The Coming Of Wisdom (39 page)

All the shutters were open now and a very faint grayness filtered in. Even on deck there would be little light, with clouds covering the Dream God. The rain seemed to have stopped, but there were footsteps on the deck above.

“Tomiyano? Holiyi?” Wallie said quietly.

“Here.”

“Here.”

“I’m going to lift Nnanji up. You two hang on to my back straps, or we’ll tip out. Okay? Then I’ll follow him, but the rest of you stay here. Leave it to the professionals. Nnanji, I’ll let go the right ankle when you’re up there. Better have your knife handy for openers. This way.” He led them over to the aft port window.

The panic had gone. They were a tough bunch, these sailors.

Nnanji turned his back to the window. His eyes seemed to shine by themselves, but it must have been the light from the other side of the room. Wallie crowded close to him, positioned Holiyi’s foot behind his own on one side, Tomiyano’s on the other, felt them grip his backstops. Then he squatted down, ignoring protests from his not-quite-healed wound. The sailors took his weight, stopping him from falling over backward. He gripped Nnanji’s ankles.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice muffled in Nnanji’s kilt.

He felt Nnanji chuckle. “Ready!” He leaned back.

Wallie lifted and then straightened his knees: Ummph!

Nnanji shot upward and out, swaying as Wallie rose and leaned forward. The two sailors grunted, catching the sudden stress on the straps and the backward slip of his feet, slamming bodily against the window frame. In one long movement Wallie had unfolded from a squat to his full height, raising his arms and propelling his protégé skyward—a remarkable feat of strength, but there was no time for admiration.

To the pirates waiting above, the swordsman must have materialized from nothing, suddenly suspended outside the rail, higher than they were. A flash of teeth and eyes, perhaps, and then Nnanji threw his knife into the nearest watcher and drew his sword. Another man sprang forward and his blade was parried. He recoiled against a mizzen backstay and was struck. He screamed, his sword missing Wallie by inches, then hitting the water with a loud splash. Nnanji swayed precariously as his ankle was released, parried again, put his right foot on the rail, grabbed the stay, blocked another lunge, pulled his left foot free, parried—then he was on the rail and down on the deck.

At that point the fight was as good as lost for the pirates. Nnanji could hold them off while Wallie pushed his supporters away and scrambled out through the window. Then he was over the rail also, and the sharks were in the swimming pool.

It was a monochrome nightmare, black on almost-black, lit only by faint gleams from silver shreds of clouds and shards of the Dream God and bright water. Slaughter and injury and death, no affair of honor, proclaimed by heralds, diluted by the convention of equal facing off against equal . . . Wallie used a battle cry to tell his companion where he was: “Seven! Seven!” like a tuba in the mounting noise. He heard Nnanji’s laugh, then: “Four! Four!”

Wallie parried and thrust, and someone screamed. Another dark shape loomed at him, eyes and blade shining, and he slashed and felt his sword cut into meat and strike bone, heard another curse of pain. A body hit the deck. “Seven!” “Four!” He could barely see his opponents, but they were worse off. His supreme skill, his knowledge of the deck, his certainty that they were all enemies and not friends, even his size and strength, together made him unbeatable. Shonsu was the World’s best, and on this deck Nnanji was almost a Sixth. It was no contest, just hot-blooded murder. The swordsmen were outnumbered, but the pirates were outclassed.

“Four!”

“Seven!”

A voice shouted, “Three!” and tailed off in a gurgle and another tenor laugh from Nnanji. Then the pirates fell back, and for a moment there was a pause, a circle of armed men facing two over a clutter of four or five bodies, one of them screaming in a high voice like a boy or a woman might use. It was better not to see the carnage, to fight by sounds and the feel of things, not to know what one was doing to living men—or women.

“Come on, then!” Nnanji jeered, and they came, at least six of them together, and it must have seemed a reasonable idea. It was folly, for they tripped over the bodies and jostled each other, while the swordsmen had their backs to the rail. Cut. Slash. Oath. Scream.

“Seven!”

“Four!”

Then they broke and fled, the swordsmen close behind, lions after Christians. A hand grabbed Wallie’s ankle. He stumbled, slashed, and was freed. He fought his way down the steps, and the brightening ringlight showed people scrambling over the rail forward.

“Hold it!” he panted. “Let them go.”

The wind was cold as death on his sweaty skin.

Nnanji stopped to watch also, wiping his face with an arm. “That was fun,” he said. “The trouble with our craft, brother, is too much rehearsal and not enough acting.”

Then the fo’c’sle door slammed shut. The pirates had vacated the deck, but there were others below. Wallie stalked forward, warily checking for ambushes behind the dinghies. He looked over the rail and saw a group of boats.

“Wait for your wounded!” he called, and received a chorus of obscenities.

“I am a swordsman of the Seventh. I swear by my sword that there will be no tricks. We’ll return your wounded. How many went below?”

The replies were too jumbled to be audible. He went over to the door and kicked it. “Can you hear me?” No reply. He grabbed the door and heaved, jumped back and sideways. He was facing utter blackness and he didn’t need Shonsu to tell him that he would be visible against the sky and could be knifed.

He repeated his oath—no tricks, and they could leave in safety if they came out. Silence, the only sounds a muffled clamor from the deckhouse, a distant weeping from the wounded, and the slap of water against the hull.

“We’ll starve you out,” he shouted.

No reply.

“I’ve told you that you can leave. But only if you come now.”

More silence.

“I’m a swordsman!” Wallie shouted, and he could hear his despair in his voice—and hoped the pirates could. “The sailors will be here in a minute. Hurry!”

“With our swords?” asked a voice from just inside.

“Yes. I swear.”

Nnanji growled angrily.

Wallie snarled at him. “Keep watch on the boats!”

“I’m coming!” said a woman’s voice. A shape materialized in the doorway and ran toward the boats.

Nnanji grabbed her arm with his free hand. “How many more in there?”

“Four more,” she said.

Then there was confusion as the crew came streaming across the deck. Someone had climbed out a window and unbarred the door. Wallie swung around, and now he had to threaten his friends to defend their enemies. Tomiyano would have attacked them with his dagger if Nnanji had not blocked him. He was raving with fury, screaming over and over that they were pirates and ought to die.

Finally Wallie grabbed him with his left hand, angry that he must take his attention off the fo’c’sle and the captives, who might yet be dangerous.

“They’re sailors,” Wallie roared. “Half of them are women. There are children out there in the boats! Where did your grandfather get this ship?”

It was only a guess, but it silenced Tomiyano. The last of the pirates slipped over the rail to their boats. A splash from the stern warned Wallie that the crew were starting to clean up. He turned and ran, hoping that that body had been dead, and he almost had to use his sword again to defend the three surviving wounded from his friends. Next to fire, they loathed pirates most.

The wounded were bandaged and helped into a final boat. Wallie leaned wearily on the rail, feeling the blood drying on his arm and chest, feeling the sullen throb of protest from his leg, hating this barbaric World, watching the sad little cavalcade drift away. It was an endless, savage game, with its own rules. Had the attack succeeded, then by morning
Sapphire
would still have been a trading ship, but under new ownership. Brota and her family would have been fed to the fish, unless they had been granted mercy, in which case they would have been in the boats—with swords or without—homeless refugees and potentially pirates themselves.

He shivered at the wind on his heated face. The light was growing brighter as the clouds were ripped from the Dream God.

“I think I did four and wounded one,” Nnanji said. “So that would be three dead, two wounded for you, right?”

“I didn’t count.”

Then Thana came hurtling out of the darkness and threw her arms around Nnanji. Wallie was suddenly enveloped in a sobbing Brota. His back was being slapped, his hand pumped with laughter and cheering. He was astonished at one point to be hugged by Tomiyano, now recovered from his fury and gruffly apologizing for everything he could think of. The swordsmen were heroes.

He slipped away by himself up the fo’c’sle steps and leaned on the capstan and shivered. It was there that Jja found him.

She put an arm around him. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” The shivering was getting worse.

“No.” That had been a mere river skirmish, and he had seven cities to take back from the sorcerers. How much blood? How many dead?

“You did your duty, love,” she whispered, sensing his horror at the slaughter. “What the gods wanted.”

“I don’t have to like it, do I?” In the battle on the holy island he had let the Shonsu bloodlust drive him. Perhaps he could have called it up for this one, but he had not felt it and had not raised it. This had been Wallie running things; and hating it.

“No, you don’t have to like it,” she said. “But it had to be done. They are your friends—Wallie’s friends.” She very rarely called him that, except when they were making love. He hugged her tightly and buried his face in her hair.

Yes, they would be friends now—there was a party developing down on the main deck. Someone had just tipped wine over Nnanji’s head.

Rain began to fall on his back, increasing his shivering. Voices were calling him to come down and drink.

The pirates had died to fulfill the god’s riddle. He had earned his army.

Murderer!