The Destiny of the Sword (36 page)

Thana stood up. After this madhouse, Sapphire would be a nice, calm place. She would take Jja back there, then go and see about a gown for the ball. Jja was weeping again.

But... Lord Nnanji!

Her husband had won his seventh sword.

ttttt

The long antechamber was now clean, at least in theory. The fireplace was empty, the dust more evenly distributed. The paneling had been carefully smeared as high as a man on a stool could reach with a rag, although above that a cornice of dust and cobwebs remained, its base scalloped in graceful arcs. The window,panes had been nibbed to a greasy sheen.

Racket drifted in from an anthill of activity outside in the courtyard. One row of ants was carrying garbage out to a bonfire in the middle of the plaza; another row of ants was returning, and that

included those who had been billeted on citizens and were now bringing in their belongings. On almost every balcony a man was cleaning windows. Down in the yard itself a work gang hammered and sawed, building extra latrines and washhouses. Two streets away, an unused temple was being converted to women’s quarters.

Wallie had ordered a table placed in the middle of the room, six stools in front of the windows, and two rows of stools along the other side, thirty,nine of them for thirty,nine Sixths. The Firsts who had moved the furniture had thought that a very strange arrangement, but to Wallie it was a long, narrow lecture room. Next slide, please. He had recovered his temper and did not feel very guilty over losing it... not very, Nnanji had approved, which was reassuring.

That young man was already sitting on one of the six stools, legs crossed, eyes staring dreamily into space. He had been carefully instructed and could probably be relied upon to pick up his cue. Nothing could spoil this day for Nnanji, Lord Nnanji, swordsman of the seventh rank, member of the council. For the tryst, Nnanji was the true seventh Seventh. He had achieved his ambition, the dream of every young boy in the World. He was perhaps the youngest Seventh in the history of the People. What was he going to do with the rest of his life?

Now the Sixths were dribbling in, cowed and dusty and possibly resentful, but certainly obedient. They filled up the two rows opposite the windows—starting at the ends, so that the last arrivals would be in the center, closest to the dread liege as he leaned against the table. Then the last Sixths and the last of the council, and the door was closed, and everyone waited apprehensively.

Wallie turned to Nnanji and said, “Four eighteen?”

Nnanji blinked pale eyes in astonishment and obediently began reciting the sutra. Wallie cut him off and said to Boariyi, who was next, “Three twenty,two?”

When he had finished with the Sevenths, he walked down to a nervous, rather young Sixth at the end of the front row and demanded seven twenty,nine...

Finally he returned to his place, leaning against the table. ‘There you are,” he said cheerfully. “No sorcerers present!”

There were a few nervous snickers.

“Over the next two or three days, your honors, you are to test

every man in the tryst like that! If you find one who does not know his sutras, watch out! Each of you will test his proteges and make sure that they test theirs, and so on.”

He glanced around, seeing the nodding heads as they followed his reasoning.

“Anyone here ever seen a sorcerer before yesterday?”

No.

“Well, I’m going to tell you how to fight sorcerers. There are two tricks to it, that’s all. What do the sutras say about them?”

Lips moved, brows frowned. Silence. The sutras said nothing at all about sorcerers. Carefully Wallie led them through the logic; sorcerers were not swordsmen, to be greeted with challenge and the ways of honor. Nor were they civilians, to be handled with kindness, courtesy, said firmness, as the sutras optimistically specified. They had to be treated as armed civilians, therefore an abomination. Therefore anything went, anything at all.

He raised his voice as the hammering outside increased. ‘The first trick is speed. Lord Boariyi, would you assist?” He stood the skinny giant beside him at the table and pointed down the length of the long room, to the door that led into the council chamber. “We are going to have a race, my lord. We shall pretend that a sorcerer has appeared in that doorway, and we shall see who can kill him first.”

Boariyi regarded him with disbelief, then amusement. The audience brightened. A race they could understand.

“Lord Tivanixi, will you give us a signal?”

Tivanixi let the suspense build for a moment while the two big men waited, side by side. Then he said, “Now!” Boariyi launched himself forward like a sprinter, pulling his sword... and Wallie’s knife slammed into the door before he was halfway to it. He skidded to a stop and swung around, face flaming.

“You’re dead, my lord,” said Wallie. “Sony.”

The audience seethed with silent disgust. Knives—especially concealed knives—were an abomination from the lowest cesspool of die Place of Demons.

Then Zoariyi called out the line that Wallie had been hoping to get. “It’s one thing to hit a door, my liege. A man is a much smaller target.”

“Nnanji!” Wallie shouted. “Sorcerer!” He pointed as if he were sicking a dog on an intruder.

NnanjJ’s mind was not as far away as it seemed, and he had crossed his legs so that the knife in bis boot was handy. He rose, hurled it, and sat down to continue smiling at nothing. The knife struck within a finger,width of Wallie’s. Boariyi dodged, but long after it had gone by him. The audience collectively said: “Ooo!”

“Curiously,” Wallie said, gleeful at the lucky shot, “Lord Nnanji is much better with a knife than I am.” The Sixths ab,sorbed that thought with interest.

He walked over to get his knife, ostentatiously replacing it in his boot. Then he flipped Nnanji’s so that it struck the floor hi front of him and Nnanji could pick it up. The hours of practice in the ship were paying off, although not in the way he had expected.

“If you fight sorcerers in the ways of honor,” Wallie said, “they will win every time. I was rescued from the sorcerers at Ov by Nnanji and my sailor friends, armed with knives. The sorcerer’s thunder weapons are about as accurate and more deadly, but they take time to reload.”

Then he said, “Nnanji, you don’t need to hear all this. We shall excuse you.” Nnanji rose, nodded happily, and sauntered off to attend to the many things that he had been given to do. Whatever his oath brother wanted was fine with him.

When the door had closed behind him Wallie said, “One other thing about testing for spies: Beware of any water,rat swordsmen you may have—they can read lips, some of them, and many of us mouth the words when we’re listening to sutras. I suspect that water rats in general may not be very good on sutras, so test water rats with a foil—they’ll pass that test!” He dared not look at Tivanixi.

The lecture continued. The second trick, the liege said, was to get the sorcerers out of their gowns—then they were harmless, like the old man he had shown in the temple. Jja’s bundle lay on the table, and from that he produced Rotanxi’s gown. He showed it off—the long sleeves, the numerous pockets, the cunning slits by which the wearer could reach in any pocket while appearing to have his arms folded within the sleeves. Then he brought out the gadgets, one by one, and explained them, showed them, passed some around. He sent for a stray dog from the street and pricked it with Chinarama’s knife. It died quickly and convincingly.

He brought out Rotanxi’s glasses and a copper tube—a small telescope—and explained lip reading. He passed them around and everyone marveled at the telescope’s inverted, color,blurred, but magnified image.

He told of the sleight of hand he had seen, even the previous day.

He played a few notes on a silver fife and explained how a similar blowpipe had slain Kandom of the Third.

He produced a small bag of oiled silk fitted with a glass nozzle and told how it sprayed a fiery liquid, how the sorcerers could blind a man or bum his face with a wave of the hand, while mumbling nonsensical spells. He demonstrated this acid spray on the dead dog, filling the room with an acrid stink.

The ink and quill and vellum he did not show, but he mentioned that a pigeon could be used as a signal, and that caged pigeons were an important clue to sorcerer agents.

He struck a match, and that created the biggest sensation yet.

Rotanxi’s pockets had yielded two things like firecrackers, but they had become waterlogged in the hold and so rendered useless. Wallie showed them, however. He had cut one open and discovered a mixture of black powder and lead shot. “If you ever see things like these,” he warned his audience, “with mis wick burning—then run! It may injure you or blind you. It will create a clap of thunder, at least, and much smoke.”

They all nodded again, fascinated, half,incredulous, greatly uneasy.

There were other poisoned knives, some so tiny as to be almost skewers. There were petty trick gadgets, like flexible coins and silk flowers that would crumple to nothing and then spring back. There was a compass, which created much more interest among these swordsmen that it had in the sailors, who knew only two directions, upriver and down. There was a pocket lens, and Wallie set one of the Sixths to holding it in sunlight by the window until he made a cloth smoke.

There were several bottles and packets whose purpose even Wallie did not know, labeled in a strange cursive script that tantalized him.

By now he had half his audience terrified and the other half

contemptuous, so he ended with the pistol and made diem all terrified. He explained it carefully. Then he fired a shot through the table, into the floor. The hammering outside stopped and then gradually picked up once more.

Finally he brought out the “toy for Vixini” that he had made so laboriously on the ship, a model catapult, and he flipped pebbles across the room with it. His listeners were too much in shock to laugh as he had hoped.

“We shall fight sorcerers with knives, with bows and arrows, with battering rams and big catapults to knock down their towers and hurl burning pitch through their windows. They use pigeons as signals, so we need falcons! We shall need men on horseback, who can move quickly. We shall attack by night and without warning and from behind. With these tactics we can win; without them we cannot. If the sorcerers use diabolical weapons, men so must we.”

There was a long silence, which happened to match a lull in the racket from the courtyard. He thought it was not going to work.

He said, “Three hundred and thirty men tried to fight sorcerers hi the ways of honor. Will you help me avenge them?”

For another moment he was sure that he had failed. Then Boariyi—bless him!—jumped up and said, “Yes!” Then everyone had to rise, and they all cheered. Their cheering probably convinced themselves much more than it did Wallie.

But he could smile, then. He began to pace up and down the long room. “We need to distribute some responsibilities,” he said. “Lord Tivanixi has already agreed to look after the cavalry. Someone must be adjutant—I mean he will have to sort out the manpower and assign people and look after finances and relationships with the townsfolk and so on.”

The Sevenths all shrank into their stools at that thought.

“That makes two. We need someone to look after building the catapults—three. Slingshots, bows and arrows—I know nothing about those, except that they are used to hunt birds. Do we have anyone who does?”

A couple of Sixths rose, rather shamefacedly.

“Great! I’ll assign a Seventh to it anyway, but you can advise him. Lord Nnanji will attend to intelligence and security.

“Lastly,” Wallie said and paused. “Lastly, we need some ac,

tion! All the rest of these things are going to take time; I want action now! They have laughed at us for too long. They must learn to fear us.”

Angry mutters of agreement...

“I have a small ship. I shall send it over to the left bank to kill some sorcerers. It’ll be duty, nasty work. It’ll mean sneaking in by dark, throwing knives, and men running. No honor and much danger! But I want to frighten them. I would like to think that they’re scared to walk their streets at night. They ought to know mat we can fight.

“Lord Boariyi, I give you your choice.”

The tall man had been slumped forward with an elbow on a knee. He straightened up and grinned and said, “The boat!”

That was what Wallie had expected—the attraction of danger outweighed the scruples—but once Boariyi had accepted the most dishonorable job, the other Sevenths would follow more readily.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Lord Zoariyi, will you try the catapults? Lord Jansilui, the archery, with the two honorable Sixths? And Lord Linumino, you will be adjutant?”

They nodded, none very happy.

He felt very weary, but he could also feel safer. If the sorcerers killed him now, they could not stop the tryst. The magic had gone away.

Then he realized that they were all waiting for him, so he straightened up and smiled and said, “Dismissed!”

There may be an exam later.