The Reluctant Swordsman

by David Duncan

  The jungle canopy was so dense that there was almost no ground cover. Wallie pounded along between the pillars, through the hot green gloom, until he reached a wall of undergrowth flourishing in the sunlight at the edge of the clearing. He could catch glimpses of the guardhouse now, but he turned upstream and ran around, heading for the water, his feet thumping squishily in rotting leaves. The downstream side had no windows, Nnanji had said, so there was more likely to be a sentry there.

  Then he was at the bank and he stopped to catch his breath, gasping in the sultry heat. Two or three billion insects discovered him at once and brought their friends. Ignoring them, he peered out through the leaves.

  The meadow was, as Nnanji had said, flat, grassy, and open. It ran down very gently to the River, ending in a bank as low as a doorstep. It contained no cover, just a ramshackle corral at the end of the trail. The colors were all as brilliant as a child's painting-grass and jungle in vibrant greens, the water an improbable sparkling blue.

  Only the guardhouse was drab, its planks shabby, silvered by weather, and showing many layers of patchings. Larger than he had expected, it straddled the water's edge and the start of the crumbling red stone jetty. The jetty was deserted at the moment, but another boat was coming in. His friends had dismounted and were slowly making their way over the meadow to the building.

  There were no guards in sight, no one but his party and the skinner. Trap?

  Nnanji and his brother were wearing their swords again. They were supporting Honakura between them, making slow progress. Vixini was wailing loudly in his sling on Jja's back. Cowie was following Nnanji in a seductive hip-swinging saunter.

  Wallie waited until they had entered the building, in case they saw him and gave him away to watchers. He counted time to the moment of maximum distraction. They would enter an empty shed, walk forward... when the last one was inside, the trap would be sprung behind them. Tarru would accost them. After a moment or two Nnanji would tell them he was no longer Shonsu's vassal... surprise and reevaluation...

  Time to go!

  Wallie plunged through the thorns and branches, then sprinted along the edge of the bank. The skinner had taken his mules to the far side of the building and was swinging a bucket on a pole, loading water into a drinking trough. Wallie reached the building and stopped, panting again.

  Nothing happened. No alarm, no shouts, no challenge. No one had been posted in the trees, no one at the windows. He had not expected that. Now what?

  Two doors opened into the shed, and the landward one would certainly be guarded. He stepped down carefully into the water. It was full of weeds, but it came only halfway up his boots, and the bottom was firm. He waded out along the side of the guardhouse, trying not to splash, gradually going deeper. His boots filled with a cool rush, and then he had trouble keeping them from falling off at every step. When he reached the far end of the building, the water was well above his knees, soaking his kilt, wonderfully welcome and cool.

  The red stonework of the jetty was rough, but coated with algae below the waterline. The deck was level with his shoulders. Along the wall of the building, flanking both sides of the doorway arch, lay a litter of broken wheels and scrap lumber, rotted fishing nets and old baskets. He found finger purchase between the cobbles, hauled himself up, and bent his knees to tip water from his boots.

  He knelt there for a moment, puzzled. He had outflanked the guard. That seemed to have been suspiciously easy.

  Then he heard voices, laughter-the clash of swords.

  He crawled on hands and knees around the junk pile to the edge of the doorway and peered in with his head at floor level.

  There were ten of the guard there. The closest, with his back turned to Wallie, was the square-hewed figure of Trasingji, blocking any final escape to the jetty.

  Farthest away, and just inside the landward doorway, three lowranks were guarding Jja, Katanji, and the rest.

  Slightly closer stood a line of five middleranks, Fourths and Fifths, all watching Nnanji and Tarru himself, both with swords drawn. Nnanji lunged, Tarru parried easily, and laughed. Then he waited for his victim's next move, playing cat to Nnanji's mouse.

  That morning Nnanji had revealed himself as a first class swordsman. Tarru was now going to cut him down to size. It would be bloody murder.

  Wallie was not going to allow that. He rose, slipped the dagger from his belt with his left hand, and unsheathed the sword of the Goddess.

  In an obscure corner of his mind he registered that the next ferry boat had docked behind him, but he paid no attention. The scene was taking on a strange pink tinge. He could hear an ominous noise that he had heard before, a grinding of teeth. He knew what was happening, and this time he let it happen. When the bloodlust was upon him, Shonsu was a berserker.

  Shonsu now took over.

  With a barbaric scream of fury, he launched himself forward. As he went by Trasingji, he pushed the dagger into his back and then tugged it loose again, without even breaking stride. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man begin to crumple, but already he was bearing down on Tarru and Nnanji, howling for blood, his hair standing on end and his eyes red. Tarru started to turn and was cut down from behind with a sideways slash to the base of the rib cage, where there was little chance of a sword being caught between bones. It would not kill at once, but it would put the man out of the fight.

  Nnanji's jaw dropped, and his comic charcoal eyebrows shot up. His face was a ludicrous, frozen picture of horror, his sword suspended uselessly in midair, as the monster rushed past him.

  Wallie was often to wonder later what would have happened had he stopped there-halted, waved the blood-soaked sword of the Goddess at the middleranks, and told them that it was Her will that he leave the island with the sword. Very likely they would have agreed, and the killing would have been over at that point. That would have been the way of sweet reason, and certainly the choice of the old Wallie Smith. But it might also have been suicide, for surprise was his only advantage. It was not a tactic to appeal to Shonsu when the bloodlust was upon him. Harsh measures, the god had said...

  The line of five Fourths and Fifths awoke too late to their peril, to the realization that this nemesis was bearing down on them also. They started to draw. He took the middle one as a start. As the man pulled his blade from its scabbard, he was spitted by the seventh sword extended at arm's length. His neighbor to Shonsu's left managed to draw, but before he could reach guard position the attacker's momentum brought them into chest-to-chest contact, and he died on the dagger.

  That left two to the right and one to the left, and just for a moment they were delayed by the shock of the deaths, and by the two bodies falling in their path. Shonsu stumbled from the impact, pulled his dagger free, and swung around to lock swords with the first man on his right-Ghaniri, he noted through the red mist. He forced the weapons high, striking once more with the dagger, this time at his opponent's sword arm. It hit bone. Ghaniri yelled and fell back as Shonsu swung around, parrying a lunge from the single man on the left as though he had seen it through the back of his head. But he knew that Ghaniri was still mobile and still behind him, and there was another man also...

  Then he heard a clang as swords met, and he knew that Nnanji was in the battle, too, and holding that one.

  He made riposte, was parried, and heard the blades clash-clash-clash, as though measuring precious seconds off his life. Then he was under his opponent's guard and could bury his sword in his chest, but it caught in the ribs as the body fell, and another vital instant went by while he bent to pull it loose. He swung round, bringing up the dagger in the hope of parrying Ghaniri's inevitable attack behind him. Even as he did so, he knew it was too late.

  He caught a momentary vision of Ghaniri's ugly, battered face, contorted in hate or rage or fear. With right elbow high, he was bringing his sword down like a toreador in a long straight-and-true lunge, and there was just no time... Then that face showed sudden surprise as Nnanji's sword swept down in
a slash to sever his wrist, swung back up, and gutted him. Blood in torrents...

  Still howling, Shonsu whirled right around in a circle and registered a grinning Nnanji on his feet and five bodies on the ground. Then he raced for the juniors. They had already fled, abandoning their captives. Sword high, he ran after them, straight between Jja and the shrieking Cowie.

  He caught up with one just beyond the end of the shed and cut him down without missing a step. The other two separated, one fleeing along the road, the other turning to the right and racing across the meadow. Shonsu came screaming after that one, steadily gaining, until without warning the kid wheeled around and fell on his knees. Shonsu's sword stopped an inch from his neck. His head was tilted back, staring up, with eyes white all round the iris, lips curled in a rictus of terror, hands trembling in the sign of obeisance, waiting.

  Red fog faded. Yelling stopped. The sword was withdrawn.

  The Second fell forward in a dead faint.

  More or less conscious again, but still twitching and jigging, chest heaving hugely, Wallie stared down at him. The events of the past few minutes felt like something remembered from long ages past. Had that been him? That screaming, murdering fiend? He flopped on the grass to catch his breath. His throat was sore.

  It was over!

  Tarru was dead and the last junior was tearing up the trail as though Hell itself were still on his heels.

  He had won.

  Praise to the Goddess!

  * * *

  Feeling strangely removed from events, like an onlooker, Wallie wiped his sword on the turf. The Second opened his eyes and twitched with renewed terror on seeing him.

  "It's all right," said Wallie, smiling. "It's all over." He rose and sheathed his sword, held out a hand to the kid and helped him up. He was shivering like an aspen with ague. "Relax!" Wallie insisted. "Tarru is dead. You're alive and so am I. That's all that matters. Come on."

  He put an arm on the Second's shoulders and led the way back to the shed, not quite sure who was supporting whom. Just outside the doorway was the body of another Second, the one he had cut down. That was bad, very bad. That was the worst thing that had happened in the whole horrible day, for the youngster had been no threat. Even Janghiuki had been a threat, but this one had been running away. He had fallen victim to the berserk frenzy that Wallie had not brought under control in time. Almost it made the whole thing seem not worth while if he had done that.

  Inside the door were five more bodies, but those Wallie did not mind so much-especially Ghaniri and the other Fourth whom Nnanji had killed, for their deaths meant that Nnanji was all right. The killer earthworm had not returned. And Nnanji had not done that as a vassal, he had done it for his friend Shonsu. That felt good.

  He saw Jja and Cowie and the old man sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, and he smiled at them. He got no answering smiles. Honakura had his eyes close and seemed to be unconscious. Cowie, as usual, was blank. Jja was staring at him with an expression that surely was meant as a warning.

  He looked around groggily. He felt mildly surprised that there were so many men standing there, but they were against the light of the far doorway, and for a moment he could not make them out. Then he distinguished Nnanji.

  Nnanji was standing between two swordsmen, quite obviously under arrest.

  ††††††

  "I am Imperkanni, swordsman of the seventh rank, and I give thanks to the Most High for granting me this opportunity to assure your beneficence that your prosperity and happiness will always be my desire and the subject of my prayers."

  "I am Shonsu, swordsman of the seventh rank; I am honored by your courtesy and do most humbly extend the same felicitations to your noble self."

  He was a big man, broad and masterful, probably in his late forties. Experience and achievement had sculpted the leathery, square-jawed face into a mask of arrogance and authority. He had bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows, but his hair had been bleached with lime, giving him a magnificent white ponytail, which he wore longer than most. The only other sign of vanity about him was his poverty-his blue kilt was patched and threadbare, his boots scuffed, his harness positively shabby. Poverty was an affectation of the frees, to show their honesty. Yet his sword was bright and shiny, the heavy arms were scarred, and there were at least a dozen notches in his right shoulder strap.

  Here was a true swordsman, a veteran, a professional. Compared to this, Tarru had been garbage. Commander of a private army, owing allegiance to no man, guided only by his own conscience and his Goddess, Imperkanni was one of the powers of the World.

  His eyes were the palest Wallie had yet seen among the People, even paler than Nnanji's. Those amber eyes observed the seventh sword and the sapphire hairclip and they narrowed in disapproval. They were very cold, no nonsense eyes.

  "May I have the honor of presenting to the noble Lord Shonsu my protégé, Honorable Yoningu of the Sixth?"

  Yoningu was a little younger and slighter, with curly brown hair and quick eyes. His face was oddly lopsided, giving the impression that he might be a fun guy at a party. The fun side of him, if there really was one, was being suppressed at the moment, for he looked as hostile as his leader. He was another fighter, scarred like a butcher's block.

  Wallie accepted the salute and glanced across at his former vassal, standing with his head down, looking beaten and crushed.

  "We have already met Adept Nnanji," Imperkanni said icily. He turned to Yoningu. "You are willing to do this, protégé?"

  "I am, mentor," Yoningu said. He glanced briefly at Wallie and then Nnanji, then said loudly, "I also denounce Lord Shonsu for violations of the seventh sutra."

  So he had already denounced Nnanji. Imperkanni would be judge, Yoningu prosecutor. It was primitive justice by Wallie's standards, for both men were also witnesses, and they were probably buddies of many years' standing, but it was better than nothing.

  These were the passengers who had disembarked from the boat-about a dozen of them. two slaves and ten or so swordsmen ranging in rank from Second to Seventh. They had arrived just in time to see the fight, a company of the free swords of whom Nnanji spoke with such admiration and longing-the enforcers, the peacekeepers-those who supported, regulated, and, if necessary, avenged the swordsmen of garrison and guard.

  Imperkanni glanced out at the meadow and called over his shoulder to one of his men. "Kandanni, make sure those mules don't go without us."

  A Third trotted quickly out of the shed.

  "Good idea," Wallie said. "Perhaps, my lord, you would be kind enough to detain the boat also."

  Imperkanni raised a skeptical eyebrow, but he nodded to a Second, who went running along the jetty. He might be convinced already of the accused's guilt, but he was willing to observe the formalities.

  Wallie was so weary that his knees were trembling, but if they were not going to sit down, then he was not going to suggest it. The swordsmen had carefully sealed off the entrance to the meadow in case the prisoners tried to escape and, while both prisoners had been allowed to retain their swords, Wallie was quite certain that it was a mere courtesy. These men would not be pushovers like the temple guard. These men were fighters.

  He was to be tried, here and now, in the echoing and blood-spattered guardhouse. It was a strange courtroom: a big wooden shed with a wide cobbled floor like a street running through the middle of it. The horse stalls along one side were open to the high timber ceiling, but the opposite wall was solid, pierced by a few ordinary doors. Barn swallows swooped in and out the archways at the ends, soaring upward to their nests in the rafters, twittering angrily at the men below. If it reminded Wallie of anything at all, it was of a theater stage seen from the rear, the beams and bare flats exposed, and all the bodies from the last act of Hamlet strewn over the ground.

  The skinner and the boat captain were marched in and made to sit, close to Jja and Cowie. Swordsmen preferred action to argument. Not that any sane civilian would argue.

  Katanji
was standing behind his brother, staring at Wallie with big, scared eyes. The low evening light was pouring in the River door, floodlighting Trasingji's body. Horses were chomping behind the stall doors.

  "You may begin, Honorable Yoningu," the judge said.

  The prosecutor led the way over to Trasingji. Imperkanni and Wallie walked beside him.

  "I observed Lord Shonsu strike this man from behind, and with a dagger."

  They paced back to Tarru. Wallie was staggered to see that he had cut the man almost in half, and that the cobbles were drenched with blood all around, as though he had exploded.

  "I observed Lord Shonsu attack this man from behind."

  Then the group of five corpses, and Yoningu paused for a moment, to refresh his memory, or to make sure that he had significant charges to lay. His wry expression was caused by a scar, pulling the corner of his mouth up-perhaps he had no sense of humor at all. If his mentor ruled against Wallie, would Wallie then become this man's slave? No, these were capital offenses.

  "I observed Lord Shonsu attack these men without formal challenge. I observed Lord Shonsu strike this one with a dagger, and this one also." He shrugged, implying that those charges would do for now.

  Imperkanni turned to Wallie. "Do you have any defense?"

  "A great deal, my lord." Wallie smiled to show that he was not feeling guilty. "Honorable Yoningu has missed one, I think." He pointed between the guarding swordsmen to the body of the Second outside. That one was a capital offense in Wallie's eyes, and the only one.

  Yoningu glared at him angrily, as though Wallie were wasting the time of the court with trivialities. "That man was running away," he said.

  A wave of culture shock broke over Wallie, temporarily choking him. By running away, the boy had forfeited his right to be avenged. Yet, after a moment, Wallie found some comfort in that, because the other Second had stopped and made obeisance, and that had been enough to trigger Shonsu's controls and halt the berserker. Not much comfort, but a little. The first kid would still be alive, had he remembered his training.