“You're going to have trouble with that guy,” he warned. But the knight was too overcome at the final realization of his hopes to take cognizance of Ethan's warning.
“The vote in Council is against him,” he said absently. “What can he do now? Nothing! He is more helpless than a cub, and embarrassed besides. Forget him. Do you not understand? We're going to fight!”
Ethan turned away and noticed General Balavere standing in a circle of older tran. Solemnly there was a gentle touch on the shoulders, quiet conversation with first one, then another. Closer inspection revealed another interesting anthropological fact about their hosts, which was that they did actually cry. Ethan turned away.
Meanwhile, the Landgrave had been attempting almost desperately to restore some semblance of order since the prefect had left. He pounded his staff on the floor and enlisted the vocal services of the herald. Then, apparently deciding it was hopeless, he signaled something to the musicians in the balcony.
A wild, strongly rhythmic tune replaced the pseudo-march. With a yell, the councilmen and knights separated the two long arms of the great table, turning it into a wide “V” shape. Instantly the funneled dance floor was occupied by swirling, flying couples.
It was interesting to note that the dancing, while highly energetic, did not last long at all by terran standards. No matter how husky-looking, many of the dancers seemed to get quickly out of breath. Apparently, with the wind to move them, the tran had not developed their lung-power overmuch. By the same token, the acrobatics of the lighter-than-they looked dancers verged on the appalling. Their sense of timing and balance, logically enough, was inhuman. He'd keep that in mind if he ever found it necessary to dodge the local police. It had happened before.
On the ice, they would run circles around him.
Laughter and handclapping added to the feeling of merriment. Right now everyone was in the best of spirits. Later, when the enormity of their decision had sunk in, there would be time for quiet contemplation and thought.
Ethan was thoroughly enjoying the scene when there was a tap on his shoulder. He turned and was confronted by the copious bosom of Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata. He hurriedly elevated his gaze, finding no relaxation in the return stare at the top.
“As thou can see, good Sir Ethan,” she purred, “I have not yet been asked to dance.” This was not entirely true, as several young tran with bruised shins could attest.
“Perhaps Sir Hunnar?...” Ethan suggested desperately.
“Foo! He's too busy accepting congratulations for the way in which he outmaneuvered the prefect. Anyhow, I want to dance with you.” She lowered her voice. “I have not forgotten your mastery at ... hand-to-hand combat. Are you equally adept at dancing, mayhap?”
“Oh no,” he said, shrinking back and finding the table blocking his retreat. “I know nothing of your local dances. I've got two left feet. And I'm naturally clumsy besides.”
“That, for sure, I cannot believe,” she said smokily. She reached out and grabbed his arm with a paw that might have been lighter than his own, but was backed by muscles of iron. Rather than be yanked from the chair, he got up peacefully.
“Come then, and we will disport ourselves with the others.”
Before he could protest he found himself in the middle of the floor, trapped in a whirlpool of fur and giant shoulders. The music was alien but not impossibly exotic. The steps of Sofoldian dance were fairly simple. After a bit he was actually enjoying himself. Never mind that he was flirting with disaster.
A strange sort of rescue was provided by Sir Hunnar. The knight stepped up behind him, put a paw on his shoulder, and said in the cheeriest voice imaginable, “Sir Ethan, I challenge you.”
“Beg pardon?” Ethan responded, stumbling over his own feet.
“A challenge! Yea, a challenge!” came the cry from the crowd. Almost as soon as he caught his balance, it seemed, the floor had been cleared around them. Everyone was staring expectantly at him and Hunnar.
Meanwhile, the knight was removing his cloak, decorations, and dress jacket.
“Wait a minute,” began Ethan confusedly. “I was just starting to get the hang of the dance. What's this challenge business?”
“In truth, 'tis really nothing, friend Ethan,” replied Hunnar, flexing his massive aims and stretching his wings. “Just a simple custom. 'Tis good manners for guests and hosts to fight. I was reminded that this pleasantry had not yet occurred, 'tis an opportune time as any to perform such.”
“I disagree,” countered Ethan cautiously. “Anyhow,” he continued, backing up a couple of steps, “why pick on me? Why not exchange blessings of good fellowship with Sir September?”
“I would have,” the knight grinned. “But look.”
Ethan turned. September reclined full-length across the table. His flowing white hair lay half-in and half-out of a bowl of cold soup. A tankard was gripped limply in one massive hand. He was snoring with the melodious buzz of a broken bearing.
“I'll waken the good knight,” Ethan stammered. “Really, Sir Hunnar, I'm not cut out for this sort of thing. Now, if you'd like to have a go on the links ... would there be a course about?”
“Ah, your modesty is truly worthy of you, Sir Ethan,” said Hunnar admiringly. He was now naked to the waist. The resulting pectoral panorama would give any barber pause.
“Let us to combat!” He came barrelling across the room, arms forming a great hairy crescent.
Well, at least it wasn't supposed to be a lethal conflict, Ethan rationalized. It was the least he could do in the interests of good fellowship, wasn't it? Besides, he'd seen the ease with which September had hoisted the knight, chair and all.
He tried to ignore the roar of the crowd — they sounded just like a bunch of inebriated conventioneers, he decided — and duck the roundhouse blow Hunnar threw at him. He stepped in and tried to get a grip on the knight's waist. What he got instead was a solid buffet on the side of the head. His vision was momentarily restricted to sights galactic — black spaces and colored stars.
He sat up and refocused his eyes. Sir Hunnar was standing several meters away, panting and grinning down at him.
Obviously more subtle tactics were required. Cries of “Well struck!” and “Good blow!” came from the appreciative crowd. His opponent might not weigh in as heavy as he, but he could still knock your head off while you were looking up the proportionate discrepancies, Ethan reflected.
All right, he would try something else — if he could remember that far back.
Sir Hunnar carne on again. He feinted with his left paw and swung the right. Ethan stepped to one side, blocked the blow with his left arm, and hit the other gently in the ribs, just behind the wing membrane, and then in the jaw. He spun and hit him in the lower back with his heel, almost falling down in the process.
His own weight and the blow combined to send the knight sprawling. For an awful moment Ethan thought he'd broken something. The Tran were tougher than that, however. Hunnar rolled over and grunted.
“How did you do that, Sir Ethan?”
“Come on and find out,” invited Ethan, breathing heavily.
Hunnar climbed to his feet and advanced again, more cautiously this time. Ethan let him grab his right shoulder. Then he spun into the other's charge, driving an elbow up and into the broad chest. Hunnar let out a whoosh, surprised. Ethan bent and grabbed a bladed foot by the ankle, yanked and straightened up, putting the knight on his back. Ethan turned and drove the heel of his foot into the other's midriff — gently. He walked away while Hunnar was trying to catch his breath.
The crowd was deafening. On Terra his movements would have seemed slow and clumsy. But here their alienness seemed to verge on the magical.
Sir Hunnar sat up, holding his middle. He smiled. “I could see that one, I think. Will you teach me that last trick, Sir Ethan?”
“Sure. Here, you start like this...” But he didn't have a chance to continue, because a moment later massive palms were literally pounding congr
atulations into him. If it continued he'd be asking for mercy from their admiring assault.
Even worse, he noticed that Elfa was staring across at him with gleaming, almost worshipful eyes.
Someone in the crowd pressed a tankard of reedle into his hand. His left leg hurt where he'd pulled something. He drained several swallows. He did not notice Colette du Kane, who was staring at him with a most peculiar expression.
Chapter Seven
He woke in the middle of the night, and it wasn't from cold. The icy night air was sharp enough to keep him from falling asleep again, though. After several futile attempts, he put his hands under his head and stared up at the canopy which covered the bed. His suit crinkled under him and he edged up against the bulk of his survival parka.
Something was going to have to be done about the attentions of the Landgrave's daughter before a fatal misunderstanding occurred.
He knew next to nothing of local custom in such matters. But if someone should develop the wrong idea or walk in on them at another moment like that first one, it could be very awkward indeed. They'd be reminded very quickly of their alienness. Even Hunnar's friendship might evaporate with surprising speed.
Finally he rolled over and felt under the blankets for the parka. It was difficult to put it on in the light from the single remaining candle. The thermometer had plunged to regions where no human should have stirred from bed. But with his mind thinking furiously on other matters, he hardly noticed.
Once he'd donned the parka, he unbolted the door and slipped out into the hall. He had a fair idea of the location of the Landgrave's rooms. Tracing the proper steps and turns in the sub-freezing, windswept hallways was something else again. Only a few candles and oil lamps lit the way.
At night, with the wind moaning through the corridors and everyone but a few uncommunicative guards asleep, the castle seemed as forlorn and empty-cold as the mountains of the moon.
The whole thing was ridiculous. What was he going to do, rouse the Landgrave in the middle of the night? On the other hand, it might be the best time. In secret, without nosy courtiers around. An unguarded, unwatched discussion. It might also help minimize his embarrassment. And it was something that ought to be dealt with soonest.
Ah, the Landgrave's quarters were just around that turn, there. He would tell the guards...
He looked down the hall, peered harder. The flickering, uncertain light made it hard to be sure, but there didn't seem to be any guards. That was odd. He slowed as he approached the door to the inner chambers.
The guards were there, it turned out. Both of them. Immaculately clad in inlaid armor and leather. One was pinned neatly to the wall by a pair of long pikes. His expression was frozen in shock and surprise. The other's head lolled on the floor at an unnatural angle. His blood flowed over the smooth stones.
Several possibilities suggested themselves right away. None of them made any sense. In the shock of the moment he didn't stop to consider that where two competent armed guards had been neatly dispatched, he might prove singularly uneffective. He stuck his head inside the open door and looked into the room.
The tableau that greeted his eyes might have been drawn from an ancient Terrussian opera. It was crowded enough.
In the great canopied carved bed, the Landgrave lay pinned to the blankets by two husky tran wearing simple masks. A third stood over him with a standard ship-issue survival knife poised to strike. Hellespont and Colette du Kane sat to one side, securely gagged. They were tied to a couple of chairs much too big for them. A fourth tran wielding a bloody saber, watched them.
Ethan turned, reached down, and hefted the pike of the fallen guard. Two courses of action suggested themselves. He could charge in and dispatch the four assassins, free the du Kanes, and earn the eternal admiration of all. Or he could turn and run down the hall screaming like a broker whose credit had submarined until he'd roused enough help to be effective.
Logic, plus the fact that he could handle a garden hoe more readily than a pike, inclined him toward the latter course. Not as glorious, but more practical. He turned and took several steps down the hall.
“Alarm, murder most foul, assassins, cutthroats! Rouse yourselves! Help, help, the Landgrave is being murdered! Guards, knights, priests, depression, devaluation, competitions.”
Confused murmurs sprang up throughout the castle as the cold walls bounced Ethan's cries up corridors, around turns, down iceways. The pile of stone started to stir like a beehive poked with a stick.
Replies also came from within the room in the form of a string of curses. One of the assassins, a huge burly fellow with a sword slash on one arm and fur knotted like an old rug, came out with weapon at the ready. He looked to his left. This was a fatal mistake, since Ethan was waiting on his right.
It took little skill to skewer the killer through the middle.
The tran screamed like a girl, which added a satisfying note to the growing pandemonium. At one end of the hall, figures could be seen running toward them. Ethan started for there.
And tripped over the prone guard in the half-dark.
He rolled over on his back, stunned. Above him a tall, shadow-garbed figure raised a red saber over its head. Fangs glowed in the oil-light. The saber descended. He could hear the air it cut. The wielder grunted questioningly and Ethan heard the steel hit the stone floor at his side, so close that it cut his shirt and struck sparks from the rock. Something blunt hit him in the stomach.
It was the feathered end of the arrow that was buried in the other's gut. Another millisecond and he was buried in an avalanche of blood and fur.
It might be lighter than it should, but it was dead weight. In a minute, though, there were hands to help him. He stared into the gloom. Hunnar was among the crowd. Feet ran past him. Shouts rang like bells from the hallway walls.
“Very close, Sir Ethan,” said the knight, giving him a muscular arm up. “Our thanks.”
“Mine to you,” he replied breathlessly. He fingered his middle where the back of the arrow had struck before snapping in half.
“Not to me.” Hunnar pointed to another figure standing in the twilight beside them.
Suaxus-dal-Jagger was holding a bow half again as tall as himself, an arrow notched in the gut-string. He nodded curtly, turned, and started down the hall.
Hunnar knelt and rolled the body of the saber-holder over. He examined the silent face while Ethan tried to wipe some of the blood from his parka.
“Do you recognize him?” he asked curiously.
“No, but that is not surprising strange. Such men take care of their anonymity. What happened?”
Without replying, Ethan turned and led him into the room he'd seen so briefly. At least twenty armed tran were now clustered inside. Their faces were not pleasing to look upon. Right now they were giving the room a thorough search, even hunting for hollow places in the walls.
The du Kanes had been released. Colette was rubbing her wrists. In the freezing air Ethan could imagine how painful the ropes must have been. When she saw Ethan, she took a step in his direction, caught herself, and stared at the floor.
Crazy twit, he thought uneasily.
“You happened along at a propitious time, sir,” said du Kane. “Those blackguards rudely assaulted us in the midst of a sound sleep. Before we knew it we were trussed tighter than a good copyright. We—”
The Landgrave stepped roughly between them. He put a paw on each of Ethan's shoulders, gently but firmly.
“This I do now promise you, Sir Ethan. Thee are bound to this fight that approaches and there is no help for it. But should Wannome triumph, I swear to you on my ancestor's honor that all our abilities and wealth shall be bent to the task of taking you to wherever you should wish, be it halfway around the world. I owe you my life. Few in Sofold carry such a valuable claim.” He turned to greet his daughter, who had just arrived. She ran into his arms, her face twisted into an unreadable alien expression.
Ethan turned away. That ought to do as a le
ver for trade concessions, he thought, trying to push the sentimental scene from his mind.
“I'm not sure I understand, Sir Ethan,” said Hunnar, rubbing his own arm. Maybe he'd literally fallen out of bed. Ethan became aware for the first time that the knight was naked except for his sword. “Why did they take your two friends?”
“It's obvious enough,” explained Ethan tiredly. “They were going to murder the Landgrave and make it appear as though the du Kanes had done it. Not only would that have finished your plans to fight this Horde, but it would put us in a pretty fix, wouldn't it? C'mon, Hunnar, you know as well as I who's behind this.”
Hunnar hesitated, then looked shocked.
“The prefect? But he wouldn't dare!”
“Someone did. Why not him?”
“For one thing, my friend, you are mistaken in your thoughts. Should the Landgrave die it would have no effect on our decision to fight the Horde. The Landgrave's daughter would inherit the throne and a new Landgrave would be chosen to serve beside her. Having been duly determined, the Council's declaration would stand.”
“I see,” said Ethan reflectively. “Tell me. Does Elfa get to choose her own Landgrave?”
“Certainly not! Should the Landgrave leave naught but female offspring, then the eldest receives a suitor selected by the Council. Someone to perpetuate a strong line.”
“Really.” Ethan was thinking furiously. “And who would the Council be likely to pick as a good match?”
“I had not given the matter any thought,” replied Hunnar. “I doubt anyone has. The Landgrave has many years before him yet. In such a case I might hope it could be myself.” He averted his gaze. “But 'twould probably not be.”
His head came up and his eyes widened. He looked thoughtful. “I understand you now, Sir Ethan. Yes, for the sake of seeing himself on the throne, or his children, he could do that.”
They stood quietly for a few moments. A soldier appeared at the doorway, his armor askew from the speed at which he'd donned it.
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