The Unwilling Warlord Read Free Page B

sounded much more attractive.
    Lady Kalira said something in Semmat; the smiles van­ished from the faces of the soldiers, and each dropped a hand to his sword-hilt.
    “But it’s not my country!” Sterren protested. “I was born and raised here in Ethshar, of Ethsharitic parents!” He looked from the sailor to Lady Kalira and back.
    The sailor shrugged, a gesture that was getting on Sterren’s nerves. Lady Kalira said, in halting Ethsharitic, “You, the heir.”
    Sterren looked despairingly at the two soldiers; he could see no chance at all that he could outrun or outfight either of them, let alone both. The one on the left slid a few inches of his blade from its scabbard, in warning.
    “Hai! No bloodshed in here! Take him outside first!” The innkeeper’s voice was worried.
    No one paid any attention to his outburst — save that Sterran hoped he would call the city guard.
    Hoping for the city guard was a new experience for him.
    Even if they were summoned, though, they could not possibly arrive in time to do him any good. He had no way out. Struggling to smile, Sterren managed a ghastly parody of a grin as he said, “I guess I’ll be going to Semma, then.”
    Lady Kalira smiled smugly.

Chapter Two
    Sterren stared at the decaying, sun-bleached town of Akalla of the Diamond in dismay. It lived up to his worst imaginings of what the barbaric Small Kingdoms would be like.
    He had had very little warning of what to expect. His captors had spirited him out of the tavern, paused at his room on Bargain Street only long enough to gather up his few belongings, and then taken him, protesting vigorously, onto their chartered ship.
    He had looked desperately for an opportunity to es­cape, but none had presented itself. At the last minute he had dived off the dock, only to be fished ignominiously out of the mud and dragged aboard.
    After that, he had given up any thoughts of escape for a time. Where could he escape to from a ship? He wasn’t that strong a swimmer. Instead, he had cooperated as best he could, biding his time.
    His captors had separated him from the interpreter, and made it plain that they expected him to learn their barbaric tongue — Semmat, they called it. He had swallowed his revulsion at the thought of speaking anything but proper Ethsharitic, and had done his best to oblige. After all, if he couldn’t understand what was being said around him, he would have little chance of learning anything useful.
    His language lessons had not covered very much when the ship docked in Akalla of the Diamond, just ten days after leaving Ethshar of the Spices. The weather had been hot and clear — and fairly calm, which is why it took ten days just to cross the Gulf of the East and sail the South Coast. One of the two immense Semman soldiers, the one who called himself Alder d’Yoon, told Sterren in a mixture of baby Semmat and sign language that the voyage in the other direction had taken only four days because the ship had been driven before a storm much of the way — a very expensive storm, conjured up for that very purpose, if Sterren understood him correctly.
    Alder guessed the total distance between the two ports at less than a hundred leagues, a figure that surprised Sterren considerably. He had always thought of the Small Kingdoms as being a very long way off, on the far side of the ocean, and a hundred leagues across a mere gulf didn’t seem that far.
    Of course, Sterren was not absolutely certain that he had understood Alder correctly. He knew he had the numbers straight, because he had learned them from counting fingers, but he wasn’t completely sure of the Semmat terms for “day” and “league.” He wished that he could check with the interpreter, but Lady Kalira — or rather, Aia Kalira, in Semmat — had expressly forbidden the man to talk to him in any language, and she was paying enough that the sailor would not take any chance of losing his job.
    Several members of the crew spoke