BOOK FOUR:

HOW THE SWORDSMAN EARNED AN ARMY

†

Casr, next city after Dri, lay also on the right bank, swordsman country. The Wind God continued to perform His duties apathetically, and when at last Casr came in sight, one hot and tranquil afternoon, Wallie was sufficiently recovered to be out of doors. Wearing nothing but his kilt, he sprawled on a hatch cover with his head on a pillow, soaking up sunshine like a millionaire on a private yacht. The boards were warm beneath him, and sails filled the sky.

By him lay his crutch, made for him by Sailor Holiyi. On his other side sat Jja, clad now in sailor breechclout and bra sash. They had to be black for a slave, of course, but they showed off her delectable figure in a way that Wallie found thunderously provocative. From time to time he would squeeze her hand, or she would squeeze his, and then they would smile to each other in silent contentment. Thana, praise to the Most High, had at last become discouraged in her wooing and was nowhere around.

The World crawled along at its leisurely preindustrial pace. It was a very peaceful way to go to war. Wallie was being given time to recover his health and apparently he was going to make a full recovery. The pious might class that as a miracle cure.

Sailors sauntered by upon their daily tasks, tending ship and children, clothes and food. The glances they sent his way were at best friendly, at worst respectfully polite . . . and that was another miracle. Their former hostility had vanished, being replaced by a grudging acceptance of the passengers. Brota had even found cabins for them, doubling up youngsters and clearing out storage.

Up on the poop, steel clashed on steel as Nnanji coached Mata. Since his mentor had uncovered that curiously ambiguous sutra, ship life had been transformed for him from a hell of boredom to a heaven of day-long fencing. No longer was he restricted to teaching Thana, Katanji, and Matarro. The sailors welcomed the instruction. On the River, it was wise insurance.

Wallie was still savoring that thought when a shadow warned him and he raised his eyes to see the humorless face of Tomiyano like a dark cloud in the sky. He sat up.

“Casr in sight . . . my lord.” Tomiyano no longer thought murder when he looked at Shonsu, but neither did he experience ecstasies of brotherly love. “Just wondering if you felt able to recruit some swordsmen yet?” He was obviously resigned to a negative reply.

Wallie shook his head. He tried a smile, but it was absorbed and not reflected. Moving the crutch out of the way, he gestured to the hatch beside him.

“Not yet, Captain. But sit a moment and let’s discuss it.”

Tomiyano shrugged and perched on the edge as if not planning to stay long. His bruises were gone now, the scrapes healed. The burn on his face had developed white strands of scar tissue. A proud man—proud of his ship, now appropriated by the gods; proud of his physical self, eclipsed by the titanic presence of Shonsu; proud once of his independence . . . 

“I’m not fit for duty yet,” Wallie said. “But one day, Captain, you’ll get your ship back. One day I’ll have cleaned up the sorcerers. Then we’ll both be free agents. And perhaps, when that day comes, you and I can meet in a bar somewhere and clean that up together? Or clean up each other, if you prefer. I’ll spot you one friend or two chair legs, and I’ll flatten the furniture with you. After that’s over, we could tear up the whole dock front? Go wenching and start a legend? Build the sort of hangover that makes a man suicidal? Riot and pillage and . . . ”

Tomiyano’s face stayed wooden. He laid his hands on the hatch as if about to rise. “Anything else, my lord?”

Wallie sighed—wrong approach. “Yes. After Casr, I believe, comes Sen. But that’s left bank. Next swordsman city is Tau . . . a week, maybe?”

“If we get some decent wind.”

“Well, I should be mobile by then.”

“You’ll be disembarking in Tau?” The sailor’s expression was cautious.

Wallie knew what was bothering him. “As soon as I’m fit and we reach a city with some reasonable swordsmen, then your obligations are ended, the contract fulfilled. We’ll disembark. Fair enough?”

The sailor was also a trader. “Define ‘reasonable swordsmen.’ ”

“A pair of Thirds? Able-bodied types, of course. Yes, I’d say that two Thirds would do to start with. They, at least, could cover my back.”

The sailor nodded and again seemed about to depart.

“Stay awhile,” Wallie said. “If you have a minute? I’ve a problem you may be able to help me with.”

Tomiyano settled back, his face revealing nothing, but at that moment an outburst of laughter came wafting down from the fencers and their audience on the poop, with Nnanji’s the loudest of all. The captain glanced that way, and his eyes narrowed.

“Now there’s a miracle for you,” Wallie said softly.

“Miracle?”

“Nnanji. Not many men can overcome their own prejudices as he did, Captain.”

Tomiyano scowled. “Prejudices? Prejudices would be opinions not based upon experience, would they not?”

“Or on experiences not relevant.” Wallie found it hard to be patient around Tomiyano. “Think what he started with—years of consorting with almost no one but swordsmen. Of course he regarded civilians with scorn—it was how he was trained to think. He was also taught that assassination was an absolutely unforgivable crime, the ultimate atrocity—”

“You disagree with that oath he swore?”

“Not in the slightest. What I mean is that he found that his training was inappropriate and he rose above it. Few people ever do that, Captain. The old man swears he played no part—it was all Nnanji’s idea. When we first came aboard, he believed that you and your family should be proud to serve him, just because he was a swordsman. Now he regards you as friends and allies. That’s quite a feat of adjustment, is it not?”

“It’s an improvement.”

“And you? You believed that all swordsmen were murderers and rapists. How are your prejudices coming along, Sailor Tomiyano?”

The captain flushed. “My opinions were based on experience.”

“But not relevant experience.”

“I admit I was proved wrong, in your case. Only in your case.”

Wallie shrugged, knowing that most swordsmen would have been ready to draw blood for that remark. But a ship’s captain ought to appreciate leadership, and Nnanji had demonstrated a faculty for leadership that Wallie had never suspected behind that flippant juvenile grin. He had been guilty of prejudice himself, thinking of his young assistant as merely a useful ax-man and a handy walking reference library. So there was another niggling question: how large a part was Nnanji destined to play in Shonsu’s quest?

Tomiyano went back to business. “What was the problem you wanted to discuss?”

“In a sense, my problem is knowing what my problem is, if you can follow that. A god told me I had a mission, but he didn’t say what it involved, just that it would be revealed to me. Well, now I’ve met the sorcerers, so I know what I’m supposed to do, even if I still don’t know how. But he also gave me a riddle.”

The sailor’s eyebrows pushed the three shipmarks up into his chestnut hair. Petulance succumbed to curiosity. “A riddle, my lord?”

“A riddle. And this is the part that concerns you:

“We assume that a swordsman of my rank qualifies as being mighty, and spurning is a mild description of what I got in Aus.”

Obviously intrigued, Tomiyano scratched his head. “How do you earn an army?” he asked warily.

He did not speak the natural continuation of the question: How did Lord Shonsu earn an army after what he had done in Aus? If that tale arrived before him, he would be refused at best and denounced at worst. If it became known after he had enlisted swordsmen, then it would detonate a mutiny. His contract with Brota had specified that he was to be given passage to the nearest city where he could recruit swordsmen, but could Shonsu ever recruit swordsmen now?

Which might be why Honakura had been suggesting that Sapphire’s crew might be the army in question. They had all been nimble with a sword even before Nnanji began his lessons, and his training was rapidly giving them a versatility and polish they had never had before. Nevertheless, Wallie could not believe that he was expected to fight several cities’ worth of sorcerers with a dozen or so amateurs, half of them women, and he certainly was not going to mention the idea to Tomiyano. The swordsmen and their companions might be tolerated now as a necessary evil, but Sapphire’s crew were not soldiers. Warfare had no appeal for them, and fire demons were certainly not in the contract.

“I don’t know how one earns an army,” Wallie said. “I am sure that the lesson part concerns the sorcerers—somehow, there must be a way to fight them. But it’s the circle part I wanted to ask you about.”

“What circle?”

‘The one we’re turning!” He chuckled at the sailor’s puzzled frown. “So far we know of four swordsmen cities to our left, on the right bank—Ki San, Dri, and Casr straight ahead there. Tau comes next, I’m told.”

“So they say.” Then the sailor pulled a face. “We’re traders, Shonsu, not explorers. Traders trade back and forth—usually between two cities, sometimes a stretch of three or four. If the Goddess does not return us to Hool, then we’ll trade here just as happily. Ki San and Dri will do fine. I admit I like the climate, though I’m told the winters are bad. We’ll study what sells and what’s needed. We weren’t even planning to go on to Tau, but I suppose we still have to find you some swordsmen. If there are none in Tau, then we’ll bring you back to Casr. Or Ki San. You’ll be on your feet by then.”

Wallie had been hoping that Tomiyano would have been more inquisitive. He ought to know more of the geography than Honakura and Katanji had been able to uncover; but obviously not, Brota had shown the same lack of interest.

“On the left bank, Captain, we know of Aus and Wal—sorcerer cities. Next comes Sen. But I know of another one ahead, further upstream.”

“What’s that?”

“Ov.”

“But . . . ” The sailor scowled. “That was where you’d come from, when we met you? That’s weeks back, Shonsu!”

To a sailor there were only two directions in the World: up and down River. Distance was measured in days. Patiently Wallie began to explain, drawing invisible maps on the hatch cover with his fingers. The River made a loop—north from Ov, then west, around or through the mountains, and then south to Aus. The Black Lands upstream from Ov were the same Black Lands that lay downstream from Aus. There was the god’s circle that must be turned.

He had worked it out during his convalescence, only to discover that his companions already knew. Honakura had seen it first, on the top of the pass, or so he claimed, when Wallie had pointed out the River ahead and had argued that it must flow south. Nnanji had probably learned it from Katanji.

Eventually logic overcame the sailor’s prejudices. He nodded. Sapphire was sailing up the west side of a loop. Already the mountains of RegiVul lay to the east and south, and they had been northeast of Aus. At Ov, they had lain to the northwest.

“You expect us to take you all the way around to Ov, Shonsu?” he demanded angrily.

“I have to go back to Ov, Captain, and turn the circle. Whether that means the city itself or the manor house where we started, I don’t know. Whether we travel there on Sapphire or not, I don’t know. But it would help if you asked some sailors in Casr. How far is it? How many cities have the sorcerers seized? The old man says he knows, but he’s just guessing.”

Seven, of course, Honakura said—it would have to be seven. Wallie had not disputed the point, because he was developing a hard respect for the priest’s superstitions.

Then boots thumped on the old polished planks, and there was Nnanji, hot and sweaty and grinning, fencing completed for the time being. Behind him, the city of Casr was drawing near. “You will be staying on board, my lord brother?” he inquired.

“I will,” Wallie said. He noted once more the subtle signs of change in Nnanji—the tiny pause that came before he spoke and after others did, the calculation hidden below the habitual joviality, the secret pride in his own competence. Wallie’s lectures on the theory of thinking and responsibility had been promptly followed by practice in white water, and no one of Nnanji’s age could have come through that without a few scars. On the surface he was still the same impractical idealist, an irrepressible rapscallion, but something deeper had been awakened now. Blind hero worship had become considered respect. Being Nnanji, he would forget nothing.

“I’ll stay, but I don’t see why you can’t do a little exploring,” Wallie said. “You could visit the garrison in Casr and talk with the reeve.”

Nnanji’s smile vanished. Evidently he had already considered the possibility. “I think that might be inadvisable,” he said softly. “They will ask if I have a mentor—who and what rank. And if the reeve hears that there is a Seventh in town, then he will certainly come to call.”

Wallie was about to suggest that Nnanji could tell lies—but of course he wouldn’t. Based on his experience with the venal Hardduju at Hann, and the Cowie incident in Ki San, Nnanji now had a strong distrust of reeves.

“You might learn something about sorcerers, though,”

“I still think it would be inadvisable . . . brother.” Nnanji was being respectful, but he was prepared to be stubborn. “You are not yet restored to health.”

Wallie sighed. “As you wish. But, Nnanji . . . that oath we swore was the oath of brotherhood.”

“Yes?”

“Not motherhood.”

Nnanji grinned and pointed a lean arm at the fo’c’sle. “Go to your room, Shonsu!”

Evidently Tomiyano was still mulling the god’s riddle. “Suppose we did sail all the way to Ov, my lord? Why Ov? What happens there?”

“Captain,” Wallie said sadly, “I’m damned if I know. Maybe I missed something?”

††

After Casr the weather broke, as if to hint that summer was aging and might die soon. In rain and fog and gloom they came to Sen. Black Sen, the sailors called it, and the name fit—black basalt walls and black slate roofs, morbid buildings over noisome narrow alleys glittering icily in the wet. Cramped against the River between two cliffs, the town had bloated upward in tenements of five or six stories, turning cramped streets into tenebrous canyons. Even the docks were black, and the sorcerers’ tower seemed no more depressing or ominous than the rest of the city. The pedestrians and the horses cowered along in the wet, hunched and dejected.

Katanji watched the arrival through the porthole in Diwa’s cabin. So far he had not been summoned to the deckhouse, where Shonsu and Nnanji would skulk while Sapphire was in port. It was too late now to send Nanj to get him, for the ship was already close to the dock, but they might yet send Jja.

Diwa fretted nervously at his side. He had his slave loincloth ready, and his makeup. That was a mixture of lampblack and goose grease, Matarro had said. They used it to lubricate the capstan. Matarro did not know that Katanji had purloined some, or the other use he had found for it.

Shonsu had torn him apart when he had learned that Katanji had gone ashore in Wal to talk to the slave gang under the wagon, although he had been pleased enough to get the eyewitness reports that Katanji had gathered. The port officer had fallen off the gangplank when the thunderbolt struck him. He had not been turned into smoke, as Brota had said. There had been two sorcerers waiting on the dock . . . the man had been dead or unconscious . . . they had taken his pouch and pushed him over into the River . . . 

That news had pleased Shonsu, but he had still been molten, claiming that Katanji had disobeyed orders. That had not been true. As they left Aus, he had been told not to go ashore if Sapphire ever returned there. Nothing had been said about other sorcerer ports. Nanj had confirmed that, quoting the big man’s exact words.

“Very well!” Shonsu had said, glaring black murder. “But in any other sorcerer port, you don’t set foot on the gangplank! You don’t even go on deck! Is that clear?”

Perfectly clear—Katanji went in and out portholes when he was being a slave, anyway. Tactfully, he had not mentioned that he had gone ashore again in Wal, the next day, and had roamed the town for hours.

And now Shonsu had asked Brota to visit Sen so he could gather wisdom. Sailors and one old priest—what could they learn? What could swordsmen discover by hiding in the deckhouse and peering out windows? Wisdom was Katanji’s business; the god had said so.

Sly, sneaky old Honakura had found out what he was up to, and he had deflected Shonsu a couple of times when the conversation had veered onto dangerous territory. But even he now said that next time must be the last time. “Then you must tell them novice. And they’ll have to stop you. But it’s worth one more try.”

The dock was coming up fast now, on this side. Had the ship turned, then he would have had to nip across to the cabin he shared with Matarro.

“Good!” Katanji said. He pulled off his breechclout and began tying on the black loincloth.

He had Diwa well trained now. She held up the mirror she borrowed from her parents’ cabin. He reached for his grease pot and spatula.

“Hold it still, wench!” he said. Her hands were trembling.

“Oh, Katanji! It’s so dangerous!”

“I’ve told you! I’m a swordsman. Danger is my business. A swordsman’s woman must be strong as well as beautiful . . . and you are beautiful.”

That took her mind off danger. She blushed a rich, dark shade—very rewarding—and her hands steadied. He smiled and concentrated on his makeup again. “Only the fair deserve the brave, Nanj says.”

She whimpered a little. She was a pretty thing, nicely rounded. A few more years and she’d be as disgustingly fat as her Aunt Brota, but right now she was just very cuddly.

“There!” He had done. It was nice to have a girl he could look down at. Mei was too tall for him. “I can’t kiss you now, or I’ll smudge it. But I’ll make it up to you tonight.”

She laid her cheek against his neck. “Be careful, my darling. I’ll feel terrible if anything happens to you.”

The ship bumped gently into fenders. He put his arms around her and was surprised to discover how hard it was to take them away again.

“Nothing will. Now, keep a good lookout. And get down here fast when I signal!”

He opened the porthole a crack. The lines had been tied. There was a pile of bales just in front . . . perfect. He opened the flap wider and slithered out onto the cold, wet dock.

The crowds were thin because of the rain, but people were walking with their heads down, not looking around, and that suited Katanji very well. He kept his head down, also, walking with a slave’s listless shuffle. It was good to get out of his boots; he shucked them whenever Nanj was not looking, but rarely got away with it for long. The wisp of loincloth was lots more comfortable than that kilt. He felt like a kid again, running around with the sun shining on his butt, not having to strut about with his head up, being a swordsman. He still could not think of himself as a swordsman, no matter how much Nanj shouted at him.

He headed up one of the narrow streets. It was gloomy enough that no one could possibly see anything wrong with his slave stripe. This would be the last time, and he must make it pay, gathering lots of wisdom.

He chuckled at the thought of Nanj. His ponytail would stand straight up, and he’d scream like Aunt Gruza. Shonsu would roar, but in secret he would approve. Yet he would not overrule Nanj in a thing like this. The big man liked to learn things—so did Katanji, and there were not many people like that around. Well, today he would find out plenty to add to what he had learned in Wal. Then the two of them would sit down together, and he’d give Shonsu all the wisdom, and Shonsu would shake his head admiringly and say, “Well done, novice,” in that deep growl of his. Then even Nanj could not scream too much.

He caught a glimpse of the tower down another alley and turned that way.

Then he reached the square and ducked into a doorway to take a look. Just like Wal and Aus—the bag-heads had pulled down buildings to make their tower and leave an empty space around it. This was as close as he had gone at Aus, but in Wal he had walked right by the tower and picked up some of that swordsman intelligence that the sutras listed. He could do that now, but this tower looked exactly like the others. He could see a big raised door for unloading wagons, so there would be another, smaller door on the far side. No windows for at least three spans above the ground, then there were thirteen layers of windows in all. The stairs they would have to climb! But exactly alike. Sorcerers must have a sutra for building towers.

He walked across the square, counting his paces to the tower and alongside the tower and past the tower. Then he worked his way round the streets to come out another alley and did the same thing in the other direction. Square tower, twenty-two paces each side, as he had expected. The doors were the same—heavy wood with bronze scrollwork on them, bronze feather shapes. And again there was a pit in front of each door with a bronze grating over it.

Why? The pit was shallow, and the gratings did not look hinged, so they were not traps.

A lot of bronze: expensive! Birds, too. There had been birds round the other towers, strutting about on the ground and fluttering clumsily out of his way as he passed. Something to do with feather facemarks? He was standing on a corner, wondering what to do next, when the small door opened and a sorcerer of the Second came out with a basket and started throwing something on the ground. The birds all gathered around, so it must be food.

He wondered if the birds were sorcerers in disguise. What would happen if he grabbed one? If it changed back into a sorcerer would its feathers turn into a gown, or would he be naked? Or were the birds prisoners, changed by sorcery, hanging around the tower in the hope of being turned back into men? He shivered.

Then a boy came across the square pulling a cart with fish painted on its sides. He stopped at the small door and spoke to the Second, who opened the door for him, and he started carrying boxes into the tower. Katanji came out of his corner and crossed the square in the slow, lazy lope of a slave who had been told to run. He grabbed a look in the boxes as he went by. Octopus? Yuck!

That was enough for now, so he wandered off through the town for a while, enjoying the smells, the people, the smell of people, the old familiar feel of horsedung between his toes. Ship life got boring for a city man.

He headed back to the docks to check on Sapphire. Two traders were trudging up the plank to haggle with Brota. That was all right, then. He had hours yet.

He went exploring the alleyways, looking for a slave hole. As a kid he had gone slaving often with Kan’a and Ji’o . . . what would they be doing now? Kan’a had sworn to the fullers. Ji’o was probably a draper now, like his dad.

The three of them had learned more from listening to slaves than their parents had ever known. Sometimes they had even drawn slave lines on their faces, although that was so risky that it had made his gut quiver and usually they had not done that. He had assumed when he got pricked as a swordsman that his slaving days were over. Then he had seen that a slavestripe would cover up a single sword, and the temptation had been too much to resist. He had gone down to the dock in Wal in the thunderstorm and gathered a lot of wisdom sitting under that wagon. Two golds . . . it had been worth at least two hundred to Brota.

So the Goddess had approved, and the next day he had gone slaving around Wal.

Slaves were slaves. Slave holes were slave holes. He found a deep alcove between two buildings, where a wooden stair went up. There was just room to squeeze between the steps and one wall—slaves were never fat unless they’d been gelded. He squeezed through, and there, sprawled underneath in the dark and filth and stink, were three slaves, assiduously shirking.

They just grunted, so he joined them, finding a place next to one of them where there was no dung on the ground. He sat down and huddled up for warmth, listened to their talk for a while; listened to the rain drip and a billion baritone flies. Just like old times.

The talk was of women, of course—bragging about what their mistresses demanded when their masters were away. None of them believed the others, it was all wishful thinking, and they all knew that. It made him horny listening to them, though, and he started thinking about Diwa. Maloli would kill him if he found out what had happened to his dear little, innocent, virgin daughter, or how much his dear little daughter enjoyed it.

But who would tell? Matarro knew; he’d wakened up at least once as his roommate came home at dawn. Truth be told, Katanji had been a little clumsier than necessary that first time. Stepping on his fingers had been a bit excessive. Later Matarro had tried to frighten him, saying Brota had put Diwa up to it, wanting to trap Katanji because he would make a good water rat. He did not believe that. He did not think he believed that. You could not trap a swordsman on land that way, but the river-folk had narrow ideas. Certainly it would create a hell of a fight—he had been told not to use the women. But Matarro was a good kid. Very naive, being just a sailor, but he wouldn’t split.

Very gently he edged into the conversation. New slave in town: what’s this sorcerer business? How many of them? What do they do? Could they cast a spell to make a slave a free man?

“They’d sell you a magic potion to do it,” one of the men said, and one of the others laughed. They worked together, these two. What’s so funny? asked the third—younger, not much older than Katanji.

“You know what they make those potions out of?” the first said. “Horse pee.”

The third said manure they did.

“Fact. Our owner has a stable. Collects the horse pee and the sorcerers buy it off him.”

Manure again.

“Manure you!” the first growled. “Fact. You go walk by that tower of theirs. You’ll smell it. Stinks like a stable, but there’s no horses there.”

“I used to belong to a tanner,” Katanji said. “Now there was stink!”

“None of those around here. Sorcerers ran them out of town.”

Again! The same as Wal—what did sorcerers have against tanners? “How about dyers?”

“Them, too. Why?” The oldest slave was getting suspicious of so many questions.

But there had been no dyers in Aus or Wal, either. Shonsu would love this.

“I’d heard that,” Katanji said. “Didn’t believe it. What about thunderbolts? Fact?”

“Fact,” the oldest said. “Big noise and fire and smoke. Seen one.”

“No big noise,” said the middle one. “Seen one, too. Big flash of light was all.”

They got to arguing. The first man had been walking along a street when a madman came out of a house, a slave gone weird, waving a bloody ax. He had killed three people inside and got two more in the street. Then a sorceress of the Second—piddly little girl—had stepped in front of him. Big noise, smoke, dead slave.

So even a Second could cast that spell? Shonsu would not like hearing that.

That was all manure, the other said, pure, adulterated manure. He’d seen swordsmen killed by a thunderbolt. The others scoffed, so he went into details. Couple years ago—dark night, clouds over the Dream God . . . coming home late from a woman, he’d been making a shortcut across the square and seen three swordsmen—ponytails, swords, the whole rig. They must have come off a ship. They’d been carrying bundles. He’d stopped in the shadows to watch, because there had not been swordsmen in Sen for years, and he’d made out the bundles. They’d been faggots. The swordsmen had run across the square to the small door of the tower, and he’d guessed that they were going to set a fire against the door. He thought they’d been drunked up pretty good.

They’d stopped at the grating, suspicious, and put down the bundles. He thought a window had opened high up, but he was not sure. Then the swordsmen had gone to look at the door and there’d been a big flash of lightning and screams. No big noise, just a sort of glass-breaking sound; loud for glass, but not thunder.

Two of the swordsmen had come back and gone by him, one helping the other. The third had stayed, dead.

“Cooked,” he said. “They went right by me, and I could smell roast meat off the hurt one. He was making nasty noises and smelling like pork. You go look at that door on the tower! You can still see the scorch marks.”

Two types of thunderbolt? Or a demon?

The nearest slave put his arm round Katanji. “You’re a nice kid,” he said,

“No!” Katanji tried to wriggle loose.

“It’s all right if it’s all you can get,” the slave said, without much conviction. “Try it, come on!”

“No,” Katanji protested, not daring to shout very loud.

“Oh, let him go,” the youngest said. “I’ll do it with you.”

Katanji left then.

He checked on Sapphire again, and she was unloading cargo, so he still had time. He must try to find more wisdom. He went back to the square, and the rain was even heavier, the clouds lower and gloomier. A group of slaves was waiting by the big door, ten or twelve of them. He hung around, watching, beginning to feel frustrated.

Then a wagon came grumbling along the street behind him, heading for the square and the tower. It was big—four horses. Maybe from out of town? From Vul, even? Shonsu might know. It was loaded high with something, a leather cover over it. More slaves walked behind. Two slave gangs? He could join in, and then each would think he belonged to the other. When the wagon and its followers passed him, he tagged on and trailed after them across the square before he had time to get scared.

Halfway there his insides began to leap up and down. What in the names of all the gods was he doing? He must have been out of his mind, but it was too late to stop now. If he tried to bolt they’d start a runaway slave cry, and the whole town would give chase. Goddess, preserve me!

The big doors were opened. The teamster maneuvered the wagon onto the grating, against the loading door. Three sorcerers appeared, a Third and two big Firsts. They tried to keep the load dry, holding up the cover so that the slaves could pull out the sacks and hustle them inside. Katanji climbed up on the dock with the others, and no one looked at him twice.

He must tell Shonsu that the walls were an arm’s-length thick. There would be no knocking holes in those.

A sack was dumped on his shoulder, and his legs almost crumpled. He staggered into the tower, following the man in front.

He was crazy! What had possessed him? They would hear his heart!

They would hear his knees—either his terror or the load he was carrying was making them knock like castanets.

The air did stink of horses. Phew!

It was dark in there, a big, high room reaching right up to the first windows, and probably half the width of the tower. He could look up and see great massive beams supporting the ceiling. The place was cluttered, but the sack hid everything to his right, and on his left was just a wall of bins, some of them open, holding herbs.

A swordsman spying inside a sorcerers’ tower . . . what would they do to him if they caught him at it?

The slave in front stepped into a sort of big closet and dumped his sack on a pile and came out. Katanji copied him with relief. Two sorcerers stood by the entrance, watching—a Fourth in orange, and a Second, whose yellow gown shone bright in the gloom.

Remembering to keep his head down, Katanji emerged from the closet, still following the same slave. He rubbed his back . . . mucking heavy, those sacks! Then, as he was going past the sorcerers, one of them reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.

†††

Sapphire was still gliding toward the dock in Sen, while Honakura sat on an oak chest like a ragged black owl and Nnanji slouched restlessly by the windows and Wallie thudded knives into the target board. Then Brota swooped into the deckhouse, swathed in an enormous madder-colored leather cloak, more huge even than usual, an angry cumulus cloud. Water was puddling all around her as it ran off that great expanse of stitched leather and dripped from her ponytail. It shone on her plump brown face and white eyebrows.

“I don’t like the look of this place,” she grumbled. “What do you think you’re going to learn here, my lord?”

“I don’t know, mistress.”

“Traders expect shelter. They’ll want to come in here!”

Wallie had not thought of that. There was nowhere else he would be able to see much at all. The portholes would be level with the dock, or lower. “Hang a drape? Yes—I’ve seen washing hung in here, haven’t I?”

Brota rolled her eyes at the thought of swordsmen hiding behind laundry, but she swung around and went off to organize.

“Where’s our mascot?” Wallie asked. “Perhaps we should keep him under our eye.”

Nnanji nodded. He was turning for the door when Honakura said, “Lord Shonsu? What would you say was the most unusual thing the sorcerer did, the one who came aboard in Wal? And you, adept? What do you think?”

“Killing a man with a snap of his fingers,” Wallie suggested.

“Not killing me with another!” Nnanji grinned as if that were funny.

The old priest shrugged his huddled shoulders. “We knew they could do something like that. And you were not trying to draw your sword, adept. Not like the late Swordsman Kandoru . . . No. That’s not it.” He looked puzzled.

“Tell us.”

“That spell of good fortune he offered to put on the cargo!”

What bright thoughts were sparkling below that polished scalp? “He must have known of the fire,” Wallie said.

“Exactly! It’s like that bird that they magicked into the kettle for the captain, isn’t it?”

“It is?”

Honakura scowled at the obtuseness of swordsmen. “When you capture a dangerous prisoner, Lord Shonsu, do you demonstrate your swordsmanship? Do you throw apples in the air and split them?”

“Showing off?”

“Like little boys! Why?”

It was a curious point, possibly significant. Honakura had a finely honed instinct for people.

“Katanji says he was lumpy. That interests me more,” Wallie said.

“Lumpy? Boils?”

“No. Their gowns are made of very heavy, stiff material, but the wind was blowing hard that night, and Katanji says that either the man had packages strapped around him, or a great many pockets. He’s a very quick little rascal, that one. Which reminds me. Nnanji—”

Honakura leered. “That’s not all he’s quick at.”

“What do you mean? He was told—”

The old man put a warning finger to his lips as Brota came in with Mata, bearing bundles. Quickly they strung a line along the length of the room and draped wet sheets over it. Nnanji pushed the chests to one side, so the swordsmen could sit unseen, yet would be able to see and hear whatever was going on. They would be on the landward side, Brota assured them, and able to watch the dock, also. It was ingenious but not very plausible, for nothing would dry in Sen on this drippy day. Wallie wondered if sorcerers could see through cotton—but then they might be able to see through timbers as easily.

The deckhouse began to fill up with wet people, including children, giggling at the novelty of wearing capes. Their play would be a good distraction if anyone became suspicious, for nothing could seem more innocent than children’s laughter.

As Sapphire nestled against the dock, Wallie remembered Katanji. Too late now to send Nnanji. Honakura, who had just wandered away so ingenuously, had deliberately diverted Wallie’s attention from the boy, and not for the first time, either. Katanji must be up to something, and Honakura was covering for him. Still, the novice had been ordered not to go ashore in sorcerer ports, so he could not get into too much mischief. Wallie put Katanji out of his mind.

Tomiyano had announced that if sorcerers in Wal could stomach Nnanji on a ship, then a burn mark was not going to upset them, and he stayed in view, wearing the dagger. Jja entertained the toddlers, leaving sailors free to attend to business.

The port officer was an old woman, twisted and lame from arthritis, sad and respectful. She ignored the captain’s scar, muttered quickly that no swordsmen should go ashore, accepted two golds, and limped away. Wallie concluded that she was probably genuine and probably frightened of her masters.

So the sorcerers were succeeding in their efforts to cure corruption among the officials. In the ports on the right bank the swordsmen either could not or did not try, and graft persisted in traditional fashion. The only crimes that swordsmen recognized were the violent varieties. Wallie could not imagine a Nnanji-type swordsman trying to unravel the intricacies of embezzlement or fraud. The sorcerers wanted to encourage trade. Again, the swordsmen would not care. Wallie, being a very atypical swordsman, rather approved of that. He found the notion amusing, remembering the words of the demigod: “You do not think like Shonsu, and that pleases me.”

An awning had been jury-rigged over the top of one gangplank, where Brota had made herself comfortable in her chair, and the edge of the dock below was cluttered with her samples. Old Lina wandered down the other plank to inspect the hawkers’ wares. Rain splattered and dripped.

Wallie began to grow bored and frustrated. These damn facemarks! How could he run a war with such a handicap? If the enemy could become invisible, or change their crafts at will, then they could penetrate the swordsmen cities easily. It was not fair! He grew short-tempered, wanting to shout at the children to be quiet.

Quite soon, though, Brota brought in two traders and argued them up from one hundred and fifty to two forty-five, while the eavesdroppers listened in amusement behind the draperies. Hands were shaken, and the traders went off to watch the unloading of the baskets and leather goods.

Then came Holiyi. He was the youngest of the adult sailors, skinnier even than Nnanji, and notoriously short of speech—amiable enough, but apparently able to go for days without saying a word.

“Ki San, Dri, Casr, Tau, Wo, Shan, and Gi,” he told Wallie. “Aus, Wal, Sen, Cha, Gor, Amb . . . and Ov!” He smiled, turned, and stalked out. For him, that had been a notable oration—and a fine display of the trained memory expected among preliterates.

So Tomiyano must have ordered him to inquire about the geography, and he had done so. Honakura had been correct, then—seven cities on each bank. Seven free cities lying on the outer rim of the River’s loop, and seven lining the inner curve seized by sorcerers? Assume so—based on superstition, which seemed to work as well as evidence in the World. For the millionth time, Wallie wished he could write. Of course he could sketch a map—with charcoal, say—but he would not be able to attach labels to it. He had tried, and it did not work. He asked Nnanji to repeat the lists for him while he pictured how the River must flow: north out of the Black Lands near Ov, charting a wide circle counter-clockwise—around Vul?—and back south into the Black Lands again at Aus. The only gap in this River-drawn circle would be the neck of land between Aus and Ov, which they had already crossed.

Wallie was still mulling over his mental map when a curious procession came marching up the plank. The slaves had only just begun removing the cargo, and here was new business already. With a little luck, Sapphire would soon be able to leave this dismal place.

The leader was a middle-aged Fourth, followed by two younger men who wore brown robes and were therefore likely priests, for other crafts kept to loincloths at their age. All three carried leather umbrellas. The last man was younger, a Third. He was husky and earnest-looking and soaking wet, his hair plastered over his face. After a word to Brota, they all trooped into the deckhouse, followed by Brota herself and Tomiyano.

Listening and watching behind the curtain, Wallie learned that the burly, bedraggled youngster was a stonemason. His father had sent him downriver from Cha to buy marble, and now he had a load to send home. If Sapphire was heading upriver, then would she transport his purchase?

Wallie found that an interesting problem in an illiterate world. There were no bills of lading, or banks, or letters of credit, or even any effective policing outside the cities. Straight buying and selling was simple, but obviously merchants must sometimes wish to ship goods on order. He could not think of any effective means. Obviously Brota could buy the marble and then resell it, but then she must trust the man’s word that his father would be willing to take it, or else her own judgment that it would sell for a fair profit. But she would also be free to sell it to his competitors. If he merely entrusted his cargo to her, then she and her ship could vanish with it forever. If he sailed along with it, then the same thing might happen, with him feeding the piranhas. Any course seemed to call for impossible trust by somebody, even without the complications introduced by the fickleness of the Goddess and the variable geography of the World.

So Wallie sat behind the curtain, listened to the terms being discussed, and learned that there was a way. The wagon with the marble was standing by, and Brota purchased the stone for one hundred and sixty golds—grumbling that it could not be worth half that. The trader, a local worthy who would be collecting a commission, swore that he would buy it from her in ten days for two hundred if she brought it back. Tomiyano, as official captain, swore that he would take it to Cha, Brota that she would sell it to the stonemason for no more than two hundred.

Very ingenious, Wallie concluded; they spread the risk around. The young man would probably get his marble transported for forty, or even less if his father beat Brota down a little. She was sure of forty golds if she had to make the round trip, and the marble was overpriced so she would not be tempted to abscond with it. Wallie enjoyed that, and also the oath ceremonies. The priests were witnesses. The mason swore by his chisel, Brota by her sword, Tomiyano by his ship, and the trader by gold.

Wallie mused how much easier things would be if writing had been invented in the World. He wondered why it had not been. Was that an intervention by the gods?

The bulky baskets were soon removed, and Sapphire began to load the marble. Now Wallie discovered why a mere seven or eight days’ sailing could command so high a fee. Marble was a dangerous cargo. It was the first time he had seen the boom in use, and everyone seemed to stop breathing as each great block was swung inboard. If one slipped, it would go straight through the keel, and a helpless, invalid swordsman would be stranded in a sorcerer city. When that realization came, he began muttering curses: damn Brota for making such a deal in this place!

But no rope broke, no block slipped. Eight times the boom lowered its load in safety, while Sapphire cowered lower in the water. Then the wagon and witnesses departed. Honakura, who had been snooping as usual, came dripping up the plank. Wandering crew members returned and prepared for departure.

The visit seemed to have been almost pointless from Wallie’s point of view, although likely Honakura would have uncovered some information on when and how Sen had been invaded by sorcerers.

“I shan’t be sorry to leave here,” Wallie remarked. “It’s a depressing town.”

Nnanji nodded in agreement. “And lunch is overdue.”

The first of the two gangplanks was hauled in with a clatter.

††††

At the sorcerer’s touch, Katanji jumped like a rabbit, and a small squeal of terror escaped before he could stop it. Every gland on his skin started spurting sweat. He turned around, still staring hard at the floor, expecting to see all his insides drop out of his loincloth at any moment.

He tried to say “Adept?” but all that came out was a croak. His very fear would betray him.

“That one hasn’t got much meat on his bones,” the Second remarked.

What were they going to do, cook him?

“Don’t want meat,” the Fourth replied in a deep, rumbling voice. “Endurance is what we need—stamina.”

Torture? Oh, Goddess!

Neither sorcerer spoke to Katanji, so he just stood there, quivering. Other slaves paraded past with sacks and came out of the closet without them. Then the Fourth tapped another. “You!” He was not much older than Katanji, taller but just as stringy, and he reacted with an even louder, gibbering wail. Katanji could see his knees shake. So all slaves were frightened of sorcerers, and his own terror had not given him away. But when they looked at faces . . . 

“And you!” the Fourth said, choosing another. “Come with me.”

Leaving the Second to watch the unloading, the Fourth swung around and led the way, going between a big iron range, very hot, with two big caldrons boiling on it—more foul stink—and a stack of firewood, then a pile of sacks. One of them was open and there was charcoal falling out of it. Beyond the sacks was a long table, cluttered with big pots and little pots and giant bottles of dark green glass and three of the big copper pots with coils on top that Shonsu had seen in Aus, dented and black with long use. And beyond the range was a furnace, like a blacksmith’s but bigger, and a near-naked youth working bellows furiously, gleaming sweat. He glanced up as Katanji passed, showing the single feather on his brow. Being a sorcerer First was less fun than being a swordsman First, obviously, and he looked at least as old as Nanj.

Then they came to a stairwell. A big wooden vat of water sat in the middle, and the stairs spiraled up around the walls. Metal steps; more bronze.

As Katanji reached the vat and was about to put his foot on the first step, with the sorcerer three or four steps up already, the vat suddenly spluttered and hissed and blew steam. Katanji jumped and squealed in alarm and very nearly lost control of his bladder.

The sorcerer laughed. He stretched out a hand and wailed a brief incantation in words Katanji did not recognize. “Now he won’t hurt you,” he said. “Come on!”

Trembling, Katanji started up the stairs, the other two slaves following him. Then the vat hissed again, and they wailed quietly, so they were just as scared as he was. And they did not have swordmarks on their foreheads.

The stairs went round twice before they reached the next level, and the vat hissed five times below them. More stairs . . . they climbed three floors and were all puffing. The sorcerer marched along a dim corridor, passed two closed doors, and then turned into a big room. Katanji looked nervously at a hole in the floor with ropes hanging in it, and a huge wooden thing like a long drum in a rack, tangled with ropes and wheels. One wall was stone and had a window—the sutras said that window size was important—and two walls were wooden, and the fourth was almost hidden by piles of sacks. There were four sorcerers waiting there, two Firsts and two Seconds. Katanji gazed in growing horror at the drum thing. Torture?

The Fourth pointed at it. “Hurry up! Get on!” he said.

Katanji did not understand, but the other two slaves pushed past him to grab hold of a bar across the top and climb up on the drum, which had paddles along it. He copied them, and the drum began to turn slowly with a loud squeaking and clattering of the ropes and wheels. Big slab things began to sink into the hole.

“Flames!” muttered the Fourth. He picked up a whip from somewhere and cracked it loudly in the air. “Work, or I’ll skin you!”

So the three slaves pushed up against the bar and pushed down with their feet. The drum began to move faster and make louder noises, creaking and rumbling. Katanji was in the middle, looking at his thin arms between two sets of thicker arms, and beyond those was the big hole in the floor, and the ropes were moving. Soon he was running, trying to keep up with the others, wondering if he was going to be run to death. When he saw that the ropes were coming up, he worked out that this was not sorcery—the drum was winding the ropes. He and the other two slaves must be lifting that whole closet thing with their feet. It was nitty hard work.

The whip cracked again, and he remembered that he had no scars on his back. Would the sorcerers wonder about that? Almost all real slaves did. Would they be tempted to put some there, just on principle?

Faster and faster—he was gasping for breath, and his face and armpits were dribbling sweat. He could smell sweat in the air. His heart hammered and his mouth was dry. The other two were gasping, also, and both were bigger youths than he. Then gradually the pile of sacks rose right out of the floor, and the Fourth threw a handle. The drum locked and the three slaves almost jumped right over the bar. The sorcerers all laughed, as if they had been waiting for that.

The other two slaves lifted their arms and wiped their faces. Just in time Katanji did not. It was brighter in this room than downstairs—would anyone look hard at his slavestripe? Grease and lampblack . . . was it spreading with all this sweat? He kept his head down with his hands out, resting on the rail, and he panted his heart out. The other two slaves were doing much the same. The junior sorcerers were unloading the sacks and stacking them carefully and neatly. There seemed to be some way of telling one type from another, for they went to various places along the wall, but all the sacks looked the same to the watching swordsman.

“Ready!” the Fourth shouted when the closet was empty; he threw the handle again and the drum shifted under Katanji’s feet. The slaves started treading, but it was almost as much work to lower the thing back down again as it had been to bring it up—and that did not seem fair, somehow. Then he heard more sacks being thrown in it.

He thought with dismay of the size of that wagon, and its load.

He wondered about Sapphire. What would he do if she sailed without him?

The whip cracked again, and the torment began again . . . 

It took at least twenty trips to empty the wagon. By then Katanji was shaking all over with exhaustion and did not really care if they saw he was a swordsman, if they would only let him lie down somewhere. His mouth tasted like mud, and he thought his heart would burst. Sometimes the room seemed to darken and fade; then he knew he was close to fainting. Slaves were always worked like that, but if he fell over, they would see his face.

The Fourth cracked his whip often, but did not use it, although the last couple of loads took a long time. One of his juniors said perhaps he should go and get some fresh livestock, but the Fourth said almost done, not to bother.

At last he led them into the corridor again. Katanji hung back, limping slowly—and it was not hard to do that. It was hard to walk at all. His legs were paste. The two doors were open now, throwing patches of light, and he slowed down as he went by each, trying to grab a picture in his mind. In the first room a sorceress was sitting at a table, a Second, with her cowl back. She was doing something with a plate, rubbing it round and round on something—casting a spell, he supposed, looking bored. Mostly he just noticed her face, saw nothing behind or around her. She was about twenty-five, quite pretty, but she had three facemarks, not two for her yellow gown. They were not feathers! He was not sure just what they were, but they did not have the curved shape of feathers.

There was no one visible in the second room, just a couple of tables and some chairs. One of the tables seemed to be a shrine, for it had tall feathers standing on it in silver holders—something to do with the facemarks, he supposed. The far wall was lined with shelves, laden with hundreds of brown boxes of various sizes, made of leather, he thought. Then he was at the stairs.

He clung hard to the rail as he went down, because his legs were quivering so much. The thing in the vat hissed and spluttered, and he did not care. He tried to see more things in the big room, but it was gloomy, and his eyes had not had time to adjust. It was a very big room, half the size of the tower, he guessed. There were two windows on one long wall and one on each of the shorter walls, so that would be right. Racks and shelves ran the whole length of the room, with bottles and bundles on them—how could anyone remember which was what? The bellows man was still pumping. Another First, in a gown, was grinding something in a mortar as big as a washtub.

He wanted more time, time to study it all, and he dare not stop. His brain would not work, he was too tired. Through a gray fog he noticed a copper snake at the far end—much, much bigger than any he had seen before—and a grindstone, and a smaller edition of the treadmill upstairs, underneath one thing that he could never overlook: a great big gold ball on a pillar near the door, big enough for a man to stand up in if it were hollow. That must be a very big sorcery, or perhaps it was a sun god idol? There were many pipes snaking around, too, and ropes hanging . . . a couple more tables of junk and two more piles of bags and sacks . . . and then he was at the loading dock, and the wagon had already gone. The two slave gangs were standing outside, waiting.

He was trapped! He stopped on the dock to try to think. His two sweaty companions from the treadmill dropped down limply, heading for different groups. Which one should he go to? The sorcerers were waiting to shut the doors. He rubbed an eye as if he had got something in it and got shouted at, so he scrambled down, legs still shaking madly.

He stood on the bronze grating and hesitated. But both slave gangs were complete, so both turned and walked away, each boss thinking that the last slave belonged to the other. With a sigh of relief Katanji followed after one of them, and the big doors clunked shut behind him. The rain was gloriously cold on his hot skin. He began to drop behind the slaves, farther and farther, and then edged in behind a portly matron of the Third, following her as if she owned him until they reached the buildings and he could go off on his own. He had started to shiver in the cold.

Sapphire would be gone, and they might not miss him for hours. He was a swordsman, trapped in a sorcerer town. He would have to go to the temple, he supposed . . . 

“Katanji?”

He jumped. It was Lae, bony old Lae, her wrinkled, motherly face frowning at him.

“You all right?” she demanded.

He stopped his jaw rattling long enough to say, “Yes, I’m all right. I was just coming back.” His eyes prickled, and he lowered his face as a slave should.

She frowned. “Shonsu and your brother are eating the shutters in the deckhouse. You were very nearly left behind! I guessed you’d be around the tower somewhere. Come on!”

He fell into step beside her, then remembered that he was a slave and fell back a pace. She twisted her head a few times to look at him. “You look as if you’ve had a hard day.” Her voice was more gentle.

He managed to grin, beginning to feel better. “I’ve been inside the tower.”

She stopped dead so that the other pedestrians had to dodge around them; it was a narrow street. “Gods, boy! You’ve got more guts and less brains than your brother! I did not think that was possible.”

He had more brains, but he did not say so. And, yes, maybe he did have guts.

“Oh, it was not hard. Very interesting, really. I saw lots of things . . . ” He was going to start babbling and he had a crazy desire to laugh, so he bit his lip and forced himself into silence.

“Getting in might be easy,” Lae said, “but you got out again! You look beat. Come on, then.”

They reached the dock road and walked along past the ships. Two patrolling sorcerers went by without a glance at him. Lae stopped again and asked some questions, studying him carefully.

“I’m going to take you on board,” she said firmly, “and you’re going to have a shower and then you’ll sleep in my cabin. Shonsu and Nnanji can’t leave the deckhouse until we’re out of port, and I’ll see they stay away.”

“Thanks,” he said. Brota liked to think she was ship mother, but anyone with a problem went to Lae. A sleep would be good, but could even Lae hold off an angry Seventh?

He saw both grins and glares as he went on board, but Lae kept the others away. She stood outside the door while he showered. His muscles began to knot up in lumps of agony as he worked the pump. He was trembling even more now, damn it! Then she handed in his kilt, and he stumbled along behind her, down to the cabins.

Hers was just like the others, a little box with a chest and a roll of bedding, but she had bright drapes beside the porthole, a little rug on the floor, and an embroidered bedcover. The air smelled of lavender, like his mother’s closet. He unrolled the bedding and lay down stiffly and looked up at her.

“You need anything else, novice? Food?”

“A drink of water, Sailor Lae,” he said, “and thank you.”

She smiled, thin-lipped. “I’ll see that you’re not disturbed.”

He thought he would go to sleep at once, but he lay there, and his shivering grew worse instead of better. He took off his kilt and pulled the covers over him and that did not help. He decided he had caught a chill.

He ought to say some prayers, he thought. Then the door opened and his drink came in, but it was Diwa who brought it. She shut the door and bolted it.

When he put the beaker aside, she sat down and started sliding into the bed beside him.

He gulped. “No! You’ll be missed!”

She chuckled. “Don’t worry—they know about us. Oooo! You’re cold as a fish! Lae said this might help.”

It did help. It helped worlds. She put her arms around him, tightly. He pushed down her bra sash with his chin and cuddled his head between her breasts. They were big and soft and warm and smelled of fresh bread; lovely things, they were. He shed tears over them, because they were so lovely, and hoped she would not notice.

Eventually he stopped shivering and began to feel warm. He thought he ought to do the manly thing for Diwa now, because this might be his last opportunity, but then it was too late, because he was asleep . . . 

†††††

Of course it was Diwa who stopped Sapphire from sailing. Sniveling and shaking, she was thrust into the deckhouse ahead of an enraged Brota to repeat her confession to the swordsmen and explain that Katanji was ashore. Tomiyano was right behind, his face dark with fury. Others came crowding in, filling the dim, shuttered room with wet, furious people. The draperies of damp laundry were ripped down to make more space; voices were raised.

For the third time the ship had visited a sorcerer city. For a fourth time she had been put in jeopardy. The sailors were frightened and therefore angry. Wallie was horrified by the risk to Katanji. Nnanji was disgusted at the disgrace of a swordsman playing slave. Maloli—a stocky, heavyset man whose face was rubicund at the best of times—was ablaze at the shame of it all. Only the calming influence of his wife, Fala, was restraining him from words that would have forced Nnanji to take offense; and even the unexcitable Fala was thin-lipped and bitter. Katanji had been in their daughter’s cabin; she had been compromised. Everyone was shouting and arguing at cross-purposes.

“Quiet!” Wallie bellowed, and there was quiet.

Then he spoke quietly. “Mistress, we can discuss blame later. I ask you now to send out search parties. If he’s been caught, then we must be able to leave quickly. How many can you spare?”

“If he’s been caught, then the demons may be here any minute!”

“That’s true. But remember the sorcerers in the quarry—they did nothing to stop us sailing away, so their powers do not extend very far over the River. If he has been captured, then I shall offer myself in exchange—”

“A Seventh for a First?” Nnanji shouted.

“It’s my fault. Be quiet, brother, please. Mistress?”

Had it been any one of the passengers other than Katanji, Brota would have cast off and sailed. Wallie knew that. But Katanji had charm. They all liked Katanji. As tempers began to cool, the sailors remembered stories they had collected about sorcerers and torture. Reluctantly Brota agreed that they would stay and look for him, at least until there was evidence that the sorcerers had been alerted. If they had to leave swiftly, then anyone left behind would rendezvous at the temple at midnight and wait for a dinghy . . . 

The sailors trailed out.

Wallie was feeling sick. If he had failed to control one novice, how could he ever run an army? “I told him not to go ashore!”

“You told him not to set foot on the plank!” Nnanji snapped. He bared his teeth. “Disguise! A slave!”

“I set the example there,” Wallie admitted.

“At least you never tampered with facemarks.” That was an inordinate sin among the People; their whole culture was based on facemarks.

But then they were interrupted as crew members took shelter from the rain, and they could say no more.

And time seemed to stop. A port officer came by and inquired why they had not sailed yet, if their trading was done. The berth was needed. Brota spun a yarn of stomach cramps and a hurried trip to the healers.

The rain grew worse.

Wallie’s frustration grew almost unbearable.

How long until the sorcerers extracted the truth from the boy?

And what happened then? The ship was being jeopardized on a faint chance of saving one raw recruit. Cold mathematics suggested that Sapphire should sail while she could. A good general would make that calculation and act on it. Wallie could calculate, but he could not act.

Little Fia ran in, screaming with excitement—Lae and Katanji were coming along the road.

Wallie relaxed with a huge sigh of relief and said a silent prayer to the Goddess, and to Shorty.

“I’ll skin him!” Nnanji muttered. But his eyes were shiny.

A few minutes later, a wan Katanji limped up the plank like a beaten dog and headed forward behind Lae. The sailors hurried to their posts, and at last the swordsmen were left alone—two swordsmen and one ragged old priest, sitting on a chest and smirking.

Now the blame could be distributed.

Wallie pointed an accusing finger at Honakura. “You knew what he was doing!”

The old man nodded smugly.

“You let that boy go into danger—”

“Danger?” Nnanji shouted. “That’s his job! But to violate the laws—that’s an abomination!”

“Indeed?” Honakura raised his eyebrows. “Laws are tricky, adept. Unlike sutras, they have no exact words. What is the precise law in Sen that your protégé has broken?”

“I . . . exact?”

“Oh? You don’t know?” Honakura beamed up mockingly. Nnanji was turning bright red with fury.

“All laws forbid changing facemarks!”

“He hasn’t changed his. It is still there. He painted a stripe over it, but that will wipe off.”

“Then it is an abomination to change one’s craft!”

“Slavery is not a craft.”

Reluctantly Wallie began to appreciate the humor. The old priest was going to tie Nnanji in a marlinespike hitch. And he himself could see nothing wrong in a plainclothes swordsman; it was the answer he had been seeking. Katanji could gather wisdom for him, as the riddle had suggested, so this was part of the gods’ plan. He felt more hopeful.

“It is always an abomination to change one’s rank!” Nnanji persisted.

“I disagree. Any law I have ever heard forbids one to raise one’s rank. Your brother lowered his.”

Nnanji’s reply was incomprehensible.

“Did Katanji understand that, old man?” Wallie asked.

“Perhaps not at first,” Honakura admitted. “But I explained it to him.”

“You corrupted my protégé, you—”

“Steady, Nnanji!” Wallie said. “He has a good argument. There would seem to be no breach of the laws. Who would make a law forbidding a swordsman to wear a slavestripe? It is still the danger that bothers me . . . ”

“Honor!”

The door flew open to admit young Matarro, with eyes big as Sapphire’s scuppers. “He went in the tower, my lord!”

“He did what?”

The boy nodded wildly. “He’s been in the sorcerers’ tower! Lae says he saw all sorts of things!”

And Novice Matarro vanished again to attend to his duties. Sapphire was departing.

From another wisdom gain. Wallie turned to Nnanji—and even Nnanji was looking startled. “Adept, I congratulate you on the exemplary courage displayed by your protegé!” There was no higher compliment one swordsman could pay another, because the craft believed that courage and honor could be taught only by example.

Nnanji’s mouth opened and closed a few times in silence. Then his principles and his anger prevailed. “Does courage alone justify dishonor, my lord brother?”

“I see no dishonor! He cannot yet serve the Goddess with his sword. He was trying to further Her purposes by the best means he has. I am amazed by his dedication. I applaud his heroism.”

Nnanji took a few deep breaths, calming himself with a visible effort. He smiled uncertainly. “Well, he is a spunky little devil, I suppose . . . ”

“He seeks to be worthy of his mentor.”

Nnanji’s face went red again. He mumbled something and turned away. Wallie and Honakura grinned at each other.

But now it was also time to think about repairs. Relations with the crew had been damaged.

“Tell me, protégé!” Wallie said. “Did you not instruct him to stay away from the girls?”

Nnanji turned around again, looking surprised. “Well, yes! But of course . . . ” He shrugged.

“Of course what?”

Nnanji smirked. “Of course he knew I did not mean it. No swordsman would take that order seriously, my lord brother!”

“I meant it! I took it seriously!”

Nnanji seemed puzzled. “Why? A swordsman? It’s an honor . . . ”

“Sailors may not think so!”

“Well, they should!”

Gods give me strength! Wallie thought. Somehow Nnanji managed to combine the ethics of a puritan with the morals of an alleycat.

“I’ve told you, we’re not free swords. Even if we were . . . ”

Again the door swung open, this time to admit Tomiyano. He marched across to Nnanji and held out a hand. Tomiyano smiling?

“You should be proud of that brother of yours, adept!” he said. “He’s been in the tower!”

Nnanji shook hands, vacillated, and then registered modesty. “It was his duty, sailor.”

“Maybe so, but it took more courage . . . ”

Sapphire was heading out into the River. News of Katanji’s exploit had flown through the ship like a flight of gulls. He being unavailable, men and women and children came flocking into the deckhouse to congratulate Nnanji instead. He began to swell like a pouter pigeon. Wallie and Honakura grinned at each other again.

Then Maloli arrived, and there was a sudden tension.

“Adept,” he muttered, “I’m sorry if anything I said earlier . . . We can all take pride in your brother. We’re glad that Diwa . . . was able to be of assistance. He is a courageous lad—and a man of honor!”

“Of course!” Nnanji shot a smug, I-told-you-so glance at Wallie.

“A good influence on Diwa, we’re sure,” said Fala. “Now we understand why he was in her cabin and we are glad that she could be of service to him.”

Nnanji kept his face straight, but only just. “He knows how a true swordsman should honor a lady, naturally.”

Uncertainly Fala said, “Naturally.” And blushed.

Wallie gave up. They were not all talking the same sort of honor, but he suspected they all knew what they meant—and he was the stranger here. Who could grudge anything to Katanji now?

By nightfall the rain had stopped, and Katanji appeared on deck for the evening meal. He was still shaky, and so stiff that he could hardly walk, but he put on a superb performance as Imp of the Year. Wallie and Nnanji, having obtained permission from Tomiyano to draw their swords on board, gave him the Salute to a Hero. He grinned mightily and kept his arm firmly around Diwa.

Yet damage there had been. Brota stated emphatically that Tau was the limit. Sapphire would continue as far as Cha to unload her marble, but no farther. If Lord Shonsu could not enlist his swordsmen at Tau, then he was going to be taken back to Casr. Then the family would settle down to a routine trading existence once more, probably on the Dri-Casr run. Their obligations to the Goddess had been satisfied, they said. Whether the Goddess agreed, of course, was something that only time would show.

Fair weather returned, and the River flowed now from the east. The mountains of RegiVul lay to the south. For several days, Wallie and Honakura stripped information from Katanji, layer after layer, as if they were peeling an onion. Nnanji sat beside them as recording secretary and filed it all away in his memory.

Katanji cooperated as well as he could. His powers of observation could not be faulted, and even under the terrible stress of imminent danger, he had continued to look. Yet everything he had seen had to be filtered through his own experience before it could be told, and through Wallie’s to be understood. Somewhere on that journey, facts became guesses.

Obviously the sorcerers had limitations. They could certainly be fooled, and that might be the most important lesson of all. But gold balls? Feathers in silver holders? Wallie began to feel that he was viewing a madhouse through a distorting glass. What was achieved by all that frenzied activity in the tower? What was being ground up with mortar and pestle—demon bait? What lived in the tub? How many sorts of thunderbolt were there, and why had fire demons been invoked only at Ov? How he wished that Katanji had been able to carry a camera on that perilous expedition into the tower!

What did sorcerers have against dyers and tanners? How much of their behavior was effective, and how much mere witch-doctoring? Some of it must be as meaningless and illogical as medieval alchemy, or Honakura’s fixation upon the holy number seven, and the more Wallie learned, the less sense it all seemed to make.

Day by day his frustration continued, until at last Sapphire drew close to Tau.

Although he still limped, one morning Wallie took up foil and mask. He would not yet dare to take on a highrank, but he could handle Nnanji. When the score reached twenty-one to zero, even the sweating redhead admitted that Shonsu was now restored to health and no longer in need of mothering.

“And me, my lord brother?” he inquired eagerly.

“Yes,” Wallie agreed. “You’re coming along well.”

“Fifth?”

“Very close. Certainly worth a try.”

The sun god in all his splendor could not have shone more brightly then. In a small army Lord Shonsu would not need a Sixth, so if Adept Nnanji could become Master Nnanji, then he would be sure of being second in command.

††††††

It was good to be ashore after so many weeks, even if his leg did hurt a little. It was fun to limp along the narrow, crowded streets with the seventh sword on his back, studying the traffic and the buildings while civilians warily made way for him. And Tau itself was a joyful surprise.

Each city on the River was different. Tau was barely a city at all, no more than a small market town. Watching it as Sapphire approached, Wallie had felt a strange recognition: thatched roots, brown oak beams showing on the fronts of the buildings, earth-toned pargeting. At first he had identified the style as medieval European, but he decided that it was more like Tudor when he started along the lane that professed to be the main street, for there he saw older structures, whose beams had turned black and pargeting white.

So Tau was a stage set of Merrie England. Upper stories jutted out to shadow the cobbled filth underfoot, while the strip of blue sky above was fringed by bristling eaves. Shiny bottle glass in the diamond windows obscured the interiors and flickered many-hued reflections back at the viewer, hanging signs portrayed the wares available within. Despite a constant lack of headroom that made his progress hazardous, Wallie was fascinated. Of course the loincloths and gowns were inappropriate, but he felt as if he had been transported to Shakespeare’s London, and he kept wondering whether there was a theater in town, and who composed its plays.

Brota had solemnly promised not to sail without him. He had come to seek swordsmen, but he felt as if he were a prisoner released, a child at a fair. At one point, when even his rank and prestige could not immediately clear a way for him, he turned around to grin at Nnanji and announce, “I like this town!”

Nnanji pinched his nose and said, “Yeech!”

Well, there was that . . . 

The main thoroughfare was so narrow that two men’s arms could have spanned it easily, and here it had packed solid. Now Wallie saw the cause of the delay. A cart full of apples had locked wheels with one overloaded with glossy blue tiles, and the impact had spilled a shower of shiny red fruit into the mire. Peering over heads, he could see small boys squeezing in and out to retrieve this treasure, and its guardian engaged in a contest of oaths with the pusher of the tile cart. The invention was becoming more lurid, the genealogy more improbable, and the anatomical instructions more ruinous by the minute. A wheel on the tile cart had left its axle, and the entire load was in danger of collapsing. The resulting fistfight might easily grow into a riot. The crowd’s good-natured mockery was already turning to abuse as those with urgent business attempted to squeeze by with their bundles.

In the midst of all this confusion, a sword hilt was bobbing around like a floating cork, but its owner was apparently being ignored, unable even to get close to the problem. Wallie decided that the time had come for him to do a little swordsmaning.

He began to push and he cleared a path with sheer size where his rank had failed. With Nnanji at his heels, he reached the center of the turmoil and laid a heavy hand on Tiles’ shoulder. Tiles looked around angrily, then up apprehensively, then fell silent respectfully. Apples stopped a detailed pedigree of his antagonist at the fourth generation. Both waited with relief for instructions. Wallie ordered Apples and a beefy slave to lift one end of the tile cart, while he took a grip on the other and shifted his weight to his left leg. The cart was raised, and Tiles replaced the wheel on the axle. Nnanji had already begun to clear an exit for him. Soon the jam was thinning out in a few final ribald comments.

The ineffective local swordsman remained, now revealed as a very young and very small Second, staring white-faced and horrified at the visitor. He could not be much older than Katanji and he was no bigger—small wonder he had failed to impose his authority.

He reached a shaky hand for his sword hilt.

“Leave that!” Wallie commanded.

Gulping, the Second obeyed and made civilian salute, identifying himself as Apprentice Allajuiy. Wallie responded, but did not waste time presenting the youngster to Nnanji.

“I came to call on the reeve,” he said. “Lead the way to the barracks.”

His obvious nervousness increasing, Allajuiy pointed in silent dismay at the nearest doorway. Above it hung a bronze sword that Wallie ought to have noticed, side by side with an oversized boot.

“And where is the reeve, then?” Wallie asked.

“He . . . he is in there, my lord.”

Wallie glanced at Nnanji and received the puzzled frown he had expected. The two of them moved toward the door, and Apprentice Allajuiy took to his heels without waiting for formal dismissal.

The swordsmen stepped down into the cordwainer’s shop. It was small and cramped by tables of shoes and boots, the beams of the ceiling perilously low. Under the window, a Fifth and two Seconds were hammering away, their lasts on their laps. The floor around them was littered with scraps of leather, and its pungency perfumed the air. The door closed over the sounds of the street.

The Fifth rose hastily and turned to greet his visitors. At once his face took on the same apprehensive expression as the young swordsman’s had. He was around forty, heavyset in his red gown, and almost bald. He had arms like a wrestler, an old scar across his forehead, and a remarkable cauliflower ear. Cobbling must be a rowdy profession in Tau.

Wallie returned his salute.

“I seek the reeve,” he said.

The cordwainer’s craggy face did not welcome the news. “My father has the honor to be reeve, my lord. He will, of course, be honored to greet you, if your lordship can wait a few minutes?” He turned and plodded out quickly through a door at the back. His two juniors scrambled to their feet and fled after him.

Wallie’s quizzical smile earned a scowl from Nnanji.

“Something tells me that I shall not be doing much recruiting in Tau,” Wallie said. “I can’t consider a denunciation from you, oath brother—but they won’t know that. This might be a good chance for you to try conducting an investigation!”

Nnanji nodded, without losing his frown.

It was some time before the cordwainer returned, and he came alone. He had changed into a cleaner robe, but it was an older man’s garment. Nnanji’s brows dropped even lower.

“My father will be here shortly, my lord. He . . . he is elderly, and sometimes a little slow in the mornings . . . ”

“We are in no hurry,” Wallie remarked cheerfully. “Meanwhile, allow me to present my protégé and oath brother, Adept Nnanji. I believe he may have a few questions to ask.”

Worry became open terror. The burly man’s hands shook as he returned Nnanji’s salute, and Nnanji’s questions began at once.

“Tell me the names and ranks of the garrison, master.”

“My father, Kioniarru of the Fifth, adept, is reeve. His deputy is Kionijuiy of the Fourth . . . ” Unhappy silence.

“And?”

“And two Seconds, adept.”

Nnanji’s eyes flashed a predatory gleam. “Nephews of yours, by any chance?”

The cordwainer shuddered and nodded. “Yes, adept.”

“And where is . . . ”

At that moment a young woman led in the reeve.

He was a Fifth, but at least eighty; bent, wrinkled, toothless, and senile, grinning inanely around him as he was brought forward. His ponytail was a faint white wisp, the sort of thing that grew on grass stalks in ditches. He beamed at the sight of the visitors and tried to draw to make his salute. With much help from his son, he eventually did so, but then the cordwainer took the sword away from him to sheath it safely. Wallie managed to contort himself enough to make the appropriate reply under the low ceiling.

“In what way may I be of service to your lordship?” the reeve quavered. “Kionijuiy handles most of the work now. Where is the boy?” he demanded of the cordwainer.

“He’s out just now, father,” the cordwainer shouted.

“Where’s he gone, then?”

“He’ll be back soon.”

“No, he won’t! I remember—he’s gone to Casr, hasn’t he?” Master Kioniarru showed his gums triumphantly. “Went to the lodge!”

The cordwainer rolled his eyes up and said, “Yes, Father.”

“Lodge?” Nnanji shouted. “There is a lodge at Casr?” He glanced momentarily at Wallie. “And who is castellan?”

“Eh?” The old man cupped his ear.

“Who is castellan of the lodge?” Nnanji bellowed.

“Castellan? Shonsu of the Seventh.”

The solid cordwainer was now close to nervous weeping. “No, no, Father, this is Lord Shonsu.”

He did not notice the way Lord Shonsu and his protégé were staring at each other. Wallie did not need to ask what a lodge was—that had been part of Shonsu’s professional memories and had therefore been passed on to him. A lodge was a union hall, an independent barracks where free swords might seek rest, news, and fellowship. A lodge was a logical place to try to enlist swordsmen. A lodge was a logical headquarters for a war against the sorcerers.

And for Shonsu? The Shonsu who had failed disastrously?

The sorcerer in Aus had said, “ . . . when you return to your nest.”

“I’m sure it was Shonsu,” the old man quavered. “I’ll ask Kio’y. He’ll know.” He turned and tottered back to the rear exit, already shouting, “Kionijuiy?”

The woman, who had been watching in unhappy silence, followed him sadly out. The others observed a moment’s silence, out of pity. The cordwainer, left to face the wrath of swordsmen, muttered something about one of his bad days.

Then Wallie folded his arms and leaned back against a table displaying boots. He did not need to tell Nnanji to go ahead—he could not have stopped him now. The questions came quick and angry.

“So your brother is the only effective swordsman in Tau?”

“Yes, adept.”

“But he has gone to Casr?”

“Yes, adept.”

“Why? For promotion?”

“He hoped . . . Yes, adept. He should be back—”

‘Take off that robe!”

He was older, bigger, and of higher rank, but civilians did not dispute with swordsmen. In abject silence, the cordwainer untied his garment and pulled it down as far as his waist.

“Put it on again. How many more brothers have you got?”

“Five, adept.”

“Crafts?”

“A butcher, a baker—”

“And do they also bear foil scars?”

The cordwainer nodded miserably.

A man with only two Seconds for practice would hardly be trying for promotion to Fifth. And a lodge would be a logical place to seek promotion—having missed that opportunity, Adept Nnanji was not likely to be sympathetic.

“So your brother—your swordsman brother—has gone off to advance his career, leaving the town unguarded?”

“The Seconds could call for a posse—”

“An apprentice does not have that authority!” Nnanji was seething with fury, but he took a few minutes to reflect before he decided, unconsciously rubbing his chin. Then he said icily, “I am ready to proceed, mentor.”

The cordwainer looked ready to faint.

And Wallie had to decide what to do now. Possibly this was another of the gods’ tests, or perhaps it was some sort of a clue. Certainly Nnanji had a watertight case. Tau was so small that most of the time one swordsman would be ample to keep it peaceful. Likely Kioniarru had been reeve for decades, and any time he had needed help, on festival days when the drunks prowled, he had called out his sons. The elders would have approved, because they had no extra wages to pay, so they were not guiltless. But the old man had taught his sons to use swords—a sensible precaution and a flagrant abomination. Butchers and bakers were not sailors.

Wallie could not hear a denunciation from Nnanji, and priests should not judge violations of swordsmen sutras. Brota could, of course.

He needed time to think. If he let this prosecution go ahead, he was going to strip Tau of any protection at all. Even a cordwainer would be better than nothing. Even a cordwainer who had ignored a near riot developing right outside his shop.

“What penalties would you demand?” Wallie inquired.

“Death—what else?” Nnanji snapped.

The cordwainer moaned.

“A little extreme, perhaps?”

Nnanji bristled. “I have no doubts, my lord brother!”

WalUe had asked the wrong question. “What penalties would you assess if you were judge, then?” Nnanji as prosecutor would always ask for the death penalty, to show he was not afraid of losing his case.

“Oh!” Nnanji pondered. “The old man wouldn’t understand, would he? He’s confused . . . cut off his ponytail and break his sword. The civilians . . . the right hand.”

The cordwainer cringed.

“Then they will starve, and their children, also,” Wallie said.

Nnanji frowned. “What sentence would you impose, mentor?”

Very grateful that the case was still hypothetical, Wallie said, “I think a flogging would suffice. Their father was the main culprit.”

Nnanji thought about that, and then nodded. “Yes, that’s true—a thorough flogging, in public.” Nnanji had mellowed!

“And Adept Kionijuiy? Or Master Kionijuiy, if he has won his promotion?”

Nnanji’s eyes lit up—challenge! That need not be hypothetical! “He might still be at Casr when we get back there? Or even here, when we return from Cha next week?”

“If he is, then you can have him.”

“Thank you, brother!” Nnanji beamed.

Wallie suppressed a shiver and looked at the quaking cobbler. “Adept Nnanji and I have pressing business elsewhere. We cannot stay to administer justice at this time, but we shall be back. Warn your brothers, all of them. And I intend to send word to the lodge at Casr, stating that Tau has need of swordsmen.”

Obviously astonished by this reprieve, the cordwainer wiped sweat from his brow.

It was amazing that the old man, and later his swordsman son, had managed to hide the nepotism so long. Perhaps only the very closeness of a lodge had made it possible—any free swords who had chanced by had been easily diverted to Casr. Now, if they had any sense, the whole family would leave town.

The swordsmen emerged again into the smelly, bustling street. Wallie stood for a moment with his back against a wall, thinking. He could not easily talk to Nnanji when they were walking.

It was still not a very satisfactory solution. If Kionijuiy’s brothers all fled, then Tau would be left unprotected, at least for a few days.

“We are going to the temple?” Nnanji asked.

“You are, as soon as you see me safely to the ship. Here.” Wallie handed over a couple of golds. Priests were the only messengers who could be trusted not to pocket a fee and forget its purpose.

Nnanji raised his eyebrows.

“Send word to the lodge. But also ask if they know the castellan’s name—I can’t do that now, can I?”

Perhaps the old man had been mistaken; or perhaps not.

If Shonsu had been castellan of the lodge at Casr, then word of Wallie’s disgrace at Aus would certainly have been carried there by sailors. When Sapphire had docked at Casr, he had tried to persuade Nnanji to visit the garrison. That might have been a very narrow escape. And what was he expected to do now—go back to Casr, or continue the circle to Ov?

“It’s a puzzle, isn’t it?” Wallie looked around with enjoyment at the pseudo-Tudor buildings and the bustling people detouring nervously around him. “Maybe I’m supposed to stay and take over here! It’s a cute little town, this.”

“You’re joking!”

“Not entirely,” Wallie said. “When we’ve completed our mission, what are you going to do afterward? Marry Thana and be a water rat?”

“Thana’s great, but . . . me—a water rat?” Nnanji shrugged. “Be a Seventh?”

“Certainly, in time. Doing what?”

“A free sword. Honorable and true to my oaths.” Nnanji looked puzzled by this sudden philosophical discussion. “You?”

“I want to see more of the World. But eventually, I suppose, I’ll settle down in some quiet little town like this and be a reeve.” Wallie chuckled at the notion. “And raise seven sons, like old Kioniarru. And seven daughters, also, if Jja wants them!”

Nnanji stared at him incredulously. “Reeve? Why not king?”

“Too much bloodshed to get it, and too much work when you do. But I like Tau, I think.”

“If you want it, my lord brother,” Nnanji said respectfully, “then I am sure that the Goddess will give it to you.” He wrinkled his snub nose in disgust. “I’ll try to deserve something better.”

Wallie had feared that the sailors might be fretting and eager to leave, but Brota had discovered that Tau was a source of fine leather. While Sapphire was heavy-laden with the marble, her holds were far from full. Brota dearly enjoyed trading . . . and sorcerer towns had no tanners. Thus the swordsmen returned to find the ship smelling like the cordwainer’s shop, while the usual panting slaves raced up and down the planks, loading boots and shoes, bulky but not heavy.

Brota and Tomiyano scowled at the news that Lord Shonsu had been unable to enlist helpers in Tau, but they did not seem surprised. Nnanji headed off to the temple, and Wallie sought out Honakura for a consultation.

The evenings were growing shorter now, and the weather uncertain. By nightfall, a storm front had moved in, and Sapphire jerked peevishly at her anchor in mid-River, her center of gravity strangely lowered by the marble. Rain splattered everywhere and dribbled from the scuppers. Cold, damp darkness flooded into the deckhouse before the meal was finished.

Wallie was even more puzzled than before. The priests had promised Nnanji they would pass the message to the lodge. The castellan there had been a Lord Shonsu until recently—so they had said—but they thought there was a new one now, name unknown. Castellans came and went frequently. So what was Wallie supposed to do? Go back to Casr, or continue to Ov? Casr was logical, for there he must find swordsmen, but he would be in grave danger of a denunciation for cowardice. Ov seemed to be what the god’s riddle demanded, but it made very little sense.

Sitting on the floor and cuddling Jja for warmth, he passed on the news that there was a lodge in Casr.

Holiyi broke a two-day silence to say, “Heard that. Didn’t know it mattered.”

“Casr it must be, then,” Brota proclaimed firmly. ‘Three days to Cha, then back to Casr!” The next city was always going to appear in three days, but in practice always took longer.

A wordless murmur from the shadows indicated that the family agreed with her. The Jonahs were not resented as bitterly as they had been at first, but these riverfolk wanted no part of divine missions. They felt they had done their share now and should be allowed to go back to minding their own business.

“What would a priest say, if we had one present, old man?” Wallie asked.

“How should I know?” Honakura protested, and there were a few chuckles. “I agree that the signals are contradictory, my lord. You must pray for guidance.”

Prayer might help, but Wallie decided to try a little morale boosting. “Nnanji? Sing us a song, the one about Chioxin.”

“No, let’s have a romantic one!” protested one of the women—Mata, he thought.

“Don’t know any romantic ones,” Nnanji said. ‘They weren’t allowed in the barracks.”

Then he started, and his soft tenor drifted anonymously out of the shadows:

In a few minutes Oligarro’s mandolin picked up the melody. It was a mediocre ballad, and whichever minstrel’s voice Nnanji was copying was not especially tuneful, but it was new to the audience, and soon they must have seen why it had been chosen. Battles and heroes, monsters and villains, blood and honor floated through the gathering dark and out into the night: six swords, six heraldic beasts holding six jewels, many legendary warriors . . . then silence.

“Go on!” Matarro shouted eagerly.

“Forgotten the words?” Tomiyano asked sarcastically.

“I only know one more verse,” Nnanji said, and quoted the lines he had sung once to his liege lord as he sat in a bathtub:

Silence again.

“That can’t be all?” Diwa protested.

“No,” said Nnanji. “There’s a little more, but I never heard it. Chioxin died. The seventh sword, he gave to the Goddess. No one saw it for seven hundred years.”

The deckhouse was black as a coal mine now, the Dream God obscured by the flying clouds, the shutters mostly closed against the wind.

“And She gave it to Shonsu?” Matarro asked breathlessly.

“She did. It’s here, in this room. The saga isn’t finished. The greatest part must be still to come. And you’re in it!”

“Oo!” said a few juvenile voices, and there were adult murmurs there, also.

“I don’t want to be in it!” That was Tomiyano. “And I don’t want the damned sword on my ship!”

“Tom’o!” Brota’s voice was reproving, but a few others muttered agreement.

“Nor swordsmen! Who needs them?”

The ensuing embarrassed silence was suddenly broken as the bar dropped across the door. Feet ran up the steps outside.

Engrossed in the song. Captain Tomiyano had forgotten to set guards at nightfall. Sapphire had been boarded.

†††††††

The deckhouse was filled with shouting and panic. Wallie was sitting directly below a window. He rose and swung open the shutter. Leaning out backward, he looked up at the blackness of the bulwark against the almost-black sky. He could reach the rail if he stood on his toes. Then a darker darkness loomed above the rail, and a blade glinted. Behind him, the brightness of the River . . . hastily he grabbed the sides of the frame and threw himself back, hanging over the water as steel whistled where his head had been an instant before.

He slid back into the deckhouse. Think up plan two . . . 

“Here,” Nnanji said softly at his side.

The noise was subsiding.

“Men to the middle, everyone else back against the walls,” Wallie said. Silence returned, except for one of the adolescents, who was snuffling.

All the shutters were open now and a very faint grayness filtered in. Even on deck there would be little light, with clouds covering the Dream God. The rain seemed to have stopped, but there were footsteps on the deck above.

“Tomiyano? Holiyi?” Wallie said quietly.

“Here.”

“Here.”

“I’m going to lift Nnanji up. You two hang on to my back straps, or we’ll tip out. Okay? Then I’ll follow him, but the rest of you stay here. Leave it to the professionals. Nnanji, I’ll let go the right ankle when you’re up there. Better have your knife handy for openers. This way.” He led them over to the aft port window.

The panic had gone. They were a tough bunch, these sailors.

Nnanji turned his back to the window. His eyes seemed to shine by themselves, but it must have been the light from the other side of the room. Wallie crowded close to him, positioned Holiyi’s foot behind his own on one side, Tomiyano’s on the other, felt them grip his backstops. Then he squatted down, ignoring protests from his not-quite-healed wound. The sailors took his weight, stopping him from falling over backward. He gripped Nnanji’s ankles.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice muffled in Nnanji’s kilt.

He felt Nnanji chuckle. “Ready!” He leaned back.

Wallie lifted and then straightened his knees: Ummph!

Nnanji shot upward and out, swaying as Wallie rose and leaned forward. The two sailors grunted, catching the sudden stress on the straps and the backward slip of his feet, slamming bodily against the window frame. In one long movement Wallie had unfolded from a squat to his full height, raising his arms and propelling his protégé skyward—a remarkable feat of strength, but there was no time for admiration.

To the pirates waiting above, the swordsman must have materialized from nothing, suddenly suspended outside the rail, higher than they were. A flash of teeth and eyes, perhaps, and then Nnanji threw his knife into the nearest watcher and drew his sword. Another man sprang forward and his blade was parried. He recoiled against a mizzen backstay and was struck. He screamed, his sword missing Wallie by inches, then hitting the water with a loud splash. Nnanji swayed precariously as his ankle was released, parried again, put his right foot on the rail, grabbed the stay, blocked another lunge, pulled his left foot free, parried—then he was on the rail and down on the deck.

At that point the fight was as good as lost for the pirates. Nnanji could hold them off while Wallie pushed his supporters away and scrambled out through the window. Then he was over the rail also, and the sharks were in the swimming pool.

It was a monochrome nightmare, black on almost-black, lit only by faint gleams from silver shreds of clouds and shards of the Dream God and bright water. Slaughter and injury and death, no affair of honor, proclaimed by heralds, diluted by the convention of equal facing off against equal . . . Wallie used a battle cry to tell his companion where he was: “Seven! Seven!” like a tuba in the mounting noise. He heard Nnanji’s laugh, then: “Four! Four!”

Wallie parried and thrust, and someone screamed. Another dark shape loomed at him, eyes and blade shining, and he slashed and felt his sword cut into meat and strike bone, heard another curse of pain. A body hit the deck. “Seven!” “Four!” He could barely see his opponents, but they were worse off. His supreme skill, his knowledge of the deck, his certainty that they were all enemies and not friends, even his size and strength, together made him unbeatable. Shonsu was the World’s best, and on this deck Nnanji was almost a Sixth. It was no contest, just hot-blooded murder. The swordsmen were outnumbered, but the pirates were outclassed.

“Four!”

“Seven!”

A voice shouted, “Three!” and tailed off in a gurgle and another tenor laugh from Nnanji. Then the pirates fell back, and for a moment there was a pause, a circle of armed men facing two over a clutter of four or five bodies, one of them screaming in a high voice like a boy or a woman might use. It was better not to see the carnage, to fight by sounds and the feel of things, not to know what one was doing to living men—or women.

“Come on, then!” Nnanji jeered, and they came, at least six of them together, and it must have seemed a reasonable idea. It was folly, for they tripped over the bodies and jostled each other, while the swordsmen had their backs to the rail. Cut. Slash. Oath. Scream.

“Seven!”

“Four!”

Then they broke and fled, the swordsmen close behind, lions after Christians. A hand grabbed Wallie’s ankle. He stumbled, slashed, and was freed. He fought his way down the steps, and the brightening ringlight showed people scrambling over the rail forward.

“Hold it!” he panted. “Let them go.”

The wind was cold as death on his sweaty skin.

Nnanji stopped to watch also, wiping his face with an arm. “That was fun,” he said. “The trouble with our craft, brother, is too much rehearsal and not enough acting.”

Then the fo’c’sle door slammed shut. The pirates had vacated the deck, but there were others below. Wallie stalked forward, warily checking for ambushes behind the dinghies. He looked over the rail and saw a group of boats.

“Wait for your wounded!” he called, and received a chorus of obscenities.

“I am a swordsman of the Seventh. I swear by my sword that there will be no tricks. We’ll return your wounded. How many went below?”

The replies were too jumbled to be audible. He went over to the door and kicked it. “Can you hear me?” No reply. He grabbed the door and heaved, jumped back and sideways. He was facing utter blackness and he didn’t need Shonsu to tell him that he would be visible against the sky and could be knifed.

He repeated his oath—no tricks, and they could leave in safety if they came out. Silence, the only sounds a muffled clamor from the deckhouse, a distant weeping from the wounded, and the slap of water against the hull.

“We’ll starve you out,” he shouted.

No reply.

“I’ve told you that you can leave. But only if you come now.”

More silence.

“I’m a swordsman!” Wallie shouted, and he could hear his despair in his voice—and hoped the pirates could. “The sailors will be here in a minute. Hurry!”

“With our swords?” asked a voice from just inside.

“Yes. I swear.”

Nnanji growled angrily.

Wallie snarled at him. “Keep watch on the boats!”

“I’m coming!” said a woman’s voice. A shape materialized in the doorway and ran toward the boats.

Nnanji grabbed her arm with his free hand. “How many more in there?”

“Four more,” she said.

Then there was confusion as the crew came streaming across the deck. Someone had climbed out a window and unbarred the door. Wallie swung around, and now he had to threaten his friends to defend their enemies. Tomiyano would have attacked them with his dagger if Nnanji had not blocked him. He was raving with fury, screaming over and over that they were pirates and ought to die.

Finally Wallie grabbed him with his left hand, angry that he must take his attention off the fo’c’sle and the captives, who might yet be dangerous.

“They’re sailors,” Wallie roared. “Half of them are women. There are children out there in the boats! Where did your grandfather get this ship?”

It was only a guess, but it silenced Tomiyano. The last of the pirates slipped over the rail to their boats. A splash from the stern warned Wallie that the crew were starting to clean up. He turned and ran, hoping that that body had been dead, and he almost had to use his sword again to defend the three surviving wounded from his friends. Next to fire, they loathed pirates most.

The wounded were bandaged and helped into a final boat. Wallie leaned wearily on the rail, feeling the blood drying on his arm and chest, feeling the sullen throb of protest from his leg, hating this barbaric World, watching the sad little cavalcade drift away. It was an endless, savage game, with its own rules. Had the attack succeeded, then by morning Sapphire would still have been a trading ship, but under new ownership. Brota and her family would have been fed to the fish, unless they had been granted mercy, in which case they would have been in the boats—with swords or without—homeless refugees and potentially pirates themselves.

He shivered at the wind on his heated face. The light was growing brighter as the clouds were ripped from the Dream God.

“I think I did four and wounded one,” Nnanji said. “So that would be three dead, two wounded for you, right?”

“I didn’t count.”

Then Thana came hurtling out of the darkness and threw her arms around Nnanji. Wallie was suddenly enveloped in a sobbing Brota. His back was being slapped, his hand pumped with laughter and cheering. He was astonished at one point to be hugged by Tomiyano, now recovered from his fury and gruffly apologizing for everything he could think of. The swordsmen were heroes.

He slipped away by himself up the fo’c’sle steps and leaned on the capstan and shivered. It was there that Jja found him.

She put an arm around him. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” The shivering was getting worse.

“No.” That had been a mere river skirmish, and he had seven cities to take back from the sorcerers. How much blood? How many dead?

“You did your duty, love,” she whispered, sensing his horror at the slaughter. “What the gods wanted.”

“I don’t have to like it, do I?” In the battle on the holy island he had let the Shonsu bloodlust drive him. Perhaps he could have called it up for this one, but he had not felt it and had not raised it. This had been Wallie running things; and hating it.

“No, you don’t have to like it,” she said. “But it had to be done. They are your friends—Wallie’s friends.” She very rarely called him that, except when they were making love. He hugged her tightly and buried his face in her hair.

Yes, they would be friends now—there was a party developing down on the main deck. Someone had just tipped wine over Nnanji’s head.

Rain began to fall on his back, increasing his shivering. Voices were calling him to come down and drink.

The pirates had died to fulfill the god’s riddle. He had earned his army.

Murderer!