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3

Master Polini headed down the plank with his protégé at his heels. He was probably relieved to escape from the insanity of Sapphire, with its incomprehensible Seventh and its rabid captain. If he breathed a prayer of thanks, then he breathed too soon, for another outrage was in store for him—on reaching the dock he came face-to-face with the returning Brota.

Female swordsmen were a heresy to landlubbers. Fat swordsmen were intolerable. Swordsmen who still bore their blades in middle age were contemptible. Brota was all of those, voluminous in her red robe, her ponytail streaked with gray, and a sword on her back, Wallie saw the encounter and chuckled. Apparently there was something in Polini's face that annoyed her, for she fixed him with her piggy eye and accosted him squarely. Then she drew and made the salute to an equal. With obvious reluctance, he responded. They exchanged a few words, then Polini set off along the road with furiously huge strides, his diminutive protégé almost trotting to keep up with him. Brota rolled up the plank wearing a satisfied smirk. As a water-rat swordsman she enjoyed baiting the landlubber variety almost as much as her sailor son did.

Polini had probably not even noticed Mata in the background, although she was still a fine-looking woman in her brown bra sash and breechclout. Wallie wondered what Polini would have said had he been told that she, a sailor of the third rank, a mother of four children, could probably give him a fair match with foil or sword.

Wallie had apologized to Jja, cursed himself several times for his stupidity, and then had to tell the beginning of the story to Nnanji, who had nodded in satisfaction and gone off with his head high, probably repeating "hero" to himself. A prince had said it—intoxicating stuff for the son of a rugmaker.

Brota rolled over to Wallie and scowled up at him under her curiously bushy white brows. "I suppose you are in haste to leave now, my lord?"

Wallie shrugged, "Not especially. If the Goddess is in a hurry, then She can speed our passage as She pleases. You found no trade?"

"Pah! Their prices are outrageous," she said.

Katanji had commented on the prices in the brothel. Katanji was a very astute young man in money matters. Now Wallie wondered if a tryst would create a local inflation. A few hundred active young men could certainly drive up the price of food—and women—in Casr, but he would not have thought that the effect would have reached so far as Tau.

That raised a whole new series of problems. Who was going to pay for this tryst? Probably most of the men arriving would be free swords. They would be penniless, and Casr would be in trouble. They would expect free shelter and board—and women. The economy of the World was a primitive, fragile thing. The demigod had given Wallie a fortune in sapphires and called it "expenses." Perhaps that had been another hint that he was expected to be leader of the tryst. Why, then, was he not being taken to it?

He looked across the dock road to the nearest warehouse. "The Goddess has guided you often in the past to the most profitable cargo, mistress," he suggested. "What do they offer over there?"

"Ox hides!" Brota snorted. "Nasty things! I don't want my ship full of smelly hides!"

"Hides?" Wallie repeated thoughtfully. Brota noticed at once. Brota and gold had a mutual attraction.

"Hides?" she echoed. The conversation was becoming monotonous.

"If we reach Casr . . . if I become leader of the tryst—and those are big 'ifs'—then I think hides might be of value."

"Scabbards? Boots?" She frowned in disbelief.

"Heavier grade than that, I should think."

"Saddle leather? You would fight sorcerers with leather, Shonsu?"

He smiled and nodded.

Brota studied him narrowly. "The sorcerers have driven all the tanners out of their cities. Any connection?"

"None whatsoever."

Brota pouted. Then she wheeled about, shouted for Mata, and rolled toward the plank.

Wallie glanced around. He was pleased to see that Katanji had reappeared on deck and had recovered most of his color. Wallie beckoned him over. "Feeling better now?" he inquired.

The lad gave him a pert and incredibly innocent smile. "Yes, thank you, my lord." Katanji could be angelically polite or diabolically vulgar, as circumstances required.

"I need a speck of additional wisdom from you, novice," said Wallie.

"I am always at your service and at that of the Goddess, my lord."

After the service of his own money pouch, of course.

"Good!" Wallie said with a conspiratorial smile. "Mistress Brota is now bent on buying leather. I should like to know how much she spends on it."

Katanji grinned. "Is that all?" He nodded and walked away. He could probably discover details of the tanner's grandfather's sex life if Wallie needed them.

Wallie stayed by the rail, watching his spy trail after Brota. There were no swordsmen in sight. Then Nnanji reappeared at his side, suspicious of what his oath brother had wanted with his true brother. Nnanji's protégé was a constant trial to him, with his unswordsmanlike tendencies, and his mentor almost as bad. Wallie decided not to explain, out of pure perversity.

"Did you find Adept Kionijuiy?" he inquired.

Nnanji scowled. "Someone else got to him first, my lord brother."

On their previous visit to Tau, Kionijuiy had been de facto reeve. He had been absent from his post, leaving the town in the care of an inadequate garrison, and that lapse had offended Nnanji's ideals of swordsman honor. While the subject had not been discussed since, Wallie knew that Nnanji never forgot anything. He would certainly have sought to rectify the matter that morning.

"The new reeve is the Honorable Finderinoli," Nnanji added. "He and his band arrived at the lodge just before your message got there. So he came on to Tau and put things to rights at once. I did not meet him, but he seems to be doing a fine job." He nodded approvingly.

"What did he do to the old man?" Wallie asked. Kionijuiy's father had failed to resign when he grew too old to be reeve. Much worse, though, he had taught his civilian sons to fence. That was an abomination, a breach of the sutras, a violation of the swordsmen's closed-shop union rules.

"Drained him, too," Nnanji said simply, studying people on the dock road below.

Wallie shivered. "And the brothers?"

"Cut off their hands," Nnanji said. "Ah! Here she is!"

Thana was coming along the road—Brota's daughter, tall and slim and ravishing in a yellow wrap. Thana had a classic Grecian profile and dark curls. Whenever Wallie saw her with her sword on her back, as now, he thought of Diana the Huntress. When Thana was in sight, Nnanji would not think readily of anything else.

Beside her was the tiny form of Honakura, ancient priest and one of Wallie's company—indeed, Honakura was the first person he had spoken to when he awoke in the World in Shonsu's body. Today the old man had gone to visit the temple in search of news. He was still wearing his anonymous black robe, hiding his craftmarks under a headband, and so being a Nameless One. Wallie had half expected Honakura to end this charade now, but apparently not. He had never explained its purpose; possibly he did not wish to admit that it had none.

Jja was comforting Vixini, who was fretting over another tooth. Katanji came strolling back from the warehouse. Honakura climbed wearily up the gangplank. Nnanji headed toward it to welcome Thana. Seven was the sacred number. When Wallie had left the temple at Hann to begin his mission for the gods, seven had been the number is his party. The seventh, Nnanji's moronic slave, had gone. If Nnanji had any say in the matter, Thana was destined to replace her. That would bring them back to seven again . . .

Sapphire had taken Wallie to all the cities of the RegiVul loop; its crew had provided his army for the battle of Ov. With Sapphire he had unmasked the sorcerers and discovered their secrets. Now someone—and he still did not know who—had called a tryst in Casr. To Casr he must go. Looking at Nnanji beaming idiotically as he held Thana's hands, he wondered if his party was about to be restored to the sacred number. Possibly Sapphire's part in his mission was ended, and he was about to leave this easy, informal River life and complete his quest ashore.

Yet Apprentice Thana was showing few signs of cooperating, although Nnanji now proposed to her regularly—three times a day, after meals, Wallie suspected. She clearly had no illusions about that redheaded idealist who regarded honor as life's purpose, killing as his business, fencing and wenching as the only worthwhile recreations. Looking at the two of them, lost in their private conversation, Wallie would not have been surprised to learn that his lusty young protégé was describing his morning's exploits in the brothel. He was quite capable of doing so and then wondering how he had offended. Yet certainly Nnanji had some major part to play in the gods' mission, for Wallie had been directed to swear the fourth oath with him, the oath of brotherhood.

Oath of brotherhood or not. Nnanji would be reluctant to leave Sapphire without Thana. Suppose she would not go? What would the gods do then?

He must discuss that possibility with Honakura.

* * *

Two hours later, reeking like a tannery, Sapphire cast off. As she did so, another ship pulled into an empty berth ahead and two nimble young swordsman Seconds jumped ashore without even waiting for the plank. They were at once accosted by a Fourth and three Thirds, whom Wallie had already identified as followers of the head-hunting Sixth. By nightfall that Sixth would have collected all the loose swordsmen in town.

Wallie had gone up on the fo'c'sle to stay out of the sailors' way. He was leaning on the rail with Nnanji beside him. Thana was next to Nnanji.

"On to Casr!" Nnanji said in a satisfied tone.

"We may be back!" Wallie warned him, watching the two Seconds being marched off to meet the absent Sixth and swear their oaths.

"What! Why, brother?"

Wallie explained his theory that the Goddess might be wanting him to recruit a private army. Nnanji pouted mightily—he would be greatly outranked by a Sixth.

"I hope that is not the case," Wallie assured him. "But why else would she have brought all these swordsmen to Tau? It is a long way to Casr. I am sure that the Goddess is capable of better aim than that."

"Ah!" Nnanji looked relieved. "It is not only Tau! Swordsmen have been arriving at Dri and Wo, also. And Ki San, apparently. Even Quo."

The ways of gods were inscrutable. Perhaps, though, the docks at Casr could not handle the traffic, and the Goddess was using these outlying ports as way stations . . .

"Quo?" Wallie echoed.

Nnanji chuckled and glanced sideways at him. "It is on the next loop of the River! There is a wagon trail over the hills from Casr to Quo, brother! One day by road and twenty weeks by water, so I'm told."

"Where did you hear this?"

"During intermission!" Nnanji leered. Then he remembered that Thana was present, and his face suddenly matched his hair, perhaps his social skills were improving, slightly.

There was also a trail from Ov to Aus, Wallie knew, although land travel was very rare in the World. There were no maps in the World, because there was no writing, and because the geography was subject to change without notice, at the whim of the Goddess. But Wallie had a mental picture of the usual form of the landscape, and he now sought to adjust it. What had Nnanji thought of, to put that grin on his face?

"Another loop?" Wallie said. "Then Casr is strategic!"

Nnanji looked vaguely disappointed that his mentor had worked that out so quickly. He would have had to consult the sutras.

"Right!" he said. "It has three neighbors, instead of two, like all the other cities."

"And therefore it may just be the sorcerers' next target?"

Nnanji nodded. The sorcerers had been seizing another city every two years or so. Now they had control of all the left bank, the inside of the loop. River travel was difficult or impossible through the Black Lands, so the RegiVul loop was closed. Their next move must to be to cross the River.

"Casr is very old," Nnanji added. "It's mentioned in some of the most ancient sagas. Been burned and sacked and rebuilt dozens of times, I expect."

"And it has a swordsman lodge," Wallie said.

Nnanji grinned and put his arm around Thana for a firm hug. Wallie returned to watching the docks as they dwindled astern, masked now by a picket fence of masts and rigging. As the details became less visible, Tau seemed to become ever more like a scene from Tudor England.

Nnanji sniggered. "Still want to be reeve, brother?"

"Me?" Wallie said with astonishment, turning to stare at him.

Nnanji flashed his huge grin. "Forgotten? Last time we were here you said . . . " His eyes went slightly out of focus, and his voice deepened to mimic Shonsu's bass. "'Eventually, I suppose, I'll settle down in some quiet little town like this and be a reeve. And raise seven sons, like old Kioniarru. And seven daughters, also, if Jja wants them!' And I said, 'Reeve? Why not king?' And you said, 'Too much bloodshed to get it, and too much work when you do. But I like Tau, I think.'"

His eyes came back into focus and his grin returned. Neither commented on the feat of memory—they both knew it was child's play for Nnanji—but Thana was disgusted. "You weren't serious, my lord? Reeve? In a place like that?" She turned to stare at the thatched roofs of vanishing Tau.

"It's a nice little town," Wallie protested feebly.

"You can have it, brother," Nnanji said generously.

 

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