"Seventh Sword 03 - The Destiny of the Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

Normally Brota sold the cargo and Tomiyano scouted for

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another, but now the sailors were fretting about ballast and trim, so the roles were reversed. Big fat Brota strapped on her sword, took Mata along to wield it if necessary, and waddled away in search of profit. Tomiyano ordered two bronze ingots laid at the foot of the plank, stood young Matarro beside them, and headed back on board to attend to other business.

He was not left long in peaceЧtraders arrived and Matarro fetched the captain. As a bargainer, Tomiyano was very nearly as shrewd as his mother. Wallie eavesdropped happily from his post on the rail while the discussion raged below him. Eventually the price range was narrowed, and the traders came on board to inspect the main cargo in the hold. Wallie turned his attention back to the dock life.

Tau was Wallie's favorite among all the cities of the Regi-Vul loop, although to call Tau a city was to stretch the term to its limit. As in most towns and cities, the dock road was too narrow for its duties, cramped between the bollards, gangplanks, and piles of unloaded cargoes on one side and the traders* warehouses on the other. The sun was unusually warm for a day in fall and it shone on a scene of loud and colorful disorder. Wagons rumbled and clanked, pedestrians milled, slave gangs sweated, hawkers pulled carts and shouted their wares. There were no rulesЧtraffic went wherever it could find a space. The clamor of wheels mingled with oaths and insults and abuse. Yet the People were a good-natured race, and in the main the tumult was without rancor. The air smelled of horses and dust and people.

Wallie enjoyed watching the horses of the World. They seemed so mythologicalЧthe head of a camel and body of a basset hound. They smelled Earthlike enough, though. During fee morning he had observed a herd of goats being unloaded. He had been amused to learn that goats had antlers, not horns. Goats smelled very earthy.

The backdrop for all this noisy confusion was a facade of two-story warehouses that fascinated himЧdark oak woodwork and beige parqueting like a movie set of Merrie England; diamond-paned windows and beetling roofs of fuzzy thatch. Yet, however medieval or Tudor the architecture might seem to him, there were no farthingaled damsels or beruffed Elizabe-

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than gallants strutting this stage. The dress of the People was simple and plainЧkilts or loincloths on the men and wraps for the women, with the elders of both sexes decently concealed in robes. Youngsters ran naked. They were a brown-skinned, brown-haired folk, lithe and merry, and brown also was tine dominant shade of their garb, the color worn by Thirds, qualified artisans of the three hundred and forty-three crafts of the World. The yellow of Seconds and the white of Firsts brightened the texture, with the rarer orange and red and green of higher ranks scattered around in the surging, scurrying throng.

A skinny youth in a white loincloth ran past Wallie and dashed down the plank to go racing and dodging off through the crowd, narrowly avoiding death under the wheels of a two-horse wagon. He was one of the traders' juniors, so he had undoubtedly been sent to fetch help. That meant that Tomiyano had made a sale. In a few minutes the captain emerged on deck and saw his visitors off. The smile that he then allowed himself told Wallie that the price had been more man satisfactory.

Tomiyano was an effective young man, aggressive and muscular, weathered to a dark chestnut, with hair approaching red, although not as red as Nnanji's. He wore only a skimpy brown breechclout, plus a belt and dagger to show mat he was captain. Craftmarks of three ships were marked on his forehead, but he was a very competent sailor, who could have qualified for much higher rank had he wished. The scar on his face had been made by a sorcerer, and Wallie now knew that it was an acid bum.

Yet Tomiyano was a mere stripling alongside Wallie. Swordsmen were rarely big, but Shonsu had been an exception Чvery big. The sailor had to tilt his head back to meet Wallie's eyes. He did that now, and his face was full of astonishment.

"Hiding?" he demanded.

Wallie shrugged and smiled. "Being cautious."

The captain's eyes narrowed. "Is that how swordsmen behaved in your dream world, Shonsu?"

It was only within the last couple of weeks that Wallie had taken the crew of Sapphire totally into his confidence, explaining

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that he was not the original Shonsu, swordsman of the seventh rank; that his soul had been brought from another world and been given die body of Shonsu, his skill with a sword, and his unaccomplished mission for the gods- Tomiyano was a skeptical man. He had learned to trust Lord ShonsuЧlearned with difficulty, for the crew of Sapphire had little liking for swordsmenЧbut he still had trouble accepting so incredible a story. And tact was not the captain's most conspicuous trait.

Wallie sighed, thinking of plainclothes detectives and unmarked patrol cars. "Yes," he admitted. "They did this quite a lot."

Tomiyano snorted in disgust. "And last time we came to Tau you were screaming because you couldn't find a swordsman. Now the place is full of them."

"Exactly," Wallie said.

That was what he had been studyingЧswordsmen. Their ponytails and sword hilts made them conspicuous as they strode through the crowds, and sane civilians made way for swordsmen. They walked in twos or threes, sometimes fours or fives. Brown kilts were the most common, of course, but Wallie had seen several Fourths, two Fifths, and evenЧsurprisinglyЧone Sixth. He had counted forty-two swordsmen in die last hour. Tau indeed was full of mem.

Tomiyano looked down at the busy street for a while and then said, "Why?"

Wallie leaned his elbows on the rail and attempted to put his concern into words. "Work it out, Captain. Suppose you're a swordsman. The Goddess has brought you to Tau and you're on your way to Casr. You have a prot6g6 or two with you. You're a Third, or a Fourth, maybe. There must be hundreds of swordsmen in Casr now... What's the first thing a swordsman will want when he gets there?"

Tomiyano spat over the side. "Women!"