned Katanji in the spot, beside the closed door. Nnanji’s face darkened as he recognized an ambush.

Wallie paused, studying the big hall, imagining the crowd of watchers like semitransparent ghosts.

The little priestess sent him a worried glance; she had told him all this twice already. “Adept Motipodi had sent a message, my lord. His honor was arriving by road, with guests. They might include sorcerers. Kandoru was to remain at the tenancy.”

“I had been commanded . . . I stayed with my husband. I was trying to persuade him to leave, my lord.”

And then another message had come: Kandoru was to appear and meet the guests after all.

“Why would he . . . I mean, he did not wear it when he was digging, or hoeing, but . . . ”

“Danger?” Nnanji shouted. “From guests?” Wallie merely nodded. Hospitality should have protected both sides, but so soon after the massacre in Ov there had obviously been danger. Kandoru had known that, but danger would not keep an honorable swordsman from his duty.

With Nnanji playing the victim, Wallie made them act out the crime five or six times, until Quili was sure of her story and Nnanji knew his part. Then he had them run it through without words, while he and the equally intent Honakura watched in silence.

Nnanji-Kandoru marched in through the doorway, Quili a pace behind and slightly to his left. With one side of the door closed, he had no choice in where he walked—good ambush technique. A few steps into the room, he stopped, seeing the audience. Quili almost ran into him.

Then he started to turn and started to draw his sword. When he was facing toward Katanji, the novice whistled three notes to represent the trill of the sorcerer’s magic fife. Nnanji paused as he had been directed, arm raised but sword still sheathed, then crumpled realistically to the floor and thrashed a few times. Quili dropped to her knees beside him. Kandoru had tried to speak, she said, but then his eyes had rolled up . . .

“That’ll do, I think,” Wallie said coldly. Nnanji scrambled to his feet again. “Draw your sword, novice.”

“Put the point on the floor—no, never mind the wood—both hands on the hilt. Right! You stay here . . . Head up! You’re a guard. Let people in, but if anyone tries to leave without my permission, hit him with that sword, as hard as you can.”

“Use the sharp side.” In stern fury Wallie headed for the fireplace, and the others trailed after him.

The playacting might not have done any good at all—but it had. Wallie glanced at Honakura. “Well, old man? Did we learn anything?”

“Apparently, my lord.” He was grinning toothlessly. Swordsmen behaving unconventionally were a source of great enjoyment to the old priest, and he had just witnessed a World first, a reenactment of a crime.

“Katanji—the sorcerer. You started to draw your sword and turn around before the music. That’s right, Apprentice Quili?”

Eyewitnesses in any world were never as reliable as they were in detective stories or the convenient fiction of legal process. Perhaps her memory was at fault—it could only have been a matter of a second or two. But the sequence of events seemed wrong, and the position of the body was significant.

Wallie had thought that his mission would require him to play hero in a barbarian epic, not detective in a whodunnit.

Elegant or not, it had been an ambush, and Lady Thondi had called Kandoru to the meeting.

Everyone except the petrified Katanji had gathered before the blazing fire. Damp clothes steamed, but there was still no sign of Lady Thondi.

Wallie leaned against a life-size marble statue of a dancer, toppling it down on an exquisitely inlaid table—ebony, ivory, and mother-of-pearl.

“Your turn again, brother. Pick another window. Or try a little swordwork on those ropes holding the chandeliers . . . no! Wait—we have company.”

Once she might have had beauty, and, if so, it would have been spectacular. Now her body had thickened, and she leaned on a cane, and her height was lost in a dowager hump. She made a slow and impressive progress along the great room, while light flickered on moving jewels. Her gown was ruffled cobalt silk trimmed in silver lace, with thickly massed pearls concealing her neck and wrists. Another fortune sparkled in the high-piled white hair; fingers and ears and bosom were bright with treasure. Behind her came two self-effacing companions, a middle-aged Fourth and an attractive young Second, but no one was looking at either of those, not even Nnanji.

Her hair had always been white. She was an albino, and when she came at last to Wallie and stared up at him with a face of crumpled parchment, its lines etched deep by fury, he realized how accustomed he had already become to the smooth brown faces of the People. This uncanny pallor was shocking to him and must be much more so to anyone else.

He was younger and a visitor, but he was male and a swordsman. Without turning, she passed her cane to the Fourth behind her, and then made the salute to an equal: “I am Thondi, dancer of the seventh rank, and I give thanks to the Most High . . . ”

Wallie drew his sword and spoke the equally hypocritical reply. He then asked if he might have the honor of presenting Adept Nnanji, oath brother and protégé, and Apprentice Quili. Thondi acknowledged them tersely but did not offer to introduce her companions, nor did she deign to notice the rest of Wallie’s.

Her eyes were milky pink, filmed by age. There was no other color in the death’s-head face that now looked down at Quili—even the lips were the same ivory shade as the cheeks. “Did Adept Motipodi get hold of you, child?”

“No? Well, he has been busy. But my son has changed his mind. He has agreed to accept your suggestion about new slave barns. Motipodi will be seeking your help in pacing them out and planning better sanitation.”

Wallie watched Quili’s reaction with interest. Thondi had bought her once, could she do so again? The priestess flinched and then said quietly, “That is good news, my lady.”

Thondi held out a hand without looking, and the cane was placed in it. She headed for a chair.

“When will construction begin, my lady?” Quili asked softly. “As soon as the work in Ov is completed?”

Lady Thondi seated herself stiffly and settled both hands on her cane. She fixed her inhuman pink-pearl eyes on Wallie. The two other woman huddled in behind her chair, as if wanting to be protected from the swordsmen. “You have a strange way of seeking hospitality, Lord Shonsu.”

It was an extraordinary face. Momentarily the eyes flickered contempt over Nnanji. “I am to be denounced? When a woman is brought to trial, it is customary for her nearest male relative . . . my son is in Ov at present. But by all means, let us hear the charge.”

Two young toughs should have no difficulty in terrorizing one old woman—not when the toughs were armed, and all her menfolk were absent—but this evil old hag was apparently not frightened at all. She was even flaunting a vast fortune in jewelry before the intruders. Wallie’s skin crawled in sudden recollection of Nnanji’s tales of invisibility. Were there sorcerers present already? Or were the jewels a stupendous bluff?

“For technical reasons my oath brother and I cannot bring a formal denunciation.”

Time was short, and the evidence clear. Wallie should not let himself be delayed by argument, but he was fascinated by her cold nerve. “Then perhaps you will relate your side of the story?”

A pink worm of a tongue ran along the bone lips. “The facts are indisputable. Rathazaxo of the Sixth came calling with some—”

“Certainly. A cultivated gentleman, a patron of the arts.” She glanced momentarily at the rubble and firewood Wallie had created.

Lady Thondi wrinkled her nose in disgust. “His honor required assurances that no rebel or fugitive swordsman would be sheltered on our lands. Of course my son and I agreed, and we wished to instruct our retainer accordingly. He was to be allowed to continue his duties here, on condition that he not wear his sword beyond our boundaries. We sent for him. As soon as he walked in that door, he drew and attacked one of our guests. Naturally the man defended himself. It was unfortunate. It was embarrassing.”

“His hips, my lord.” Quili was holding her head up defiantly, standing close by Wallie.

“He did not charge across the room. It is a poor swordsman who cannot draw faster than he can turn, especially one with a sore hip. He was attacked from behind. You had a sorcerer concealed just inside the door.”

Exactly! She was a formidable opponent, and Wallie no longer felt guilty about bullying an old woman. “And you send your male employees away to clear land in this downpour? Is that the act of an innocent woman?”

“You are a better butcher than farmer, Lord Shonsu. Try uprooting gorse bushes in dry weather sometime.”

Wallie would be enjoying this tussle of wits if he were not himself in urgent danger. “I do not believe you, my lady. I think you are playing for time, until your sorcerer friends arrive.”

The albino’s eyes narrowed within their enshrouding wrinkles. “I have no need to play for time, Lord Shonsu. If you plan to kill me, then please go ahead and try.”

“I would not dirty my sword,” Wallie said, and Nnanji growled angrily behind his left shoulder.

At that, a thunderclap of hope hit Wallie. He swung around and smiled at his incensed, quivering young oath brother. “The third clue!”

But Wallie turned back to face Thondi. Now he knew what he needed from this vicious hag. Could he somehow wring cooperation from her?

“I cannot hold a proper trial, so I shall leave you and your son to the justice of the gods, Lady Thondi. But a swordsman was killed in this house. I am going to burn it to the ground.”

She snarled at him, opening a pink mouth in the blanched face, showing yellow stumps of teeth. The jewels on her fingers flashed as she gripped her cane more tightly. So she was vulnerable. There were no unseen demons hovering overhead.

“The smoke will bring your servants hurrying back. I shall empower them as a posse—”

“Ambush!” Nnanji whooped with excitement. In theory it would be possible. Although the craft was a closed shop, the sutras allowed a swordsman to arm civilians in an emergency. An isolated settlement like this would surely have a supply of swords somewhere. But in practice it would not work—not in this case—and Thondi saw that at once.

Sane men prefer to be on the winning side. Sorcerers apparently slew swordsmen as easily as spitting grape seeds.

“You will be hostage for their cooperation, my lady.” Wallie gestured toward Katanji, still guarding the door. “That boy will have a sword at your throat.”

Wallie shrugged and headed for the fireplace, Jja moving out of his way, wide-eyed at his behavior. He lifted a blazing log with the tongs and walked toward the nearest drapes. “When sanity fails, then madness must suffice. It is my only hope—” He glanced back at the old woman. “—for there is no escape route, is there?”

“Yes, there is,” said a new voice. “And we had better take it quickly, my lord. The sorcerers will soon be here.”

Wallie threw the log back in the fireplace and turned to meet the youth who was striding along the room, wiping his hair with a muddy towel. His legs were still wet and very dirty below short leather breeches of a type Wallie had seen muleskinners wear. His feet were bare and dry, so he had removed riding boots before he came in. There were still smears of mud on his face, chest, and arms.

Lady Thondi was rigid with fury, pink blotches like bruises blooming on her cheekbones.

The lad shot her an angry glance, his youth making it seem more petulant than dangerous. He was short and slight, with curly hair and a narrow, pinched face. He was probably no older than Nnanji, but much shorter and even bonier . . . and extraordinarily young for his rank. Being athletes, swordsmen gained promotion much earlier than other crafts, yet this boy’s brow already bore three arches. He raised hands in salute. “I am Garadooi, builder of the third rank . . . ”

“I am Shonsu . . . ” Wallie’s suspicious mind was dancing with many dark possibilities. A sorcerer materializing in time to save the house from vandalism? A cleverly prearranged double cross? This newcomer’s arrival smacked of miracle, and Wallie had been warned not to expect miracles. Yet he had already seen that flicker in Thondi’s eyes—there was a way out, and she would probably have shown it to him herself, had he agreed to spare her house.

As he sheathed his sword, the old harridan growled, “There is your hostage, Shonsu!” Surrender confirmed.

“Only me, my lord. Maybe none tomorrow—my father will disown me or bury me in a foundation somewhere.” He grinned somewhat ruefully, but also proudly.

A shadow fell. “I had a good friend named Farafini, my lord. My best friend . . . ”

“He was a swordsman. The demons ripped him to pieces.” He turned to regard his grandmother with defiant contempt. “Also, I am ashamed at what was done to Kandoru of the Third in this house. I was not here, but I heard.” He looked back at Wallie. “I would make amends, if She will permit it. You are Her servants.”

“Young idiot!” Thondi thumped her cane on the floor. “You meddle in affairs that do not concern you. Be silent!”

“There are sorcerers coming. She . . . ” He gestured at his seething grandmother. “She sent word of you to the tower. The messenger came to the house afterward. I went straight to the stables, but the sorcerers were already on the road. A dozen of them, I was told.”

Wallie kept his face as impassive as he could, but a dozen sorcerers sounded like more than enough. Yet, if they were so powerful, why so many? Were they not confident? Then he remembered that the first reports of swordsmen being sighted would not likely have included their numbers. The sorcerers had been prepared to send a dozen against a force of unknown size—plenty confident. By now they must have intercepted a second message, telling them that they need only worry about Nnanji and himself. Would some have turned back?

“There is a bend in the River,” Quili said. “A shortcut.” It was a shock to hear a new voice break in, but comforting to know that she was vouching for this so-convenient newcomer.

Garadooi nodded. “But it could not carry twelve horsemen and three packhorses.”

“They cannot be more than an hour behind me, my lord, although I ruined a good horse.” He was young enough to brag.

“There were no other horsemen on this ferry?” Wallie asked. He would have sent a scout ahead.

The boy shook his head and bent to pick up the towel. “It docked just as I arrived, after they had gone by. Very fortunate! I paid gold to have it leave at once.” Again he glared juvenile defiance at his grandmother.

“I hope the gods have not already closed it, my lord. There is a trail across the mountains. Two days to Aus.”

“A city . . . not as large as Ov, I think. I’ve never been there. I only know this end of the road. But traders use it.”

Land travel was very rare in the World, Wallie knew. A trader road was almost a miracle, and miracles would not be granted. The gods wanted great deeds done by mortals, not their own easy answers. It made sense, but it was suspiciously convenient.

A low growling noise intruded on Wallie’s racing thoughts, coming from a red-haired, white-lipped swordsman. “Flight?” Nnanji exclaimed.

“My lord brother!” He was horrified, outraged. Honor forbade flight and honor could even move Nnanji now to argue with his hero, his mentor and oath brother. “You asked me only this morning to tell you when I thought you were making a mistake . . . ”

“It is the third clue, Nnanji. I haven’t time to explain, but avoiding battle is no shame in a case like this. Trust me!”

Nnanji fell silent, paler than ever, doubting. He probably still thought that the posse idea would work. He probably would not care very much if it did not—death was preferable to dishonor. Nnanji was certainly no actor, and Wallie was beginning to suspect that he did not perceive fear at all. His was not true courage, the conquest of fear, he seemed to lack the emotion in the first place.

Wallie studied Garadooi. The boy tried to hold his gaze and failed. “You realize that if you betray me to the sorcerers, I shall kill you?”

He nodded. “I shall not betray you, my lord—but time is very short. We must leave soon!”

It could all be a trick to make Wallie spare the family home. Thondi was capable of any deception, but he found it hard to believe that this boy was.

Garadooi flushed under his mud smears. “Money, my lord! I am a flunky for my father; that is all.”

Thondi banged her cane on the floor. “And less than that when he hears of this madness!”

Her grandson turned on her. “I don’t care!” he shouted in sudden rage. “You know I never wanted to be a builder!”

Garadooi was turning very red. “A priest, my lord. And this is one way in which I may serve Her, by helping Her swordsmen against the assassins. And I don’t care if they do disown me!”

Poor little rich boy, rebelling against his own guilt . . . if this was acting, it was magnificent. Wallie looked to his companions. “We have no time for discussion, but I want your votes. Can I trust him, yes or no? Old man?”

Honakura had long since settled into a huge, down-filled chair, being almost swallowed whole by it. “Are there fords on this trail, builder? Or bridges?”

“Both.” The boy stared in astonishment at the Nameless One. Perhaps he had not noticed him before.

“Then of course we must trust him,” Honakura said. “The rain does seem to be getting heavier, does it not?”

The priestess studied Garadooi for a moment and then dropped her eyes. “I think so, my lord.”

“Oh! Yes, I have heard of that, my lord. I did not know it went anywhere, except up into the mountains.”

Jja was horrified that a slave should be asked for an opinion and be required to judge the free. Then she saw that Wallie would insist on an answer. She thought for a moment and then nodded, but it had been Quili she studied, not Garadooi. Wallie wondered why . . .

“Don’t be absurd!” Spraying spit, Honakura began to struggle out of the chair. “I am part of the mission. Seven may be increased by temporary guides—or else we do not count babies and Nameless Ones. I am coming! So is Apprentice Quili.”

“Lord Shonsu!” Garadooi said. “I would not presume to argue with you, my lord, but horses alone will be much faster than a wagon. The track may not be passable even for them. A wagon . . . ”

“If traders use the road, then it must be capable of taking wagons. We need supplies—food, bedding, axes, ropes, chains—and loading a wagon is much faster than loading horses. Anyway, there will be no pursuit. Lady Thondi will advise the sorcerers that we nave left by boat. Is that not so, my lady?”

She bared her yellow fangs again. “I wonder why I should lift a hand to save such a fool. He was right—his father will disown him.”

Bowing her head over the jewel-encrusted hands on the cane, Thondi whispered, “If you will spare my home.” It was a touching note. She must have been a most dramatic performer in her dancing career, even if some of her rank had been acquired by bribery, like her grandson’s.

“I shall accompany you also, my lord.” That was Quili, sounding quiet but determined.

The sorcerers would question her. If she refused to answer they would know that the story they had been given was false—Honakura had seen that already. And if the wagon could not get through, then she could bring it back with Cowie and the old man, while the others proceeded on horseback.

“Very well. We’ll try it with eight. Are there that many horses available?”

“Then we must go.” He looked to the defeated Lady Thondi. “And you will now send a messenger to meet the sorcerers, to say that we have departed the way we came.” That would not likely stop them coming to the manor, but it might make them slow down to spare their mounts. “You will divert any pursuit, or I swear that I shall kill your grandson.” Wallie could never be ruthless enough to kill a hostage, but formal oaths required drawing his sword and using a ritual formula, so he was not quite committing perjury.

Wallie had missed a bet. He had been concentrating on the old woman, ignoring the two companions who still stood behind her. They were not so skilled at dissimulation, and he had caught a vanishing trace of . . . something . . . on the face of the pretty Second. Now it was gone, leaving him with a nagging certainty that he had overlooked . . . something.

The stable was a long building, barrel-vaulted and gloomy like a tunnel, both musty and acrid with horse smell. For the first time since stepping off the ferry, Wallie found himself in a crowd—forty or fifty male slaves of various ages. Whatever the manor’s free servants were doing, wherever they had taken refuge, they were obviously not uprooting gorse bushes—not when the slaves were sitting idle in the warm shelter of the stable, enjoying a holiday. They clustered eagerly around to greet Quili and Garadooi, largely ignoring the swordsmen.

In the interests of haste and mobility, Quili’s two-wheel cart would suffice instead of a wagon, and all that was needed was to load it and acquire additional horses. Wallie Smith’s equestrian experience had been limited to a few childhood riding lessons, and either Shonsu had avoided horses completely, or his knowledge had not been passed along. Nor had Wallie ever organized a pack trip, although his work with fatherless boys on a certain other planet had given him a fair knowledge of camping.

But young Garadooi seemed to know what was needed and was eager to display his competence. He began shouting orders as soon as the cart rattled in through the big doorway and came to a shuddering halt on the cobbled floor. Wallie stepped back into the shadows and let him take charge, insisting only that axes and chains and ropes be included. He knew what Honakura had in mind; more and more the old man’s priestly superstitions seemed to be working out as effective predictions of the ways of gods.

“Hunting, my lord,” Garadooi explained proudly at a momentary pause in the confusion. “That’s how I know about the trail, too—the men used to take me with them in the fall, when they went hunting.”

Those would be free men, of course, yet obviously young Garadooi was friendly with the slaves, also. The younger men, especially, greeted him as a too-long-absent buddy, and he responded in the same fashion—inquiring after this one’s health, kidding about that one’s love life, promising to investigate complaints. In return they swarmed to help. They ran to fetch the things he wanted and worked with a haste and efficiency quite foreign to slave labor. Wallie’s estimation of the poor little rich boy rose by several notches.

Nnanji, also, was now caught up in the excitement of action, yet still not convinced that flight was permissible behavior. “Explain this third clue, my lord brother?”

“I told you—I tried to enlist a half-dozen or so swordsmen. Most Sevenths would have at least that many, wouldn’t they?”

“And therefore they would stay and fight. I was blocked, Nnanji. I have no army, although my sword needs guarding. It means that I am not supposed to fight. We were brought here to learn, that’s all.”

“But . . . ” Nnanji wrinkled his snub nose. “But when do we fight, then?”

Better still. Reassured, Nnanji grinned and unconsciously tested that his sword moved easily in its scabbard.

The previous day the adventurers had escaped from the temple on mules—but the mules had been strung nose to tail. “How are you on a horse?”

The grin melted away. Nnanji confessed that he’d only been on a horse twice. As a First he’d been taken to see the guard post at the jetty, riding there and back. When a mount was produced for him and he clambered aboard, his inexperience was obvious. His long legs hung down like bell ropes, and the horse flattened its ears in contempt. The slaves turned away to hide smirks.

Katanji, displaying his usual ability to astonish, scrambled into the saddle with much greater confidence and ability. The animal was frisky, but he soothed it and brought it under control. Then he smiled down in fake modesty at Wallie and explained that he had helped out muleskinners a time or two.

Wallie wished that he could do as well. The furry, big-nosed steeds were long bodied but low slung. He was assigned the largest available, an ancient and docile cart horse, but he knew he must look as absurd as Nnanji. The saddle was not big enough for him, the stirrup had not yet been invented in the World, and his feet almost touched the ground. Wet kilts were poor riding garb. Moreover, he was still sore from the previous day’s mule trip—the coming journey would not be a pleasant experience.

Then they were off, and the rain was certainly growing heavier. Quili drove the cart, loaded with supplies and passengers. Spare horses trailed behind it on tethers, while the swordsmen and Garadooi brought up the rear. At first their way wandered across fields and through orchards, heading inland and uphill. The traders’ trail joined the Ov road near Pol, Garadooi explained, but he knew a shortcut to it. Hooves splattered mud and five minutes sufficed to make everyone filthy. Every tiny hollow had become a lake. Then the ascent grew steeper, and the cart slowed the party’s progress.

They should be well hidden from any observers—by the hedges, by the many little woods, and by the curtains of mist drifting across the landscape—but they were leaving an obvious trail. Wallie could only hope that the inevitable pursuit would be delayed for a while yet. Even had he trusted Thondi—and he did not—it was inconceivable that the sorcerers would not investigate further. The swordsmen’s barbaric ritual of retribution was working against him. Every free man on the estate must be in mortal fear of that, so the sorcerers would have willing allies if they cared to ask. Sooner or later they would give chase.

Again he felt the strange disorientation of jet lag. He was unsure what the time of day was, and the cloud-painted sky provided no clue. He stifled yawns, knowing that he would be much more weary before he could rest.

They had been following the main trail for some distance before he realized that they had reached it, for it was primitive and indistinct, wandering vaguely across open pasture on the hills. In such a downpour he found it hard to remember that this was an arid land, but the prickly trees stood far apart, and scattered pens of piled stones showed that the wild, unfenced moorland was good for little but raising sheep. Lonely shepherd cottages crouched in hollows, seemingly deserted as all sensible men took refuge from the weather.

Axle creaked, hooves plodded, rain fell. Signs of human life dwindled away. Gradually the country grew more hilly, rising and falling on a greater scale. Then the ridges were capped by cindery black rubble, the valleys held running water, and the going had become difficult. The rain increased, moved now by a cold, blustery wind.

If Honakura was reading the gods’ program correctly, the door was going to be shut behind the fugitives. By the third ford, Wallie began to fear that it might close before they were through. The water swirled angrily around his horse’s knees. Some of the animals balked and had to be soothed by Garadooi.

No one seemed worried about piranha. Honakura had said that they avoided fast water, but this complete lack of concern suggested that they were not found in tributary streams, that only the River itself was instant death. Wallie did not ask.

The fourth crossing was even worse. Here the valley floor was wooded and the trail marked by an obvious cut in the trees. The stream foamed and rumbled, lapping out beyond its banks to conceal its depth.

Garadooi studied it apprehensively. “I think the horses can make it, my lord; but the cart may not.”

He rode ahead, being the best horseman, and even he had trouble persuading his mount to enter the stream. He crossed and then returned, shivering and worried.

“Then we must trust in the gods!” But Wallie wished he felt as confident as he was trying to appear.

Without little Garadooi’s expertise they would never have managed that fourth ford. He took two horses across, left one, and returned to drive the cart. It skittered sideways in the rush of water, but he controlled the panicking horse and fought through to the far bank. He came back again and formed the more docile animals into a string, then led them across with the other travelers clinging tight on their backs. Finally he persuaded the rest of the horses, one by one. At last the party formed up as before and trailed off wetly through the trees. But they were making poor time. When the sorcerers learned of their flight and followed with fresh mounts, they would rapidly overtake the fugitives.

Another bare ridge . . . another valley . . . After a while they all seemed to blur into a single unending torment of rain, punctuated by the colder ordeals of fords. For long stretches Wallie walked, leading his horse; Shonsu’s giant stride had no trouble keeping up with the cart. Once in a while, when downpour yielded briefly to drizzle, he saw a distant gleam off the River, far away beyond the ridges, and far below. The clouds were closer overhead.

Then they came to the bridge. It was built in three spans, logs supported on pilings, but the water was almost level with the deck. This was no mere swollen stream; this was a bloated mountain torrent that had spread far beyond its banks, reaching almost to the trees. The ramps at either end had been bypassed, so that the whole structure stood in the flood, like an anchored raft.

Wallie stopped his horse’s feet at the edge of the water. Out as far as the bridge ramps it was smooth and slow-moving, therefore not deep; but in the center it surged and swirled around the pilings. The current would be undermining the supports, for they could not be deep rooted. Even as he watched, floating tree trunks were impacting the bridge.

“I suspect that it will not last long, anyway,” he said, having to raise his voice over the noise of the water. “And certainly this can not be forded.”

“It is not the bridge I remember, my lord. I have not been up here for two or three years. You saw where the trail had been widened?”

“Someone has been improving the road. This bridge is quite new. Do you suppose . . . ”

“Nowhere. There is supposed to be an old mine along here somewhere, but I thought it was abandoned.”

But Garadooi did not know, and obviously the first task was to cross the bridge. The water was axle-deep on the cart when they reached the gentle ramp leading up to the deck. The bridge quivered and trembled as the travelers crossed, but finally they all stood on the far bank—not exactly on dry ground, but beyond the reach of the flood.

Both upstream and downstream the valley seemed to narrow, and there the River would move more swiftly. “I think this is where we must try to block the road,” Wallie said. “And we must stop soon, anyway.” Honakura was blue-lipped with cold and exhausted by the jolting of the cart. Even Jja and Cowie looked close to their limits, and Nnanji and his brother were not in much better shape. And the light was failing.

“Good! Then Nnanji and I will deal with the bridge. Leave us the axes and pinch bars. You go on and get a fire going.”

Wallie shook his head. “I could not get a horse back out there again. No—there’s no need,” he added as the youth was about to offer to try. “I’m sure we can manage with bare hands.”

Wallie laughed and thumped him on the shoulder. “You have done a great service for the Goddess this day, builder. Tonight I’ll tell you just how great. And don’t worry if we’re some time—I shall keep watch here until dark. Now be gone!”

So Wallie and Nnanji remained and the rest of the party headed off into the trees. Two abandoned horses whinnied anxiously and jerked at their tethers.

Wallie laid ax and bar over his shoulder and studied the bridge for a moment. The piles stood in pairs, each pair topped by a heavy crosspiece. In dry weather, of course, he would simply chop down those piles, but he could not get at them now. Three long and massive wooden beams connected each set, like girders, and the corduroy decking was lashed on with tarred rope. The decking would be easy. After that was removed no horse would be able to cross, but a foolhardy man might walk one of the beams, so those would have to come down, also.

“My lord brother,” Nnanji sounded wistful as he fell into step, “would this not be good place to set an ambush?”

It would, of course, if an ambush made sense. The trail was a greasy-floored canyon through thick pine woods, already gloomy and about to become very dark. It was little wider than a footpath, and a rope strung at knee height would almost certainly bring down the lead horse, perhaps several.

“For gods’ sakes!” Wallie said. “Yes. But why ambush when you can be certain of stopping them? That’s stupid!”

“Because—you said it yourself—there’s no honor in fighting sorcerers. This is murder, Nnanji! Brigands, swordsmen killers! I wouldn’t run from a challenge—”

“But I’m sure as hell not going to take on impossible odds if I don’t have to!” They were back at the water, and Wallie began to wade, testing every step, already feeling the cold through the leather of his boots. “You’re a Fourth now. You’re supposed to be competent to give orders to Thirds, qualified swordsmen, so think! Don’t be so brainless.”

Wallie shot him a rueful glance. “Sorry!” He was tired and worried and jet-lagged, but he ought not to be taking it out on Nnanji. His left boot filled and tried to fall off as he lifted his foot. “All right. So you’re a Fourth. I assume you want to go on and try for Fifth?”

“Why not? Well, you’ll have to start thinking about responsibility, now—judgment and planning. The sutras will help, of course. You’re up to eight hundred and three. You’ve noticed how they change? The early ones deal with practical things, like looking after your sword. The later ones have begun to teach you tactics, right?” The water was lapping Wallie’s kilt and tugging hard at him. He reached out a hand and gripped Nnanji’s arm so that they could support each other. The river was certainly still rising.

“From here on, you’re into strategy, in fact I’ll give you the next sutra right now!”

With icy water halfway up his thighs, Nnanji turned to grin. “Do we have to sit down, my lord brother?”

“I think we’ll dispense with—oops!” Wallie recovered his footing, and they pushed on through the sadistic cold torrent. “I shall try to dispense with sitting down. I didn’t mean the whole sutra, anyway, just the epigram: ‘Only cats fight in the dark.’ “

“You tell me.” Wallie stumbled again. The bridge stood higher than the banks, ending in low ramps of dirt and corduroy, but now the current was sucking away the fill, and most of the logs had gone, also. He scrambled blindly up the remains to get out of the water. Then be helped Nnanji up. He bent his legs to tip water from his boots, wondering if his toes had died.

“Oh!” Nnanji was silent as they squelched along the shivering bridge to the third support. “It means ‘Don’t fight without knowing who you’re fighting’?”

“More or less. You take that side, I’ll do this.” They began chopping the bindings that held the wooden deck. “Who, or what, or how . . . appropriate, is it not?”

They soon established a pattern. The pinch bars were not needed, for only lashings held the logs to the beams. Wallie cut one side and Nnanji the other. Then Nnanji hit the center tie and Wallie pushed the freed log sideways, away into the stream. The water was halfway up the beams now.

Of course! Now he saw. That was why Wallie Smith had been chosen to succeed Shonsu. True, he had a deeply ingrained prejudice against believing in sorcery, but he had already accepted that it could exist in this World. The evidence of Kandoru’s murder was convincing, and Garadooi had been telling of demons loose in Ov. So Wallie would believe in sorcerers. But he also had scientific training. He could analyze a problem in a way that no other swordsman ever could.

Half the center span had been stripped, exposing the three long beams. A circus horse might cross on one of those in dry weather, but the bravest of riders would never risk such a feat in rain, above a roaring torrent. Yet an agile man on foot might try it.

“We need to know what they can do?” Nnanji asked, pausing to catch his breath. Bridge smashing was warm work, even in heavy rain.

The bridge uttered a loud warning. Wallie stopped and regarded it warily. He did not intend to go down with the ship, and the gods might be about to complete his work for him. There was a definite sideways sag now, the structure starting to fail under the combined efforts of men and river. Flotsam had collected thickly on the upstream side, creating drag. Piles were tilting as their supporting rubble was washed away.

“Let’s go!” The two of them began to run. They had barely reached the ramp when an even louder creaking announced the end. Weakened by their work, the center span succumbed. Beams split, lashings snapped, spars splintered and sprang skyward. An instant’s foam, and the middle of the bridge had vanished. Floating debris showed momentarily, rushing away downstream.

“That ought to hold them,” Wallie said with some satisfaction. Quite likely the rest of the structure would follow of its own accord now. Perhaps the whole thing would have gone anyway, but gods were well known for helping those who helped themselves.

That left the problem of returning to shore, and it proved to be harder than the journey out. Twice Nnanji’s feet were swept from under him, and only Wallie’s stout grip saved him from following the center of the bridge away into the unknown. Once Wallie stepped in a hollow, sat down, and submerged completely. But eventually they staggered out of the water, shivering and coughing.

They emptied their boots again and began jumping up and down and thumping arms to get warm. The sky was darkening, and they had a cave to find, but some hunch told Wallie that he ought to wait around a little while yet.

“What did you mean, ‘Need even more to know what they can’t do’?” The question came out in puffs as he jogged in place, but Nnanji was notable for his tenacity.

“One of your minstrel ballads told how a sorcerer changed himself into an eagle, didn’t it?”

“Well, they didn’t fly from Ov; they rode horses. And that’s why I’m waiting here. Maybe they can fly across the river.”

“There must be a way to fight sorcerers. The Goddess wouldn’t have given me an impossible task, would She?”

“So they must have a weakness, and I have to find it. Forty men died in Ov.”

Garadooi had told them. He had not been present, but he had been awakened by the noise—half the city had. A line of sorcerers had appeared in the main square before dawn and sent a challenge to the reeve. The Honorable Zandorphino had marched out with his entire force. The sorcerers had begun a chant. The swordsmen had charged. Fire demons had appeared and slaughtered them to the last man. No one had survived. Even trees and statues had been demolished by the demons’ fury, walls and storefronts smashed in, blood splattered over upper-story windows. In minutes the whole garrison had been shredded. Garadooi had found the body of his friend Farafini, charred and chewed and mangled, with one leg ripped off and his sword broken.

Wallie’s hunch had paid off. Against a dark sky, across a darker skyline, figures moved—three or more. He might have missed some, but riders had just come over the top of the opposite ridge and vanished down into the gloom, heading his way.

Wallie ran for the mounts, with Nnanji close behind, inevitably asking, “Why?”

That might not be true. Rain might stifle the scent, but it would be a wise precaution. So they rode the wet and unhappy horses farther away from the river and tethered them again. Then the two men hurried back along a trail that was rapidly becoming a stream in its own right.

Wallie removed his sword and laid it by his feet, then made Nnanji do the same—another precaution, against reflections. They stood shivering in the shadows and waited to see if sorcerers could fly across rivers. Could they sense watching swordsmen and send demons against them?

Nothing seemed to happen. Another span of the bridge had gone, and the third was awash. The light was so poor now that the forest on the opposite bank was a black wall, and the roar of the bright silver river drowned out everything except the thumping of Wallie’s heart and a faint chattering of teeth from Nnanji.

“I don’t think I would mind a small fire demon, right now.” Wallie chuckled softly.

In a world of flint and steel, there was no way to make fire appear like that—no matches or cigarette lighters. It flickered between the trunks, and Wallie thought he caught a glimpse of cowled figures, a flash of orange that might mean a sorcerer of the Fourth. Then the glow faded away, and darkness returned. “A demon?”

“I don’t think so,” Wallie said. “I’m only guessing, but I think they were checking our tracks. They’ve seen the bridge. Now they know they’ve lost us. Unless they can fly.”

Another sorcerer ability—they could magic up fire at will. But why so brief? In a dark, wet forest, light would be useful. Why let it go out so soon? Was that a limit to their ability, even if not a very useful one to know?

There was no more fire. There were no more signs of the sorcerers among the trees. Time crawled like glaciers. Frozen to his soul, Wallie was about to give up when Nnanji muttered and pointed. Vague figures crossed the skyline again. This time they counted four of them and a pack horse, retreating. The sorcerers had departed, balked of their quarry, heading home on a long ride over the hills.

Whereas the two chilled swordsmen could now go in search of warmth and shelter only half a league away. They were coming off best this time.

“Let’s go,” Wallie said. “It’s been an instructive day, but don’t overlook that last lesson, my young friend!”

BOOK ONE:

HOW THE SWORDSMAN RAN AWAY