“Go ahead and sell your wine, mistress,” Wallie told Brota. “I know what the rest of us are going to do. Right, brother?”
“Right,” said Nnanji. “Carnival!”
Wallie turned to Jja. “Dancing!” he said. “Wine and song and beautiful ladies in gossamer dresses.”
Jja dropped her eyes. “I can’t dance, my love.”
“And masks,” Wallie said quietly.
He had been right about the reeve: the only swordsmen they could locate were two juniors so totally drunk that they could not have found their sword hilts. Nnanji was enraged and wanted to chop off their ponytails, but Wallie dragged him away before he could start. There was no chance now that Brota would put him ashore if he found enlistable swordsmen, but evidently he was still not permitted to meet any. He was on a voyage of discovery and must find out for himself. By Ov, hopefully, the lesson would be learned.
He had been wrong about the beautiful dresses. The standard of living was not high enough to allow such luxury. Participants in carnival wore the minimum of clothes and a complete coat of body paint, which acted as costume and mask in one. A supply of paint was quickly obtained, and the younger folk divided into couples to decorate each other. Nnanji offered his services to Thana, but had to settle for Katanji.
Wallie and Jja retired to their cabin and discovered that body painting was even more fun than the dress designing they had enjoyed long ago in the temple barracks. They smudged several attempts before being able to concentrate on art.
That night they danced in the streets by the light of bonfires while the music played and the wine flowed. The air was cool on skins wearing only paint, but they were warmed by giant bonfires, by frenzied tarantellas and torrid fandangoes, by hot wine mulled with cinnamon and sweet cloves.
Jja was a born dancer, the best of them all, and soon was teaching her owner. They all danced until dawn had turned to morning.
Nnanji wore four shades of green, like a red-haired leprechaun, and Thana was a golden sprite from some legendary Arcadian forest. Leaping with little skill but unbounded enthusiasm, those two won the endurance dance.
Jja shone in midnight blue with silver stars, Wallie was Harlequin. They were awarded the grand prize for the handsomest couple in the carnival. Of course.
From Wo to Gor . . .
At Gor, two sorcerers stopped Tomiyano in the street and questioned him about his scar, his ship, his business, and his personal habits. He returned to
Sapphire
cursing, red-faced, and obviously intimidated; vowing to stay out of sight in future.
Slowly Wallie was gathering wisdom about sorcery, but not the one wisdom he needed—how could swordsmen fight sorcerers? There were more stories of thunderbolts, various tales of mysterious powers—some of which he was sure were legend—and a harrowing eyewitness account of the destruction of the swordsmen of Gor, who had charged the line of sorcerers across an open pasture under a cloudless sky, only to die simultaneously in one great thunderbolt. Or had that been another manifestation of fire demons? The bodies had apparently been badly chewed, as at Ov.
The towers were places of dread for the townsfolk, who stayed away at night, fearing the strange noises and lights. All the towers were identical, Katanji insisted, and they all had birds around them. At least one other tower purchased horse urine, and a second time Katanji saw octopus being delivered. The sorcerers seemed to do well out of their wine ensorceling. They purchased all the finest leather. They sold love potions and would foretell the future for a fee. Their garrisons seemed always to be slightly smaller than the swordsmen garrisons they displaced, but who knew who was a sorcerer? There might be many around in disguise.
Wallie could find no limit to their power, no chink in their armor. If the World contained a sorcerer kryptonite, he did not hear of it. The colors of fall began to tint the hills and the days flew away like swallows. The mountains slid round to the west. Crew and passengers became almost indistinguishable, and even Nnanji at times donned a breechclout and ran aloft with the others.
Thana continued to vamp Lord Shonsu and ignore Nnanji’s passionate yearnings. At first Wallie had dismissed those as mere lechery. Then he had concluded that they were only a juvenile infatuation—Thana was probably the first woman who had ever genuinely refused Nnanji and she was also the only target in sight. Now his unflagging persistence was beginning to seem quite out of character, another of those complexities that Wallie had not previously suspected in him. Unfortunately, his social skills remained primitive, and his courtship was still much like his table manners—long on enthusiasm and short on finesse. He did not know how to woo a lady. Until he sought advice, his mentor was not going to offer any, and evidently Nnanji was too proud to ask.
Gor on the left bank, then Shan on the right, a pleasant little town of potteries and dairies, where
Sapphire
loaded great yellow cartwheels of cheese, and the crew joked that the Goddess was rewarding even the ship’s rats.
Rather nervously, Wallie went hunting for the reeve, wondering what disaster this action might call down on the unsuspecting victim. The reeve and his deputy had gone duck hunting. Wallie was not surprised. For the first time he did meet some competent swordsmen—a half-dozen middleranks, awed to find themselves entertaining a Seventh—but all of them were happily married and beyond the age of seeking adventure. He made no attempt to enlist any, and none of them knew or cared very much about sorcerers.
Then Amb, on the left bank. There Brota purchased long rolls of sailcloth and bundles of tools; saws and axes and shovels and kegs of nails. As the last of these were being carried aboard,
Sapphire
had a visitor, a wizened, graying priest of the Fifth, mincing up the plank behind the diminutive figure of Honakura.
Wallie, Nnanji, and Tomiyano—the three who must not be seen in sorcerer country, the three wise monkeys, Wallie called them—were watching from the deckhouse. They could not hear what was said, but they saw gold being passed and then the priest depart. Honakura came wandering in to explain, looking pleased with himself.
He settled wearily on one of the chests. “An interesting development, my lord,” he said. “We are on a mission of mercy!” Then he would say no more until he had sipped a glass of wine and eaten some of Lina’s fresh gingerbread.
Wallie knew that he was being teased and would have to wait. The old man was a wonder to him. He gave the impression that he was enjoying every minute of this wandering, dangerous life, so unlike his pampered past. At every city he scouted with the sailors and he provided more useful information than anyone except Katanji, for he had both judgment and skill.
He also had an invaluable source of gossip in the priests. While they were unhappy with the rule of sorcerers because they demanded that altars to the Fire God be maintained within the temples and prayers offered to Him, their unhappiness did not seem to extend to contemplating revolution. The sorcerers were being very skillful at keeping the population content. In Wallie’s view, their public relations were much better than the swordsmen’s.
“Ah!” said Honakura, refreshed at last. The ship was preparing to leave. “You know that Mistress Brota purchased tools? I was just returning when I saw the holy Master Momingu arrive at the trader’s, so I made myself known to him.”
“And what is so interesting about Master Momingu?” Wallie asked patiently. Nnanji and Tomiyano were almost ready to start strangling procedures.
“He had come to purchase a shipload of tools and charter a vessel to carry them. The temple wants to send succor to the city of Gi, next port up on the right bank. I explained that we were heading that way, and Mistress Brota agreed to sell her cargo and accept the charter.”
“The devil she did?” Tomiyano muttered.
Honakura twinkled. “I think she made a small profit, Captain. Of course, the reverend Momingu had expected to accompany the load and supervise distribution, but I was able to persuade him that such was not required in this case.”
“And why should the priests of Amb wish to buy tools and send them to the city of Gi?” Wallie asked, as expected.
“Because,” the priest replied triumphantly, “the sorcerers have informed them that a great fire is burning there! Much of the city has already been destroyed, and many people are homeless. The temple is also chartering ships of food and lumber.”
“
Is
burning?”
“Is. It started this morning, they say.”
His listeners looked at each other. “Three days to Gi,” Tomiyano said.
“Exactly!” Honakura rubbed his hands and beamed at Wallie. “A test of the sorcerers, my lord!”
Wallie nodded. The sorcerers had known of the downed bridge in the mountains, but Gi was a long way off and was also in swordsman country. Nor had the sorcerers offered to transport the tools and lumber by magic. “Very interesting, old man. Very interesting, indeed!”
Hard-nosed traders though they were, Brota and Tomiyano were not without compassion or faith in the Goddess. They sailed late and weighed anchor early, and now the winds were favorable. Two days brought
Sapphire
to Gi.
There were cities of wood and there were cities of stone. Gi had been of wood, spread across a delta plain between two gentle hills. For hours before
Sapphire
arrived the air was tainted by an acrid stench of burning. As she drew close the whole company assembled on deck to stare in shock and dismay at the devastation.
The plain was gray, a giant’s thistlefield, a petrified forest of chimneys, its deadly sameness broken only by a few roofless skeletons of temples. Lonely wisps of smoke showed where remnants still smoldered, but tiny shanties of charred fragments were already clustered around some of the stark chimney stacks. The wind lifted clouds of ash and stirred them around contemptuously. From the stone facing on the dock all the way back to the hillsides, hardly a whole building stood. Even as the watchers absorbed their first horror, people began to rise out of the wasteland like ants. They drifted toward the harbor, thousands of them, homeless, hungry ghosts, the same deathly gray as their city.
Wallie was the first ashore, Nnanji at his heels, and they had to push their way into the crowd and force it back to allow the ship to be properly moored. The mob was filthy and shocked—white eyes staring out of ash-covered faces. People shouted and struggled, and there was danger of a stampede that would hurl hundreds off the dock and into the deadly waters.
Drawing his sword and waving it high, bellowing to enforce order, Wallie called for swordsmen, and eventually three or four came struggling through to the front. They were as black and as confused as the civilians. He could not tell their ranks and he had no time for formal salutes. He barked orders and was obeyed. Discipline appeared like a sudden rain in the desert, and the danger of panic subsided. He jumped up on a bollard and shouted the news: Food ships were coming, help was coming, pass the word, and make room.
So that day
Sapphire
went into the relief business. The sailcloth was ripped into tent lengths, and some of those torn small to hold nails. One tool or one poke of nails to a customer—let them cooperate as best they could. The crew worked as dock slaves, carrying the cargo to shore. Other ships began to arrive, sent by the priests of Amb and Ov, or by chance, or by the Hand of the Goddess. They brought food and lumber, and one was a cattle boat whose crew set up an abattoir on the dock. Wallie conscripted every water rat from every ship and built himself an army, which he used to organize and pacify. Eventually he found the reeve, but he was elderly and shattered by bereavement. Wallie declared him deposed and replaced by his deputy; no one questioned a Seventh’s right to do anything he wanted. By evening tents and shacks were beginning to spread across the plain, while
Sapphire
had turned gray herself and stank of dead fire like the devastated city. But civilization had taken root again.
Incredibly, Brota had found trade. Several of the warehouses had held bronze ingots, great flat slabs with a lug at each corner, the shape that the Greeks had used and called oxhides. Many had survived the fire and lay in heaps amid the rubble. She bought a load of them, and Wallie had no doubt that the price was good. Nor was there need to hire a slave gang; hundreds of sooty men were willing to work for a copper until they were sweat-streaked like zebras. By the end of the day there was one woman smiling in Gi.
At last they had done all they could. They spread the grubby sails and stood out into open water and untainted air, weary and filthy, and sad. Fire was even worse than pirates.
Slumped beside a sooty and equally exhausted Nnanji at the rail, Wallie reflected that for once he had truly enjoyed being a swordsman of the Seventh. Power itself held no appeal for him, but sometimes it could be used for good purposes.
Then Jja came by, clean and delectable in her black bikini, much amused that she had won first place in the lottery for the shower, taking precedence over her mighty owner. She made a great performance of leaning forward and pursing her lips to get a kiss without being soiled by him. Chuckling, she went off to help with the children.
Wallie sighed and made a remark that was to have a curious sequel.
“If only a slave could wear jewels!” he said. “If she could use them, I would buy beautiful things and give them to Jja. There are few easier ways to honor one’s lady.”
Getting no answer, he turned to glance at his companion and intercepted an amused look. He turned away quickly. Nnanji had seen right through that little deception and knew that he was not talking only of Jja.
“Thank you, brother,” Nnanji said quietly. “I should have thought of that, of course.”
Wallie turned back to him, knowing that his face was burning under its film of ash. “Forgive me,” he said. “I keep treating you as the Second I found on the beach. I forget that you have come a long way since then.”
“If I have, then the credit is yours,” Nnanji said graciously. He went back to looking at the ruins of Gi. Incredibly, a tear trickled down his cheek, clearing a path through the dust.