Seventh Sword - The Reluctant Swordsman Part 21

Surprised, he nodded once more.

She guessed his thoughts. "The slaves know everything, master. They told me."

He felt a surge of excitement. Friend! He had been committing the very crime he had denounced in the People, thinking of a woman as a possession, a mere source of physical pleasure.

"Would they help?" he asked. "Would you?"

She seemed surprised that he would ask. "I will do anything. The others will help, also. Because of Ani."

"Ani?"

She nodded solemnly, her face so close to his that it was hard to focus. "Ani would have been beaten, master, had you not accepted her."

So that trivial half kindness, half joke had earned him the friendship of the slaves, had it? There were many slaves around the barracks, he now realized. He had barely registered them. Probably n.o.body else noticed them at all. They must be privy to all the secrets. Of course his actions with Ani would be known. Ani was a slave herself. Likely there had been another in the corner bed.

He was still pondering the implications of a slave army when Jja said, "If you try to leave with the sword, he will stop you, master? That is what they told me."

"Yes."

"If I carried it out for you?"

He started to smile as the ideas began to flow together.

"No," he said. "I don't think so. The swordsmen know you -- you would not even get down the stairs, Jja. You would be stopped if you were carrying a long bundle, a roll, a..."

He sat up and yelled, "Nnanji!"

At once Nnanji stopped his lunging and swung round: "My liege?" He was grinning insanely. He, too, would do anything -- he would eat hot coals if his mentor asked him.

"You told me you had a brother?" Wallie asked.

Looking surprised, Nnanji walked over, sheathing his sword. "Katanji, my liege."

"How old is he?"

Nnanji turned pink. "He is old enough to shave," he confessed.

Momentarily nonplussed, Wallie raised a hand to his own smooth chin. Then he realized that Nnanji was not thinking of chins -- Nnanji meant that his brother ought to be wearing a loincloth. Poor families had trouble finding crafts for their children. Payment to admit Nnanji to the swordsmen had been a bribe, but artisan mentors demanded initiation dues quite openly.

"Is he trustworthy, really trustworthy?" Wallie asked.

Nnanji frowned. "He is a h.e.l.lion, my liege, but he always seems to talk his way out of trouble."

"Is he loyal to you, then? Would you trust him with your life?"

Now Nnanji was truly astonished, but he nodded.

"And he wants to be a swordsman?"

"Of course, my liege!" Nnanji could not imagine a higher ambition.

"Right," Wallie said -- he had no choice that he could see. "Jja will go and find him. I have a job for him. If he performs it faithfully, then he can have any reward that it is in my power to give."

"You would take a scratcher as a protege?" exclaimed the va.s.sal who had been little more use than a scratcher himself an hour before.

"If that's what he wants." Wallie smiled. "But you're going to be a Fourth next week, remember? We can make you a Third today if you keep lunging the way you were just now. He can swear to you or me, I don't care."

If either of them survived, of course.

Nnanji's battered appearance at lunch provoked much silent hilarity -- the Seventh had obviously lost his temper with his notoriously inept protege. Only the perceptive might have noted that Lord Shonsu had acquired more bruises and cuts himself, or wondered why the apparent victim was grinning so idiotically.

That afternoon Lord Shonsu proved to be a demanding guest. He sent for the tailor again, and the cobbler. Healer Dinartura arrived and saw the need to call in second, third, and fourth opinions on the n.o.ble lord's feet; he also carried away a secret message to his uncle. The barracks ma.s.seur was summoned. Priests began to call, bearing mysterious packages. Lord Shonsu decided to buy a saddle and sent for the saddler. He demanded music, so musicians came and went all afternoon. He wanted his slave to sew more gowns, and drapers attended with their rolls of silk. Bath water was required -- not once, but twice, because of the unrelenting heat. Finally, toward sunset, even Lord Athinalani came from his armory, accompanied by two juniors bearing carrying cases full of swords. If Tarru was keeping himself informed about all this meaningless activity, the ident.i.ty of that last visitor might have warned him what was happening. But by then it had already happened.

Just before sunset the heat broke in a spectacular thunderstorm. Rain dropped in layers from a sky of coal. Thickets of lavender lightning jigged above the temple spires. The gold plating would make those spires good lightning rods, and some other divinely inspired accident of design had obviously made them well grounded.

To Wallie and Nnanji, watching from their palace suite, the thunderclaps. .h.i.t like blows to the head, leaving their ears ringing.

"The G.o.ds are angry, my liege," Nnanji said uneasily.

"I don't think so. I think they are laughing their heads off."

The social hour started later than usual, after the rain, but the night was wonderfully cool, and the torches hissed and steamed around the terrace, reflecting up from the wet flagstones. As the n.o.ble guest paraded his tiny entourage across the floor, all eyes turned to watch. With carefully concealed amus.e.m.e.nt Wallie registered the puzzled glances as the swordsmen tried to work out what was different, the dropped jaws and exclamations when they succeeded.

It was not the battered condition of his protege that elicited surprise, nor the lithe figure of his slave in her blue gown decorated with a silver griffon on the left breast -- half the women in the place were this evening wearing similar gowns, now known as "shonsues." No, the attention was directed toward the valorous lord himself, and his empty scabbard.

Lord Shonsu had checked his sword at the door.

Tarru was not present, but three Fifths attempted an inconspicuous stampede out to the vestibule. There the ancient, one-armed retainer exhibited for them the sword that the n.o.ble lord had left with them. They probably recognized it -- a travesty of a weapon, pig iron, not fit to stop a charging rabbit.

The sword had been checked.

So had the swordsmen.

Your move, Honorable Tarru.

*4*

Honakura's spy network had been operating efficiently, as usual, and he greeted Wallie and his brand-new sword the next morning with much toothless chuckling and delighted wringing of hands. The shady courtyard was cool and damp, the bougainvillaea sprinkled with diamond dust. The air was fragrant.

"I told you that you should not underestimate the G.o.ddess' champion!" he said, producing an extremely dusty clay bottle. "This, my lord, is the last bottle of a famous vintage, the Plon eighty-nine. I open it in honor of your victory!"

"It's no victory!" Wallie protested, settling once more on the familiar stool. "But I have won the time I wanted."

"A hit, but not yet the match?" Honakura asked with another chuckle. "Do I have that right?" He put the bottle on the little table and stood over it, fussing with a knife to remove the wax seal. "You greatly frightened my nephew -- he was convinced that the demon had returned. You also worried me, my lord. When Dinartura told me that you wanted to be visited by priests bearing long packages, I thought you were going to pa.s.s the sword to me. I was much exercised to think of a safe hiding place. Then all the packages returned unopened..." He laughed again, spraying spit. "There!" He poured the wine.

Wallie sniffed the wine in its crystal chalice, sipped, and paid compliments. It wasn't bad at all, not unlike a fair Muscatel.

"They searched your quarters, I understand?" Honakura asked.

"At least four times, from the look of the place," Wallie replied. "I sent for Coningu and raised a typhoon of complaint. The bed was half shredded! There were feathers everywhere."

The old priest almost choked on his drink. "What did Master Coningu have to say?"

"He dropped a broad hint that the culprit was beyond his jurisdiction," Wallie said. The old commissary obviously disapproved of Tarru and might be a valuable ally. "So now the treasure hunt is on, but I had many visitors yesterday. He can't know which one took it."

Honakura nodded with glee. "And who can he trust to search? The honest men, who disapprove, will doubtless be perfunctory in their efforts; the dishonest would move it to another hiding place. He cannot search everywhere himself."

He sipped his wine in silence, savoring Tarru's untenable dilemma, then raised a nonexistent eyebrow. "Would you tell me in general how you did it?"

"With pleasure." Wallie had been waiting for the question. "The trickiest part was smuggling it downstairs and out of the building, for there were watchers, and I am followed wherever I go. The sword would certainly have been noticed. What I did not know was whether Nnanji was also being followed..."

So, while Jja had gone in search of Nnanji's brother, Wallie had instructed Nnanji in how to detect a follower. Nnanji had been disappointed to learn that this was not a sutra, but Wallie had merely been quoting the standard practice set forth in spy stories -- dodge into doorways, backtrack without warning, and so on. He had even given some advice on losing a tail, although the temple grounds lacked the taxicabs and hotel lobbies recommended by the spy-story writers. Accepting this as a game, Nnanji had headed for the gate to let himself be seen by his brother, Katanji. And Katanji, as instructed, had followed him at a distance back to the barracks.

Honakura's eyes gleamed. "His brother has black hair?"

"Yes," Wallie said. "I couldn't have risked it if ... How did you know that?"

"A lucky guess," the priest replied, smirking and obviously lying.

Wallie frowned, then continued. "Of course the guards on the gate paid no attention to a naked boy bringing in a rug. He followed Nnanji, and they both slipped into the bushes below the balcony. And I dropped the sword to them."

Honakura was aghast -- he knew the height of the barracks. "You _dropped_ it? It wasn't smashed?"

Wallie explained parachutes. He had attached a pillowcase to the hilt with four lengths of Jja's thread. It had not been enough to slow the sword's fall very much, but it had made that superbly balanced weapon drop point downward, and Chioxin would have designed it to take impact from that direction. Only a buried rock could have caused damage, and that he had had to chance.

As things had turned out, what the seventh sword had encountered had been a buried tree root. That had proved to be a problem. Katanji had heaved and strained without success -- the sword had remained firmly planted, while Wallie had held his breath on the balcony above. It had made him think, in a mildly hysterical way, of Mallory's tale of the boy Arthur: _Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise King born of all England_. In this case the boy Arthur's lanky older brother had been standing by in the undergrowth and had emerged to try. But Chioxin would not have foreseen tensional stress, and Wallie had been suffering nightmare visions of the hilt coming loose from the tang. In the event it had been the blade that came free from the root, and Sir Kay-Nnanji had fallen flat on his back, while the boy Arthur collapsed in a fit of nervous giggles.

"Of course," Wallie said, "the guards should have investigated a boy carrying a rug _out_ of the grounds, but it was so hot yesterday ... and he has a rugmaker's fathermark, so a story about repairs would have been believed. Jja was watching. She says he walked through without being questioned at all."

The old priest frowned. "That priceless sword is now in the home of a rugmaker?"

"Certainly not!" Wallie snapped. "Much too obvious!"

He sipped wine, enjoying the expression on Honakura's face -- had anyone ever before had cause to tell Honakura that he was being too obvious? Then he continued.

"At breakfast this morning -- and, by the way, you could tell who was on my side from the grins when I came in ... not that I can trust even those men any more. Where was I? Yes, Tarru was not there, but Trasingji was..."

Wallie and his protege had finished breakfast in their usual seats. Then their way out had taken them past Trasingji, sitting with two other Fifths. Wallie had stopped to accept their salutes. Only a slight lowering of the feathery white eyebrows had hinted at Trasingji's thoughts, but his companions had been grinning openly at the Seventh.

"Tell your friend this," Wallie had said. "I do not know where it is. Nnanji does not know where it is. Nor do his parents -- it is not at their house. In fact it is not in the town at all. All this I swear by my sword. The G.o.ddess be with you, master." And he had stalked out, feeling very pleased with himself. There was nothing more holy to a swordsman than the oath of his craft, so he would probably be believed.

"I see," Honakura said. "I think. So he knows that it is still within the grounds?" The priest was peeved at being mystified by a mere swordsman. He knew that Wallie knew that.

Wallie nodded. "He may well a.s.sume that you have it, holy one. I should have excluded you also; you may be in danger."

"Bah!" Honakura frowned darkly. "I still think you have removed it from the temple altogether. But you would not perjure yourself..."

"And Tarru has extra guards on the gate. They will all swear that neither Nnanji nor I went out. They don't know Katanji. They may have seen Jja come and go, for they watch the women, but she was carrying nothing." He sipped his wine and added casually, "Except a blanket, when she returned."

"A blanket?"

Wallie took pity on him. "Her baby misses his blanket. I gave her a copper to buy it from Kikarani. Having smelled it, I can tell how he recognizes it, but not why he would want it."

Now the old man understood and he shook his head in wonder. "So you trusted the sword to a slave and a boy you have never met?"

Wallie nodded, well pleased. If the devious Honakura, who knew that Jja was no ordinary slave, had found his actions incredible, then Tarru would never get close. Tarru was covetous and a gambler, but not a trusting man. Tarru would not even have trusted Nnanji the swordsman with a jewel.

"Katanji carried it up the road in the rug, with Jja following to watch. Then she slipped into an empty cottage and hid it in the thatch. But I do not know which cottage, so I do not know where it is."

"So the blanket was her excuse to be there and absent from the barracks," the priest concluded, smiling and nodding. "And the sword has not only left the temple but is even beyond the town. Oh, yes! You are a most subtle swordsman, my lord!" He could probably pay no higher compliment.

Wallie accepted a cake and more wine. He could admit the cause for celebration. He provoked more mirth by telling how he had checked in Nnanji's old sword the previous evening.

"How is his fencing, then?" Honakura asked. "I heard that you had treated him severely."

Wallie confessed that he had been forced to beat Nnanji, although not in conventional fashion. "His swordsmanship is astonishing. His defense was fine before, and now he has an attack to match. He tried to butcher me this morning, but he will grow out of that."

Nnanji would be an easy Third by temple standards, even by Shonsu's. Almost it seemed as though those years of frustrated practice had been locked up in storage and were now released. Wallie had offered to arrange his promotion that very day. Nnanji had turned coy, and asked if there was any rule against jumping two ranks at once. There wasn't, so Wallie had agreed to let him wait until he was ready to try for Fourth. Nnanji was now his secret weapon.

Honakura huddled back in his wicker chair and twinkled at his guest. "And the slave?"

Unconsciously Wallie yawned. He was not sure whether he had slept at all in the night. He wished that Honakura was literate, to appreciate a joke about a World book of records. But he wasn't, so Wallie merely remarked that there had been a lot more feathers on the floor again in the morning. Shonsu was a tireless performer when encouraged; Jja an enthusiastic partner. Together they had scaled heights of rapture that he would have thought quite unattainable had he not experienced them.

"So now, what do you do?" the priest asked, refilling his chalice.

"Now I have time," Wallie said. "Time to heal, to train Nnanji, to learn about the World from you ... time to think! Honorable Tarru can carry on taking the temple complex apart, but now he must be seriously considering the possibility of failure, so I think he will be circ.u.mspect."

"And this Katanji?"

"Ah," Wallie said. "I have not met him, but I think he must be the fifth. Two more to go."

"You are learning, Walliesmith," said Honakura.

Wallie could not afford to relax, but he no longer felt death stalking closely at his back. Days crept by, and his feet healed with a rapidity that astonished Dinartura, yet the bandages stayed on. Wallie spent most of his time in the guest room -- exercising, chanting sutras and fencing with Nnanji, playing with Vixini, making love with Jja. Any time he went out he was certain that he was being followed, and he suspected that the same was now true of Nnanji.

Shonsu was a brilliant instructor, Nnanji an incredible pupil. Shown a knack, trick, or skill, he never forgot it. His swordsmanship grew like a thunderhead on a summer's afternoon, as Wallie could see from the level at which he had to fence to equal him. He should have had more than one partner, but they were both taking pleasure in keeping his progress secret.

The days crept by...

One evening, when teacher and pupil had finished bathing and were both feeling the weary contentment that comes from long and hard exertion, Nnanji confessed to feeling frustrated.