by David Duncan
Polini was shocked, but tried not to show it. "So they are as dangerous as the locals report?"
"Probably more so," Wallie assured him. "One slew a man on this deck. A sorcerer can kill at a distance. Only speed will prevail against them, a throwing knife would be a better weapon than a sword." His hearers would have been horrified to hear that he had a knife hidden in his boot and that he practiced with it daily. He did not bother to point out the holes in the ship's rail that had been made by musket balls.
"But they are not invincible?" Arganari exclaimed, wiping beer froth from his lips. "The locals tell of one swordsman victory!"
"Do they now?" Wallie said. "Tell me that, then."
The boy beamed and began to chatter in a curious singsong, although Polini was already showing doubt on his craggy face.
"At Ov, my lord, two weeks ago. It is said that swordsmen from a ship attacked a band of sorcerers on the dock and survived the thunderbolts. They charged them in a wagon, my lord, and made great slaughter of the unholy ones. They were led by a Seventh and a very young, red-haired Fourth, my lord. We were told that they could have seized the evildoers' tower and taken back the city, except that... the Seventh.... chose... not to?" Horror spread over his youthful face.
Shouts and thumps drifted up from the dock; white birds soared by on the wind. A windlass on the next ship squeaked painfully.
Sevenths were rare. Sevenths who sailed these waters were as common as square eggs. Sevenths did not appreciate innuendoes of cowardice. Potini was rigid, obviously wondering what his protégé might have provoked.
"I am sure that he had excellent reason, my lord." the boy whispered.
"Probably," Wallie said bitterly. He had not expected the story to be up and down the River already. In this primitive World he expected no news to travel faster than the sorcerers' pigeons, and most to travel hardly at all. But now the Goddess was moving ships around like snowflakes. The news of the battle at Ov would be all along the River, and mat meant all over the World-news of swordsmen battling sorcerers, a red-haired Fourth, and a black-hatred Seventh who had called back his troops from the brink of victory. That was another problem, then, to add to his others-one he had not anticipated.
He discovered that he had been sitting in silence and scowling. So he smiled and said, "There may be more to that story than the dock gossip tells."
He got a chorus in reply.
"Of course, my lord!"
"Of course, my lord?"
At that moment Nnanji came up the plank, saw the meeting in progress, and strode over at once, homing in on visiting swordsmen like a bird dog. He was wearing his usual eager grin, and it seemed even wider than normal, perhaps because of what he had been doing ashore. He was tall, young, lanky, and very red-haired by the standards of the People. And he wore the orange kilt of a Fourth.
Polini and Arganari glanced at each other and then rose.
"May I have the honor, master..." Wallie presented Nnanji of the Fourth, protégé and oath brother; and after those formalities, he surprised Nnanji by presenting the First.
"Arganari?" Nnanji wrinkled his snub nose as he did when he was thinking. "There was a great hero once by that name."
"My ancestor, adept."
Nnanji thought it was a question and looked puzzled.
"The founder of his royal house," Wallie said to get his protégé pointing in the right direction.
The boy nodded proudly. "The Kingdom of Plo and Fex," he said. "My father has the honor to be the holy Arganari XIV, priest of the seventh rank."
So this Arganari was the oldest son. Polini's problem was even worse than Wallie had suspected.
"There are many great epics about him!" Nnanji declared solemnly. "My favorite is the one that begins..."
After about twenty lines, Wallie laid a hand on his arm to stop him and suggested that they all sit down again.
Nnanji squatted on his heels between Wallie and the visitors. "And of course, Arganari led the tryst of Xo," he said. Then he winked at Wallie and said, "With the topaz sword, the fourth sword of Chioxin!"
That was why the name had been familiar!
"My sword!" Arganari exclaimed proudly.
Nnanji looked at the boy's sword and frowned.
"He does not wear it," Polini said. "But it is the proudest possession of his house; and when he was inducted into the craft, Lord Kollorono, reeve of the palace guard, dedicated it to him. He is the first swordsman in the dynasty since the great Arganari, so it was fitting, and a most moving ceremony."
Wallie chuckled. "I am sure that you got it off him quickly afterward."
Polini smiled understanding! "It would take a great swordsman to wear one of the seven for long, my lord."
"Describe the fourth to us," Nnanji said with a smile.
The boy's eyes shone with pride. "The guard is a golden basilisk, holding a topaz. The basilisk means 'Justice tempered with mercy,' so that is the motto of our house. And the blade is all inscribed with swordsmen fighting monsters on one side, and maidens playing with them on the other."
It is a magnificent weapon," Polini said, probably glad of an impersonal topic in this awkward interview. "I tried it. The balance, the spring-magnificent! Chioxin's reputation was well deserved."
Nnanji turned his grin back to Wallie.
"Something like this?" Wallie asked. He drew his sword and held it out for them to see. The hilt had been behind his head all this time, and they would not have had a good look at it.
Polini and his protégé gasped loudly.
"The seventh!" Arganari shouted. "A sapphire and a griffon! And the pictures are much the same. Is it real? I mean, is it really the seventh sword of Chioxin?"
"Probably."
The legendary sword was having a bombshell effect on the swordsmen. Polini had gone perceptibly pale, and the boy quite pink with excitement.
"But, my lord..." Arganari was turning even pinker.
"Yes?"
"The six swords are famous... the saga has no stories of the seventh. It is said that Chioxin gave it to the Goddess."
"Perhaps the story is not finished yet?" Nnanji suggested, his enormous grin still firmly in place.
Polini and Arganari nodded solemnly, still fascinated by the sword.
"The griffon is the symbol of royalty. It means 'Power wisely used,'" the boy said, peering at the exquisitely fashioned guard.
"It is a very long blade." Polini would use a long sword, being tall.
"Want to try your luck?" Wallie asked.
Polini blanched. "Of course not, my lord!"
"It is in superb condition," the boy said, his strange way of speaking almost making it a question. "Mine is notched and worn. Just one flaw."
Nnanji nodded solemnly. "That mark was made by a sorcerer's thunderbolt."
Polini and his protégé again exchanged glances, then the boy went back to examining the sword. He pointed at the figures engraved in the blade. "You see the cross-hatching, mentor? It is said that Chioxin was left-handed. On all his swords, not just the seven, the cross-hatching goes from left to right."
"The devil you say?" Wallie murmured, peering. "Like Leonardo da Vinci? I thank you, novice. I did not know that. Then this isn't a forgery, after all!"
Nnanji snickered.
"My lord..." Arganari said and stopped. His mentor rumbled warningly at him.
"You want to know where I got it," Wallie said, replacing the priceless blade in his scabbard. He shrugged. "It is a reasonable question. I was given it by a god." He drank some beer.
The visitors were understandably astounded.
"He also gave me this sapphire hairclip and told me I had a task for the Goddess."
Now Polini understood and was impressed. "Then you are to be leader of the tryst, my lord!"
"Perhaps I am," Wallie said. "If so, then She is in no hurry to get me there, which may be where you come in." He looked to Nnanji, who nodded thoughtfully.
"Me? Us?"
"I a
m wondering if we were meant to meet, Master Polini. Stranger things can happen-indeed they happen to me all the time. It is curious that you chose this ship, and even more curious that you and your protegé should be familiar with one of the other seven swords of Chioxin. A tryst might be good training for a swordsman prince. After all, a novice will not be expected to do any fighting, so he will be in no great danger."
For the first time, the youngster showed some normal boyish excitement. He swung around to his mentor to see what he thought.
Polini rose disapprovingly. "You may well be right, my lord. I hope that you are. But I have already sworn my oath and I must attempt to return my protégé to Plo. If I am wrong, then I am sure that we shall meet again-in Casr."
The light died in the boy's eyes, and he stood up dutifully. Princes learned more than flowery speeches, and Firsts did not argue. Then he turned and looked up at Nnanji.
"Adept," he said, his voice now curiously flat, "was it truly you who led the wagon charge against the sorcerers in Ov?"
Nnanji grinned. "We skinned them! Fourteen dead sorcerers." He glanced regretfully at Wallie, who had spared an easy fifteenth.
The boy reached up and unfastened his ponytail. "I shall not likely be going to the tryst, adept," he said. "Lord Shonsu has a hairclip that was given him by a god, so he will not mind. This one belonged to my ancestor, and he wore it on the tryst of Xo. Will you take it for me and wear it against the evildoers?" He held out the silver clip.
"Novice!" Polini barked. "That clip has been in your family for centuries! Your father would not approve of your giving it away to a stranger. I forbid this!"
"Not a stranger, mentor, a hero."
"I think he is right, novice," Wallie said gently.
That settled the matter, of course, but Nnanji, immensely flattered at being called a hero, swallowed hard and said that he also agreed. Reluctantly Arganari replaced the clip, looking very juvenile between the three tall men.
"We thank you for your hospitality, my lord," Polini said formally. "I wish now to withdraw, with your permission, and seek a vessel. Probably a smaller would be more suitable. With no sailor-swordsmen Sixths!" he added, his smile openly skeptical.
Puzzled and vaguely worried, Wallie led the visitors back to the top of the gangplank, arriving just as Lae came aboard, closely followed by Jja. Jja had discarded the riverfolk bikini sashes she normally wore on the ship in favor of a conventional slave's black wrap. But the perfection of her figure could triumph over any costume, and her face was the stuff of legends. Wallie smiled her a welcome. He put an arm around her and unthinkingly proceeded to commit a major social blunder. Accustomed over many weeks now to the informality of ship life, he had forgotten the stilted formality of land-based culture in the World.
"Jja, my darling," he said, "here are visitors from your hometown, Master Polini and his Highness Novice Arganari."
The swordsmen stared aghast at the slavestripe on the woman's face. Jja was momentarily paralyzed, also. There was no ritual for presenting slaves, as Wallie should have remembered.
Then Jja fell to her knees and pressed her forehead to the deck. Wallie bit his lip in fury at his own stupidity. Polini was totally at a loss for words. It was young Arganari who reacted first. He stepped forward and raised her.
"Truly I see how Plo earned its reputation for beautiful women," he said in his singsong, childish voice. "If it did not have it before, then it would now."
That was a courtly speech.
†††
Master Polini headed down the plank with his protégé at his heels. He was probably relieved to escape from the insanity of Sapphire, with its incomprehensible Seventh and its rabid captain. If he breathed a prayer of thanks, then he breathed too soon, for another outrage was in store for him-on reaching the dock he came face-to-face with the returning Brota.
Female swordsmen were a heresy to landlubbers. Fat swordsmen were intolerable. Swordsmen who still bore their blades in middle age were contemptible. Brota was all of those, voluminous in her red robe, her ponytail streaked with gray, and a sword on her back. Wallie saw the encounter and chuckled. Apparently there was something in Polini's face that annoyed her, for she fixed him with her piggy eye and accosted him squarely. Then she drew and made the salute to an equal. With obvious reluctance, he responded. They exchanged a few words, then Polini set off along the road with furiously huge strides, his diminutive protégé almost trotting to keep up with him. Brota rolled up the plank wearing a satisfied smirk. As a water-rat swordsman she enjoyed baiting the landlubber variety almost as much as her sailor son did.
Polini had probably not even noticed Mata in the background, although she was still a fine-looking woman in her brown bra sash and breechclout. Wallie wondered what Polini would have said had he been told that she, a sailor of the third rank, a mother of four children, could probably give him a fair match with foil or sword.
Wallie had apologized to Jja, cursed himself several times for his stupidity, and then had to tell the beginning of the story to Nnanji, who had nodded in satisfaction and gone off with his head high, probably repeating "hero" to himself. A prince had said it-intoxicating stuff for the son of a rugmaker.
Brota rolled over to Wallie and scowled up at him under her curiously bushy white brows. "I suppose you are in haste to leave now, my lord?"
Wallie shrugged. "Not especially. If the Goddess is in a hurry, then She can speed our passage as She pleases. You found no trade?"
"Pah! Their prices are outrageous," she said.
Katanji had commented on the prices in the brothel. Katanji was a very astute young man in money matters. Now Wallie wondered if a tryst would create a local inflation. A few hundred active young men could certainly drive up the price of food-and women-in Casr, but he would not have thought that the effect would have reached so far as Tau.
That raised a whole new series of problems. Who was going to pay for this tryst? Probably most of the men arriving would be free swords. They would be penniless, and Casr would be in trouble. They would expect free shelter and board-and women. The economy of the World was a primitive, fragile thing. The demigod had given Wallie a fortune in sapphires and called it "expenses." Perhaps that had been another hint that he was expected to be leader of the tryst. Why, then, was he not being taken to it?
He looked across the dock road to the nearest warehouse. "The Goddess has guided you often in the past to the most profitable cargo, mistress," he suggested. "What do they offer over there?"
"Ox hides!" Brota snorted. "Nasty things! I don't want my ship full of smelly hides!"
"Hides?" Wallie repeated thoughtfully. Brota noticed at once. Brota and gold had a mutual attraction.
"Hides?" she echoed. The conversation was becoming monotonous.
"If we reach Casr... if I become leader of the tryst-and those are big 'ifs'-then I think hides might be of value."
"Scabbards? Boots?" She frowned in disbelief.
"Heavier grade than that, I should think."
"Saddle leather? You would fight sorcerers with leather, Shonsu?"
He smiled and nodded.
Brota studied him narrowly. "The sorcerers have driven all the tanners out of their cities. Any connection?"
"None whatsoever."
Brota pouted. Then she wheeled about, shouted for Mata, and rolled toward the plank.
Wallie glanced around. He was pleased to see that Katanji had reappeared on deck and had recovered most of his color. Wallie beckoned him over. "Feeling better now?" he inquired.
The lad gave him a pert and incredibly innocent smile. "Yes, thank you, my lord." Katanji could be angelically polite or diabolically vulgar, as circumstances required.
"I need a speck of additional wisdom from you, novice," said Wallie.
"I am always at your service and at that of the Goddess, my lord."
After the service of his own money pouch, of course.
"Good!" Wallie said with a conspiratorial smile. "Mistress
Brota is now bent on buying leather. I should like to know how much she spends on it."
Katanji grinned. "Is that all?" He nodded and walked away. He could probably discover details of the tanner's grandfather's sex life if Wallie needed them.
Wallie stayed by the rail, watching his spy trail after Brota. There were no swordsmen in sight. Then Nnanji reappeared at his side, suspicious of what his oath brother had wanted with his true brother. Nnanji's protégé was a constant trial to him, with his unswordsmanlike tendencies, and his mentor almost as bad. Wallie decided not to explain, out of pure perversity.
"Did you find Adept Kionijuiy?" he inquired.
Nnanji scowled. "Someone else got to him first, my lord brother."
On their previous visit to Tau, Kionijuiy had been de facto reeve. He had been absent from his post, leaving the town in the care of an inadequate garrison, and that lapse had offended Nnanji's ideals of swordsman honor. While the subject had not been discussed since, Wallie knew that Nnanji never forgot anything. He would certainly have sought to rectify the matter that morning.
"The new reeve is the Honorable Finderinoli," Nnanji added. "He and his band arrived at the lodge just before your message got there. So he came on to Tau and put things to rights at once. I did not meet him, but he seems to be doing a fine job." He nodded approvingly.
"What did he do to the old man?" Wallie asked. Kionijuiy's father had failed to resign when he grew too old to be reeve. Much worse, though, he had taught his civilian sons to fence. That was an abomination, a breach of the sutras, a violation of the swordsmen's closed-shop union rules.
"Drained him, too," Nnanji said simply, studying people on the dock road below.
Wallie shivered. "And the brothers?"
"Cut off their hands," Nnanji said. "Ah! Here she is!"
Thana was coming along the road-Brota's daughter, tall and slim and ravishing in a yellow wrap. Thana had a classic Grecian profile and dark curls. Whenever Wallie saw her with her sword on her back, as now, he thought of Diana the Huntress. When Thana was in sight, Nnanji would not think readily of anything else.
