Paul of Dune hod-1

by Brian Herbert

  The fogtrees, more than just an unusual natural growth, were considered an Elaccan art form. Artists, selected from across the Imperium for their telepathic abilities, could nurture the trees as saplings, using a focused mental vision to guide the branches into specific forms, sculpting them into fantastic shapes.

  Vidal had built his palace stronghold within a prime-cluster of large fogtrees. The high branches had been groomed and shaped into a magnificent defensible residence ten meters above the ground. Seven large trunks stood in a circle, reaching up to the labyrinth of boughs that formed a warren of separated rooms, woven chambers for the Elaccan Duke and his household.

  Vidal’s fogtree fortress was more than a kilometer from his massed military ships, the barracks and tents of rebel soldiers, and all the defensive weapons he had gathered. In the dense morning mist the thin interwoven branches looked like skeletal claws tangled in cotton. As Leto peered up at the eerie sight, Gurney cautioned him. “Vidal’s real guards would not stand around gawking like tourists.”

  Leto shuffled along beside his companion, drawing no attention to himself. The two men wore uniforms stripped from the bodies of Elaccan rebels that had been killed while attempting to escape from the Archduke’s palace. It had taken only half a day for the palace tailors to launder and resize the enemy uniforms to fit Leto and Gurney, while document specialists altered the soldiers’ IDs.

  The key to their infiltration was a detailed topographical projection that allowed Leto and Gurney to traverse the supposedly impenetrable wilderness near Vidal’s fogtree stronghold. Because Archduke Armand believed in natural science as much as commerce, he had long ago surveyed and mapped all the terrain on Ecaz, particularly the fertile cloud-forests and valleys of the Elaccan continent. With these high-resolution terrain maps, the two men had been able to slip through the densest groves and rocky valleys, weaving through difficult forest canyons, using byways that even Prad Vidal likely didn’t know. They crossed an enormous fallen log over a narrow gorge to reach the fogtree fortress.

  It was shortly before daybreak with a high moon silvering the fog. Twenty guards patrolled the outer perimeter in pairs.

  When they neared the prime-cluster of trees, Leto and Gurney walked together, alert, sidearms ready, posing as another two guards on patrol. Preoccupied with their apparent importance, they walked right past other pairs of gruff guards.

  They circled the ring of seven trees, going about their business. While Gurney served as lookout, Leto quickly knelt beside one trunk, reached into his small pack, and withdrew a silver hemispherical disk from the bottom of which extended a pair of sharp prongs. He slapped the disk against the fogtree and worked the prongs into the bark. The green ready light winked on.

  “All right, Gurney — let’s move.” Leto planted one of the silver blisters on the next trunk as well, followed by the next, circling the perimeter until all seven had been rigged.

  By now, Gurney had mentally tracked the patterns of the other guards. “Three more minutes, my Lord, and they should be at their widest dispersal.”

  The two intruders waited, and the mist seemed to thicken. Leto held the activator in his hand, and when Gurney nodded, he pressed the button.

  The high-capacitance dischargers made almost no sound as they released a powerful static pulse into the tree trunks. The giant fogtree structures, sensitive enough to be guided by faint telepathy, were utterly vulnerable to such an intense burst. The willowy nested limbs twitched like the legs of a dying insect, then drew together to form the bars of a cage.

  “Like shigawire bindings,” Gurney chuckled. “The more you struggle, the tighter they pull.”

  The interlaced walls of the fogtree fortress now turned the separate rooms into prison cells. Though the Elaccan trees responded to any disturbance by coiling and clenching, they were not flimsy by any means. Fibers ran through their branches like plasteel cables. As the smaller rooms compressed, some of the sleeping people were crushed; a few could be heard gasping and crying out as they slowly suffocated.

  Prad Vidal and his family, though, were very much alive. The Elaccan leader shouted from within his bedchamber, wrapping his hands around two of the bowed-over branches and pushing his face to a small opening. “This is an assassination attempt!”

  Below, the guards ran about, trying to pinpoint the source of the attack.

  Armand Ecaz had given Leto and Gurney specialty equipment used by Ecazi jungle workers. Strapping on needle-sharp claw gloves and sticky toepads, they climbed like beetles, slipping upward and unseen into the thickening mist. They had to be swift now, and bold.

  Vidal spotted the two men climbing, saw their Elaccan uniforms, and thrust his hand through the opening in the clenched branches. “Free me from this! Do you have cutters?” Dangling from the trunk by their claws, Leto and Gurney halted. Without answering the rebellious leader, Leto removed a diamond-edged circular saw designed to slice through difficult branches. When Vidal saw it, he exclaimed, “Good, hurry!”

  Gurney scrambled up, but Leto gave him a quick signal. “This is my responsibility.”

  When Leto started the whirling branch-cutter blade, the diamond teeth were enhanced by the glow of a hot laser field. The Elaccan Duke stretched out his grasping hand. It was clear he did not recognize either Leto or Gurney in their Elaccan uniforms. “Quickly! The imposter Archduke must be behind this.”

  “I know the Archduke very well,” Leto intoned.

  Watching Vidal desperately extending his arm, Leto could not drive away horrific images of his wedding day. He thought of his friend Armand, crippled for life, his arm severed. And dead Rivvy Dinari, the fat Swordmaster killed as he shielded his master with his own bulk. And Ilesa, sweet, innocent Ilesa, butchered during what should have been her happiest moment. The other dozen people dead, many more injured.

  Any man who could order such a thing was a monster, an animal.

  “Archduke Armand Ecaz was my friend,” he shouted. “His daughter would have been my wife, but she is dead now.” Leto had not yet loved her, but he could have. And that made all the difference.

  Vidal gasped as he saw the blade getting closer. Suddenly realizing who faced him, he sucked in great astonished breaths and recoiled into the cramped room.

  The diamond blade swept downward through the intertwined branches. Leto barely felt any resistance at all.

  Despite his fury, grief, and horror, there were barriers an Atreides would not cross. Duke Leto descended from a long line of proud noblemen. He used the cutter to slice through the fogtree branches, carving an entrance for himself and Gurney. They pushed forward side by side, Leto holding the still-spinning saw.

  Trapped inside his chamber, Vidal was unable to find the breath even to scream.

  Leto remembered the threat to his household, to his son and heir Paul. The Grummans were behind the outrageous actions, but the Elaccan Duke had plotted the actual event and planted the hexagonal cutter discs in the terra-cotta pots. The wedding bloodbath had been this man’s responsibility. He had thrust himself into this War of Assassins.

  But Leto refused to follow his enemy over this particular moral precipice. Out of revenge, he could have cut off Vidal’s arm, could have tortured him. But that was not the course of honor. Abiding by the rules of civilization was not a weakness. The forms must be obeyed. There were necessities, wars to end, lives to save.

  “By the laws of the Great Convention, the established rules of conflict among the Landsraad,” Leto intoned, “I hereby execute you in the name of peace.” Vidal writhed, tried to fight back, but Leto continued, “Thus, I end this feud on Ecaz.”

  He did what had to be done, without joy, without satisfaction. He pressed the blade release, and the flying cutter shot forward. With a meaty smack, the blade sliced through Vidal’s neck, decapitating him cleanly.

  Gurney said, “Let’s hope those soldiers below will follow the rules of kanly, even if their master did not.”

  Now the two men stripped off their
Elaccan uniforms to proudly display the red hawk crest of House Atreides. Leto also wore an armband given him by Archduke Armand himself.

  In the turmoil below, the guards rushed about, still expecting a frontal attack. Some climbed the fogtrees, using crude knives to slash their way into the barred rooms where victims screamed the loudest.

  Gurney wrestled with the headless body of Vidal and shoved it through the wall opening. As soon as it fell to the ground, several guards screamed in high-pitched, fearful voices.

  “I am Duke Leto Atreides!” The mist seemed to make his shout from inside the chamber even louder. He lifted up Vidal’s head by the hair like a trophy. “By the rules of the Great Convention, I have eliminated an enemy to Ecaz, a man declared a rebel and a traitor by your rightful Archduke. We have targeted only the man responsible — by the rules!

  “If you throw down your arms and cease fighting, none of you will be held accountable. None of you will face trial. If you attempt to resist the commands of your lawful Archduke, we will annihilate you with the full military might of House Ecaz and House Atreides.” As he spoke, the mist began to clear.

  Leto thrust the severed head forward for all to see in the dawn light. Down below, the pale, upturned faces of the Elaccan guards were wide-eyed, their mouths agape in astonishment. With a muttered epithet, Leto hurled Vidal’s head down among them. It tumbled in the air, then struck the ground with a sickening sound. The guards jumped away.

  “Duke Prad Vidal conspired against your Archduke and against House Atreides, aiding the true enemy of Ecaz — Viscount Hundro Moritani. They murdered Ilesa Ecaz at the bridal altar. Vidal was responsible.”

  The soldiers seemed uncertain, muttering. Gurney finally bellowed, “Are you fools? You know who your enemy is. The Archduke needs you and your sword arms to fight House Moritani. Whom would you rather kill — your brothers, or Grummans?”

  13

  Once we decide to fight, we face another question: Do we fight and retreat, or fight and press forward?

  —THUFIR HAWAT, Weapons Master of House Atreides

  By late afternoon, the celebrations of the Caladan primitives had died down. The smoky fire had burned low, and the roasted animal carcass was picked to the bone.

  Paul could not relax, though. Hyperaware of his surroundings, he attuned his senses to the hum of normal existence in the jungle, the familiar sounds, the movement of leaves and insects. Now, as he and Duncan sat planning what to do next, Paul detected a subtle change around him, a faint alteration in the forest’s rhythm. His brow furrowed.

  The primitives sensed the same thing and instantly reacted. The headwoman grabbed her polished club and shouted a high-pitched command.

  Duncan rose into an armed defensive position. “Paul, activate your body shield. Now!”

  As the faint hum of the protective barrier dulled the subtle jungle sounds, Paul drew his own dagger. He summoned to mind the numerous close-in knife-fighting techniques in which Thufir, Gurney, and Duncan had mercilessly drilled him. He had never killed a man, but he had always known it was only a matter of time, unless someone killed him first. He prepared to fight.

  He knew that more of the assassin-trackers had found them.

  A projectile launched into the trees around the clearing made an unimpressive, hollow thump, followed by the gasp of outrushing gases and a distinct snick. Paul heard the two stages, separated by only a fraction of a second, and knew exactly what sort of weapon it was: The first was a kinetic dispersal unit, pushing out a thick fuel-air vapor to fill the largest possible volume; the second was a charge to ignite an incendiary cloud.

  Orange flames rolled through the air like a Caladan hurricane, stripping towering ferns and leathery trees to the bare bones of branches in an instant. The fuel vapor was consumed swiftly, and Paul’s body shield protected him from the brief but devastating thermal shock wave, but the flashfire was enough to mow down most of the unprotected primitives, leaving them charred and flattened. The merest breath of the focused heat was enough to burn lungs to ash. Some survivors gasped, clutching their chests and throats, trying to inhale, but only smoke came from their mouths.

  Most of the beautiful tapestries woven by the Sisters in Isolation had been crisped in the thermal bombardment, smoking as they curled. One of the primitives, her skin blackened, had wrapped herself in a tapestry to smother the fire.

  Three dark-uniformed men appeared riding a suspensor platform above the canopy, hunting for their quarry. No longer stealthy killers, the assassins screeched as they fired projectiles from their platform. “For House Moritani!” They shot at Paul and Duncan, whose shields deflected the projectiles. At the moment, the assassins didn’t seem to care about any specific quarry.

  Those primitives not killed by the incendiary bomb had begun to tally, grabbing weapons. Unshielded, they ran toward the three attackers — and were gunned down, their bodies ripped apart by projectiles.

  Paul was not some pampered princeling who needed to be guarded every moment. He noted a flicker of indecision on Duncan’s face, which Paul easily interpreted. The Swordmaster was torn between two methods of keeping the young man safe — fight or escape. Paul made the choice for him. Only three assassins remained. “We’ve got to fight, Duncan. No more running. We’re safer if we stop them.”

  With a bitter quirk of a smile, he said, “As you command, young Master.”

  Shouting to each other in Atreides battle-language, the pair raced forward. Then, with a sword thrust so ferocious it went through the torso and out the back, Duncan dispatched the assassin who had called out in support of his Viscount.

  Paul had no time to admire the kill because a second assassin tossed aside his depleted projectile weapon and retrieved a hooked dagger reminiscent of a fisherman’s gutting knife. Facing him, Paul stood in the correct stance, holding his own dagger and turning his shield to meet the hooked blade.

  The killer wore a baggy, flexible hooded suit that encased his entire body. When Paul slashed with the dagger, he easily cut through the oily gray cloth. This wasn’t body armor, but a thermal suit. The three assassin-trackers must have expected to wade into an inferno. They probably had more incendiary bombs in their arsenal on the hovering platform.

  Paul parried the barbed knife with his own, turned about, and thrust in, hoping to score a second slash, but the assassin fought with greater verve now that he had realized that this was no helpless boy.

  With his entire focus on the combat at hand, Paul couldn’t watch Duncan. The universe had collapsed to nothing more than himself and his opponent. He felt no reluctance about killing this enemy. The massacre and the subsequent assassination attempts had left no room for doubt, and he would not hesitate if the opportunity presented itself. He had trained well for this.

  Seeing Paul struggling, Duncan shoved his own adversary aside by using his shield to inflict a blow that sent the foe staggering. He spun and hamstrung Paul’s rival with a single slash of the notched sword. The man let out a brief gasp as he fell. Duncan flattened him with a kick and killed him with a thrust of the point, before turning to confront the remaining assassin.

  These three hunters were ill prepared for a concerted resistance. Expecting the incendiary bomb to do their work for them, they had come here merely to recover bodies.

  Seeing he was alone, the remaining killer produced a second dagger and leaped toward Duncan with a knife in each hand, yelling. In a blur of steel, Duncan thrust the Old Duke’s blade through the man’s abdomen. The assassin didn’t even try to evade the sword.

  Thinking the fight was over, Paul resheathed his own dagger.

  But the Moritani assassin, whether pumped up on a stimulant or on adrenaline and bloodlust, looked down at the long blade piercing his stomach — and kept coming, pressing himself forward as if the sword didn’t exist. He raised his two daggers as if they were lead weights and worked his way in through Duncan’s shield.

  Duncan struggled with his trapped weapon, twisting to withdraw it,
but the man was too close. The sword was caught in the man’s rib cage, and Duncan wrenched the hilt in a desperate gesture. The shield generator flickered off.

  Paul drew his dagger again, bounded toward Duncan.

  The impaled assassin grimaced and lurched forward along the sword blade, bending it. Paul couldn’t get there fast enough.

  But like an unintelligible banshee, the silver-haired headwoman rose up behind the assassin and swung her fang-inset club. The blow against the back of the man’s skull sounded like the splitting of an overripe paradan melon.

  ***

  DUNCAN AND PAUL used their field medical packs to help the surviving primitives, but even so, nearly three-quarters of the tribe had been wiped out by the flaming shock wave and projectile fire.

  Paul looked around, sickened and unutterably exhausted. “If we were the targets, Duncan, why did they need to kill so many of these people?”

  “Their attack shows desperation. I would speculate that these three were the last of those hunting us, but we can’t be certain of that.”

  “So we just keep hiding?”

  “The best alternative, I’d say.”

  Like the previous group, the assassins’ bodies carried no obvious identification. Paul’s father, as well as Gurney and Archduke Armand, would soon be taking their military forces to Grumman for a full-scale attack — while he and Duncan were skulking about in the jungle.

  When Paul spoke next, he used the powers of command that his father had taught him as Duke and his mother had shown him through Bene Gesserit exercises. “Duncan, we will return to Castle Caladan. Hiding hasn’t kept me any safer than if I’d remained with my father. I am the heir of House Atreides, and we need to be part of this. I will not turn my back in a fight… or a war.”