BOOK FIVE:

HOW THE SWORD SAVED THE SWORDSMAN

†

Next morning, while Nnanji was teaching fencing to Matarro, Tomiyano came to Wallie with a rueful smile and two foils. It was a declaration of surrender, but it merely confirmed what Wallie had already guessed—from now on Sapphire was his to command. The family had had close calls from pirates before, but never that close, and they had suffered no losses. They understood. They would cooperate. Moreover, they were genuinely grateful to the swordsmen. There would be no more talk of putting the passengers ashore, and now even the surly captain began to thaw into friendship.

Two days later, carefully primed by Wallie with a few fiendishly complex and obscure routines, plus a brief lecture on Nnanji’s shortcomings, Tomiyano beat that young man soundly, to his great indignation. From then on their daily match became the ship’s national sport. Wallie could hardly find a peaceful moment without one or other demanding another lesson. The standard of fencing on board rose to giddy heights.

At Cha, Novice Katanji was astonished to discover that slaving was not merely permissible now, but encouraged. Entering towers, talking to sorcerers, or any other such foolhardiness was still forbidden, but he seemed unusually sincere when he promised to be careful.

At Cha, also, Brota disposed of the marble and footwear and bought wine, great fragrant hogsheads of wine. Without discussion. Sapphire continued her voyage upstream, and the mountains edged around from south to southwest.

That first night out of Cha, the meal became raucous as a feast of gulls—Tomiyano was passing round samples of wine.

“Ensorceled wine!” he proclaimed. “You wouldn’t believe what the vintners charge for it, but there’s a good market for it on the right bank. I’ve been checking.”

Wallie could guess before he tasted it, and not only from the choking and gasping that accompanied its progress around the curie. “At least six times the price of ordinary wine?” he asked.

The captain nodded suspiciously. “About eight times. Why?”

Wallie sipped cautiously. It was almost straight alcohol, flavored with wine—a crude and powerful brandy.

“If you have some ordinary wine, Captain,” he said, “then tomorrow I shall ensorcel it for you. But you’ll only get about a fifth as much of the ensorceled wine as you have of the ordinary.” He laughed at the captain’s skeptical glare.

The copper still from Ki San had remained in a corner of the deckhouse, unclaimed by either Tomiyano or Nnanji. Next morning Wallie took it down to the galley and carefully distilled some wine for the dumfounded sailors.

“There you are,” he said. “If you want to settle down ashore, then you can be wine ensorcelers; but I suspect that the sorcerers would resent the competition. You might die of a nasty accident fairly soon, so I don’t advise it.” They stared at him with superstitious awe and disclaimed any such ambition.

It was obvious that the sorcerers, having stills for whatever purpose, would sooner or later have discovered alcohol. What was more interesting to Wallie was the revelation that they were making money from it. He added to his list of things he wanted to know: What else did the sorcerers sell, apart from magic potions and spells and ensorceled wine?

Cha on the left bank . . . the next city was Wo on the right bank. They alternated like footsteps. As Sapphire docked, a band led a parade along the road. The port official reeled up the gangplank, and Tomiyano reeled, also, catching his breath from his salute.

“Welcome to Wo and carnival!” the official declaimed, and staggered slightly.

Brota rubbed her plump hands at the thought of carnival time and a load of ensorceled wine to sell.

A dark suspicion settled in Wallie’s mind. He turned to Nnanji. “I’ll bet you tomorrow’s latrine duty that we don’t get to speak to the reeve.”

Nnanji would not take that bet—he trusted his mentor’s hunches too much. They settled on a wager of an hour’s fencing as a sure win for both.

“Go ahead and sell your wine, mistress,” Wallie told Brota. “I know what the rest of us are going to do. Right, brother?”

“Right,” said Nnanji. “Carnival!”

Wallie turned to Jja. “Dancing!” he said. “Wine and song and beautiful ladies in gossamer dresses.”

Jja dropped her eyes. “I can’t dance, my love.”

“And masks,” Wallie said quietly.

He had been right about the reeve: the only swordsmen they could locate were two juniors so totally drunk that they could not have found their sword hilts. Nnanji was enraged and wanted to chop off their ponytails, but Wallie dragged him away before he could start. There was no chance now that Brota would put him ashore if he found enlistable swordsmen, but evidently he was still not permitted to meet any. He was on a voyage of discovery and must find out for himself. By Ov, hopefully, the lesson would be learned.

He had been wrong about the beautiful dresses. The standard of living was not high enough to allow such luxury. Participants in carnival wore the minimum of clothes and a complete coat of body paint, which acted as costume and mask in one. A supply of paint was quickly obtained, and the younger folk divided into couples to decorate each other. Nnanji offered his services to Thana, but had to settle for Katanji.

Wallie and Jja retired to their cabin and discovered that body painting was even more fun than the dress designing they had enjoyed long ago in the temple barracks. They smudged several attempts before being able to concentrate on art.

That night they danced in the streets by the light of bonfires while the music played and the wine flowed. The air was cool on skins wearing only paint, but they were warmed by giant bonfires, by frenzied tarantellas and torrid fandangoes, by hot wine mulled with cinnamon and sweet cloves.

Jja was a born dancer, the best of them all, and soon was teaching her owner. They all danced until dawn had turned to morning.

Nnanji wore four shades of green, like a red-haired leprechaun, and Thana was a golden sprite from some legendary Arcadian forest. Leaping with little skill but unbounded enthusiasm, those two won the endurance dance.

Jja shone in midnight blue with silver stars, Wallie was Harlequin. They were awarded the grand prize for the handsomest couple in the carnival. Of course.

From Wo to Gor . . . 

At Gor, two sorcerers stopped Tomiyano in the street and questioned him about his scar, his ship, his business, and his personal habits. He returned to Sapphire cursing, red-faced, and obviously intimidated; vowing to stay out of sight in future.

Slowly Wallie was gathering wisdom about sorcery, but not the one wisdom he needed—how could swordsmen fight sorcerers? There were more stories of thunderbolts, various tales of mysterious powers—some of which he was sure were legend—and a harrowing eyewitness account of the destruction of the swordsmen of Gor, who had charged the line of sorcerers across an open pasture under a cloudless sky, only to die simultaneously in one great thunderbolt. Or had that been another manifestation of fire demons? The bodies had apparently been badly chewed, as at Ov.

The towers were places of dread for the townsfolk, who stayed away at night, fearing the strange noises and lights. All the towers were identical, Katanji insisted, and they all had birds around them. At least one other tower purchased horse urine, and a second time Katanji saw octopus being delivered. The sorcerers seemed to do well out of their wine ensorceling. They purchased all the finest leather. They sold love potions and would foretell the future for a fee. Their garrisons seemed always to be slightly smaller than the swordsmen garrisons they displaced, but who knew who was a sorcerer? There might be many around in disguise.

Wallie could find no limit to their power, no chink in their armor. If the World contained a sorcerer kryptonite, he did not hear of it. The colors of fall began to tint the hills and the days flew away like swallows. The mountains slid round to the west. Crew and passengers became almost indistinguishable, and even Nnanji at times donned a breechclout and ran aloft with the others.

Thana continued to vamp Lord Shonsu and ignore Nnanji’s passionate yearnings. At first Wallie had dismissed those as mere lechery. Then he had concluded that they were only a juvenile infatuation—Thana was probably the first woman who had ever genuinely refused Nnanji and she was also the only target in sight. Now his unflagging persistence was beginning to seem quite out of character, another of those complexities that Wallie had not previously suspected in him. Unfortunately, his social skills remained primitive, and his courtship was still much like his table manners—long on enthusiasm and short on finesse. He did not know how to woo a lady. Until he sought advice, his mentor was not going to offer any, and evidently Nnanji was too proud to ask.

Gor on the left bank, then Shan on the right, a pleasant little town of potteries and dairies, where Sapphire loaded great yellow cartwheels of cheese, and the crew joked that the Goddess was rewarding even the ship’s rats.

Rather nervously, Wallie went hunting for the reeve, wondering what disaster this action might call down on the unsuspecting victim. The reeve and his deputy had gone duck hunting. Wallie was not surprised. For the first time he did meet some competent swordsmen—a half-dozen middleranks, awed to find themselves entertaining a Seventh—but all of them were happily married and beyond the age of seeking adventure. He made no attempt to enlist any, and none of them knew or cared very much about sorcerers.

Then Amb, on the left bank. There Brota purchased long rolls of sailcloth and bundles of tools; saws and axes and shovels and kegs of nails. As the last of these were being carried aboard, Sapphire had a visitor, a wizened, graying priest of the Fifth, mincing up the plank behind the diminutive figure of Honakura.

Wallie, Nnanji, and Tomiyano—the three who must not be seen in sorcerer country, the three wise monkeys, Wallie called them—were watching from the deckhouse. They could not hear what was said, but they saw gold being passed and then the priest depart. Honakura came wandering in to explain, looking pleased with himself.

He settled wearily on one of the chests. “An interesting development, my lord,” he said. “We are on a mission of mercy!” Then he would say no more until he had sipped a glass of wine and eaten some of Lina’s fresh gingerbread.

Wallie knew that he was being teased and would have to wait. The old man was a wonder to him. He gave the impression that he was enjoying every minute of this wandering, dangerous life, so unlike his pampered past. At every city he scouted with the sailors and he provided more useful information than anyone except Katanji, for he had both judgment and skill.

He also had an invaluable source of gossip in the priests. While they were unhappy with the rule of sorcerers because they demanded that altars to the Fire God be maintained within the temples and prayers offered to Him, their unhappiness did not seem to extend to contemplating revolution. The sorcerers were being very skillful at keeping the population content. In Wallie’s view, their public relations were much better than the swordsmen’s.

“Ah!” said Honakura, refreshed at last. The ship was preparing to leave. “You know that Mistress Brota purchased tools? I was just returning when I saw the holy Master Momingu arrive at the trader’s, so I made myself known to him.”

“And what is so interesting about Master Momingu?” Wallie asked patiently. Nnanji and Tomiyano were almost ready to start strangling procedures.

“He had come to purchase a shipload of tools and charter a vessel to carry them. The temple wants to send succor to the city of Gi, next port up on the right bank. I explained that we were heading that way, and Mistress Brota agreed to sell her cargo and accept the charter.”

“The devil she did?” Tomiyano muttered.

Honakura twinkled. “I think she made a small profit, Captain. Of course, the reverend Momingu had expected to accompany the load and supervise distribution, but I was able to persuade him that such was not required in this case.”

“And why should the priests of Amb wish to buy tools and send them to the city of Gi?” Wallie asked, as expected.

“Because,” the priest replied triumphantly, “the sorcerers have informed them that a great fire is burning there! Much of the city has already been destroyed, and many people are homeless. The temple is also chartering ships of food and lumber.”

“Is burning?”

“Is. It started this morning, they say.”

His listeners looked at each other. “Three days to Gi,” Tomiyano said.

“Exactly!” Honakura rubbed his hands and beamed at Wallie. “A test of the sorcerers, my lord!”

Wallie nodded. The sorcerers had known of the downed bridge in the mountains, but Gi was a long way off and was also in swordsman country. Nor had the sorcerers offered to transport the tools and lumber by magic. “Very interesting, old man. Very interesting, indeed!”

Hard-nosed traders though they were, Brota and Tomiyano were not without compassion or faith in the Goddess. They sailed late and weighed anchor early, and now the winds were favorable. Two days brought Sapphire to Gi.

There were cities of wood and there were cities of stone. Gi had been of wood, spread across a delta plain between two gentle hills. For hours before Sapphire arrived the air was tainted by an acrid stench of burning. As she drew close the whole company assembled on deck to stare in shock and dismay at the devastation.

The plain was gray, a giant’s thistlefield, a petrified forest of chimneys, its deadly sameness broken only by a few roofless skeletons of temples. Lonely wisps of smoke showed where remnants still smoldered, but tiny shanties of charred fragments were already clustered around some of the stark chimney stacks. The wind lifted clouds of ash and stirred them around contemptuously. From the stone facing on the dock all the way back to the hillsides, hardly a whole building stood. Even as the watchers absorbed their first horror, people began to rise out of the wasteland like ants. They drifted toward the harbor, thousands of them, homeless, hungry ghosts, the same deathly gray as their city.

Wallie was the first ashore, Nnanji at his heels, and they had to push their way into the crowd and force it back to allow the ship to be properly moored. The mob was filthy and shocked—white eyes staring out of ash-covered faces. People shouted and struggled, and there was danger of a stampede that would hurl hundreds off the dock and into the deadly waters.

Drawing his sword and waving it high, bellowing to enforce order, Wallie called for swordsmen, and eventually three or four came struggling through to the front. They were as black and as confused as the civilians. He could not tell their ranks and he had no time for formal salutes. He barked orders and was obeyed. Discipline appeared like a sudden rain in the desert, and the danger of panic subsided. He jumped up on a bollard and shouted the news: Food ships were coming, help was coming, pass the word, and make room.

So that day Sapphire went into the relief business. The sailcloth was ripped into tent lengths, and some of those torn small to hold nails. One tool or one poke of nails to a customer—let them cooperate as best they could. The crew worked as dock slaves, carrying the cargo to shore. Other ships began to arrive, sent by the priests of Amb and Ov, or by chance, or by the Hand of the Goddess. They brought food and lumber, and one was a cattle boat whose crew set up an abattoir on the dock. Wallie conscripted every water rat from every ship and built himself an army, which he used to organize and pacify. Eventually he found the reeve, but he was elderly and shattered by bereavement. Wallie declared him deposed and replaced by his deputy; no one questioned a Seventh’s right to do anything he wanted. By evening tents and shacks were beginning to spread across the plain, while Sapphire had turned gray herself and stank of dead fire like the devastated city. But civilization had taken root again.

Incredibly, Brota had found trade. Several of the warehouses had held bronze ingots, great flat slabs with a lug at each corner, the shape that the Greeks had used and called oxhides. Many had survived the fire and lay in heaps amid the rubble. She bought a load of them, and Wallie had no doubt that the price was good. Nor was there need to hire a slave gang; hundreds of sooty men were willing to work for a copper until they were sweat-streaked like zebras. By the end of the day there was one woman smiling in Gi.

At last they had done all they could. They spread the grubby sails and stood out into open water and untainted air, weary and filthy, and sad. Fire was even worse than pirates.

Slumped beside a sooty and equally exhausted Nnanji at the rail, Wallie reflected that for once he had truly enjoyed being a swordsman of the Seventh. Power itself held no appeal for him, but sometimes it could be used for good purposes.

Then Jja came by, clean and delectable in her black bikini, much amused that she had won first place in the lottery for the shower, taking precedence over her mighty owner. She made a great performance of leaning forward and pursing her lips to get a kiss without being soiled by him. Chuckling, she went off to help with the children.

Wallie sighed and made a remark that was to have a curious sequel.

“If only a slave could wear jewels!” he said. “If she could use them, I would buy beautiful things and give them to Jja. There are few easier ways to honor one’s lady.”

Getting no answer, he turned to glance at his companion and intercepted an amused look. He turned away quickly. Nnanji had seen right through that little deception and knew that he was not talking only of Jja.

“Thank you, brother,” Nnanji said quietly. “I should have thought of that, of course.”

Wallie turned back to him, knowing that his face was burning under its film of ash. “Forgive me,” he said. “I keep treating you as the Second I found on the beach. I forget that you have come a long way since then.”

“If I have, then the credit is yours,” Nnanji said graciously. He went back to looking at the ruins of Gi. Incredibly, a tear trickled down his cheek, clearing a path through the dust.

††

The rain god had been about his business in the night, washing the rigging, but the sails were striped with his leavings and the deck blotched with mud. The crew set to work to clean up, singing river chanteys in the morning sunshine.

Wallie swung a mop in the line of workers, perhaps the first swordsman of the Seventh ever to undertake such a task in the history of the World. He would have been quite happy at it, had he not been working alongside a certain nubile, slender lass. He was being kept extremely conscious of her shapely form in its saffron bikini, of her calendar beauty, of her classic profile crowned with shiny black curls and adorned with the sexiest eyelashes in the World, for Thana had mysteriously become left-handed, which put her off center, and every few minutes her flank or arm would gently nudge against his. “Beg pardon, my lord,” she would whisper. “My pleasure,” he would reply. It was very annoying, because he knew that she was doing it deliberately, that he was reacting, that she knew he was reacting, that she knew he knew, and so on. Had Shonsu been in better control of his glands? Probably not, but likely Shonsu would not have cared.

Then Nnanji threw open the fo’c’sle door and came striding along the deck with a bag in his hand. Behind him, almost having to trot to keep up, came Katanji, wearing sword and kilt and boots. For once, he looked concerned, and there was obviously trouble in the air—so much trouble that Nnanji did not even notice Thana.

“I should be grateful if you would accompany us, my lord brother. I need speak with Mistress Brota.”

Wallie was wearing his sword, but his feet were bare. “If you hold on a moment, I can get my boots,” he said, but Nnanji was already bounding up the steps to the poop. Wallie glanced at Katanji, who brashly rolled his eyes in an attempt to appear less worried than he obviously was. They both followed.

Brota was sitting like a giant red puffball at the tiller and her moon face was totally expressionless as the deputation arrived. Wallie was not surprised to find that Thana and Honakura had come along also—they both liked to be in on any excitement that was brewing. Thus there were five people who formed up in a semicircle in front of the helmsperson.

“You’re blocking my view!” Brota barked. Nnanji growled, but all five sat down. First point to Brota, Wallie thought; now she was higher than they were, and being angry was harder when sitting than standing. She had no real need to see, anyway. Sapphire was heading up an empty River, with very few sails in sight—blue sky, blue water, golden fall hills against the smoke-colored ranges far to the northwest.

A moment later Tomiyano slid into view and stayed leaning against the rail, watching with cynical suspicion. Seven was the magic number, Wallie remembered. Could this be some divinely decreed event? They had as near a complete set of ranks as could be assembled on the ship, too—little, desiccated Honakura in his black, then the lithesome Thana in skimpy yellow . . . Next to her, Katanji was as dark-skinned as she, and looked darker because he was wearing a white kilt, unusually clean for him. Nnanji was a tangle of lanky and paler limbs protruding from an orange kilt, his anger making him seem more awkward even than he normally did. Brota loomed above them all in her wind-rippled crimson, Tomiyano was a silent audience on the fringes in a brown breechclout, and Wallie himself, huge in blue. Only a Sixth’s green was missing.

Nnanji looked at Wallie. “The day you were wounded, brother, I took your money to look after. I gave mine to Novice Katanji, so they would not get mixed up. I gave him forty-three golds and some change. When I sold Cowie, I gave him another ten. He had five of his own. I asked for three back in Wo, but I haven’t needed any more. Today I asked him for the rest of it.”

Planning to buy a present for Thana, of course.

“Fifty-three of yours and five of his makes fifty-eight,” Wallie said, knowing that mathematics was not his protégé’s strong point. “Less three makes fifty he owes you?”

Nnanji nodded grimly. “He hasn’t got it. All he has is this.”

He tipped the bag he had been holding, spilling a glittering heap of rubies and emeralds and pearls. The circle of onlookers muttered in astonishment. Nnanji stirred the heap with a finger.

“Three golds and some silver,” he said, picking out a few coins.

“Obviously the gems are worth more than fifty golds,” Wallie said. “He can certainly repay you as soon as he gets to a free city.”

Nnanji’s eyes were icy. “But I want to know where he got them, brother. He denies stealing, but says he promised Mistress Brota that he would not tell. That’s what concerns me!”

“I’ve never seen those before,” Brota said hurriedly. She started scanning the horizon as if looking for landmarks. No one wanted to speak next. Wallie decided that this was a matter between Nnanji and his brother, but he was curious to see how Nnanji would handle it.

Getting no help from him, Nnanji took a deep breath and said, “Mistress, would you please explain how a protégé can keep anything secret from his mentor? Do you consider it seemly for another swordsman, like yourself, to suggest that he should?”

Point to Nnanji.

Brota grunted without looking down. “No! But I don’t recall telling him to do that. As I remember, it was the other way. I promised him that I would not tell you.”

Nnanji swung a triumphant gaze on Katanji, who was attempting to look like a very small boy confused by the affairs of adults. He was less convincing than he would have been once; the weeks on the River had lengthened him and filled him out. He would never be big, but he was visibly closer to manhood than he had been when Wallie first met him. He looked healthier, too, and he even had a stump of a ponytail now, although it curled up in a knot. “I bought some rugs, mentor,” he said. “Brota helped me.”

Thana was instantly overcome by a life-threatening attack of giggles. Brota glared at her in angry silence, but that merely made Thana’s fit worse.

“Let me tell!” she said when she had recovered.

Out came a story of silk rugs and of negotiations in a gondola. Wallie was soon digging his nails into his palms to stop himself laughing aloud. He risked a glance at the old priest, who raised one eyebrow—Brota outwitted by a scratcher? Certainly a miracle!

Katanji had bought all the best rugs in the shop in Dri for sixty-two gold pieces, filling the gondola. Brota had gained nothing by her bargain. Indeed she had been out the costs of the ride and bribing the gondolier, out even the risk of smuggling, for the authorities might have seized her ship. Wallie knew that she would have felt bound by her handshake, but that did not explain how she had managed to resist drowning the brat.

“And how did you sell them?” he asked.

Katanji had recovered his confidence, but he was still somehow projecting an appearance of great youth and innocence as he took up the story. Now it was even better.

At the next port, Casr, he asked that his rugs be unloaded and placed on the docks next to Brota’s. There was a fierce but whispered argument. He retorted that she had agreed to unload them where he wanted and if they were too close to hers, then she could have them moved, but he could not do that himself, and the crew would wonder why. He promised that the sailors would not discover his private trading as long as she kept them away, especially Diwa and Matarro. Wallie guessed that by this time Brota was too fascinated by his display of precocity to do more than cooperate and watch. So Katanji arranged his rugs in a heap and sat on top of it to play a solitaire game that involved moving pegs around a board.

When the traders came, Brota tried to sell her rugs, but the finest in sight were under Katanji. She could only refer the traders to the boy. He politely showed the goods, but explained that he was guarding the rugs for his father, who had gone into town. So they were not for sale? Well, his dad had said he could sell the whole pile for a hundred and twenty golds. When would his father be back? Katanji merely shrugged and returned to his solitaire game. He wore a rugmaker’s fathermark, so the story seemed believable.

He had nothing else to do with the day; the ship could not sail without Brota; Brota could not leave without selling her goods—for the traders were interested—and Brota was not going to sell much with that pile of superlative rugs sitting there next to hers. The traders, baffled by having no one to haggle with, hung around, waiting for the imaginary father to return. After a couple of hours, when the waiting seemed likely to last until sunset, one of the traders confirmed with Brota that the boy had authority to sell and handed over the full amount. As Katanji went back on board, he placed the solitaire game on Brota’s table . . . 

That last piece of studied insolence was too much for Wallie. He leaned back on his arms and bellowed with laughter. Nnanji scowled and looked at Thana, who was equally helpless. Tears were pouring down Honakura’s cheeks. Brota was smiling thinly—obviously it hurt too much to laugh. Then a raucous noise from the rail showed that Tomiyano, also, was overcome by the story. Outraged, Nnanji glared around at him, then turned back to his brother, who was very wide-eyed and hopeful . . . but this time he had gone too far. Nnanji was not going to see the joke. This was a matter of honor.

“Right,” he said coldly, when calm had been restored. “So you spent sixty-two out of . . . how did you get to sixty-two?”

He looked in puzzlement at Wallie, who agreed that they had not accounted for sixty-two, even with Katanji’s own five.

“You had nineteen silvers, mentor,” Katanji said reluctantly. “And I had two . . . ”

“That makes one more gold.”

Katanji sighed. “When you tried to buy the pot from the captain? He didn’t take the money. He kicked it away.”

“And you picked it up afterward, of course!” Nnanji glared. “That is Lord Shonsu’s money. No, it is the captain’s.”

“But he didn’t want it!”

Even Wallie was having trouble keeping track by this time, but they eventually established that Katanji, after he had sold his rugs, should have had one hundred and twenty-two left, of which five were either Wallie’s or Tomiyano’s. Then they learned of two more that he had weaseled out of Brota in Wal . . . one hundred and twenty-four.

“How much is all this worth?” Nnanji asked suddenly, peering at the heap of jewels. Thana bent forward and spread them out.

“At least five hundred golds,” she said. Brota nodded in agreement.

Nnanji fixed his gaze on the sinner. “How much?”

Katanji pouted. “Between seven and eight hundred . . . nearer to eight.”

The congregation exchanged glances.

“I bought some jewels in Casr. Look, see this ruby? I bought that and another for sixty, then I sold the other in Tau for fifty, but it was bigger. And I bought two amethysts and four topazes in Wo and sold them in Shan.”

“How do you know about jewels?” Wallie demanded. There seemed to be no bottom to Katanji’s hidden depths.

Nnanji turned pink. “Our grandfather was a silversmith. Katanji used to hang around his workshop, my lord brother, till he died. About four years ago,” he added in a small voice, and Wallie then knew where the money had come from to bribe Nnanji’s way into the temple guard.

“He was going to let me apprentice to him, my lord,” Katanji said, eager to change the subject.

“How did you get from one hundred and twenty-odd to seven or eight hundred, though?” his brother demanded.

Katanji looked appealingly at Brota. “He did some work for me,” she admitted, then grudgingly explained. Katanji’s unique ability to extract information from slaves had not been used only in sorcerer cities. At Casr, Tau, Wo, and Shan, he had undertaken industrial espionage for Brota. His price had risen every time, until now he was charging ten golds. Brota had paid, because haggling was much easier when she knew her opponent’s unit cost.

Nnanji looked disgusted. Even Wallie had lost track of the mathematics. “What did you have when you got to Gi?” he demanded.

“One ruby, two emeralds, and one hundred and eleven golds, my lord.”

Three coins left . . . “You bought the rest of this with one hundred and eight golds?” Wallie asked and Katanji nodded guiltily.

Supply and demand—in a world without banks the ultimate store of value was land, but for movable property was gold or gems. The survivors of Gi would have saved their jewelry if nothing else, but they would have been in need of hard cash. Jewels had suddenly become cheap and money dear. Katanji had seen the opportunity of a lifetime. Wallie looked at Brota, and she was scowling ferociously. She had been wasting her time on bronze ingots, while Katanji had been working his way up into the senior class.

“That’s horrible!” Nnanji said when it was explained to him in simple terms. “They were starving! Homeless! Don’t you have any pity at all?”

He looked at Wallie in disgust. Wallie wondered if Nnanji would have felt such compassion when he was Katanji’s age. Perhaps not, but he had changed and learned. Katanji never would.

“He probably regrets only that he didn’t hold back enough cash to repay you,” said Wallie. “Then you wouldn’t have known. He got greedy.”

“I was going to, my lord,” Katanji said sadly, “until I saw the pearls.” He reached into the heap and lifted out a glittering string of light. “I couldn’t resist them. I got these for twenty—and they’re worth at least two hundred.”

No, he had no regrets.

“From now on,” Nnanji said, “you will not go slaving without my permission! Is that clear?” His brother nodded glumly, and Brota pouted at the skyline. “Slaving may be honorable when it is done to aid the gods, but not for money! Now, how much could you get for . . . this?” He pulled out a brooch of gold and emeralds.

“Seventy or so,” Katanji suggested cautiously.

Nnanji handed it to him. “Then take it, sell it, and pay back what you started with. Keep anything extra.”

Katanji’s eyes gleamed.

Then Nnanji looked doubtfully at the rest of the treasure, silently sought help from Wallie and then Honakura, and saw that they were leaving it up to him. “Who owns this?”

“It’s mine!” But Katanji’s voice lacked conviction.

“No it isn’t!” Even sitting on the deck, Nnanji could look down on him like a wading heron eyeing a fish. “As a First you can own nothing. And even if you were a Second, this wouldn’t be yours. If I told you to look after my cow, and she calved, then the calf would still be mine. That’s the law.” He glanced at the priest and got an amused nod.

He scowled in thought for a while, the others waited for his decision, and the ship glided through the morning sunlight.

“I think it’s tainted,” Nnanji said. “It ought to go to the Goddess at the next temple we reach.”

Katanji and Brota exchanged looks of disgust.

“Just a minute,” said Brota from her throne, a crimson Buddha about to impart enlightenment. “Shonsu, you’ve seen Katanji fence. What sort of a swordsman is he going to make?”

“A dead one.”

She nodded. “Nnanji, you know this, too. The kid has no future in your business, but he’s a natural trader, like my oldest, Tomiyarro, was, maybe even better. He will do very well on the River, even if he never does get more marks.”

“He’s not quite as bad as he makes out,” Wallie said. “He fakes it.”

Nnanji looked suspiciously at Katanji, whose face now wore a studied absence of expression.

“But,” Wallie added, “he’s never going to be a Third if he lives to a thousand. Nnanji,” he said gently, “the lady has a good point.”

“Let him swear to me,” Brota suggested, “and be a water rat. It’s his natural calling. One day he can marry a trader, and they can own their own ship. That’s better than being dead, isn’t it?” She gave Katanji a motherly smile and probably meant it.

Nnanji colored. “A swordsman engaging in trade?”

“Kindly explain what is wrong with that?” Thana asked in a voice dripping poisoned honey. “Mother and I need to know.”

A silence grew, while Nnanji studied the jewels intently, and the sides of his neck turned as red as his cheeks. He had just dug his grave with his tongue, Wallie decided, and waited with interest to see if he could extricate himself.

“Is that what you want, protégé? To be a water rat? A trader?”

Katanji hesitated. “I think I would be a better trader than a swordsman, Nanj,” he said quietly. “But I want to stay with you—for a few years, anyway.”

“Well, if you do become a water rat, then I suppose you could use this,” Nnanji said reluctantly.

“But my honor, mentor?” Katanji’s eyes were very big and very innocent.

Nnanji glared. Then, choosing his words with great care, he said, “It is wrong for a garrison swordsman or a free sword to engage in trade, because it distracts him from his duty. But a water rat has obligations to his ship, so trade is permissible for him. Is that clear?”

Katanji sighed. “It’s clever!” Then he looked up again at his brother. “But what would Aunt Gruza say?”

More silence . . . a sound like escaping steam . . . then Nnanji exploded into laughter at last, and Katanji joined him, and they howled in unison at some family in-joke that the others could not share. The onlookers watched in amused and puzzled silence.

Nnanji could not speak. He beat his fists on the deck. He wiped tears away a couple of times and tried . . . then he would catch his brother’s eye again, and again the two of them would collapse into hysterical giggles. Whoever Aunt Gruza was, her name was a word of power.

To Wallie it was a touching reminder that these two had shared childhood together—and not very long ago, either. He was trying to fight a war with very young assistants. And, in spite of their extreme differences, these brothers were actually very fond of each other.

At long last, the fit passed, and Nnanji regained control.

“All right, nipper,” he said. “You can keep it . . . except for these.” He reached into the hoard and lifted out the string of pearls, which writhed in his fingers like a captured sunbeam. “Mistress Brota, will you seal the rest of this in a bag and put it in a safe place for us? If anything happens to me, then it belongs to Katanji.”

“Of course, adept,” Brota said.

Nnanji studied the pearls for a moment. “And these . . . these are the most beautiful, and they are honest—they brought out the story. So I shall keep them in view, to remind us to be honest. But I shall hide their beauty by putting them against a greater beauty.”

He rose, hung the pearls around Thana’s neck, and walked quickly away.

Thana gasped and raised her hand to them: two hundred golds? She looked at her mother, then at Wallie. Then she jumped up and ran after Nnanji,

Katanji quietly muttered, “Oh, puke!” in unbounded disgust.

“Perhaps you would witness the sealing, old man?” Wallie asked. Honakura took the hint and led Katanji and his fortune away. Tomiyano followed, leaving only Wallie sitting on the deck, looking up at Brota.

“That should do the trick,” Wallie said.

And Brota studied him in silence for a white. “You are a man of great honor, my lord. Very few men, of any rank, would have refused what has been offered.”

“I think there were conditions attached,” Wallie said. “But what of Nnanji? You know, sometimes I think of him as an egg, a great big egg that I found on a beach. Every now and again another piece of shell falls off, and I get another glimpse of what is going to hatch. Whatever it is, it will be remarkable. Who would have thought that he was capable of that gracious little speech just now?”

“What are you implying, my lord?”

“That Thana has been missing a very good bet.”

Brota nodded thoughtfully. “A mother should not say this, Lord Shonsu . . . but I doubt that she is worthy of him.”

†††

“Someone’s coming now!” Nnanji said, and slapped at a mosquito, bringing his score up to a hundred or so.

The undulant profile of mountains along the western skyline was sharp and black like obsidian, below a colorless, limpid sky. The sun had gone, but true darkness was slow in coming, here in the deep shadow of RegiVul. The cliffs and the River were gloomy, drab, and sad. A cool wind ruffled the water, but failed to discourage legions of the nastiest biting insects Wallie had ever met.

At noon, Sapphire had slipped by the sorcerer city of Ov, feeling her way cautiously southward amid shallows and sandbanks. Now she lay in mid-River off the Garathondi estate.

Her dinghy was tied at the end of the jetty. It had been there for what seemed like a dozen hours, and must be at least two. A couple of ramshackle fishing boats were tethered nearby. The River was much higher than it had been when Wallie had first come to this place—and how long ago that felt!

Peering along the surface of the ancient, scruffy planks, he heard what Nnanji’s ears had discerned over the slap of the ripples: hooves, and a creaking axle, and wheels on gravel. The dinghy rocked gently.

“About time!” said Tomiyano.

There were five of them—three swordsmen, counting Thana, plus one sailor and one slave—or six if you also counted the sleeping Vixini. Holiyi had been sent inland to find Quili.

Holiyi had been gone too long, so something had not gone as expected. With Holiyi the delay was certainly not due to idle gossiping, and Tomiyano had begun muttering dark threats of vengeance if anything had happened to his cousin.

The circle had been turned. This was where the mission had begun, here at the end of this jetty, waiting for Nnanji to scout and return. By coming back, Wallie had followed his orders. He had met the problem here, crossed the mountains, sailed around—turned the circle. Now the lesson might be learned. Maybe. He wished he had more confidence in his own ability to learn it. He was depressed by a nagging conviction that he had overlooked something, somewhere.

Damn horseflies! He slapped at the back of his neck.

A wagon came into sight at the bottom of the canyon, drawn by two horses. Two people dismounted and began walking. A third remained and commenced a long, painful effort to turn the vehicle. Horses would not step into the waters of the River, and there was little room with the River so high.

One of the pedestrians was Holiyi. The other was a woman, but not Quili.

“The rest of you stay here!” Wallie stepped up on the deck and strode forward to meet the visitors, his boots making hollow thudding sounds in the evening stillness.

Holiyi, when he came near enough to be clearly seen, was sporting his usual sardonic grin, which was reassuring. His companion was middle-aged, almost elderly. She wore the orange gown of a Fourth, and Wallie registered vaguely that it was of much too fine a velvet to be sweeping its lace-trimmed hem over this dirty, scabby jetty. Her hair was silver and well tended, her fingers jeweled. She was a priestess, and obviously a prosperous one.

“Adept Valia, Lord Shonsu,” Holiyi muttered.

Salute and response.

“You had trouble?” Wallie demanded.

Holiyi shook his head with a relaxed and noncommittal shrug.

“Priestess Quili is well, my lord,” Valia said, “but unable to come and see you at the moment. She is entertaining sorcerers.” She smiled, being graciously amused at his reaction. Valia’s manner was friendly enough, but she obviously fancied herself as a grand lady.

“That’s not trouble?”

“Not as long as they do not know you are here, my lord! And I am sure that they will not find out.”

Wallie turned and waved for his companions to join him. He could ask Holiyi for details, but it might take an hour to drag them out of him.

“Explain, please, adept?”

But boots were drumming, and bare feet. The others came running, and then Valia had to be presented to Nnanji, and the others to her.

“What a beautiful baby!” she exclaimed.

Vixini, grumpy from being awakened, did not feel like a beautiful baby. He buried his face in his mother and declined conversation.

Wallie said a silent prayer for patience. “We cannot offer you a comfortable chair, adept, and the air swarms with vampire bats, so perhaps we should get the story quickly?”

Valia inclined her head in regal assent. “I have the honor to minister here now, my lord. Priestess Quili is my protégé. She is also my secular superior, but that is no problem. We work well together.”

“I don’t think I quite understand,” Wallie said. “I am delighted to hear that Quili has achieved promotion to Third. What of Lady Thondi?”

“She is with the Goddess.”

“I would be hypocritical if I expressed regrets.”

He received a slight frown of priestly reproof, then the smiling condescension due a Seventh. “Perhaps understandable. I believe that you yourself consigned her to the justice of the gods. Your prayer was heard, my lord, and her passing was not easy.”

“Explain!”

Adept Valia glanced around the group, relishing an attentive audience for a good story. “She came down to this jetty to embark on the family boat, meaning to travel to Ov on business—not long after your departure, Lord Shonsu. A rotted plank failed beneath her, and she fell through.”

“Goddess!” Wallie muttered. His skin crawled. Why did he feel guilty?

“Undoubtedly! Several large men had preceded her, and she was not a weighty person, as I understand.”

“So the piranha got her?”

He had been expected to ask. “No. They rejected her. That does happen, of course. The current swept her out of reach, underneath. She was trapped, and she drowned. No one was able to reach her in time.” The priestess was savoring her audience’s reaction.

Jja slipped a comforting arm around her master. Nnanji and Tomiyano were looking impressed.

“I can show you the exact spot, if you wish,” Valia offered.

“Thank you, no! And her son?”

“The Honorable Garathondi is in poor health, my lord. A few days after his mother’s death, he suffered a seizure. He has been paralyzed and speechless ever since. The healers hold out no hope of recovery and do not expect him to live much longer.”

“That’s horrible!”

The priestess looked surprised. “You question the justice of the gods, my lord, when you yourself invoked it?”

“I didn’t mean . . . Tell me about Quili, then. I trust her news is better?”

“Excellent. I have never seen a happier couple.”

Wallie restrained a strong temptation to stun a holy personage. “She married Garadooi?”

“Of course! And they are so well suited! True lovebirds.”

Feeling Jja’s arm squeeze him, Wallie looked down at her smile. Some things did not need to be said.

“Please give them our congratulations.”

“I certainly shall. And you, my lord? You have recovered from your injury?”

“How the . . . how do you know of that?”

Valia again displayed ladylike amusement. She was much less exposed to the wind and the bugs than the others were. “Some weeks ago, the sorcerers informed the builder that you had died. You had been seen in Aus, and then in Ki San, but very ill, from the effects of a sword cut. The healers had despaired of your life. Naturally, Quili was overjoyed when she heard that you were here this evening, and that the stories were all lies.”

Not all; Wallie did not look at Nnanji. His mind was swirling with the implications. The sorcerers’ powers were terrifying. They had agents in Ki San, then, at the very least, even if the healer himself had not been a sorcerer. But the healer had been wrong. That might be why Sapphire had not been more closely examined in Wal, when the sorcerer came aboard. The sorcerers had given him up for dead. Again that sense of power wasted by human fallibility . . . 

“Not all their tales were false,” he admitted. “But what is their business here tonight?”

The priestess chuckled. “Work on the sorcerers’ tower is proceeding very slowly since Builder Garadooi shortened his slaves’ work hours. He has also banned all physical punishment without his personal approval, my lord.”

“That could be deleterious, I suppose.”

“But output from the estate itself is markedly improved recently, I am told.”

It sounded like Garadooi. He would be giving his slaves meat next. Maybe he already had. Beds, even.

“And the sorcerers?”

“Honorable Rathazaxo came to call today,” Valia said, with a cynical smile. “He wanted Builder Garadooi to return with him to the city and take over supervision in person, as his father did. There was some loud discussion. Even through closed doors, it was loud.”

“The tower is not being completed?”

“The tower itself is almost finished, I understand, but there is still work needed on the adjacent plaza. I think the contract will be fulfilled, my lord, eventually. Of course his honor and his companions were invited to stay to dinner. That was when Sailor Holiyi arrived at the tenancy. Word came to the manor. There was some problem in passing a message—I was at the dinner, also.”

Holiyi had been told to find Quili, but the presence of two priestesses might have caused some confusion. Hence the delay, passing information under the ears of sorcerers.

“Quili and I managed to slip out for a quick word together,” Valia explained, “at the end. She dares not leave yet. If you wish to come back with me, then we should wait awhile, to be sure. If not . . . she sends her love to you and Adept Nnanji, my lord.”

Nnanji grinned. “Give her mine.”

“And certainly mine,” Wallie added. “How many companions did this sorcerer of the Sixth bring with him?”

“Two. Both Thirds.”

Wallie’s pulse began to beat a little faster. “But Builder Garadooi will be returning to Ov with them?”

Nnanji stiffened slightly.

Valia indulged a genteel laugh. “If they cast a spell on him. But it will take a strong one! He did promise that in a couple of days . . . ” Then she guessed, and her lips clamped together in angry silence.

Tomiyano had arrived there also. “The road runs by the River?”

Nnanji nodded. “There is a ferry,” he said softly.

“They were being very insistent that he go with them, my lord,” Valia protested. She was frightened now, furious at her own stupidity. “And he was still trying to persuade them to spend the night. The family boat will be arriving in the morning—”

“But you invited us to the manor. You thought they were leaving.”

She would not admit that. “They may have.”

Wallie ignored her then. He had often watched Honakura twist the truth without actually lying, and the old man was much more skilled at it than this pompous priestess was.

In the gathering gloom, the light from the River was reflecting in Nnanji’s eyes, making them shine. But the bloodlust that should have been there was missing. He was watching Wallie intently, very still, not seething with excitement as he should be at the prospect of action. Nnanji knew the answer and was waiting to see if Wallie did.

“Then here’s your chance, Shonsu!” Tomiyano rubbed his hands gloatingly. “Five of us and three of them. Not bad odds, wouldn’t you say, when we have surprise on our side?”

Wallie said, “No.”

“What! Why not? Kill two, take one alive! It’s your chance to find out what they have in their pockets, man! A heaven-seat opportunity! We’ll tie him up and gag him—”

“No.”

“Why not?” die captain shouted. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Lord Shonsu is not Swordsman Kandoru,” Nnanji said, more quietly than ever.

“What’s he got to do with it?” Tomiyano was looking from one swordsman to the other, baffled.

“He drew against a guest.”

Thana was as puzzled as her brother. “She said we couldn’t go up to the house yet—we’ve been refused hospitality. We’re not guests!”

“But they are.” Nnanji was smiling faintly, approving.

“We shall not move against the sorcerers, adept,” Wallie told Valia. It was crazy. Tomiyano was quite right—this was a heaven-sent opportunity, a chance to capture a sorcerer of the Sixth. But Valia had unwittingly betrayed her guests to their enemies, and to take advantage of that error would not be honorable. Good manners did not permit a war to be fought that way . . . crazy! Insane! But Nnanji was pleased—Lord Shonsu was a man of honor. Why should Wallie care what Nnanji thought? Why did that wry smile feel good? Penance for what he had done in Aus? Crazy!

Tomiyano snorted in disgust. Thana shook her head over such landlubber nonsense.

“I thank you, my lord,” Valia said humbly. “The blame would have been laid to Quili . . . ” There was less great lady now. “Will you not come up to the manor?”

“I think the hour is late,” Wallie said. “We should return to our vessel before true darkness.”

“As you please, my lord.” Valia hesitated. “I was not going to mention . . . this was told in confidence, but there was no oath. I think my duty is to pass it on. You would find out soon anyway.”

Wallie felt a sudden tingle of premonition. “Yes?”

“It seems to be the cause of the sorcerers’ impatience.” She was incapable of coming straight to a point. “Honorable Rathazaxo reported that a tryst has been called.”

“A TRYST?” shouted Nnanji. “Where?”

Valia recoiled. “At Casr, adept.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“And has She blessed it?”

Valia backed away before his vehemence. “Apparently, adept.”

“Her swordsmen are coming?”

“So his honor said . . . ”

Nnanji stepped across the circle and grabbed Wallie by the shoulders. If he tried to shake him, nothing happened. “That’s it, brother! You were wondering how to fight sorcerers, and there’s the answer! Why didn’t we think of it?”

“What the demons is a tryst?” Tomiyano growled.

“It’s a holy war! It needs two Sevenths, a swordsman, and a priest—” He swung back to Valia, growing shrill with excitement. “And bullocks? They had the bullocks?”

She nodded.

“Why bullocks?” Tomiyano asked. “A barbecue?”

“No, no, no!” Nnanji was almost dancing. “There hasn’t been a tryst for—oh! centuries. It takes a priest and a swordsman to call one, and they wade into the River. The bullocks go first.”

Tomiyano’s eyes popped wide. “It would take more than bullocks to get me—”

Nnanji spun back to Wallie. “But if the stories are true and the swordsmen are coming, then the Goddess has blessed it! So it’s a real tryst! The saga of Arganari . . . Za? Guiliko?”

“Who leads this tryst?” Thana asked with a glance at Wallie. “The Seventh who called it?”

Nnanji paused and frowned. “No, I don’t think . . . not necessarily.” His lips moved as he pondered. “Leadership is decided by combat, I think. The best swordsman.” He swung round to face Wallie again and shouted. “The best swordsman in the World! Of course! And remember the ballad of Chioxin, brother? The emerald led a tryst, and so did the ruby! The fourth did, too! That’s what your sword is for!”

And the leader’s aide-de-camp and oath brother could be certain of an honorable mention in the epics to follow. Nnanji was as thrilled as a medieval squire given tickets to the next crusade. Thana and Tomiyano also had caught the excitement. Even Jja and Holiyi were beaming. Of course—a tryst against the sorcerers, led by Lord Shonsu and Her own sword.

So here was something else to think about. Lots of things. Perhaps Wallie had been interpreting the riddle wrongly. The army might not be Sapphire’s crew after all. A tryst was a real army, the greatest the World ever knew. He had done nothing to earn that.

Nnanji lapsed into silence, his lips moving again as he recited epics to himself, researching trysts.

“I cannot persuade you to come up to the manor, my lord?” Valia asked. “Quili is anxious to see you, and the builder will be, also, if he did not accompany the sorcerers.”

But Wallie had too much on his mind—riddles and trysts, circles and armies, Casr and Aus. And he did not want to face his former helpers and have to confess that what they had been told about him was true.

“I think not, holy one. Give them our love and, again, our thanks. Tell them we shall continue the fight against the evil ones, and that it progresses. I think we must return to our ship before true darkness.”

Or would Sapphire have vanished, and the dinghy find itself delivering the seventh sword to Casr? Under that bitter thought he tasted relief that Jja and Vixini were with him.

“And on to Casr, my lord brother?” Nnanji said eagerly.

Wallie sighed. “Yes. She has summoned Her swordsmen, so yes, we must go to Casr.”

Then Thana’s eyes went wide, and a brightness seemed to glow in her face. Before she could speak, the others wheeled around, staring to the north. Huge, but very distant, a giant rose of flame was unfolding graceful petals into the somber dusk—higher, higher, and ever brighter, belittling the range on which it grew, lighting the dark landscape below, setting the very sky ablaze. Then the darkening crest reached into the heavens themselves and was touched by the rays of the invisible sun, blooming pink and gold.

A volcanic eruption . . . the blast would arrive later, but the wind would carry the ash westward, toward Casr . . . Wallie was still analyzing, when he realized how this would appear to his companions.

“The Fire God rages!” Valia exclaimed, making the sign of the Goddess. “He fears the tryst called against his sorcerers!”

“He didn’t fear it until he heard who was going to lead it!” said Nnanji. He grinned proudly at Wallie. A little hero worship was creeping back. Lord Shonsu was a man of honor.

††††

The first thing the sun god discovered when he returned to the World was the monstrous mushroom standing high above RegiVul, dwarfing the mountains themselves. Playfully he painted it red, then gold, and finally a very pale blue, but the Fire God still tinted the underside with angry rosy flickers. A little later the sun observed Sapphire as she headed into Ov.

Wallie had slept little and badly. He had been counting on the god’s riddle to solve his problem for him. Turn the circle, he had thought, and some divine revelation would show him how to fight sorcerers. Instead his problem now looked worse. The sorcerers had known of his sickness at Ki San. They had demonstrated again an inexplicable ability to pass information. A tryst had been called. As a swordsman, he now had a sacred duty to head for Casr. Certainly the tryst explained why he had been given the legendary sword, but for Shonsu to return to Casr would be virtual suicide. Now he must beware not only denunciation but also challenge, for other Sevenths would flock to a tryst.

In the bitterest hours of the night, he had reproached himself for another blunder. He should have ambushed that sorcerer Sixth as he headed home to Ov, instead of pandering to Nnanji’s stupid scruples.

But had he turned the circle? During a discussion that had run halfway to dawn, Honakura had suggested that perhaps he had not yet done so. Seven cities had fallen to the sorcerers; Sapphire had visited but six. The way back ran by Ov, so let the ship call there. No one could think of a better plan, but no one was very happy with the prospect. The sorcerers would be doubly alert for swordsmen now. Moreover, Sapphire had no logical excuse to trade in Ov. Ov was a tin-mining center; the bronze ingots that Brota had purchased at a knock-down price in Gi had themselves come from Ov. To offer them for sale there would make no sense and might rouse suspicion.

A short visit, then, Wallie suggested, and offered to pay the dock fees. Brota accepted that suggestion without argument.

Ov was huge, bigger even than Dri or Ki San, the sailors said. It sprawled in patches and weals on the higher reaches of a low gray landscape, whose hollows were fetid swamp. The buildings themselves were a drab gray, also, monotonous and ugly—a city built of fossilized business suits, Wallie concluded peevishly. Amid such tedious dullness, the sorcerers’ tower was a welcome relief, black and vertical, evil instead of merely funereal. It stood, as usual, about a block back from the River. Its exterior seemed to be complete, and sunlight streaked from glass in at least one of the high windows.

The River was shallow, and the dock unlike any other Wallie had seen, a long pier extending far out from shore, branching at the end to form a T. Each captain tried to moor as close to the city as he dared approach, so the vertical part of the T was crowded, the crossbar almost empty.

Wallie, Nnanji, and Tomiyano, the three wise monkeys, gathered in the deckhouse as Brota brought Sapphire in. She found a berth about halfway along the vertical, on the downstream side.

“Good position,” Tomiyano said. “Cut the cables and the current will sweep us away. Good for a fast escape.” He glanced at Wallie.

“Good fighting terrain,” Wallie agreed. “No warehouses overlooking us—they could only bring up reinforcements from one side.” Then he caught the captain’s eye, and each admitted in silence that he was uneasy. Seven times they had risked bringing a swordsman of the Seventh to a sorcerer city in violation of the local laws. This was the end of the line. Superstition said that if something was going to happen, it should happen now. Superstition worked well in the World.

Nnanji had caught the mood, also. Half the night, Nnanji had been in spate on the subject of trysts—the Tryst of Rof and the Tryst of Za, Guiliko’s Tryst and Farhanderi’s Tryst—honor and glory and blood and immortality. Now he had succumbed to the prevailing dreariness of Ov.

His brother strolled into the deckhouse in his slave costume.

“You don’t have to,” Nnanji said, “if you don’t want to.”

Even Katanji seemed more subdued than usual. He hesitated and then said, “My duty, mentor?”

Nnanji bit his lip and nodded.

“Keep it short, though,” Wallie said. “Just a quick look at the tower and then right back, okay?”

Sapphire bumped gently against the fenders.

The Fire God was angry . . . Honakura wandered in. “Too far to town for my old legs,” he muttered, and hauled himself up to sit on a chest.

They all felt it, but no one would say it: Something was going to go wrong.

A wagon went by and made a drumming, roaring sound on the roadway that was built of timber over stone piers. It was also narrow and cluttered by ships’ loads on both sides.

“Phew!” Nnanji pulled a face. “Now we know why this spot was empty!” The vessel on the opposite side of the pier was a cattle boat, as evidenced by mournful bellowings and an unmistakable stench.

“Must have swordsmen aboard?” Tomiyano suggested, and dodged the ensuing punch. For a moment the two of them indulged in a wrestling match. Wallie was amused, remembering the beginning of the voyage. Sapphire was a much happier ship now.

Nnanji broke free of the unequal struggle and slapped at his shoulder, muttering. If mosquitoes in the World carried malaria, Wallie thought, then Ov could not be a healthy place. Already the deckhouse swarmed with them.

“The circle turned,” mused the priest in his corner. He looked tired and even older than usual. “Have you decided what to do next, Lord Shonsu?”

“Yes,” Wallie said. “Nothing.”

Nnanji gasped. “Nothing, brother?”

‘Tell me how to fight sorcerers,” Wallie replied.

“Pah!” said the old man. “They’re fakes!” His audience swung around to stare at him indignantly.

“Fakes?” Wallie sneered. “If you count up the garrisons and the other stories—how many now, Nnanji?”

‘Two hundred and eighty-one,” Nnanji said.

‘Two hundred and eighty-one swordsmen have been killed. A man died out there on that deck. Fakes?”

‘True,” Honakura admitted. “But they’re still faking. I’m sure of it. Why did the sorcerer offer to put a spell of good fortune on the cargo when he already knew it would fetch an unusually high price? Why was the captain given a demonstration of birds coming out of pots? It all stinks of showing off, like little boys do. They’re not as powerful as they want you to think!”

He had argued this before, and certainly the sorcerers did have an aura of showmanship about them. But they also had deadly powers that Wallie could not explain in an iron-age culture.

“So what are you going to do about them?” Honakura demanded again from his perch across the deckhouse.

“The answer is still ‘nothing,’ ” Wallie said. “In every city it’s the same story: the sorcerers appear, and the swordsmen march out and—zap! It started fifteen years ago, in Wal, and every couple of years they do another. I expect they’ll cross the River soon. Does it matter? The swordsmen have learned nothing in fifteen years—nothing! I don’t know what to teach them, and they wouldn’t learn anyway. They’ll try to take the cities back with the same techniques that lost them. I want nothing to do with it.”

The old priest made the sign of the Goddess. “But the edict of the gods!”

“So She doesn’t like Fire altars in Her temples? What does it matter? Even the priests don’t care much! For thousands of years Her swordsmen have been swatting sorcerers like bugs. Now the foot is in the other shoe, and She starts sending miracles.”

Honakura spluttered. “Blasphemy!”

Wallie was beginning to convince himself and was also losing his temper as his sense of failure and frustration boiled over. “All right—blasphemy! So throw me in the River as you did the last time! Denounce me to Brota. I don’t know what happened fifteen years ago. Did the sorcerers find a better thunderbolt, do you suppose? Or did they just get tired of being stamped on by swordsmen? The people don’t mind. They’re just as miserable under sorcerers as they were under swordsmen; no more, no less. And they certainly won’t want battles being fought in their streets, civilians killed, swordsmen killed, houses burned. You saw in Gi what a fire can do.

“No. I shall do nothing.” Wallie went back to staring out the window.

Nnanji was incredulous and upset. “But the tryst, my lord brother?”

“I think the sorcerers could zap a tryst as easily as they can zap a garrison. It will be a disaster.”

Shonsu had failed disastrously, but that was another mystery. In all their inquiries, the Sapphire detectives had heard no further word of Shonsu. He had been castellan of the lodge at Casr, but that was all they knew. They had uncovered no news of any slaughter later than the conquest of Ov. There was no explanation of Shonsu’s departure from Casr and his pilgrimage to Hann, driven by the sorcerers’ demons.

“Remember the riddle?” Wallie said. “Finally return that sword? I shall return it all right—to the Goddess. I’ll give it to Her temple in Casr. Then the tryst can fight over it. I shall buy a blue breechclout and be a water rat. Want a strong back on your ship, Captain?”

“You are lying, Shonsu,” Tomiyano said cheerfully. “Swear an oath on that?”

“Tell me how to fight sorcerers,” Wallie growled and turned back to peer out the shutter. Then he added: “Port officer!”

Honakura and Katanji came to the windows as the plank clunked down to the dock.

She was elderly, white-haired, plump—a something of the Third, in a brown wool gown, with pink cheeks and a friendly smile. The big, embossed leather pouch of office hung at her waist. She came puffing up the plank to the deck.

Wallie thought she seemed a motherly, neighborly sort, and at once wondered if that was what he was meant to think. Then he hissed, for there were two sorcerers behind her, a Third and a Second. They glided up the plank with less effort and onto the deck without asking permission; they stood there like hooded statues, faces invisible, hands in sleeves.

“Uh-oh!” Nnanji whispered.

“If they search the ship . . . ” Wallie drew the knife from his boot.

“I’ll take the woman,” said Tomiyano, who knew that swordsmen had sutra problems fighting women. “Shonsu the brown, Nnanji the yellow.”

Oligarro was being captain, and Brota was close beside him. Half the crew hung around the deck, wary and frowning at the sinister intruders.

The port officer made the salute. “I welcome you to Ov, Captain,” she said, “on behalf of the king and the wizard. What swordsmen do you have on board?”

Brota stepped forward and made the acknowledgment of an inferior, then accepted the resulting salute.

“Me, my daughter of the Second, and a First.”

“That is all?” one of the sorcerers growled, and the watchers could not tell which one spoke, although it was probably the brown Third. “No frees? You will swear that on your ship, Captain?”

“Certainly,” Oligarro said. The crew all knew now that their passengers did not classify themselves as free swords.

“Mistress, you also swear that there are no free swords aboard?”

“Certainly,” Brota said. The sorcerers pivoted and floated away down the plank.

“That’s new, isn’t it?” Brota demanded.

The grandmotherly type nodded. “Started today. Something’s chewing the baggies’ bottoms.” She shrugged. “Don’t know what.”

Wallie knew what. He was relieved to see that Brota looked as suspicious of this sweet old dear as he was. No port officer had ever talked like that before.

“Well, let’s do business,” Brota said. “How much?”

“Five,” the port officer answered sweetly.

Oligarro frowned. “I thought two was the fee?”

“Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t,” she said. “But you are going to pay five, and who’s to know?” She shook her leather pouch, making it jingle, and she smiled again.

Brota scowled and Oligarro argued, but he paid in the end.

The dear old lady took the money, made a polite farewell, and limped away. Brota made a vulgar gesture at her back. Then she headed for the deckhouse to collect from Lord Shonsu.

As a slave Katanji could be so inconspicuous as to be almost invisible. Wallie caught a glimpse of him slouching down the plank, and then he had gone. Brota headed out back to supervise, but the crew was already doing everything required. Wallie turned to regard the dock, in time to see two more sorcerers gliding by. “Why do they never show their hands?” he asked, and got no reply.

Holiyi and Linihyo staggered down to the dock with an ingot, then took another and leaned the two together like a tent for elves. Hawkers came by, and Lina haggled with them for groceries and fresh fruit, while other crew members drifted off along the pier in search of information, most going left to the city, a couple heading right toward the River. Brota parked herself in her chair at the top of the plank and waited for business.

People and wagons swarmed along the roadway, with masts and rigging forming a double avenue of winter trees above them and the wheels rumbling thunderously on the hollow planks. The drivers cursed and roared at the sailors and slaves; the sailors replied as loudly and continued to pile goods in heaps along both sides, steadily encroaching on the right-of-way. Pedestrians dodged and jostled. Birds that looked like gulls perched on the yards and made lightning dives into the traffic in search of garbage.

A party of horsemen arrived, and the cattle were unloaded, turning confusion into chaos for a while. Eventually the bawling died away as the herd was driven into the city; the cattle boat cast off and sailed away, leaving no regrets on Sapphire.

Nnanji started to do exercises. Honakura sat on the chest and seemed to be thinking hard. Wallie and Tomiyano took a window each and stared despondently at the crowd. All of them slapped petulantly at mosquitoes.

As usual, sorcerers patrolled the docks in pairs, gliding along unperturbed by the crush, ignoring the impatience of those who wanted to get by them but dared not get too close. They had no set beat, and Wallie could not decide how many there were in total; all he had to go on was the color of their gowns, and they seemed to change partners frequently.

Then Tomiyano suddenly snapped, “Shonsu! That Fourth! Recognize him?”

“Our soft-handed friend from Ov!”

“Ixiphino?” Nnanji came over to look.

It was the port officer from Aus, slim and handsome in orange breechclout and shiny leather sandals; still looking to Wallie like a beachwear model. Beside him walked a sorcerer of the Fifth, red robed, cowled, tall, and stooped. Behind them, and apparently in their service, a slave pulled a cart loaded with cubical baskets. They were heading away from the town.

“That settles any doubts in my mind,” Wallie said. “He’s a sorcerer! And look there!”

Not far behind was Katanji. He must have met that little procession somewhere and now was tagging along behind, to see where it was going. Sharp kid!

They watched the quarry out of sight behind the next ship, one anonymous slave boy following. Tomiyano went out and ran up the rigging like a squirrel.

Thana came in to ask if they had seen the sailor.

Jja arrived. Wallie kissed her and told her the news.

Two more spies returned. Fala had discovered little of interest, but Lae had seen the fake sailor and his sorcerer companion in the town and had trailed them, also. She had waited a while on the dock to make sure she was not being followed. Lae was competent at anything, even spying.

“They came from the tower, I think,” she said, and her sure manner suggested that a theory from Lae was as good as a fact from anyone else.

Tomiyano slid down a rope and hurried in. “They turned right at the junction,” he said, and hurried over to one of the stern windows. “That ship there, the white one.”

The crossbar of the T was less crowded with shipping, and the ship he indicated was near the end, clearly visible and isolated. It was small and single-masted. If the cart was there, it was hidden by the hull.

“Tell a landlubber about boats,” Wallie said. “Surely a small one like that could come much closer in? Why would they berth out there?”

“Doesn’t follow,” the captain said impatiently. “That babe’s built for speed. She probably draws more water than Sapphire—big keel. Too big to use a center board.”

Wallie turned back to Lae. “Did you happen to see what they had in the baskets?”

Lae glanced at Tomiyano and her wrinkles deepened in a hint of a smile. “Birds, my lord.”

Tomiyano growled obscenities about sorcerers and their birds.

Time continued to pass imperceptibly . . . 

Then a small candle flickered in the darkness at the back of Wallie’s mind. Katanji had always seen birds around the towers, birds that walked on the ground. The sorcerers fed the birds. True, they had feather facemarks, but . . . he tried to recall the bird that he had seen magicked from the pot. Square baskets? “What sort of birds, could you tell?” he asked and held his breath for Lae’s reply.

“They sounded like pigeons.”

“Great gods!” Wallie said. “Octopus and feathers!” The candle flame blazed up like a bonfire. The others looked at him in surprise, but he was lost in thought and did not notice their stares or the half-amused, half-worried glances they exchanged, His mind raced as he tried to absorb the implications of pigeons in baskets and a fast boat.

“My lord brother?” said Nnanji at last, concerned.

Wallie snapped back to the deckhouse and thumped him on the back so vigorously that he almost fell over. Jubilation! “Got it!” he said. “It’s not much, but I’ve solved one of the sorcerers’ secrets.” He turned his smile on Tomiyano. “You get black stuff out of an octopus?”

“Ink, you mean?” the captain asked, looking annoyed at this puzzle game.

“Ink?” A new word for Wallie. The former Shonsu would have known nothing of octopus, except possibly as food. Sepia—squid ink! And the feather marks meant quills. Quills! Ink! Honakura had said that the sorcerers had once been associated with the priests—scribes, by the gods! And homing pigeons were no use without messages, and messages meant writing. That was how the sorcerers had known of the downed bridge, of the fire in Gi, how word had come so soon about the tryst.

Pigeons, moreover, would only fly one way—homeward. So a messenger service based on pigeons needed a distribution network, and the fastest way of getting around would be a swift boat . . . and of course the overland shortcut from Aus. That was one reason why the road had been repaired. The sailor they had recognized had brought pigeons from Aus and probably Wal, for use in Ov and Amb. Check!

The implications were immense: find a trader or merchant who kept pigeons in a free city and you had a sorcerer spy. Hawking was a common sport—hawks could cut the lines of communication. Wallie still could not fight sorcery, but he had a start for fighting sorcerers.

“I can’t explain now,” Wallie said. Perhaps he never could, for writing was beyond their experience. It was also social dynamite, and even to reveal the principle might break the sorcerers’ monopoly and rock the whole framework of their culture. The gods might not allow that. No! The sorcerers did not allow it! Now he remembered his half-joke about ensorceling wine. That was why writing was not invented—it had been invented once and it was a sorcerer monopoly. He had discovered the sorcerers’ business. That was why they prowled the World in disguise—to stamp out any reinvention of writing. That was how they built identical towers, with blueprints.

Wallie was starting to twitch with excitement. “Nnanji! When Katanji was leaving the tower he saw shelves with boxes on them. How did he describe them?”

‘”Leather boxes,’” Nnanji said with a frown. “The second time he said ‘brown leather boxes’ and the next time, ‘flat boxes.’ Lots of them, he said.”

Books! Sorcerers bought all the finest leather—vellum! Would it even be possible to steal books and learn to read again? To learn magic? This changed everything! Sorcerers were literate! Meanwhile . . . “What the devil do you suppose is keeping Katanji?”

Then birds hurtled skyward, horses reared in their traces, and heads turned. Out by the fast boat where the cart had gone, where the sorcerers had gone, where Katanji had gone, a cloud of smoke rose slowly into the air.

The hard, sharp crack of a thunderbolt rolled over the harbor.

Wallie Smith knew that noise.

That was no thunderbolt—that was a shot.

The coming of wisdom.

†††††

So the lesson may be learned.

Idiot!

Tomiyano and Nnanji collided in the doorway and the swordsman lost. The captain went aloft at high speed, and every rope in the moorings was bouncing as other sailors did the same. Nnanji recovered his balance and made a second try at the door; then discipline asserted itself, and he rushed back to his mentor.

“Katanji!” he said. “I want to go and see!”

Wallie stared blankly, right through him. The rest of the crew came hurrying in with frightened looks. Out on the roadway the patrolling sorcerers started to move quickly, heading riverward and almost running. Braver souls in the crowd followed them, while the more timorous headed toward home.

“My lord brother! Lord Shonsu!”

“Horse pee,” Wallie replied in a whisper. His mind was in turmoil. He had barely recovered from the staggering discovery of writing, had not had time to work out all the implications of it. Yet perhaps without that shock to disturb his thinking he might not have made this other incredible leap. The mental bonfire blazed like a sun. Ideas were racing through his head so fast that he could not keep track of them. The World had turned upside down for him.

He had been a blind, witless, stubborn fool! It had all been there for him to see. He screamed and thumped his fists against the deckhouse wall in a fury. Horse urine and fire blazing in dark forests. Thunderbolts and mining near volcanoes. Fire demons and boiling tubs. Magic fifes and mosquitoes. Birds in pots and long sleeves. Maniac! Why had he not realized?

My lord brother!

Wallie roared: “Tomiyano?” He looked around and Tomiyano was missing. He grabbed Brota by the shoulders. “Aus!” he shouted. “The ship where I met Tom’o. What was it loading? Did he tell you?” Then he realized that he was shaking her and stopped.

She gaped at him in terror. “He said sulfur, my lord!”

“Sulfur?” Another new word to Shonsu. “What is it used for?”

“I use it to fumigate the cabins sometimes, my lord.” Brota was quaking before the madman.

MY LORD BROTHER!

Sulfur it was, then. A whole shipload of sulfur? He should have guessed right there. The sorcerers exported sulfur from Aus to the other towers. And Katanji had seen charcoal in the tower. Gunpowder! Primitive black powder: fifteen parts potassium nitrate, three parts sulfur, two parts charcoal . . . The Goddess had chosen the soul of a chemical engineer, and he had been too damn dumb to see why. They would know potassium nitrate as saltpeter, perhaps, a meat preservative . . . never mind now. That tub in the stairwell of the tower that had frightened Katanji so much when it spluttered . . . that was why the sorcerers built towers, or one reason—they were shot towers. Drip molten lead down a tower into a vat of water—of course it hissed and steamed! But that meant that they likely did not have rifling yet, only smooth bore.

Fire demons were cannons full of grapeshot, or possibly shrapnel bombs—no wonder the bodies had been ripped and shattered!

“Katanji!” he wailed. “You told me! You offered me wisdom, and I didn’t take it!” The others looked at one another in dismay.

So the sorcerers had skulked for millennia in their mountain retreats, hemmed in by the swordsmen, but they had known of writing. With writing knowledge became cumulative. They had piled up knowledge, age after age, until they discovered gunpowder. The Chinese had known of gunpowder for centuries before they made weapons from it. The sorcerers had invented firearms, primitive certainly, but enough to kill swordsmen.

But not likely very accurate. Slow to reload! That was why the sorcerer in Wal had not shot Nnanji—he had not had time to reload after killing the port officer.

The coming of wisdom—the coming of sorcery. Wallie had wondered why the sorcerers had never seized cities until fifteen years ago. That fact alone should have told him. Only a leap in technology ever changed the course of history like that.

Then the fog began to clear, and the first thing that came into view was Nnanji’s face, distraught and bewildered—Nnanji, bereaved of the last of his family and now betrayed by a mentor behaving like a raving madman. All around him clustered the shocked and worried faces of the crew, a deckhouse full of frightened people looking to him for leadership. Nnanji first.

“I want to go and see, my lord brother!” Perhaps Nnanji had said that before, several times.

“No! You could not help.” What to say? Wallie plunged ahead. “Nnanji, the tryst has begun. If Katanji has died, then he is only the start. The minstrels will sing his name forever, first in the list of the glorious!”

That was the right note. Nnanji’s bony shoulders straightened, and he nodded solemnly.

Wallie said, “But suppose he isn’t dead? Put yourself in the sorcerers’ place. You have uncovered a spy; what do you do?” Five minutes before he would not even have considered the possibility of a thunderbolt spell missing its target.

“Take him in to the tower for questioning, of course,” Nnanji said. “No!” His lips moved as he began to run through the sutras, the Manual of Swordsmanship. “It’s likely he came from a ship, and they’d have to pass by too many ships. Take him on board their own boat to be safe. Alert the tower against an attack. Post guards at the end of the dock to protect the tower? Start a ship-by-ship search.”

“Good!” Wallie nodded. “I was thinking the same. But we’re swordsmen, and they’re not! They might just be stupid enough to bring him past here.”

Nnanji’s eyes gleamed, then his face fell again. “That’s only if he’s alive, my lord brother.”

Then he yelped and Wallie realized that he had taken hold of Nnanji’s shoulder and was squeezing it like putty. He let go. “Let’s assume he is until we know otherwise. We’ll ambush them!” There were mutterings of disbelief around him: fight thunderbolts? Had Tomiyano been there he would have made one of his sarcastic comments about swordsmen.

Then Tomiyano’s feet thumped against the deck and he came bounding in. “He’s alive!” he shouted. “It looks like he’s hurt, but they’ve got him on his feet.” Tumult and cheering.

“Quiet!” Wallie roared. He swung around to look at the crowd in the deckhouse. That was bad. The sorcerers would want to know where this disguised swordsman had come from, and if the tower was watching for unusual activity, then an entire crew pouring through one door would wave flags galore for them. Casting a spell by rubbing a plate? “If they bring him past here, then Nnanji and I are going to rescue him. Do you want to help?”

“Yes,” said the crew, almost as one.

“It’ll be dangerous,” he warned. “We may lose more lives in the attempt.”

Uproar! They were with him; damn the torpedoes! Ever since the pirates, Shonsu had had an army ready to hand.

Nnanji was grinning wildly now. His hero was heroing again, and there was going to be action.

Wallie closed his eyes for a moment, rattling plans around in his head like dice in a box. Then, “Okay!” he said. “We have very little time. Do exactly as I say, with no arguments at all. First thing—when I shout ‘Charge!’ you all throw yourselves flat on the ground! Got that? It’s a code. ‘Charge!’ means lie down. Fast! ‘Up!’ means up. Think of these thunderbolts as throwing knives—they probably have about the same accuracy, but I think that each sorcerer can only throw one, and then there will be a space of a few minutes until he can throw another. Have you got that?” He repeated it.

If he was wrong on that guess, he was going to lose a lot of friends very shortly. Why did he think that, anyway? Part of his brain was throwing up answers to questions he had not had time to ask it yet. Because the sorcerers had only been acting this way for fifteen years, since they first seized a city, and a technology that succeeds does not advance very far in fifteen years —that was why. The fire-demon cannons might be new, but there were none of those here. With a sensation of launching himself into space he started throwing out orders, hardly knowing himself what words were going to come out of his mouth.

“Linihyo, Oligarro, Holiyi, Maloli, you bring those ingots up from the dock and—”

“They don’t matter,” Brota began.

“Quiet!” the swordsman roared again. “I said no arguments!” No one had spoken to Brota like that in years. She crumpled into shocked silence. He turned back to the sailors. “Get as many more as you can manage up from the hold. No time to rig the boom. You’ll have to manhandle them. Stand them on edge against the bulwark on the dock side. Okay? Move!”

The ingots were incredible good fortune—if the gods were withholding miracles, they were still allowing good luck. A bronze ingot would stop a lead musket ball.

“Nnanji, take off your sword for now. I want six good swordsmen down on the dock, scattered around and out of sight. Women—they’ll be less conspicuous. Place them and then come back for weapons. Move!” Nnanji’s sword and harness fell by the doorway, and he was gone, shouting names as he went.

“Sinboro, take Fia and Oligata, go aloft. You stay, send them down when there’s any news.

“Diwa, all the children and noncombatants belowdecks and keep them there unless the ship goes on fire. Lina and the old man, as well. And not in the cabins, right down in the hold.

“Lae, an ax beside each cable. You may have to cut and run if this doesn’t work.

“Cap’n? How many sorcerers?”

Tomiyano hesitated. “Demons! Didn’t count. I think just two or three out where Katanji is. The patrols . . . maybe another eight. They’ll be out there, too, by now. That’s cowls only.”

Wallie nodded, satisfied. “It’s only cowls I’m worried about. Get the swords up.” He ran his sketchy plan through in his head, and it was not good enough—he would get himself killed. “Brota, I need something that looks like a head.”

Her fat face quavered all over. She did not know whether to laugh or scream. “A head?”

“With a foil on it.” That took time to explain. By the time she stumped off, the first messenger boy was back from the lookout—Oligata.

“They’re bringing him in,” he said, panting and wide-eyed with excitement. “Seven sorcerers and Katanji.”

“Great! Tell Sinboro to keep an eye on the town. There may be reinforcements coming. Back to your post, herald!”

Sword in hand, Wallie led the rest out on deck and told Nnanji that his brother was coming, the ambush was going ahead. The sailors had strung ten of the ingots along the side against the bulwark, invisible from the dock. But would they be strong enough? He moved two single-handedly, putting one beside each of the cables.

Brota reappeared with a foil and a head-sized basket wrapped in black cloth. The end of the cloth even looked like a ponytail. He stuck the foil through the knot and studied it with a grin. “Puppet show,” he said.

“You’re madder than usual today, Shonsu,” she remarked nervously.

“On the contrary. I’m sane for the first time since Aus.” He glanced around the deck, wondering how many dozen things he had overlooked. “You and Jja lie down by the hawsers, behind those ingots, because I think they’ll stop the thunderbolts. But first I need cloths to cover the swords.”

“It will take a large ingot to hide me!” Brota rolled her eyes and waddled off obediently.

Wallie turned to watch the crowd, which had not thinned out much. There might be a lot of innocent people hurt soon. He was suddenly tempted to call the whole thing off, to pull in his troops, and run. The only thing that stopped him was the thought of torture. Oh, Katanji!

He had five men and one boy on deck, standing expectantly around him. Nnanji with six women and girls on the roadway—he could see Fala by a heap of bales, talking to a woman from another ship, and Mata on the other side chatting with two sailors. The space by Sapphire was comparatively clear, as they had unloaded no cargo, but the rest of the dockway was cluttered with heaps, and there were wagons waiting, people pushing or standing, more wagons coming. This was going to be chaos on top of chaos.

He turned to the shiny-eyed Nnanji. “Take swords down to the others. Keep them wrapped until they’re needed.” He motioned the men in to listen. “Remind them to lie down fast whenever I shout ‘Charge!’ Nnanji, the one thing I’m most worried about is torture. We musn’t leave any wounded, and that includes your brother!”

Nnanji just nodded, but his grin showed that he was not contemplating failure.

Wallie explained. “We’re going to show ourselves on deck and challenge, then duck. I hope that that will draw their . . . their thunderbolts. It will be noisy! Then we attack before they have a chance to cast any more spells.”

Tiny Fia dropped to the deck, wrapping her hands under her arms to cool them. “Shonsu, they’ve turned the corner.”

“Okay. Go back up. Tell Sinboro that you’re all to stay up there now. Expect lots of noise!

“Off you go, Nnanji. Stay out of sight until we come over the rail. Oh, Nnanji? Tell everyone to aim for arms, not head or body.”

The ginger eyebrows shot up, and a question was stopped on the brink of being asked. Nnanji dashed off with his bundle of wrapped swords in one hand, his own sword and harness in the other.

“Why arms, my lord?” Holiyi asked.

“Because they have things in their gowns,” Wallie said cryptically, and they all accepted that. There was another reason that he could not tell them, a promise. The first sorcerer I meet, I shall spare for your sake. Of course there was also the possibility of reprisals against the sailors or townsfolk, although he did not really expect that; but he might leave some of his force behind alive, in spite of his gruesome warning to Nnanji. They might fare better if no sorcerers had died. And he just wanted to avoid deaths if he could.

“Shonsu!” Sinboro was shouting from the masthead. “More coming!” He pointed toward the town. Wallie waved an acknowledgment. Then he took his small army over to the rail and ran through the drill twice.

Then another shout from the masthead warned him that the sorcerers were almost there.

††††††

He crouched by the top of the gangplank, sword in hand. Opposite Sapphire a ship had unloaded a pile of shabby brown bales and sailcloth in long, buff rolls to make an excellent roadblock. All the traffic detoured toward him to get around it; it also made good cover. Fala was sitting on a bale with a sword beside her, but her companion of a few minutes before had gone. Perhaps she had recognized the sword in its wrapping.

To his right, in the direction from which the enemy would come, the way was squeezed between a heap of grain sacks on the nearer side and a wagon loading crates on the other. Nnanji was squatting behind the sacks, sword in hand. That seemed an odd choice—why would he not have put himself at the city end of the ambush in case the sorcerers tried to run for it? Fala and Mata were beside the wagon.

To his left he could see none of his warriors, but his view was as much obstructed as the sorcerers’ would be by two more wagons, one piled high with yellow baskets and the other with warm red bricks. Another wagon bearing lumber was scraping through between them with loud exchange of insults. Leaning on his cart of glistening fish, an elderly hawker plodded past Sapphire. Two more wagons were coming from the right, and the sorcerers were behind those, a glimpse of yellow cowls above the crowd.

There were fewer people nearby as the swords were noticed and the wise departed. This was a loyalty test for the riverfolk and the citizens of Ov: Would anyone run to warn the sorcerers? Of course that was why Nnanji had gone to that side. If they were alerted, they would turn around and retreat with their prisoner. The thought gave Wallie goose bumps, for his plan to draw their fire would have been thwarted, and Nnanji would certainly pursue.

He made a last check of the deck and of his army, all crouching by the ingots, swords in hands, watching him nervously. He gave them the local equivalent of a thumbs-up sign, and then saw Honakura standing by the mast and smiling complacently.

“Go below!” Wallie yelled.

The old man pouted and shook his head. “I collect great deeds, as well as miracles!” He smirked.

“You’ll collect a thunderbolt, you flaming idiot! Go up on the fo’c’sle, then, and stay behind the capstan.”

The priest scowled, but sauntered forward.

Now the lumber wagon had made it through the gap and pulled up by Sapphire until the way ahead was clear. Fortunately for the ambush, the teamster was selfish enough to hog the middle of the road. The oncoming traffic would have to pass him on Wallie’s side. A spurt of pedestrians flowed through the gap and hurried by.

The first of the two wagons rumbled past the crates and then by the ship, its cargo of barrels sending out a strong smell of beer. The second followed, carrying a precariously high load of what looked like lobster pots.

Then came the sorcerers—yellows, a red, and browns. They walked in two lines of three, warily eyeing the ships and the crowd, every man with his arms in front of him and hands in sleeves. In the center was Katanji, tiny and barely visible. Wallie saw that his right arm was bandaged and in a sling. There was a rope around his neck and behind him, holding the rope, walked a very tall Fifth, keeping his eyes firmly on the prisoner.

Wallie’s pulse was pounding, and his mouth was dry. The lobster pots passed below him, and he got his first clear glimpse of the captive. Katanji looked shaken and pale and very small. He was keeping his eyes down to avoid looking at Sapphire, but his face was bruised and bleeding. The sorcerers had obviously done some preliminary questioning.

Bastards!

“Up!” Wallie roared. “Sorcerers! I am sent of the Goddess!”

He stepped forward to the top of the plank so that they could have a clear view of his blue kilt. He raised his sword.

The sorcerers’ eyes swung toward the shout. They saw a Seventh and a group of men with swords and they reacted instinctively, pulling their weapons from their sleeves. Seeing battle impending, bystanders and pedestrians screamed and started to run.

Wallie yelled, “Charge!” and hurled himself flat on his face.

Roar!—a very loud and jagged explosion. He felt the ingots beside him shudder. Splinters of wood flew across the deck. He grabbed the foil with the basket and thrust it up over the rail to draw any more thunderbolts, but nothing happened to it. He scrambled to his feet and he did not die.

Chaos he had predicted, but not this. The amount of smoke from the primitive black powder was astonishing; the air was thick with it and full of terrified screams from people and horses. Especially horses, plunging horses, churning the crowd. The lobster pots were a lightweight load and that wagon had bolted straight left, into the beer wagon, and barrels were cascading down. The basket wagon came charging to the right, into the sorcerers, scattered them, plowed over the sailcloth, and toppled onto its side. Baskets bounded into the roadway among the barrels and milling civilians.

He was halfway down the gangplank when he saw Nnanji impale his first sorcerer. But where was Katanji? Then he caught a glimpse of red through the smoke, as the big Fifth disappeared around the beer wagon and headed toward the town. Wallie left the battle to his army and gave chase.

Now the barrels and baskets were a hindrance instead of a helpful distraction. He dodged and sidestepped and cursed until he was past the worst of it and had a clearer view. The Fifth, with his prisoner over one shoulder, was in the middle of a panic-stricken crowd streaming toward the town through a maze of goods and wagons and skittish horses. Wallie threw people out of the way as he ran, but the big man was a powerful runner, also, even with his burden, and it took long minutes to catch him . . . almost to the end of the dock. Then Wallie came up behind him and thrust his sword between the man’s legs.

The sorcerer fell headlong on top of Katanji, rolled over, and started to pull something from a pocket. Wallie was briefly conscious of a hate-filled face glaring up at him. He kicked. The first sorcerer Wallie had met was out of the battle then. Maimed perhaps, but probably not dead, so the swordsman had kept the promise he had made in Aus.

Katanji sat up shakily, looking dazed, saw Wallie, exclaimed, “Oh, Lord Shonsu!” and burst into tears.

Wallie glanced at the crowd ahead and saw cowls fighting their way toward him. He was almost into the reinforcements coming from the tower. He sheathed his sword, threw Katanji over his shoulder, and began to run.

The dock had emptied of people, and now he needed them for cover. He pounded down the roadway as hard as he could go, with his scalp prickling, waiting for more thunderbolts. He started to veer from side to side, even when there was clear space ahead, and he heard Katanji groan at the shaking he was getting. He saw Sapphire’s blue hull still a long way ahead along that cluttered avenue between the wagons and the heaps, an avenue walled by the sides of ships, arched over by the webbing of masts and rope and yards. It seemed to stretch forever.

There was shouting close behind him, very close. Then something kicked him in the back with the strength of elephants and proclamations of thunder. He was hurled forward and for the second time the unfortunate Katanji acted as landing pad for a large man.

All the breath went out of Wallie, and the impact rattled his bones from his feet to his teeth. Half stunned, he could only lie and gasp like a landed fish.

Then his arms were grabbed and pulled behind him and something cold went round his wrists with a click.

“A Seventh!” said a jubilant voice. A foot crashed into Wallie’s ribs. “Up, swordsman!”

He gasped and was kicked again. He was dragged to his feet, reeling and dazed. Every rasping breath was an agony. There were sorcerers of various colors all around, even a green.

“A swordsman of the Seventh!” the Sixth exclaimed, and then laughed. He smiled up at Wallie. “You are a welcome guest, my lord! We shall have much entertainment from you.”

Damned handcuffs! Manacles! He swayed and looked to see Katanji being hauled to his feet, also, although he seemed barely conscious and his sling was soaked with blood. “Let the boy go!” Wallie said.

“Hors d’oeuvre,” the Sixth said, a smallish, wrinkled face peering out of a green cowl. “You can watch him go first. Shonsu, of course? You are hard to kill, swordsman! But this time we shall make sure. There will be no haste.”

Then he frowned and turned to stare toward the River, and Wallie became vaguely conscious of a rumbling noise.

He struggled to focus sense out of a many-colored, whirling mist. A wagon was moving. Two men were standing up in front, one flogging the horses, and the other waving a sword. It carried a whole company of sword-waving figures. More men were jumping on it as it reached them. Swordsmen! They were pouring off the ships as it passed and being hauled aboard.

From a million miles away, from a million years ago, someone was shouting inside his head, very faintly. It sounded like Wallie Smith. The chief sorcerer started yelling orders in a shrill voice. Then Wallie made out that thin, far-off internal screaming: “Delay them! Distract them!”

His tongue was a dead fish in his mouth. “Honorable . . . Rathazaxo!”

The sorcerer paused and stared in surprise. “Well done! How . . . No matter. You will tell, later. Everything, you will tell.”

He turned back to consider the onrushing wagon.

Wallie flogged his mind and voice. “The tryst is come, sorcerer.”

This time he got a glare. “You could not know!”

“The gods told me. Did you think your pigeons could do better than the gods?” Everything was going round faster and faster. “Ink and feathers, little bits of leather?”

He had scored. Not only the green—half a dozen sorcerers were staring at him openmouthed. Their age-old secret?

“How do you know of that, Shonsu?”

“Sulfur . . . charcoal . . . horse urine . . . ”

Anger and fear showed within the cowls.

The rumbling grew louder. Then the Sixth awoke again to danger. He shouted orders. Wallie was shoved back to the side of the road. He stumbled and fell heavily on a pile of bales, and a flame of agony in his back dragged a scream from him. The rigging swayed before a darkening sky. He thought he would vomit . . . 

Yet he hung on. He twisted his head to see. The hollow rumbling was growing louder, the wagon picking up speed, the shouting becoming clearer. Now the two men were distinguishable, even to Wallie’s muddled vision—the heavyset bulkiness of Oligarro driving the horses, yelling and whipping, Nnanji’s matchstick lankiness, whirling his sword as he yelled for swordsmen, his ponytail a banner of blood in the wind. The water rats were responding, leaping off the boats and coming to help against sorcerers. And armed sailors, also . . . even a few free swords in ponytails and kilts . . . Oligarro had not been the only liar in port.

Louder and louder came the juggernaut, gathering speed even as it gathered passengers. Then Wallie saw what the sorcerers were trying to do. He twisted and scrambled frantically until he got to his feet, his head a whirlpool of pain. Katanji was staggering about behind them, in the path of the coming destruction, too dazed to understand. Wallie backed up to him, grabbed his good arm with manacled hands and towed him to the side of the road, knocked him down yet again, and turned his muddled attention to the eight sorcerers lined up across the road. They were all standing with legs apart. They were all holding pistols.

“Ready!” the Sixth shouted, and the sorcerers raised their arms outstretched before them. The wagon was plunging forward, and in the midst of the dust and the noise and confusion Wallie registered the terrified eyes of the horses.

“Aim!” the Sixth shouted.

Then he opened his mouth again, and Wallie hurled himself bodily into the nearest man. He teetered and fell against his neighbor. Had Wallie had his wits and normal strength he might have felled the whole line, like dominoes, one into another. As it was, he ricocheted limply off and fell once more, thumping his head on the timbers as a hail of knives flashed over him and the pistols roared, squirting great clouds of smoke. Half the sorcerers fell, and the wagon plowed into and over the rest.

There were swordsmen everywhere, screams and swords and yells and knives and cheers and smoke and blood.

The smoke cleared, the noise stopped.

He was lifted more gently—but not much more gently—to his feet. Eight dead sorcerers . . . a crowd of swordsmen—free swords in kilts, water rats in breechclouts, sailors . . . Tomiyano and Holiyi and Maloli, even a few women. They were cheering and laughing. Then Nnanji threw an arm around him, grinning and exultant.

“We did it, brother! Wiped out the lot of them!”

“Well done,” Wallie whispered. “Oh, bravely done!” But he did not think he was audible.

Nnanji was. “On To The Tower!”

Cheers! “On to the tower!”

“No!” Wallie yelled. He lunged at Nnanji as he started to move away and then gasped again with the pain. The tower was booby-trapped. There would be cannons and grapeshot and shrapnel bombs . . . “You can’t take the tower! Back to your ships!” Gods! It hurts to speak!

Anger and disappointment rumbled around him. Wallie leaned weakly against Nnanji. “Back to your ships!” he repeated faintly.

“Brother!” Nnanji pleaded. “We have a victory. We must follow it up. The sutras . . . ”

That bang on the head—he couldn’t think, and his tongue was all over his mouth. “I ama theventh,” Wallie mumbled.

“Brother!”

“A Seventh!” Wallie repeated faintly. His knees were paper. The howling of the wind . . . 

He was a Seventh. Muttering, they turned and headed back.

“Katanji?” Wallie said. The dock road was swaying nauseatingly, the storm drowning out everything.

“He’s on his way back.” Nnanji was beginning to look worried.

“Casualties?”

“Only Oligarro, brother. Not serious.”

Earthquakes, now; the dock was going up and down in great fuzzy waves.

“He’s got a little round hole through his shoulder,” Nnanji said from a far distance. “I think he’ll be all right, if there’s no curse on it.”

There was something very important that Wallie had to say, if he could only remember . . . He slid to his knees, and the World faded behind the gray roaring.

He thought of it again as they carried him on board Sapphire, when he saw the other pile of dead sorcerers. His orders to wound, not kill, had not worked very well. He tried to speak, to tell Nnanji to collect weapons. If he made the words they were not heard.

They laid him on a hatch cover and sailed away.

†††††††

He had been studying a fire bucket for some time—perhaps only a few minutes, perhaps longer. He had not been conscious of being unconscious . . . He remembered them cutting off his manacles, unbuckling his harness, and laying him gently on the cover. He was lying there now, on his side with his head in Jja’s lap. Delayed shock? Not the sort of thing that a hero was supposed to get. He tried to turn over, winced, and made do with twisting his head to look up at her. This was an interesting viewpoint, and he studied contentedly for a while, then looked beyond, to where her face hung against the sky, the most beautiful and certainly the most welcome face in the World, a miracle of golden brown against blue.

“That’s the sort of smile that drives men mad,” he said. The smile grew broader, but she did not speak. “What’s so funny, then?”

The smile became broader still. “Not funny, my love—happy.”

Again be tried to move and grunted with pain. “I don’t think you should smile like that when I’m dying. See that hole in my back? Those broken white things are ribs. The puffy pink things are bits of lungs.”

“There’s no hole in your back.” Soft as snowflakes, her fingers stroked from his shoulder blade down to the base of his ribs. “You have bruises, that’s all. A bump on the head. No bones broken, Brota says.”

Wallie said, “Brota can only look at the outside. Inside feels like a junkyard.” He decided that the smile was fifty percent relief and fifty percent the sort of smile she gave Vixini sometimes and fifty percent some sort of admiration. All the rest of it must be love. Hell, it was a good smile to be given. Yet . . . “What is so funny, wench?”

Jja snickered. “You have a mothermark. I know it wasn’t there this morning.”

Another battle won—after the last battle, his right eyelid had suddenly gained a swordsman fathermark, but his left had stayed blank, uniquely blank in the World.

‘Tell me,” he said, wondering what the little god had made of a crime reporter.

Jja’s smile broadened. “It’s a feather, my love!”

A scribe, of course. Or was the god playing his jokes again? The sorcerers were a lot more than scribes; they were also chemists, and the new Lord Shonsu was a blend of the old Shonsu the swordsman and Wallie Smith the chemist. Very funny, Shorty! I thought you promised no miracles? What are the swordsmen of the tryst going to think when they see that?

Sorcery as technology? That was going to need some rethinking.

He had been thinking of spy stories, and whodunnits. But it had not been a whodunnit, rather a howdunnit. His eyes had told him, Katanji had told him, and he had paid no heed.

Gunpowder certainly—the smell alone confirmed that. What else did they have? Probably not much; Honakura had been right, they were mostly charlatans. Whatever had caused that ancient quarrel between the priests and the scribes, the swordsmen had sided with the priests. The scribes had been driven out and herded up into the mountains. In self-defense they had claimed magical powers and probably devised all sorts of clever little tricks, like the sleight of hand that could steal a sailor’s knife. That explained the sleeves and the hidden hands.

And sleight of hand explained the magical bird. Tomiyano had not opened the pot, because he had been holding it. The sorcerer had lifted the lid, and the bird had come out of his sleeve. Put a bird in a dark pocket, and it would freeze. That had not been all meaningless mumbo-jumbo, though. A pigeon could carry a message, but it could also be a signal. No message meant send help. The purpose of the exercise had been to release the pigeon, and the other sorcerers had shown up very soon afterward.

Burning rags? Lights in the forest? Phosphorus! Quite possible—middle sixteen hundreds on Earth, but not all technologies would make discoveries in the same order, so phosphorus was possible. Urine, both human and animal, would be the source of phosphorus, as well as of nitrates for the gunpowder. That was why the tanners and dyers were evicted; those crafts used urine, also, and the sorcerers wanted to corner the supply. Why had he not seen that? The scar on Tomiyano’s face was an acid burn, of course. What else? He would have to rethink everything he had learned and reinterpret it. Surely all of it would have a rational explanation now—sorcery or science, but never both.

It had all been there for him to see that day in Aus: distillation coils, sulfur, pigeons. Even earlier—what would be mined in volcanic terrain except sulfur? Dumb swordsman!

He had come so close when he had Kandoru’s murder reenacted. Had he followed his own logic through to its proper conclusions, he would have seen that the tune had been a stage prop, the fife a weapon. Then he would not have locked his mind into a belief in sorcery; things would have turned out differently then.

He twisted around and saw Nnanji and Thana standing by the rail watching him. so he made an effort, and Jja helped him to sit up. He had indeed been unconscious, and for some time, it seemed. Sapphire was already in among the islands north of the city, winding her way along a channel in a line of ships, all fleeing from Ov and the sorcerers’ wrath. The sun shone on blue water and the hot fall tints of dogwood and willows on those islands. White herons stalked the beaches. The massive white cloud over RegiVul was almost invisible in its remoteness, its shadows the same soft blue as the dome of heaven itself. Brota was humped by the tiller, probably finding her helmsman solitude relaxing after the excitement. She saw him move and raised a fat arm in salute.

Nnanji and Thana came hurrying over, hand in hand.

“Where’s Katanji?” Wallie asked.

“He’s below, resting.” Nnanji shook his head sadly. “It will take a real miracle to make a swordsman out of him now, brother! His arm is smashed. Brota says we can’t even put a cast on until the swelling goes down.”

“The Goddess rewards those who help us,” Wallie said awkwardly. “If Cowie went to live in a palace, then I think Novice Katanji will be looked after.”

Nnanji nodded, and Wallie asked what had gone wrong, what had happened. Very simple, was the answer—mosquitoes. Katanji had been slapping, like the rest of them, and had smudged his slavestripe. The fake sailor had noticed as Katanji edged close to see what was in the baskets. But Oligarro was fine, Nnanji said, a clean wound, no bones or arteries.

His grin would not stay away long: “And no one else but you got as much as a broken fingernail! We should have had minstrels with us, brother!” He hugged Thana tightly. “The first victory of your tryst, Lord Shonsu!”

“It’s not my tryst! Ouch!” He had moved again. “What’s that?”

Gingerly Nnanji held up a thin silver tube. “I found it on the dock. Is it safe, my lord brother? I can throw it overboard . . . ”

“Oh, it’s safe if there’s nothing in it! You didn’t pick up anything else, did you?”

“No, brother.”

Pity! Wallie took the fife and looked at it. There were only three finger holes, so it would not be capable of much music, but drilling finger holes without spoiling the bore must be tricky. He tried blowing, achieving a wince from himself and nervous cries from the others.

“Kandoru didn’t draw his sword, Nnanji, and he could have done, easily. He reached up and then he turned around, but he hadn’t drawn. He hadn’t been trying to draw!”

Nnanji looked blank.

Wallie sighed. “He thought he’d been bitten by a mosquito. But his fingers found a little dart sticking in him, and he turned round to see where it had come from.”

Of course, it had come from a blowpipe, a convenient short-range weapon. Good indoors, or when there was no wind—that was why he had seen one in Aus. The air had been still that afternoon, when the sorcerers had cornered Shonsu. It would have been as reliable as a pistol at close quarters, and more dramatic to the onlookers. The sorcerers were showmen, murderous tricksters!

Quietly the crew was gathering around, and Wallie explained the blowpipe, and poison darts.

“Give me my sword.”

They passed him his harness. In the middle of the decorated leather of the scabbard was a round hole, the edges burned. Wincing again, he drew the sword out, and there was a dark burn mark on the blade, very close to the image of a maiden stroking a griffon.

“Is that where the thunderbolt struck?” Nnanji asked solemnly. “I suppose a sorcerer’s spell couldn’t prevail against the Goddess’ sword?”

“Nor against Brota’s ingots. Did you look behind them?” Wallie asked. Nnanji shook his head and went to do so.

Wallie squinted along the blade, but there was no kink in it—a fine tribute to the metallurgical skill of Chioxin, for a lesser sword must surely have broken when hit by a musket ball. He would have to test it to make sure that the steel had not been fatally weakened. A fraction to the left or right and the ball would have missed the blade. Indeed if he had not been carrying Katanji, the scabbard would not have been pushed over to the left so far . . . hastily he dropped that line of thought.

He eased himself around and looked at the rail. There were two holes through it and big chunks had been blown out. Then Tomiyano saw him looking.

“We’ll have to charge for repairs,” he said solemnly. “Passengers aren’t supposed to damage the ship.” Then he laughed, which was almost unheard of.

“Don’t!” Wallie said quickly. “They’re honorable battle scars.”

Nnanji had managed to drag one of the ingots aside. He came back holding two shapeless lumps.

“I found these,” he said wonderingly. “They look like silver.”

“They’re lead,” Wallie told him.

“Why would you not let us go on to the tower, my lord brother?” Nnanji asked regretfully. “Fighting sorcerers wasn’t so difficult after all! Fifteen dead!” Then he paused and smiled suspiciously. “Or was it only fourteen?”

“Fourteen,” Wallie agreed. “I don’t think I killed the Fifth.” Nnanji shook his head in affectionate disapproval of this swordsman who didn’t like killing.

“We were lucky, Nnanji, very lucky! They aren’t much good at fighting are they? Did you count their mistakes?”

“Dozens!” Nnanji snorted. “Lining up across the path of a charging wagon? They should have let us go by them, then commandeered a ship. They should have dropped you in the River before we arrived, brother! Amateurs!”

That was worth knowing, though. The swordsmen were trained fighters, the sorcerers merely armed civilians. They had lost their heads. Yet Nnanji could not suspect a fraction of it. The tower doors were certainly booby-trapped. Defenders could drop antipersonnel grenades. A skirmish on a jetty was one thing; an assault on a tower would be another matter altogether. Then another piece of the puzzle fell into place—Katanji had reported bronze gratings at the tower doors and had seen a big gold ball on a column—an electrostatic generator, of course. Burglars were electrocuted.

“You saved my life again, brother,” Wallie said. “I thank you.”

Nnanji grinned. “I was rather good, wasn’t I?”

“Not good—magnificent!”

Once Nnanji would have blushed scarlet at that. Now he just chuckled and said, “Thinking?”

“Very fast thinking!”

“Judgment?”

“Great judgment!”

“Tactics?”

“Superb tactics!” Wallie laughed with him, and then wished he hadn’t. “Sum it up in one word, brother: leadership! You’re not just a Fifth in fencing, Master Nnanji, you’re a leader. You’ll be a Fifth and a good one!”

Where now was the gangling, awkward kid whom Wallie had found on the temple beach? Few swordsmen of any rank could have reacted fast enough and efficiently enough to have organized that rescue. Wallie had not thought of calling on the water rats as reinforcements, but Nnanji had, and thought of taking a wagon, too.

Thana was standing beside him; they had their arms around each other again. Now she spoke for the first time. “Sixth?”

Wallie tried to shrug and regretted that, also. “Soon,” he said. “Very soon.”

Nnanji’s eyes glinted. “We are going, on to Casr, then, brother?”

Yes, Lord Shonsu would have to return to Casr. He might have to face a denunciation for what he had done in Aus—but now he had a victory to set against it. He wondered what other time bombs might be ticking there, what buried mines his predecessor had left. “We are, if She wills it. You will get your promotion. You’ve earned it, and it will be our first business there.”

The rest of the crew was standing or sitting around—smiling in approval, waiting for him to recover, patient to hear what fate he had in store for them. He was admiral, he had been granted wisdom, he was the Goddess’ champion, he would decide their fate.

“And the tryst, brother?”

Wallie sagged his shoulders to seek a more comfortable position. Tryst? Now he knew how to fight sorcerers, but that did not mean he would succeed.

Nor was the god’s riddle much help now. First your brother . . . fine, he had done that. From another wisdom gain—that was his new insight into the sorcerers. He had been spurned in Aus, turned the circle back to Ov, earned his army for the battle on the jetty . . . 

Finally return that sword, And to its destiny accord. But what did that mean? When was “finally”? Destiny? The destiny of the sword might be to lead the tryst, but the sword had never truly been in Casr, so returning it to Casr was not the answer. Was be truly supposed to return it to the Goddess at Her temple there, so that some other leader could have it? He gazed lovingly at that superb hilt, the silver griffon, and the sapphire. Over my dead body!

Lead a tryst? Other Chioxin swords had done so. Somehow he felt that the destiny of the seventh should be more than that.

“The tryst?” Nnanji asked again.

“I don’t know.” Wallie sighed. “Maybe we’ll join the tryst—and if we do, then I don’t intend to be assistant quartermaster. I’ll be leader, and you’ll be my deputy!”

Nnanji’s teeth gleamed as he smiled at Thana—fame and glory!

“Or maybe we’ll have to stop the tryst, to prevent a massacre.”

“Stop the tryst!” echoed Nnanji in horror.

It was Cortez versus Montezuma again, a few firearms against a primitive civilization. The smart money went on Cortez. The swordsmen were at about the level of the Greek phalanx, the sorcerers were Early Renaissance—and that was a different league.

One thing was certain: if the tryst of the Goddess’ swordsmen went heads-down against the Fire God’s sorcerers using their traditional tactics, they were going to be devastated. Wallie’s duty—to his craft, to the Goddess, to his own conscience—was clear. He must prevent disaster.

How?

He would have to do some hard thinking before he got to Casr. Four or five weeks’ sailing to Casr . . . unless the Goddess wanted him there by lunchtime. The crew’s smiles were fading, and he could see that his doubts had alarmed them.

He put his arm around Jja and grinned to reassure them all. “Or perhaps the tryst is just a blind to distract the sorcerers, Adept Nnanji, while you and I do something else?”

“Do what, brother?” Nnanji asked, eager to hear and willing to follow his oath brother into hell if he was asked.

“Ah!” Wallie had no idea. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?” He mused for a while, but his mind was a blank. “Answer that one, friend, and you win an all-expense-paid trip for two.”

Nnanji looked puzzled. “To where?”

“To Vul, I suppose,” Wallie said, and then he laughed. “No, that’s just an expression. Don’t take me seriously.”

Wisdom seldom gave answers; it only redefined the questions. He had not known how to lead an army of swordsmen against sorcery. Against technology, though . . . well, that was another story altogether.