The Reluctant Swordsman (25 page)

“And how many can you beat?”

Nnanji muttered, “Three.”

“What! That doesn’t make sense!”

“Briu says that my defense is very good, my liege. They rarely get a hit against me.”

Wallie frowned. Unless his Shonsu expertise was starting to fail him, something was wrong there. Then he noticed a curious contraption at the far end of the court and forgot Nnanji’s troubles for a moment. It was an edifice of massive beams and straps, and neither he nor Shonsu knew what it was. Long rods like pool cues stood in a barrel beside it.

“What in hell is that?” he asked, pointing, not able to believe what he was starting to guess.

“The whipping post, my liege.”

Wallie wheeled to stare at his vassal. “And who gets whipped?”

Nnanji shrugged. “Mostly slaves. Some mentors use it on some protégés.” “And expect to make swordsmen of them?” Wallie looked once more at the whipping post, briefly again at the fencers. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, “before I lose my lunch.”

In sulky silence, Nnanji followed his liege back to the royal suite, obviously assuming that the lesson had been canceled. They marched through the anteroom.
 
“Close the door,” Wallie said and kept walking until he was a safe distance into the great room.

“Draw!” he shouted, wheeling and drawing. Nnanji jumped and drew.
 
“Hey! Not bad!” Wallie said. “And with an unfamiliar sword, too!” He laughed at Nnanji’s alarm. “Relax! Did you think I was going to start fencing with real blades? I was testing your speed—and you’re a lot faster than Briu. A lot faster! Of course you’re younger.”

Nnanji beamed—he could have had little praise on his fencing for a long time, if he was third from the bottom of thirteen.

The guest chamber was almost as large as the fencing court. It was cooler and shaded and private. Wallie laid the seventh sword carefully on a lacquered table and moved a stool close to a silk-embroidered chair. He sat down with a sigh of pleasure, putting his feet up. Nnanji was grinning again, still clutching his sword.

“Not foils,” Wallie said. “You need to learn the feel of that blade anyway. Now, guard at quarte. Show me a lunge.”

Nnanji lunged and there was a pause.

“Terrible,” said his mentor. “Foot turned in, thumb turned up. Limp wrist . . .
 
elbow. Gods! The attack of the killer earthworm.” He pointed at the mirror. “Try again over there. Now—how were you first shown? Use that memory of yours.” Nnanji lunged once more at the mirror, then adjusted his foot, his hand, his arm, his wrist. He tried again, went through the same process, and looked around uneasily.

“You’re dead, apprentice,” Wallie said quietly. “They’re down at the armory selling your sword. Pity, he was a nice kid.”

He lunged a dozen times and was wrong every time. Then Wallie had him concentrate on his wrist. He could do that, but when he tried to get his foot right as well, his wrist wavered as before. In half an hour he had gained no ground at all, and both Wallie and Shonsu were totally baffled. He stood up and gripped Nnanji’s left hand.

“I’ll take your weight,” he said. “Try it very, very slowly.” Like a slow-motion movie, Nnanji moved his arm, raised his right foot, and inched through the lunge. Wallie held him steady until his right foot came back to the floor.
 
Constantly adjusting his position, Nnanji managed a travesty of a lunge. They tried that for a while, but the least increase in speed put him right back where he was before.

“It’s your damned memory!” Wallie roared. “Can’t you forget?” But apparently Nnanji could not, although he was almost insane with frustration. His bad habits had soaked in like the sutras. They tried a fresh start with his left hand, but he was no southpaw, and they gave up on that idea.
 
They tried with a foil. They tried with his old sword. They tried with his eyes shut. If Nnanji’s distress had not been so obvious, Wallie would have thought he was playing games and doing as badly as possible on purpose.
 
“Well, let’s try the celebrated defense, then,” Wallie sighed. They pulled foils and masks from the massive iron-bound chest and faced off.
 
His defense was excellent, out of all proportion to the ineptness of his attack.

Wallie threw down the mask, slumped back into the chair, and folded his arms.

Nnanji stood and looked at him with despair.

“It beats me,” Wallie said. “Your reflexes are fine, and your defense is ’way above any Second I saw downstairs—Third at least, even by my standards. Your coordination is okay, because you make exactly the same mistakes every time. The only thing you can’t do is lunge—and that movement is half of all swordsmanship.
 
What you’ve got is a mental block.”

But it did not come out as “mental block”—it translated as “curse,” and Nnanji’s eyes bulged. Wallie laughed uneasily and said perhaps they had better send for the holy mothers.

He pointed to another of the chintz-covered chairs. “Sit down and relax for a minute,” he said. “Let me think about it.”

Nnanji sat. He sank into the down filling. But he certainly did not relax.

Wallie picked up the seventh sword and pretended to examine it.
 
“You were surprised at the price you got for your sword,” he said quietly. “What do you suppose this one is worth?”

“I don’t know, my liege,” Nnanji muttered miserably.
 
“The holy Honakura says that it’s priceless. He more or less said that it would fetch whatever you asked, as much as you could carry of anything. I’m told that there are brigands on the ferry trail.”

Wallie continued to peer at the blade, and after a moment Nnanji said, “Yes, my liege,” a little more attentively.

“I’m worried about our leaving, then,” Wallie continued, still speaking to the sword. “You and me and Jja. I shall ask Honorable Tarru to provide us with a guard.”

He wished that he dared look at his vassal, to see what expressions were chasing across his so-legible face. Surprise? Worry? Shame? Surely, eventually, Nnanji would work out that a Seventh could not be so naive? The comment came just a fraction sooner than he expected.

“I did swear to die at your side, my liege.”

Then Wallie could look round, with a grin. He saw puzzled and rueful embarrassment. “Who would he choose, Nnanji?”

“I don’t know, my liege. They didn’t trust me.” “That’s to your credit, I fear. But certainly I don’t trust Honorable Tarru. Is there any other way out of this place?”

“None, my liege.”

“What happens if we cross the River?” Wallie waved a hand in the general direction of the temple.

“Cross the River?” Nnanji said in horror.

“Well, if we could?” Wallie replied, puzzled. The River was the Goddess—was there some taboo against crossing? True, there were rapids and the water was wide, but three active young people could get across, even with a baby. “What’s on the far bank?”

“Nothing but jungle, my liege. And the cliff . . . ” True, the cliff looked bad. Well, he would scout that way himself. “Suppose we organized our own escort? Who would you invite? Granted that you tell me that they are all men of honor, which are the most honorable?” Nnanji wriggled with shame. “I don’t know, my liege! I tried not to know those things!” He was having a bad afternoon—first his inept fencing and now this—but Wallie could not afford to be merciful.

He pondered, squinting along the sword blade. The trouble with Nnanji was that he was too honest. What was needed was a little human fallibility, enough to know the ropes and who pulled them. “If we picked one man and asked him to organize a guard for us? Who?”

“Briu,” Nnanji said, and then flushed at the surprised look he received. “He gave me my sword, my liege.”

“The devil he did!” Wallie said. “Good for him—and good for you for asking!

Well, he has no call to love me, but I suppose we could approach him.”

Nnanji squirmed some more. “His mentor is Master Trasingji, my liege.” That was as close to an accusation as Nnanji was ever likely to come, and a warning. Even Briu was unsafe.

Wallie groaned. “I did not know that. Then how the hell do we get out? I need your advice, Nnanji. Remember Farranulu?”

Nnanji grinned.

#106 ON ESCAPE

The Epitome

When honor permits, a wise warrior fights on terrain of his own choosing.
 
Whether at home alone or in the field with an army, he will always know of at least two routes of escape, and in most cases will also have prepared a place of concealment.

When Farranulu’s wife complained that the bedroom was cold with the window open, he instructed her that she would be even colder without him to share the bed.

The Epigram

When Death is present, the wise are absent.

“We could sneak out quietly, board some mules, and just risk it?” suggested Nnanji, whose thinking could never be devious.

“There is a guard on the gate,” Wallie said. “He will have issued orders; he will know when we leave. We shall be followed, or else word will be sent ahead.
 
They may already have an ambush prepared. Have you seen how he looks at this sword?

“Is there another gate?” he asked. “Any way around the end of the walls?”

“One gate,” Nnanji said glumly. “And the walls end in the River.” Again this curious reluctance to go in the water! The prohibition must be very strong, and yet they used boats. But many Earthly religions allowed bare feet in their temples and prohibited shoes; religions need not be logical.
 
Nnanji sat and frowned ferociously, but nothing seemed to be coming of it. He was out of his depth.

Wallie had one vague plan he was not mentioning. If he could get Tarru alone, he could force him to swear the blood oath as he had forced Nnanji, for there was no doubt who was the better swordsman. Then he could make the acting reeve call in his protégés, one by one, and order them to swear also. Theoretically he could turn the whole guard into his vassals from the top down, diamonds and dirt together. The crooks would still be crooks and untrustworthy, but the good men would be true to their oath and surely they were in a majority? The disadvantage to that plan was that Wallie was Tarru’s guest, so drawing his sword would be an abomination. Nnanji would die of shame if he knew that his hero was even contemplating such a deed.

“Horses,” Nnanji said. “There are only a dozen or so in the valley and they all belong to the guard.” He looked at his liege hopefully.
 
“Brilliant!” Wallie exclaimed. “Bloody-handed brilliant!”

Nnanji tried to look modest and failed.

“Tell me all about them,” Wallie demanded.

There was little else to tell. The valley road was so steep that trade goods and farm produce went on oxcarts, passengers on mules. The guard kept a few horses to service the advance post at the ferry, where there was usually a picket of three swordsmen and a priest. The temple stable was close by the gate. There was a guard of three men there, also.

“You can go see it tomorrow, my liege,” Nnanji concluded.
 
“Not likely!” Wallie said. “I shan’t go near it, I’m too conspicuous.” They could steal the horses. That would be only a crime, not an abomination, and probably no one would question a Seventh’s right to help himself to whatever he fancied. The horses must legally belong to the temple itself, so perhaps he could even make a deal with Honakura to buy them ahead of time. But that left the guards . . .

“I think you have found the answer, vassal,” Wallie said. “Horse thieves we shall be. But I don’t know if I can handle a guard of three men by myself, not without a massacre, and I’d much rather not have that. Overpower them and tie them up . . . I need a good swordsman to help me.” Nnanji’s private hell fell over him again.

“So you’d better get back to practicing,” Wallie said. “I need you. The sword needs you. The Goddess needs you, Nnanji.” He pointed at the mirror. “One hundred lunges with a straight foot. Then we’ll work upward.” Now that he had money, there were things to do. But his feet were throbbing, and he wanted to emphasize his lameness, so he used the bellrope to summon a slave.
 
Then he sat back like the royal guest he was and had the barracks minions dance attendance on him for the rest of the afternoon, while Nnanji lunged away like a piston in front of the mirror. The tailor brought swatches and measured him. The cobbler traced his feet on leather, although he would have to guess an adjustment for shrinkage when the swellings went down. Whatever Shonsu had been doing for the last couple of months, he had not been getting his hair cut, so its new owner summoned a barber. Coningu had to have a gratuity, and Janu likewise, for she could make Jja’s life a misery. Honakura’s healer nephew came to change bandages and mutter a few prayers over Wallie’s feet.
 
Wallie ordered his slave sent up at sundown, and a private meal for the same time. That was a breach of the precautions he had listed to Honakura, but for his first night with Jja he was willing to risk poison. He planned to recreate that strange candlelit dinner they had shared in the pilgrim hut, even if his quarters were now a hundred times as large. A cozy dinner, an intimate conversation to build a few dreams and find what common ground linked their vastly disparate heritages in the human experience . . . and then lots of that Olympic-class loving!