The Destiny of the Sword Read Online Free PDF Page B

courtly speech.
    ttt
    Master Polini headed down the plank with his protg 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 proteg£ 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 trader
    “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 mat 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 tree shelter and board—and women. The economy of the World was a primitive, fragile thing. The
     
     
     
    demigod had given WalUe 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.