Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra

by Poul Anderson

  "What's happening, then, in space?" asked Flandry.

  He didn't expect a coherent reply. To the civilian, as to the average fighter, war is one huge murky chaos. It was a pure gift when the driver said: "My chum caught radio 'casts beamed at us from the Terran fleet. The wolves tried to jam it, of course, but I heard, an' figure 'tis mostly truth. Because 'tis bad enough! There was a lot o' guff about keepin' up our courage, an' sabotagin' the enemy, an'—" The driver rasped an obscenity. "Sorry, ma'm. But wait till you see what 'tis really like aroun' Garth an' you'll know how I feel about that idea. Admiral Walton says his fleet's seized some asteroid bases an' theirs isn't tryin' to get him off 'em. Stalemate, you see, till the wolves have built up enough strength. Which they're doin', fast. The reason the admiral can't throw everything he's got against them in space is that he has to watch Ogre too. Seems there's reason to suspect Ymir might be in cahoots with Ardazir. The Ymirites aren't sayin'. You know what they're like."

  Flandry nodded. "Yes. ‘If you will not accept our word that we are neutral, there is no obvious way to let you convince yourselves, since the whole Terran Empire could not investigate a fraction of Dispersal territory. Accordingly, we shall not waste our time discussing the question.'"

  "That's it, chum. You've got the very tone. They might be honest, sure. Or they might be waitin' for the minute Walton eases up his watch on 'em, to jump him."

  Flandry glanced out. The stars flashed impersonally, not caring that a few motes of flesh named them provinces for a few centuries. He saw that part of this planet's sky had no stars, a hole into forever. Kit had told him it was called the Hatch. But that was only a nearby dark nebula, not even a big one. The clear white spark of Rigel was more sinister, blazing from the heart of Merseia's realm. And what of Ogre, tawny above the tree?

  "What do you think will happen?" Kit's voice could scarcely be heard through the engine grumble.

  "I don't even dare guess," said the driver. "Maybe Walton'll negotiate something—might leave us here, to become wolf-cattle, or might arrange to evacuate us an' we can become beggars on Terra. Or he might fight in space... but even if he doesn't attack their forts here on Vixen, we'll all be hostages to Ardazir, won't we? Or the Ymirites might... No, ma'm, I'm just drivin' my truck an' drawin' my pay an' feedin' my family. Shorter rations every week, it seems. Figure there's nothin' else any one person can do. Is there?"

  Kit began to cry, a soft hopeless sobbing on Flandry's shoulder. He laid an arm around her and they sat thus all the way to Garth.

  X

  Night again, after a short hot winter day of thunderstorms. Flandry and Emil Bryce stood in the pit blackness of an alley, watching a nearly invisible street. Rain sluiced over their cloaks. A fold in Flandry's hood was letting water trickle in, his tunic was soaked, but he dared not move. At any moment now, the Ardazirho would come by.

  The rain roared slow and heavy, down over the high-peaked roofs of Garth, through blacked-out streets and gurgling into the storm drains. All wind had stopped, but now and then lightning glared. There was a brief white view of pavement that shimmered wet, half-timbered houses with blind shutters crowded side by side, a skeletal transmitter tower for one of the robotic weather-monitor stations strewn over the planet. Then night clamped back down, and thunder went banging through enormous hollow spaces.

  Emil Bryce had not moved for half an hour. But he really was a hunter by trade, thought Flandry. The Terran felt an unreasonable resentment of Bryce's guild. Damn them, it wasn't fair, in that trade they stood waiting for prey since they were boys—and he had to start cold. No, hot. It steamed beneath his rain cape.

  Feet resounded on the walk. They did not have a human rhythm. And they did not smack the ground first with a boot-heel, but clicked metal-shod toes along the pavement. A flashbeam bobbed, slashing darkness with a light too blue and sharp for human comfort. Watery reflections touched Bryce's broad red face. His mouth alone moved, and Flandry could read fear upon it. Wolves!

  But Bryce's dart gun slithered from under this cloak. Flandry eased steel knucks onto one hand. With the other, he gestured Bryce back. He, Flandry, must go first, pick out the precise enemy he wanted—in darkness, in rain, and all their faces nonhuman. Nor would uniforms help; the Ardazirho bore such a wild variety of dress.

  But... Flandry was trained. It had been worth a rifle, to have an excuse for entering local invader headquarters. Their garrison in Garth was not large: a few hundred, for a city of a quarter million. But modern heavy weapons redressed that, robotanks, repeating cannon, the flat announcement that any town where a human uprising actually succeeded would be missiled. (The glassy crater which had been Marsburg proved it.) The Garth garrison was there chiefly to man observation posts and anti-spacecraft defenses in the vicinity; but they also collected firearms, directed factories to produce for their army, prowled in search of any citizens with spirit left to fight. Therefore, Flandry told himself, their chief officer must have a fair amount of knowledge—and the chief officer spoke Anglic, and Flandry had gotten a good look at him while surrendering the rifle, and Flandry was trained to tell faces apart, even nonhuman faces—

  And now Clanmaster Temulak, as he had called himself, was going off duty, from headquarters to barracks. Bryce and others had been watching the Ardazirho for weeks. They had told Flandry that the invaders went on foot, in small armed parties, whenever practicable. Nobody knew quite why. Maybe they preferred the intimacy with odors and sounds which a vehicle denied; it was known they had better noses than man. Or perhaps they relished the challenge: more than once, humans had attacked such a group, been beaten off and hunted down and torn to pieces. Civilians had no chance against body armor, blast-weapons, and reflexes trained for combat.

  But I'm not a civilian, Flandry told himself, and Bryce has some rather special skills.

  The quarry passed by. Scattered flashbeam light etched the ruffled, muzzled heads against flowing dimness. There were five. Flandry identified Temulak, helmeted and corseleted, near the middle. He glided out of the alley, behind them.

  The Ardazirho whipped about. How keen were their ears? Flandry kept going. One red-furred alien hand dropped towards a holstered blaster. Flandry smashed his steel-knuckled fist at Temulak's face. The enemy bobbed his head, the knucks clanged off the helmet. And light metal sheathed his belly, no blow would have effect there. The blaster came out. Flandry chopped down his left palm, edge on, with savage precision. He thought he felt wristbones crack beneath it. Temulak's gun glattered to the pavement. The Ardazirho threw back his head and howled, ululating noise hurled into the rain. And HQ only half a kilometer away, barracks no further in the opposite direction—

  Flandry threw a karate kick to the jaw. The officer staggered back. But he was quick, twisting about to seize the man's ankle before it withdrew. They went down together. Temulak's right hand still hung useless, but his left snatched for Flandry's throat. The Terran glimpsed fingernails reinforced with sharp steel plectra. He threw up an arm to keep his larynx from being torn. Temulak howled again. Flandry chopped at the hairy neck. The Ardazirho ducked and sank teeth into Flandry's wrist. Anguish went like flame along the nerves. But now Temulak was crouched before him. Flandry slammed down a rabbit punch. Temulak slumped. Flandry got on his back and throttled him.

  Looking up, gasping, the man saw shadows leap and yell in the glow of the dropped flashlight. There had been no way to simply needle Temulak. He was wanted alive, and Flandry didn't know what anaesthetics might be fatal to an Ardazirho. But Bryce had only to kill the guards, as noiselessly as possible. His airgun spat cyanide darts, quick death for any oxygen breather. And his skilled aim sent those darts into exposed flesh, not uselessly breaking on armor. Two sprawled in the street. Another had somehow jumped for Bryce's throat. The hunter brought up one boot. It clanged on a breastplate, but sheer force sent the alien lurching backward. Bryce shot him. By then the last one had freed his blaster. It crashed and blazed through rain. Bryce had already dropped. The ion
bolt sizzled where he had been. Bryce fired, missed, rolled away from another blast, fired again and missed. Now howling could be heard down the street, as a pack of invaders rallied to come and help.

  Flandry reached across Temulak's gaunt body, picked up the Clanmaster's gun, and waited. He was nearly blind in this night. The other Ardazirho's blaster flamed once more. Flandry fired where it showed. The alien screamed, once, and thudded to the street. Scorched hair and meat smoked sickly in the wet air.

  "Out o' here!" gasped Bryce. He sprang erect. "They're comin'! An' they'll track us by scent—"

  "I came prepared for that," said Flandry. A brief hard grin peeled his teeth. He let Bryce pick up Temulak while he got a flat plastibottle from his tunic. He turned a pressure nozzle and sprayed a liter of gasoline around the area. "If their noses are any good for several minutes after this, I give up. Let's go."

  Bryce led the way, through the alley to the next street, down a block of horribly open paving, then hand-over-hand across a garden wall. No private human vehicles could move after dark without being shot at from the air, but it wasn't far to the underground hideout. In fact, too close, thought Flandry. But then, who on Vixen had any experience with such operations? Kit had looked up those friends in Garth who smuggled her out, and they had led Flandry straight to their bitter little organization. It expedited matters this time, yes, but suppose the Ardazirho had supplied a ringer? Or... it was only a matter of time before they started questioning humans in detail, under drugs and duress. Then you needed cells, changing passwords, widely scattered boltholes, or your underground was done for.

  Flandry stumbled through drenched flowerbeds. He helped Bryce carry Temulak down into the hurricane cellar: standard for every house in Garth. A tunnel had been dug from this one; its door, at least, was well concealed. Flandry and Bryce groped for several hundred meters to the other end. They emerged beneath a house whose address they should not have been permitted to know.

  Judith Hurst turned about with a small shriek when the cellar door opened. Then dim light picked out Bryce's heavy form, and Temulak still limp in the hunter's arms. Flandry came behind, shedding his cape with a relieved whistle. "Oh," gasped Judith. "You got him!"

  Bryce's eyes went around the circle of them. A dozen men stood with taut brown faces in the light of a single small fluoro. Their shadows fell monstrous in the corners and across the window shutters. Knives and forbidden guns gleamed at their belts. Kit was the only person seated, still slumped in the dull sadness of stimulol reaction.

  "Damn near didn't," grunted Bryce. "Couldn't have, without the captain here. Sir Dominic, I apologize for some things I'd been thinkin' lately 'bout Terra."

  "An' I." Judith Hurst trod forward, taking both the Navy man's hands. She was among the few women in the underground, and Flandry thought it a crime to risk such looks being shot up. She was tall, with long auburn hair and skin like cream; her eyes were sleepy brown in a full, pouting face; her figure strained at shorts and bolero. "I never thought I'd see you again," she said. "But you've come back with the first real success this war's had for us."

  "Two swallows do not make a drinking bout," warned Flandry. He gave her his courtliest bow. "Speaking of which, I could use something liquid, and cannot imagine a more ornamental cupbearer. But first, let's deal with friend Temulak. This way, isn't it?"

  As he passed Kit, her exhausted eyes turned up to him. Slow tears coursed down her face. "Oh, Dominic, you're alive," she whispered. "That makes everything else seem like nothin'." She rose to wobbly legs. He threw her a preoccupied smile and continued on past, his brain choked with technicalities.

  Given a proper biopsych lab, he could have learned how to get truth out of Temulak with drugs and electronics. But now he just didn't have enough data on the species. He would have to fall back on certain widely applicable, if not universal, rules of psychology.

  At his orders, an offside room in the cellar had been provided with a comfortable bed. He stripped Temulak and tied him down, firmly, but using soft bonds which wouldn't chafe. The prisoner began to stir. By the time Flandry was through and Temulak immobile, the gray alien eyes were open and the muzzle wrinkled back over white teeth. A growl rumbled in Temulak's throat.

  "Feeling better?" asked the man unctuously.

  "Not as well as I shall when we pull you down in the street." The Anglic was thickly accented, but fluent, and it bore a haughtiness like steel.

  "I shudder." Flandry kindled a cigarette. "Well, comrade, if you want to answer some questions now, it will save trouble all around. I presume, since you're alive, you've been blanked of your home sun's coordinates. But you retain clues." He blew a thoughtful smoke ring. "And, to be sure, there are the things you obviously do know, since your rank requires it. Oh, all sorts of things, dear heart, which my side is just dying to find out." He chuckled. "I don't mean that literally. Any dying will be done by you."

  Temulak stiffened. "If you think I would remain alive, at the price of betraying the orbekh—"

  "Nothing so clear-cut."

  The red fur bristled, but Temulak snarled: "Nor will pain in any degree compel me. And I do not believe you understand the psycho-physiology of my race well enough to undertake total reconditioning."

  "No," admitted Flandry, "not yet. However, I haven't time for reconditioning in any event, and torture is so strenuous... besides offering no guarantee that when you talk, you won't fib. No, no, my friend, you'll want to spill to me pretty soon. Whenever you've had enough, just call and I'll come hear you out."

  He nodded to Dr. Reineke. The physician wheeled forth the equipment he had abstracted from Garth General Hospital at Flandry's request. A blindfolding hood went over Temulak's eyes, sound-deadening wax filled his ears and plugged his nose, a machine supplied him with intravenous nourishment and another removed body wastes. They left him immobile and, except for the soft constant pressure of bonds and bed, sealed into a darkness like death. No sense impressions could reach him from outside. It was painless, it did no permanent harm, but the mind is not intended for such isolation. When there is nothing by which it may orient itself, it rapidly loses all knowledge of time; an hour seems like a day, and later like a week or a year. Space and material reality vanish. Hallucinations come, and the will begins to crumble. Most particularly is this true when the victim is among enemies, tensed to feel the whip or knife which his own ferocious culture would surely use.

  Flandry closed the door. "Keep a guard," he said. "When he begins to holler, let me know." He peeled off his tunic. "From whom can I beg something dry to wear?"

  Judith gave his torso a long look. "I thought all Terrans were flabby, Sir Dominic," she purred. "I was wrong about that too."

  His eyes raked her. "And you, my dear, make it abundantly plain that Vixenites are anything but," he leered.

  She took his arm. "What do you plan to do next?"

  "Scratch around. Observe. Whip this maquisard outfit into something efficient. There are so many stunts to teach you. To name just one, any time you've no other amusement, you can halt work at a war factory for half a day with an anonymous telecall warning that a time bomb's been planted and the staff had better get out. Then there's all the rest of your planet to organize. I don't know how many days I'll have, but there's enough work to fill a year of 'em." Flandry stretched luxuriously, "Right now, though, I want that drink I spoke of."

  "Here you are, sir." Bryce held out a flask.

  Judith flicked a scowl at him. "Is that white mule all you can offer the captain?" she cried. Her hair glowed along her back as she turned to smile again at Flandry. "I know you'll think I'm terribly forward, but I have two bottles o' real Bourgogne at my house. 'Tis only a few blocks from here, an' I know a safe way to go."

  Oh-oh! Flandry licked his mental chops. "Delighted," he said.

  "I'd invite the rest o' you," said Judith sweetly, "but 'tisn't enough to go aroun', an' Sir Dominic deserves it the most. Nothin's too good for him, that's what I think. Just nothin
' at all."

  "Agreed," said Flandry. He bowed good night and went out with her.

  Kit stared after them a moment. As he closed the door, he heard her burst into weeping.

  XI

  Three of Vixen's 22-hour rotation periods went by, and part of a fourth, before the message came that Temulak had broken. Flandry whistled. "It's about time! If they're all as tough as that—"

  Judith clung to him. "Do you have to go right now, darlin'?" she murmured. "You've been away so much... out prowlin', spyin', an' the streets still full o' packs huntin' for whoever attacked that squad—I'm terrified for you."

  Her look was more inviting than anxious. Flandry kissed her absent-mindedly. "We're patriots and all that sort of rot," he said. "I could not love you so much, dear, et cetera. Now do let go." He was out the door before she could speak further.

  The way between her house and the underground's went mostly from garden to garden, but there was a stretch of public thoroughfare. Flandry put hands in pockets and sauntered along under rustling feather palms as if he had neither cares nor haste. The other humans about, afoot or in groundcars, were subdued, the pinch of hunger and shabbiness already upon them. Once a party of Ardazirho whirred past on motor unicycles; their sharp red muzzles clove the air like prows, and they left a wake of frightened silence behind them. The winter sun burned low to northwest, big and dazzling white in a pale sky, among hurried stormclouds. When Flandry let himself into the cellar, only Emil Bryce and Kit Kittredge were there. The hunter lounged on guard. From the closed door behind him came howling and sobbing. "He babbled he'd talk," said Bryce. "But can you trust what he says?"