Seventh Sword - The Reluctant Swordsman Part 6

Hardduju's satisfaction increased. Then he flashed out his sword with impressive speed and dexterously zipped it around in a complicated routine.

"I am Hardduju, swordsman of the seventh rank, reeve of the temple of the G.o.ddess at Hann, and I give thanks to the Most High for granting me this opportunity to a.s.sure your beneficence that your prosperity and happiness will always be my desire and the subject of my prayers."

He shot the sword back into its scabbard and waited.

Before Wallie could think of anything to reply, little Honakura stepped forward and pointed a frail arm at him. "My lord reeve!" he snapped. "Remove this blasphemer!"

Hardduju glanced down at Honakura and laughed gloatingly. "I shall do better, holy one." He waved his men forward. "I denounce this man as an imposter. Arrest him."

Wallie backed up to put the dais behind him, knowing it was no real protection. The three young toughs grinned in antic.i.p.ation, and then advanced warily, spreading out to come at him from different angles. Probably none was any younger or tougher than he was, but they could count.

If he drew his sword he was dead, he was sure, and it seemed that they were not going to draw unless he did. They wanted him alive, so perhaps dead would be better. He fumbled for his sword, and they pounced, simultaneously and irresistibly.

He parried one blow with his left hand, felt his right arm grabbed in two hands, took a savage punch to the side of his head, and then the infallible, age-old clincher of a boot in the groin.

And that did matter. It mattered very much.

*BOOK TWO:*

*HOW THE SWORDSMAN RECEIVED THE SWORD*

*1*

The temple jail was long, narrow, and very, very damp. It seemed to Wallie, once he had recovered his wits enough to study it, like a cross between an open sewer and an empty swimming pool. The timber roof had mostly rotted away, leaving a furry trellis from which long strands of moss hung dark against the blue brightness. The stones of both floor and walls were covered with brown and yellow-green slime. There were rusty grilles at both ends, but the stairs were unbarred. An agile man could have clambered out through the roof.

He did not comprehend much of his own arrival, but he watched the procedure when others were brought in later. If the prisoner was neither unconscious nor sufficiently docile, he was adjusted to one state or the other, then stripped and laid on the floor. A large stone slab was then stood on edge across his legs, pinning his ankles within notches cut in its base.

And that was that.

It took him some hours to recover sufficiently to sit up, bruised, swollen, and aching all over, coated with vomit and dried blood both inside and out. He would have exchanged all the treasure in the temple for a gla.s.s of water and he thought he was going to lose about six teeth. Through half-closed eyes, he peered groggily at the line of sitting men, all rooted to the low wall of slabs that ran down the middle of the room. There were five of them, apart from himself, and he was at the end of the line.

His neighbor smiled at him nervously and then attempted the greeting to a superior as well as he could in a sitting position, naming himself as Innulari, healer of the Fifth.

Wallie took a few minutes to gather his thoughts. "I am Shonsu, swordsman of the Seventh, my lord," he said. "I regret that I cannot give you a formal reply, but I am so confused that I do not recall the words."

The healer was a short and pudgy man, his flabbiness displayed by his nudity. He had limp, almost feminine, b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a globular belly. The top of his head was bald and the hair at the sides was plastered in all directions. He looked disgusting, but then they all did, and Wallie perhaps worst of all.

The healer simpered. "Oh, you must not address me as 'lord,' my lord. 'Master' is the correct address to a Fifth."

Five teeth for certain, Wallie concluded glumly. "My apologies, Master Innulari. I wish I could engage your professional services, but I regret that I seem to be out of funds at the moment."

The fat little man was regarding him with interest. "Do this," he said, moving an arm. "Now this..."

Wallie obeyed, moving as much of himself as he could with his legs pinned to the ground, and every twitch hurt.

"A few broken ribs, perhaps," the healer decided with satisfaction. "You didn't pa.s.s much blood, so the internal damage may not be too severe. Obviously the work of experts, for when I saw you I expected worse."

Wallie thought back to Hardduju's instructions to his goons before the punishment had started. "They were told not to reduce my value too much," he explained. "The reeve expects to get five golds for me."

"A denunciation?" Innulari asked, shocked. "Oh, I beg pardon, my lord; none of my business."

Wearily Wallie explained, as well as he could, that he had received a blow on the head the previous day and had lost his memory. He had, therefore, failed to return the correct reply to the reeve's greeting.

"So he thought you were an imposter!" The little man looked shocked and sympathetic. Apparently he was so honored to be sitting next to a Seventh that he was reluctant to make the same a.s.sumption. "That is a serious abomination, of course. As he was the one to denounce you, then he gets the slave, you understand."

Wallie nodded and then wished he hadn't. "What do they do about my facemarks?"

"Branding iron," Innulari explained cheerfully. "They'll probably use it to add your slavestripe, too, and save the cost of having it done professionally."

Great.

At that moment the two men next in line to Innulari started to fight, flailing sideways and one-handed at each other, yelling obscenities. After a few minutes a boyish-looking swordsman of the Second came trotting down the stairs. He walked along the other side of the slabs to them. The men screamed, one after the other, and fell silent. The swordsman walked briskly out again.

"How did he do that?" Wallie asked in surprise.

"Kicked their feet. It's very effective." Innulari glanced around the jail with approval. "The whole system is most efficient. Don't try to move the slab. You can probably push it over, but then it will fall on your feet and crush them."

Wallie lay down again, the only other position available to him, and wondered why the floor was so very wet. The smell was even worse than the stink of the town. He thought of the mysterious Shorty and his remark about a sample of h.e.l.l ... In some ways the little boy had seemed to make more sense than anyone or anything else in this insanity, but in other ways he had been even less believable. That trick with the beads, now...

The healer lay down also. He was obviously a natural chatterbox, Wallie concluded, and therefore one more pain to add to the others, but he might also be a valuable source of information.

"Your blow to the head is very interesting, my lord. I have never met the symptoms before, but they are mentioned in one of our sutras." He frowned disapprovingly. "I am surprised that they did not allow the priests to attempt an exorcism, for that is the treatment of choice. Clearly a demon has gained admittance."

"That seems to have been the problem in the first place." Wallie sighed, and explained. He was trying to remember the argument that had taken place after he had been dragged from the nave of the temple into a back room, with Hardduju claiming the imposter as a slave, Honakura insisting that he was a blasphemer, and others -- priests, he thought -- talking demons. He had gained the impression that there had been a power struggle going on over his gasping, retching self. He tried to explain that also.

The healer seized on this as an important piece of temple gossip. If the holy Honakura's exorcism had failed, then the old man had been repudiated by the G.o.ddess and had lost face. It might signify an important shift in influence, he said.

Great again.

"Well, at least they didn't try to call in a healer," Innulari said. "I know that I would not take your case -- with respect, my lord."

"Why not?" Wallie asked, curious in spite of his pains.

"Because the prognosis is discouraging, of course." He waved a plump hand at the skeleton roof above them and the slimy walls. "That was what brought me here. I refused a case, but the family had money and kept raising the offer. Finally I got greedy, may She forgive me!"

Gingerly Wallie turned his head. "You mean a healer who loses a patient goes to jail?"

"If the relatives have influence." Innulari sighed. "I was avaricious. But it was my wife's idea, so she must cope now as best she can."

"How long are you in for, then?"

The fat little man shivered in spite of the steamy heat. "Oh, I expect to go tomorrow. I've been here three days. The temple court usually decides faster than that."

Go where? To the Judgment, of course. Wallie levered himself up once more and looked at the line of naked men. Not a beautiful virgin among them. Not human sacrifices, then, but executions. Those had been criminals he had seen thrown into the falls, had they? Mostly, the healer said. Or slaves no longer useful, of course. And sometimes citizens went voluntarily to the G.o.ddess -- the very sick or the old.

"How many return alive?" Wallie asked thoughtfully.

"About one in fifty, I suppose," the healer said. "Once every two or three weeks. Most She chastises severely."

Further questions established that the chastis.e.m.e.nt consisted of being battered and maimed on the rocks -- it was very rare indeed for anyone to return unscathed. Nevertheless, the healer seemed quite cheerful about his prospects, convinced that his lapse into avarice was a minor sin that his G.o.ddess would forgive. Wallie could not decide if the little man was putting up a brave front or really had such faith. It seemed like a very long shot to Wallie.

Later in the day, a young slave was brought in and pinned under the next slab. He regarded Wallie's facemarks with dread and would not speak. Wallie eventually decided that he was a congenital idiot.

The day dragged on in pain and heat and ever-increasing stink, as the inmates fouled themselves and the sun turned the damp cell into a sauna. The pudgy Innulari chattered aimlessly, thrilled at meeting a Seventh, insistent on recounting his life story and describing his children. Eventually he returned to the subject of the temple court. The accused person did not appear before it -- he thought that an extraordinary idea -- and usually learned of the verdict only when he was taken away to execution. Acquittals did happen, he admitted.

"Of course you can hardly expect one in your case, my lord," he said, "because several of the members of the court, like the most holy Honakura, were present to witness your crime." He paused and then added thoughtfully, "It will be interesting to hear the decision, though: demon, imposter, or blasphemer?"

"I can hardly wait," Wallie said. Yet had he a choice, he would go for another exorcism -- if they had exorcised him into this madhouse, perhaps they could exorcise him out. But a little later he learned from some remark of Innulari's that a second exorcism was very unlikely. Obstinate demons were usually referred to the G.o.ddess.

A woman was brought in by the guards. She stripped and sat down obediently, and was pinned in the stocks next to the slack-jawed slave boy. She was middle-aged, graying, flabby, and loose-skinned, but the boy twisted round to stare at her and remained in that position for the rest of the day.

That certainly was not Wallie's problem -- maybe never again. He pondered further about the sample of h.e.l.l that the little boy had mentioned. Had that been a threat, a prophecy, or a lucky guess? If heaven was to be defined crudely as s.e.xual ecstasy in a man's groin, then his h.e.l.l had started appropriately with unbearable agony in the same place.

First postulate: All this pain was real. s.e.x he might fantasize, but not this.

Corollary: This world was real.

There were, he concluded, three possible explanations. The first was Wallie Smith's encephalitis, meaning that the World was all delirium. Somehow that was seeming less and less convincing as time went on.

A second was Shonsu's head injury -- he was Shonsu, and Wallie Smith was the illusion. He lay on the hard wet stone and pondered that idea for a long time, with his swollen eyes shut against the sun's glare. He could not convince himself. Wallie Smith's life was too detailed in his memory. He could remember thousands of technical terms, for example, although when he tried to p.r.o.nounce them he produced nothing but grunts. He could remember his childhood and his friends and his education. Politics. Music. Sports. Earth refused to die for him.

That left the third explanation: both worlds were real -- and he was in the wrong one.

Sunset arrived, and a sudden rattling noise from the grille at one end of the cell.

"Clean-out time!" Innulari announced, sounding pleased. "And that drink you wanted, my lord."

Water began to flow along the cell, surging rapidly deeper. It had pa.s.sed five men by the time it reached Wallie, and its filth made him retch -- with agonizing consequences for his bruised abdominal muscles -- but soon it ran deeper and relatively clean and gratifyingly cool. The inmates lay back in it and splashed and laughed ... and drank. The twice-daily clean-out was the only water he would get in the jail, Innulari a.s.sured him.

_The court sentences you to a week's amoebic dysentery and two weeks' probationary septicemia. It will try your case shortly._ When the water had drained through the other grille, the evening meal was pa.s.sed along in a basket -- leftovers, mostly moldy fruit with a few stale crusts and sc.r.a.ps of meat that Wallie would not have touched even if his teeth had felt firm in his head. Anything better had gone before the basket reached him. A week in this cell would be a death sentence.

Then the sun vanished with tropical swiftness; the cello chorus of the flies yielded to ma.s.sed violins from the mosquitoes. Innulari's determined optimism seemed to fade also, and he began to brood. Wallie steered him around to the details of his faith and heard the same simple reincarnation belief that he had heard from the slave girl.

"Surely it is evident?" asked the healer, sounding as if he were trying to convince himself as much as Wallie. "The River is the G.o.ddess. As the River flows from city to city, so our souls flow from life to life."

Wallie was skeptical. "You can't remember previous lives, can you? What is a soul, then, if it is not your mind?"

"Quite different," the little man insisted. "The cities are lives and the River is the soul. It is an allegory to guide us. Or like beads on a string."

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" Wallie said quietly. He fell silent. You could not move a city on a river, but you could untie a string, move beads around, and then retie the string.

The light faded and the incredible beauty of the rings filled the sky above him, thin ribbons of silver that would make a mere moon seem as uninspiring as a light bulb. He thought of the glory of the waterfall they called the Judgment. This was a very beautiful world.

Even without the pains of his injuries he could have slept little. Leg cramps were common to all the inmates; there were more groans than snores in the jail. The ring system, which the slave woman had called the Dream G.o.d, made a good timepiece. The dark gap that marked the shadow of the planet rose in the east soon after sunset and moved across the sky. At midnight he saw it mark off two exactly equal arcs, and he saw it fade at dawn.

Another day came, and he had not yet awakened to reality.

*2*

Morning dawned fair, promising to be as hot as the day before. The healer Innulari seemed disappointed and eventually confessed that on very rainy days, when the G.o.ddess could not see the Judgment, there were no executions.

Clean-out came and went. The inmates fretted in uneasy quiet, whispering nervously.

Then two priests, three swordsmen, four slaves came clattering down the stairs, pulling faces at the stench.

"Innulari, healer of the Fifth, for negligence...

"Kinaragu, carpenter of the Third, for theft...

"Narrin, slave, for recalcitrance."

As a priest called each name, a swordsman pointed. Slaves levered up the block and pulled out the victim. Each screamed at the pain when his stiffened legs were bent, each in turn was dragged away. Thus Wallie's immediate neighbors and another man farther along the line were taken away for execution, and the Death Squad departed. Then the fruit basket was pa.s.sed again.

Wallie realized that he was going to miss the talkative Innulari. An hour or two later he heard the bell tolling. He wondered if he should say a prayer to the healer's G.o.ddess for him, but he did not.

In the middle of the morning, another five men were brought in. Although there was s.p.a.ce beyond for many more, the place seemed suddenly crowded. Wallie acquired two new neighbors, who were delighted to see a swordsman of the Seventh in jail. They jeered at him and replied with obscenities when he tried to make conversation. He was exhausted by pain and lack of sleep, but if he seemed to nod off they would reach over and punch him from spite.

There was a sudden quiet. Wallie had perhaps been dozing, for he looked up to see the reeve regarding him with satisfied contempt from the safe side of the wall of slabs. He was holding a bamboo rod in both hands, flexing it thoughtfully, and there was no doubt as to his intended victim. Wallie's first decision was that he must show no fear. That would not be difficult, for his face was so swollen that probably no expression at all could show on it. Should he attempt to explain or should he remain silent? He was still debating that when the questioning began.

"What is the first sutra?" Hardduju demanded.

"I don't know," Wallie said calmly -- he hoped calmly. "I -- "

Before he could say more, the reeve slashed the bamboo across the sole of Wallie's left foot. It was bad ... the pain itself, as well as the reflex that jerked the top of his foot against the stone and skinned his ankle. Hardduju studied his reaction carefully and seemed to approve of it.

"What is the second sutra?" That was the right foot.

Back to the left foot for the third sutra. How many could there be? After the sixth sutra, though, the s.a.d.i.s.t stopped asking and just continued beating, watching Wallie's agony with a growing smile and obvious excitement, his face becoming red and shiny. He switched from one foot to the other at random and sometimes faked a stroke to see the foot yank back against the stone in antic.i.p.ation.

Wallie tried to explain and was given no hearing. He tried remaining silent until blood from his bitten tongue filled his mouth. He tried screaming. He tried begging. He wept.

He must have fainted, for he had no clear memory of the monster's departure. He probably went into shock, too, because the rest of the day was a confusion -- a long, shivery, disjointed h.e.l.l. Perhaps it was good that he could not see his ruined feet lying in the furnace beyond the stone slab. The sun moved, the shadows of the lattice roof crawled over him, and the flies came to inspect his wounds. But his neighbors punched and jeered no more.