by Dave Duncan
“Things look bloody,” Boariyi said, “swordsmen being slaughtered wholesale.”
“Sorcerers behind it, you mean? I guessed that when you said Nnanji had gone back to carrying a knife.” Swordsmen didn’t massacre swordsmen. They challenged them to duels, one on one. Only sorcerers would resort to mass violence.
“It looks like sorcerers with swordsmen allies. And thunder weapons again.”
Venal swordsmen with sorcerer allies had always been the ultimate nightmare scenario, the dogs ganging up with the cats.
The long procession had halted to await the two Sevenths’ arrival. They rode along the column to the litter, near the center. The eight slaves carrying it had been allowed to lay it down. A relief team of eight more bearers stood behind them, and it was clear that the man in charge was a short, thick-shouldered Fifth, whom Wallie remembered leaving Casr two years ago as a Third. His name was Endrasti, and Nnanji had praised him in dispatches. He saluted, grim-faced.
Wallie returned his salute. “Is he awake?”
“On and off. He insisted he must speak with you when you arrived.”
Ignoring the hundreds of watching eyes, Wallie walked over to the litter, which looked as if it had been assembled in a hurry by a gang of shipwrights using the most solid timber in their yards. Endrasti pulled back a drape and stepped aside.
The patient lay on at least a double layer of feather mattresses and was well covered in quilts. The face just barely visible in this foam was an image of Nnanji carved from white wax. His hair had lost none of its startling redness, so rare among the People. Unbound, it framed his head in a scarlet halo and emphasized his corpse pallor, as did the fresh blood around his mouth, for he had chewed his lip until it bled.
Wallie thought of vampires and horror movies. Encumbered by the extra sword he was holding, he did not attempt a formal salute. Just thumping his heart with a fist, he said, “Shonsu, brother, reporting for duty.”
Eyes opened, rolled vaguely, and steadied. His oath brother grimaced and managed a gargoyle smile. “Stay away from them, brother. They’ll get you in the end.” His voice was a painful gasp, forced through a throat raw with screaming.
“Who will?”
“Girls… course!” he groaned at another spasm of pain.
“I’ve been telling you that for years, you human goat. We’ll have you home very soon. Thana’ll be here in a moment. Don’t worry about anything. Any special instructions?”
The whisper was almost inaudible: “Take care of… kids?”
“Like my own, brother.” Clearly Nnanji was in no shape to provide any useful information. Before Wallie could say more, he was jostled aside by Thana, so he backed away.
He was in charge. Boariyi and Endrasti, blue kilt and red, were waiting for his orders. Four hundred men were watching.
For the benefit of the audience, he smiled and nodded as if he had just exchanged jokes with the patient. He spoke softly. “We’ll go on war footing as of now. Adept, you come with me. My lord, bring the liege home, to his palace. I’ll have it searched before you get there and post extra guards. Today’s password is Know your enemies and the rejoinder Only cats fight in the dark. We’ll hold a meeting of the council when you get to the lodge. I expect you’ll want a meal first, and the rest of us would be happier if you bathed, too.”
Both men laughed to continue the pretense of lightheartedness.
The council? There were more than two hundred Sevenths in the Tryst now, officially all members of the council, but they were scattered over half the World. Even with Boariyi, the meeting was going to be a pathetically small gathering.
Filurz had gone, racing back to Casr to take care of Addis. Wallie paused at Thana’s carriage, to leave the seventh sword in it for safekeeping. When he opened the door, he found Swordsman Tilber cuddling Tomisolaan. She looked guilty and blushed, yet this was the woman who had once challenged a Fourth for making a joke about female swordsmen. Keeping his face straight with an effort, Wallie assured Nnadaro that her mommy would be back soon and she would see Daddy when they got home.
Then he rallied what was left of his personal guard and headed back to Casr to deal with this disaster.
Chapter 7
The horses were already tired, so Wallie set a brisk, but not breakneck, pace. Endrasti rode at his side, waiting for the questions.
“First, then, master. Tell me how you fit into Nnanji’s company?” The Tryst had no fixed military structure. Each leader in the field, always a Seventh, made up his own rules as he went along, working with whatever men he had, to deal with whatever conditions he encountered.
“I was his senior aide, my lord. With respect, I believe he relied on me mostly for help with political matters, like things concerning kings or councils of elders or whoever else ran each city.”
Nnanji himself was only interested in reforming swordsmen. The need to clean up civic governments as well just annoyed him. It had taken a couple of years and a few nasty accidents before he had been convinced of the necessity.
“He praised you highly in his dispatches.”
“Oh. Thank you, my lord.”
“He never told you to your face how much he valued your work?”
“Well, yes, he did… But it’s nice to hear it confirmed!”
“Nnanji’s good at giving praise where it’s due, and if you’re no good he’ll tell you that, too.”
“I’ve heard that happening!” Endrasti smiled to indicate that the thunderbolts had never been directed at him. He had done extraordinarily well to move up from Third to Fifth in less than two years. He would have had to learn well over six hundred more sutras and raise his fencing to a much higher level. A stickler for regulations, Nnanji would always make sure that his personal favorites received no special treatment.
“So what’s all this about rebellion and ambushes? I just need the bare bones now, but the council will want the whole carcass, bones and offal and all. No verbal indelicacies that may escape your lips on this occasion will be held against you, I swear. If Nnanji screwed up, say so.”
“Oh, it wasn’t his fault, my lord. It happened about half a year ago. We were in the Ulk sector, and the sorcerers of Ulk have never been very cooperative, although they had caused us no trouble. We were working our way upstream toward a very large city named Plo.”
“Heard of it.” Jja had been born there, and its name had cropped up again later. Wallie had mentioned it to Katanji only a few hours ago.
“We’d heard that Plo was in a different coven’s sector, so we knew we might have some trouble. The reeve of a city called Fo swore to the Tryst willingly enough, and ordered his subordinates to do so as well. The elders seemed quite enlightened, so we prepared to move on up to Nolar, the next big town. Then we were told of a land crossing at a loading port called Cross Zek, which was closer. The trail led southward and there were big mountains visible that way. RegiKra, they’re called.”
That was what Wallie had been trying to remember: a sorcerer city called Kra lying south of Plo. Nnanji would have known that right away. It was rare for two towns or cities to face each other directly across the River, so “Cross Zek” simply meant a minor location opposite Zek.
Endrasti hesitated, moving in rhythm with his horse, staring at the trail ahead.
“So Nnanji had a choice to make,” Wallie prompted. “Either go on to Nolar and Plo, where he might need all his men and then some, or go exploring to see if there was access to another reach of the River to the south. Or split his forces and do both. What advice did you offer?” Advice that Nnanji had disregarded, likely.
He received a smile of thanks for the help. “I wasn’t happy about the information, my lord, and said so. I hadn’t been able to confirm the southern loop story. Cross Zek wasn’t a place where people lived, just a dock for loading tin ore. The riverbanks were high and steep there, but a tributary flowed in, so the ships could tie up out of the main flow. There was certainly a trail heading inland, but it might just le
ad to the tin mines. Winter was coming on; this was southern hemisphere.”
Wallie chuckled, a rumble of Shonsu thunder. “I have known my oath brother longer than you have, master. I’ll bet he couldn’t resist the chance to locate another loop.”
“Yes, my lord. He considered sending Lord Mibullim inland to explore, but he wanted him to send him to Casr soon. So he decided to send Master Notukasmo, with a troop of twenty-five. But he was only to reconnoiter, and must be back at Cross Zek by Slaters’ Day. The liege himself would take the rest of us over to Zek and then Nolar, but no farther.”
“Tell me about Mibullim.”
Endrasti frowned at this mention of other trouble. “Mibullim of the Seventh was a free sword, who’d come to meet us in Obla about four weeks before. He had fifteen men in his troop, and they were a very impressive band, my lord. One of them, Master Notukasmo, helped examine me for my promotion and almost shredded my kilt! He gave me the fight of my life, my lord, and I’m fairly sure he threw me the final point out of pity. Lord Nnanji complimented Lord Mibullim on his own fencing. He was eager to enlist, and so were his men.”
“Valuable reinforcements.” Of course the troop could have been sorcerer agents, but swordsmen took their ferocious oaths seriously, and it would be very hard to assemble such a large group of traitors. The fact that at least two of them were first-class fencers for their ranks was almost certain proof that they were what they claimed to be.“Glad to see ‘em, we were, sir, because we’d picked up rumors about the king of Plo planning to cause trouble. We knew we might have to wet our blades there. Nolar, which we would come to first, was also large, but I was hoping we might win some support there against Plo. I’d heard of a long-time inter-city rivalry, you see. But we’d smelt blood in the air ever since Arbo.”
Over the years the Tryst’s expansion had not required as much bloody warfare as Wallie had feared when Nnanji had first suggested that its mission must be to reform the entire swordsman craft. Wallie had imagined the Tryst conquering like an empire, but in fact it had spread more like a religion, by conversion. Its forces had advanced city by city along the River, swearing in the garrisons as they went, collecting and organizing the nomadic free sword troops. Any swordsman who refused to swear allegiance was denounced as a disgrace of the craft and challenged. If he won that bout, he could be challenged again and again, but in practice he would usually accept the inevitable and swear the oath. Since duress was not an admissible excuse for a swordsman, he was just as effectively bound then as if he’d submitted right away. If he later reneged, then he would be challenged again, and this time to the death. The Tryst’s commander on the spot—Nnanji, Shonsu, Boariyi, or another—would appoint a new reeve, clean up the guard, and then move on.
In effect, the reeves were police chiefs, kept honest by regular moves to new postings and by Casr’s roving inspectors. The inspectors were basically the old free swords, but they now had defined domains and the whole resources of the Tryst behind them; they could investigate even the largest cities and depose rulers if necessary.
Exceptions prove rules, though, and there had been minor battles.
“Cross Zek was a trap?”
“Aye, that it was, my lord. And so was Zek, but we were lucky there. After the Cross Zek scouting party disembarked, the rest of us went over to Zek itself. Wind and current made us detour downstream, but we arrived the following day and were made welcome. The reeve and the mayor had gone goose hunting, we were told, but they’d heard we were coming and left word that we were to be billeted in the shearing barn. We weren’t green enough to be caught like that, my lord, so when they sprang their trap, we were ready. They tried to burn the barn down on top of us. That didn’t work, but there were a lot of them and there was a battle. We killed every man found with a weapon or seen fighting. We left the women and children in the shearing barn, burned the rest of the town, and scuttled their fishing fleet.”
Horrible as that revenge was, Wallie knew that in Nnanji’s place he might well have done the same thing, for such blatant treachery must not go unpunished. With thousands of swordsmen scattered over half the World, the Tryst could not allow any to be molested without reprisal. The blood oath that bound it together laid an obligation of vengeance on both parties, so it was now Nnanji’s job to see that the dead men were avenged, and any Nnanji oath was automatically Wallie’s.
“Did they use thunder weapons?”
“We did not hear or see any, my lord. We guessed then, of course, that the Cross Zek land road was another trap. As soon as possible, Lord Nnanji took us all back there. They’d been ambushed, slaughtered to the last man. Their bodies had been stripped and left for the rats and ravens. If Lord Nnanji had led us all that way, we’d likely all have died.”
Clearly Lord Shonsu would be visiting Zek and Cross Zek in the near future.
“Who were these foes, though? Swordsmen or sorcerers?”
“Sorcerers, without a doubt, my lord, so Lord Nnanji said. Or civilians using sorcerers’ thunder weapons. No sword cuts, no arrow wounds. They had holes in them, that was all.”
So Wallie’s old nightmare of swordsmen trying to fight sorcerers armed with guns had come true at last. Even if the Kra coven had nothing better than the Vul coven’s smoothbore, short-barrel pistols, this was going to be very ugly.
He reined in and dismounted. “Show me,” he said, taking Endrasti’s reins. “Pace it out. How far apart were the bodies?”
They were not quite into the vineyards, still in the upland area of dairy farms, where cows slumped on the grass chewing their cud incuriously. Endrasti recreated the scene for him, using fences and even particular cows as landmarks. He conjured up a narrow, steep-sided valley, a deep cut winding through forested hills, with poor visibility ahead and none at all to the sides. Anything, he said, might be hidden in the trees and bushes above. Most of the bodies lay in order of march, as if they had died in a single volley, but a few had tried to storm up the crumbling sides and been shot down from above. Wallie questioned him hard on distance. How far from their victims had the bushwhackers been hiding? The most significant fact that he deduced was that the range had been too great for smoothbore handguns. The bushwhackers had been armed with long guns, so the Kra sorcerers, if they were the culprits, had invented the musket.
“How many wounds per body, could you tell?”
“Well… The crows had been at them, my lord. One or two, was most I saw.”
“Were any of them ripped to pieces?” Back when Vul coven had conquered the RegiVul Loop, they had progressed to cannon loaded with grapeshot. The entire garrison of Gor had been wiped out with one such “thunderbolt”.
“No, my lord. Lord Nnanji commented on that.”
“Our losses?”
“At Cross Zek twenty-six swordsmen, three porters, and a herald; worse than Arbo.”
Thirty musket balls could not mow down thirty men. At least twice that many shots would be needed, and that meant either a far greater rate of fire than could be achieved with primitive muskets, or a much larger force. Considering that the enemy could not have known how many swordsmen they would have to deal with, the much larger force theory seemed more likely.
The two men remounted and continued their ride.
“Twice you mentioned somewhere called Arbo.”
Endrasti looked at Wallie with dismay. “The massacre at Arbo, on Swordsmen’s Day. Honorable Rudere… You didn’t receive that dispatch, either?”
The Tryst maintained a picket post at the edge of town. Wallie and Endrasti stopped there to change horses, so they were able to make good speed on the last leg of their journey to the lodge. He went straight to the Executive Block, tossed his reins to a waiting junior, and took the steps at the double. As was to be expected, Master Horkoda was still at his desk.
Wallie barked out the news. “Lord Nnanji was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt last night, in Quo. Have his palace searched from turret to cellar and post double guards. He is
coming home with an escort of around four hundred, led by lord Boariyi. His usual quarters must be made ready, and the rest of them will need billeting, feeding, stabling. Inform the lords of the council that we’ll meet this evening as soon as Lord Boariyi has had a chance to freshen up. Master Endrasti, here, will attend. Meanwhile, he needs billeting and looking after also.”
His aide had heard all this without taking a single note. He could read and write, but still preferred to rely on his childhood memory training.
“You wish a recorder present?”
“Certainly not.” Most recorders were sorcerers. “Where can I find the boy Addis?”
Horkoda permitted himself a very faint smile. “In Swordsman Helbringr’s quarters in your palace, my lord. Master Filurz arrived less than an hour ago and doubled your guards. Apprentice Vixini is being force-fed sutras as if his life depended on it.”
Wallie felt a twist of guilt. The opposite might be closer to the truth. By pushing his stepson into third rank, he would make him eligible for battle, and the war had already started.
Accompanied by a pickup escort, Wallie rode back to his palace, where he found Adept Filurz newly cleaned up after his ride in, still slightly damp. Addis, he reported, was downstairs, demonstrating his new-found skills.
Sure enough, the swordsmen of Wallie’s night watch, and many of his daytime bodyguard as well, were sitting around in the guards’ mess, deriding a gladiatorial show. In the center, Addis, son of Nnanji, and Novice Gwiddle, who was shorter but broader, were circling each other warily. Both wore very dirty kilts, originally of first-rank white. Unsworn youths were forbidden clothing except in cold weather, but some protection would be a wise precaution when engaged in Addis’s current activity. Swordsman Helbringr was on her feet, being referee and instructor.
