For a moment Owen thought he must have come to the wrong planet. Nowhere on the pastoral world of Virimonde had ever looked like this. But of course it did, now. Just as he'd always known it would, deep down.
"Damn," said Hazel quietly. "I'm sorry, Owen."
"I think the trees were over there," said Owen. He tried to point, but his arm seemed very heavy. "Right over there. But they're gone now. It's all gone. Everything. Nothing to show they or we were ever here. They even took my past away from me. And it's all my fault."
"How the hell do you work that out?" said Hazel.
"I was Lord of this world. This planet and everyone on it were given to me, and put under my protection. But I went away and left them defenseless when the Empire's wolves came. I wasn't here when they needed me."
"Now, that is bullshit," said Hazel. "They threw you out! Your own security people turned against you. You were outlawed. And you can be damned sure there wasn't a man or a woman here who wouldn't have cheerfully sold you out in a moment for the price on your head. Your cousin David was Lord here after you, and he couldn't even save himself when the Empire forces came. Hell, he was one of them, and they killed him anyway."
"You're right," said Owen. "But it doesn't help. I should have been here."
"Then you'd be dead too. Is that what you want?"
"Sometimes. The old me is dead. I lost him somewhere along the long rebel trail that led to Lionstone's Court. I miss him. I liked him a lot better than the killing machine I've become."
"Don't start that again. Change isn't death."
"It was for Virimonde. This used to be a food planet. The crops and livestock we raised here fed people all across the Empire. Who'll feed them now? Look at it, Hazel. They killed this world."
"You could start over. Pump enough microorganisms into the soil, plant the right seeds, and this world could bloom again. In time."
"Maybe. But it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be the world I knew."
Hazel shook her head exasperatedly. "It always comes back to you, doesn't it, Deathstalker? Typical aristo, seeing everything in terms of himself. Virimonde isn't the only world to get trashed by the Empress's whims. That's the kind of thing we fought the rebellion over. Remember?"
Owen tried to smile for her. "I know. I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I don't really have the right, I suppose. My people lost everything. But I can at least avenge them. Valentine will pay for what he did here. I'll see him die, and die hard, and to hell with the consequences."
Hazel clapped him hard on the shoulder. "That's more like it. When all else fails, there's always revenge."
"You're a woman of simple pleasures. Hazel."
"That's what you think, stud." She grinned at Owen, and he had to grin back.
They stood together for a while, sharing the moment. The world was very quiet, not even a murmur of breeze to disturb the dead silence. Owen and Hazel looked slowly around them, and nothing looked back. Hazel frowned suddenly.
"What?" said Owen.
"I hate to sound morbid… but shouldn't there be a hell of a lot of bodies lying around? Or bits of bodies, or… something? All I can see is miles and miles of mud."
"You've got a point," said Owen slowly. "It is a bit… tidy, isn't it? I wasn't aware anyone had sent in a clean-up crew yet. Hang on a minute." He accessed his AI. "Oz, where are all the bodies?"
"Damned if I know, Owen. According to the records, there was a major battle right here, between the incumbent peasants and the invading forces."
"Scan the area, Oz. Find me some bodies."
"Scanning. Now, that is interesting. I'm picking up some decayed animal remains mixed in with the mud, but absolutely no trace anywhere of human remains, in any form. I have no explanation for this."
"So what the hell happened to the bodies? Could Shub have paid a visit here, looking for raw materials for their Ghost Warriors?"
"Unlikely," said the AI. "Even allowing for the current scattered state of the Imperial Fleet, such a visit would hardly have gone unreported. And you can forget about a clean-up crew. There isn't enough manpower available to deal with the needs of the living right now, never mind the dead. Unless… Valentine had them removed."
"Why would he do a thing like that?"
"To show he's sorry, and make amends?"
Hazel cut in, demanding to know what Oz was saying. Owen told her, and she snorted dismissively. "You can forget that. Valentine never apologized for anything in his life."
"But I'll bet he does know what happened," said Owen. "It's the kind of thing he'd want to know. So I guess we'll just have to slog our way through the mud to my old Standing, haul him out by the scruff of the neck, and ask him."
"Sounds like a plan to me," said Hazel. "Is it okay if I stick my gun in his ear while you question him?"
"Be my guest."
Owen started out across the sea of churned mud in the direction he thought his old Standing lay. The distance was concealed behind a gray haze, grimly enigmatic. According to Oz, his old home was just over two miles away, so he and Hazel were just out of range of the castle's sensors. Unless Valentine had souped them up too. Owen smiled humorlessly. It didn't matter a damn if Valentine had. Let him know his death was coming. There might only be the two of them, against an unknown number of enemies, but Owen didn't care. Even an army couldn't stop him now. The thought pulled him up short, and he scowled. More and more these days he found himself thinking things that scared him. He wondered what he was becoming. The changes the Madness Maze had worked in him seemed to be accelerating, if anything. At first he'd just been a man with an edge, and then a man with unfamiliar esp abilities, but he hadn't been merely human in a long time. He was leaving his humanity behind, and he knew it, and it scared him. Which was perhaps why he clung so desperately to his old, human, beliefs in honor and justice.
He sighed tiredly. He'd come a long way from the simple minor historian he'd been the last time he was here. But he'd lost everything when he was outlawed, and had no choice but to become the warrior his Clan had always wanted. Become what he despised most, or die. He'd achieved a great deal, righted wrongs and meted out justice high and low, but at the end of the day there was just so much blood on his hands… Most of it from people who deserved to die, but not all. For every clear villain who'd died at his hand, there'd been a hundred men who were just soldiers following orders, doing what they thought was right. Protecting a corrupt Empire because all the other alternatives seemed worse. Brave fighters who'd died because they were unfortunate enough to stand between Owen Deathstalker and his destiny. So many faceless dead. He dreamed of them sometimes.
There was a child he'd crippled and killed in the grimy back streets of Mistport. It had been an accident. And she had been trying to kill him at the time. But none of that mattered. He'd struck out blindly, in the rage of battle, and the result was a young girl lying in the blood-spattered snow. He'd never forgiven himself for that, and never would. If there was any purpose to the warrior he'd become, it was to put an end to a system that produced children like that. And perhaps to protect people like that from people like him.
That was what it meant to be a Deathstalker.
He glanced across at Hazel, striding determinedly beside him. Her long, ratty red hair fell down around a sharp and pointed face. Not conventionally pretty perhaps, but then Hazel d'Ark didn't believe in being conventional in anything if she could help it. Owen thought she was beautiful, but then, he was biased. He loved her, quietly, secretly. She wasn't at all the kind of woman he'd thought he'd fall in love with, and certainly not the kind of woman he was supposed to marry, to continue the centuries-old Deathstalker line, but he loved her nonetheless. Despite all the reasons, or maybe even because of them. Hazel was bright and funny, honest when it suited her, and the bravest woman he'd ever known. Not to mention hell on wheels with any weapon you could name. He admired her immensely, but was careful to keep it to himself. She'd only take advantage. She was confident when he w
as not, cautious when he forgot to be, and she never forgot what they were fighting for. And he knew that if he ever mentioned the word love, she'd leave him flat. Hazel had made it clear, on more than one occasion, that she didn't believe in things like love. They tied you down, made you vulnerable, and led to subjects like commitment and trust and openness, none of which had any place in Hazel's life. So he accepted what warmth and friendship she offered on her own terms, and hoped. They were together, and if that was all he could have, it was more than he'd ever had before.
"Why are we walking?" said Hazel suddenly. "I made sure they loaded gravity sleds on board before we left."
"Sleds would show up on the Standing's scanners," Owen said patiently. "We, on the other hand, have proved invisible to most scanners ever since we passed through the Maze. Just another useful side effect that no one understands. So we walk, and hopefully slip through Valentine's defenses unnoticed."
"Hate walking," said Hazel, scowling. "Makes my back ache. If God had meant us to walk, he wouldn't have given us antigrav."
"Admire the scenery," suggested Owen.
"Ha bloody ha. Last time I walked through anything like this, all the field toilets had failed at once."
"Walking is supposed to be very good for you."
"So is eating sensibly and abstinence, and I hate them too. I'm warning you right now, Deathstalker: I'd better get to kill a hell of a lot of people at your Standing, or there's going to be trouble."
"Oh, I think I can guarantee that," said Owen. "The one thing you can be sure of is that we have absolutely no friends at all at the Deathstalker Standing."
The Deathstalker Standing was a great stone castle set on top of a hill, its pale gray stone marked here and there by damage and burns from energy weapons from when the Empire had laid seige to the castle to capture its then Lord, David Deathstalker. Now it suffered the occupation of Lord Valentine Wolfe and his cronies. The Wolfe had come to Virimonde for his own purposes, and the others had followed because they had no choice. He was their only hope of unseating the rebellion and putting them back in power again. Not for them the lesser glories of trade and influence. They wanted, needed, to be lords and masters.
They were also there because he held their lives in the palm of his hand, though they tried not to think about that unless they were forced to. But nothing else could have persuaded such aristocratic movers and shakers to ally themselves so closely with the notorious Valentine Wolfe. He was mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but he had something, a weapon of such potential power that they couldn't risk losing it. So they allied themselves with the despised Wolfe and bet their lives they could outmaneuver him at some future point. Which was a sign of how desperate they were.
Valentine sat at his ease in the Lord's chair in the great dining hall of what had been the Deathstalker's Standing, and watched tolerantly as his cronies wrecked the place. They were partly drunk, from too many bottles of wine with a good dinner, and now they were laughing as they threw food around and overturned the furniture. The Lord Silvestri was throwing his knives at the Family portraits hanging on the walls, showing Deathstalkers down the ages. He was aiming for the eyes, and hitting them more often than not. The Lord Romanov had pulled down a precious tapestry and was wearing it like a shawl as he drank brandy straight from the bottle. The Lord Kartakis was stamping back and forth on top of the table, fondly believing he was dancing to the ribald song he was singing defiantly off key. Valentine smiled on them as errant children and allowed them their fun. There wasn't much for them to do, and they had been cooped up in the castle for a long time. And Valentine did so like to see the Deathstalker's precious things being violated, as he would someday destroy the man himself.
Valentine Wolfe sat in a chair far too large for him, one long leg slung over an arm of the chair, his other foot up on the table. Dressed as always all in black, his pale white face surrounded by long dark ringlets of oiled and scented hair, his mouth a scarlet slash, and his eyes heavy with mascara, he looked the very picture of the utter villain he strove to be. And the drugs, the glorious drugs, ran riot in his system as they always had. It had been truly said of Valentine that he'd never met a chemical he didn't like, and if you could smoke it, swallow it, inject it, or stick it where the sun doesn't shine, Valentine was right there at the front of the line, ready to give it a try. He saw his chemically enhanced mind as an ongoing work of art, and was constantly striving to perfect it. The ultimate high was still out there somewhere, and Valentine pursued it tirelessly.
To that end he'd taken the rare and immediately addictive esper drug, even though he knew it killed a small but significant percentage of those who took it. Valentine had survived, of course. Probably because you couldn't affect his radically transmuted body chemistry with anything less than fuming nitric acid. The drug had given him minor telepathic powers, along with complete control of his autonomic nervous system, and his thoughts moved along strange and unfamiliar tracks. He threw one drug on top of another, maintaining a complex balance through sheer effort of will. Valentine thought of himself as the first in a new breed of Humanity, like the Hadenmen—an alchemical step forward, or perhaps sideways, on the evolutionary ladder.
He watched Carlos Silvestri throw his knives again and again, tearing the eyes out of great men just because he could, to prove to everyone that he wasn't afraid of the mighty Owen Deathstalker. Silvestri was a tall, thin man, all long limbs and sudden angles. He dressed in shades of red, the traditional color of his Clan. It didn't suit him. His face was round and puffy, as though it hadn't yet decided what it wanted to be when it grew up, though the man had to be at least forty. He shaved his head bald and plucked his other hairs. He was good with a knife and better with a sword. He would have made a great swordsman and duelist if only he'd had the courage of his convictions. But the Silvestri had always been a very cautious man who preferred to watch from the sidelines and work through underlings, and never, ever, get his hands dirty himself. He'd never forgiven Finlay Campbell for the assassination of his good friend William St. John, and had spent much time and money on plans to have the Campbell killed, but none of them had succeeded. Now with Finlay a man of power and substance once again, and the Silvestri's powers drastically reduced by Random's deal and the emergence of Blue Block, Carlos Silvestri had been forced to turn to Valentine as his only possible savior. And if that had turned out very differently from what he'd intended, it just put a little more emphasis into the throw of his knives.
Valentine smiled and turned his attention to Pieter Romanov, that fat and ruddy man wrapped in a torn masterpiece. Pieter believed a man should be recognized by the breadth and achievement of his appetites, and indulged each sense till they groaned under the weight of his will. There was in him a hunger that would not be satisfied, no matter how he tried. His people obeyed his every whim, or he had them killed and replaced with those who would. Pieter was an aristocrat's aristocrat, and he had taken Random's deal hard. Not for him the lesser power and rewards of mere business. So he went looking for an ally, a great man of power and influence, who would put things back the way they once were, the way they should be. A man of vision and destiny. Unfortunately, all he could find was Valentine. But the Wolfe at least had a plan, which was more than most, and Pieter couldn't help but admire a man whose taste for indulgence actually surpassed his. So Pieter and Valentine had made a pact, and if the Romanov found the source of their power base to be somewhat distressing, there was always another meal and another bottle from the Deathstalker's excellent wine cellar to help distract him.
And finally there was Athos Kartakis. A short and swarthy man with a flashing smile and a temperament that could change in a moment from brightest day to darkest night. He collected insults and saw dueling as a sport. He never accepted first blood, and always went for the kill. People tended to be very careful what they said around the young Lord Kartakis. His Clan had never been more than a fairly minor House, and generations had been spending money faster than
it came in. Kartakis had inherited many debts, and wasted no time in adding many of his own. Creditors preferred to forget their bills rather than risk fighting a duel over them, but even so, everyone knew the true state of affairs, and Kartakis knew they knew. The deal Blue Block had brokered with Random had been the last straw. Take away his lordship, and Kartakis had nothing left. He'd never survive as a businessman. If only because he'd made so many enemies in trade. And so he had pawned what was left of his soul with Valentine.
Valentine watched his people at their play, and thought pleasantly on the day he wouldn't need their support anymore and could have them all killed in slow and interesting ways. He'd just begun to number the ways and select his very favorite when the viewscreen on the wall chimed politely. Valentine raised a painted eyebrow. He'd given the servants to understand that he wasn't to be interrupted at his dinner for anything less than a major emergency, and after he'd had that footman flayed from the waist down, they'd learned to follow his instructions to the letter. So he accepted the call and directed his cronies to hush themselves. The screen cleared to show that sinister butterball of a man, the ex-Lord Gregor Shreck. The Shreck sat behind an ugly but functional wooden table, covered with papers and reports. He nodded curtly to Valentine, the nearest he ever got to polite behavior, and plunged right in without bothering with any more amenities:
"You're in trouble, Wolfe. Parliament's sent a force to investigate what you're up to on Virimonde."
"Really?" said Valentine, unperturbed as always. "And just how large an army are they sending?"
"It's worse than an army. They've sent Deathstalker and d'Ark."
The three aristocrats looked quickly at one another and began to babble unhappily. Valentine waved for them to be quiet, and they were. The Wolfe smiled slowly at the Shreck's image on the viewscreen, his great scarlet smile spreading across his deathlike face. "Dear Owen. I have so been looking forward to meeting him. I can't wait to see what he thinks of what I've done with his old place. When can I expect the illustrious hero and his warlike companion?"
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