The Destiny of the Sword (17 page)

The castellan nodded. ‘Tell me again of his riddle.”

“Seven lines...” Wallie said. “First chain my brother, and I did mat when Nnanji and I swore the fourth oath. The mighty spurned was my stupidity in Aus, so the god foresaw that. Turning the circle was my reconnaissance of the sorcerer cities, and I earned an army by saving Sapphire from pirates. Next to gain wisdom and I have done that—that was Katanji showing me the truth about the sorcerers. The last instruction is to return the sword, and mat I do not understand yet.”

Tivanixi smiled. “You have done that, too. According to local tradition, Chioxin was a Casr man.”

Wallie swore quietly.

That sword was made in this lodge.”

Wallie nodded, thinking he could hear the shrill laughter of the tittle god. You amuse me! The gods had tricked him before and now they had tricked him again. He hoped it made them very happy.

,:
       
“And you did not know that!” Tivanixi was studying Wallie ‘£
  
thoughtfully. He seemed to approve of his surprise. H
      
“So now I must accord to ,” Wallie J
  
said glumly. “To lead the tryst, obviously. Whoever bears it. At it’ least three of the seven led trysts.” Suddenly, chillingly, he saw

why—a tryst was led by the best swordsman in the World. Any lesser man who wore one of the Chioxin masterpieces soon died. The epics did not mention that. Heroes were heroes.

“How much tune is there?” he asked. “You cannot promote another Sixth?”

“Not very likely now,” the castellan said, pacing again. He was speaking absently, his mind still wrestling with the bigger problem. “Of course the next boat may always bring someone ... You would think that you could get more than two Sevenths out of three dozen Sixths, wouldn’t you? But many are past their primes. A few are not there yet. Others never expected the opportunity and have not learned the sutras—why bother, when they were doing well as Sixths? Many are working on it, but it takes time. Some tried and failed and must wait until next year.” He chuckled. “Honorable Fiendori and I have been together since we were Thirds. On a good day he can beat me like a drum... but sutras? Zoariyi asked him for nine twenty. He started in ten thirteen, detoured through eight seventy,two, and finished up in nine eighteen!”

He gave Wallie a long, long stare. Then he sighed. He had made his decision. Wallie had become too familiar with the seventh sword to appreciate the impact it had on a swordsman—its quality, its beauty, and its legend. In a world where only the sorcerers could read, the Goddess could hardly have given him a letter of introduction. To whom it may concern: The bearer of this missive, our trusty and well,beloved Shonsu... She had given him the next best thing, the greatest sword ever made, and Ti,vanixi had heard the message,

“I shall accept you, Lord Shonsu, as being sent by the Goddess, with Her sword. Obviously She wants us to have the benefit of your wisdom as well as your sword. But I warn you—if you are a traitor, I shall kill you myself, at any cost.”

“I shall not betray your trust, my lord,” Wallie said, astonished and delighted, shaking his hand warmly. Here was an invaluable ally—and potentially a good friend, he thought. Then he remembered his doubts in the night... whose side was he on? He strangled the memory quickly. He, also, had made a decision. “One thing I have not heard, though,” he said. “For what exact purpose did you call this tryst? If you are planning to wreak

vengeance on the civilians of the left bank for harboring sorcerers, then I want no part of it.”

The castellan picked up the fragment of the fifth sword and wandered over to replace it on its pegs. “I wanted to call it to avenge Shonsu.” He chuckled. “That would have been a problem when you came back, wouldn’t it? But there were rumors that you had been seen, and also the priests started spinning their webs of words, as usual, wanting to know how I could call sorcerers as witnesses, and so on. And none of us knew at that time bow many cities had been taken! So we finally decided to keep it simple. We called die tryst of Cast ‘To restore the honor of the swordsmen’s craft.* Helpfully vague, yes?”

“Very good indeed!” Wallie said. That committed no one to anything and every swordsman must support it, but he wondered how the citizens of Casr felt about swordsmen’s honor at the moment.

“And by nightfall the swordsmen were arriving,” Tivanixi said proudly. He must have hoped to be leader, but he had earned bis immortality as the man who called the tryst, the one whose prayer had been answered. “And now She has sent Her own sword!”

“But who will bear it?” Wallie asked. Now it was bis turn to start pacing.

“He is the better swordsman, my lord. In eight or ten bouts, I have never touched him. Of course his reach is...” The castellan smiled. “Well, it’s unfair! He is incredibly fast—and completely ambidextrous. Zoariyi has taught him every trick in the craft. You might do better if you had more practice. You are rusty as the ruby, Shonsu. I could tell.”

“What sort of a leader would he make?” Wallie asked sadly. **His uncle is the brains?”

“Of course. But you know the blood oath—absolute power. He can tell bis uncle to disembowel himself if he wants to, once he has sworn that oath. He might, too! If I cannot be leader, then I had rather you than he, my lord. You may yet be traitor, but Boariyi is sure disaster.”

Wallie reached the far wall and started back. “How is he at leadership?”

Tivanixi snorted. “At his age?”

Wallie was surprised. He did not think that leadership depended very much on age—Nnanji certainly had it, and had proved so more than once. But a moment’s thought showed him mat this was a language problem, and perhaps a cultural one. To the swordsmen, leadership implied a certain public dignity, eminence, nobility... the word did not quite translate exactly.

“I believe mat I am supposed to be leader. But I can’t beat Boariyi, you say, and the tryst would not accept me anyway.”

“You know how to fight these thunderbolts?”

Wallie shrugged. “They have at least three types of thunderbolt. Apart from that they are mostly fakes. Speed is the key, but it will not work against the towers. I have some ideas, though. If Boariyi were leader, would he take my advice?”

“I doubt it,” Tivanixi said. “Just being a Seventh has gone to his head, and being liege lord will boil his brains.” Obviously he bitterly resented this upstart Boariyi. “And you will have to give him the sword! He either did not notice it, or he has not heard of Chioxin, but one of his men will have told him by now. In fact,” he said, with a worried frown, “it is surprising that he has not come looking for you already. He will certainly not let it escape from the lodge.”

He went to the window and started wiping a pane, speaking over his shoulder. “Choose another, my lord! Take any one off the wall. I will say the words to give it to you, and you can put it in your scabbard.”

Wallie discovered that he was a man of more honor man that. To walk out with a rusty old relic on his back and the seventh sword under his arm would be a public admission that he no longer felt worthy to wear it, and at the moment he needed all the prestige and self,esteem he could find.

“Yes, he is still down there,” said Tivanixi.

“Is there a back door?” Wallie asked. “If I can reach my ship, I am safe. On Sapphire’s deck I can beat any man.”

The castellan swung around. He frowned and men shrugged. “Yes, there is. Let’s go, men.”

They clipped their hair up and went out, pushing the wailing door closed, shutting the ghosts back in their cold gray solitude.

“Leave the bar,” the castellan said as Wallie reached for it. “I’ll send some juniors to get the hernias.” They started down the

stairs. “I can return Master Nnanji and the others with an escort. Have you a password he will know?”

Wallie thought and then chuckled. “ ‘Killer earthworm/ It was how he fenced when I first met nun.”

“He is more of a cobra now, Lord Shonsu! A pity he cannot manage the sutras; he would have a good chance to make Sixth.”

They clattered down a second flight. There were two doors on mis floor, one on either side of the stairwell. “Through here.” The door led into another long room—smelly, grimy, and littered with bedding rolls and the small packs of belongings that free swords might carry on their gypsy life. All the rooms in the lodge must be this shape, long and narrow, with windows on one side out to a balcony.

“If no other Seventh appears, how much time do I have?” Wallie asked as they paced through.

“Very little, I fear! You announced mat you would not join the tryst, so they can’t count you. But if no other appears, then I don’t think we can wait much longer.” They went out through the tar door and down more stairs. “The town can’t take much more of mis.”

So Tivanixi did care about what was happening in the city?

“You can’t impose discipline?”

He got an angry and resentful glare. “I have tried! It risks gang warfare, my men versus your men. It is the unattached Sixths, and a couple of Fifths; slack disciplinarians have less trouble recruiting, of course. The Sevenths are all keeping their protege’s under control, I think, but the others are troublemakers. It is hard on the citizens. And taxes are another problem—I had no idea how much this was going to cost, and the elders scream when I ask for more money.”

He opened another door, leading into another long room, rank and unbelievably cluttered. Half the windowpanes were missing, panels had warped away from the walls. There was mold on the heaps of old furniture and high,piled bedding, harnesses, clothes, and boxes that almost filled it. The floor had sagged in places and me air stank of rot and decay.

‘Tell the elders,” Wallie said as they edged their way through the piled furniture, along a narrow, crooked path, “that feeding a tryst costs less than building a sorcerer’s tower.”

Tivanixi stopped and stared back at him. “I hadn’t thought of that!”

“It is their logical next move.”

“Sorcerers cannot cross the River!”

“Oh yes, they can! I assure you, Lord Tivanixi, that there is at least one sorcerer down there in that courtyard at tins moment. Most likely he is a slave, or a hawker, or someone else inconspicuous. News of my arrival will be on its way to Vul already.”

tttttt

Wallie had been quite prepared to return to the ship alone, but with a glance at his hairclip Tivanixi had tactfully insisted on providing an escort and he had put bis longtime friend Fiendori of the Sixth hi charge of it. Thus Wallie marched through the narrow alleys and across the wide squares with Fiendori and half a dozen swordsmen at his back.

He glowed with a new exuberance, his doubts withered away. Thanks to the ambitious Thana, he now understood the sorcerers’ apparent telepathy. Minx! She had sought sutra lessons from him, and from Nnanji, and from her mother, so that no one could know what she had been taught. Obviously Nnanji had been assuming mat it was Wallie who had instructed her in Fourth,rank sutras, as a surprise for him. He wondered how many sutras Brota knew—the water rats were little impressed by ritual.

Lip reading was probably well known to the riverfolk, useful up in the shrouds in a strong wind, when neither voices nor gestures could be used. The sorcerers had adopted it and combined it with the telescope. That was typical of their methods, a fragment of technology plus a bushel of showmanship, combined to give an impression of magic powers. Obviously they could know of the telescope—it ought to have been invented on Earth long before it had been.

Also, Wallie had completed the god’s riddle. He had tetumed the sword to the lodge where it had been made. And he had accorded to its destiny, accepting mat he must lead the tryst.

The need was obvious. Boariyi was a brash kid. Tivanixi

seemed intelligent enough, yet even he had already blundered conspicuously. He had been tricked into calling the tryst at the wrong time of year, with whiter coming. He had charged ahead without finding out anything about the enemy. He had obviously given no thought at all to finance. Faith in the Goddess was fine, but the gods helped those who knew what they were doing. The tryst needed not only Wallie’s superior knowledge of the enemies’ powers, but also some good management techniques—aim identification, cost,benefit studies, critical path analysis, command structure definitions, budgetary forecasts...

The tiny battle of Ov had shown Wallie that the sorcerers were poor fighters, merely armed civilians who lost their beads, while the swordsmen were trained tacticians. Yet Tivanixi’s impetuous response to the sorcerers’ defiance suggested that, on the higher level of strategy, the sorcerers might be better man the swordsmen. There were sutras on strategy, but who ever got to use them? War was rare in the World. Few swordsmen would ever command a force of more than a dozen or so, while the sorcerers had obviously been working to a careful plan for fifteen years. Now they had run out of cities on the left bank. They must either rest with the conquests they had, or cross the River. They could write; they had records; they had communications and organization; they could see the bigger picture. Wallie Smith still thought mat way, although he was now illiterate. He had the additional advantage of knowing a little history from another world, a much more warlike planet than this. His feel for strategy and planning was better than that of the other swordsmen. They were iron,age barbarians; he was a cultivated, educated, and reasonably well,informed twentieth,century technologist... who just happened to be an iron,age barbarian on the outside. The tryst needed his way of thinking as much as it needed his knowledge of the sorcerers’ technology. He must somehow put himself at its head.