“Possibly.”
“This time, my lady, we must reverse, the process and with as many as ten. The destination is the square in Glagmaron city. Moreover, you must be able to maintain contact and to bring us back on signal. Again: Can you do it?”
This time her reply was slow in coming. She said finally, “There was a time when I’d say yes, and instantly. But I can’t guarantee it, Collin. To send you, yes; I think so. But to maintain contact, as you call it—and return you safely—the risk would be great….”
“My lady,” Rawl Fergis said hoarsely before I could speak, “I know our Collini Well take that risk, e’en though it be just the two of us. Prepare your magick!”
Her eyes flew to me. I nodded, asked simply, “When?”
“When do you wish it?”
“As my comrade said. Now.”
“I need an hour.”
“We’ll be here then. My lady.” I bowed my head and led off toward the exits….
There was still an hour or so of daylight. We held our meeting in the council room, told all that had happened in more detail, how it was in the other kingdoms and the like. A few additional sorcerers and teachers had arrived from Glagmaron. They served to substantiate what Rawl, myself and the Lady Elioseen had seen. They emphasized further that in all of Glagmaron and the towns and villages around it, it was thought that the Collin, Sir Rawl Fergis and the battle commander, the Lord Fel-Holdt of Svoss, had been slain. It was also told that the Pug-Boos had left the land, were nowhere to be found….
“One more reason for us to prove them liars with our presence,” I announced. I then told the council what I intended doing and asked the aid of Dosh and Sernas. Sir Dosh raised a pained eyebrow that his name should even be mentioned, since where I went, he went. He even arose to announce—for he had need of a certain bravo image—that he, personally, would rebuild Ormon’s temple with the heads of the apostates who’d pulled it down.
Sernas but rolled his eyes and nodded while keeping ,up a running patter of foolishments with one of Elioseen’s ladies who, oddly enough, found his company—he’d plunked himself down beside her unasked—quite entertaining.
There wasn’t a knight or lord who didn’t volunteer. But Fel-Holdt, knowing our limitations and the risks as stated by Elioseen, allowed only Gen-Rondin plus three student warriors of my choice to accompany us.
Our now avowed objective? To slay all in the temple in the name of the Trinity, the Royal House and the “very much alive Collin,” as representing the Lord-Commander Fel-Holdt—in the field with the core of Marack’s reborn armies!
Fel-Holdt, the ever-practical, asked bluntly if I thought Sernas’s trick with the faldirks would suffice to cancel the weaponry of the sky-lords as they’d done at Janblink City. “My lord,” I told him, “there are more ways than one to skin a flimpl. Trust me….”
I then excused myself and left the meeting for some extracurricular business. In the great hall I buzzed Kriloy and ordered him outside to await a guide and guards who’d take him to the castle. … On his arrival, I told him that it would be he on the morrow who’d pick up the Gheesian sorcerer and that it would be he who’d return them all to their respective kingdoms on the day after; this, depending on whether our raid came a cropper and we were either taken or killed.
We’d seated ourselves on a divan in that marvelous “hall of lords,” which he, I’ll add, looked at with wonder, even awe. It was his first time outside the ship and inside a Camelotian-Fregisian stronghold. He was deeply impressed.
A carafe of sviss and cups had been brought and placed before us on a small table. His guide and guards awaited him at some distance.
He didn’t take to it well at all. I’d known he wouldn’t. Kriloy, to me, had become a complete surprise. On the single occasion when I’d belabored him for what he hadn’t done, I’d been oppressed with a feeling of alienation; that I was failing completely to get through to him. A Kriloy aboard the Deneb was one thing. There, he was within his own element, a part of it all, as it were. But a Kriloy on Fregis, with me, was something else. The death of the Deneb had been the catalyst, I think. Now, with the others dead, I was no longer Kyrie Fern to him, but rather a Fregisian—a Marackian Overlord. To Kriloy my fur was as real as it was to Murie; so were my blue-purple eyes. To him, the fact that in the spans of nine months I’d killed more men than he would ever personally know was just unacceptable. He simply could no longer relate to me as Kyrie Fern, Senior Adjuster of the Galactic Foundation Center. Whatever his studies at the academy, I was now an alien, even a monster, perhaps.
Thinking about it, I was inclined to agree with him. The old cliche that “a man has to do what a man has to do,” held true. In self-pity I even allowed my eyes to brim.
When I told him what was happening, explained it to him in detail, he asked soberly, “Well, what becomes of me if you’re killed, Kyrie?”
I replied just as soberly: “Well, you can take my place for one thing. Or, you can keep trying to break through to the Foundation for a rescue. You can even try for Holbein. There’s a small base there. Take you twenty years without warp, and even then I doubt if you’d make it. Gotta have full tanks. Lastly, you could just hole up; get yourself a sex partner for those dull evenings and pray that all the crap that’s coming down, won’t; or at least that it won’t touch you.”
“You think the Foundation will check out the missing Deneb?”
“Certainly. But slowly and cautiously. You don’t move into the area of a starship’s destruction in the usual way, Kriloy. Remember the skuuls! It’ll take a few years, maybe five, ten.”
“Why does it have to be you?” He couldn’t help himself.
“Well take a good look at me, buddy. I’m what I think you think I am. I could walk away from all this easily. But I’d die of a broken heart if I did. I’m reminded of one of our old Terran poets, Burns, I think. He had something that began with: ‘If ye ha’ been where I ha’ been,’ and like that. But you, Kriloy, will never be where I have been, because it’s all in the past. Anyhow, buddy, the players are still out there. And it’s the last act, the final curtain. It’s like Ragnarok; the Gotterdammerung! There’s something happening, too, that I can’t put my finger on, like the old ‘play within a play.’ Whatever. Mysteries have a way of disclosing themselves in time. In this last act, well either make it or we won’t… . The only role you can play is the one you’re playing. You wanna be a hero? Find the drain. Correct it Break in on the goddamn grid and tell ‘em to get their bloody asses over here. That way, buddy, if either of us wins, well both win. Think about that. There ain’t no other way….”
He said, quoting: “So let it be written, so let it be done.” The half-puzzled frown still touched the pale forehead. He said, “It’s beginning to gel. I even had a pang of sympathy.”
I laughed. “Heyyyy! That’s progress. Keep trying for the matrix. If I don’t buzz you at eight tomorrow, then come out of that skyship in a hurry and present yourself to Fel-Holdt to take my place—or else run for it; whichever you please.”
The frown had deepened. A few beads of sweat had appeared. “Don’t lose any sleep, Kyrie. I’ll know what to do before that screwing Fomalhaut starts waking your fauna. Don’t worry.”
“Me worry?” I grinned. “Forget it.” I then whistled up his guide and the two men-at-arms to walk him to the ship. It was now dark outside. “So the kaatis won’t get you,” I called after him.
We’d stripped, bathed, oiled ourselves lightly with a curative substance with antiseptic qualities, put on fresh linen long shots, light-padded jupons, hauberks, plates and our best surcoats. This time the world would fully note just who we were. I allowed my three students to wear my colors, the sprig of violets against a ‘field of gold. Rawl’s three scarlet bars on an azure field was now known to all the north; so too was the Dernim tulip of Sir Dosh. His father had carried it with valor from one end of Fregis to the other. The book and sword of Rondin against a white field was splendiferous,
to say the least. An odd heraldry, his family had always been either judges or warriors, and so the logo… . And then, of course, there was the thick-lipped and lecherous Lors Sernas. His blazonry would be long remembered when all of ours were dust. For the north had no paint pots to equal the brilliantly permanent colors of his shield and surcoat.
We gathered quietly in Elioseen’s great room of witchery.
She’d limited the viewers to ten, what with all the sorcerers, witches and warlocks present, and most of them involved. Fel-Holdt and Jos Viins led the viewers, ten knights and lords. They were forced to stand well back from where I and my eight were positioned. There was only candlelight to see by— an eerie atmosphere. The smell of incense was thick around us. The signs on all the walls, the floor, the tapestries now seemed familiar, like ancient tombs I’d seen of the protective pentagrams of Earth’s warlocks in that far-ago time. Again I wondered, where did the science begin and the fol-de-rol leave off ?
The chanting began. Word sounds well spaced; each vowel hard and fully pronounced. Within seconds I felt the tingling I’d experienced in that far time of nine months before when the then “wicked Elioseen” had seized Murie and me from the king’s road to begin the saga. …
Suddenly then it was as if we were encased in a silvered, translucent bubble. There Was no sound, nothing; indeed, all was an instant ebon-black so that I thought that perhaps we’d died. But I had not lost consciousness, nor had any of my comrades. This time, to interrupt the great thrumming that had set all our muscles to quivering to its tune, there came a simple brilliant flash of light, and there we were, at the very center of the square and directly before the great temple.
A celebration was taking place; the aftermath of the day’s destruction and killing. The scene was riotous. Great tuns and tubs of wine, beer and sviss had been laid out on long tables. Food, too, was everywhere with, at the square’s four cardinal points, whole gogs being turned on roasting spits over huge fires. Before the series of steps leading to the temple’s entrance was a double line of as many as two dozen men-at-arms. Behind them, still on the flat entry space before the doors, were two chairs in which sat two Alphians. They, apparently, were the appointed “watchers” for the evening.
As could be expected, our coming elicited some surprise. I pressed the ion control at my belt, fingered it instantly to a low radiation so that the high-sulfur content of Fregis’s steel would thus be activated,. We began to glow, phosphorescently, with a beautiful golden aura. We then quickly formed a rough circle with myself at point and marched in cadence to stand directly before the double line of warriors and the two seated Alphians. … I surreptitiously pressed the stud at my belt to effect the power-pack drain of our enemies’ blaster and laser guns.
The roar of the crowd ceased. The ensuing quiet moved like a tactile encompassing wave, rolling out from those around us to the furthermost limits of the square. Even the roisterers on the side streets were affected. The Alphians arose, walked gracefully to the edge of the dais to peer down at our small ring of swords.
One of the roisterers, a huge bearded warrior with the white tab on his harness, chose to step forward to touch Rawl’s shield with his own drawn sword and roar: “Say your name, fellow, for I think I recognize that shieldfront.” Then he blanched, crying, “By the fallen gods, ‘tis Sir Fergis, the king’s nephew. And there’s the Collin. And the Justice, Gen-Rondin! You’re dead, all of you,” he shouted in drunken terror. “You should have stayed so.” He tripped then and fell and had to be restored to his feet by his comrades.
Ignoring him, I yelled up to the Alphians, “Hey, now. Sky-men. Here’s a man who says we’re dead. What say you to that? Indeed, who is there among you murdering scum who can say he killed the Collin, or any one of us? I call you liars, cowards. Would you be gods? I’ll show you the way. Come taste my steel you sons of bitches; the road to immortality lies through these shields, these swords.”
Nothing.
I called insultingly again: “I see you wear greatswords across your backs. I challenge you to use them, and tell you now that if you do, in fair fight, that I alone, or with but one of my companions, will strike your heads from off your bodies and feed your entrails to the beasts. What say you, sirs?” I called cheerfully. I drew my well-honed beauty from its sheath, advanced two paces, whirled it twice around my head—and waited.
Nothing.
One of the Alphians now rested a hand upon the butt of his blaster, but that was all. If he’d tried to use it, Sernas and one of my students, also a devil with the faldirk, would have driven two blades hilt-deep in his throat. … As of the moment, I played for tune; time for my belt to drain the power-packs of their weapons. I. figured we’d need twenty minutes, at least.
And then, at a signal from the Alphian leader, two husky Marackian sergeants stepped forward. I recognized them as castle teachers, swordmasters. I called lightly, “Stand back, sirs. Tis not your lives I want, despite your treason. Tis that scum that hides behind you. Throw down your weapons.”
But they came on, so we met them square, with a sparkling kaleidoscope of blade-work plus but the slightest movements of the shield. Five seconds and I had the first one. An arm severed and my blade straight between his teeth so that it stuck out a hand’s breadth from his skull’s base. The grim Rawl Fergis had simply couched his shield beneath a rain of frenzied blows and then casually, but with tremendous strength, thrust his heavy point right up through the double fold of hauberk; through the living heart and out the shoulder. …
The gasps of horror, even from that semi-drunken mob, at such a feat swept out to the streets and beyond.
“Was that, sirs, a blow from a ghost?” I shouted. “How many more will die, oh lords of the sky, before you who dare call yourselves our gods, will take our challenge?”
The white-clad almost angelic figure of the Alphian who’d toyed with his blaster now moved quickly to draw. But his eyes were on me as I’d known they would be; indeed, it was another reason for my yelling. Two whistling silvered streaks, as close together as to be almost indistinguishable, hissed past my ear to appear as faldirks, buried to the very hilt in the Alphian’s throat. He dropped the blaster. His hands flew up. His instant high-pitched scream was that of a child who’s run a splinter into his finger. Bright blood fountained out over the double line of men-at-arms.
A gasp arose from the crowd.
“Well,, now,” I yelled again, my voice even louder, “we are not ghosts. But our gods are mortal. They bleed as we and can be killed as we. … But you, my most cautious and cowardly dubot,” I called to the last Alphian, “have still not answered my challenge. I ask it again. Come down, sir, and show us how you’d use that sword you so brazenly wear upon your back.”
Silence.
I’d half expected it would be this way; indeed, I’d had doubts he even understood the niceties of the “challenge” with its cultural implications. To wear a sword is one thing; to know how to use it does not necessarily mean that one is acquainted with its social lore.
Still he hesitated, but for different reasons. He’d had his chance and failed. He could have drawn when the first man drew and thrown himself for protection behind his wall of warriors and from there wasted the lot of us. Now he stood alone and exposed. To reach for either laser or blaster now, or to yell for his men to attack, was simply to invite not one or even two faldirks in his throat—but seven!
I took the first step myself, called sternly, “Hey, you Marackian dolts, ‘tis I, your Collin. And I ask that you stand aside while I slice the liver from this mewling zotl. If you do not, I’ll have yours first and then his. I’ve challenged him properly. You’ve no right to interfere.”
Conditioned to protocol, they murmured and began to make a path. But I didn’t have to mount those steps. The Alphian had made up his mind. He came down them.
Tall, he was my height. Beautifully muscled, he was built like me, like Rawl, Rondin, Dosh—like any Fregisian fighting man. His eyes were clear a
nd bright; his expression calm, confident. One thing was instantly apparent. He was not afraid!
The double row of warriors closed behind him as he stepped down upon the first slate slabs of the square below the steps. Great torches, ablaze before the temple’s entrance and in mounted sconces all around us, illumined a large area before the temple. The scarce-breathing crowd kept well back from my intimidating seven. As the Alphian drew his greatsword, I handed my shield to Rawl. The sky-lord had no shield. In all fairness, therefore, I could not use my own. Because of who I was, I’d no choice but to be responsible to the mores of the land; even in the face of those Marackians who’d betrayed us.
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