Free The Wordsmiths and the Warguild by Hugh Cook

of
patience, Togura Poulaan. You've used up most of your chances. You don't have
many left."
            "My lady,"
said Togura, the formality of romance coming to his rescue.
            He took her hand in his
and kissed it, gracefully. Then he led her inside. Unable to resist the
opportunity to show off a little, he took her to the central courtyard to show
her the odex. By night it was, when they stood in front of it, an amazement of
brilliant colours, far brighter than the night lamps arrayed around the
courtyard.
            While they were standing
watching, two figures dressed in black jumped down from the roof above and
landed in the courtyard. Day squealed. The intruders drew swords. They were
masked with darkness: only their eyes showed.
            "We seek Togura
Poulaan," said one, speaking a foreign variety of Galish rather than the
local patois.
            "The
swordmaster-assassin otherwise known as Barak the Battleman," said the
other.
            "Here I am,"
said Togura - and instantly wished he had held his tongue.
            "Joke with us again
and you're dead," said one of the intruders, grabbing Day Suet by the
throat. "The girl dies, too. Now tell us where we find our quarry. We know
he's here! The whole town knows. We know him to his face, so try no
substitutes. We know the head required in Chi'ash-lan."
            Togura stood rooted to
the spot, paralysed with terror. He had no weapons. Face to face with this twin
death, what could he have done with weapons anyway?
            "Tog," gasped
Day. "He's hurting me!"
            "Silence,
girl!" snarled the man holding her, looking around. For the first time he
looked directly into the odex, and so, for the first time, he saw its
ever-changing maze of kaleidoscopic colours. "What," he said,
slightly startled, "is that?"
            Day did not answer, but
Togura found voice enough to say:
            "A kind of
Door."
            "You can go through
it?"
            "In a manner of
speaking," said Togura.
            At that moment, they
were interrupted by sounds of argument beyond the courtyard. Then in came the
Baron Chan Poulaan with a squad of bowmen and spearmen. Two wordmasters were
clinging to the baron, trying to restrain him.
            "This place is
forbidden by dark," cried one.
            But the baron advanced
remorselessly.
            "I'll have my son
tonight," he said. "Or know the reason why. Ah, Togura! There you
are! Come, boy. Heel!"
            "Stay where you
are," hissed one of the men in black.
            "Who are your funny
friends?" said the baron, advancing, with his men behind him. "Drawn
swords, I see. Do we have a problem here?"
            So speaking, the baron
drew his own sword. He was by no means a master of the weapon, but he was
strong, aggressive and enthusiastic. In Sung, he was regarded as fearsome.
            The man holding Day in a
throttle edged closer to the odex. His companion gave Togura a shove which sent
him sprawling to the ground, then menaced the baron and his men.
            "Back,
rabble!" he said, speaking now in a loud, hard voice.
            Baron Chan Poulaan was amused.
            "There are at least
seven of us and only two of you," said the baron, reasonably. "Throw
down your weapons and surrender."
            "I," said the
man confronting him, "am a ninth-grade adept of the Zenjingu fighting
cult. I can kill all of you without thinking. Your very existence here is at
your peril."
            "Your grammar
suffers under stress," said the baron, dryly.
            "Out, vermin! Do
you not know the dread doom which walks in the midnight black of the Zenjingu
fighters?"
             "No," said the
baron, frankly.
            He was essentially a
provincial man who led a narrow and provincial life; he knew nothing whatsoever
of the Zenjingu fighters, whose very