The Coming of Wisdom

by David Duncan

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

  "You're joking!"

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

  "Thana's great, but... me―a water rat?" Nnanji shrugged. "Be a Seventh?"

  "Certainly, in time. Doing what?"

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

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

  Nnanji stared at him incredulously. "Reeve? Why not king?"

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

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

  Holiyi broke a two-day silence to say, "Heard that. Didn't know it mattered."

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

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

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

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

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

  "No, let's have a romantic one!" protested one of the women―Mata, he thought.

  "Don't know any romantic ones," Nnanji said. 'They weren't allowed in the barracks."

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

  "I sing of arms and he who made

  The greatest swords

  That men have wrought,

  Of how the price of life was paid,

  The seven years Chioxin bought."

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

  "Go on!" Matarro shouted eagerly.

  "Forgotten the words?" Tomiyano asked sarcastically.

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

  "A griffon crouched upon the hilt

  In silver white and sapphire blue,

  With ruby eye and talons gilt

  And blade of steel of starlight hue,

  The seventh sword he wrought at last,

  And all the others it surpassed."

  Silence again.

  "That can't be all?" Diwa protested.

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

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

  "And She gave it to Shonsu?" Matarro asked breathlessly.

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

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

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

  "Tom'o!" Brota's voice was reproving, but a few others muttered agreement.

  "Nor swordsmen! Who needs them?"

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

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

  ††† † †††

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

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

  "Here," Nnanji said softly at his side.

  The noise was subsiding.

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

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

  "Tomiyano? Holiyi?" Wallie said quietly.

  "Here."

  "Here."

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

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

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

  "Ready?" he asked, his voice muffled in Nnanji's kilt.

  He felt Nnanji chuckle. "Ready!" He leaned back.

  Wallie lifted and then straightened his knees: Ummph!

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

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

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

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

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

  "Four!"

  "Seven!"

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

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

  "Seven!"

  "Four!"

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

  "Hold it!" he panted. "Let them go."

  The wind was cold as death on his sweaty skin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "We'll starve you out," he shouted.

  No reply.

  "I've told you that you can leave. But only if you come now."

  More silence.

  "I'm a swordsman!" Wallie shouted, and he could hear his despair in his voice―and hoped the pirates could. "The sailors will be here in a minute. Hurry!"

  "With our swords?" asked a voice from just inside.

  "Yes. I swear."

  Nnanji growled angrily.

  Wallie snarled at him. "Keep watch on the boats!"

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

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

  "Four more," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "I didn't count."

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

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

 
She put an arm around him. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?" The shivering was getting worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Murderer!

  BOOK FIVE:

  HOW THE SWORD SAVED THE SWORDSMAN

  †

  zzz

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

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