"Lords are big on keeping promises?"
"Formal, written, signed, and sealed? Of course."
"Did you promise to help them?"
"Against all outside enemies," Sandry said.
"Not against Lordkin?"
"No! They'd never ask. At least they never have, and if they did now, well, it would take three full meetings of all the Lords even to consider extending the Toronexti charter. But it wouldn't happen. The charter says they protect us against revolt."
Whandall sipped tea. It was good, root tea, not hemp. The shop wanted three shells a cup, a high price, but prices always went up when the wagon train was in town. "Sandry, are you afraid of Master Peacevoice Waterman?"
"Wouldn't you be?"
"Well, maybe, but by that light I should be afraid of Greathand the blacksmith," Whandall said. "But Waterman's a Lordsman and you're a Lord."
"Younglord," Sandry corrected. "Apprentice, if you like to think of it that way. Waterman would take my orders, if I were dumb enough to talk back to him. Then it would get back to my father. Wagonmaster, you tell your blacksmith what to make, but you don't tell him how to make it."
"I wouldn't know how."
"And I wouldn't know how to train men."
"Or get them to fight," Whandall said.
"That part's easy. It's called leadership," Sandry said, and blushed a little. "Getting them to fight together, to do things all of them at once, not one at a time, that's hard."
Like learning knife fighting, Whandall thought. But if you learn one thing at a time, you can put it all together. He thought about battles they'd had with bandits. Kettle Belly had taught him to get as many men together as you can, make them stay together and fight together. Twenty on three always won, and usually with none of the twenty getting hurt.
And the Lords knew all that, and the Lordkin didn't, and-
"So what shall we do today?" Sandry asked.
"I'll send you with Morth, but hold up a breath or two." Whandall considered. "You can't tell me how to fight the Toronexti." He got a confirming nod. "But what can you tell me about dealing with the Wolverines under Granite Knob?"
Sandry smiled. "I asked about that after last night. Fights between Lordkin are not my concern. I won't help you fight them, but I can tell you anything you want to know about Wolverines."
And Whandall was sure, now. The Toronexti were the Wolverines. But what good did it do to know that?
It was known that he intended to take a few people out of Serpent's Walk, out of Tep's Town. Some were willing to help him choose.
Several Lordkin tried to extract promises from him. Take my nephew, he doesn't fit in... my daughter, she's sleeping with the wrong men... my son, he's murdered someone powerful... my brother, he keeps getting beaten up. Whandall didn't promise. Nobody can force you to buy without actually drawing knife... and that happened only once.
Fubgire was one of Wanshig's guards, in his late twenties, brawny and agile. Whandall retreated from the room where Fubgire confronted him, into the courtyard, and there he turned it into a knife fighting lesson.
Kinless and Lordkin came to him, driven by distaste for the ways of the
Burning City. He would make an offer to a few of these. He set some of the kinless to working on maps.
Yesterday the courtyard had been covered with maps sketched in sawdust. Today Morth and Wanshig and a few visitors from other turf were making maps inside.
Lured by the fight with Fubgire or by Wanshig's wonderful new knife or by rumor and curiosity, nearly forty men waited at dawn to be trained in knife fighting by Whandall Placehold. Too many by far, of course. One was Fubgire, older than most of these, but bandaged and determined to learn from his mistakes. Try him on maps too?
Whandall began to teach. More drifted up, until there were sixty in the Placehold courtyard.
Many felt that they already knew how to fight, that no outsider had anything to teach them. They spoke this truth, or it showed in their sneers. They began to drift away.
Some stuck to it. Some stayed to laugh at the rest, and they had a point. That was why he had practiced in secret, because it did look funny. When Wanshig finally emerged around noon, the numbers were down to thirty.
The essence of knife training, as Whandall taught it, was to practice each of several moves separately until the mind turned to jelly. Whandall looked for those who could stick to it for an hour, perfecting one move, and move on to the next, and end the day without screaming in anyone's face.
To them, and to those who could work with maps and still not scream in anyone's face, he would make an offer.
There were too many. He had no confidence in most of them. The cursed trouble was that you could not set tests for a Lordkin, because he wouldn't put up with it. You learned what a Lordkin was made of by watching him, sometimes for years.
Whandall didn't have years.
His bed was waiting, but so was Morth. The wizard asked, "How are you feeling?"
"Worn out. I've been training Lordkin in knife fighting. How would you feel? Want some tea?"
"Yes, please. Whandall, do these Lordkin make you angry? You've been away a long time."
"Embarrassed. I used to be them. I kept my temper all day."
"I expected you to lose your temper with the Toronexti."
"Morth, it's a dance. They're clumsy at bargaining. That bottle trick was fun."
"Has anything made you angry lately?"
"Is this about anger, Morth?"
"Yes."
Whandall considered. "Not angry. Shocked. This... wilderness was Peacegiven Square. It wasn't just the place where our mothers gathered what our families needed to live. It was... order. Order where we lived, like the houses in the Lordshills."
"You're shocked but not angry."
"Well, I-"
"I wasn't asking. Whandall, Yangin-Atep hasn't even looked at you these three days, not a flicker, I can tell, and that's why. You don't get angry. If I threw a calming spell at you, I'd have to tell you about it later. But can you keep it up?"
"Merchants don't get angry, Morth. Good merchants don't even fake it."
"Then ... it could work. Here's what I need."
Whandall listened. Presently he asked, "Why?"
And presently he asked, "Why should I?"
"Oh, make up your own cursed motives. What has a water elemental ever done for you?"
"It gave me water to drink when I was a boy."
"I thought that was me, but all right. Yangin-Atep?"
"Burned... burned my family. Yes, I see. Morth, this is the craziest idea I've ever heard, even from you, but I... I think I see how to use this. I mean, for the caravan. For my family. For Feathersnake. If you'll do it my way."
"Yes?" And Morth listened.
The next day's mapmaking went on in the dining hall behind locked doors. Whandall spent some time in the courtyard supervising knife fighters at their practice, and some time with the map.
The Gulls at Sea Cliffs hadn't seen Morth dancing on the cliff above them. They knew only that a tremendous wave stood up and smashed four houses before it washed against the cliff. Three housed kinless, but in the biggest house three or four Lordkin lived in every room. Two were killed. Nine were homeless.
Now came word from Wanshig of Serpent's Walk. Their people were
drowned, their stronghold smashed and washed away, by a water demon.
Wanshig's runners told the Gulls what had hurt them, and who could kill it, and what was needed.