BOOK TWO:

HOW THE SWORDSMAN MET HIS MATCH

†

The virtuous Huli, priestess of the third rank, came striding along the riverfront at Casr with the hem of her brown robe swirling around her ankles and dark thoughts churning over in her mind. The sun was warm, but the wind tugged and jostled at her, throwing dust in her eyes so that she hardly knew whether her tears came from the dust, or from anger and frustration.

The city had become a madhouse, an asylum for the criminally insane. There were no bars to restrain the inmates, and more of them were arriving every day. She passed a fruit seller’s barrow on one side as two young swordsmen strutted by on the other, openly helping themselves to apples as they went. Not only did they not consider paying, they did not have the grace to thank the owner or even send him a nod of acknowledgment. So far as those two louts were concerned, the poor man did not exist—and he likely with eight or nine children at home to feed.

Swordsmen! She ground her teeth. She still had all her teeth.

Swordsmen in sixes. Swordsmen in dozens. They postured and they marched, they bullied and they lechered. She dodged angrily as a sword whistled—a Fifth leading ten men was saluting a Sixth with five. No one was safe anymore!

Daily the victims appealed to the temple—men mutilated or beaten, girls ravished, householders impoverished and driven out. The priests could give them little but solace. Daily, Priestess Huli gave thanks to the Holiest that, being a woman of the cloth, she was sacrosanct and safe from molestation. Of course those young debauchers normally preyed on less mature women than she, so that was another protection.

The tryst had turned the city sideways. Even her own humble existence . . . she had been giving very serious thought to accepting a proposal of marriage—from Jinjino of the Fourth, a most respected draper, a dignified and prosperous widower, father of three children who dearly needed a loving mother to teach them some manners. She had almost decided to accept. He had made most solemn promises that his demands on her person would be moderate and discreet. And now he had fled town, taking his children with him. That was something of a disappointment. The eldest was only twelve and even these sword-waving boors did not descend to that.

She scowled at the sight of three swordsmen encircling a young female, leering and bantering. Lewd humor, no doubt! She wondered if she could find the courage to intervene. They were only juvenile Seconds, but they were very large, rough-looking types. She paused in her progress, irresolute. Then she noticed with horror that the woman was obviously enjoying the attention—wanton! Huli continued on her way, frowning in disgust.

The wide plaza was always busy, but it was so vast that in ordinary times it could handle its traffic easily and still seem comparatively peaceful. On a normal day there might be a dozen ships tied up along the front, loading and unloading. Now there must be fifty, an almost continuous line of them, and the crowds swarmed everywhere. It was not only swordsmen who had invaded Casr, but their followers, also, from babes in arms to whores and cutthroats. Madhouse!

The problem was in knowing who to blame. The most holy Lord Kadywinsi, high priest of Casr, was the obvious culprit, but she could hardly bring herself to pass judgment on a man so revered and venerable, even if he was, just perhaps, maybe, a tiny bit . . . senile? Be charitable, she told herself as she detoured around a wagon to avoid a group of pedestrian-baiting young swordsmen, the holy lord is not the man he was when you were a novice, but he is still worthy of your respect.

A blue ship, she had been told, by the double statue. There was a small blue ship visible in the distance now.

And if Kadywinsi of the Seventh was not at fault, it was certainly not Priestess Hull’s place to criticize the Goddess.

She had been unsuspecting and excited that day two weeks back, when word had flashed around the temple that the castellan, the charming and handsome Lord Tivanixi, had ridden in with his men and had persuaded the high priest to join with him in calling a tryst. A tryst! It would be the first in centuries, if the Holiest heard their plea, and of course the risk involved was so terrifying! She had thought she might faint with horror as she had watched the ceremony. Forty-nine bullocks, poor things, the water scarlet and foaming, and the two valiant lords actually wading into the River behind them! She still perspired with horror at the thought.

Such faith! And so wonderfully blessed by the Most High! It had been less than an hour before the ships had begun arriving with swordsmen on board.

The blame, then, must be laid to Lord Tivanixi, for failing to control the swordsmen when they had come. But he was so handsome!

Suddenly she heard boots running. “Challenge!” shouted male voices. Swordsmen went running by her, and all the unattached swordsmen in the area took off after them, vanishing up a side street. Well! That certainly cleared this area for a while. She wondered if there would shortly be one less swordsman around to bully the innocent civilians, then reproved herself for an uncharitable thought. They were still arriving much faster than they were killing one another off.

Now she had reached the two bronze statues, so corroded that it was impossible to tell whether they represented men or women. There was the blue ship, as she had been told. She squared her shoulders and marched up the plank, then paused to look around the deck. She had never been on a ship before. It was not a large ship, but it was clean and smelled pleasantly of leather. Two or three sailors were sitting around and one of them rose and came over. He wore a knife, so he must be in charge. A Third, like herself . . . but she had been instructed to make the salute to a superior—a shameful concession from a priestess! His manner was not very respectful, but he responded smartly.

“I have a message for ‘a swordsman of high rank,’ Captain.”

Rudely, the sailor jerked his head toward a door at the rear. With a sniff, Huli marched over to it and went in, finding a big, bright, almost bare room. A young slave woman was kneeling in the corner, entertaining three or four small children. A man rose from a large wooden chest where he had been sitting. A Seventh! And huge! His head and sword hilt almost touched the ceiling. Most of the swordsmen who had invaded Casr were slim, wiry men, but this one was a giant. A fine figure of a man, she admitted, and discovered to her astonishment that he was giving her a friendly smile, and that she was returning it. This was certainly the highrank she had been sent to find, so she saluted.

He responded.

Shonsu!

Of course! She had seen him many times in the distance—but he was supposed to have died! She staggered and then recovered herself with an effort. The infamous Shonsu come back! But . . . 

He had noticed her reaction and his smile had gone. She did not like what had replaced it.

“In what way may I serve you, holy lady?”

Huli pulled her wits together. No wonder she had been warned not to discuss this. “I have a message for you, my lord, from a priest of the seventh rank.” That was an odd way to describe Lord Kadywinsi, but it was what she had been told to say. There were no other priests of that rank in Casr, so who else could it be from?

“Come out of the closet at last, has he?”

“My lord?”

The swordsman laughed. “Forgive me, priestess. The message, if you please?”

Huli took a deep breath and repeated the words she had been given. “ ‘The person of whom you inquired was born far off, arrived two years ago, and is unmarried, but has children. He held the office we understood and departed at the time we thought. He was believed dead, but there have recently been rumors. I shall remain at the temple until tomorrow.’ ”

It was demeaning for a priestess of her rank to be used as a common herald, and not to be told what it was all about, either, but she served the Goddess as her superiors decided. Now she had completed this trivial errand and could get back to . . . thought to have died . . . came two years ago? That message could apply to Shonsu himself!

“I thank you, priestess. There will be no reply, I think.” The swordsman was studying her carefully, almost as if he could read her thoughts. “May we offer you refreshment before you depart?”

Huli stuttered a refusal. Shonsu! She wanted to get away by herself and think. What rumors? Shonsu was supposed to have been killed by sorcerers. Had not this terrible tryst been called to avenge him?

She made her formal farewell, hurried along the deck without a glance at the sailors, and almost ran down the plank. Shonsu come back? Casr had been well rid of Shonsu . . . 

Angry and upset, Priestess Huli marched off across the sun-bright plaza, with the wind whipping and tugging at her brown robe. She barely noticed the lanky, red-haired swordsman of the Fourth who strode past her, wearing an expression of black despair.

††

Most cities presented a façade of warehouses to the River, but not Casr. Ships tied up alongside a wide plaza that ran off endlessly in both directions along the waterfront. Behind it loomed tall buildings and the entrances to wide streets, yet the general effect was one of improvisation. The buildings ranged through every architectural style imaginable—some old and some ancient, some smart and imposing, others crumbling and half in ruins. Arches and pillars and domes mingled at random among minarets and pilasters and arcades. Fragments of old walls jutted up in places, and the streets changed without warning from great avenues to narrow alleys like canyons, rolling up and down from one level to another as if the remains of a dozen cities had been shoveled out of a box. The only consistency was in color, for everything from the towers to the pavement was made of a shiny bronze stone like old gold, and even the scattered trees, those that had leaves remaining, glittered to match. Many of the windows sported bright-hued awnings, reds and blues and greens, like flashings of fire from a diamond.

Casr was old. Its statues had weathered to shapeless monoliths; the stone bollards along the waterfront were worn into mushrooms by the windings of centuries.

Wallie had sent his troops out to scout, while he spent the morning skulking in the deckhouse, almost as if Casr were a sorcerer city.

The usual wagons and heaps of trade goods were in evidence, and the gangs of dock slaves labored in Casr as in all ports. The traders and hawkers and busy citizens roamed as always, yet there was much less crowding and jostling than elsewhere, because of the sheer vastness of the plaza. In Casr business proceeded with more decorum and much less noise. The only thing hurrying was the wind, sweeping leaves along as if impatient to clean up before winter, flapping awnings like dust rags.

Everywhere were swordsmen. Not in one or twos, as at Tau, but in sixes or dozens, marching along with a senior in front, usually a green-kilted Sixth, rarely a red Fifth, and very rarely a blue Seventh. Browns were most common, of course, but there were absurd numbers of fresh-faced Firsts and Seconds, who would be more or less useless, mere errand boys and extra mouths to feed.

Even from the ship Wallie could detect tension in Casr. Gangs of small children ran along behind the troops sometimes, shouting rudenesses, and they would be taking that attitude from their elders. Swordsmen expected cheering, not jeering. He thought he saw some unobtrusive fist-waving from adults and certainly he saw petty pilfering, girls being accosted, men being roughly shouldered aside or insulted. If such things were going on in public, what was happening behind the shutters?

Free swords lived on charity, a primitive form of taxation. Such extortion was bearable for a night or two when a troop arrived in a town or village to clean up any crime that the garrison could not handle, to confirm that the resident swordsmen were themselves honest, to tumble the best-looking girls, and then to move on. A large city would hardly notice them, but even one as large as Casr would be reeling from this invasion. All these men must expect to eat regularly and sleep somewhere. And certainly not sleep alone, not swordsmen! Hundreds of active young men with nothing much to keep them occupied—who was in charge of this zoo? Who had been so brash as to call a tryst?

Wallie had kept his sword on his back, prepared to run down and intervene if he noticed any serious disturbances, but that had not been necessary. Yet obviously the tryst was chaos in spades. He wanted nothing to do with it.

Then came the message from Honakura, brought by a sour-faced priestess, and that was good news. To learn that Shonsu had no parents or other family in Casr gave Wallie a huge sense of relief. Lunch was almost due. He decided to celebrate with a tankard of beer and asked Jja to fetch it for him. Before he could drink, Nnanji’s boots thumped on the deck, and he strode in, dusty and hot. His normal carefree cheerfulness had been replaced by an ominous angry scowl.

Wallie held out the beer: “My goods are your goods,” he said.

Nnanji shook his bead. “No thank you, brother. I’ve been having that stuff thrust at me all morning.”

A Fourth would be a good catch, a very tall and unusually young Fourth. The recruiting was blatant and ferocious. As soon as Sapphire had docked and the port officer had gone ashore again, no less than eight swordsmen had tried to come aboard, hunting for newcomers. Brota had donned her sword and stood at the top of the plank and glared, huge and red and ugly, a swordsman’s nightmare. She had kept them away, but obviously Nnanji would have run into the problem in the town.

“How many times were you propositioned?” Wallie asked.

His protégé scowled and counted on his fingers. “Thirteen!” He shook his head, changed his mind, took the tankard, and drained it. Yet obviously it was not the recruiting that had been worrying him. There was something else.

“What did you say?” inquired Wallie, amused.

“Just that I had a mentor already. Then they wanted to know who and what rank; I quoted one seventy-five at them! Acch!”

Then Thana came in. Nnanji grabbed her to administer a long and doubtless beery kiss.

Jja tactfully shepherded the children out. Wallie seated himself on the chest by the window, where he had spent the morning. Nnanji and Thana settled on the other, arms around each other, and Wallie told them of Honakura’s message.

Then Katanji strolled in, looking cheerful. He, also, had been scouting. His injured arm relieved him of the obligation to wear a sword, and probably that had been a big advantage for him, Wallie thought.

“Take a seat, novice,” he said jovially, waving at the floor. “I don’t suppose the press-gangs bothered you much?”

Katanji sank down cross-legged and grinned. “They did, my lord! Four times! Of course they could tell a good man when they saw one!”

Wallie was startled. If a crippled First was in demand, then the battle for numbers was being carried beyond all reason.

“Well, let’s have the news,” he said. “Novice?”

Katanji looked pleased with himself. He reported as if he had been rehearsing: “Lord Shonsu was previous castellan of the lodge. He came from somewhere far away, and I don’t think he was married. He left about half a year ago and never came back. The new castellan is more popular.”

“Where did you find this out?” Wallie asked.

He smirked. “At the stews, my lord. I asked some other people. All of them just laughed and said to go there and ask. So I did. The girls all knew Shonsu. I said he was my uncle and the Goddess had brought me to Casr, and I was trying to find him. He was a frequent customer, my lord, although he usually didn’t pay. But the girls . . . ” The smirk became a leer. “They shed no tears over his departure, I fancy.”

Wallie knew of Shonsu’s demonic sex drive and he had seen the petty pilfering going on at the hawkers’ carts. Same principle.

“Nobody seems to know where Shonsu went or why. He just disappeared. I think that’s all, my lord.”

“Well done, novice,” Wallie said. “Did you spend much on expenses?”

Katanji hesitated and then regretfully said, “No, my lord. The elders have declared the brothels free for swordsmen.”

That was interesting. “Busy, are they?”

Katanji chuckled. “They were pleased to have the chance to just talk, my lord!”

He had probably done very well even to get the chance to talk to them, being only a First. “You just talked?” Wallie demanded disbelievingly.

Katanji opened his eyes very wide “My mentor has frequently impressed upon me, Lord Shonsu, the need to uphold the honor of the craft!” Nnanji snarled at the impudence.

Wallie laughed. “How about the other matter?”

“I did some checking, my lord.” Katanji studied Wallie with mingled admiration and perplexity. “Yes, prices have fallen. How did you guess?”

“Prices of what?” Nnanji demanded.

“Gems,” Wallie said. “And Lina is screaming that the cost of food has gone up. I’ll give you all a lecture on it tonight, if you’re interested. What did you discover, brother?”

Nnanji disengaged his arm from Thana and clasped his large hands on his knees. “Not much about Shonsu himself. The castellan before him was a Seventh named Narrinko. Shonsu came to town, fancied the job, and killed him.”

“Nasty! What did the elders say?”

Nnanji rubbed his chin—and Wallie knew where he had picked up that gesture. “They don’t seem to have any say, brother. This is a lodge city; it seems they’re different. There is no garrison, no reeve. The castellan keeps order with whoever happens to be around.”

Then it was the present castellan’s fault that the city was such a madhouse now.

“The lodge is independent?” Thana said. “That’s how the sorcerers’ towers are, isn’t it? At least I assume it is—the port officers always welcomed the ship on behalf of the elders and the wizard. In swordsmen towns they don’t mention reeve. Curious!”

That was the first time Wallie had ever heard anyone on the ship express an interest in politics, and he was suddenly filled with admiration for Honakura’s acumen. Lady Macbeth!

“Shonsu was a collector,” Nnanji went on. He frowned in disapproval—and that was a surprise from Nnanji.

“What’s that, Nanj?” asked Katanji.

“A killer,” Nnanji said, too intent on his reporting to notice the informality. “Collects dead men’s swords. It seems he organized an expedition against the sorcerers. It wasn’t a tryst, of course. Fifty men, I heard, and somehow he did it in secret. One day they just vanished. None of them ever returned.” Startled silence.

The demigod had said that Shonsu had failed disastrously. Wallie shivered at the thought of fifty young men running into armed sorcerers and being mowed down. “But what city? Why did we never hear of this on the other bank?”

Nnanji shrugged. “There are no swordsmen in town who knew Shonsu. He took them all. The guess is that he landed at some village jetty and set off to attack Vul itself.”

“Gods!” Wallie exclaimed. “He went for a kill! I wonder if that’s what the tryst is planning?”

Nnanji said he did not know. He was beginning to look very uneasy again, and Thana, sensing it, was studying him carefully.

“Tell me the bad news then,” Wallie said.

Nnanji clenched his hands together once more and stared at them. “A few weeks later, early in summer, so I was told, the sorcerers in Aus paraded a swordsman through the streets.” He stopped talking, but they all knew the rest—the swordsman had been crawling naked on his belly.

“And the name of the swordsman?”

“They think it was Shonsu.”

Wallie nodded. “That’s not quite how I recall it,” he said. “I was captured and allowed to crawl back to the ship.”

“But that’s not what the rumors say!” Nnanji shouted angrily. “It sounds as if the sorcerers brought you out, showed you, and then put you back in a box somewhere.”

There was Wallie’s danger. The details did not matter. Trapped by the sorcerers, ashore and unarmed, he had felt that public humiliation was a small price to pay to save his life. He had not thought at the time what other swordsmen—real swordsmen—would think of his disgrace, or of what they would do to such a coward when they caught him.

“And the Ov story is worse, my lord brother! They say that a band of swordsmen attacked the docks—I got asked, because of this damned hair of mine.” He looked totally miserable. “The massacre is all right, but then the story goes that you . . . that a Seventh, probably Shonsu because of his size . . . appeared and ordered us all back to our ships. They make it sound like you were an their side!”

Yes, that was bad. Misery filled the deckhouse. Wallie had been prepared to face an allegation of cowardice, but not treason. In the confusion of the fight at Ov, the facts could easily have become distorted. When the wagon charge had reached the sorcerers, he had been with them. Evidently his earlier run along the jetty and his capture had not been noticed.

Still, he could produce witnesses for Ov. The mess he had made at Aus was an insoluble disaster.

“I’ve loused it up,” he said bitterly. “The Goddess gave me Her own sword, and I’ve thrown it all away. Now I’m going to be called a traitor.” And his sorcerer mothermark would not help.

“A zombie,” Nnanji growled. “That’s what they say. That the sorcerers have Shonsu’s body working for them.”

“Do I look like a zombie?”

Nnanji managed to return the smile. “Not very.”

Wallie scowled in silent misery and self-reproach. He had no regrets about his decision at Ov. Yet, ironically, at Ov he had gained a bullethole in his scabbard. No one else would know what it was, but to be wounded in the scabbard was swordsman slang for cowardice.

A clatter out on deck proclaimed that lunch was being laid out.

“What word on the tryst, then?” he asked.

Nnanji cheered up slightly. “Over a thousand swordsmen, not counting lowranks! The tryst was called by the castellan, of course, Lord Tivanixi, and the high priest, Lord Kadywinsi. More swordsmen still coining.”

“And who is leader?”

“That is to be decided by combat. The popular favorite is someone called Boariyi, but there are bets on Tivanixi, too.”

“Why not you, my lord?” asked Katanji, who was hugging his bony knees and listening intently.

Wallie sighed. “Nnanji, correct me if I’m wrong. The top swordsmen, the Sevenths, decide by combat who is best, right? Then they all swear to be his vassals, swear the third oath to the leader. Then all the others swear the third oath to their mentors or a higher rank, in a pyramid. Am I right?”

Nnanji nodded.

“Do you know the third oath?” Wallie asked Katanji.

“No, my lord.”

“It’s a horror! The vassal is absolute slave to his liege. His own honor is of no account—he must obey any order whatsoever. That’s why it may only be sworn before battle.”

“But, my lord, it you’re the best swordsman . . . ”

Wallie shook his head and glanced at Nnanji, who did not look as if he was going to argue.

“I am a zombie or a traitor or a coward or all three, novice. It’s a dead horse.”

Silence fell, then Thana said, “Dead horses have their uses. They’re better than live ones for skinning. And why is it a dead horse? You’re the greatest swordsman in the world, Nnanji says.”

“Perhaps!” said Wallie. “The god told me there were none better, but that one other might be as good. That’s not the point. I once made Nnanji swear the third oath to me. I put my sword at his throat and said I was going to kill him.” He did not need to tell her that a swordsman could never plead duress—Nnanji’s oath had been as binding as it would have been if given freely. “But that won’t work with a thousand men, Thana! I’d get the first one and a couple of the fat ones, but the other nine hundred and ninety-seven would be at Quo before I caught them. They would not swear to a traitor. They’d run.”

It was hopeless—and suddenly Wallie felt a surge of relief. He need not worry about seeking the leadership, because he could not. That option did not exist, so he need not concern himself with it.

Yet he had promised Nnanji that he could try for promotion. As Nnanji’s mentor, Wallie ought to accompany him. “Well, brother,” he said. “What happens if I go to the lodge? Give me your judgment.” Nnanji’s predictions of swordsmen’s behavior were usually better than his.

Nnanji looked startled. “Of course, you would be safe under the ways of honor, brother. They know how Shonsu used metal—no one is going to challenge you. But . . . ”

“But if they denounce me . . . ” Wallie nodded. If they denounced him, the odds were a thousand to one. “Yet . . . Ov is all right. We have witnesses.” Brota, Honakura, or even Thana—swordsmen preferred swordsman witnesses. “And they wouldn’t have witnesses for what happened in Aus!”

Thana frowned. “They could get them, my lord—sailors, water rats . . . ”

“But not this afternoon, they couldn’t! Not right away! A quick visit, and then scamper? Let’s do it!”

He grinned mischievously at Nnanji, expecting him to welcome the thought of such bravado. But Nnanji went pale and shook his head vigorously. Wallie had never seen him display fear when in personal danger—indeed, he seemed to enjoy danger, and Nnanji’s acting skills were nonexistent. Apparently he just did not know what fear was. But he looked horrified at this risk to his oath brother. If even Nnanji thought it was too dangerous . . . 

They all sat in silence for a while.

Then Katanji said, “Nanj? You said that all the great trysts were led by seven Sevenths? One Seventh called this tryst. Three Sevenths responded. Two Sixths have won promotion. I was told that they’re still waiting for the Goddess to send a seventh Seventh!”

Superstition! The World ran on it.

Wallie laughed. “Well! That changes things! Then they won’t throw me in the cesspool without a hearing, will they? Don’t eat too much lunch, protégé; you have some fencing to do this afternoon.”

Still Nnanji looked sick. “Brother!” he warned. “If they denounce you as a traitor . . . or a coward . . . ”

“No!” Wallie thumped his fist on the oak chest. “I’m tired of hiding on this ship! It’s time to do something! They can’t prove I’m a traitor . . . and I can certainly prove that I’m not a coward!”

Nnanji’s eyes widened. “By going to the lodge?” He gulped, and then grinned admiringly. “Right!”

†††

Wearing a trim new ultramarine kilt that Jja had made for him, Wallie led his army down the gangplank. His sword hilt flashed in the sunlight, and his blood pumped eagerly at the prospect of action at last.

Next came Nnanji of the Fourth, his grin firmly anchored to his ears and his head in the stars. Nnanji of the Fifth? He was having trouble not marching straight up his mentor’s back in his impatience to reach the lodge. He also wore his best, but his hairclip was the usual orange stone. Arganari’s silver griffon had neither appeared nor been mentioned, which was unusual tact for Nnanji.

And after him was Thana, defiantly dressed in riverfolk breechclout and bra sash of buttercup yellow, her only concession to land life being a pair of shoes. Wallie had been hesitant when she had appeared with her sword on, announcing that she also was a candidate for promotion. The tryst would be quite antagonistic enough toward him without a female water rat at his side. True, she could handle the fencing for third rank with her eyes closed, and she had repeatedly astonished him in the sutra sessions, but he was sure that she had only just developed this feverish desire to leant sutras. There must be many that she had never even heard. Then Nnanji had put on his ill-treated-spaniel expression. Thinking that she would be company for Jja, Wallie had consented.

Behind Thana came Novice Katanji, attempting to maintain a man-of-the-World cynicism about this swordsman childishness, but not succeeding very well in hiding his excitement at the prospect of seeing the lodge and of being brother to a Fifth. Tucked under his cast, steadied by his good hand, he carried two sheathed swords.

Finally came Jja, bearing a bundle—a swordsman might carry nothing except a foil or a spare sword, because that would diminish his honor. She wore sandals and the usual slave’s black wrap, but it had been skillfully tailored by herself from the finest linen her owner had been able to purchase and have appropriately dyed.

They had barely started across the wind-whipped, eye-watering plaza, the sailors’ good wishes had scarcely died away behind them, when they were spotted by some juniors, whose reaction was obvious. Here was the expected seventh Seventh! The juniors turned and headed for the lodge. Other swordsmen, including the press-gangs, saw the activity and gave chase.

Nnanji was calling directions, but soon Wallie did not need them, for an increasing crowd of swordsmen was preceding him, gathering newcomers like a snowball, and all he had to do was follow. The citizens noticed the excitement, also, pausing in their business to stare. Several times Wallie thought he saw recognition, or heard his name being spoken. Shonsu was returning from the dead.

Their way led toward the center of town, then through a narrow alley and out into an open space too irregular ever to be called a square. Most of the flanking buildings seemed to be deserted ruins. At the far side was a huge block, set at an odd angle, and the mob of swordsmen was pouring into it through a single arched doorway.

All that showed from the outside was a blank stone wall like the side of a cube, with the archway and a single balcony high above it. A bronze sword hung on the wall above that. There were no windows. As Wallie and his followers approached, the tail end of his unofficial vanguard was streaming in to be present when he arrived.

By the time he had crossed the court, the crowd had vanished inside. Two guards of the third rank flashed their swords in salute and a solitary figure came marching out to greet him. He was a Seventh, but no swordsman. He was built like a blue bullfrog, a bald head perching on the shoulders of his robe without intervention of neck. Wallie eyed the unfamiliar facemarks doubtfully—they looked like mouths—and waited for the salute.

He was a herald, and he reacted to Wallie’s name with obvious shock.

“Lord Shonsu!” he repeated, and then recovered himself. “By what titles does your lordship wish to be proclaimed?” He had a voice like falling rocks.

“My name will suffice, my lord herald.” The herald bowed and led the way through a dark tunnel that emerged into a courtyard. The lodge, it seemed, was a shoe box, a hollow rectangle whose outside walls were bare and whose interior was lined with balconies, layer upon layer of them overlooking the open space in the center. Wallie found himself at the top of a short flight of steps, surveying what in normal times was probably a charming and peaceful place. But these were not normal times, and now it was not charming and certainly not peaceful.

The courtyard was huge. At each end stood venerable and gnarled oak trees, bare now of leaves, symbols of strength and endurance. Between these a central rectangle was marked off by stone benches and plinths bearing statues of marble or bronze, weathered and corroded by age to travesties of the warriors they had once represented. Probably this smaller central area was intended for fencing. It was larger than all of Sapphire.

Far from peaceful! The court seemed with noisy swordsmen, busy as a fairground. The center space had been divided into four sections by wooden hurdles, and each of these smaller spaces contained a fencing match. Around the outside, and in many of the lower balconies, crowds of spectators heckled and cheered as their favorites performed. Seniors with entourages were pushing through, around, and over the tops of cross-legged sutra sessions. Discussions and arguments were being shouted everywhere in total disregard for everything else. At least two minstrels were trying to sing above the noise of hawkers shouting their wares. Swordsmen were sharpening swords on treadle grindstones, eating, arguing, playing dice, cooking food on braziers, and even wrestling. A line of colored flags hung like washing across the center of the court, dropping almost to head height in the middle. Real washing or bedding being aired hung from half the balconies.

Nor were there only swordsmen. Wallie saw slaves and cooks and dozens of other civilians he could not identify at a distance. Many of them were women. Fairground! He disapproved, and he thought Shonsu’s instincts did, also.

The herald was not the only one to have been alerted, for a Seventh and some Sixths were waiting at the base of the steps, and as Wallie came through the archway a blaring fanfare exploded from a balcony directly above his head. It raised a cloud of pigeons from the roof, reverberated off the walls, drowned the racket completely, and then was itself swallowed by a roll of drums that left his ears ringing. The dueling stopped. A last chanted sutra faded into a respectful and merciful silence. At least a thousand eyes turned to examine the long-awaited seventh Seventh and his companions.

The Seventh at the bottom of the steps had to be the castellan, Tivanixi. He was little older than Shonsu—probably about thirty—slim and poised and handsome. His ponytail was longer than most, wavy, and the same golden-brown shade as his skin. His kilt and harness were an unusual cobalt blue, his boots the same, and everything he wore looked expensive and elegant—except his sword hilt, which was starkly plain. That was obviously a calculated effect and quite impressive—in fact he was an impressive sight altogether.

Even before the herald spoke, while the trumpets were still screaming, the smile of welcome faded from his face. Speed was more valuable than strength to swordsmen. Big men were rare. Giant, black-haired Sevenths were . . . unique. This could only be his predecessor, and Tivanixi would not be human were he not then wondering whether Shonsu had returned to reclaim his job. Shonsu, who collected dead men’s swords? Shonsu, rumored to be a tool of the sorcerers? Then his eyes switched to Nnanji, stepping into place on Wallie’s left, and surprise showed, also. A red-haired Fourth? That mysterious hero from the battle of Ov must have been the subject of much discussion, and here was such a man at the side of Shonsu. The Sixths behind him were still smiling. Tivanixi, Wallie concluded, was a fast thinker.

The human bullfrog took a leisurely breath and then raised the birds again, outdoing the trumpets in volume. “My lords . . . in the name of the Goddess . . . and in the ways and traditions of your honorable and ancient craft . . . give welcome to the valiant Lord . . . SHONSU . . . swordsman of the seventh rank.”

Shock!

Disgust!

Incredulity!

Superstitious creepy feelings?

For a moment Wallie stood and enjoyed the drama, then he drew his sword and made the salute to a company. A buzz of conversation like a plague of bees began and grew steadily louder. All smiles had vanished except one—Tivanixi’s was now back in place.

Wallie walked down the steps and silence fell once more, as if the onlookers had not believed their ears and wanted to hear that name spoken again. And again Wallie drew, to make the salute to an equal.

The castellan responded, confirming his identity, maintaining a wary smile of greeting and displaying a confident and easy grace in his sword movements. To an experienced eye like Shonsu’s, even those were revealing, “I am Tivanixi, swordsman of the seventh rank, castellan of the lodge in Casr; I am honored by your courtesy and do most humbly extend the same felicitations to your noble self-and-welcome-to-the-lodge-and-to-the-tryst-my-lord.”

That very fast addition had perhaps made him host, therefore immune to challenge. It was debatable, for the visitor had not requested hospitality.

The Sixths were edging gently backward. They did not wish to be presented. The crowd was silent, intent, frowning. “I did not come to join the tryst.”

More shock from the onlookers, increased wariness from the castellan. “It is a holy cause to which the Goddess has summoned Her swordsmen, my lord.”

Wallie bowed his head slightly. “Certainly! I stop here only in passing, though. I have two items of business to attend to.”

That might be a threat? “What other business is more important than a tryst?” Tivanixi demanded. The onlookers at the limit of hearing were shushing those farther away, but most of the swordsmen present were listening intently.

“An oath.”

For a moment Wallie thought that Tivanixi was going to point out that a quick visit to the temple could dispose of an inconvenient oath . . . but discretion prevailed.

“In what way may we be of assistance, then?”

Wallie raised his voice until the echoes rolled. “A sad duty and a pleasant one. Sadly I bring news of two honorable and valorous swordsmen slain by pirates on their way here. I performed justice upon the guilty.”

The news was digested in silence.

“The happier task is to seek promotion for two swordsmen. Lord castellan, may I have the honor . . . ” Wallie presented Nnanji of the Fourth, protégé and oath brother. Thana he omitted for the time being.

Tivanixi, sheathing his sword after the response, could not restrain his curiosity. “We have heard of a red-haired Fourth who led a battle against the ungodly in Ov, adept.”

Nnanji looked boyish and ungainly compared to the suave Tivanixi, but he smiled triumphantly and said, almost shouting, “That battle was led by Lord Shonsu, my lord. I helped, but the honor is his.”

More surprise and whispers. Tivanixi beamed. “That is good news, my lord! We must summon minstrels and have that noble encounter recorded. The facts may have not been correctly reported here.”

Wallie released a trace of a smile to show that he knew what had been reported.

“Before that, let us honor the fallen, my lord,” he said. “I believe that there are swordsmen here from the Kingdom of Plo and Fex?”

“Let us honor the greater dead first,” replied the castellan with a curious expression on his face now. “Newcomers are shown our memorial, the cause that led to the calling of this tryst.” He half turned, pointed to the row of limp flags hanging across the center of the court, and then studied Lord Shonsu’s expression.

Flags? Curious flags! Brown at the ends, then orange, red, a couple of greens, and a solitary blue in the middle? Not flags. Kilts! Some were torn, some burned, and the stains could only be blood. Wallie was sure his face had turned pale, which must be providing the onlookers with satisfaction.

“Explain?” he stuttered.

“They were returned to Casr by a sailor, acting on a request from a certain Lord Rotanxi, who calls himself wizard of Sen.” Tivanixi’s voice was grim. “The next day I called this tryst—which the Holiest has blessed.”

So these were the remains of Shonsu’s ill-fated attack on Vul? To return the clothes and trappings of the fallen was a swordsmen courtesy. To send the kilts alone had probably been intended as an insult. Tivanixi had cleverly turned the insult into a challenge, shame into glory. Wallie had hardly taken in that thought, when he was struck by another—the sorcerers had deliberately provoked the tryst, or something like it. Did Tivanixi realize that he might be swallowing dangerous bait?

And the blue kilt must have belonged to Shonsu. It did look marginally larger than those hanging nearby. Wallie would cheerfully have given his hairclip to be certain, but he would have to assume that there had been no other Sevenths on that ill-fated venture. Surely it would have been out of character for Shonsu to share command?

The swordsmen were waiting for him. The ritual was clear. He was expected to go forward and make the salute to the dead—to his own kilt? He nodded to Nnanji, who had turned vaguely green, and then he started to march, the crowd parting for him. He passed between two stone benches, then through a gap in the first row of hurdles. He could hear Nnanji’s boots behind him and he signed to him to stop.

The line of kilts hung over the second row of hurdles. The blue kilt was the lowest, in the middle. Without breaking stride, Wallie jumped up on the bar, drew his sword, swung it overhead, leaped backward before he lost his balance, and had the blade sheathed as he reached the ground again. Not a bad feat of swordsman gymnastics at all! The blue kilt flopped down to the ground. He turned and retraced his steps to a proper distance, where Nnanji was waiting for him, wide-eyed but approving.

They made the salute together, then headed back to Tivanixi and the silent circle of onlookers.

“That one was a forgery, my lord,” Wallie said. “The rest need be avenged, but not that.” He had no idea what had happened to Shonsu—he might even have escaped without his kilt, for he had been a Nameless One when he had arrived at Hann. No one else seemed to know either, perhaps not even the sorcerers.

Tivanixi’s suspicion had not decreased—what sort of a leader is the only survivor?

“I have minstrels here, Lord Shonsu. Will you list for us the names of the fallen, so that they may be revered?”

How to handle that one? This was like fencing in the dark. Worse! Yet forty-nine names after half a year—even in this preliterate culture, that would be asking much.

“No, my lord. Neither names nor ranks. Let them be equal in glory.”

“Then recount to us their heroism and the abomination of sorcery that slew them.”

Wallie was sweating now, and hoping it did not show too much. He had been so worried over his own blunders that he had forgotten he would be blamed for Shonsu’s also. “Nor that, either.”

Hostility burned in silence around him. A general loses an army and then refuses to discuss the matter?

No one argued with a swordsman of the Seventh, except possibly another. Tivanixi seemed to be on the point of doing so, but he was bound by the ways of honor—he could not call on assistance from the troops standing beside him. He could accept this refusal, or he could challenge.

Or he could call for a denunciation.

The castellan’s face was granite hard. “And you will not join the tryst and seek vengeance, my lord?”

Wallie shook his head. “I have an oath to fulfill, my lord.”

“But the Goddess brought you here?” Perhaps Tivanixi and the others were wondering to which god that oath had been sworn.

“She did,” Wallie said, and saw the suspicion relax a trifle, the bewilderment increase. “But about Plo?” he insisted. “Call up your heralds, Lord Tivanixi.”

A voice said, “I am from Plo, my lords.” A nervous-looking Third pushed his way to the front. He saluted the castellan and then Wallie. His harness was studded with topazes.

Wallie turned to Tivanixi. “The minstrels?”

The castellan waved a hand at a group of civilians jostling for access. The swordsmen reluctantly opened to let a dozen or so press through, then closed to shut out the rest. Minstrels came in all shapes and sexes. Wallie noted a fat, elderly woman of the Fourth, and two bony men in yellow loincloths, and a very tall youth at the back, peering over everyone. Minstrels wore their hair long and they all carried lutes on their backs. Lutes were their facemarks, also.

Taking the bundle of kilts and harnesses from Jja, and the two swords from Katanji, Wallie began the story. He did not mention his advice to Polini, but he stressed the man’s lonely day-long stand and he thought he told it rather well. Then he asked Nnanji if he had anything to add, and Nnanji gave the final, pathetic conversation, word for word.

The swordsmen had forgotten any other business they might have had. This Shonsu was the day’s event, and they had all clustered around to listen. As Nnanji was speaking, Wallie noticed more of them streaming in the gate. None were leaving. At the end of the tale the minstrels asked a couple of questions, then bowed and withdrew to compose the official version. Minstrels necessarily had Nnanji-type memories, of course, as well as good voices. They took with them—for background information, Wallie supposed—the Third from Plo, who was clutching the bundle and the swords, and not even trying to hold back his sobs.

Tivanixi looked angry and puzzled. Lord Shonsu could apparently behave in a proper swordsman fashion when he chose to, but why honor two and not forty-nine?

“Now your promotions, my lord,” he said, “and then we shall call more minstrels to hear of the events at Ov.” Wallie nodded.

Tivanixi glanced at Thana’s sailor costume and smiled knowingly. “Adept Nnanji, we have a wide selection of opponents to offer you, but space has become a problem. Promotions have been going through here like sheep pellets, We have been forced to limit fencing to these small areas, but if you wish to go outside in the plaza, we could arrange that.”

Nnanji grinned and said that he would try to do his best in the cramped conditions. Apparently this routine affair was going to receive the castellan’s personal attention, which suited Wallie. He was aware of the murderous suspicion and resentment around him. He felt like a mouse in a snakepit and he knew that only the ways of honor were protecting him. Tivanixi doubtless wanted to keep an eye on Shonsu. Shonsu was happy to stay close to Tivanixi.

There had to be more formalities, of course. A reluctant Sixth was selected as the second judge and presented. Wallie made sure that Jja was safely positioned between Thana and Katanji, behind one of the stone benches. Then he followed Nnanji and the judges into the fencing area. The crowd spread along the hurdles that formed one side, and along the roped benches and statues that made the other three.

Tivanixi glanced over the spectators and carefully selected a Fifth, who was naturally several years older man Nnanji, and who made a joke about infanticide, which raised a laugh. Nnanji smiled tolerantly and said nothing. There was no need to review the rules—promotions required two matches, best of three. Tivanixi called for the fencing to begin.

Lunge!

“One!” Nnanji called.

“Agreed!” said the judges, somewhat startled. “Continue!”

Lunge! Parry! Riposte!

“Two!” Nnanji said. “Next one please.”

The Fifth departed in shocked humiliation. The crowd was stunned to silence, but it seemed to ripple, and suddenly Fifths were as rare as dinosaurs in the courtyard. Tivanixi sent Wallie a broad and quite genuine-looking smile. It suited him. For the moment, suspicions could be forgotten in the pleasure of good swordsmanship and the shared superiority of high rank.

“Strange!” he said. “There were some here a moment ago.” He sprang lightly up on a bench, glanced over the heads, and called a name. The crowd parted to admit a heavyset, swarthy Fifth, younger than the first, but obviously reluctant and angry at not having escaped in time.

The second match lasted no longer. The courtyard erupted in cheers. When Nnanji’s grin emerged from the mask, Wallie matched it and shook his hand.

Now came the sutra test, which was dull, and the crowd indulged itself in discussion and muttering. The lodge standards were high. The judges called for sutra after sutra. Nnanji spouted them all at top speed, without a moment’s hesitation. They shifted to tricky ones, and he never broke stride.

Tivanixi threw up his hands and rose. “I had heard that Lord Shonsu was a great teacher,” he said. “Master Nnanji, I congratulate you on the most impressive promotion I have ever seen.”

Nnanji beamed. “Thank you, my lord.”

The castellan glanced at Wallie and then back to the new Fifth. “You would not care to try for Sixth?”

Nnanji gave his mentor a reproachful look. “Unfortunately I do not know all the sutras required for that rank, my lord.”

Tivanixi looked surprised, but he nodded sympathetically. “Many good swordsmen find them the hard part.”

“Very true,” Wallie said sadly—and Nnanji glared at him furiously.

“And now my wife?” Nnanji demanded.

Tivanixi pulled a face and studied Wallie thoughtfully, perhaps wondering if this was some sort of trap to justify a challenge. He evidently decided it was not, and smiled once more. “I never heard of a female swordsman having the audacity even to approach a lodge, let alone seek promotion there. However, Master Nnanji, in your case I will allow an exception. Present her.”

The onlookers muttered, but Thana was presented and Tivanixi found himself being charmed against his will.

“Two Thirds, I assume, apprentice?” he said, smiling.

“Fourths!” Thana said.

Wallie choked back an objection. Certainly Thana could make a good try at the fencing, for this confined space would suit her water-rat style admirably and confound her opponents, but he was almost certain that she did not know enough sutras even for Third . . . He turned to question Nnanji and got a big grin. Nnanji must have been giving her more lessons than they had revealed. Wallie shrugged and the chance to intervene had passed. Then he decided that there had been something very strange about that grin of Nnanji’s . . . 

Tivanixi rolled his eyes at some of the watching Sixths. He started a hunt for opponents. The first two Fourths he asked turned him down at once. He gave Wallie a what-do-you-expect look, but on the third attempt he found one. Word that the good-looking female was going to fence provoked much grumbling and talk of heresy. Nevertheless the crowd congealed once more around the site, and some juniors clambered into trees for a better view.

Thana started with a big advantage: her opponent had surely never fought a woman before. He also badly underestimated her, then got rattled when he lost the first pass. She won the second point, also. By now bets were being placed at the back of the crowd and the old arguments about the legality of female swordsmen were being rehashed.

It should have been hard to find another Fourth willing to risk his reputation, but Thana was accustomed to having her own way. She picked out a tall young man and smiled at him bewitchingly. He was about to refuse, but his companions pushed him forward, laughing. Wallie guessed at once, and his guess was very soon confirmed. Thana had stumbled on a sleeper—he was at least a good Fifth, and would likely have given even a Sixth a fair match. He was as good as Nnanji! Certainly he could have wiped Thana off the court as easily as Nnanji had disposed of his opponents, but he chose instead to toy with her. The crowd understood, and the laughter began. Thana leaped and lunged and cut, and the Fourth hardly shifted his feet, as if he could do this all day. He never let her foil come close to him . . . a wildcat fighting a rainbow.

Nnanji turned blood-red with fury, growling about sleepers. Even the judges were grinning. Thana was young and fit, but she began to flag at last.

By then calls for a draw had begun at the back of the crowd. They grew louder and more numerous. The candidate had demonstrated her swordsmanship, and an outright win was not required. The judges at last agreed. The mood had changed. Prejudice had been overcome by professional admiration—and some sympathy. Male enjoyment of watching a nubile female body in motion was probably not without influence, either.

After a pause for the candidate to recover her breath—and for Wallie to persuade Nnanji that he need not challenge the smirking Fourth—it was time for the sutra test. The two judges sat opposite Thana, three swords crossed on the ground between them. The crowd lost interest and some wandered away. Tivanixi began six thirty-five, “On the Design of a Fortress,” and Wallie groaned, for it was long, dull, hard, and not one he had ever heard her try. Thana smiled back at Wallie and chanted the words slowly and carefully. She stumbled twice, recovered, and reached the end safely. The Sixth began another, and she got that right, too. Wallie was bewildered—how did she do that? He turned to Nnanji beside him and received a triumphant super-grin. Yet there was something wrong with that grin, also. It did not seem to be conveying quite the right message.

Nnanji went back to studying the examination—six thirteen, “On Long-distance Marching,” smiling encouragingly. Wallie stared at him, then looked around, then back at Thana.

Sudden understanding hit him like an earthquake.

Thana was using sorcery.

††††

When Wallie had gone ashore at Aus, the sorcerers had known what he had said to Jja before he had left Sapphire’s deck. The sorcerer who had come aboard in Wal had known Brota’s name. The port officials were being kept honest in all the sorcerer cities except Ov—and at Ov there were no warehouses overlooking the moorings.

When Katanji had infiltrated the tower at Sen he had seen a female sorcerer rubbing a plate on something—casting a spell, he had thought. Grinding a lens?

Now Wallie looked again along the line of spectators beside him. At least half of them were moving their lips. Nnanji was—he always did. Wallie looked back at Thana, and her eyes were flickering to and fro along that gallery of faces. Then she glanced at him and in silence he mouthed the words: “You are cheating, Thana.”

The candidate stuttered and stopped her chanting.

“I cannot keep a secret from Nnanji,” Wallie said, still silent. “He is my oath brother.”

She started up again and stumbled once more. The watchers held their breath, like an audience when an actor gets stage fright. The lip-moving became more obvious, but there was no sound.

“He will kill you, Thana.” That might be an exaggeration, but perhaps not much of one. Honakura and Wallie had worked very hard on Nnanji to soften his rigid, implacable standards. From them he had learned mercy and tolerance, until he had even been able to forgive the killing of swordsmen by civilians—under very exceptional circumstances. But there were no exceptional circumstances here. Thana was blatantly cheating. Nnanji’s fury and shame would have no limit.

“Start again,” Tivanixi suggested helpfully.

Thana flushed scarlet. “No, I think not, my lord.”

Nnanji ran forward to help her rise and give her a hug of condolence. The judges politely wished her better luck next time and congratulated her on her swordsmanship.

Wallie was exultant. The last mystery solved! The final veil had been torn off the sorcerers for him and he owed it to Thana’s ambition!

Wallie brought his attention back to Tivanixi with a start. “I beg pardon, my lord?”

The castellan had his hand on the shoulder of a young First, who held a rack of foils. “I asked if you would care for a pass or two yourself, Lord Shonsu? We both know how hard it is for Sevenths to find good practice.”

Wallie was about to refuse until he saw that Tivanixi was studying him very intently and with obvious suspicion. Perhaps the castellan was not quite at the point of suspecting a zombie, but he now wanted to check this mysterious stranger’s credentials. Nnanji had proved that he was a genuine swordsman—was his companion also one, or was he an imposter?

Wallie, for his part, was curious about this graceful and gracious Seventh. And he dared not refuse, anyway. “Why not?” he said. “Best of five?” He selected a foil, the longest he could find.

Tivanixi, wanting no burdens, removed his sword and handed it to a nearby Sixth. Wallie copied him, giving his to Nnanji. Then he slipped between the benches once more, onto the fencing ground.

If the leadership was to be decided by combat, then the Sevenths would have been testing one another out with foils under the guise of practice. The final battle with real blades would likely be a pure formality, which the minstrels would adorn with blood and drama for the general public and future generations; swordsmen admired courage, but they were not utterly brainless.

The word had gone out and the crowd reassembled yet again. The balconies filled up by some sort of telepathy, and the noise dwindled.

The opponents faced off, took each other’s foils cautiously, and feinted a few times. The castellan had the grace of a ballet dancer, smooth as a sunbeam. He was very good, indeed, and very fast, and he proceeded to give Wallie his first real test since the god had made him a swordsman. They leaped and bounded in landlubber style, very unlike the deadly, close-in fencing of the water rats. Tivanixi, of course, had several other Sevenths to play with now, whereas Shonsu had not had practice on this level since before Wallie took him over.

The crowd muttered or cheered from time to time, but mostly just watched. Feint—thrust—parry—riposte—back and forth they clattered. “One!”

Wallie learned a few things and taught a few more, but if there was another swordsman equal to Shonsu, this was not he. “Two!”

They paused for a moment’s panting, then went to guard again. Clatter . . . clatter . . . Then some loud voices, some disturbance among the spectators; Wallie’s attention flickered momentarily from that shimmering silver haze that the castellan brandished.

“One!” Tivanixi exulted.

Damn! Shonsu should be winning this on straight points. Wallie growled angrily and drove in hard, forcing Tivanixi back against the barricade, where footwork would count for less. “Three!” Wallie said; best of five.

They removed the masks and breathlessly thanked each other. The crowd applauded loudly for a fine match and began to discuss the form sheet, doubtless with many comments that this Shonsu might have lost an army, but was certainly a good man with metal.

Wallie yielded mask and foil back to the First and accepted a towel. Wiping and panting, he headed toward his companions, expecting smiles. Instead he saw warning looks and glances to his rear. He spun around. Two Sevenths stood behind the far hurdles.

Damnation!

He almost lost Shonsu’s diabolical temper on the spot.

True, he had revealed his style and his abilities to Tivanixi, but that had been a fair exchange. He had not planned on giving a free demonstration to these two. They were quite within their rights in being there, but he felt as if he had been spied upon. A surge of fury came burning up his throat and red fringes flickered inside his eyelids. He made a huge effort to force that berserker madness back down again, balling his fist to keep it from making the sign of challenge.

One of the Sevenths could be dismissed at a glance, but the other . . . 

The popular favorite was somebody called Boariyi, Nnanji had said. The other Seventh was taller than Shonsu, and that was unfair; Wallie had met almost no one taller than himself in the World. He was also younger. Unfair again; Shonsu was a very young Seventh, and Wallie was proud of that.

This must be a Boariyi. He was a human mantis, a basketball player, obviously built from a sutra on giraffes. His kilt was a thin blue tube around gibbon hips and thighs like baseball bats. He had a jaw too big for his head and a mouth too wide for his jaw and a single dark slash of eyebrow across the top of his ugly face, and he was standing with one leg vertical and the other sloped, with golf club arms crossed over a birdcage chest, head slightly tilted to one side, gazing at Wallie with a supercilious smirk on oversize rubbery lips.

In that moment of fury the decision was made.

You sneaky, arrogant young lout! Wallie thought—and it was all he could do not to shout the thought aloud. Think you can take me, do you? Well, Mister Boariyi, if that’s your name, I’ll tell you this: You’ll be leader of this tryst only over my dead body!

For a moment longer Wallie stood alone in the middle of the fencing area, aware that his fury must be blazing in his face and obvious to the crowd. Then the tableau was broken by the older of the two newcomers. He drew his sword and made the salute to an equal . . . Zoariyi, swordsman of the Seventh.

He was a slight, short, and wiry man, gray hawed, well into middle age. However great his skill, his speed would be deserting him now, which was why Shonsu’s instincts had rejected him as a threat. He wore the unadorned garb of a free and he was conspicuously scarred. He had the same continuous eyebrow as his younger companion and his name was very similar—father and son?

Wallie grabbed a foil from the startled First and made his response with it. It was intended as an insult, and Zoariyi frowned.

Then the beanpole beside him drew his sword—a very long sword, of course—and perfunctorily saluted without shifting from his slouched, hip-tilted stance. His smirk did not change. He was indeed Boariyi, the popular favorite. With those arms the reason was obvious.

Wallie used the foil again. The kid’s contemptuous amusement increased. One of his facemarks was not quite healed.

He might be little older than Nnanji, and that was ridiculous for a Seventh. Thirty was normal. Indeed the system was designed to prevent youngsters from advancing too quickly. Systems always are. By the time a man had mastered eleven hundred and forty-four sutras, fought his way up through the six lower ranks, found a Seventh as mentor, and then could manage to find two Sevenths together as examiners—which must be extremely rare—he had to be at least thirty. How Shonsu had managed it sooner, Wallie could not guess. Nnanji was going to do better, because of his memory, and because he had found a mentor who really cared, and who could teach well.

All of which suggested that Zoariyi was the power behind Boariyi.

Wallie took another look at the older man and decided that, yes, he might be a great deal shrewder than that smirking pituitary malfunction beside him. Then he swung around and strolled over to the bench behind which Nnanji was standing. “My sword now, please,” he said loudly.

Nnanji was staring in doubt at his mentor, but he was about to hand over the seventh sword . . . 

“Let me see that!” Tivanixi demanded sharply. Nnanji reacted instinctively to the tone of authority and handed the seventh sword to the castellan.

He studied the griffon on the hilt, the sapphire in its beak, and then the blade; especially the blade. Wallie passed his foil back to the First, returned a grin from Katanji and a smile from Jja, and continued to wipe at himself with the towel. The crowd waited.

“Shonsu!” Thana whispered urgently, and he looked at her in surprise. She was staring past him, toward Boariyi. “Don’t challenge!” she hissed.

Wallie resisted the temptation to turn around.

“No matter what!” she added in the same whisper.

“This is a remarkable sword, Lord Shonsu!” The castellan had a strange expression on his face.

Wallie smiled and nodded.

“May I ask where you got this?”

“It was given me,” Wallie said.

Tivanixi directed a calculating stare at him. “It looks as if it came fresh from the forge yesterday.”

Wallie smiled blandly. “Not quite—one previous owner.”

Tivanixi paled. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“Yes.”

The castellan gazed at him hard and long. “Yet you will not join the tryst?”

Wallie shook his head. “I’m still considering.”

Tivanixi’s eyes shifted toward Boariyi and Zoariyi, then back to Wallie. “I would not wear this,” he said quietly.

Wallie thought of young Arganari and the Chioxin topaz. The boy would have borne that priceless heirloom for only a few minutes after it was formally given to him. Then he would have been quickly given another to wear.

“We all must bear our burdens,” Wallie said. He took the seventh sword back from Tivanixi, who continued to stare at him in bewilderment.

A voice said: “The name of Shonsu is well known in this lodge.”

Wallie turned around to face Boariyi and unobtrusively sheathed his sword. “The name of Boariyi, however, is not.”

The kid’s eyes narrowed. “Not all reputations are good.”

“But nothing is still nothing.”

Boariyi’s hand twitched and the older man growled something quietly. There was a forest of green Sixths behind those two Sevenths, and a desert of red-kilted Fifths behind them—and they were not pressing in to the barricades as the rest of the audience was. They were standing in proper military form, behind their superiors. Boariyi, as popular favorite, had collected a large following—and disciplined it.

Wallie turned back to face his own entourage. Nnanji was frowning and moving his lips as if reviewing sutras. Katanji had lost his grin. Thana flashed another warning glance at Wallie and went back to studying the opponents.

“His uncle,” Tivanixi remarked quietly, to no one special. With a warm rush of relief, Wallie realized that the castellan was now on his side.

Boariyi called across the fencing ground once more. “You have come to join the tryst, I suppose, Lord Shonsu?”

Wallie turned again.

“No.”

That was a surprise, and Boariyi glanced down at the man who must be his uncle, if Tivanixi’s remark meant anything. “It is an honorable cause, for honorable men.”

“I am sure it is,” Wallie replied calmly.

“Afraid of the sorcerers?”

The audience gasped in unison. That was grounds for opening arteries.

Wallie’s hand had started to rise before he remembered Thana’s warning and lowered it again. Was this to be the combat for leadership—no formalities, just a vulgar squabble escalating to challenge? Then he understood. He was going to be baited into making the challenge—and Boariyi would refuse it, claiming that Shonsu was not a man of honor. In the absence of witnesses and a prepared case, a denunciation would be dangerous, for if an accuser failed to prove his charges, then he must pay the penalty. This way was safer because Tivanixi, as host and interim leader of the tryst, would have to judge. All Boariyi would be risking, at worst, was having to accept the challenge, while in the meantime he would have been able to drag out all the unsubstantiated rumors in support of his position. It was a sneaky plan, obviously the brainchild of the older, more experienced Zoariyi. If Wallie refused to rise to the bait, he would be exposed as a coward. His only defense was to try to force a challenge out of Boariyi, for that would be an admission that Wallie was a man of honor. Not that it would work, but it was all he could do.

He walked slowly across to the middle of the fencing area, letting the tension build, frantically trying to think up some ammunition, and unhappily aware that a fight was almost inevitable now . . . and that Boariyi thought he was the better man.

“Let me ask you a question, sonny, before I answer that. Have you ever seen a sorcerer?”

Boariyi scowled angrily. “Not yet. But—”

“Well, I have!” Wallie shouted. “And I will answer your question. Yes, I am afraid of sorcerers. Have you seen that?” He pointed up at the line of kilts hanging over the court behind Boariyi’s head. “Any man who knows what that means and yet is not afraid of sorcerers is too dumb to be allowed out of the womb. But being afraid doesn’t mean that you can’t fight them! We killed fourteen at Ov, my young friend, so I haven’t quite paid off the score yet. But I’m fourteen ahead of you.”

“No, Shonsu! You’re thirty-five behind.”

Ouch! The kid was not as dumb as he looked.

“You plan to be leader of the tryst, do you, sonny?”

“If that is the will of the Goddess.” Boariyi was obviously confident that it was.

Almost the whole tryst must be present now, standing in silent fascination at this confrontation between Sevenths.

“You’d better learn to count better than that, then,” Wallie roared, hearing his voice booming back from the walls. “Eleven years ago in Aus: eighteen swordsmen killed by twenty sorcerers wielding thunderbolts, and at least another dozen killed there since. Four years before that, in Wal: thirty-two swordsmen killed by twenty-eight sorcerers. And about two years ago a party of four swordsmen came ashore . . . ”

He had learned how to do without notebooks—he used Nnanji, and the two of them had been over these numbers a hundred times. One by one he went around the cities of the loop, calling out the ghastly toll . . . Aus and Wal and Sen and Cha and Gor . . . the whole garrison with one thunderbolt at Gor. Perhaps this was all recorded somewhere in the libraries of Vul, but he was certain that no swordsman had ever worked it out before. He had gathered this information—Katanji and Honakura and the sailors had gathered it, quietly asking questions and listening in the sorcerer towns. Fifteen years of sorcerer infiltration and fifteen years of rank stupidity by swordsmen. None of them had learned a thing in fifteen years. And Amb and Ov . . . forty men ripped to pieces in Ov . . . 

“So add it all up, sonny,” he concluded. “Add in the forty-nine and you’ll come up with three hundred and thirty dead swordsmen. That’s the best estimate I can make. How many did you make it? Will you try for thirteen hundred and thirty?”

The echoes died away into stunned silence. Boariyi and his uncle looked as shocked as anyone. Everyone was shocked. Lord Shonsu had scared the kilts off the entire tryst of Casr with his litany of death. It was Zoariyi who recovered first.

“You were castellan here, Lord Shonsu! Why did you not act sooner? Why did you not call this holy tryst?”

For a moment Wallie considered challenging him instead of his nephew, but the same problem arose: He would refuse.

“Thank the Goddess I did not, Lord Zoariyi!” Again he pointed to the pathetic line of kilts hanging over the court. “It would have been a thousand kilts there, not fifty. I did not know how to fight sorcerers! But now I do. I proved that at Ov!”

He turned and stalked away. Hopefully they would let it rest now, while they thought about it. Tavanixi’s face was pale—Shonsu was imperiling his tryst.

He had barely moved when Boariyi spoke again: “But you wouldn’t attack the tower in Ov? What sort of leader calls off his men when he has victory within his grasp?”

Ov was safer ground. Wallie beckoned to Katanji, who jumped in shock and clattered his cast against a rack of foils, then reluctantly came forward. Wallie faced him toward Boariyi and stood behind him with his hands on his shoulders, looking over his head.

“This, my lords, is Novice Katanji, my oath brother’s protégé, and therefore mine, also. I shan’t present him, because he can’t salute with an injured arm.” And you might not respond, which would force me to challenge. “It was broken by a sorcerer’s thunderbolt.” He raised his voice even higher, over the sudden clamor. “All of you, take note! This boy is the bravest man in this courtyard. He has been ashore in every one of the sorcerer towns, risking a terrible death every time. He was captured at Ov, and we rescued him. He has been inside one of the towers and has seen what is in there—probably he is the only swordsman in the history of the World who has done that and lived.”

He had to wait for the sensation to die down.

“How large is a tower, Lord Boariyi? How thick are the walls, Lord Boariyi? How many doors, Lord Boariyi? How high are the first windows, Lord Boariyi? You don’t know, Lord Boariyi? But Novice Katanji does! He’s forgotten more about sorcerers than you’ll ever know, Lord Boariyi. And I say he’s better fitted to lead this tryst than you’ll ever be!”

“Stop!” Tivanixi came marching forward and stood between the two factions. “This is not a proper discussion to be held in public. Lord Zoariyi, Lord Boariyi, you will excuse us. Lord Shonsu, I wish a word with you in private!”

Whew! Saved!

Tivanixi herded Wallie and Katanji back to the others. “Master Nnanji, you need to see our facemarker. We have a tailor here who can provide you with the kilt you have so richly earned. Lord Shonsu, perhaps we could visit the museum together?”

Wallie nodded. “You will see that my friends are not harassed?”

Tivanixi frowned and snapped his fingers to bring a Sixth. He gave orders, then looked expectantly at Wallie. “Lead the way, Lord Shonsu.”

“After you Lord Tivanixi,” Wallie said politely.

†††††

Tivanixi headed toward the southwest corner, and a quick glance showed Wallie that there was a doorway in each comer of the great rectangle. From the shapes of the windows, he could guess that each opened into a stairwell. A nice, simple architectural plan, he mused cynically—not so complicated that swordsmen might get confused.

The stairs wound up and up, the treads of the lower flights dished by generations of swordsman boots. The lower floors of the lodge were noisy and smelled of bodies, but as the two Sevenths climbed higher, the sounds died away, and the steps were less worn. The air grew cool and musty until finally the men reached the top, sneaking glances at each other to see which was puffing harder.

“Think we can manage the bar?” the castellan asked.

There was only one door, and the gigantic iron bar across it was fit with six handles, not four.

“I always did it one-handed,” Wallie said modestly, but it was a struggle for two men to lift the monster and set it down without crushing feet, or wrenching things necessary for swordwork. The floor there was scored and gouged and had been patched a few times, he noticed. It took three men or two strong ones to rob the museum. There were no locks in the World.

The massive door opened with a groan of pain. The swordsmen walked into a long gallery, smelling of mice and rot and sheer antiquity. Along one side were windows fogged over with dust; the opposite wall was paneled and hung with hundreds of rust-spotted swords. The floor was filthy with litter and crumbling rubbish, cluttered by a line of wormy tables bearing miscellaneous heaps of anonymous relics. Overhead, remnants of banners trailed down from the ceiling, webbed, shredded by insects, and faded to a uniform gray in the dim, cold light. Even the air felt old. One of the windows rattled continuously in the wind.

Wallie shivered as he followed Tivanixi’s footsteps along that mournful room. The castellan stopped and lifted a fragment of a sword blade from the wall.

“The ruby,” he said. “The fifth. Or so it is said.” He swept the fragment across the top of the nearest table, showering garbage to the floor, raising a cloud of rancid dust. Then he laid it down, and Wallie placed the seventh sword beside it.

Tivanixi bent to compare them. Wallie took a walk down to the end of the room and back. He had never seen a place that depressed him more; designed to honor the valor of young men whose names were forgotten, whose very descendants must have forgotten them . . . those who had survived to have descendants. The honored kilts in the courtyard would be brought here one day, with ceremony and pomp perhaps, and empty words. The mice would rejoice, and within a generation the kilts would be a nameless heap of filth like the rest of this junk.

He turned to inspect the myriad blades on the wall, of every possible design and quality. Most were very long swords, he noticed. Perhaps the men of the People were getting smaller, but more likely the usable weapons had been quietly pilfered away.

He rejoined Tivanixi, who was cleaning off a spot on the fragment with his whetstone so that he could study the damask. There was no hilt. It was just as Wallie had remembered it—long ago, it seemed now—in the only glimpse he had ever been given of Shonsu’s personal memories: half a sword, with no hilt and no point. No point at all . . . just like this whole depressing junk room.

The chasing on the two blades was similar. Swordsmen battled mythical monsters on one side, maidens played with the same monsters on the other. The order was different and no pose was repeated exactly, but the superlative artistry was unmistakably the same.

“I am convinced,” Tivanixi said, still studying.

Then he lifted the seventh and tested its balance and flexibility before handing it back to Wallie with a penetrating stare.

“It is too long for me,” he said.

“But not for our skinny friend.”

Tivanixi shook his head, leaned back against the table, and folded his arms across his cobalt harness.

“You did not know the way to this room, my lord.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did not know Doa.”

“Who?”

The castellan shrugged. “A minstrel . . . Shonsu should know Doa.”

Wallie made his decision—but perhaps he had made it earlier. “I am Shonsu—and I am not Shonsu,” he said. “I shall tell you, but you will have to decide for yourself whether I am sent by the Goddess, or by the sorcerers.”

Tivanixi nodded. He was a brave man to come alone to this place with someone who might be a sorcerer, and the strain was showing in his eyes.

Wallie began, and he told the whole story of Wallie Smith and Shonsu, and it took a long, long time. The castellan listened in silence, watching his face. Wallie, in turn, studied his reaction. Yes, this was an unusually intelligent swordsman—not a blustering bully, a cold-blooded killer as Shonsu must have been, not an unpractical idealist like Nnanji had been once, not even a pigheaded showboat like Polini. With this man there might be hope of rational response . . . but could he believe?

When he finished, Tivanixi said, “And the only evidence is that sword?”

“There is a priest,” Wallie said. “A Seventh from Hann.”

Even in a World where few people knew the name of the next city—and that might change anyway—everyone had heard of Hann. Hann was Rome, Mecca, Jerusalem.

“And my parentmarks. I don’t know what Shonsu’s were, but not these, I am sure.”

The castellan reached up, removed his hairclip, and looked expectantly at Wallie, who puzzled down into Shonsu’s swordsman memories, for obviously this was a ritual. Then he reeled between two mental worlds. He was letting his hair down! The expression translated word for word and the absurdity of that equivalence collided with the paradox of Tivanixi’s appearance in terrestrial terms: a handsome man in a skirt and leather harness, with wavy gold-brown hair streaming down around his shoulders. Yet this was the epitome of macho in the World, the role model for every red-blooded boy, the ultimate male sex symbol. If Wallie had allowed his lips to twitch he would have exploded into giggles. Letting his hair down! It did not mean quite the same, though. Here it meant: “I shall speak frankly,” but it also meant “I shall not challenge; I waive the dictates of honor.”

Keeping his face rigid, Wallie undipped his sapphire and released his own black mane.

“As it happens I do know Shonsu’s parentmarks,” Tivanixi said. “You . . . he . . . left a few juniors here, Firsts and a couple of Seconds. One of them offered you foils today and you did not know him, either.” He hesitated. “But there was a joke—both Shonsu’s parentmarks were swords. It was said that both his parents were men.”

Wallie guffawed. “Said behind his back?”

The castellan smiled. “A long way behind, I fancy.”

It had been a test—this was not Shonsu.

“I accept that your sword is the seventh sword of Chioxin, my lord, but it does not show the wear of seven hundred years. No one knows where it has been. No royal family could have kept it secret this long . . . but a temple could. He gave it to the Goddess . . . ”

“Say it!”

“You could have stolen it from the temple at Hann.”

“I didn’t. Talk to the priest.”

Tivanixi began to pace, his boots echoing and sending up puffs of dust, scattering the mouse droppings.

Still pacing, he said, “I was about to denounce you. Your fencing made me hesitate, for if the sorcerers can create a swordsman like you, then we are all dead men. The sword confused me completely. Your tales of the sorcerers have made it worse, and yet if you have truly been scouting on the left bank, I am ashamed, for I called the tryst without knowing what I was calling it against. We need your counsel!”

“Leave the question open, then,” Wallie said, “for the moment. You have another problem. Even assuming that I was sent by the gods, am I a man of honor? I have screwed things up mightily a couple of times. Especially at Aus. I went ashore—idiocy! Without my sword—more idiocy! I was captured and given the choice of dying on the spot or crawling back to my ship. I was on the docks. I could have jumped. Instead I crawled. Perhaps it was the wrong decision.”

An odd expression came over Tivanixi’s face. He went to stand at one of the windows, as if he could see out through the golden glare of the grime. “Very few swordsmen have not eaten dirt at one time or another,” he said, very quietly.

That was news to Wallie. Shonsu’s history was a blank to him; the only swordsman he knew well was Nnanji. He could not imagine Nnanji performing the ritual of abasement—but Nnanji was not cut from ordinary cloth.

“When I was a Second,” Tivanixi said. “I was challenged. I had talked my way into the wrong bed.” He had tried to make that sound humorous, but every muscle in his back had gone taut and his voice was barely audible. “He was two ranks above me and his eyes were red. He made the sign. I rolled over. He demanded the abasement. He even made me go and bring my friends to watch—and I did it! All the time I was telling myself that afterward I would go and wash my sword.”

Wallie was fascinated . . . and stayed silent.

“I went down to the River,” the castellan whispered to the window. “I stood on the edge of the water for an hour and my feet would not move. Then I went home and grew my hair back . . . 

“I have never told anyone that before, my lord.”

“I shall not repeat it,” Wallie promised. “But you waded into the River when you called the tryst.” Which was why Tivanixi could tell the story now, he thought.

The castellan laughed and turned around. “Oh—that was different. I had not just told myself I was going to do it, I had told everyone. There was a crowd! It was a ceremony. We had the remains of forty-nine bullocks still dying in front of us.” He shivered. “But a very strange feeling!

“What I mean is,” he continued, “that most of us have made obeisance at some time to swordsmen. You did it to sorcerers, that is all. If I had that on my conscience, I would not expect to have it thrown back in my face, except by someone who wanted to start a fight, and there are always ways of starting fights. But I don’t know that I would try to become leader of a tryst, my lord.”

Quite! “Ov was different. I make no apologies for Ov. I made the right decision.”

Tivanixi nodded approvingly. “I think you did. You had no army, only an ad hoc rabble of swordsmen, no plan, no chain of command—you could not have even given orders, for you did not know their names. You were right—but only highranks know the sutras on strategy. The cubs will howl.”

“Tell me what happens now,” Wallie said.

The castellan shrugged and leaned back against the table again. “The ancient stories are not quite clear, but it seems that we must wait for seven Sevenths. When the last appears, then I proclaim the tryst and call for challenge.”

He stared glumly down at his boots. “I hope he is not too rough.”

A heavier than normal gust of wind played a tattoo with the loose window. Wallie said, “I see that calling trysts is no task for small men, my lord. What if two challenge?”

“I fight the first and the surviv—the winner calls for challenges and then fights the next. When no one responds, that is the leader.”

“Then tell me what happens if I challenge and win. Supposing I can beat Boariyi? Will they swear to me?”

He had to wait a long time for a reply, while Tivanixi studied his expensive boots and fingered his hair. At last he said, “I don’t think so. Not to Shonsu. I think they would flee, or riot. But it will never come to that. Boariyi will denounce you. Zoariyi was improvising today—now he will have time to prepare a case, with witnesses who saw you in Aus. He may have men down at the docks already; they have plenty of men.”

Wallie nodded glumly. “And Shonsu lost an army, or sold it. Now he has come back to sell another . . . The god gave me a hard task, Lord Tivanixi, even without my own follies.”

The castellan nodded. “Tell me again of his riddle.”

“Seven lines . . . ” Wallie said. “First chain my brother, and I did that when Nnanji and I swore the fourth oath. The mighty spurned was my stupidity in Aus, so the god foresaw that. Turning the circle was my reconnaissance of the sorcerer cities, and I earned an army by saving Sapphire from pirates. Next to gain wisdom and I have done that—that was Katanji showing me the truth about the sorcerers. The last instruction is to return the sword, and that I do not understand yet.”

Tivanixi smiled. “You have done that, too. According to local tradition, Chioxin was a Casr man.”

Wallie swore quietly.

“That sword was made in this lodge.”

Wallie nodded, thinking he could hear the shrill laughter of the little god. You amuse me! The gods had tricked him before and now they had tricked him again. He hoped it made them very happy.

“And you did not know that!” Tivanixi was studying Wallie thoughtfully. He seemed to approve of his surprise.

“So now I must accord to the destiny of the sword,” Wallie said glumly. “To lead the tryst, obviously. Whoever bears it. At least three of the seven led trysts.” Suddenly, chillingly, he saw why—a tryst was led by the best swordsman in the World. Any lesser man who wore one of the Chioxin masterpieces soon died. The epics did not mention that. Heroes were heroes.

“How much time is there?” he asked. “You cannot promote another Sixth?”

“Not very likely now,” the castellan said, pacing again. He was speaking absently, his mind still wrestling with the bigger problem. “Of course the next boat may always bring someone . . . You would think that you could get more than two Sevenths out of three dozen Sixths, wouldn’t you? But many are past their primes. A few are not there yet. Others never expected the opportunity and have not learned the sutras—why bother, when they were doing well as Sixths? Many are working on it, but it takes time. Some tried and failed and must wait until next year.” He chuckled. “Honorable Fiendori and I have been together since we were Thirds. On a good day he can beat me like a drum . . . but sutras? Zoariyi asked him for nine twenty. He started in ten thirteen, detoured through eight seventy-two, and finished up in nine eighteen!”

He gave Wallie a long, long stare. Then he sighed. He had made his decision. Wallie had become too familiar with the seventh sword to appreciate the impact it had on a swordsman—its quality, its beauty, and its legend. In a world where only the sorcerers could read, the Goddess could hardly have given him a letter of introduction. To whom it may concern: The bearer of this missive, our trusty and well-beloved Shonsu . . . She had given him the next best thing, the greatest sword ever made, and Tivanixi had heard the message.

“I shall accept you, Lord Shonsu, as being sent by the Goddess, with Her sword. Obviously She wants us to have the benefit of your wisdom as well as your sword. But I warn you—if you are a traitor, I shall kill you myself, at any cost.”

“I shall not betray your trust, my lord,” Wallie said, astonished and delighted, shaking his hand warmly. Here was an invaluable ally—and potentially a good friend, he thought. Then he remembered his doubts in the night . . . whose side was he on? He strangled the memory quickly. He, also, had made a decision. “One thing I have not heard, though,” he said. “For what exact purpose did you call this tryst? If you are planning to wreak vengeance on the civilians of the left bank for harboring sorcerers, then I want no part of it.”

The castellan picked up the fragment of the fifth sword and wandered over to replace it on its pegs. “I wanted to call it to avenge Shonsu.” He chuckled. “That would have been a problem when you came back, wouldn’t it? But there were rumors that you had been seen, and also the priests started spinning their webs of words, as usual, wanting to know how I could call sorcerers as witnesses, and so on. And none of us knew at that time how many cities had been taken! So we finally decided to keep it simple. We called the tryst of Cast ‘To restore the honor of the swordsmen’s craft.’ Helpfully vague, yes?”

“Very good indeed!” Wallie said. That committed no one to anything and every swordsman must support it, but he wondered how the citizens of Casr felt about swordsmen’s honor at the moment.

“And by nightfall the swordsmen were arriving,” Tivanixi said proudly. He must have hoped to be leader, but he had earned his immortality as the man who called the tryst, the one whose prayer had been answered. “And now She has sent Her own sword!”

“But who will bear it?” Wallie asked. Now it was his turn to start pacing.

“He is the better swordsman, my lord. In eight or ten bouts, I have never touched him. Of course his reach is . . . ” The castellan smiled. “Well, it’s unfair! He is incredibly fast—and completely ambidextrous. Zoariyi has taught him every trick in the craft. You might do better if you had more practice. You are rusty as the ruby, Shonsu. I could tell.”

“What sort of a leader would he make?” Wallie asked sadly. “His uncle is the brains?”

“Of course. But you know the blood oath—absolute power. He can tell his uncle to disembowel himself if he wants to, once he has sworn that oath. He might, too! If I cannot be leader, then I had rather you than he, my lord. You may yet be traitor, but Boariyi is sure disaster.”

Wallie reached the far wall and started back. “How is he at leadership?”

Tivanixi snorted. “At his age?”

Wallie was surprised. He did not think that leadership depended very much on age—Nnanji certainly had it, and had proved so more than once. But a moment’s thought showed him that this was a language problem, and perhaps a cultural one. To the swordsmen, leadership implied a certain public dignity, eminence, nobility . . . the word did not quite translate exactly.

“I believe that I am supposed to be leader. But I can’t beat Boariyi, you say, and the tryst would not accept me anyway.”

“You know how to fight these thunderbolts?”

Wallie shrugged. “They have at least three types of thunderbolt. Apart from that they are mostly fakes. Speed is the key, but it will not work against the towers. I have some ideas, though. If Boariyi were leader, would he take my advice?”

“I doubt it,” Tivanixi said. “Just being a Seventh has gone to his head, and being liege lord will boil his brains.” Obviously he bitterly resented this upstart Boariyi. “And you will have to give him the sword! He either did not notice it, or he has not heard of Chioxin, but one of his men will have told him by now. In fact,” he said, with a worried frown, “it is surprising that he has not come looking for you already. He will certainly not let it escape from the lodge.”

He went to the window and started wiping a pane, speaking over his shoulder. “Choose another, my lord! Take any one off the wall. I will say the words to give it to you, and you can put it in your scabbard.”

Wallie discovered that he was a man of more honor than that. To walk out with a rusty old relic on his back and the seventh sword under his arm would be a public admission that he no longer felt worthy to wear it, and at the moment he needed all the prestige and self-esteem he could find.

“Yes, he is still down there,” said Tivanixi.

“Is there a back door?” Wallie asked. “If I can reach my ship, I am safe. On Sapphire’s deck I can beat any man.”

The castellan swung around. He frowned and then shrugged. “Yes, there is. Let’s go, then.”

They clipped their hair up and went out, pushing the wailing door closed, shutting the ghosts back in their cold gray solitude.

“Leave the bar,” the castellan said as Wallie reached for it. “I’ll send some juniors to get the hernias.” They started down the stairs. “I can return Master Nnanji and the others with an escort. Have you a password he will know?”

Wallie thought and then chuckled. “ ‘Killer earthworm.’ It was how he fenced when I first met him.”

“He is more of a cobra now, Lord Shonsu! A pity he cannot manage the sutras; he would have a good chance to make Sixth.”

They clattered down a second flight. There were two doors on this floor, one on either side of the stairwell. “Through here.” The door led into another long room—smelly, grimy, and littered with bedding rolls and the small packs of belongings that free swords might carry on their gypsy life. All the rooms in the lodge must be this shape, long and narrow, with windows on one side out to a balcony.

“If no other Seventh appears, how much time do I have?” Wallie asked as they paced through.

“Very little, I fear! You announced that you would not join the tryst, so they can’t count you. But if no other appears, then I don’t think we can wait much longer.” They went out through the far door and down more stairs. “The town can’t take much more of this.”

So Tivanixi did care about what was happening in the city?

“You can’t impose discipline?”

He got an angry and resentful glare. “I have tried! It risks gang warfare, my men versus your men. It is the unattached Sixths, and a couple of Fifths; slack disciplinarians have less trouble recruiting, of course. The Sevenths are all keeping their protégé’s under control, I think, but the others are troublemakers. It is hard on the citizens. And taxes are another problem—I had no idea how much this was going to cost, and the elders scream when I ask for more money.”

He opened another door, leading into another long room, rank and unbelievably cluttered. Half the windowpanes were missing, panels had warped away from the walls. There was mold on the heaps of old furniture and high-piled bedding, harnesses, clothes, and boxes that almost filled it. The floor had sagged in places and the air stank of rot and decay.

“Tell the elders,” Wallie said as they edged their way through the piled furniture, along a narrow, crooked path, “that feeding a tryst costs less than building a sorcerer’s tower.”

Tivanixi stopped and stared back at him. “I hadn’t thought of that!”

“It is their logical next move.”

“Sorcerers cannot cross the River!”

“Oh yes, they can! I assure you, Lord Tivanixi, that there is at least one sorcerer down there in that courtyard at this moment. Most likely he is a slave, or a hawker, or someone else inconspicuous. News of my arrival will be on its way to Vul already.”

††††††

Wallie had been quite prepared to return to the ship alone, but with a glance at his hairclip Tivanixi had tactfully insisted on providing an escort and he had put his longtime friend Fiendori of the Sixth in charge of it. Thus Wallie marched through the narrow alleys and across the wide squares with Fiendori and half a dozen swordsmen at his back.

He glowed with a new exuberance, his doubts withered away. Thanks to the ambitious Thana, he now understood the sorcerers’ apparent telepathy. Minx! She had sought sutra lessons from him, and from Nnanji, and from her mother, so that no one could know what she had been taught. Obviously Nnanji had been assuming that it was Wallie who had instructed her in Fourth-rank sutras, as a surprise for him. He wondered how many sutras Brota knew—the water rats were little impressed by ritual.

Lip reading was probably well known to the riverfolk, useful up in the shrouds in a strong wind, when neither voices nor gestures could be used. The sorcerers had adopted it and combined it with the telescope. That was typical of their methods, a fragment of technology plus a bushel of showmanship, combined to give an impression of magic powers. Obviously they could know of the telescope—it ought to have been invented on Earth long before it had been.

Also, Wallie had completed the god’s riddle. He had returned the sword to the lodge where it had been made. And he had accorded to its destiny, accepting that he must lead the tryst.

The need was obvious. Boariyi was a brash kid. Tivanixi seemed intelligent enough, yet even he had already blundered conspicuously. He had been tricked into calling the tryst at the wrong time of year, with winter coming. He had charged ahead without finding out anything about the enemy. He had obviously given no thought at all to finance. Faith in the Goddess was fine, but the gods helped those who knew what they were doing. The tryst needed not only Wallie’s superior knowledge of the enemies’ powers, but also some good management techniques—aim identification, cost-benefit studies, critical path analysis, command structure definitions, budgetary forecasts . . . 

The tiny battle of Ov had shown Wallie that the sorcerers were poor fighters, merely armed civilians who lost their heads, while the swordsmen were trained tacticians. Yet Tivanixi’s impetuous response to the sorcerers’ defiance suggested that, on the higher level of strategy, the sorcerers might be better than the swordsmen. There were sutras on strategy, but who ever got to use them? War was rare in the World. Few swordsmen would ever command a force of more than a dozen or so, while the sorcerers had obviously been working to a careful plan for fifteen years. Now they had run out of cities on the left bank. They must either rest with the conquests they had, or cross the River. They could write; they had records; they had communications and organization; they could see the bigger picture. Wallie Smith still thought that way, although he was now illiterate. He had the additional advantage of knowing a little history from another world, a much more warlike planet than this. His feel for strategy and planning was better than that of the other swordsmen. They were iron-age barbarians; he was a cultivated, educated, and reasonably well-informed twentieth-century technologist . . . who just happened to be an iron-age barbarian on the outside. The tryst needed his way of thinking as much as it needed his knowledge of the sorcerers’ technology. He must somehow put himself at its head.

How?

He needed to do something dramatic and he could not demand a miracle from the gods. But heroes were allowed to be lucky. Already he had an idea of what was going to be needed, and luck would certainly be a vital ingredient.

The swordsmen of the tryst and their natural distrust of him were one problem. Boariyi himself was another. The god had hinted that there was one other swordsman who might be as good as Shonsu—who else but Boariyi? That had been an obvious warning, for if equals meet, and one is out of practice while the other is not, who will win?

Right first time.

That meant practice, and practice meant a partner. Nnanji was not good enough. But—Wallie now realized—marching right behind him was a Sixth who could sometimes beat Tivanixi himself. The castellan had left Wallie waiting a bladder-testing long time beside the rear door while he went off to fetch Fiendori. That might mean that friend Fiendori had been well briefed, might it not?

By the time Wallie had got this far in his thoughts, he had come to the wide and windy plaza where the River shone through a haze of masts and rigging that curved away into the distance in both directions. Sapphire was visible a short way downstream. He gestured for Fiendori to move up beside him.

He was a pleasant-seeming fellow, not tall, but thick and broad, and he had a big, friendly grin. He moved and walked with the same athletic grace as his mentor.

Wallie opened the conversation by asking how he had come to Casr, and when. He was told that Lord Tivanixi’s band of frees, arriving at Quo, had heard that there was a lodge at Casr and had decided to go there in the hope of picking up a promising junior or two. They had ridden in about three days after Shonsu had left, to find four Firsts and two Seconds attempting to maintain order, with a conspicuous lack of success.

“They were looting house to house by that time, my lord,” Fiendori said with disgust, but without explaining who “they” were. “We rolled a few heads across this avenue, here, my lord, and soon stopped that!”

Clearly, in Fiendori’s eyes Lord Tivanixi was the perfect swordsman, a hero in the great tradition, a man who could do no wrong. Tivanixi had cleaned up the town and then stayed on, waiting for Shonsu to return. The weeks had rolled by, and the rumors of disaster had sifted back, and—without any specific announcement or decision, more or less by default—Tivanixi had become castellan in Shonsu’s place. His men had no complaint.

Whatever duty the gods sent and the boss accepted was fine by them.

“I don’t know if the castellan told you, your honor,” Wallie said, “but I need some practice. I have been ship-bound for many weeks.”

The big, loose grin flashed. “He told me to put myself at your disposal, if I could be of any help to your lordship. Subject to an emergency arising where he might need me, that is.”

Good for Tivanixi! He had been ’way out ahead. Wallie expressed his gratitude. “Then we shall need to find somewhere with space,” he said, “and privacy! He spoke highly of your skills. Did he mention my sword to you?”

“Yes, my lord.” Fiendori glanced up at the hilt. “A great honor, but also a great burden, if I may say so.”

Wallie suspected that this Sixth was a both follower and probably not in the Nobel league for original thinking, but that remark sounded like a tactful reference to the need for keeping out of Boariyi’s way, so Wallie did not labor the point. He was about to ask if his companion knew of any convenient courtyard that might be rented, preferably close to the docks, when conversation was ended by the sight of a disturbance in progress.

Two slaves were in trouble on the Sapphire’s gangplank. Between them was a sedan chair. The slave at the rear was taking most of the weight, because of the tilt of the plank, and was starting to buckle. The slave at the front was in greater difficulty, because he was facing Tomiyano, and there was no power in the World that was going to get that sedan chair on that deck. The slave, however, had his orders and a mere Third was seemingly not enough to change them. An irresistible enforcement had met an immovable objector.

A swordsman of the Seventh, however, was different. Wallie ordered the rear slave to start backing, and the man at the front had no choice but to follow. The chair returned to the dock and the slaves set it down. Wallie waved cheerfully at Tomiyano’s glare. Then he stepped forward and pulled aside the curtain.

As he had expected, Honakura was sitting inside, grinning toothlessly.

“I thought that earthquake voice must be yours, my lord.” He chuckled. “You have been to the lodge.” That was not a question; Honakura could pull information out of cobblestones. “How is Lord Boariyi?”

“Better, I’m afraid,” said Wallie. “How is the holy Lord Kadywinsi?”

“Senile!” whispered the old man. “But I shall help him.” Then he accepted a helping hand to disembark.

The black garb of a Nameless One had gone. He stepped out, still tiny and bald and toothless, but with the seven wavy lines now uncovered on his forehead, wearing a gown of sky-blue satin shimmering with that same holy pattern. His face was a dangerous gray shade and he looked very weary, but all his old authority had returned, the presence that could face down swordsmen of any rank. Wallie backed up and flashed the seventh sword in the greeting to an equal, and the old man responded in his slurred voice. Then Willie presented the Honorable Fiendori of the Sixth, who was impressed.

Wallie had stopped distrusting coincidences a long time ago. He edged Honakura and Fiendori slightly away from the troop of swordsmen, while passing pedestrians made a wide and wary circuit around them. “Holy one,” he explained, “his honor and I were just debating where we might find a convenient and private place to do some fencing. Roomy, you understand, and not subject to unexpected intruders.”

Honakura looked up at him with amusement. “I was asked to inform you that the priests of Casr will be more than grateful for an opportunity to help Her champion in any way they can be of service.”

Look out, Boariyi!

“There we are, then,” Wallie told Fiendori. “Today is almost gone—meet us at the temple in the morning. I assume that we can move Sapphire there?” he asked the old man.

“I gather that the water is shallow, my lord, but you can anchor offshore and come in by dinghy. Mistress Brota will be fretting about dock fees soon.”

Wallie laughed and agreed. He dismissed his escort and conducted the priest up the gangplank.

The transformation had been noted, and the rail was lined with startled faces. Tomiyano was so overcome that he volunteered the salute to a superior and babbled that his ship would be honored to receive such a visitor. The rest of the sailors were staring with open mouths, as if an egg in the ship’s larder had suddenly hatched a dragon. This was the old man who had cleaned pots in their galley? They had all guessed that he was a priest, but not a Seventh. A Seventh’s prestige was so great in their culture that none of them found it strange when Wallie solemnly presented everyone old enough to salute. Each saluted reverently and received the response. That done, there was a bewildered pause. Honakura looked around at their faces, tottered across to sit on his favorite fire bucket, and started to laugh. Then they all laughed.

The riverfront plaza was beginning to empty as evening approached, the sky blushing in the west and even the wind seeming inclined to stop work for the day. Wallie now could attend to that stein of ale he had promised himself earlier. He took some beer down to the two slaves waiting on the dock—to their stunned amazement—and then settled himself on a hatch cover, while Sapphire’s crew gathered around. Then he recounted the events at the lodge.

“What happens now, great leader?” Tomiyano demanded from the other hatch cover.

“Possibly we get boarded,” Wallie said. “If a very tall Seventh appears, don’t try your tongue on him—he’ll cut it out. Leave him to me, and the rest of you scamper.” There was, after all, just a chance that Boariyi, once he learned the significance of the seventh sword, would come foaming down to the dock. Wallie could handle him easily on the ship. Zoariyi might not know that there were two kinds of swordsmanship in the World. Even if he did, his nephew might not heed his warnings.

“And apart from that?” the captain persisted.

Wallie was wondering where Nnanji and the others had got to—they should have arrived by now—but he started to explain between mouthfuls of beer and peanuts.

“Two problems. The popular favorite to win the leadership is this human giraffe called Boariyi. I’m told he is better than me.”

“Bilge!” Brota muttered loyally.

“Maybe not! He has an arm like your bowsprit. So I have to get in some practice. Soon! The other problem is that the swordsmen don’t trust me. The other Shonsu lost an army. They think I might lose another. They know about my screw-up at Aus, too. So I can’t just win the leadership by simple combat, as Boariyi or the castellan could. But I’d be the only leader with a hope of averting disaster. The sorcerers are evil and the swordsmen are stupid! You and I—if you’re still with me—are going to prevent a massacre.”

Tomiyano looked skeptical. “How?”

“Good question. We must do something dramatic, I think. Anyone got any ideas?”

“Yes,” the captain said. “You do. Tell us.”

Wallie smiled at their faith—or was it that these shrewd traders could read his face? “No more voyages to the left bank for Sapphire,” he said. “But there will be danger—this is war. Are you still with me?”

They were still with him, every one of them, from ancient old Lina, who was possibly as old as Honakura, down to the wide-eyed children. He thanked them sincerely, more moved than he wanted to show. Then he eyed the old man. “How much help can we have from the priests, holy one?”

“Whatever you want,” Honakura said complacently.

If Honakura could deliver the temple, then Boariyi had hit the iceberg and was listing already. Wallie pondered in silence for a while, but then decided his harebrained plan was the only one he was going to come up with. He took a deep breath and began. “I think I have jobs for all of you, then. You, Cap’n, buy me a ship.”

Tomiyano was surprised. “Big or small? What rig?”

Wallie shrugged. “Something that will carry eight or ten, I suppose. As fast as possible. Large enough to stand up in below-decks.”

Sailors anywhere enjoy evaluating boats. Tomiyano rose and peered along the front, then at the scattering of vessels anchored out in the River. “Like that? How about that?”

“Whatever you can get,” Wallie said. “How much must I pay?”

“Two or three thousand.”

Wallie looked at Brota beside him and was almost turned to ice by the look in her eye. She was afraid that he was going to ask for Donations to a Good Cause. She probably had several times that much hidden away somewhere in Sapphire, the profits of thirty years’ trading.

He smiled innocently. “That’s all right, then.”

She frowned even more and shot a glance at her son.

Tomiyano grunted. “So you do have more of them!”

Wallie reached in his money pouch and brought out a handful of blue fire. “I do. Would it have mattered, had you known?”

The captain showed his teeth in a fierce grin. “Possibly! I was ready to do it for your hairclip alone; I couldn’t think what we’d do with the sword. She wouldn’t let me . . . but she would have done, if she’d known about those.”

He was joking, but he might not be lying—his mother was glaring at him.

Wallie laughed and put the gems back. “Then I am grateful to you, mistress! Perhaps you and Katanji could sell some of these for me, when we know how much we’ll need?”

“One moment, my lord,” said Honakura. “I assume that the god gave you those jewels?”

Wallie nodded.

“Then they are rather special. The temple might well be interested in purchasing them.”

“Thank you, holy one.” Wallie spoke solemnly, but he was grinning inside. The old rascal was saying that he would raid the temple treasury for him. “Brota, we shall need silk. I suppose we can buy some silk in this city? Good-quality silk?”

“Very good silk,” Brota agreed cautiously.

“Orange would be best, of course. What could we use to waterproof it, do you think? Some sort of wax? Beeswax?”

“Shoemakers’ wax, perhaps,” she replied.

“Lina?” Wallie said. “Is that copper pot still in the galley? The one with the coil on it, which I used when I showed you how the sorcerers ensorcel wine?”

The low sun was in Lina’s eyes; she shaded them with a hand that was almost transparent as she peered across the deck at him. “It was getting in my way, nasty thing. It’s down in the bilge somewhere.”

Tomiyano was turning pink and trying not to explode. Honakura was showing his gums and trying not to laugh.

“Right! Captain, have we any ensorceled wine left?”

Tomiyano thought there might be a bottle or two around somewhere.

“No matter,” Wallie said. “We’ll get five or six bottles and then ensorcel them again and get double-ensorceled wine.”

“Love a squid!” said Tomiyano. “Is it that much stronger again if you do that?”

“No, about the same. But I need it very pure. We’d better do that ashore somewhere—it’s too much of a fire hazard. Mata, would you do that for me? I’ll show you how.”

The sailors were now clearly divided into those who were annoyed at being teased and those who were enjoying the annoyance of the first group.

“Lae?” Wallie said. “Could you make me a gown?”

The ship’s honorary grandmother frowned. “Jja’s a better seamstress than me, my lord.”

“But she’ll be sewing the silk bags,” Wallie said as if that were obvious. Where was Jja? What was keeping them all? “What I want from you is a blue gown, with a hood and those big, droopy sleeves.”

“You’re going to pretend to be a sorcerer?” Tomiyano shouted. “You’re going ashore as a sorcerer?”

Wallie feigned surprise. “You think I’m crazy?”

“The thought had drifted across my mind, perhaps.”

“Nonsense!” Wallie said. “Holiyi, you’re the best carpenter on board. You’ll cut some holes in the ship for me, won’t you?”

Holiyi was as skinny as Boariyi, although not especially tall. He probably had not spoken for hours—Holiyi seemed to get through the day on a handful of words like the legendary Arab on a handful of dates—but now he not only nodded, he exclaimed, “Of course!” as if he had expected the request. The grins grew wider.

Wallie rose and walked over to the rail to stare across the plaza. “Well, I think that’s about everything, then. The holy lord suggests that you anchor by the temple and save dock fees.”

“Where are you going in this ship of yours?” Tomiyano demanded. “This ship with the holes in it, and the silk bags full of ensorceled wine, and you in your sorcerer’s robe?”

Wallie pointed east, toward Vul. The volcanoes were dormant again, hardly smoking at all.

“And who’s going to sail it for you?”

This was the tricky part, and all the mystifying had been mostly to get the man intrigued enough that he might agree. “I hoped that you would, Captain.”

“Me? Leave Sapphire? You’re crazy even to ask!” Tomiyano was taking the suggestion as an insult.

“It is important,” Wallie said seriously. “I’ve been making a game of it, but it is important! If the swordsmen walk into the sorcerers’ trap, then they’ll all die, hundreds of them.”

The sailor’s face grew red. “No! I’ve cooperated with the Goddess. We’ve risked our ship and our lives, and I’ll help still, but I’m not leaving Sapphire. And that’s final.”

“Fool!” Honakura squirmed down from the fire bucket. “You, a sailor, would defy Her? The Goddess is the River and the River is the Goddess! They are Her swordsmen!” The captain paled as the tiny old man marched across to him, shrill with anger. “You will never find fair wind again! Never reach the port you want! Never know a night without pirates! Is that what you want, Captain Tomiyano? How long will you survive on the River if you anger the Goddess?”

“Oh, hell!” Tomiyano scowled at the deck. “I guess I’ll come, then.”

“Thanks, Captain,” Wallie said quietly.

“Just a moment, my lord!” Brota was suspicious. “You said that you had work for all of us. Haven’t you kept a few things back?” She hunched her head down in her pillowed shoulders and frowned at him.

“Well, yes,” Wallie admitted. “When I’m off playing in my new ship, there will be a small job—at least for you, mistress.”

“Such as?”

“I’ll handle the sorcerers. You have to stop the tryst.”

Even Brota could be startled sometimes. Some of the children giggled.

Then Tomiyano began to laugh—and that was rare as summer snow. “Shonsu,” he said, “you’re not the only one who’s going to need some fencing practice.”

†††††††

Nnanji of the Fifth bounded up the gangplank and landed with both feet firmly on the deck, arms wide to receive plaudits and bouquets, timed to an inaudible fanfare from an invisible band—Ta-RAH! His new red kilt was absurdly short and a horrible raspberry shade that clashed with his hair, but his facemarks were symmetrical for the first time since Wallie had known him, and he was somehow contriving to laugh and grin at the same time.

There, Wallie thought, was one swordsman who would never again have problems handling sailors, unlike the late Polini. And had the younger Nnanji of the temple guard been required to leave a lodge full of swordsmen to go and mix with riverfolk, he would have sulked for hours.

Thana appeared at his side, sliding an arm around him to share in his triumph as the crew rushed forward with congratulations. She noticed Wallie, smiled, and then stuck out her tongue. He mouthed “Cheat!” at her silently, and she smirked, unrepentant. Katanji came on board, also grinning.

Then Jja—she noted where Vixini was even as she ran over to Wallie. Vixi had been contentedly sitting beside Fala, but now he dropped the bone on which he had been sharpening his latest tooth and levered himself upright, bottom first. There was his favorite mother . . . 

Wallie grabbed her in a fierce hug. She was laughing under his kiss as Vixini cannoned into her.

“What kept you all?” Wallie demanded. “I was ready to declare war!”

She scooped up Vixini. “Minstrels!” She was excited and happy. “Just after you left, a minstrel started singing an epic—about you! You and Nnanji and the fight against the Honorable Tarru and his men. You horrible dirty River monster!” The last remark was directed at Vixini.

Great gods! The battle with Tarru, the escape from the holy island—how long ago that seemed! But of course Yoningu had promised Nnanji that he would tell the tale to the first minstrel who came by the barracks. So that minstrel was now here in Casr, or one who had heard the story from him.

He laughed. “Was it a good epic?”

She smiled mischievously. “Very good! So Master Nnanji says.”

“He’s biased! Well, he’ll be happy.” Ecstatic, more like! And an epic would be excellent public relations.

Then Nnanji himself came pushing forward through the throng, disentangling himself from the more youthful admirers. “I met four Sevenths today, my lord brother,” he said solemnly. “That makes seven all together in my whole life!”

“Who was the fourth, then?” Wallie asked.

“Lord Chinarama. He’ll be no problem for you, though—he’s old!”

For Nnanji, senescence began at thirty. “How old?”

Nnanji pondered. “At least seventy . . . but a nice old relic. Says he’s always dreamed of a tryst, so when he heard about this one, he retrieved his sword from the woodshed and came along in the hope of giving counsel.” Then he added, “I don’t suppose he’ll hurt.”

“What did you think of Boariyi?” Wallie asked.

“He is a man of honor,” Nnanji said cautiously. “He is very troubled about the lack of discipline, thinks it is a disgrace to the craft. And he says I am younger than he was when he reached Fifth!”

Boariyi had found the keys to Nnanji’s heart.

“And I have an epic for you!” Nnanji beamed and turned to address everyone. “Who wants to hear an epic?”

“Not now!” Wallie said. “We have a war to fight.”

Casr had become a dangerous place for him. By now Zoariyi and his nephew must have learned the importance of the seventh sword and would be anxious to prevent it leaving town. If they could locate a water rat, or even a sailor, who had witnessed Wallie’s disgrace in Aus, then a denunciation would follow at once—the posse would arrive at the gangplank. He must vanish into the mists of the River, and the sooner the better.

He was shouted down. The World was a leisurely place. Sapphire was having a vacation. His war could wait. He almost lost his temper, but Honakura said firmly that he wanted to hear an epic, and that was that. Wagons and horses and chattering people were winding their way home, the wind was still listlessly flapping awnings and sails, but such details would not keep Nnanji from his epic. So Wallie reluctantly sat down and leaned back against the bulwark, out of the wind, his aim around Jja.

Nnanji jumped up on the aft hatch cover. “Right!” he said. “Gather round! Ready? How Nnanji of the Fourth and Shonsu of the Seventh Fought Ten Renegade Swordsmen!” He glanced at Wallie.

“What! You get star billing?” Wallie protested—it translated as “place of honor.”

Nnanji smirked. “That was what you told Yoningu, brother!”

So it was—Wallie had joked that Nnanji’s name should be first. He had not then cared for the dubious honor of being hero of a barbarian romance . . . but at that time he had not been running for office.

With a title like that, he thought sourly, it would never make the best-seller list. As soon as Nnanji started, though, he saw that it well might—it was a very good epic. No, it was excellent, far superior to the ephemeral jingles in which the minstrels normally reported current events, the doggerel that he had once dismissed as swordsman sports news. At times he had wondered if one day he would find a Homer to record whatever feat he might achieve for the Goddess. If the author of this work was present in Casr, then perhaps he had. True, it used all the stock phrases and conventions—long dramatic speeches between sword strokes, vile villains and heroic heroes—but the meter was certain and the imagery vivid. Moreover, the bard had taken wide liberties with the story line to make it more dramatic. As the tale unfolded, Wallie began to feel very uneasy.

Nnanji of the Second had sought promotion in the temple guard—true—and challenged two Fourths, killing one—true—and had then denounced the guard as venal—false and improbable: How did he gain a promotion after that? Then the new “blood-headed” Nnanji of the Fourth, facemarks still dramatically bleeding, had set off with his brother . . . 

Wallie choked down an interruption as he saw Katanji grinning expectantly at him. How had he gotten into this? He had been present, but only a very minor character. Now Wallie was astounded to realize that the minstrel had been extemporizing, creating the epic as he went along. Having the basic story in some form or other, he had adapted it to the earlier events of the afternoon, downplaying the unsavory Shonsu, emphasizing the “blood-headed” hero of Ov and the brother who had been so dramatically presented as the bravest man in the courtyard—giving his audience what it wanted to hear. In all this ridiculous farrago, Shonsu had not even been mentioned yet.

The scene changed to the jetty, where the impossibly vile Tarru of the Sixth swore terrible vows and pledged evil minions by the blood oath. Nnanji and Katanji came on stage. Tarru mocked them—and David promptly challenged Goliath in iambic pentameters.

Leaving the battle in suspense, the bard then switched to the holy cave behind the sacred waterfall, where the Goddess expounded on the honor of her swordsmen, the sins of Tarru, the virtue and future greatness of Nnanji, and finally summoned a demigod, commanding him to save Her hero.

Wallie looked in exasperation at Honakura and saw that he was turning purple with suppressed laughter.

The demigod found Shonsu—where? at the relief office?—gave him the seventh sword—described in lines stolen from the saga of Chioxin—and then transported him by a miracle to the battle.

Copious blood spurted. With a little help on the side from Shonsu, the magnificent Nnanji was victorious. Virtue triumphed. The two heroes swore the oath of brotherhood and sailed away to continue the battle against evil. End of epic, applause.

The seventh sword was understandable—Imperkanni’s men back at the jetty at Hann had known of that—but no one except the crew of Sapphire had been aware of the fourth oath until Wallie had mentioned it in the lodge. Very few of those present would ever have heard of the oath before.

Certainly Homer had been present in the courtyard!

So now the seventh sword was public knowledge! And Wallie felt like Agamemnon hearing the Iliad; it was good public relations, but for the wrong man. He hoped he was managing to hide his pique as he applauded with the others. The youngsters wanted to hear it all again, but Nnanji refused. Perhaps Wallie’s face was not so waterproof as he hoped.

“Not exactly the way I recall the way it went,” Wallie said, squeezing out a toothpaste smile, “but superb poetry! Who was the minstrel?”

Nnanji shrugged. “Don’t know. Not bad, though, was it?” He looked a little disillusioned. “I suppose one shouldn’t believe everything one hears in epics.”

The crew rose, ready to take on the war now. “Where to, great leader?” Tomiyano asked.

“Vanish!” Wallie said. “The mysterious Shonsu disappears as mysteriously as he mysteriously appeared.”

Nnanji stared at him in horror and dismay.

“Then we creep back and go to the temple.”

“Ah! And what do we do there, brother?”

“Fence,” Wallie said.

“Oh!” Nnanji looked surprised, but fencing was always acceptable behavior.

Honakura descended from his bucket. “I shall see you there. I was told to suggest the up end of the grounds. Dinghies,” he added, “look even worse than mules, whereas I find sedan chair riding to be excellent exercise, not tiring at all.”

Wallie escorted the priest to the gangplank, while Sapphire’s crew prepared to cast off. Somewhere out on that wide plaza there would be watchers, waiting to see what this Shonsu did.

He wandered back to where Nnanji stood with a firm grip on Thana. He had been out of bed for hours and was obviously feeling deprived.

“That’s a hideous kilt,” Wallie said.

“It was all they had,” Nnanji protested, looking smug. “Fifths are supposed to be short or fat.”

Wallie explained that Jja had made him one—very smart, with a griffon embroidered on the hem. Pleased, Nnanji said he would go and change. Thana remarked that new kilts were tricky, perhaps she should come and help. They fell agiggling again.

“Thank you, Thana,” Wallie said, “for the warning about Boariyi—you saved the day.”

“What warning?” Nnanji demanded.

“Never mind,” Thana retorted quickly. “Let’s get that ghastly kilt off you first.” There was an offer that he would not refuse, and the two of them ran off.

The gangplank was being hauled in—time to start detailed planning. Wallie returned to Jja’s side near the deckhouse, meaning to explain about silk and sewing. There was no sign of swordsmen heading for the ship.

“Did you like the epic, darling?” she inquired, and there was something lurking in those dark, unreadable eyes.

“It was great poetry, even if it wasn’t very accurate. Why?”

“There will be others!” she said. “Nnanji told the minstrels about Ov.”

Wallie had promised Tivanixi he would do that, then had forgotten. No matter—Nnanji would have done it better. “How many minstrels are there, anyway?”

“Dozens, love,” she said, frowning.

So many? A thousand swordsmen, plus juniors—three or four hundred juniors. Minstrels, of course, would flock to a tryst. Heralds? Armorers? Camp followers? Wives? Children? Musicians? Night slaves? He wondered how many thousands had invaded Casr. Small wonder that the elders were unhappy.

“And Thana told them how you and Nnanji fought the pirates.”

He brought his mind back to Jja. She was concerned about something.

“What’s worrying you, love? The pirate story is all right.” Of course the pirates had been only dispossessed sailors, half of them women. In the minstrels’ version they would be Morgan and Blackbeard and Long John Silver, but it would be a harmless piece of swashbuckling. Free swords hated pirates because they could do nothing about them, so the story would be appreciated.

She dropped her eyes shyly, not wanting to prompt a master who was usually so quick. “Who started the fighting?”

Nnanji had. Wallie had lifted him out of the window. Now he understood! The pattern had been set. Nnanji was the hero of the fight against Tarru, he would be the hero of the battle of Ov and of the pirate fight, also. With Thana telling the pirate story, Wallie would be lucky to get into a footnote.

“They were asked about Gi, too,” Jja said. “If it was you who arrived with the shipload of tools after the fire and who organized the town again.”

Wallie smiled. “Well, at least Nnanji can’t steal that one.”

“The tools came from Amb, darling.”

Amb—a sorcerer city! The suspicion would be there . . . He was not usually so dumb, but then Jja had had more time to think about it.

“And Katanji was asked about the sorcerers’ tower,” she said.

Damn! Wallie just stared, too shocked to speak. Of course Katanji would have been asked—it was Wallie’s own fault for mentioning the subject. Katanji was sharp beyond his years, but he would not have been able to resist an audience like that . . . dozens of minstrels?

Damn! Damn! What would the swordsmen think of a Seventh who hid in safety on a ship and sent a First into danger—and disguised him as a slave, too? They would react as Nnanji had reacted, saying that changing facemarks was an abomination. They could never approve of a plainclothes swordsman. The pirate story might do no harm, but the Katanji tale would be pure disaster for Shonsu’s image.

Damn! Damn! Damn! Minstrels! Wallie had forgotten the position that minstrels held in the World. While he had been babbling smugly to himself about modern management techniques, his subordinates had been blowing their heads off at a press conference.