A Young Man Without Magic

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The watchman said nothing; he merely blinked.

  “Take off your clothes. Now,” Anrel ordered.

  “I don’t . . .” The man’s words were slurred, and he was unable to finish the sentence; Anrel hoped his blows had not done any permanent damage. He set both sword and dagger aside, and set to stripping off the watchman’s uniform himself. The watchman did not resist, but sat limply as Anrel tugged at his garments.

  By the time Anrel was done and dressed in the blue and white coat and breeches, the man’s grogginess was passing; he was sitting up in his underclothes and looking frightened.

  “Just stay quiet and I won’t hurt you,” Anrel said, snatching up his stolen sword and holding it at the watchman’s throat. “Call out, and I’ll kill you.”

  The watchman nodded. He remained silently cooperative as Anrel used his own belt to tie his captive’s wrists behind him, and then his own fawn breeches to bind the man’s ankles. Finally, he stuffed a handkerchief in the watchman’s mouth.

  He made sure the bindings were as secure as he could make them, and that the man was well out of sight of the main street; he did not want the watchman getting loose or being found too soon.

  Then he stood and finished buttoning and belting himself into the watchman’s uniform. He slid the sword back into the sheath on his stolen belt, and tucked the dagger back into his boot—the finely made weapon wasn’t something a real watchman was likely to have, but he could not bring himself to leave it behind.

  He had kept his own boots. The watchman’s would not have fit properly; he could see that at a glance. He thought his own were similar enough to pass a casual inspection.

  Once again fully dressed he stopped at that doorway to retrieve his velvet coat and traveler’s hat, which he stuffed into the watchman’s almost-empty rucksack. That rucksack might prove very convenient at some point, Anrel thought.

  Aware that his captive might work his way free very quickly, Anrel wasted no more time. He clapped the watchman’s hat on his head and marched down toward the docks, deliberately letting his sword rattle.

  As he entered the square several pairs of eyes turned toward him, and he spoke before anyone else could.

  “Orders from Lord Neriam,” he said, as he marched toward the docks. “I’m to ride the next barge down and make sure none of the conspirators have gotten at the locks. Can’t afford to have the canal out of service.”

  “I think we’d have seen if anyone did anything,” one of the other watchmen replied.

  Anrel shrugged. “I didn’t give the orders. Take it up with the magistrates.” He looked at the barges. “Which one’s leaving next?”

  For a moment no one answered; then a bargeman pointed, and Anrel strode briskly to the indicated craft. “Where can I stand?” he demanded, as he set one foot on the gunwale.

  The crew of the barge all stopped what they were doing to stare at him; Anrel suppressed the urge to either run away or demand to know what they were staring at.

  “I’m to ride down the canal with you,” he said. “Where can I stand?”

  “Over there,” the tillerman replied, bemused. He gestured toward a clear space near the bow.

  Anrel resisted the temptation to say thank you; it seemed out of character for his role. Instead he stepped down into the barge without another word and made his way to the spot the tillerman had indicated, where he would be out of the way of the four men with barge poles.

  None of them spoke to him; they watched silently as he passed, then returned to their labors.

  Anrel took up his position and stood there, looking conspicuously useless, as the crew finished loading the barge.

  To every outward appearance he was calm, even bored, but in his heart Anrel was almost mad with impatience and worry—at any moment the watchman he had robbed might work his way free and come denounce Anrel as an imposter. Anrel wanted to shout at the men to hurry up, to get the barge moving, to get him out of the city, but he could not do so without giving himself away, so he forced himself to stand idle, weight on one leg, hands on his hips.

  At last, though, the barge seemed to be full, yet no one made a move to push off. “What are you people waiting for?” he demanded.

  “The lock’s still filling,” the nearest bargeman said smugly.

  Anrel turned. Sure enough, the big doors were still closed, and the water beyond was still a couple of feet below the level of the basin.

  “Right,” Anrel said. “Carry on.”

  “Yes indeed, sir.” The bargemen exchanged amused glances. Anrel resisted the temptation to make some ill-tempered comment; it would have been in character, but he did not want to be drawn into any conversations, as they might go in directions for which he was not prepared.

  Eventually the water level on both sides of the gates equalized, and the lockkeepers heaved at the beams, forcing the valves open. The tillerman barked an order, and the bargemen lifted their poles and pushed off.

  Anrel watched with feigned indifference as the barge slid through into the lock, and the doors closed behind it. Up until now, if a band of watchmen had come after him, he could have jumped overboard and made a run for it. Once the spillways were opened, though, and the barge began to descend, the jump from barge to wall grew rapidly and steadily more difficult; if his deception was detected before the barge passed under the city wall he could easily be trapped.

  “What was it you wanted to see, sir?” one of the forward bargemen asked.

  Anrel turned to look at him. “What concern is it of yours?”

  “Well, sir, we know the canal better than you do. I thought I might be able to point things out to you.”

  Anrel considered that, then nodded. “Lord Neriam’s secretary heard a rumor that someone was cutting a hole down into the tunnel,” he said.

  The bargemen exchanged glances. “You mean the passage under the city wall?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t see how that would be possible, sir.”

  Anrel allowed himself a smile. “I don’t, either,” he said, “but looking for signs of it is an easier way for me to earn today’s pay than fighting rioters in Aulix Square.”

  “Rioters? Is that what all that noise was?”

  Startled, Anrel asked, “You hadn’t heard?”

  “The lieutenant said there was trouble, but he didn’t say what kind.”

  “Oh. Then perhaps I shouldn’t, either.”

  “But we’re on our way out of the city, sir—look, they’re opening the doors to the next lock. Poles up, boys!”

  For the next few minutes the bargemen were too busy maneuvering their craft safely into the next compartment to ask any more questions, or listen to any more answers. Once the doors had closed behind them, though, they turned their attention back to Anrel.

  “Now, sir, what’s this about rioters?” the nearest man asked. “Was it something about the grain shipments?”

  “Grain? No, nothing like that,” Anrel said. “Just some damned idiot making ridiculous speeches and getting everyone stirred up.”

  The clang of the spillway doors opening echoed from the stone walls of the lock, and Anrel looked up at the lockkeepers, standing a dozen feet above him. The sky had shrunk down to a rectangle, and as the water drained out from beneath them and the barge sank downward it contracted still further.

  “Speeches?”

  “About the Grand Council, I heard,” Anrel said. “I don’t know the details.”

  “You said there were conspirators?”

  “Must have been,” Anrel said. “Someone spirited our orator out of Aulix Square before he could be arrested. They say that the crowd in the square seemed organized, too, as if they had planned their actions in advance.” He hoped desperately that this didn’t contradict anything these people had heard earlier.

  It seemed to satisfy the bargemen; they did not question him further, but merely watched the walls sliding up around them.

  At last the roar of water through the spillways trai
led off to nothing, and a moment later the doors ahead of the barge swung open. Four barge poles thumped against the walls of the lock, and the craft slid forward, into the third and final lock.

  Anrel looked up at the lockkeepers, far above. Not much longer, and he would be safe. If his deception held until he was in the tunnel, that was all he needed.

  The doors thumped shut behind them, and the lockkeepers opened the final spillways, which drained not into the lower canal, but into underground holding tanks, whence it could be pumped back up to refill the locks. Again, the barge descended.

  No one seemed to have anything to say this time, though.

  Finally the last pair of doors swung open, and the poles thumped on the walls, and the barge slid forward into the tunnel that led out of Naith. Anrel looked up at the lockkeepers one last time.

  Someone shouted, and the lockkeepers all turned to see what was happening. Anrel guessed that his captive had finally freed himself. He started to say something to the bargemen, to urge them to greater speed, but he caught himself in time—they were through the doors, and there was no way the lockkeepers could stop the barge now. Closing the doors would merely speed them forward a little.

  “Wonder what that’s about?” one of the bargemen said, glancing up.

  “Nothing to do with us,” another replied, before Anrel could respond.

  And then the barge slipped into the gloom ahead. The sky overhead vanished, taking the lockkeepers and the city watch with it, and the barge, its cargo, and the six men aboard it were surrounded by the arched stone of the tunnel. A half circle of daylight, perhaps a hundred feet away, provided most of the illumination and beckoned them onward.

  17

  In Which Anrel Takes to the Water

  When the barge finally emerged from the tunnel into the afternoon sun the glare was almost blinding; Anrel shaded his eyes as best he could, but still had to blink and squint. The bargemen didn’t seem to do much better.

  One of them turned and smiled at Anrel. “I didn’t see any holes, sir—did you?”

  “No,” Anrel admitted. “You can put me ashore . . .” Then he stopped as he looked at his surroundings.

  The canal here was cut deep into the earth; the barge was being poled along between high stone walls. There was no shore, no bank, to put him on. The walls towered a good ten feet above his head.

  Behind him the ramparts of Naith rose even higher, easily sixty feet from the barge’s deck, and as he looked he saw heads appearing atop the wall, peering down at him.

  “Fend off!” the tillerman called, and Anrel whirled around to see that another barge was heading directly toward them, on its way into Naith. He stared at it in horror, expecting a collision—surely, the canal wasn’t wide enough here for the two barges to pass!

  But it was. The barge poles were pulled in on one side, pushed hard on the other, and the two craft slid past each other, with less than a foot of clearance between them, and less than a foot between the gunwale and the wall of the canal.

  The bargemen on the starboard side stood with their poles raised straight up, and greeted the other barge’s crew as the two passed; it was clear they all knew one another.

  “Hey, Orlin, still seeing that girl in Kuriel?” one man asked, and a young man on the other barge blushed bright red.

  “Does she have a sister?” another man asked, and everyone laughed.

  The people atop the city ramparts were shouting now, but their words were unintelligible over the laughter, the thump of barge poles on stone and wood, the echoes from the smooth stone walls. The tillerman looked up over his shoulder and muttered something Anrel could not make out.

  If the words from above did manage to be heard, Anrel knew he was in trouble. He could still be trapped here, in this barge, in this canal. His hand fell to the hilt of his stolen sword.

  “Those fools up there seem to be shouting at us,” a bargeman remarked, looking up at Naith.

  “Probably telling us they caught someone,” Anrel said.

  The bow of the barge was well clear of the other craft now, and the forward starboard bargeman had lowered his pole back to the horizontal, ready to resume pushing; the aft starboard bargeman was still waiting for the other boat’s stern to be entirely clear, and the tillermen were calling their respects to each other. Anrel’s hand closed on the sword.

  He had taken a few lessons in swordsmanship during his years in Lume—not so much because he intended to ever use them, but merely to impress the local women. He had learned enough to know that he wasn’t actually very good with a blade. His instructor had said he showed some talent, but he had never applied himself seriously to the study, preferring to devote his time to history and law, which he expected to be more valuable in finding employment.

  Taking on five large, muscular opponents, four of whom held barge poles that could make very serviceable weapons, would be suicide.

  Surrendering to the magistrates of Naith would be equally suicidal, though—there could be no doubt that if he was caught here and now, while memories were still fresh and fires still burning, and while still wearing his stolen uniform, he would be hanged for sedition or treason. He needed time for things to cool down.

  He looked up, trying to judge the height of the walls of the canal. That height was dropping down toward the canal’s level as the barge made its way out of the hillside toward the river, but it was still much too far to leap, and probably farther than he could hope to climb. The joints between stones did not seem to provide many handholds.

  “Stop!” The single word, called from the ramparts, was finally understandable, where the earlier shouting was not. The other barge was well clear, and at that moment none of the poles happened to be thudding against the walls, nothing happened to be splashing, no one was speaking. The lower walls here produced fewer echoes to obscure the sound, which more than made up for the increased distance.

  “Do they mean us?” one of the bargemen asked, looking up.

  “He’s pointing at us,” another replied.

  “. . . not a watchman!” came the cry from above.

  It took a second for the words to penetrate; then five faces turned toward Anrel. The tiller and the four poles were held motionless, leaving the craft to drift gently on the calm water of the canal.

  In the sudden silence, the next shout was clear: “Hold him there!”

  Anrel smiled. His sword would not save him here, but his words still might.

  “It’s true,” he said. “I’m not a watchman. I stole this uniform I’m wearing. They were hunting for me, and the canal was the only way I could hope to escape the city, so I knocked a watchman on the head and took his clothes. I didn’t kill him; I didn’t hurt him any more than I had to. I tied him up, but it seems he got loose and raised the alarm.”

  The bargemen exchanged uncertain glances.

  “Now, the five of you have a decision to make,” Anrel said, pulling the sword halfway from its sheath. “You can fight me, five against one, and probably win, but I do have this sword, and I’ve studied swordsmanship, so I could probably hurt two or three of you before you take me down—maybe even kill one or two. It would be messy.”

  Again, uncertain glances, a little more worried this time.

  “Or you could keep poling us along, pretend you couldn’t hear, until we get to a point where I can get off the barge, off the canal, and make a run for it. If you do that, why, I’ve no reason to hurt anyone, and when they ask you why you let me go, you can just say you didn’t know any better. Or if you think it would be more convincing, you could say I threatened you all with the sword, and demonstrated such amazing skill with a blade that you did not think your numbers would be sufficient to overcome me—I’d be happy with that, too, as it might intimidate anyone they send after me.”

  “And why shouldn’t we just knock you off the boat with a barge pole and leave you to drown?” the tillerman asked.

  “You might be able to do that,” Anrel conceded. “Or I might
dodge better than you think, and then, as I said, it would be messy. Still, I can see why you’d think it was worth a try. Bear with me for just a moment more, though, and let me tell you why they’re hunting for me.”

  The bargemen exchanged glances. “Well, boys, should we hear him out?” the tillerman asked.

  “I say we should,” the man closest to Anrel’s sword said, with a significant glance at Anrel’s hand on the hilt.

  “Why not?”

  “As you please—I don’t care.”

  “All right, stranger,” the tillerman said. “Tell us why you’re here.”

  “Because Lord Allutar killed a friend of mine,” Anrel said. “He tore my friend’s chest open with his foul sorcery. The magistrates said there was nothing I could do about it, because Lord Allutar is the landgrave of Aulix and has the right to do anything he pleases, even if it means the death of an innocent man. So I stood up on the statue of the First Emperor in Aulix Square, and I told the people of Naith the truth, and for that Lord Neriam declared me a traitor, closed the gates, and set the watch on me. I robbed no one; I harmed no one, save the man I hit over the head to get this uniform. I spoke the truth, nothing more, and for that they mean to kill me.”

  The bargemen did not seem entirely convinced.

  “What’s going on down there?” someone called from above.

  “Was that what started the fighting we heard about?” one of the bargemen asked.

  “The city watch came out into Aulix Square to break up the crowd, and the crowd fought back,” Anrel explained. “I didn’t ask them to, but it seems I’m not the only one who’s had his fill of sorcerers playing their games while the ordinary people of the empire starve.”

  “You aren’t,” one bargeman muttered.

  One of the others turned to the tillerman. “We aren’t watchmen,” he said. “Why should we do their work for them, then? I want to get this cargo down the river while there’s still daylight!”

  The tillerman looked at his four crewmen and saw general agreement. “All right, lads,” he said. “It seems we didn’t hear the shouting correctly, and thought we were supposed to deliver this fellow to the lockkeeper at number four, and how were we to guess he’d jump for it and run before we got there?”