The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (9 page)

       
"Yes," said
Day Suet. "But it would be interesting to watch one real man spank
another."

       
"Minx!" said
Togura, swatting her.

       
She evaded him, and
laughed.

       
And, before very long,
she had persuaded him to laugh with her.

       
They ate.

       
They drank.

       
They danced.

       
The musicians, robust
and virile men, laboured and belaboured their instruments, pumping, hammering,
stretching, scraping and churning, till their faces were beetroot-red and sweat
poured down to their beards and their broad moustaches.

       
As Togura danced with
Day, he dared, and she dared with him. Her breasts were soft. Her lips were hot
and eager. Her eyes spoke just a little more than she would voice. His
confidence grew. When he suggested they leave, she never asked him where. She
led him to her room. As if in a trance, he stripped her to he skin. Her body,
smooth and glabrous, glimmered in the light of a single candle. She closed with
him, and gave him a drunken kiss. She smelt of sweat and musk, of perfume and
spices, of hard liquor and youthful desire.

       
He undressed.

       
Standing before her,
naked, he realised that now was the moment. Now he was really going to become a
man. A real man. Initiated into the mysteries of the flesh. His desire was
hard, urgent, swelling. He touched her thigh, lightly, finding it warm as new
bread. Overwhelmed by her heat and aroma, he felt and irresistible imminence
taking control of his flesh. Horror-struck, he tried to restrain himself.

       
He failed.

       
His male organ began to
pump.

       
At the last possible
moment, Togura clapped a hand to his cock, which pumped hot jism over his palm.
That saved him from splattering Day from bosom to thigh with his semen. But the
disaster was still absolute, unmitigated and irretrievable.

       
"Oh no!" he
cried, in agony.

 
      
"What
is it?" said Day.

       
Then, realising
precisely what it was, she began to laugh. Blithe spirit that she was, she
could not take this technical hitch seriously. She was puzzled when Togura
began to ram himself into his clothes.

       
"Tog," she
said. "No. Don't go. Tog, it's nothing. Talk to me, Tog. Tog. Wait!"

       
But, when she clutched
at him, he broke free and fled, still fastening his garments. He was so
embarrassed he could not endure her presence. He wanted to die. Or bury himself
in a hole for half a thousand years.

       
He escaped to the autumn
air and stalked through the streets, furious. Raging. Hating himself and the
world and his own rebellious flesh. He had failed absolutely and miserably at a
man's most important test. He was worse than nothing. He was disgraced. He
would never be able to look Day in the face again. She knew!

       
When his half-brother
Cromarty had accused him of being a day-dreaming masturbator, that had been bad
enough. But he had been able to deny it with a straight face, even though it
was true. After all, masturbation was furtively acknowledged or hinted at by
many. But to fail with a woman!

       
Togura remembered
Cromarty boasting about Toff the milkmaid:

       
"She was hot, boys.
Hot, drunk and flat on her back. So I stuck it in to the hilt. Rammed it in.
She loved it. She begged for more. I gave it."

       
Everyone had their
stories. Even Togura had his stories, though his were not true. (Could
Cromarty's be untrue? He'd like to think so, but it was difficult. Cromarty was
so brash, so arrogant, so confident.)

       
Brooding on his
disaster, Togura grimly resolved that tonight would be the night, no matter
what. He could never face Day again, but he would find a way. He would lose his
virginity by morning, or die in the attempt.

       
Thus resolved, he bent
his footsteps toward the townhouse of Melladona, one of the town's five whores,
and rumoured to be the cheapest. She was awake and working; she had only lately
discharged her last customer. He struck a bargain and paid.

       
He thought himself
confident.

       
But when he actually saw
her rancid flesh, her flaccid thighs, the fat veins snaking up her legs, the
stale bruises and the odd blotched marks on her breasts, and the crinkling scar
running from her neck to her naval, his courage failed. In her cold and narrow
room, his worm disgraced him by shrinking to a cringing stump of flesh scarcely
the size of a thumb.

       
He asked for his money
back.

       
Melladona laughed, then,
realising he was serious, attacked him. After he escaped into the street, she
cursed him from the window. Trying to recover something from the debacle, he
eased his ego by shouting a few well-chosen insults. Melladona responded
promptly by emptying her chamber pot over his head.

       
Togura eventually washed
himself off in someone's rain water barrel, then, sadder but not necessarily
wiser, mooched through the night to the Wordsmiths' Stronghold. The gate was
open, and someone, dressed in a winterweight coat and swaddled in a blanket,
was sitting by the gate waiting for him.

       
"Togura
Poulaan!" said Day Suet severely as he approached. "So there you are
at last. Well? Aren't you grateful to see me? Don't you realise you're lucky to
see me at all? Running off into the night like that! Stupid fellow! Most girls
would have given you away forever."

       
"Day," said
Togura, not knowing what to say.

       
She had come for him.
She was his. This must be true love! But, all the same, she was a source of
mortification to him. She knew! Standing in the light of the gatelamp, he
hesitated.

       
"Don't just stand
there, stupid!" said Day, impatiently. "Kiss me!"

       
Togura gathered her into
his arms, and they kissed.

       
"Now take me
inside," said Day, "And get me something to eat. It's cold out here,
and I'm hungry."

       
"I don't know if
the brothers would approve," said Togura.

       
Day kicked him in the
shins, hard.

       
"I'm running out 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 name was terror in the lands around
Chi'ash-lan.

       
"You have outlived
your life," snarled the Zenjingu fighter, raising his sword.

       
The baron snapped his
fingers. An archer standing behind him unleashed an arrow. The Zenjingu fighter
lurched, dropped his sword, threw up his arms, then waddled round in circles,
gasping as he clutched at the arrow, which had pierced his throat.

       
"Thus we do in the
highlands," said the baron, striding forward with an easy gait.

       
As the Zenjingu fighter
tottered, the baron hacked into the unruly fellow's head. On the third blow,
the man dropped dead at his feet. Whistling tunelessly, the baron turned his
attention to the remaining trespasser.

       
"Get back!"
shouted the survivor. "Get back, or I kill the girl."

       
"The life of a
female Suet is nothing to me," said Baron Chan Poulaan, who saw no harm in
telling the truth. "Go ahead. Make my day."

       
"No!" screamed
Togura, launching himself at the Zenjingu fighter.

       
The fighter threw Day
Suet into the odex, which had been described to him as a Door. Then he jumped
in after her. Both were briefly visible, then gone, disintegrating - with a
jangle of music - into a storm of colours. An ilps, popping out of the odex,
celebrated the occasion with hearty laughter.

       
"So much for
that," said the baron crisply, wiping his sword then sheathing it.
"Come along, Togura, we're going home. What is it, boy? Not crying, are
we? Now now, don't be a baby."