This was not the sort of treatment to which Esten Rul, master duellist and swordsman of three continents, was accustomed. These shaven-headed wretches obviously did not possess the wit to understand that the man who stood before them was acknowledged a master on Quon Tali and Falar. And that he had taken the measure of the current crop of talents here in Genabackis and frankly thought them rather second-rate.
One oldster was dutifully sweeping up the leaves that littered the courtyard and this one he approached.
‘You. Old man. Where can I find the one who goes by the name Traveller?’
In what was obviously a deliberate insult the fellow had the effrontery to continue sweeping. Esten stamped his foot down on the bundled straw of the broom. ‘I am talking to you, grandfather.’
The man peered up at him, very dark, not a local, his scalp freshly shaven, the face scarred and graven in lines of care. Yet the eyes: utterly without fear, deep midnight blue like ocean depths.
The weight of that gaze made Esten look away, uncomfortable. So, not a servant after all. A broken-down veteran perhaps, shattered by battle. ‘You know of him?’
‘The one those here call Master? Yes.’
Esten grunted. So, their master, was he? Of course. What else could such a man be? ‘Where is he? Which of these pathetic huts?’ The old man looked him up and down. Esten saw his eyes casting over the quillons of his sheathed rapier.
‘You would challenge him?’
‘No, I’m here delivering flowers from Black Coral. Of course I’m here to challenge him, you senile fool!’
The old man closed his eyes as if pained; lowered his head. ‘Go back to Darujhistan. The one called Traveller has … retired … from all swordplay.’ He returned to his sweeping.
Esten barely restrained himself from cuffing the insolent fool. He set his hand instead on the grip of his sword. ‘Do not try me. I am not used to such treatment. Take me to Traveller or I will find someone else who will — at sword-point.’
The old man stilled. He turned to face him: the eyes had narrowed now, and darkened even more. ‘Is that the way of it? Very well. I will take you to Traveller, but before I do you must demonstrate your worthiness.’
Esten gaped at the man. ‘
‘By defeating the least of us.’
Esten bit down on his impatience and took a slow calming breath. ‘And … that would be?’
A sad slow shrug from the man. ‘Well … that would be me.’
‘You.’
‘Yes. I’m very new here.’
‘You …’ He stepped away as if the fellow were a lunatic. ‘But you’re just cleaning the court!’
A rueful nod. ‘Yes. And I’ve yet to get it right. It’s the wind, you know. No matter how careful you are the wind just comes tumbling through and all your plans and care are for naught.’
Esten snorted his disgust and turned away. He raised his hands to his mouth to bellow: ‘
‘Defeat me and they will bring you to him.’
Having turned full circle Esten faced the man again. ‘Really … just like that?’
‘Yes. Just like that. It is an ancient practice. One remembered and honoured here.’
Esten opened his hands as if in a gesture of futility. ‘Well … if I must … You
The old man merely shrugged his regretful apology once more and raised his broom.
From the gates to the monastery an acolyte watched the foreign duellist walking down the zigzag mountain trail. The swordsman’s hands were clasped behind his back and his head was lowered as if he had just been given a great deal to think about. The acolyte bowed to the man at the gate where he leaned on his broom, the wood of the haft nicked and gouged.
‘Will he return, Master?’ the acolyte asked.
‘I keep telling you lot not to call me that,’ sighed the man who had given up the name Traveller. He shrugged. ‘Let’s hope not. He’s been offered a lesson. We can only hope it will be heeded.’ He shifted his grip on the broom. ‘But … life is nothing more than a series of lessons and few learn enough of them.’ He looked to the courtyard and winced. ‘Gods — you turn away for one moment and everything goes to the Abyss. I’m going to have to start all over again …’
‘As we all should, Master.’
For an instant a small smile graced the man’s pain-ravaged face, then the mouth eased back into its habitual slash of a grimace. ‘Well said. Yes. As we all should. Every day. With every breath.’
In the nameless outskirts of the shanty town rambling westward of Darujhistan, an old woman squatted in front of her shack and carved a stick beneath a night sky dominated by the slashing lurid green banner of the Scimitar. Her hair was a wild bush about her head tied with lengths of string, ribbon, beads, and twists of leather. Her bare feet where they poked out beneath her layered skirts were as dark as the earth the toes gripped. She droned to herself in a language no one understood.
An old woman living alone in a decrepit hut was nothing unusual for the shanty town, peopled as it was by the poorest, most broken-down of the lowest class of tannery workers, sewer cleaners and garbage haulers of Darujhistan. Every second shack seemed occupied by an old widow or grandmother, the menfolk dying off early as they do everywhere — the men claiming this proves they do all the hard work, and the women knowing it’s because men aren’t tough enough to endure being old.
And so this woman had lived in her squalid hut for as long as anyone could remember and none remarked upon it, except for all the surrounding old widows and grandmothers who amongst themselves knew her as ‘that crazy old woman’.
Squatting in the mud before her hut she brought the thin stick she was carving close to eyes clouded by milky cataracts and studied the intricate tracery of curve and line that ran end to end. She crooned to herself, ‘Almost, now. Almost.’ Then she glanced fearfully, and rather blindly, to the starry night sky and its intruding alien banner, muttering, ‘Almost now. Almost.’
The stick went into a sack at her side. From a smaller bag she drew a pipe and a pinch of a sticky dark substance like gum that she rolled into a ball then pressed into the pipe. She lit the pipe with a twig from a low fire, drew the smoke in deep and held it down in her lungs for a long time before leaning her head back and letting the great plume blow skyward.
She blinked her watering eyes. ‘Almost, now. Almost.’
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
The problem with paths is that once you have chosen one, You cannot choose the others.
