If Honakura was reading the gods’ program correctly, the door was going to be shut behind the fugitives. By the third ford, Wallie began to fear that it might close before they were through. The water swirled angrily around his horse’s knees. Some of the animals balked and had to be soothed by Garadooi.
No one seemed worried about piranha. Honakura had said that they avoided fast water, but this complete lack of concern suggested that they were not found in tributary streams, that only the River itself was instant death. Wallie did not ask.
The fourth crossing was even worse. Here the valley floor was wooded and the trail marked by an obvious cut in the trees. The stream foamed and rumbled, lapping out beyond its banks to conceal its depth.
Garadooi studied it apprehensively. “I think the horses can make it, my lord; but the cart may not.”
He rode ahead, being the best horseman, and even he had trouble persuading his mount to enter the stream. He crossed and then returned, shivering and worried.
“Do they continue getting worse?” Wallie asked.
“The next one or two should be better. Then there is a bridge.”
“Ah! Could we fell that bridge?”
The lad’s eyes widened. “I expect so.”
“And that would block the trail?”
Garadooi smiled then. “Probably.”
“Then we must trust in the gods!” But Wallie wished he felt as confident as he was trying to appear.
Without little Garadooi’s expertise they would never have managed that fourth ford. He took two horses across, left one, and returned to drive the cart. It skittered sideways in the rush of water, but he controlled the panicking horse and fought through to the far bank. He came back again and formed the more docile animals into a string, then led them across with the other travelers clinging tight on their backs. Finally he persuaded the rest of the horses, one by one. At last the party formed up as before and trailed off wetly through the trees. But they were making poor time. When the sorcerers learned of their flight and followed with fresh mounts, they would rapidly overtake the fugitives.
Another bare ridge . . . another valley . . . After a while they all seemed to blur into a single unending torment of rain, punctuated by the colder ordeals of fords. For long stretches Wallie walked, leading his horse; Shonsu’s giant stride had no trouble keeping up with the cart. Once in a while, when downpour yielded briefly to drizzle, he saw a distant gleam off the River, far away beyond the ridges, and far below. The clouds were closer overhead.
Then they came to the bridge. It was built in three spans, logs supported on pilings, but the water was almost level with the deck. This was no mere swollen stream; this was a bloated mountain torrent that had spread far beyond its banks, reaching almost to the trees. The ramps at either end had been bypassed, so that the whole structure stood in the flood, like an anchored raft.
Wallie stopped his horse’s feet at the edge of the water. Out as far as the bridge ramps it was smooth and slow-moving, therefore not deep; but in the center it surged and swirled around the pilings. The current would be undermining the supports, for they could not be deep rooted. Even as he watched, floating tree trunks were impacting the bridge.
“I suspect that it will not last long, anyway,” he said, having to raise his voice over the noise of the water. “And certainly this can not be forded.”
Garadooi nodded, but he was frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“It is not the bridge I remember, my lord. I have not been up here for two or three years. You saw where the trail had been widened?”
Wallie had missed that. “What do you mean?”
“Someone has been improving the road. This bridge is quite new. Do you suppose . . . ”
“The sorcerers are using it?”
The lad nodded.
“Where else does it go, apart from Aus?”
“Nowhere. There is supposed to be an old mine along here somewhere, but I thought it was abandoned.”
“What did they mine?” Wallie asked automatically.
But Garadooi did not know, and obviously the first task was to cross the bridge. The water was axle-deep on the cart when they reached the gentle ramp leading up to the deck. The bridge quivered and trembled as the travelers crossed, but finally they all stood on the far bank—not exactly on dry ground, but beyond the reach of the flood.
Both upstream and downstream the valley seemed to narrow, and there the River would move more swiftly. “I think this is where we must try to block the road,” Wallie said. “And we must stop soon, anyway.” Honakura was blue-lipped with cold and exhausted by the jolting of the cart. Even Jja and Cowie looked close to their limits, and Nnanji and his brother were not in much better shape. And the light was failing.
“In about half a league, my lord, there is a cave.”
“Good! Then Nnanji and I will deal with the bridge. Leave us the axes and pinch bars. You go on and get a fire going.”
Garadooi nodded, teeth chattering. “The chains, also?”
Wallie shook his head. “I could not get a horse back out there again. No—there’s no need,” he added as the youth was about to offer to try. “I’m sure we can manage with bare hands.”
“I’m sure
you
can, my lord!”
Wallie laughed and thumped him on the shoulder. “You have done a great service for the Goddess this day, builder. Tonight I’ll tell you just how great. And don’t worry if we’re some time—I shall keep watch here until dark. Now be gone!”
So Wallie and Nnanji remained and the rest of the party headed off into the trees. Two abandoned horses whinnied anxiously and jerked at their tethers.
Wallie laid ax and bar over his shoulder and studied the bridge for a moment. The piles stood in pairs, each pair topped by a heavy crosspiece. In dry weather, of course, he would simply chop down those piles, but he could not get at them now. Three long and massive wooden beams connected each set, like girders, and the corduroy decking was lashed on with tarred rope. The decking would be easy. After that was removed no horse would be able to cross, but a foolhardy man might walk one of the beams, so those would have to come down, also.
“Let’s go, then!” he said, setting out.
“My lord brother,” Nnanji sounded wistful as he fell into step, “would this not be good place to set an ambush?”
It would, of course, if an ambush made sense. The trail was a greasy-floored canyon through thick pine woods, already gloomy and about to become very dark. It was little wider than a footpath, and a rope strung at knee height would almost certainly bring down the lead horse, perhaps several.
“For gods’ sakes!” Wallie said. “Yes. But why ambush when you can be certain of stopping them? That’s stupid!”
“Why?”
“Because—you said it yourself—there’s no honor in fighting sorcerers. This is murder, Nnanji! Brigands, swordsmen killers! I wouldn’t run from a challenge—”
“I know you—”
“But I’m sure as hell not going to take on impossible odds if I don’t have to!” They were back at the water, and Wallie began to wade, testing every step, already feeling the cold through the leather of his boots. “You’re a Fourth now. You’re supposed to be competent to give orders to Thirds, qualified swordsmen, so think! Don’t be so brainless.”
His right boot filled with an icy rush, and he winced.
Softly Nnanji said, “Teach me, mentor?’
Wallie shot him a rueful glance. “Sorry!” He was tired and worried and jet-lagged, but he ought not to be taking it out on Nnanji. His left boot filled and tried to fall off as he lifted his foot. “All right. So you’re a Fourth. I assume you want to go on and try for Fifth?”
“Seventh!”
“Why not? Well, you’ll have to start thinking about responsibility, now—judgment and planning. The sutras will help, of course. You’re up to eight hundred and three. You’ve noticed how they change? The early ones deal with practical things, like looking after your sword. The later ones have begun to teach you tactics, right?” The water was lapping Wallie’s kilt and tugging hard at him. He reached out a hand and gripped Nnanji’s arm so that they could support each other. The river was certainly still rising.
“From here on, you’re into strategy, in fact I’ll give you the next sutra right now!”
With icy water halfway up his thighs, Nnanji turned to grin. “Do we have to sit down, my lord brother?”
“I think we’ll dispense with—oops!” Wallie recovered his footing, and they pushed on through the sadistic cold torrent. “I shall try to dispense with sitting down. I didn’t mean the whole sutra, anyway, just the epigram: ‘Only cats fight in the dark.’ “
“Explain, mentor.”
“You tell me.” Wallie stumbled again. The bridge stood higher than the banks, ending in low ramps of dirt and corduroy, but now the current was sucking away the fill, and most of the logs had gone, also. He scrambled blindly up the remains to get out of the water. Then be helped Nnanji up. He bent his legs to tip water from his boots, wondering if his toes had died.
“What’s it called?” Nnanji was doing similar gymnastics.
Wallie chuckled. “ ‘On Evaluation of Opponents.’ ”
“Oh!” Nnanji was silent as they squelched along the shivering bridge to the third support. “It means ‘Don’t fight without knowing who you’re fighting’?”
“More or less. You take that side, I’ll do this.” They began chopping the bindings that held the wooden deck. “Who, or what, or how . . . appropriate, is it not?”
They soon established a pattern. The pinch bars were not needed, for only lashings held the logs to the beams. Wallie cut one side and Nnanji the other. Then Nnanji hit the center tie and Wallie pushed the freed log sideways, away into the stream. The water was halfway up the beams now.
“We need to know more about sorcerers?”
“Much more.”
Of course! Now he saw. That was why Wallie Smith had been chosen to succeed Shonsu. True, he had a deeply ingrained prejudice against believing in sorcery, but he had already accepted that it could exist in this World. The evidence of Kandoru’s murder was convincing, and Garadooi had been telling of demons loose in Ov. So Wallie would believe in sorcerers. But he also had scientific training. He could analyze a problem in a way that no other swordsman ever could.
Half the center span had been stripped, exposing the three long beams. A circus horse might cross on one of those in dry weather, but the bravest of riders would never risk such a feat in rain, above a roaring torrent. Yet an agile man on foot might try it.
“We need to know what they can do?” Nnanji asked, pausing to catch his breath. Bridge smashing was warm work, even in heavy rain.
“Yes. But we need even more to know what they can’t do.”
The bridge uttered a loud warning. Wallie stopped and regarded it warily. He did not intend to go down with the ship, and the gods might be about to complete his work for him. There was a definite sideways sag now, the structure starting to fail under the combined efforts of men and river. Flotsam had collected thickly on the upstream side, creating drag. Piles were tilting as their supporting rubble was washed away.
“Let’s go!” The two of them began to run. They had barely reached the ramp when an even louder creaking announced the end. Weakened by their work, the center span succumbed. Beams split, lashings snapped, spars splintered and sprang skyward. An instant’s foam, and the middle of the bridge had vanished. Floating debris showed momentarily, rushing away downstream.
“That ought to hold them,” Wallie said with some satisfaction. Quite likely the rest of the structure would follow of its own accord now. Perhaps the whole thing would have gone anyway, but gods were well known for helping those who helped themselves.
That left the problem of returning to shore, and it proved to be harder than the journey out. Twice Nnanji’s feet were swept from under him, and only Wallie’s stout grip saved him from following the center of the bridge away into the unknown. Once Wallie stepped in a hollow, sat down, and submerged completely. But eventually they staggered out of the water, shivering and coughing.
They emptied their boots again and began jumping up and down and thumping arms to get warm. The sky was darkening, and they had a cave to find, but some hunch told Wallie that he ought to wait around a little while yet.
“What did you mean, ‘Need even more to know what they can’t do’?” The question came out in puffs as he jogged in place, but Nnanji was notable for his tenacity.
“One of your minstrel ballads told how a sorcerer changed himself into an eagle, didn’t it?”
“Yes, my lord brother.”
“Well, they didn’t fly from Ov; they rode horses. And that’s why I’m waiting here. Maybe they can fly across the river.”
“Oh!” said Nnanji.
“There must be a way to fight sorcerers. The Goddess wouldn’t have given me an impossible task, would She?”
“No.”
“So they must have a weakness, and I have to find it. Forty men died in Ov.”
Garadooi had told them. He had not been present, but he had been awakened by the noise—half the city had. A line of sorcerers had appeared in the main square before dawn and sent a challenge to the reeve. The Honorable Zandorphino had marched out with his entire force. The sorcerers had begun a chant. The swordsmen had charged. Fire demons had appeared and slaughtered them to the last man. No one had survived. Even trees and statues had been demolished by the demons’ fury, walls and storefronts smashed in, blood splattered over upper-story windows. In minutes the whole garrison had been shredded. Garadooi had found the body of his friend Farafini, charred and chewed and mangled, with one leg ripped off and his sword broken.
But there had to be a way to fight sorcerers.
“Look!”
Wallie’s hunch had paid off. Against a dark sky, across a darker skyline, figures moved—three or more. He might have missed some, but riders had just come over the top of the opposite ridge and vanished down into the gloom, heading his way.
“They’re coming!” Nnanji said, unnecessarily.
“They are! Let’s move the horses—quick!”
Wallie ran for the mounts, with Nnanji close behind, inevitably asking, “Why?”
“Because they’ll whinny!”