Free The Coming Of Wisdom by Dave Duncan

road.”
    This might be another test, or it might be the start of Wallie’s mission. In either case, the danger was obvious—and extreme.
    “We’re trapped?”
    “Apparently.” Wallie looked over his resources: two swordsmen, two slave women, a boy, a baby, and a beggar. Not much to fight an approaching army of swordsmen killers. He nodded at the woman he thought was called Myi. “Fetch our clothes, please.”
    “They’re coming,” Nnanji said snappily. “These two were witnesses to the assassination.”
    “In the great hall?” Wallie asked and they nodded dumbly.
    “And who killed Swordsman Kandoru?”
    “A sorcerer, my lord,” Myi whispered.
    “With what weapon?”
    “With music, my lord . . . three notes from a silver fife.”
    Which was what Quili had stated.
    “Well, old man,” Wallie said to the evilly grinning Honakura, “it seems that you and I must both start believing in sorcerers.”
    †††††
    Swaddled in a blanket and looking like nothing more than a bundle of trash, Honakura was perched on the driver’s bench beside Quili. Wallie had put him there and firmly told him to stop playing stupid games, to bring the girl onto the team. A priest of the Seventh from Hann was the World’s equivalent of a Curial cardinal. Once he revealed his identity, he would be able to convince Quili of anything.
    Wallie and the rest sat on wet straw in the back under cloaks and blankets. The rain was getting worse, breeding the rivulets of milky mud that ran down the roadway. Patches of silver light in the fields spoke of standing water, while trees in the distance were washed to a pale blue gray. Unfortunately, the road from Ov would still be passable, or so Quili had said.
    The cart lurched and squeaked and jingled. It had no springs, but then it was not moving very quickly. Wallie and Nnanji could have reached the manor sooner on foot, had that not meant leaving the rest of the party at the tenancy, potential hostages. A swordsman was both a soldier and a cop, and Wallie was not sure which of his two roles was dominant at the moment. He was likely to be attacked soon by a brigade of sorcerers, but he was also morally certain that Lady Thondi was guilty of murder. Kandoru had been blatantly betrayed, and Nnanji was not the only swordsman hankering for justice. Whether or not Wallie Smith could now bring himself to decapitate a helpless old woman would be an interesting discovery.
    He still was seeing very little of the World. Many stretches of the road had been deepened into a trench by long use. It was flanked by hedges—more practical than fences in the absence of barbed wire—and thus he caught few glimpses of the fields. He could tell only that they were small, irregular, and inset in woodland. The country was rising, and surely the manor could not be far off now.
    “This must be your mission, my lord brother.” Nnanji was in a sulk, furious with his own shortcomings. He was holding the edge of a blanket tight round his neck, leaving his head free, but made him look hunchbacked where it humped over his sword hilt. His wet ponytail was dark red, and even his normally invisible eyelashes were showing more than usual.
    “Perhaps.” Wallie wore his cover right over himself like a tent, peering out from under it. “But there were only forty or so swordsmen slaughtered in Ov—”
    “
Only
?”
    “Bad enough, but not much worse than that battle of Ko you were quoting.” Miracles and the Chioxin sword suggested something more vast than that. Even if Shonsu had somehow been responsible for the loss of Ov—and the reeve had not been Shonsu, but Zandorphino of the Sixth—that would hardly count as a disaster from a god’s viewpoint. “On the other hand, two of the three clues have turned up now—we did come a long way and we are in sorcerer country.”
    Vixini slapped cheerfully at the edge of the cart; it made interesting splashes. Wagon rides were exciting.
    “That’s what I meant,”