The Reluctant Swordsman (11 page)

“Ah!” the boy said. “Maybe we’re getting somewhere.” He put his hands on the slab behind him and sprang up to sit on it, his legs dangling.
 
“Who are you?” the man demanded.

“Shorty.” The boy did not smile.

“I’m sorry!” Wallie shouted. “I didn’t know!” He glanced both ways along the line of prisoners. No one stirred.

“They won’t notice,” the boy said. “Just you. All right, let’s get back to faith, shall we?”

Wallie took a moment to gather his thoughts. He had to get this right, or he was going to die. Or worse.

“I believe that this world is real. But Earth was real, too.”

The boy nodded and waited.

“It was the horses,” Wallie said. “They’re like horses but not quite. I always believed in evolution, not creationism, but the People are . . . people. They don’t belong to any Earthly race, but they’re human. Two worlds couldn’t both produce real people by convergent evolution. Something similar for a similar ecological niche, perhaps, but not so similar. I mean, birds and bats both fly, but they’re not the same. Noses and earlobes? They’re not necessary, but the People have them, too. So in spite of what all the science fiction stories said, another world would not have an intelligent biped that was indistinguishable from Homo sapiens . . . ”

The boy yawned.

“Gods!” Wallie said quickly. “It has to be gods, hasn’t it? Purpose! Direction!
 
That was what you meant with the beads, wasn’t it? ‘Every one is the same yet slightly different,’ you said. Many worlds, variations on a theme. Copies of an ideal world, perhaps.”

“Very good!” The boy nodded approvingly. “Go on.”

“So the goddess is . . . is the Goddess. She brought me here.”

“And who are you?”

That was the big question and now Wallie thought he knew. “I’m Wallie Smith and I am Shonsu . . . Wallie Smith’s memories and Shonsu’s body. Soul . . . I don’t know about souls.”

“Then don’t worry about them,” the boy said. “And Hardduju? How do you feel about capital punishment now, Mr. Smith?”

“I didn’t say that I didn’t believe in—”

“But you thought it!”

“Yes,” Wallie confessed. “Get me out of here and let me kill that bastard, and I’ll do anything you want—anything at all.”

“Well, well! Will you?” The boy shook his head. “Revenge? Not good enough!” “But I believe in the Goddess now!” Wallie protested, his voice breaking. “I will repent. I’ll pray. I will serve Her, if She will allow it. I’ll be a swordsman if that is what She wants. Anything!” “My!” the boy muttered mockingly. “Such unexpected devotion!” He fell silent, staring fixedly, and Wallie had the strangest fancy that he was being skimmed, perused—read as an accountant might run his eye down a balance sheet to the bottom line. “It’s a very small faith, Mr. Smith.” “It’s all I’ve got,” Wallie said. It was almost a sob.

“It’s a sort of chink of doubt in your disbelief. You will have to prove it.”

He had been afraid of that. “The Judgment?”

The boy pulled a face. “You don’t want to be Hardduju’s slave, do you? He wouldn’t sell you in the end—it would be too much fun to have a Seventh chained in the cellar. He has many other entertainments to try! So you’d rather go to the Judgment, wouldn’t you?” He grinned his gap-toothed grin for the first time.
 
“The trick is this: if you resist, they bang you on the head and drop you over the edge. Then you land on the rocks. But if you run and jump far out, then you come down in deep water. It is a test of faith.” “I can’t run on those feet,” Wallie said. “Is there anything left of them?”

The boy twisted around briefly to look down at Wallie’s feet and then shrugged.
 
“There is a shrine at the Place of Mercy. Pray for the strength to run.” He was becoming indistinct as the light faded. “I told you that this was important. It is a rare opportunity for a mortal.”

“I haven’t had much practice at praying,” Wallie said humbly, “but I will do my best. I thought of praying for Innulari. Would it have helped?” The boy gave him an odd look. “It wouldn’t have helped him, but it would have helped you.” He paused and said, “The gods must not provide faith in the first place, Mr. Smith. I could have given you belief, but then you would have been a tool, not an agent. A mortal’s service is of no value to the gods unless it is freely given—free will may not be dictated. Do you see? But once you have faith, the gods can increase it. You have found a spark. I can blow on a spark. I will do this much for you, in return for your kind thought about the healer.” He pulled a leaf off his twig. At once the raging fires in Wallie’s feet seemed to be plunged into ice water. The pain died away, and all the other pains also.
 
“Until dawn,” the boy said.

Wallie started to gabble thanks, stuttering in his relief. “I don’t even know what to call you,” he said.

“Call me Shorty for now,” the boy said, and his gaptooth grin was just visible in the growing light of the Dream God. “It’s been a long time since a mortal was so impudent. You amuse me.” His eyes seemed to shine in the shadow. “Once you played a game called chess; you know what happens when a pawn reaches the end of its file?”

The mockery was obvious, but Wallie quickly repressed his resentment. “Sir, it can be converted to any other piece except a king.” The boy chuckled. “So you have reached the end of your file and you have been converted. Simple, isn’t it? Remember, jump as hard as you can tomorrow, and we shall meet again.”

Then the slab was empty.

Thus, on his second night in the jail, Wallie slept soundly, but toward morning he found himself sitting at a table. It was a memory, a scene from his youth being played back to him so vividly that he could smell the cigarette butts and hear distant jazz from a radio in another room . . . green baize in darkness with a light shining down on it; playing cards, ashtrays, and glasses. Bill sat on his left, Justin on his right, and Jack had gone to the john.
 
He was declarer in a game of bridge, doubled and drunk and vulnerable in a crazy contract, in one of those crazy deals where the cards were distributed in bunches. Clubs were trumps, and he still held the last one, the deuce. Bill led a spade to Wallie’s solitary ace on the table, then obligingly moved the ace forward for him. Justin followed suit. That would force Wallie to lead from dummy, and they were waiting for him.

He trumped his own ace, and a voice said “Barf!” Then he could lead out seven good hearts from his hand. The defenders were squeezed—whatever they discarded, he could keep. He heard himself yell in triumph . . . slam, bid, made, doubled, redoubled, vulnerable, game, and rubber. He reached for the scorepad. He felt it between his fingers. Then it was gone, he was back in the jail, and the first glimmer of dawn was starting to brighten the eastern sky.
 
Believing in gods, he discovered, led one to believe in sendings. Who had made a bad lead? Chess and bridge . . . did the gods play games with humanity to while away eternity? The spades of a bridge deck were descended from the swords of tarot—had the Goddess trumped Her own ace of swords, Shonsu, with Wallie Smith, the deuce of clubs, the smallest card in the deck?
 
As the light grew, the pains returned. But that was as the little boy had predicted, and he could believe that today he would be taken from the jail.
 
A god had said so.

†††

The temple court had been busy. The Death Squad took six of the prisoners that day, and the first name on the list was: “Shonsu, swordsman of the Seventh, possessed of a demon.” If Innulari’s interpretation was correct, then old Honakura had lost out in the power struggle.

Wallie was dragged roughly up the steps, through a guard room, and allowed to fall limply on hard, hot paving under the blistering sun. He had not screamed.
 
He lay for a moment, fighting down nausea from the pain in his joints and his bruises, screwing up his eyes against the glare. Then he struggled to sit up as the others were hauled out and dropped beside him, whimpering or yelling. After one glance at his feet, he tried not to look at them any more.
 
He was at the edge of a wide court, like a parade ground, and the heat danced within it in ripples. Behind him was the jail, and he could hear the River chattering happily behind that. Two sides of the yard were flanked by massive buildings, with the great spires of the temple rising in the distance. The fourth side lay open to a heaven of parkland and greenery.
 
The priests departed, their job done. A bored-looking swordsman of the Fourth seemed to be in charge now. Efficient and shiny-smart, he was tapping a whip against his boot, looking over the victims.

“Ten minutes to get your legs back,” he announced. “Then you walk across the square and back. Or crawl, as you please.” He cracked the whip loudly.
 
A yellow-kilted, fresh-faced Second came around, tossing each condemned man a black cloth to wear. When he came to Wallie he frowned and looked at his superior.

“Better get a cart for that one,” the Fourth said.
 
Wallie said loudly, “I am a swordsman. I shall walk.” He took the loincloth and ripped it in half, started to bandage one foot.
 
“You’re a filthy imposter,” the Fourth snarled.
 
Wallie tore a small strip from the other cloth and tied us hair back so that his facemarks were visible. “Not according to the temple court, swordsman.” That was probably the wrong form of address, because the man flushed and raised his whip threateningly.

“Go ahead,” Wallie said. “Just like your boss.” The man stared at him for a moment, then grabbed another cloth from the Second and tossed it to Wallie to wear.

Wallie wasn’t sure that he was being very smart, but he was required to prove his faith, and the only way he could see to do that was to prove his courage.
 
Whether he proved it to the gods or the swordsmen or himself hardly seemed to matter. When the time came to cross the square, a couple of the men began by crawling and got whipped. Wallie walked. He walked very slowly, and as he put down each foot he gasped with the pain, but he lurched all the way across and back. And he held his head up.

Then the six were chained together to be led along the riverbank, past buildings he could not see for tears, past the busy, noisy waters, which in a short while might be carrying his mangled carcass, round to the steps of the temple. There they had to stand for a while until a priestess came out and gabbled a blessing over them.

The guard consisted of nine swordsmen and four hulking slaves. Wallie had been given the place of honor in the front, the chain from his neck held by one of the Seconds.

Every step was a torment. How much of the water in his eyes was sweat running in, and how much tears running out, he did not know or care. He was only vaguely aware of the long road through the park and the big gate, but the chain gang was not far into the slums and alleys of the town when he heard a child’s voice cry, “Hey! They got a swordsman!”

He knuckled his eyes clear to look, and there was an instant crowd. It had not occurred to him to wonder what the townsfolk thought of the daily death march.
 
Innulari had told him that a majority of the condemned were slaves or criminals sent in by nearby cities, this being a meritorious service to the Goddess for some obscure and ancient reason, but some of the victims must be from the town and perhaps there might sometimes be attempts at rescue. That might explain the size of the guard, for nine to shepherd six in chains seemed excessive.
 
But this was no rescue attempt. The crowd was jeering, running along ahead, and following behind—children and adolescents and young adults. A swordsman of the Seventh going to the Judgment was great sport. The noise and confusion in the narrow passageway grew rapidly, heads popped out of windows and doors, and the curious flocked in from side streets. The guard grew nervous and angry and increased the pace, jerking at the chain. Wallie kept his head up and his teeth clenched, and staggered along.

A soft lump of filth struck him, and then more, not so soft. The shouting was being directed only at him, the noble lord, the valorous swordsman. Did you lose a battle then? Where’s your sword, swordsman? Have this one for me, my lord . .

.

The Fourth in charge drew his sword, and it seemed for a few moments as if there might be bloodshed, with a riot sure to follow. But one of the slaves had been sent for help. Another troop of swordsmen arrived at the double, and the crowd was roughly dispersed. Wallie was in too much pain to be frightened, but he could read the message; swordsmen of the Seventh were not popular. With Hardduju as the local standard, that was easy to understand.
 
The jail had not been hell at all, barely purgatory, for the journey was worse.
 
A million times he cursed himself for not accepting the cart, however undignified that might have been, or rough on his bruises. He saw nothing of how he left the town or of the scenery beyond, noticing only that the path was climbing steeply. He was terrified that he might faint, for then he would either be dragged along to his destination or swiftly run through with a sword and dropped into the water. The rags on his feet were blood-soaked and chafing on raw flesh, the pain and heat unendurable. Every muscle and joint seemed to scream.

A blast of cold air revived him when they had rounded a corner of rock and were approaching the falls, on a path flanked by a sheer drop on one side and overhanging cliff on the other. The ground trembled, the wind swirled a mist of cold droplets, and the roar hammered at his ears. The falls hung like a wall ahead. When he peered over the edge of the path, he saw white fury and rocks and churning tree trunks far below. His frail new faith faltered—could anyone at all ever come through that alive? Even if he managed to do so, would he not end up in the temple again, still not knowing the first sutra? But then the pain drove away the doubts, for deep inside he was raging, raging at the injustice and gratuitous cruelty, slobbering with his desire for revenge on the sadistic Hardduju—and just possibly raging against the little boy, the miracle-working mystery boy who found Wallie Smith amusing. Wallie was going to show them all, and every flame tempered his resolve.