Read Online The Reluctant Swordsman by Dave Duncan - Free Book Online

“And I do not believe in gods.”
    “Ah! Now we have it, don’t we?”
    “Do a miracle,” Wallie suggested, grinning. “Turn that chair into a throne.”
    The boy’s face was shadowed, but the bright eyes seemed almost to flash.   “Miracles are crude! And they are not done upon demand!” Then he returned to his grin again. “Besides, if I performed a miracle, it would hardly help you to believe that the World is real, would it?”
    Wallie chuckled and agreed. He wondered when breakfast would be served. The boy leaned back in the chair. It was too big for him, and he bent like a banana, stared at Wallie with his chin on his chest. “Where does faith come from?” He could bang the boy’s ear and throw him out, but what would he do with the rest of his day? “Faith? It comes from upbringing.” The boy sneered at him. “That just pushes the problem back one generation, doesn’t it?”
    “True,” Wallie agreed, amused. “Well, define faith as an attempt to attribute your own values to an omnipotent being. How’s that?” “Lousy,” the boy said. “Why should you want to attribute etcetera, etcetera?” Wallie felt that he was being nudged toward saying something he didn’t want do, but he wasn’t sure what. “To find a happy ending? To explain suffering by postulating a deeper meaning?”
    It was growing hot already, although the sun was still low and the day young.   Wallie could feel perspiration running down his ribs. The skinny boy seemed unaffected.
    “Better,” he said. “Now, how can we give you faith in the World? You had a taste of its joys. Would a taste of its suffering do any more—a taste of hell work better than a taste of heaven?”
    “No.” That was not an attractive prospect.
    The dark eyes flickered again. “So you refuse the edict of the Goddess, do you?”
    If it were not absurd, that small boy might be thought to be threatening . . .   “Tell your goddess to blow it out her ear,” Wallie said firmly. “I have absolutely no intention of being a swordsman, in this or any other world.” The boy stared at him coldly. “I’m only a demigod—I shall tell Her no such thing. Why don’t you come down to the temple and tell Her yourself?” “Me? Bow to an idol? A clay idol—or stone?”
    “Stone.”
    “Never!”
    “Why not?” the boy asked. “You honored a cloth flag often enough.” Wallie felt he had lost a point somewhere. “But I believed in what the flag stood for.”
    Then the boy laughed and jumped off the chair. “There it is again! But we must move—there are assassins on their way here, so you should leave.” Wallie sprang to his feet also. “Kind of you to mention it. I need some pants.”
    The boy pointed to the bundle on the floor. “You haven’t opened your present.” How had he missed that earlier? Wallie lifted the bundle onto the bed and unwrapped it.
    “Put on the kilt first,” the boy said, watching him. “A little short, perhaps, but it will do. Now the harness. The boots won’t fit.” “No, they don’t,” Wallie agreed, struggling. He needed about a size thirty, he concluded.
    “Cut the ends with the sword, then.” The boy sniggered. “You can’t be a swordsman with bare feet.”
    Wallie drew the sword. It was fearsome. “What do they use this for?” he asked.   “Elephant hunting?” Holding the blade near its end with his fingertips, he used the point to slit the toes of the boots. Then he could get them on, but they pinched and his toes stuck out the ends. The boy giggled once more.   “Why don’t I just leave the sword for now?” Wallie said.
    The boy shook his head. “A swordsman without a sword would be a public scandal.” The scabbard was attached to the harness and hung down his back. When he tried to lift the sword high enough to insert the point, his hand hit the roof. He tried to sit on the bed and found he was sitting on the scabbard. He began to lose his temper, for the boy was grinning widely.   “You