The Reluctant Swordsman

Murderous noon; the birds were silent in the trees, the gardening slaves moved listlessly, staying out of the light, and even insects were silent. The line of pilgrims kneeling on the temple steps melted and groaned under the lash of a sadistic sun. Only the River continued to move and make noise as the World endured, praying for evening.

The parade ground was deserted and hot as a griddle. Three people came around the corner of the barracks, past the fencing area. With every man in the guard now searching for Lord Shonsu, there was no one there to notice the trio. They marched unseen across the parade ground toward the jail, floating on their shadows in the white glare.

The man in front was a swordsman of the Fourth, resplendent in a very new orange kilt. His ponytail was inky black. So was the expression on his face. He had very nearly mutinied against his sworn liege lord and had spoken not a word since the slaves had smeared his hair with lampblack and grease.

The man at the back was a short, dark-haired First. With awkward gait, sword tilted, facemark swollen, kilt sparkling white, and much-too-short hair, he was an obvious scratcher. Even the stunned look in his dark eyes proclaimed that. He clutched a rope, whose other end was knotted about the neck of the captive being brought in. She was huge and very ugly for a woman. Her black hair was much too long for a slave’s—loosely flopping curls, still smelling of hot iron. Her black, all-enveloping garment might have belonged to the infamous Wild Ani, and, it bulged oddly, as though the wearer were deformed.

The heat inside the pillows was incredible. It was dangerous, Wallie knew. Even if he did not collapse from heat prostration, he was weakening steadily. He could hardly see for the sweat running into his eyes and he dared not wipe them, because he must pretend that his hands were tied behind him. No sane swordsman would ever expect Lord Shonsu of the Seventh to dress like that. He had refrained from faking a facemark, partly out of consideration for Nnanji’s feelings, but also because if anyone got that close to him, the pretense would be over. Apart from his size, though, he could pass as a slave at a distance. He kept his stride short, he crouched—and he sweltered.

Before the jail had been fitted with a new roof, it might have been possible to rescue a prisoner without the guards’ knowing, but now the only entrance was through the door, and that led into the guard room. The door was open. The newcomers marched straight through.

Briu of the Fourth was playing dice at a table with two Seconds. Three slaves were sitting on the floor in a corner, picking lice out of clothes. They looked up and saw swordsmen bringing in a new prisoner.

Katanji, in his so-brief career, had been taught only one piece of swordsmanship. This was a maneuver that no other swordsman had ever been taught. He performed it now, twirling around and kneeling down with his head bent. The female slave pulled the sword from his scabbard, and put the point at Briu’s throat before he could draw.

“It would have to be you, wouldn’t it?” Wallie said. “Keep your hands on the table and order your men to do the same.”

Briu’s impassive face hardly changed expression. He glanced over Wallie, took in Nnanji with a hint of surprise, and then placed his hands on the table. The Seconds followed suit without being ordered; they looked stunned.

“Why is it always you that I damage?” Wallie demanded. “I had no quarrel with you, yet every time I do anything I mess up Adept Briu. You are Tarru’s vassal?”

“He’s hunting me down. He plans to torture me to make me tell him where the sword is. Do you deny it?”

“Nnanji said so, about two minutes before you challenged him that first morning.”

Briu shrugged. “Any crime committed by a vassal is laid to the account of his liege. If I am Tarru’s vassal as you claim, then I am sworn to absolute obedience, and my honor is of no account.”

“Why would you swear that oath to such a man?” inquired Nnanji’s soft voice from behind Wallie’s shoulder. He sounded bitter.

Nnanji made a choking sound, then said, “You saw Shonsu go into the water. You, better than any, know that his sword was a miracle!”

Briu stared at him stoically. “I did not do a good job of instructing you in the third oath when I was your mentor, adept. Let us see how I did otherwise. If a commander is corrupt, whose duty is it to do something about it?”

“Challenge, if he is good enough. Else go and find a stronger force.” It was a quotation. He sounded like Briu as he said it.

Briu nodded. “Yet your Lord Shonsu let Tarru live, when he was obviously guilty.”

That, Wallie knew, had been his first error. The god had told him that harsh measures would be necessary. At their very first meeting, he had warned that an honorable swordsman would feel it his duty to kill Hardduju and to restore the honor of the craft. He had even dropped a broad hint when he mentioned Napoleon, for Napoleon had been king of Elba, briefly. By sparing Tarru, Wallie had betrayed the honest men in the guard. He should have killed Tarru out of hand, taken charge, and put the Fifths on trial right there, calling for denunciations . . . but he had not.

“I admit the error,” Wallie said. “Nnanji almost pointed it out to me right afterward, on the temple steps. But since then I have been Tarru’s guest.”

Briu ran contempt over him like a blowtorch. “You had plenty of chances, and excuses. He swore Gorramini and Ghaniri by the third oath, and set them on Nnanji. Then he went to work on the Fifths. Did you not know?”

A Seventh should not take this from a Fourth, but Wallie was feeling too guilty to be assertive. “I suspected.”

“So?” Briu demanded. “If you had done something and called for help, do you think the rest of us would have stood idly by? We wanted leadership! We wanted our honor back! None of us was perfect, but . . . ” He paused, and then looked down at the table. “There was one. If the rest of us had been half as honorable as he, we would have mutinied years ago.”

Wallie’s excuse would never pass a swordsman—he had been trying to prevent bloodshed. He had spared Tarru, one man. When Nnanji had mentioned the stables, he had recoiled from the thought of killing three men. Yet every delay had raised the price. If somehow he could escape now, then the cost in lives must be much higher.

Before he could speak, Briu looked up again, redfaced and glaring. “Even this morning! Gorramini was betrayed! Yet you did nothing!”

Shonsu’s temper flamed. Wallie suppressed it with difficulty. “You have a priest here, and I am going to take him. Then I am leaving.” How? “The Goddess will attend to the honor of Her guard. It was not the task She gave me.”

“My wife had just given birth to twin sons, adept,” Briu said. “She needs to eat, and so do they. When you are older, you will understand.”

“Briu,” Wallie said, “my story is too long to explain here. But I admit my error. If I get a chance to correct it, then I shall. I do have a task for the Goddess. I need honest men to help. Is your wife well enough to travel?”

Shonsu, Nnanji, Katanji, plus Briu and his family . . . seven, if one did not count slaves.

The new roof made the jail hotter than ever, and smellier. His head swam as soon as he went in, and he wondered how long a frail old man like Honakura could survive in it. There were four prisoners there, all tethered by one ankle only, but Wallie was too bitter now to feel satisfaction at that small improvement. He headed over to one tiny, shriveled form.

Honakura cackled with amusement when he saw his rescuer. Then he slipped his tiny foot out of the stocks and accepted assistance to stand up.

“You will be a Nameless One, my lord. There is a headband in the pocket. Better dress upstairs, it is cooler.”

Still chuckling, Honakura tottered toward the steps. Wallie made the slaves pin the swordsmen in the stocks, and then pinned the slaves as well.

Wallie held out a hand. After a pause, Briu took it. “I do hope some man tries to rape you on your journey, my lord.”

Still laughing at that unexpected humor, Wallie went back up to the guard room. He handed Katanji back his sword and then had to help him put it in his scabbard. Honakura had dressed himself in the black garment, and Nnanji was tying the headband on for him.

“We are in serious trouble, my . . . old man,” Wallie said. “How we are going to get out of it, I don’t know. But we had better get back to the barracks as soon as we can.”

“And how do you propose . . . ” Wallie began, then glared at him. “Hell’s knuckles! There is a back door, I suppose?”

“Of course,” Honakura said. “Did you think the priests would not have a back door? You never asked me.”

Once away from the jail they rearranged themselves, putting the two swordsmen in front and the two black robes behind. Honakura stumbled along, holding up his too-long gown and hurrying as much as he could. Wallie was not much more agile himself, his half-healed feet starting to chafe at the slave sandals he wore. And a slow pace was advisable anyway; it was too hot to rush. The few people they passed paid no attention to them.

The old man directed Nnanji in asthmatic gasps. They traveled downstream almost to the end of the grounds, then along a wooded trail close to the great wail.

“We shall need a shovel, I suspect,” he wheezed at one point, and the gods directed them past a deserted wheelbarrow of tools. Wallie had only to take two steps out of his way to collect a shovel. Then the priest said, “Is it all clear?” and they turned into the bushes.

Well hidden in the undergrowth, an ancient and weathered dovecote stood hard against the perimeter wall, its stones lichen-coated and half-rotted with age. The door was small and decrepit. It yielded easily to Wallie’s shoulder, and a great explosion of wings sounded inside.

The interior was gloomy and dark, rank and filthy. Thick piles of guano on the floor crawled with beetles. Curtains of spiderwebs shone in the light filtering through a hole in the roof. Surprised white birds peered down from the pigeonholes that lined the upper walls.

“Unless we were seen,” Wallie said, “we are safe here. Obviously no one has been in here for years.”

“For generations!” Honakura retorted. “I only hope that the route is still open. It probably has not been used for centuries. Perhaps never before.” He sneezed. “The other end may be bricked up.”

“Cheerful!” Wallie said. “I think Katanji should go for the others, don’t you, Nnanji?”

“Then bring Jja, Cowie, and Ani,” Wallie ordered. The boy grinned and headed for the door. “Walk slowly! If anyone asks, you’re Adept Briu’s new protégé, on an errand for him . . . you can refuse to discuss what it is. And bring my boots!”

“I suppose she’s number six,” Wallie said in a growl, looking around the fetid obscenity of the dovecote. “Nnanji bought a slave.”

Wallie turned to him in disbelief. “You? With respect, holy one, it will kill you!”

“I expect so,” Honakura said calmly, “if by that you mean that I shall never return. It may also kill you, young man, and you have a great deal more to lose than I have. Moreover, you have a good chance of returning.”

“You have to return the sword, remember? I don’t know what that means any more than you do. But it could mean that you have to bring it back to where you got it.”

The doves purred disapprovingly while Wallie pondered the idea of a man of incredible age, accustomed to luxury and easy living, setting out on an unknown mission of hardship and danger. “I don’t want to take you.”

The priest snorted and then sneezed several times again. “Ever since you gave me the god’s message, I knew I would be coming. Don’t you think I shall be useful?”

There was no answer to that. “I still think that you should stay,” Wallie said, as gently as he could. He had grown to like the old man and wanted to spare him.

“If I don’t come then I shall be sent to the Judgment! Of course I am coming. Seven it is! Now, the exit was said to be in the corner farthest from the temple, so I suppose that one.”

Wallie scowled at the heaps of guano and handed the shovel to Nnanji. Nnanji had recovered slightly from his sulks, becoming interested in the adventure side of secret passages. He, also, pouted at the filth for a moment. Then he removed his new orange kilt and handed it to Wallie. He started to dig, immediately raising foul clouds of putrid dust. Wallie and the priest beat a cowardly retreat out to the fresh air. They stood in the bushes, talking in whispers.

Honakura shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “There are chains. I was told many, many years ago. When my informant died, I told another. But the first man I approached already knew.”

Simple, but it had worked for unknown centuries. Wallie should have guessed that the priests would have an escape route unknown to the swordsmen. There might even be more than one.

Then he asked why the old man had been thrown in jail. The answer confirmed what the demigod had told him—he could not understand temple politics. Part of the problem seemed to be that Honakura, planning to depart with Wallie, had surrendered too much power too quickly. There had also been much conspiring about the Swordsmen’s Day festival. Honakura had been trying to introduce an affirmation that Wallie’s task was the will of the Goddess, thereby ensnaring all the swordsmen present into accepting that. As the will of the Goddess was paramount, in effect he would have negated Tarru’s third oath. Nice try, Wallie thought, but he doubted that swordsmen would have taken such direction from mere priests. Whether Tarru had been involved in his downfall, Honakura did not know.

He did not say so, but Wallie wondered if he himself might have been partly to blame. In the Byzantine power dealings of the priesthood, Honakura must have gambled a large part of his influence and reputation on this cryptic swordsman, who had then neglected to clean up the temple guard. Wallie had failed his supporters among the priests as well as the honest swordsmen.

Where was Katanji? Wallie began to fret as time crawled by. He was putting incredible responsibility on an untested boy.

Stooping through the doorway came Nnanji like the Spirit of Plague, thickly coated in gray dust, striped with brown sweat streaks. His eyes were red and streaming. “Trapdoor,” he said between coughs. “Can’t move it.”

Wallie went in and climbed over the heaps of filth to the clearing Nnanji had made. He found a stone manhole cover with a bronze ring, badly corroded by the nitrates in the guano. He took a firm grip and heaved until his joints creaked. For a moment he thought that even he would not be able to move it, but then it crunched loose and tilted up quite easily on a pivot. He scowled down into darkness, wishing he had told Katanji to bring a light. He went back out into daylight to give time for any bad gases down there to dissipate.

The three men sat on the ground in worried silence. Katanji was quite credible unless he ran into Tarru himself, or unless Briu had been discovered and had told his tale. A new First was believable, Wallie told himself firmly, and then wished that he had warned Katanji to keep his eyes open. Two rugmakers’ sons would certainly be too many.

“If there is another trapdoor at the other end, then there may be a house on it by now,” Nnanji suggested gloomily.

“We shall find a staircase within the wall leading upward to a dead end,” Wallie said, “with another trap in the floor, down to an alcove on the outside.”

Wallie smiled smugly. “I shall tell you that if you tell me how you knew Katanji had black hair.” He got no reply. He was guessing, analyzing the design problem. This was a one-way escape route. Traps were the most secure and reliable seals. The demigod had told him that the town burned down every fifty years or so, and he had seen how the buildings went right up to the walls. An alcove would be a useful closet space, and so would be incorporated into each reconstruction. Anything else might end behind a wall or under a floor.

A party of gardener slaves sauntered along the path, and the watchers stayed silent. Then a meditating priest went by, mumbling sutras to himself.

At last Katanji and the others arrived, and Wallie realized just how tense he had become. He welcomed Jja and Vixini with a hug. Cowie looked bewildered when Nnanji put an arm around her. Obviously she was not quite sure who he was. Did not her new owner have red hair?

Ani chuckled as she reported that Honorable Tarru was ready to die of apoplexy, so incensed was he by the disappearance of the fugitives and the lackadaisical performance of his vassals. He had scoured the whole barracks and the main public buildings, and was now about to begin a search of the grounds. Janghiuki’s body would turn up soon, then. And then the guard would be after Wallie in earnest, screaming for vengeance on the recreant.

Wallie looked at Katanji’s twinkling eyes in astonishment and congratulated him, admitting to himself that the Goddess had chosen his companions better than he could have done.

With Nnanji left outside as guard, the others crept into the dovecote and inspected the passage. The taper burned confidently when Wallie lowered it into the hole, so the air was fresh. Katanji was hopping up and down with excitement and he had earned the reward—Wallie sent him in to explore.

The passage was very cramped for Wallie. Centuries of ants and other insects had fouled it horribly; fortunately there seemed to be no scorpions.

At the top of the steps was the tiny chamber he had predicted. He could not stand up straight in it, but again his strength was needed to lift the trap in the floor. He had counted the steps and could guess that the underlying alcove must be very low, probably about the size of a dog kennel. He hoped it was not being used for that purpose. Awkwardly, bumping against the walls, he gripped the bronze ring and heaved. Dim light flooded up around him.

Pilgrims mostly traveled in the morning and evening. Noontime was slack time and thus it was the custom of Ponofiti, skinner of the third rank, to stable his string at midday—but without unsaddling them, for he was a lazy man. He had gone home for lunch with his wife, and then to visit his mistress for a siesta. It was early afternoon before he returned to work.

Katanji had squeezed down into the hoard of litter in the alcove—broken chairs and pieces of harness and miscellaneous sacks—and persuaded the hinny to let him move her to a stall without an alcove. Then he had cleared a path for the others.

Jja had explained why mules stood in the dim and smelly stable in the middle of the day.

Jja, also, had located saddler’s gear and stitched her master’s disguise back together where the pillows were showing. Wallie had found a mirror and confirmed that the dust had turned his hair gray, which was appropriate for the old-woman’s dress he wore. If he kept his head down, he might escape much notice in the town.

Nnanji had angrily agreed that a clean orange kilt looked out of place on him in his present condition, and had rubbed it well with stable filth. He had even unfastened his ponytail, growling obscenities, unable to bring himself to look at his disguised leader.

Ani, they assumed, had covered the other trap with guano, closed the dovecote door, and returned to the barracks.

Cowie, having done nothing, had somehow stayed cleaner and fresher than any of them. Wallie intercepted Nnanji leading her to the hayloft and prohibited such evaluation until further notice.

Vixini had expressed a strong desire to mount a mule by climbing its back leg, but his mother had restrained him.

Ponofiti was not a large man and he entered the stable much faster than he ever had before, assisted by Wallie’s hand in his hair. The door was closed behind him.

The skinner was swarthy, rat-faced, and even ranker than his mules, but he was not entirely stupid. The sight of his own dagger in front of his eyes sufficed to concentrate his attention.

“What is your normal fare from here to the jetty?” asked the huge figure that wore an old slave woman’s black dress and spoke with a man’s bass voice.

Wallie lifted his curls to let him count the marks. They had even more effect than the dagger.

If the brigands had confederates in the guard, it was highly probable that they also controlled the skinners, by graft or by coercion. There could be signals. Wallie reached out to a convenient ledge on the wall and carefully laid down five gold coins. After a moment’s thought he added two more.

“That stays here until you return,” he said. The man’s eyes said it was a fortune. “I shall be riding the mule directly behind you. If we are stopped by brigands or by swordsmen, especially swordsmen”—he hurled the dagger, and it slammed into the wall—“you will not be returning. Any questions?”

Concealing the swords would be difficult. It took all of Wallie’s absolute third-oath authority to persuade Nnanji to hand over his sword and harness, and he did so with sullen ill temper. They were wrapped in sacking with Katanji’s and strapped on one of the mules under a bag of grain. Wallie’s was back in the barracks somewhere. Thus, unarmed except for the dagger hidden in Wallie’s ample bosom, the adventurers rode out on the string of mules, heading through the town toward the checkpoint at the foot of the hill.

Except for Cowie, they were all incredibly filthy. Wallie knew that he looked a freak, with muscular male legs hanging below an obese female shape. Nnanji, with his hair a greasy cake of black frizz, was merely a skinny Fourth of indeterminate craft, although unusually young for such a rank. Katanji was only an anonymous First. The others should not attract notice.

The checkpoint was the great danger, for there were eight men there, and Wallie had only a dagger. Had it not been for the feeble Honakura, Wallie would never have dared to try passing the checkpoint—there had to be another way up the hillside somewhere.

The swordsmen were lounging in the shade of an arbutus tree, watching the traffic from a distance, not inspecting closely. Their relaxed attitude proved that the murder victim had not yet been found. They were looking for a swordsman of the Seventh, or possibly his vassal, and most of them would still be thinking of Nnanji as a Second. They had no interest in a group of half a dozen miscellaneous pilgrims. Highranks would not mix with such riffraff, and the idea that a swordsman of the Seventh would disguise himself as a female slave would never occur to them if they lived to be as old as the temple. Wallie kept his face down and sweated even harder than he had been doing before, but in a few minutes the mule train was past the checkpoint and climbing the hill.

Brigands were not likely to bother pilgrims departing. They would prefer to plunder before the priests did, not after. So all that remained for Wallie to do was to retrieve the seventh sword and then shepherd his party safely onto a boat. Sounded simple! If he reached the jetty before news of his crime arrived, then he could hope that the watchers there would be as negligent as the farcical force at the checkpoint—the inefficient reluctant to perform the unpopular. For the first time in many days, Wallie began to feel hopeful. He prayed.

The sword was easy. All mules needed a rest somewhere on the hill, and he shouted to the skinner to stop when they reached the fourteenth cottage. “Mule train. Ferry mule train,” the skinner called obediently. Wallie and Jja dismounted.

They slipped through the curtain and found the cottage empty. She had chosen it because it was one of the most dilapidated, and hence rarely used. There was filth all over the floor, no furniture except two rotting mattresses. Apparently the hovel in which he had first met Jja had been one of the luxury suites.

“There, master,” she said, pointing, and all Wallie had to do was reach up and pull the seventh sword out of the thatch. It shone in his hand, the sapphire flamed, and his heart leaped once more at the sight of its beauty. He held it up to admire it briefly, and then reluctantly wrapped it in Vixini’s blanket.

Jja had turned to go, but the nasty little hut was reminding him of their first night together. He reached out and took her arm. She turned to stare at him questioningly.

She glanced out the doorway at the steaming mules and frowned slightly. Then she turned back to him. “Show me the World, master?”

“Ferry mule train!” the skinner called. He was outside the door, but he sounded far away to Wallie.

Embracing while upholstered like a sofa was lacking in romance, but a moment later Wallie said breathlessly, “Kiss me again, slave.”

“Master!” she murmured reproachfully. “We must go!” Yet there was a gaiety and happiness about her that he had not seen before. She was leaving a place that could hold few pleasant memories for her. Slaves were not supposed to have feelings, but whatever these squalid huts meant to Wallie, to Jja they must be a reminder that there she had been included in the rent.

And he knew that she was right. They would have to go, or the unusually long pause might attract attention. “Quickly, then!”

They kissed again, briefly, and then stepped to the door. As always, he wanted her to precede him. As always, she hung back. He insisted; she obeyed.

Then she backed into him, pushing him quickly into the cottage again. “Horses!” she said.

Wallie risked a glance. There were three of them coming up the hill, bearing a red, an orange, and a green—Tarru himself!

“Skinner!” Wallie waved for the train to move on. He unwrapped the sword and stepped to the window. Keeping well back, he watched as the string went by . . .

First rode the skinner himself, slumped over in his saddle, bored; Nnanji, hair black as coal, holding Vixini and trying to reassure him that his mother would be back soon; Katanji twisted round to stare down the hill; Honakura hunched on his saddle and already looking exhausted; and Cowie at the end.

Wallie’s eyes locked into position. It was the first time he had seen Cowie in full sunlight. And Cowie on a mule! All her spectacular leg was visible, and the net garment had pulled tight to display the rest of that sensational body. Wow! Shonsu’s glands went into a crash program of hormone production just looking at her. She was wrong, he was sure, an error. Someone else ought to be on that saddle, almost certainly another swordsman, an older and more experienced man than Nnanji. Another fighter. But Wallie did not know who, and . . . Oh! what a sight!

Had they been recognized? It did not seem possible. Much more likely was that Tarru had decided to move his strongest force, himself, to the jetty. If he could not find his quarry in the temple grounds, then that was his best strategy, for there he could not be outflanked.

Perhaps. And Briu? The jail guard was changed at noon, and Briu would have been rescued then, if not before. He would have reported that Lord Shonsu had said he was leaving.

Worse, Briu could have warned that Honakura was with the fugitives and wearing black, and that Nnanji now had black hair. Fortunately Nnanji was holding the baby, which would tend to distract attention from him, but Tarru was certain to inspect the mules as he went by. However unwilling some of his followers might be, Tarru at least was motivated, and Tarru was no fool.

Or perhaps . . . a sudden realization struck Wallie with horror. Perhaps the checkpoint had been too easy. Perhaps it had been a blind. The men’s orders might have been to allow the fugitives through and report back to the temple. Even for Tarru, murder would be better committed outside the town, in the jungle.

Tarru, a Fifth, and a Fourth . . . they were coming up that gradient much too fast for the good of their mounts. Wallie and Nnanji together could probably handle those three in a straight fight, on level terms. But the three were on horseback, Nnanji was unarmed, and there were eight more men at the bottom of the hill.

Even with the seventh sword of Chioxin, Wallie did not think Shonsu could best three mounted men single-handed.

He pulled back from the window and listened to the hooves, waiting for the sound to falter.

The train had crawled four or five cottages higher when the three horsemen went thudding by the hut where the sword they sought was gripped in a white-knuckled hand. And the beat of the hooves did not change.

Wallie risked sticking his head out the door for a glance after them. He pulled back quickly, for all three men had twisted round in their saddles to look—he glimpsed Tarru, Trasingji, and Ghaniri. Briefly he thought the game was lost, but the horses still did not break stride. In a few minutes the sound died away.

He wiped his brow and looked at Jja. In one spontaneous movement, they threw their arms around each other.

He explained. They started to laugh. They were still laughing as he wrapped the sword in Vixi’s blanket again, and still laughing when they ran off hand in hand to catch the train.

Cowie was not a mistake. She was truly one of the seven chosen by the gods. She had brought them safely by the checkpoint also, although he had not realized at the time.

Tarru and Trasingji and Ghaniri had passed within a sword’s length of Nnanji, and all they had seen was Cowie.

The mules crawled by the last of the huts, and the dusty trail continued to climb the valley wall. The town and temple were spread out far below, with the pillar of spray from the Judgment of the Goddess standing over them like a guardian.

Wallie cursed in silence against the forced inactivity of sitting on a slothful mule. Briefly, from the top of the hill, he had a last glimpse of the whole valley, clasping the great temple to its heart. Then it was gone. Someday, perhaps, he would return the sword . . . or perhaps not.

The road, now no more than a trail, wound through vegetation that became steadily thicker until it was a true tropical forest, a high trellis of treetops arched against the sky and a tangle of ground cover. The shade deepened. Even the far-off rumble of the falls faded away, until the only sound came from the feet of the mules, plodding the stones at their unvarying mulish pace, oblivious of any human urgency or turmoil.

From time to time they passed clearings showing red soil planted with crops that Wallie could not identify, and rarely smaller trails branched off and disappeared mysteriously into the jungle. Few other travelers shared the road at first, only rare pilgrims walking in twos and threes and half a dozen mule trains bringing in those who could afford a ride. But as the day began to age small groups of farm workers appeared, slouching along without a glance at the fugitives.

There was no evidence of brigands, but they would not advertise, and he could not relax. Certainly the road could have been designed for them; it wound and twisted and rolled. At every bend he half expected to see a line of armed men standing in his path.

He sweated unendingly in his pillows and a fog of flies. His canteen was soon empty. Apparently the stirrup had not yet been invented in the World, and the saddles were a sadistic torment, rubbing folds of wet clothing against his flesh to raise blisters, then rubbing them away again. Heat prostration was becoming a real hazard for him now, and he finally decided that he had better conserve what was left of his fighting strength. He slipped off his mount and stripped back down to his kilt and harness. The relief was unspeakable. Out of his padding came his boots. He put them on, tucked the skinner’s dagger in his belt, and ran to catch up with the train.

First he reached Cowie, who looked pitifully confused and miserable. He tried speaking to her, but she merely blinked slowly and did not reply. “Won’t be long!” he assured her and could not resist patting her lovely thigh. In a few days Nnanji would likely be honored to lend . . . He suppressed that lustful thought firmly.

He stepped out again to catch up with Honakura and was shocked by his haggard appearance.

For a moment there was no reply. Then Honakura peered at him and said, “No. What are you going to do about it?” and closed his eyes once more.

Katanji did not have a grin as huge as his brother’s, but he was doing the best he could, obviously enjoying himself greatly. If this was a swordsman’s life, then he was obviously in favor, not knowing that he had already found more excitement than he should normally encounter in years.

Wallie called to Nnanji, who jumped off and came back to walk on the other side. He noticed the dagger at once and scowled at it. Katanji was now looking down on a swordsman escort; he seemed to find that more fun than ever.

“Can I have my sword back now?” Not having appeared unarmed in public since he reached adolescence, Nnanji must be feeling horribly naked and vulnerable without his beloved sword.

“Not yet!” Wallie said. “I only stripped because I was cooking like meat in a pie. You saw Tarru go by—I think he’ll stay at the jetty, but he might return. There may well be messengers going to and fro. So we won’t show our swords yet. If we hear hooves, then it’s the bushes for me. Now, tell me about the dock.”

Nnanji said, “I was only there once, when I was a First.” The grieved expression faded as he stalked along beside the mule, looking blankly ahead, retrieving from his infallible databank.

Wallie could feel very sorry for Nnanji. Only that morning his world had come together just as he might have planned it. He had made his first challenge, proved his courage against a real sword, and made his first kill—all those things would matter greatly to him. He had achieved middlerank, so that he could accept his brother’s oath and buy that dream slave. How he must have been relishing the thought of displaying her in the saloon that evening!

Then the world had all come apart again, much worse than before. His hero had proved to have not merely feet of clay, but devils’ hooves. Midnight had chimed. Cinderella’s coach had turned into a lemon.

“The road ends suddenly,” Nnanji said, “in a clearing by the water’s edge—about a hundred paces both ways—and there is a paddock in it and only one building, the guardhouse. That’s about twenty paces square, I should think. You can only get to the jetty by going through the guardhouse—the road runs right through. Big arch one end and another at the other. Horse stalls on one side, and rooms on the other—a kitchen and dormitory and such. It was messy and not much used when I saw it. Nothing upstairs but a loft-hay and so on. No windows on the horses’ side. That’s . . . downstream.”

Nnanji’s smile died stillborn. For a while they walked along beside the mule in silence, flapping hands at flies.

Wallie said, “I’m going to slip away before we reach it, then. As soon as I go, you can put on your sword.”

He glanced up at Katanji. “You listen to this, too. I ask you, Nnanji, to get the others safely to Hann. Don’t argue! That’s the best thing you can do for me, for then I have only myself to worry about. I shall try to get on the boat as it leaves, but don’t hold it for me—just go. Wait for me in Hann. We need a rendezvous. You must have heard of some inns in Hann?”

Nnanji looked surprised and thought some more. “The Gold Bell, but the food is bad.”

Incredible memory! That must have come from some chance remark, perhaps heard years ago. Wallie was going to miss Nnanji.

“Right! If I’m not on the boat, then please put Jja and Vixi and the old man in The Gold Bell and pay their board for ten days. If there’s no word from me by then, I give you Jja. The old man you can trust, but he doesn’t look as though he’ll live to the jetty, let alone Hann.”

“I think he may, Nnanji, and I’m only asking you to look after Jja, not telling you.” Wallie took a deep breath. “I’m going to release you from your oaths.”

“NO!” Nnanji shouted, staring in horror across the mule at him. “You must not, my liege!”

“I’m going to. I’d do it now, but I don’t want you putting on your sword.”

“But . . . ” Probably Nnanji had thought that things could not get worse, and now they had.

“But you will have to denounce me,” Wallie said, completing the thought. “You have seen abominations. It is your duty to denounce me to a higher rank or stronger force. Tarru’s is a stronger force. Go ahead! He’ll love it. He’ll be so happy that he’ll let you go free.”

“The second oath can’t be annulled unless I agree, too!” Nnanji said triumphantly.

“Then I order you to agree!” Wallie replied, amused at the backward logic of the conversation. “As my vassal you must obey, right?”

It really wasn’t fair to tie up Nnanji in such mental knots. He had no answer, his face a wasteland of despair. Now he was torn between his ideals and his duty on one hand and—clearly—personal loyalty on the other. Wallie was touched, but determined.

There was truth in that. His loyalty was unquestionable, but his subconscious might be resurrecting the killer earthworm.

“I trust your honor and your courage totally, Nnanji, but I think that this is leading to a showdown between me and Tarru. I want Jja taken care of—you will do that for me? For friendship alone?”

“But Tarru committed abominations first,” Nnanji said angrily. “How can I denounce you to him?”

That was Wallie’s defense, of course. “Did you see those? Do you have any evidence, except what the slaves said? A slave’s testimony is not admissible, Nnanji.”

“He probably doesn’t know you know of his misdeeds,” Wallie said. “Anyway, I’m going to release you and I’m going to leave you. Now, please, Nnanji my friend, will you look after Jja and Vixini for me, and the old man if he lives?”

“But it is possible that Tarru will detain you and let the rest go,” Wallie said, wondering if Tarru would know that Honakura was a fugitive from his jail. “If so, then you, novice, will then have to do what I just told Nnanji. The old man is a Nameless One. Neither he nor the slaves can carry money. If Nnanji is stopped, you are in charge.”

The light died from Katanji’s youthful face. Wallie rehearsed him, made sure he understood, and gave him money. When he had done, both brothers looked equally worried and unhappy.

“Now cheer up!” Wallie said. “The Goddess is with us, and I’m sure She will see us safely through this. Anyway one last thing—if the worst happens, don’t sell Vixini away from Jja! Good luck.”

He trotted forward to talk with Jja for a while. She smiled bravely at him, but she was worried about Vixini, who was exhausted and hungry. Wallie could say little to cheer her up. Then he returned to his own mule, the mule that carried the most valuable piece of movable property in the World. He sat and brooded some more.

It was a strategy of desperation. If, by a miracle, Tarru was not at the jetty, then Nnanji and the others might very easily get through unquestioned. If that happened, Wallie was going to swim out to their boat, or another. If Tarru was there, then he might let Nnanji go—unlikely! Or he might detain Nnanji and let the others through—not much more likely. But at least they would distract him while Wallie improvised something. He was not fighting the whole guard, now maybe ten or a dozen, and half of those would be trash. The odds were getting better.

At long last the trees thinned, the trail reached a cliff edge, and he had his first view of the River. He was astonished at the size of it. He could barely see the far bank, although he was atop a scarp that was almost as high as the wall of the temple valley. In the far distance the evening sun gleamed on roofs and spires, probably temples in Hann, but otherwise only a faint line divided blue sky from a vastness of twinkling water, decorated here and there with sails of various colors and shapes. For the first time he could appreciate how this great navigable flood so dominated the culture of the People that they would worship it as their Goddess.

He prayed that he might win through to sail on it. He wondered where it might take him.

The trail wavered in and out of the woods, giving glimpses of the bank ahead and then a brief view of the port. He saw the solitary wooden building on the water’s edge and a jetty of red stonework running out a long way over the pale blue water. At the end of it a boat was unloading and loading passengers—the River must be very shallow there to need so long a pier. Then it all vanished behind more trees.

His next concern was where to leave the mule train. He got his answer when the trail abruptly plunged back into jungle and started to descend a thickly wooded gully. Soon the trail was almost as dark as night and completely concealed. He could relax and wait until they were almost there. A mule train came by, bringing in another contingent of pilgrims.

Then the slope leveled off. The road ahead began to brighten. He shouted to the skinner to halt, dismounted, and went up to him.

“You have done us proudly,” Wallie said. “Enjoy your reward when you get back. I need a minute, here.”

As he walked back to the apprehensive Nnanji, the mules started to bray angrily, smelling the water ahead.

Wallie smiled and shook his head. “Nnanji of the Fourth, I release you from your oaths.” He did not offer to shake hands, not as a man without honor. “Please don’t watch where I go,” he said. “The Goddess be with you, friend. You were a great vassal!”

Then he shouted to the skinner to go ahead, pulled the seventh sword from its place on the mule, and stepped into the trees.

Tarru might have set watchers in the woods, but that was unlikely if the situation was as Nnanji had described it. The man was holding a very strong tactical position and he need not divide his forces. He was facing an open meadow and he had horses. He held the only road. Wallie must come to him. He had the numbers.

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.

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 . . .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

“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.”

“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.

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

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.

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.

“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.

“May I hear the charges against Adept Nnanji, please? Then we shall present our defense.”

Imperkanni nodded. Nnanji looked up from his study of the floor and gazed bitterly at the proceedings.

Yoningu hesitated over the first man Nnanji had killed, decided to ignore that one, and pointed casually to the body of Ghaniri. “I observed Adept Nnanji strike this man from behind when he was already fighting another.”

“Your defense, my lord?” Imperkanni asked Wallie. His manner implied that it had better be good.

“I think Adept Nnanji has some charges to bring against me, also,” Wallie said recklessly.

That had a welcome shock effect, but Imperkanni recovered quickly. “Adept Nnanji?”

Nnanji looked up once more. He stared at Wallie with more pain and reproach than seemed humanly bearable. When he began to speak, he was so quiet that he stopped and started again. “I saw Lord Shonsu draw a sword on Adept Briu this morning without warning. I saw Lord Shonsu disguise himself as a female slave.”

That had even more of a shock effect. Wallie was looking regretfully at Honakura. A priest of the Seventh would be an unimpeachable witness, but the old man was still sitting like a rag doll. His eyes were partly open, but showing only the whites. He might be dead, he might be dying, but he was in no condition to testify.

Then he noticed the Second he had spared. He was cowering beside a post, hunched and still shivering.

“Let’s have an independent witness, my lord,” Wallie said. “My story is unusual, to say the least, and I should prefer to have it corroborated. You! What’s your name?”

The Second rolled his eyes and said nothing. One of the free swords, a Fourth, went over to him and slapped his face. The kid gibbered slightly, and drooled.

“Then I must tell it myself, I suppose,” Wallie said. He needed food, drink, and about two nights’ sleep. “The reeve of the temple guard, Hardduju of the Seventh, was a very corrupt man. The priests have long prayed that the Goddess would send them a replacement . . . ”

That replacement was obviously Imperkanni, but to mention that would sound like a bribe, or an attempt at flattery. It was ironic that the man whom Wallie had hoped might come to rescue him had instead turned up in time to threaten him with vengeance for winning the battle. This whole thing was infinitely ironic. He hoped that the little god was finding it amusing.

Halfway through the story he had to ask for a drink. Imperkanni was not a consciously cruel man. Now he noted Wallie’s fatigue and ordered seats. His men jumped to search the rooms and produced stools. The court continued to meet at the scene of the crime, a circle of four in the midst of carnage—Wallie, Nnanji, Imperkanni, and Yoningu. The other swordsmen moved in to stand around them, alert and impassive.

Finally, hoarse and so weary that he wondered if he still cared, Wallie reached his conclusion. “There were abominations,” he said, “but they were begun by Tarru. Once he imprisoned me within the temple grounds, this was no longer an affair of honor.”

Imperkanni waited to be sure that that was all, then drew a deep breath. He looked questioningly at Yoningu, as though saying, “Your witness.”

“You say that you were Honorable Tarru’s guest. You were hardly still his guest when you reached here, were you?”

Yoningu was persistent. It was only his twisted mouth that made him look as though he were enjoying himself. It must be painful for him to denounce a man who had displayed such swordsmanship, but it had been illegal swordsmanship. “A guest who leaves without farewell does not remain a guest indefinitely. He was no longer your host, so he was within his rights in challenging Adept Nnanji. You interfered in an honorable passage of arms.”

That was ridiculous. Wallie was sure that there was an answer to all this somewhere, but even the fear of death seemed insufficient to get his brain working again.

Then he leaned his elbows on his knees once more, clasped his oversize hands, and went back to staring across the circle at Yoningu’s boots.

This time Nnanji did not even raise his head. “I allowed a personal friendship to lead me into an abomination. I am happy that I saved your life, Lord Shonsu, but I was wrong to do so.”

“What the hell was I supposed to do?” Wallie demanded, looking at Yoningu and Imperkanni. “We were his guests, and he had prepared a trap in our room. He was swearing his men to the blood oath at swordpoint. That oath needs a specific cause, and the only cause was that he wanted to steal my sword, the Goddess’ sword! They did not address him as ‘liege.’ He was keeping the oath secret—another abomination, as you well know.”

Nnanji looked up and drew back his lips in a grimace. Slaves could not testify. Lord Shonsu had already discredited that defense himself.

“Adept Briu confirmed the third oath!” Wallie shouted. “Also the attack on Adept Nnanji—”

“Then, by admitting it, this Briu was either disobeying his liege or lying to you?”

Wallie wanted to pound his head with his fists. He could not think of an answer to that.

There it was—death before dishonor. A man was supposed to be honorable at all costs. If his enemy killed him by dishonorable means, then that was too bad, he must be avenged. By their standards Wallie should have tried walking out the gate and let himself be cut down, or just waited until Tarru came for him. He who cast the first stone was the sinner.

Some of the swordsmen had died rather than swear to Tarru . . . but there were no witnesses to that, except the slaves.

“I killed first!” Wallie said. He was thinking of Janghiuki, but they would assume he meant Transingji. Did it matter?

Imperkanni broke the ensuing silence. “Why did you release your vassal and protégé from his oaths, my lord?”

That must seem a very odd decision to him, and perhaps he was looking for some way to spare Nnanji.

“I hoped that he might be allowed through,” Wallie said, “with the others.”

Imperkanni and Yoningu glanced at his companions and then at each other—two slaves, a boy, a baby, and a beggar? Why bother?

Imperkanni folded his arms and pondered for a moment, studying Nnanji. Yes, he was trying to find some way to acquit the accomplice—Wallie’s guilt was obvious. “I am curious as to what happened when you arrived, adept. What was said before Honorable Tarru challenged you?”

Nnanji raised his eyes and returned the Seventh’s gaze glumly. “I challenged him, my lord,” he said.

Obviously Imperkanni was finding this a difficult case. He frowned. “By the look of your facemarks, adept, you were a Second quite recently.”

A very difficult case; both defendants seemed to be insane. “You were a Second this morning, and this afternoon you challenged a Sixth?”

Nnanji glanced at Wallie and suddenly, for just an instant, grinned. Then his face darkened again. Wallie dearly wanted to punch him. Gorramini and Ghaniri had known how to provoke Nnanji to violence. It must have been common knowledge in the guard. Tarru had only to make some remark about rugmakers.

Nnanji shrugged. “Yes. He was determined to pick a fight, so I ignored his insults to me, but then he insulted my . . . friend, Lord Shonsu, who was not there to defend himself.”

“What did he say?” Imperkanni asked. When Nnanji did not speak he added, “The noble lord is here to defend himself now.”

The court looked at Wallie, who was sadly feeling that he was not worthy of Nnanji’s friendship. That hurt almost as much as the guilt of the murders, or the prospect of sudden death now looming ahead of him.

“I’m afraid that he was right, Nnanji,” he said. “I killed Janghiuki with my fist. I only meant to stun him . . . but his death was not an affair of honor.”

Imperkanni demanded to know who Janghiuki might have been, and Wallie explained, not caring very much any more what was said.

“I add that confession to the list of . . . ” Then Yoningu stopped. He and Imperkanni stared at each other for a moment in silence. The Seventh did not seem to move at all, but his white ponytail waved very slightly, as though in a faint draft. Yoningu said quickly, “I withdraw that.”

“I will accept that Swordsman Janghiuki’s death was accidental, my lord,” Imperkanni said. “If you had wanted to kill him, I hardly think you would have used a fist.”

Wallie glanced over at Honakura. His eyes were properly open now, but he was panting wheezily and not paying attention. No hope there.

“The will of the Goddess overrides the sutras!” Wallie said. Incredibly, this trial was going against him. He needed witnesses! Old Coningu would do—he had known. Or Briu. But he was certain that the court would not adjourn to the temple if he asked it to. Imperkanni was starting to fidget.

“True,” said the court. “We swear to obey the will of the Goddess ahead of the sutras. But who is to determine Her will? We must assume that the sutras represent Her commandments to us unless we receive clear evidence to the contrary . . . a miracle, I suppose. I agree that you have a remarkable sword, Lord Shonsu, but it does not give you the right to commit any atrocity you fancy. There are eight dead men here. Do you have any further defense?”

What was the use of saying more? Wallie had been given a fair hearing, probably a lot more than a man of lesser rank would have received. The gods were punishing him. He had murdered Janghiuki and then he had cut down a Second running away. It could be that he would be punished for the wrong crimes, but crimes there were. Nnanji was right—why not just admit it?

The penalty for failure was death. Decapitation was quick and painless; he might have done worse.

“My lord!” squeaked Katanji, white-faced with terror, his sword canted at an absurd angle across his back. Imperkanni’s face darkened at the presumption. One of the Fourths reached out a large hand to grab the impudent urchin.

“My lord, ask Lord Shonsu how he got his kilt wet.” Katanji made a sickly smile and rubbed his ill-treated shoulder.

Great! Wallie thought. He had broken the taboo against going in the River, but no one had noticed except the smartypants kid. Probably there was an automatic and painful death penalty for that—ganching on hot irons for a first offense, perhaps. Thanks, Katanji!

Yoningu jumped from his stool and raced out to the jetty, leaping over Trasingji as he went.

Imperkanni was looking at Wallie with teeth bared in a very strange and unhumorous smile.

Yet under the guano and the road dust and the charcoal smears and the bloodstains . . . under all those, Nnanji was certainly wearing something like his old grin. Hero worship, force ten.

Visibly pale, Yoningu strode back in, came to attention beside his stool, and said stiffly, “Mentor, I wish to withdraw the charges against Lord Shonsu.”

“Indeed?” Imperkanni said. “Yes, I expect you do! Lord Shonsu, will you graciously permit my protégé to withdraw his charges?” He was openly smiling now, very friendly.

That was how it was done? Wallie recalled the little healer in the jail, Innulari, who had died for losing a patient. So Yoningu was less of a prosecutor than a plaintiff, and if the court decided that he had brought false charges then he would pay the penalty—a good way to prevent frivolous litigation and an excellent means of deterring the proliferation of lawyers. Not that Wallie needed a slave, if that was an option, but a good Sixth would be an invaluable addition to his force, so perhaps there was room to bargain . . .

Then he saw that his hesitation had caused Imperkanni’s smile to dry up, and that there were lowered heads and tightened fists and slitted eyes all the way around him. Whatever the rules said, Yoningu was one of the band. If Wallie demanded his pound of whatever flesh he was entitled to, then he was going to have to fight every last man of them afterward, from Imperkanni himself down to the lowest apprentice.

“The charges against Adept Nnanji are likewise withdrawn?” Wallie asked, not understanding why anything should be withdrawn.

Imperkanni relaxed and restored his smile. “Of course, my lord.” He looked for a long moment at Nnanji, and when he returned his smile to Wallie it said quite plainly that Nnanji was a glass box to him. He was a practiced leader of men. In Nnanji he could see the juvenile doubts and hero worship that would fade in the light of experience; the courage, tenacity, and integrity that would shine more brightly.

“As you said, my lord, this was no affair of honor, but a true battle. Adept Nnanji is to be congratulated on a fine start to his career. He was correct to come to your assistance. His honor is without reproach, his courage beyond question, my lord, like your own.”

Nnanji gasped, then stammered and thanked him, and sniffled. Then he squared his shoulders and grinned at Wallie.

Imperkanni rose, so the others did. “Indeed, I would seek to recruit him to my troop, but I assume that you will be taking him back as protégé yourself, my lord?” he asked, and his yellow eyes twinkled.

“If he will accept me as mentor,” Wallie said, “I will be honored—and very humble.”

A look of disbelief and delight spread over Nnanji’s filthy face. “My lord! You will let me swear to you after I denounced you?” Cinderella’s lemon was a coach again, with all the optionals.

“It was your duty,” Wallie said. “If you had not done so, then I should not want you.” He could out-Alice their Wonderland any time.

Yoningu had been following the treatment of Nnanji with a smile adding to the lopsidedness of his face. He and Imperkanni, as longtime companions, could probably read each other’s thoughts without difficulty. He flickered a wink at Wallie and remarked, “Of course, my lord, the first minstrel we meet will be informed how Shonsu and Nnanji defeated ten swordsmen in a redoubtable feat of arms.”

Nnanji had not yet thought of fame. His mouth opened and nothing but a croak emerged. It was the glass slipper Cinderella could live happily ever after on that alone.

“Not Shonsu and Nnanji,” Wallie said solemnly, “but Nnanji and Shonsu. He started it.”

Jja was smiling at him. Cowie was asleep. Even the old man was looking better, sitting up straight and listening. Katanji . . . Katanji was studying Wallie with a puzzled expression. He alone seemed to know that Wallie was winging it, and did not understand his acquittal.

“Indeed, my lord,” Imperkanni said thoughtfully, “I do not presume to advise you in your affairs . . . but in this case you might even consider eleven forty-four.”

Seniors loved to quote high-number sutras over the heads of juniors—they all did it. Yoningu frowned, for Sixths were usually immune to that game. Nnanji pouted and looked puzzled.

Eleven forty-four? The last sutra? Was Imperkanni testing to see if Shonsu was a genuine Seventh?

Then Wallie worked it out, and a great blaze of excitement banished his darkness of guilt and fatigue. He recognized the favor of the gods. It had not been a test—for a test he must have failed—but a lesson, and he had learned as required. He was not a failure, he was still Her champion. His relief was as great as Nnanji’s. “Of course!” he said. “Why not? A very good idea, Lord Imperkanni!” Then he threw back his head and bellowed that vast sepulchral laugh of Shonsu’s, lifting the swallows and frightening the horses, startling the mules in the meadow, waking the baby, echoing and reechoing over the corpses in the guardhouse like the tolling of the temple bell.

#1144 THE FOURTH OATH

Fortunate is he who saves the life of a colleague, and greatly blessed are two who have saved each other’s. To them only is permitted this oath and it shall be paramount, absolute, and irrevocable:

I am your brother,
My life is your life,
Your joy is my joy,
My honor is your honor,
Your anger is my anger,
My friends are your friends,
Your enemies are my enemies,
My secrets are your secrets,
Your oaths are my oaths,
My goods are your goods,
You are my brother.

The sun was sinking into the horizon like a drop of blood soaking into sand, pointing an accusing, bloody finger across the tops of the ripples toward Wallie on the jetty. Perhaps, suggested Imperkanni, the noble lord should consider spending the night at the guardhouse and continue his journey the next day? But despite his sudden mood of jubilation, Wallie wanted nothing more than to get away from the scene of carnage and the holy island as soon as he could. Anywhere else would be better.

He turned to the boat captain, who had been resignedly sitting on the floor through the whole trial and had now been released. “Have you any reservations about traveling by night, sailor?”

“Not with you on board, my lord,” said the man, groveling. So whatever it was that had happened, it affected sailors, also.

The suspicion and hostility had vanished. Every man of the free company had been presented to the relentless Lord Shonsu and the inexorable Adept Nnanji and each had humbly congratulated both on their magnificent feat of arms. Nnanji’s grin appeared to have become permanent.

Imperkanni had put his efficient organization to work. Food and straw mattresses were being stripped from the guardhouse and carried to the boat, bodies gathered up, horses inspected and tended. A laughing Third produced food to silence the loud Vixini, and a glass of wine for the old man, which affected a dramatic improvement there, also.

“We shall stay here ourselves tonight,” the Seventh said. He looked at the skinner. “You can sleep in one of the horse stalls. We shall need some of your mules in the morning. Not many.”

The skinner seemed to have had news of a major disaster. His rodent eyes switched plaintively to Wallie, who was puzzled for a moment, and then started to laugh.

“I expect that he will be missed if he does not return to his loved ones, my lord,” he said. “Someone will go looking for him. Right, skinner?”

And she would find no husband, no mules, but a fortune in gold coins in the stable.

“I am sure that your men can handle mules, can they not, Lord Imperkanni? Keep what you need and let him go. He was helpful to me.”

The white-maned swordsman raised his salt-and-pepper eyebrows in astonishment, but agreed as a favor to Lord Shonsu. Wallie was amused—even mass murderers can be good guys sometimes.

By tacit consent, the two Sevenths began to stroll along the jetty for a private talk.

“You realize that the Goddess has brought you here to be reeve?” Wallie said. “The priests will have you appointed before you can get off your horse.”

The older man nodded. “I admit that the idea tempts,” he replied. “Yoningu and I have talked much lately of finding the stone scabbard. One grows old, I fear. The cheering becomes more fun than the fighting.”

He was silent for a moment and then continued. “This was not the first time that Her hand has moved us, and always thereafter we found noble work for our swords. But Hann was a surprise; we could find no problem that needed us. Then Yoningu persuaded me to make the pilgrimage. He wanted to inquire after his father . . . and here we are.” He chuckled, being jovially patronizing. “When we stepped on the jetty and heard the swords, I thought that you were the problem, my lord. I see now that you were the solution.”

He was probably testing Wallie’s spark point, but Wallie was in no mood to let him find it. “Tell me about his father, then?” he asked.

Imperkanni shrugged. “He last heard of him years and years ago. At that time he was planning to come here to enlist with the guard. I expect acorns have grown oaks since he died.”

“Nnanji may have heard tell of him,” Wallie suggested. “What was his name?”

“Indeed?” Lord Shonsu suddenly seemed to lose interest. “On second thought, perhaps Yoningu’s best bet would be to inquire of the old commissary I mentioned. He would know, if anyone would. You will find him cooperative and honorable.” He turned to a more delicate subject. “Some of your younger men will find life in the guard very dull, will they not?”

The gold eyes went stony cold, and Wallie had the impression that the white ponytail was twitching by itself. He wondered if Sevenths could ever relax together, two stags discussing their herds.

Wallie sighed and then smiled. “There are reports of brigands fleecing pilgrims on the trail.”

Imperkanni chuckled. “Most humbly I pray to the Holiest that they try that tomorrow.”

At the end of the quay they turned and started back. There was very little wind. Work on the boat seemed to have been completed. Wallie started looking around for his party—and once more caught the eye of young Katanji.

Katanji nudged his brother, who was standing beside him. He got angrily hushed, but Imperkanni also had intercepted the exchange. He raised an eyebrow at Nnanji.

“That protégé of yours is a sharp little dagger,” the Seventh remarked. “He noticed what no one else did, and what Lord Shonsu was too proud to mention. I am in his debt. Present him.”

“He does not yet know the salutes and responses, my lord,” Nnanji protested.

Any swordsmen of the Seventh rank could freeze a man through to his spinal column with one glance. Even the intrepid Adept Nnanji quailed before the look he now received.

So Katanji was presented and had his chance: “I wondered if I might ask one of your juniors, my lord, to take word to my . . . our parents? Just to tell them where we have gone?” He flashed a glance toward Wallie. “And say that I am in good hands?”

Nnanji squirmed at such sentimentality. Imperkanni exchanged a smile with Wallie. He had noticed the civilian parentmarks. “I shall deliver that message myself,” he said. “And I shall tell them that they make fine sons, good swordsmen . . . and that you are in Her hands. Who can direct me to them?”

Wallie said, “I commend Briu to you, my lord. I think he would be grateful for a chance to redeem himself. He is basically an honest man. He could advise you on the others, if nothing else.”

Imperkanni thanked him politely, but obviously intended to make his own decisions about the temple guard.

“Certain!” Honakura snapped, although he was still very shaky. “One mule trip is two too many.” He chuckled. “Also I have a professional interest in miracles, and they follow you like flies follow cows.”

“We have a sad ceremony to perform before you depart, my lord,” Imperkanni told Wallie, nodding to where his men had laid out eight naked bodies on the jetty.

“Mm?” Honakura said. “Perhaps I should be a priest again for just a minute?” He tottered along to the bodies and pulled off his headband.

The expression on Imperkanni’s face when he counted the facemarks gave Wallie considerable satisfaction.

Thus Wallie’s last deed on the holy island was to attend a funeral. The free swords knew how such things should he done. Not wanting to show his ignorance, he went off to relieve himself, and by the time he returned they were all lined up, and his place was obvious. Twelve swordsmen stood in a line along the edge of the jetty, Katanji the smallest and youngest and most junior at the far end, Imperkanni on Honakura’s right in the center. Wallie slipped into place on his left and drew his sword in salute with the rest.

“Honorable Tarru,” Nnanji said as the first body was dragged forward by the slaves. Honakura recited the words of farewell:

“Tarru of the sixth rank, we return you now to the Great Mother of us all, for your journey in this world is ended.

“You go to Her, as we all shall, bearing dust and stains from the road, and those She will wash away; bearing hurts and sorrows, and those She will comfort; bearing joys and honors, and these She will welcome.

“You go to Her to be restored and to be cherished until, in Her own time, She sends you forth to travel once more.

“Tell Her, we pray, that we are mindful of Her, and that we also await Her call; for from waters we come, and to the waters must we all return.”

The body hit the water with a splash . . . and the water boiled, exploded in a wild eruption that rapidly became a silvery foam, turned crimson and hissed as the air in the lungs surfaced, and then died away to a faint pink stain, drifting slowly downstream. It was all over in moments, but the corpse had vanished. Wallie was so shocked that he almost dropped his sword.

From then on Wallie was ready for it, but he found that cold shivers ran through him every time and he was hard put to stop himself from trembling visibly. What he had escaped! From the depths of Shonsu’s vocabulary came a word . . . it floated around and around in his head until at last the translator found an approximate equivalent: piranha.

Now he understood the verdict of the trial. The will of the Goddess took precedence over the sutras, and She had made Her will known. Only Her champion could have reached the jetty alive by that route, so She approved of his actions. No human court would overrule her. Now he understood Nnanji’s shocked reaction when he had once suggested crossing the River, he understood why the word for “swim” applied only to fish, why the priests by the pool had been so reluctant to get their feet wet, why the skinner watered his mules at a trough, why it had been so easy to outflank Tarru. Little wonder that he was being regarded with superstitious awe, after an act of such faith and courage.

He stared out over the miles of calm water to the last blush of evening. He thought how wonderfully soothing a swim would be to his jangled nerves, his filthy and weary and saddle-sore body. But there would be no swimming in this lifetime for him.

The ferry was a whaleboat with fore-and-aft rigging. It could have carried perhaps two dozen passengers on its thwarts, but most of those had been removed by the swordsmen. With straw-filled mattresses spread over the gratings there was ample room for seven passengers to sprawl in comfort and chew at the provisions provided—cold fowl, stale bread and cheese, and flagons of warm beer. Eased along by a barely perceptible breeze, the ferry slid through the lazy ripples without a sway. There was enough food to feed a regiment of Nnanjis, so they shared it with the potbellied, obsequious captain and the loutish boy who formed his crew.

The night was warm and silent and glorious, the arc of the Dream God spectacular among the stars, brighter than a full moon on Earth, painting the boat in silver and gray, on black and silver water.

The rugmaker’s sons and Cowie had settled amidships, the crew by the tiller. Wallie sat on the bow thwart with Jja beside him and Honakura cross-legged at his feet. Vixini had been forcefully restrained all day, screaming for freedom to move around. Now he had his chance, so he rolled up in a ball and went to sleep.

As soon as the boat was away from the jetty Wallie turned to Jja and kissed her. She returned the kiss as a well trained slave should.

A slave, but not a friend. He smiled encouragingly at her and tried not to show the hurt he felt. Yet how else could it be? She had witnessed him in a rampage of slaughter. He could hardly bear to think about it himself, so how could he expect her to forgive, and overlook, and understand? If he had lost her love, then the price of victory had been higher than he had been willing to pay.

He was miserably conscious of the nosy little priest beside him, who would listen to anything he said. He wished he could take her away and talk, yet he did not know how he would put his feelings into words.

Jja almost never tried to put feelings into words, but she returned his look with a long, searching gaze, her expression unreadable, and finally said, “We are both slaves, master.”

A very faint hint of a smile crept into her face in the silver dimness. “I must please my master. My master must please the gods.”

She was silent for a while as the boat seemed to pick up speed. “It is easier for me,” she said quietly. “My task is to give you pleasure, and that gives me much joy also.”

Then she put her arms around him. They kissed with lovers’ fervor, and he knew that their love had not been lost, it had been strengthened.

He broke off the embrace before his glands went totally out of control and sat for a minute, breathing hard and feeling much better.

“I was just thinking,” Honakura remarked to the night sky, “that boats are greatly superior to mules.”

“Yes, I was,” the priest replied with a chuckle. “How could you kiss her on a mule?”

Later, when Wallie had finished his meal, he dropped the scraps overboard, piece by piece, watching in horrified fascination as the piranha swarmed on them. This close to the water he was able to make them out if he watched carefully—momentary flickers of silver in the black water, no larger than a man’s little finger, but able to appear instantly in, unlimited numbers.

“You did not have piranha in your dream world, my lord?” Honakura asked, leaning back against the gunwale and watching him with quiet amusement. Wallie started guiltily.

“Not normally,” he admitted. “If the demigod left me in such ignorance of the World, then he must make himself responsible for guiding me.”

The priest smiled. “I suggest that you do not attempt that maneuver again, now that you know.”

“I have already made a vow to that effect,” Wallie said. “Explain the temple pool to me?”

“Even there, sometimes,” said the old man. “But they avoid fast water, it is said, and that may be why the pool is usually safe. I would not walk in it from choice, though.”

Jja lay down beside Vixini and went to sleep at once. Wallie was too jumpy to try yet. The light was brighter than moonlight, but strangely diffuse, throwing double shadows. A mist was forming over the River. It was hard to make out much at a distance, even as close as the vague figures of Cowie, Nnanji, and Katanji amidships.

Nnanji, a few minutes later, came scrambling forward to kneel in front of Wallie and, incidentally, Honakura. He was still licking his fingers, and his face was a blur in the darkness under its coat of grime. He had not removed his sword, which seemed odd, but doubtless he had one of those strange swordsmen reasons for it.

Wallie shook his head. “It can wait until morning, surely? You didn’t want a fencing lesson in the boat, did you?”

“Let me guess,” Wallie said. “You want to know why the gods approved of all those abominations?”

“Perhaps our venerable friend can explain,” Wallie said. “Why should the Goddess have permitted so many abominations? We assume that She does not approve of abominations. Correct, holy one?” He looked down at the tiny, huddled shape beside him.

“I’m not a holy one any longer,” Honakura said pettily. “But, yes, that is a fair assumption.”

“And I do not approve,” Wallie said, “of mentors beating protégés, But I butchered you very thoroughly once, my young friend.”

Nnanji’s eyes showed gleaming white in the dark. “That was to break my curse, my lord.”

Suddenly Wallie became aware that something unexpected was happening amidships. He tried not to stare too openly, but it looked as though Katanji had moved very close to Cowie. Nnanji was kneeling with his back to them.

“The god ordered me to kill Hardduju. I did it—but only because I had been specifically told to do so. The only other order I had been given was to be an honorable and valiant swordsman. An honorable swordsman of the Seventh should not have tolerated Tarru and his sleazy tricks for an instant. I butchered you and taunted you, until you lost your temper and turned on me. The gods forced me into a corner until I started shedding blood and showed that I could be a killer. The same process.”

“It’s like testing a sword, isn’t it?” Nnanji said. “You bend it, to see if it snaps back or breaks?”

“We committed no abominations, either of us. The temple guard was a gang of recreants. Imperkanni acquitted us. Do you agree with his verdict, old man?”

“Oh, yes! Obviously you were forced,” said Honakura. “The gods chose the two of you and—”

Katanji was making progress. He was getting no cooperation, but neither did he seem to be meeting resistance. In Katanji’s world, evidently, all those not opposed were in favor, and obviously this was one scratcher who would not have been in need of Wild Ani’s evening classes.

“If you will swear the second oath to me, Adept Nnanji,” Wallie said, “and I hope you will, for I shall be proud to have you as a protégé again, then there is another oath that I would swear with you also.”

“Never!” Wallie said. “I think that oath is an abomination, even if the Goddess did make the sutras. I have had enough of the third oath to last two lifetimes. No, I speak of the fourth oath.”

Honakura claimed to know nothing about swordsmen’s oaths, but he was peering curiously at Wallie in the gloom.

“You could not have done,” Wallie said. “First, it is contained in sutra eleven forty-four.”

“The last sutra. Only a candidate for Seventh would ever hear of it, unless a Seventh deliberately told him, as I am going to tell you. Secondly, it is restricted . . . ”

“But we qualify, you and I. It may only be sworn by those who have saved each other’s lives, and that can happen only in battle, not in the ways of honor. I think, friend Nnanji, that that was why the gods sent us into battle today. I saved you from Tarru, and you saved me from Ghaniri. Obviously it is a very rare oath, and I think maybe it is not much talked of, anyway.”

Nnanji’s eyes were shining in the dark. Secret signs and fearsome oaths were the very essence of the swordsmen’s craft, so a secret oath was double pleasure to him.

Katanji’s explorations were coming along very well now. He had removed Cowie’s wrap and was still progressing. Nnanji was clearly very fond of his young brother, and his attitude to sex was astonishingly casual, but could it possibly be so casual that he would loan his new slave even before he had tried her out himself?

With difficulty, Wallie pulled his eyes away. “Don’t be in too much of a hurry, Nnanji,” he warned. “In some ways it is even more terrible than the third oath. But it is fair. It binds both parties equally, not like slave and master.”

Honakura coughed in the gloom. “Is it, by any chance, an oath of brotherhood, my lord?”

“It is,” Wallie said, smiling. “You see, Nnanji, the first thing I have to do, the god told me, is to find my brother, and . . . and I don’t have any brothers that I know of.”

“I’m sure he did, because he put you on the beach, so that I almost fell over you coming out of the water. You have a part to play in Her task, Nnanji, if you will swear to be my oath brother.”

“Nnanji,” Wallie said. “I hate to interrupt this important conversation, and it is certainly none of my business, but did you give your protégé permission to do what he is just about to do?”

He went scrambling rapidly aft, while Honakura smothered sniggers. A sharp cry of pain rang out, followed by thumping noises.

“I suspect that ‘another’ means another brother,” Wallie replied, stretching himself out on the mattress, “and if so, then the man in question just gained a little wisdom for his own account.”

“But now it is your turn. How did you know about Katanji’s black hair? And brotherhood?”

“Mmm, yes,” Honakura said. He also lay down and made himself comfortable. “I told you that Ikondorina was mentioned a couple of times in other sutras, my lord. Once there is a reference to ‘Ikondorina’s redhaired brother,’ and once to ‘Ikondorina’s black-haired brother.’ That is all. Red hair is very rare, as you know, and pure black hair is unusual.”

Wallie gazed up at the rings and the stars. “Tell me the stories about them, then.”

Why was the old man so reluctant? What had he guessed? Wallie had no way of finding out—and perhaps he would be happier not knowing. Yet he was sure that he had now begun his task. He had solved the first part of the god’s riddle. Nnanji had a role to play, and almost certainly it was Katanji who would bring wisdom. In fact, he had already done so, for it was he who had turned the trial around. Thus Wallie’s laughter and joy in the guardhouse—he was on the right track.

The boat started rocking with a new rhythm, and he sat up to find the cause. The cause lay with Cowie.

He could not sleep. Something was missing, some thought struggling to escape from his subconscious. The events of the day crawled all over his mind and would not let him go. The old man was snoring. There was something sticking in his back . . .

He moved to a new position and tried again, with no more success. The light of the Dream God reminded him of his nights in the jail. Then he tried turning on his side and found himself looking into a pair of big dark eyes not far away. Katanji, also, could not sleep, and that was hardly surprising. If it had been a big day for Wallie, what had it been for him?

Even at Katanji’s age, his brother would have pulled out all his toenails rather than admit to that.

“It would be nice to be at home,” Katanji whispered, “just for a little while, telling them all about the day I have had.”

This had been a good day? Well, perhaps it had, in the end. “I expect so. Good night, Novice Katanji.”

“Oh!” Katanji started to fumble with his unfamiliar harness pouch. “I forgot, my lord.”

After a pause, the boy whispered again. “My lord? You did not have any parentmarks?”

“I do?” Wallie said aloud, and then dropped his voice again. “You’re serious?” He rubbed his right eyelid with a finger and some spit. “Still there?”

A sword . . . Shonsu’s father? Or Detective Inspector Smith? Or just a sign of approval from the demigod, who must be laughing, somewhere. Thank You, Shorty. What craft had Shonsu’s mother followed? Wallie Smith’s mother had been a crime reporter. That would translate as minstrel, he supposed, and chuckled.

He lay and listened to the creak of the ropes and the hiss of water flowing by. He thought of the silvery death that swarmed below him, only inches away.

That was what had been wrong—he had been brooding on the past day, which was gone and done, washed away forever in the waters of the Goddess, like the bodies. He should be thinking of the future. The struggling thought in his subconscious surfaced, and it was the command of the demigod: Go and be a swordsman, Shonsu! Be honorable and valorous. And enjoy yourself, for the World is yours to savor.

What happened the next day
—and on many subsequent days—
is recounted in
THE COMING OF WISDOM
Book Two of The Seventh Sword

BOOK FIVE:

HOW THE SWORDSMAN FOUND HIS BROTHER