The Death of Nnanji (7 page)

Again the other Seventh glanced uneasily at Filurz, the witness. “I don’t think so. She twisted a knife in his guts. He was squirting blood like a fountain. Writhing and screaming. You know how belly wounds hurt.”

And kill. The first danger was simply bleeding out, but if Nnanji had already survived some hours, there must be hope that the hemorrhaging had stopped. But even if loss of blood did not kill him, then the punctured intestines would bring on septicemia. The miracle antibiotics of the World were honey and spider web, primitive in the extreme.

“Adept Filurz, go and advise Lady Thana of what has happened. Bring her. Tell Swordsman Tilber to look after the children. She may have to babysit them all the way home.”

Filurz thumped his chest with a fist and wheeled his horse.

“And remember,” Wallie shouted after him, “what I said earlier about a wall of steel: do it!” Addis must be protected. Only when Filurz was out of hailing distance did Wallie wonder if Vixini, too, should at least be warned. As oath brothers, the two liege lords were equals, and if both were ever put out of commission, some people might see Vixi as a more suitable figurehead for a coup than the even younger Addis.

The two Sevenths began cantering back up the Quo trail. Nnanji wounded, or Nnanji dying… This had always been a danger, but Wallie had never drawn up contingency plans. Coming from him the suggestion would have seemed self-serving, and no one else had ever dared to raise the issue. He could try to claim the leadership by right, or the council might start quoting sutras and traditions. Past trysts had always chosen their leaders by combat, but past trysts had always been short-lived, ad hoc affairs.

Now the wagons must be circled. There was a major conspiracy here, which would not stop with two bungled stabs at assassination. And Nnanji had put him in charge by giving him the sword.

“Is he conscious?”

“Barely,” Boariyi said grimly, staring straight ahead. “When he could stop screaming he insisted we bring him home to Casr. Told me to give you the Chioxin sword. ‘For now,’ he said! You know the liege. He won’t stop fighting until we slide him into the River. The healers washed their hands of him at first glance; didn’t dare take his case. I dosed him with some poppy juice to get him into the litter.”

Poppy juice was dangerous stuff at the best of times, and especially so to a man weakened by loss of blood. Wallie must give Boariyi the benefit of the doubt for now, but keep him on the list of suspects. He was the only suspect they had, except the ever-distrusted sorcerers.

“How did the killer get into the bedroom?”

The big man glanced at him mockingly. “Nnanji ran up the stairs with her draped her over his shoulder. When Lord Shonsu comes to call, we organize a dinner with senior swordsmen, sorcerers, and the least dull civic officials. When Lord Nnanji comes, we order in the raunchiest juniors and lots of girls. Of course I ordered the arrest of the gentleman who catered the entertainment, but he had not been located before I left Quo.”

Wallie shuddered. So far as he knew, Nnanji was always faithful to his wife when she was available. The rest of the time he followed the free swords’ belief that any girl he fancied should feel flattered. Only very rarely, if ever, was the all-powerful Lord Nnanji refused. “Thana must not hear of this. Officially the killer climbed in the window. Since she didn’t, how did she get a dagger into the liege’s bedroom?”

Boariyi flashed his cynical smile again. “That was a puzzle at first. But his aides identified it as his own knife, the one he carried in his boot.”

Another shock! Knives and concealed weapons in general were strictly forbidden by the sutras. Wallie had allowed them in the earliest days of the tryst, during the war against the sorcerers, but Nnanji had promptly forbidden them again. News that he had gone back to carrying one was virtually proof that he had encountered sorcerer trouble.

“Then it may not be a conspiracy. She might have been acting alone?”

“That would certainly be a relief,” Boariyi said.

Wallie found even that comment grounds for suspicion and wanted to scream and smash something. He would not have described the big man as a close friend, but he had trusted him implicitly and worked with him amicably for fifteen years. Inevitably, though, the least whiff of treason in the air poisoned everyone and everything. No face looked honest, all words were suspect.

To lie to Boariyi now would be futile, for everyone in Casr knew the truth. If he was innocent he would be insulted, and if he was guilty he would be alerted to the fact that he was still a suspect.

“It would, except that a girl climbed up to my balcony not long before dawn. She brought her own knife.”

“Great Goddess! Did you catch her?”

“Jja caught her by biting her leg; very effective.”

“Then you can question her and get to the bottom of this?”

Damn! Another suspicious question. “I hope so.” Then Wallie realized that Boariyi, too, was holding something back. He had not been surprised enough to learn of the second assassin. “Tell me about Lord Mibullim.”

That was it. Boariyi nodded slightly in appreciation, as if they were fencing with words. “A friend of my youth. We apprenticed together in Wrou. He joined a band of frees, I remained and worked my way up to being deputy reeve. Then the Goddess fetched me to Casr for the Tryst. I haven’t seen him since the day he made Third.”

“But you expected to see him?”

“No. Nnanji expected to. He’d sent Mibullim ahead with two Fourths and a couple of Thirds. They were bringing you orders to muster the largest force possible, but they never reached Quo. There’s been major bloodshed in the south. Nnanji narrowly escaped an ambush, several ambushes in fact. This morning his luck ran out.”

“Things begin to make more sense, then.” Wallie had always been surprised at how little resistance the Tryst had met as it expanded. Nnanji had predicted that a great many swordsmen, perhaps even a majority of them, would welcome it as a cure for the widespread corruption and incompetence in their craft. Mostly he had been right, at least until now. In most places the discipline and the return of honor that the Tryst promised had been welcomed, or at least accepted without a struggle. Now, Wallie had thought that the Tryst had grown too huge and powerful to defy. But bad odds had never stopped wars starting up back on Earth.

“Things look bloody,” Boariyi said, “swordsmen being slaughtered wholesale.”

“Sorcerers behind it, you mean? I guessed that when you said Nnanji had gone back to carrying a knife.” Swordsmen didn’t massacre swordsmen. They challenged them to duels, one on one. Only sorcerers would resort to mass violence.

“It looks like sorcerers with swordsmen allies. And thunder weapons again.”

Venal swordsmen with sorcerer allies had always been the ultimate nightmare scenario, the dogs ganging up with the cats.

The long procession had halted to await the two Sevenths’ arrival. They rode along the column to the litter, near the center. The eight slaves carrying it had been allowed to lay it down. A relief team of eight more bearers stood behind them, and it was clear that the man in charge was a short, thick-shouldered Fifth, whom Wallie remembered leaving Casr two years ago as a Third. His name was Endrasti, and Nnanji had praised him in dispatches. He saluted, grim-faced.

Wallie returned his salute. “Is he awake?”

“On and off. He insisted he must speak with you when you arrived.”

Ignoring the hundreds of watching eyes, Wallie walked over to the litter, which looked as if it had been assembled in a hurry by a gang of shipwrights using the most solid timber in their yards. Endrasti pulled back a drape and stepped aside.

The patient lay on at least a double layer of feather mattresses and was well covered in quilts. The face just barely visible in this foam was an image of Nnanji carved from white wax. His hair had lost none of its startling redness, so rare among the People. Unbound, it framed his head in a scarlet halo and emphasized his corpse pallor, as did the fresh blood around his mouth, for he had chewed his lip until it bled.

Wallie thought of vampires and horror movies. Encumbered by the extra sword he was holding, he did not attempt a formal salute. Just thumping his heart with a fist, he said, “Shonsu, brother, reporting for duty.”

Eyes opened, rolled vaguely, and steadied. His oath brother grimaced and managed a gargoyle smile. “Stay away from them, brother. They’ll get you in the end.” His voice was a painful gasp, forced through a throat raw with screaming.

“Who will?”

“Girls… course!” he groaned at another spasm of pain.

“I’ve been telling you that for years, you human goat. We’ll have you home very soon. Thana’ll be here in a moment. Don’t worry about anything. Any special instructions?”

The whisper was almost inaudible: “Take care of… kids?”

“Like my own, brother.” Clearly Nnanji was in no shape to provide any useful information. Before Wallie could say more, he was jostled aside by Thana, so he backed away.

He was in charge. Boariyi and Endrasti, blue kilt and red, were waiting for his orders. Four hundred men were watching.

For the benefit of the audience, he smiled and nodded as if he had just exchanged jokes with the patient. He spoke softly. “We’ll go on war footing as of now. Adept, you come with me. My lord, bring the liege home, to his palace. I’ll have it searched before you get there and post extra guards. Today’s password is
Know your enemies
and the rejoinder
Only cats fight in the dark
. We’ll hold a meeting of the council when you get to the lodge. I expect you’ll want a meal first, and the rest of us would be happier if you bathed, too.”

Both men laughed to continue the pretense of lightheartedness.

The council? There were more than two hundred Sevenths in the Tryst now, officially all members of the council, but they were scattered over half the World. Even with Boariyi, the meeting was going to be a pathetically small gathering.

Filurz had gone, racing back to Casr to take care of Addis. Wallie paused at Thana’s carriage, to leave the seventh sword in it for safekeeping. When he opened the door, he found Swordsman Tilber cuddling Tomisolaan. She looked guilty and blushed, yet this was the woman who had once challenged a Fourth for making a joke about female swordsmen. Keeping his face straight with an effort, Wallie assured Nnadaro that her mommy would be back soon and she would see Daddy when they got home.

Then he rallied what was left of his personal guard and headed back to Casr to deal with this disaster.

Chapter 7

The horses were already tired, so Wallie set a brisk, but not breakneck, pace. Endrasti rode at his side, waiting for the questions.

“First, then, master. Tell me how you fit into Nnanji’s company?” The Tryst had no fixed military structure. Each leader in the field, always a Seventh, made up his own rules as he went along, working with whatever men he had, to deal with whatever conditions he encountered.

“I was his senior aide, my lord. With respect, I believe he relied on me mostly for help with political matters, like things concerning kings or councils of elders or whoever else ran each city.”

Nnanji himself was only interested in reforming swordsmen. The need to clean up civic governments as well just annoyed him. It had taken a couple of years and a few nasty accidents before he had been convinced of the necessity.

“He praised you highly in his dispatches.”

“Oh. Thank you, my lord.”

“He never told you to your face how much he valued your work?”

“Well, yes, he did… But it’s nice to hear it confirmed!”

“Nnanji’s good at giving praise where it’s due, and if you’re no good he’ll tell you that, too.”

“I’ve heard that happening!” Endrasti smiled to indicate that the thunderbolts had never been directed at him. He had done extraordinarily well to move up from Third to Fifth in less than two years. He would have had to learn well over six hundred more sutras and raise his fencing to a much higher level. A stickler for regulations, Nnanji would always make sure that his personal favorites received no special treatment.

“So what’s all this about rebellion and ambushes? I just need the bare bones now, but the council will want the whole carcass, bones and offal and all. No verbal indelicacies that may escape your lips on this occasion will be held against you, I swear. If Nnanji screwed up, say so.”

“Oh, it wasn’t his fault, my lord. It happened about half a year ago. We were in the Ulk sector, and the sorcerers of Ulk have never been very cooperative, although they had caused us no trouble. We were working our way upstream toward a very large city named Plo.”

“Heard of it.” Jja had been born there, and its name had cropped up again later. Wallie had mentioned it to Katanji only a few hours ago.

“We’d heard that Plo was in a different coven’s sector, so we knew we might have some trouble. The reeve of a city called Fo swore to the Tryst willingly enough, and ordered his subordinates to do so as well. The elders seemed quite enlightened, so we prepared to move on up to Nolar, the next big town. Then we were told of a land crossing at a loading port called Cross Zek, which was closer. The trail led southward and there were big mountains visible that way. RegiKra, they’re called.”

That was what Wallie had been trying to remember: a sorcerer city called Kra lying south of Plo. Nnanji would have known that right away. It was rare for two towns or cities to face each other directly across the River, so “Cross Zek” simply meant a minor location opposite Zek.

Endrasti hesitated, moving in rhythm with his horse, staring at the trail ahead.

“So Nnanji had a choice to make,” Wallie prompted. “Either go on to Nolar and Plo, where he might need all his men and then some, or go exploring to see if there was access to another reach of the River to the south. Or split his forces and do both. What advice did you offer?” Advice that Nnanji had disregarded, likely.

He received a smile of thanks for the help. “I wasn’t happy about the information, my lord, and said so. I hadn’t been able to confirm the southern loop story. Cross Zek wasn’t a place where people lived, just a dock for loading tin ore. The riverbanks were high and steep there, but a tributary flowed in, so the ships could tie up out of the main flow. There was certainly a trail heading inland, but it might just lead to the tin mines. Winter was coming on; this was southern hemisphere.”