The Reluctant Swordsman (29 page)

The Fifths released her and turned round to stare incredulously. Ani blinked, then straightened up with intoxicated concentration. She resumed her progress, weaving between the outraged diners all around the balcony until she reached Wallie, peered curiously with her single bloodshot eye, and repeated, “Shonsu?” “Ani!” he said, still holding out his arms. She was huge—almost as tall as he, and half as heavy again. She simpered to show brown stumps of teeth, then embraced him fervently. It was like being attacked by a waterbed.
 
Now Nnanji had seen the plot. Grinning in great delight, he rose to offer his chair. Ani collapsed on it and eyed the noble lord suspiciously. “I don’t know you!” she said.

“Of course not,” Wallie said. “But we can correct that. Waiter—a flagon of your best for the lady.”

The waiter rolled his eyes in horror. Jja was being totally inscrutable, perhaps not understanding. Nnanji was turning purple, suppressing giggles. The highranks and their wives were not sure whether to be disgusted or respectfully tolerant.
 
Down below, the young blades had their mouths open.

Ani was trying to understand. “Do I know you?” she asked in a slurred voice.
 
Then she accepted a large goblet of wine, drained it at a gulp, and belched. She went back to studying Wallie. “No, I don’t,” she said. “You’re not a scratcher, are you? Pity.” She held out the goblet for a refill and noticed Nnanji. “Hi, Rusty,” she said. “Want your usual later?”

Nnanji almost disappeared below the table.

After the third glass she seemed to sober up for a moment and visibly counted Wallie’s facemarks. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she muttered. She attempted to rise, but failed.

“It’s a right, Ani,” Wallie said. “The Seconds put you up to this, didn’t they?”

She nodded.

“You going to be in trouble, Ani?”

She nodded again, then brightened, and emptied the goblet once more. “Tomorrow!” Wallie looked at Nnanji. “If I went off with Ani to wherever you go to, then she wouldn’t be in trouble, would she?”

Nnanji agreed, looking outraged, astonished, and intensely amused, all at the same time. “There are more beds through that door, my liege.” “Right!” Wallie said. “Stay and look after Jja for a minute.” This would be hard on his feet, but Ani was probably no longer capable of leaving under her own power.

He crouched, slid his arms under her, and—after a suspenseful moment when the issue hung in the balance—lifted her up. He carried her out, and perhaps even Shonsu himself had never worked those muscles harder.
 
Enthusiastic cheering rolled up from the lower level.

Nnanji had been correct. The door led to a big, dim room with six beds in it.
 
One in the far corner was creaking mightily, but the rest were empty and the light was dim, a single lantern. Wallie deposited his burden as gently as he could and ruefully rubbed his back.

Ani lay and stared up at him, her one eye wide. She was not too drunk to see his fingers slip into his money pouch. “No need, my lord. I’m one of the free ones.” “I’m not buying tonight, Ani,” he whispered, “but don’t tell the others. Here.” He gave her a gold, which vanished instantly into a garment that did not seem capable of hiding anything.

She lay and looked up at him blearily for a while and then, understanding at last, said, “Thank you, my lord.”

He sat down on the bed and grinned at her. She smiled back uncertainly. Someone departed from the far corner, boots clacking on the floor. In a few minutes Ani was snoring.

Wallie waited a reasonable time and then went back to the table. He smiled reassuringly at Jja and said, “I didn’t.”

“Why not, my liege?” Nnanji inquired, with an innocent grin.
 
“I think I put my back out before I got there.” Wallie reached for the wine bottle. He was not entirely joking.

They did not linger long after that. He led his slave across the floor with every eye on them, and slaves bore flames before them to the royal suite.
 
“Now do you believe in long dresses?” he asked when they were alone.
 
“Of course, master! But Apprentice Nnanji would not. It is difficult to take off.”

“That’s part of the fun,” Wallie said. “Let me show you.” But none of it was fun for Jja. She was as diligent and hard-working and frantically eager to please as she had been the previous night. The purely physical part of him, the Shonsu part, took its animal pleasure as before, but the Wallie Smith part suffered more agonies of postcoital depression. It was not her fault—he was too ravaged by guilt at being a slave owner to enjoy anything.
 
In the pilgrim cottage she had offered comfort. In the royal suite she was doing her duty. And that was not the same thing at all.

†††

The next day Jja found the courage to suggest—very tentatively—that her gown might be improved by a little embroidery. She wanted to copy the griffon from the sword. Of course Wallie enthused, so the middle of the morning found Jja sitting in a corner of the great guest chamber sewing, with the seventh sword before her.

Despite his shattered appearance, Nnanji insisted that he was well enough for fencing. In fact, Wallie could now see that his injuries were superficial, as the healer had said. Undoubtedly, then, the real culprit was Tarru. Gorramini and Ghaniri had been obeying orders, but reluctantly. They had concentrated on appearances and avoided doing any real damage at all. And that, in turn, was a lesson in the difference between obedience and loyalty.
 
Fencing it was, then. Masks came out of the chest, and Wallie selected the shortest foil he could find.

The swordsmen used no protective garments except masks with neck guards, and therefore all lunges and cuts must be carefully pulled to avoid injury. Of course that habit then tended to carry over into real swordwork—and so reduced what would otherwise have been a monstrous mortality rate in the craft.
 
Vulnerable spots, such as collarbones and armpits, were strictly out of bounds.
 
Any swordsman who injured a fencing partner became known as a butcher and soon found himself blacklisted.

“Now,” Wallie said. “I shall try to fight like a Second—a real Second, not a temple Second.”

He discarded most of his bag of tricks and slowed down to snail pace. He was still too good for Nnanji to hit, but he wasn’t hitting, either. “Your defense is great,” he announced approvingly. “Wrist! Foot! Damn! If you could only put on an attack to match . . . watch that thumb!”

He tried everything he could think of, and nothing helped. The killer earthworm was still there. If his patience was being tested, he was about to fail. Nnanji grew madder and madder with himself until he threw down his sword, ripped off his mask, and swore a bucketful of obscenities.
 
“I’m no damn good!” he shouted. “Why don’t you just take me down to the whipping post and beat me?”

Wallie sighed. The man needed a year’s psychoanalysis, and there was no time. He had only one idea left to try.

“Would that make you feel better?” he asked.

Nnanji looked surprised, concluded that his courage was being questioned, and defiantly said, “Yes!”

“I don’t want you to feel better,” Wallie said. “I want you to feel like the useless dumb brat you really are. Now put on that mask.” Nnanji guarded and got a stab in the ribs from the button of Wallie’s foil. It raised a red welt.

“Ouch!” he said accusingly.

“I think you’re scared to hit me . . . ” Wallie struck him brutally across the chest.

“Devilspit!” Nnanji staggered with the force of the blow.
 
“Because I’m a swordsman . . . ” Wallie banged his foil on Nnanji’s mask. “And you’re only rugmakers’ trash!” Then Wallie hit him insultingly on the seat of his kilt.

It could easily have failed. With his self-respect in ribbons, now rejected by his hero, Nnanji might readily have collapsed like a wrecked tent and gone back to herding pilgrims for the rest of his life. But the gods did not put red hair on a man as a warning of nothing. His temper exploded again, and this time it was directed outward, at his tormentor. Perhaps it was even Wallie’s own rugmaking grandfather who determined that. He screamed in fury at the insult, and the fight was on.

Wallie butchered. He slashed at Nnanji with the foil, he jabbed him with the button end, and he kept up a stream of all the abuse he could think of—show-off brat, brothel hog, pilgrim pusher, throwing his money around in bars, not a friend who would stand up for him . . . Every time he got another bruise Nnanji said devilspit! But he kept coming, and his attack grew wilder and wilder.
 
“Cripple! You couldn’t hit the side of the temple if you had your nose on it!” Wallie jeered and called him a weakling, a pretty-boy gelding, an impotent pansy, and a carpet beater. Nnanji’s face was invisible, but his oaths grew louder, and even his chest was turning red. His ponytail whirled like a flame.
 
It was hard work for Wallie, for he had to hold himself back to a low standard, avoid doing serious hurt, evaluate Nnanji’s moves almost before he made them, and keep up his insults, all at the same time.

“I don’t want a half-baked First. I need a fighter. I’d give you back to Briu, except he wouldn’t take you.”

Nnanji was screeching incoherently through his mask. Failing to connect, he unthinkingly started to experiment, and at last he achieved a lunge that was much better than anything he had done before. Wallie let it through. He staggered under the impact and wondered if it had broken a rib.
 
“Lucky one!” He sneered. The comment was fair, but it did not sound fair. The next lunge was about the same, so he parried it to a near miss. Then came a wickedly straight cut. That had to be allowed to pass, and then Wallie was bleeding also. He started to ease up on his hits, but now Nnanji was howling like a pack of hyenas and trying everything possible. The bad ones failed, but each time Wallie detected an improvement he let the blow come, and soon he was hurting almost as much as his victim. They battered and yelled and cursed like maniacs.

Finally he knew he had won. The strokes were coming hard and accurate, and so deadly that he was in danger of being maimed. “Hold it!” he yelled, but Nnanji either did not or could not stop now. Wallie cranked up to Seventh again, striking the foil right out of his hand. Then he grabbed him in a bear hug.
 
Nnanji screamed and kicked, and went limp.

“You did it!” Wallie said and let him go. He pulled off the masks. Nnanji’s face was almost purple, and his lip was bleeding.

“What?”

Wallie dragged him over to the mirror and thrust his own foil into his hand.

“Lunge!” he said.

Angrily Nnanji lunged at the mirror. He did it again. Then he turned to Wallie, understanding at last. “I can do it!” With a banshee yell he started capering around the room, waving his arms in the air.

Wallie felt like Professor Higgins—everyone into the Spanish dance routine. He slapped Nnanji on the back. He laughed and assured him that he had not meant any of those things he had said, and generally tried to calm him. Unbelieving, Nnanji just kept dancing back to lunge at the mirror, and then go whirling around once more. The block was gone.

“I did it! I did it!” Then Nnanji looked at his wounds and at Wallie’s, and his face fell. “You did it. Thank you, my liege! Thank you! Thank you!” Wallie rubbed an arm over his forehead. “You’re welcome! Now—quick, before you stiffen up! Run down and do some cooling off exercises, then get in a hot tub.
 
Scat!”

Wallie slammed the door behind him, leaned against it, and closed his eyes. He needed the same treatment himself, but he also needed absolution. He felt soiled, foul, perverted. Who had been tested? Could it have been Nnanji? Or was it a test to see if Wallie could be bloody-minded? He had sworn not to beat the kid and then he had done just that. What price scruples now? He was worse than Hardduju.

He opened his eyes and Jja was standing before him, studying him with those huge, dark, and inscrutable eyes. He had totally forgotten her in her corner.
 
She had seen it a. What must she think of this sadistic horror who owned her?
 
“Jja!” he said. “Don’t be scared, please! I don’t usually do that sort of thing.”

She took his hands. “I’m not scared, master. I know you don’t.” “I’ve mutilated him!” Wallie said miserably. “He’ll ache for weeks. He’ll have scars for life!”

She put her arms around him and her head on his shoulder, wet and bloody as he was, but it wasn’t sex she was offering—it was solace. He drank it like a man dying of thirst.

“Apprentice Nnanji is a very tough young man,” she said. “I think that lesson was a lot harder on Wallie than it was on Nnanji. He won’t care.” He grabbed at the thought. “He won’t?”

She chuckled into his ear. “They’re only bruises, master. He’ll wear them like jewels. You’ve given him back his pride!”

“I have?” Wallie began to relax. “Yes, I have, haven’t I?” The test had been passed. He had made his swordsman, and . . . “What did you call me?” She stiffened in sudden apprehension. “That was the name you used that first night, master. I am sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be, Jja! You are welcome to call me that.” He held her away from him to look at her. “What do you know of Wallie?”

She stared up at him, puzzled and unsure of the words to express her thought. “I think he is hiding inside Lord Shonsu,” she said shyly.
 
He hugged her tight again. “You are so right, my sweet. He is lonely in there, and he needs you. You can call him out anytime you want.” Although he was not to understand in full for some time, that moment was dawn.
 
While Nnanji had been breaking down his mental block, Jja had been building one of her own—a strange discrimination between her owner and her man. Somehow she had made a distinction between them, in a purely emotional way that could never have been put into words and would have driven Honakura mad. Different world or far country were of no interest to Jja. It might even be that this Wallie, being hidden inside her owner, was invisible, and hence had no facemarks. But it was doubtful that her thought process even went that far. It was a matter of feelings. She had seen him weep in the pilgrim hut. Now he was full of sorrow because he had hurt his friend. If he was troubled she could soothe, comfort, lend him her stoic slave’s strength to accept what the gods decreed. He would react then as a man, not a master.