The Reluctant Swordsman (37 page)

It was arguable who was more surprised—Wallie or the mule.

†††

Pilgrims mostly traveled in the morning and evening. Noontime was slack time and thus it was the custom of Ponofiti, skinner of the third rank, to stable his string at midday—but without unsaddling them, for he was a lazy man. He had gone home for lunch with his wife, and then to visit his mistress for a siesta. It was early afternoon before he returned to work.
 
Just an ordinary day in the life of a muleskinner.

Until he unbolted the stable door.

Katanji had squeezed down into the hoard of litter in the alcove—broken chairs and pieces of harness and miscellaneous sacks—and persuaded the hinny to let him move her to a stall without an alcove. Then he had cleared a path for the others.

Jja had explained why mules stood in the dim and smelly stable in the middle of the day.

Jja, also, had located saddler’s gear and stitched her master’s disguise back together where the pillows were showing. Wallie had found a mirror and confirmed that the dust had turned his hair gray, which was appropriate for the old-woman’s dress he wore. If he kept his head down, he might escape much notice in the town.

Nnanji had angrily agreed that a clean orange kilt looked out of place on him in his present condition, and had rubbed it well with stable filth. He had even unfastened his ponytail, growling obscenities, unable to bring himself to look at his disguised leader.

Ani, they assumed, had covered the other trap with guano, closed the dovecote door, and returned to the barracks.

Cowie, having done nothing, had somehow stayed cleaner and fresher than any of them. Wallie intercepted Nnanji leading her to the hayloft and prohibited such evaluation until further notice.

Vixini had expressed a strong desire to mount a mule by climbing its back leg, but his mother had restrained him.

Honakura had found a grain sack to sit on and grin toothlessly.

Now there was nothing left to do but wait for the skinner to return.

Ponofiti was not a large man and he entered the stable much faster than he ever had before, assisted by Wallie’s hand in his hair. The door was closed behind him.

The skinner was swarthy, rat-faced, and even ranker than his mules, but he was not entirely stupid. The sight of his own dagger in front of his eyes sufficed to concentrate his attention.

“What is your normal fare from here to the jetty?” asked the huge figure that wore an old slave woman’s black dress and spoke with a man’s bass voice.
 
“Three coppers . . . master?” he said.

Wallie lifted his curls to let him count the marks. They had even more effect than the dagger.

“My lord!”

If the brigands had confederates in the guard, it was highly probable that they also controlled the skinners, by graft or by coercion. There could be signals.
 
Wallie reached out to a convenient ledge on the wall and carefully laid down five gold coins. After a moment’s thought he added two more.
 
“That stays here until you return,” he said. The man’s eyes said it was a fortune. “I shall be riding the mule directly behind you. If we are stopped by brigands or by swordsmen, especially swordsmen”—he hurled the dagger, and it slammed into the wall—“you will not be returning. Any questions?” Concealing the swords would be difficult. It took all of Wallie’s absolute third-oath authority to persuade Nnanji to hand over his sword and harness, and he did so with sullen ill temper. They were wrapped in sacking with Katanji’s and strapped on one of the mules under a bag of grain. Wallie’s was back in the barracks somewhere. Thus, unarmed except for the dagger hidden in Wallie’s ample bosom, the adventurers rode out on the string of mules, heading through the town toward the checkpoint at the foot of the hill.

Except for Cowie, they were all incredibly filthy. Wallie knew that he looked a freak, with muscular male legs hanging below an obese female shape. Nnanji, with his hair a greasy cake of black frizz, was merely a skinny Fourth of indeterminate craft, although unusually young for such a rank. Katanji was only an anonymous First. The others should not attract notice.
 
The checkpoint was the great danger, for there were eight men there, and Wallie had only a dagger. Had it not been for the feeble Honakura, Wallie would never have dared to try passing the checkpoint—there had to be another way up the hillside somewhere.

The swordsmen were lounging in the shade of an arbutus tree, watching the traffic from a distance, not inspecting closely. Their relaxed attitude proved that the murder victim had not yet been found. They were looking for a swordsman of the Seventh, or possibly his vassal, and most of them would still be thinking of Nnanji as a Second. They had no interest in a group of half a dozen miscellaneous pilgrims. Highranks would not mix with such riffraff, and the idea that a swordsman of the Seventh would disguise himself as a female slave would never occur to them if they lived to be as old as the temple. Wallie kept his face down and sweated even harder than he had been doing before, but in a few minutes the mule train was past the checkpoint and climbing the hill.
 
Brigands were not likely to bother pilgrims departing. They would prefer to plunder before the priests did, not after. So all that remained for Wallie to do was to retrieve the seventh sword and then shepherd his party safely onto a boat. Sounded simple! If he reached the jetty before news of his crime arrived, then he could hope that the watchers there would be as negligent as the farcical force at the checkpoint—the inefficient reluctant to perform the unpopular. For the first time in many days, Wallie began to feel hopeful. He prayed.
 
The sword was easy. All mules needed a rest somewhere on the hill, and he shouted to the skinner to stop when they reached the fourteenth cottage. “Mule train. Ferry mule train,” the skinner called obediently. Wallie and Jja dismounted.

They slipped through the curtain and found the cottage empty. She had chosen it because it was one of the most dilapidated, and hence rarely used. There was filth all over the floor, no furniture except two rotting mattresses. Apparently the hovel in which he had first met Jja had been one of the luxury suites.
 
“There, master,” she said, pointing, and all Wallie had to do was reach up and pull the seventh sword out of the thatch. It shone in his hand, the sapphire flamed, and his heart leaped once more at the sight of its beauty. He held it up to admire it briefly, and then reluctantly wrapped it in Vixini’s blanket.
 
Jja had turned to go, but the nasty little hut was reminding him of their first night together. He reached out and took her arm. She turned to stare at him questioningly.

“Jja?” he said.

“Master?”

He shook his head. She smiled and whispered, “Wallie?”

He nodded. “This is the second treasure I have found in these huts.” She glanced out the doorway at the steaming mules and frowned slightly. Then she turned back to him. “Show me the World, master?” “If you will give me a kiss?”

She dropped her eyes demurely. “A good slave only obeys orders.”

“Kiss me, slave!”

“Ferry mule train!” the skinner called. He was outside the door, but he sounded far away to Wallie.

Embracing while upholstered like a sofa was lacking in romance, but a moment later Wallie said breathlessly, “Kiss me again, slave.” “Master!” she murmured reproachfully. “We must go!” Yet there was a gaiety and happiness about her that he had not seen before. She was leaving a place that could hold few pleasant memories for her. Slaves were not supposed to have feelings, but whatever these squalid huts meant to Wallie, to Jja they must be a reminder that there she had been included in the rent.
 
And he knew that she was right. They would have to go, or the unusually long pause might attract attention. “Quickly, then!” They kissed again, briefly, and then stepped to the door. As always, he wanted her to precede him. As always, she hung back. He insisted; she obeyed.
 
Then she backed into him, pushing him quickly into the cottage again. “Horses!” she said.

Wallie risked a glance. There were three of them coming up the hill, bearing a red, an orange, and a green—Tarru himself!

“Skinner!” Wallie waved for the train to move on. He unwrapped the sword and stepped to the window. Keeping well back, he watched as the string went by . . .

First rode the skinner himself, slumped over in his saddle, bored; Nnanji, hair black as coal, holding Vixini and trying to reassure him that his mother would be back soon; Katanji twisted round to stare down the hill; Honakura hunched on his saddle and already looking exhausted; and Cowie at the end.
 
Wallie’s eyes locked into position. It was the first time he had seen Cowie in full sunlight. And Cowie on a mule! All her spectacular leg was visible, and the net garment had pulled tight to display the rest of that sensational body. Wow!
 
Shonsu’s glands went into a crash program of hormone production just looking at her. She was wrong, he was sure, an error. Someone else ought to be on that saddle, almost certainly another swordsman, an older and more experienced man than Nnanji. Another fighter. But Wallie did not know who, and . . . Oh! what a sight!

Then the sound of hooves grew louder.

Had they been recognized? It did not seem possible. Much more likely was that Tarru had decided to move his strongest force, himself, to the jetty. If he could not find his quarry in the temple grounds, then that was his best strategy, for there he could not be outflanked.
 
Had the body of the Third been found?

Perhaps. And Briu? The jail guard was changed at noon, and Briu would have been rescued then, if not before. He would have reported that Lord Shonsu had said he was leaving.

Worse, Briu could have warned that Honakura was with the fugitives and wearing black, and that Nnanji now had black hair. Fortunately Nnanji was holding the baby, which would tend to distract attention from him, but Tarru was certain to inspect the mules as he went by. However unwilling some of his followers might be, Tarru at least was motivated, and Tarru was no fool.
 
Or perhaps . . . a sudden realization struck Wallie with horror. Perhaps the checkpoint had been too easy. Perhaps it had been a blind. The men’s orders might have been to allow the fugitives through and report back to the temple.
 
Even for Tarru, murder would be better committed outside the town, in the jungle.

Tarru, a Fifth, and a Fourth . . . they were coming up that gradient much too fast for the good of their mounts. Wallie and Nnanji together could probably handle those three in a straight fight, on level terms. But the three were on horseback, Nnanji was unarmed, and there were eight more men at the bottom of the hill.

Even with the seventh sword of Chioxin, Wallie did not think Shonsu could best three mounted men single-handed.

He pulled back from the window and listened to the hooves, waiting for the sound to falter.

The train had crawled four or five cottages higher when the three horsemen went thudding by the hut where the sword they sought was gripped in a white-knuckled hand. And the beat of the hooves did not change.
 
Wallie risked sticking his head out the door for a glance after them. He pulled back quickly, for all three men had twisted round in their saddles to look—he glimpsed Tarru, Trasingji, and Ghaniri. Briefly he thought the game was lost, but the horses still did not break stride. In a few minutes the sound died away.
 
He wiped his brow and looked at Jja. In one spontaneous movement, they threw their arms around each other.

“Cowie!” he said at last.

She looked up at him blankly.

He explained. They started to laugh. They were still laughing as he wrapped the sword in Vixi’s blanket again, and still laughing when they ran off hand in hand to catch the train.

Cowie was not a mistake. She was truly one of the seven chosen by the gods. She had brought them safely by the checkpoint also, although he had not realized at the time.

Tarru and Trasingji and Ghaniri had passed within a sword’s length of Nnanji, and all they had seen was Cowie.

††††

The mules crawled by the last of the huts, and the dusty trail continued to climb the valley wall. The town and temple were spread out far below, with the pillar of spray from the Judgment of the Goddess standing over them like a guardian.

Wallie cursed in silence against the forced inactivity of sitting on a slothful mule. Briefly, from the top of the hill, he had a last glimpse of the whole valley, clasping the great temple to its heart. Then it was gone. Someday, perhaps, he would return the sword . . . or perhaps not.
 
The road, now no more than a trail, wound through vegetation that became steadily thicker until it was a true tropical forest, a high trellis of treetops arched against the sky and a tangle of ground cover. The shade deepened. Even the far-off rumble of the falls faded away, until the only sound came from the feet of the mules, plodding the stones at their unvarying mulish pace, oblivious of any human urgency or turmoil.

From time to time they passed clearings showing red soil planted with crops that Wallie could not identify, and rarely smaller trails branched off and disappeared mysteriously into the jungle. Few other travelers shared the road at first, only rare pilgrims walking in twos and threes and half a dozen mule trains bringing in those who could afford a ride. But as the day began to age small groups of farm workers appeared, slouching along without a glance at the fugitives.