The Paper Sword (18 page)

Xemion looked around frantically but the crowd hadn't yet recovered from its turmoil and he couldn't see Saheli anywhere.

“I see we are being honoured by a final visit from our governor,” Azucena announced over the nervous murmuring of the crowd. “Friends, please welcome the recently departed governor of Ulde, Prince Akka Smissm.” She gave a signal and the trumpeters let loose with a fanfare. But there was no applause. The crowd, despite being packed in tight, in true Phaer fashion now began to re-establish its sense of order. Prince Akka Smissm strode up onto the dais while his front guard formed a defensive line at its foot in front of him. There they threw back their white cloaks and stood with arms crossed and legs wide apart, revealing the hilts of swords at their hips. The uproar that had arisen at the Pathan's entrance died down now and the arena grew hushed and quiet, waiting to hear what the shadow-faced Pathan governor might have to say. A number of the Phaerlanders who had been feeling brave only a few minutes before were now pushing their way back through the crowd toward the exits. Xemion was desperately trying to locate Saheli, but the Thralls pressed in tight about him were so tall they hardly allowed him any view of the crowd at all.

Smissm tilted the lower of his two black visors open only enough to allow his voice to project. Xemion had never seen an actual Pathan before, and he couldn't quite see this one now, but he was surprised at the surge of anger he felt as a loud glassy voice emerged.

“I hear talk of a vote.” The Pathan, though his tone was sharp and grating, spoke the Phaer tongue fluently. “This is a foolish exercise. Such practices have no impact. We rule by the sword, not by the ballot.” With these words a signal was given and the twenty soldiers who had turned to face the crowd withdrew their swords as one and stood with their blades before them, point-first on the ground, hands crossed over their pommels.

This elicited gasps from the crowd. More of them began to squeeze their way slowly back toward the exits. Pressed in even tighter amongst the throngs, standing on his tiptoes trying to find her, a memory suddenly flashed through Xemion's mind: the time he'd first seen Saheli in the river and then lost her for a moment in the torrent. This moment was like that moment. He would see her again soon. Her head would pop up in the crowd somewhere nearby, surely, and they would catch each other's hands again as they had on that day. He remembered the awesome strength of her grip and wished she'd held on to him that way today.

“Our power, as you can see,” Smissm continued, placing his hand on the protruding hilt of the sword at his own side, “is properly constituted. No vote is needed. You may not bear weapons. You do not have choice in this matter.”

“Nevertheless, Prince Smissm —” lofty Veneetha Azucena intoned, raising the volume of her voice to a surprising level.

“
AND
—” Smissm raised his voice even louder than hers, “
If
you have been fooled by these rumours that we are too preoccupied with our own internal matters to enforce our will here, ask yourselves this: Do you really think the great Pathan empire, which paid such a blood price to defeat the evils of spellcraft, would now quietly crawl away and allow the children and grandchildren of spell kone makers to come back and nest right here by the Great Kone itself? I wonder if you have all thought this through.” The Pathan surveyed the crowd imperially, his face invisible in his black helmet.

“Nevertheless, Smissm,” Veneetha Azucena spoke up even louder than before, “I must remind you that no one is more against the spellcraft than I am. Than we all are. And in any case, the supreme court has specifically asked for a response. I am obliged to give them one. Even Pathan princes, I believe, must at least obey the law.”

Smissm snorted and turned to address the crowd. “I hope you are not allowing yourselves to be led into peril by all this splendid oratory.” He gestured toward Veneetha Azucena contemptuously. “I have only the oratory of these master swordsmen here.” He indicated his soldiers, who drew themselves up to their full height and stared balefully out over the crowd. “If somehow you should all agree to break a long-held Pathan law here today, I would have no choice but to turn them loose on you.”

At this their commander gave a signal and the soldiers lifted their weapons from the ground and held their points forward and at the ready. If they expected those who faced them to back away in fear, they were disappointed. The Phaerlanders in the front row had been particularly chosen for their bravery and that fierce quality shone in the ready gazes they shot back at their well-armed oppressors.

Vow Crossed

“S
ir
, I do not think these brave Phaerlanders have come all this way just to be intimidated.” Veneetha Azucena turned to the crowd, who awaited her with tense expectation. “Are you prepared?” she asked them loudly. “Are you all ready to give your answer today to the Pathan courts?”

The crowd's answer arose as though from one mouth. “Yes!”

“I, too, am ready. So, let us decide. To the question, Do we accept this ruling? what do we say?”

“No!” she yelled as she withdrew from its scabbard within her cloak a great glory of a sword and held the blade up to the sky.

“No!” The crowd shouted as one, the sound echoing off the walls of the stadium louder than anything had in fifty years. At the same time, hundreds of other swords, till now hidden in cloaks or disguised as staffs or hidden down the legs of pantaloons, were likewise unsheathed and upraised with great shouts of “No!” and “Never!” Those in the front row, who faced the soldiers, quickly adjusted their swords, holding them before them and at the ready almost as though they'd been trained.

This clearly caught the kwislings off guard. They had been expecting to deal with an unarmed crowd. Now the twenty of them would have to fight hundreds. To be sure, many of their opponents had only shards of sharpened pipe to fight with, but there were also many proper iron swords.

Xemion's painted sword, however, was not among the crop of blades that arose there. He was using the opportunity as people shifted to squeeze through the crowd in search of Saheli. He was not blind to the solemnity and danger of the occasion, but even as the crowd chanted
“No! No! No!”
thrusting their swords up at the sky, he was calling out her name so loud several Thralls turned to give him disapproving glances.

Smissm emitted a short, sharp command: “At the ready!”

“Please, please, Prince Smissm,” Veneetha Azucena called out. “We are Phaer People. We have you vastly outnumbered.”

“I see sharpened pipes and sticks raised up against Pathan power,” Smissm screeched back, his voice even glassier with rage. “If those of you with such implements do not lower and surrender them immediately, the lives of everyone here and their families will be forfeit!”

Tomtenisse Doombeard, along with most of the other Nains in the crowd who had only come to Ulde for the promise of working at masonry or tunnel digging took great offence at being included in this threat. With frightening volume he and most of the other Nains exploded into hoarse war cries. Suddenly there were quite a number of new weapons in the air: hammers, stone axes, and short-handled picks. If this increased the kwislings' uncertainty, they did not immediately show it. Their features remained expressionless in Pathan style as they stood only a yard away from their rebel counterparts.

“Proceed!” Smissm shrieked. The kwislings lifted their shields and swords and took one step forward. The Phaerlanders likewise stepped forward so that now they stood point to point like opposing battalions.

“Stop!” Veneetha Azucena shouted. “There is no need for a bloodbath here. My Phaer brothers, my sisters,” she shouted, addressing the kwislings passionately. “Lay down your arms and I will grant you complete amnesty, or, if you prefer, safe passage out of the city, or if you dare — if you care to partake of our meagre payroll, we could surely use some brave souls like you.”

There was a brief shocked pause during which it became obvious that the kwislings were actually considering this offer. Prince Akka Smissm, not yet ready to realize how badly he had miscalculated in his decision to return for one last act of glory, bellowed “Attack them!”

The bravest of the kwislings, a large fellow with a long silver shield, dared to thrust forward a spear in his left hand. There was a ghastly scream and an almost naked, gangly and completely unarmed Thrall jumped over the front lines and leapt onto the man's shield, wrapping both his arms and legs around it, tearing it completely from his grasp. Other Thralls several rows back with long staves used them to push the shieldless soldier back and through the line of his fellows where he fell against the dais, striking his head. Several of his comrades attempted to lift him to his feet but he was clearly unconscious, a rush of red blood trickling over his visor from his nose. The others stepped closer to one another to make up for their thinned-out lines.

Seeing all the raised pikes and clubs, swords and the numerous Shield Thralls who would soon bear down on them, two of Akka Smissm's men let their blades fall to the ground and held their gauntleted hands open in a gesture of surrender. Most of them, as it turned out, were conscripts, young lads lifted from the streets of Phaeros and stuffed into oversized armour more for show than efficacy. Smissm could have turned then and left and no one would've come to any further harm, but he could not face the final indignity of this loss. Against the Pathan honour code, he swivelled to face Veneetha Azucena and whipped his blade up to her neck so fast there was barely a moment for a gasp from the crowd. There she stood, shocked and vulnerable but brave, staring back at him. “See. This is my vote here,” he shrieked at the crowd. “Shall I mark my ballot now?” And he stood as though prepared to push the thin rapier through her long, elegant neck.

Not till now did the press of the crowd give way and surrender space to the kwislings who faced them. A grave silence fell over the whole arena.

“What will it be?” the glassy voice screeched. But just then, with what most only saw as an explosion of intense sunlight, Tiri Lighthammer sent his sword spinning through the air at the Pathan and its hilt struck his head so forcefully he was knocked to the floor of the dais. Quickly retrieving his famous blade, Lighthammer inserted its point between the fallen Akka Smissm's shoulder plate and the rim of his helmet so that it touched his neck. There was fifty years of rage in Lighthammer's arms as he stood over the Pathan. How he longed to lean forward and let his blade sink right through the hated oppressor's neck.

“Careful, Lighthammer,” Azucena warned in a whisper. “Remember, we are not here for vengeance.” Lighthammer took a deep breath.

“Their weapons,” he said to her gruffly, indicating the line of kwislings who were looking at one another questioningly.

“I repeat my offer,” she shouted in a high, dramatic tone that echoed through the stadium. “If you lay down your arms I will grant you safe passage from the city.”

One among them called out, “How can we trust you?”

“I give you my overword, my underword, and the full orbits of all my words in trust.”

One by one, as some among the crowd jeered, the rest of the kwislings now lay down their broad swords and their shields. And when they stepped out of their bulky armour, revealing themselves to be thin and hungry conscripts of the streets, there was more jeering and laughing, which Azucena had several times to silence. When it was over, when all the lads had lain down their arms and those who were leaving had left, Tiri Lighthammer, who had all this time kept his point tight against the Pathan's neck, finally stood away.

Smissm rose slowly to his feet. “This is not the end of it,” he shrieked. There was a shattered quality to his voice now, as though numerous fragments of it grated and ground at one another. “I will return. And when I do, to all of you who have dishonoured my family and my ancestors, I make you this profound promise in the name of the Magman: Each and every man woman and child whom I do not personally kill I will sell into blood thrall in Arthenow.”

“Kill him!” someone shouted from the crowd. There were many shouts of assent but the Pathan knew Tiri Lighthammer was too honourable for that.

“You see, even the great Tiri Lighthammer has not the courage to kill a Pathan of the blood. The charge of our glory is still complete. I have lost nothing by this. And that victory of fifty years ago that floated a thousand Pathan ships on Phaerland blood is not undone and its rightness is right still and may never be expiated.” He said this knowing full well that Lighthammer's six brothers and sisters had contributed greatly to that ocean of blood he referred to.

Azucena shrieked “No!” But she was too late.

Tiri Lighthammer yelled, “Let the sun see your glory then!” And with that he yanked the ceremonial helmet from the regal Pathan's head. Vulnerable to the bright sunlight, Akka Smissm screamed and flung his white cape over his naked brow, but many had already seen it — the cracked crystalline facets of his forbidden face, the long, lozenge-shaped eyes with their deeply recessed sockets, the grim splinter of a mouth. Before Veneetha Azucena could stop him, Lighthammer tore the white robe away so that everyone who hadn't already seen the Pathan's features did so now. Many in the crowd had never seen even a masked Pathan before, let alone a barefaced, vulnerable one, and some laughed out loud and jeered.

The sun glinted blindingly off the Pathan's shocked face and most of those who saw it would remember it all the rest of their lives, for the Pathan's diamond face quickly blackened as though covered with char on one side, and even as he screamed Veneetha Azucena succeeded in wrenching the white robe from Tiri Lighthammer's enraged hands and covering the Pathan with it. Now she took charge. She signalled to the warriors she had hidden on the ramparts and in the alcoves and amongst the ruined seats and they stood up now and signalled back to her. She instructed her guard to take the groaning Pathan on a litter down to the harbour that he might be shipped back as quickly as possible to Pathar Deeps.

Most of the kwislings had melted into the crowd, but a core group of five of them, who knew they'd risk the lives of their families if they mutinied here today, stood about the charred Prince of Pathans until a litter was brought. Then, surrounded by Azucena's own guard, they carried him out of the stadium and away.

At first, when the great double door slammed shut, the silence in the arena continued, with everyone, particularly the Thralls, whose ancestors had been kept in blood thrall for centuries, keenly aware of the implications of all that had transpired. But the atmosphere was not one of fear. In fact, there was lightness and laughter in the air.

Not for Xemion though. All this time he had been looking for Saheli and he still hadn't found her. He had that feeling again. Not just that she had slipped out of sight for a moment but that she was gone forever.

“Now, I want this to be known.” Veneetha Azucena's voice, with its high rhetorical tone, filled the whole stadium again. “Today we have prevailed all too easily. But it will not always be so. I did not plan it to happen this way and I wish it had gone better — but I tell you, it does not matter. Smissm is of a fading dynasty. He may come back as he promises, but it won't be soon, and if he does it will be to face the best-trained Phaer militia in a century. We will prepare. We will toil. We will train our bodies and fashion the finest weapons. But we will not sacrifice the full round of the mind either, nor the needs of the spirit in this.”

“Never!” someone yelled.

“Now you have come all this way for one reason — to join us as soldiers of the new Phaer Republic. And so you have but one choice — commit to the full rigours of the ancient Elphaerean way. That means not only taking up arms but also taking up the stringent learning of yesteryear. So if you have come for easy glory, if you have come to be street-fighters, if you are bound over to another purpose, if you have contrary vows that cannot allow the vow I'm about to ask you, go now. All who choose to remain, like the Elphaereans of old, must make a vow — a full and sacred, unbreakable commitment to the endeavour we are all about to embark on. You must adhere to the Phaer code, and if you know you cannot keep it, leave now, while you still may.”

She paused as if to allow a sudden exodus. “And remember,” she continued, “once you've joined us, you are fully complicit in all of this.” She waved her hand to indicate the place where Smissm the Pathan had stood. “I will not hear a whisper of complaint from anyone, for you shall be bound like I am, wed to the Phaer purpose that was ours long before we unriddled the Great Kone and spun the first accursed spell kone of our own.”

“I will wed
you
,” a loud voice called out. There was laughter at this and it lifted the mood a little. Veneetha Azucena shook her head, allowed a little smile, and gave a mock bow. “Interesting you should say. We know there are some of you out there who already know you are beloveds. Even amongst the very young it is well known that the sense of the great bond between warrior beloveds is undeniable. So do not be afraid to account for yourselves even if you are young. This evening when we assign quarters here you must come and we will set you down in the lists. We will not keep you apart. We will adhere to the Elphaerean tradition in this. And you shall be housed, trained, and dispatched as beloveds.”