The Rebel of Rhada

by Robert Cham Gilman

  By midday the entire city was in the grip of panic. An attempt was made by a group of Vegans and native militia to defend the approaches to the city and the gates. The name of Tallan the Sarissan swept from tongue to tongue, and officers of the citadel guard rode breakneck to the scene of the fighting with royal commands from the Queen-Empress Mariana to cease hostilities at once.

  Frightened and befuddled, the defenders listened to conflicting orders, emerged from their positions, and were swiftly and mercilessly cut down by squadrons of Sarissans.

  The Nyori, responding to ancient habits, fled indoors and shuttered their houses.

  The Imperial troops waited for further orders from the Queen-Empress.

  There were none.

  A special commando of Sarissans, led by the warleader Tallan, had occupied the citadel, slaughtered the unsuspecting Vegans of the guard, and had taken the hereditary throne of the Vykan Galactons.

  Mariana was a prisoner.

  By nightfall, Nyor and the Empire were in the hands of the rebellion.

  Tallan said, “So we meet at last, Queen.”

  Mariana, her face gray with strain and shock, stood quite still listening to the unfamiliar sounds about her. In the next room Lady Constans was weeping. In the gallery beyond the doorway to the Galacton’s bedchamber, she could hear the clash of harness and weapons and the loud voices of warmen. There were laughter and coarse jokes in many tongues. From somewhere below came the noise of glassware breaking and, from the city, a smell of burning. The taste and stench and sound of defeat-- a defeat so swift and treacherous that she could still scarcely credit what had happened.

  She looked bleakly at the towering figure of the cyborg. The creature’s presence sent a sick shiver through her body. She was filled with anger, dismay, and revulsion as she thought: I subsidized this thing. I created this madness.

  She gathered herself and stood proudly. She still wore the Imperial scarlet, and she was a Vykan queen. “Why have you done this thing?” she demanded.

  The cyborg’s eyes were cold, inhuman. “At least you don’t tax me with treachery,” Tallan said. “That would have been ironic, indeed.”

  “I tax you with nothing, cyb,” Mariana spat out the epithet. “Irony is a human prerogative.”

  The cyborg stood with uncanny stillness. It seemed to Mariana that not a muscle in that great frame moved. “Kelber programmed me well, after all,” he said. “In four thousand years men have still not learned. But that does not matter. Your city is my city now. And wasn’t it great Glamiss who said: ‘Who rules Nyor rules the stars?’ “

  Mariana felt the stomach-wrenching fury of a royal rage. “You took my city because we thought you came in my service, cyb. But can you hold it?” She could hear her voice rising, growing shrill with the force of her disgust and bitterness. “Will the star kings follow a cyborg?”

  Again that inhuman stillness. The Sarissan did not move. Great Spirit, Mariana thought wildly, the thing does not even breathe. Behind the expressionless eyes tiny sparks seemed to be moving, gleaming and fading like witchfires. No, she thought, surely I imagine that. It is alive, after all. Truly alive. It could be killed.

  “No,” Tallan said impassively, “the star kings would not follow a cyborg. I should have to meet each one in combat and kill him. Your human ways would demand it. That is why I have kept it from them.” He turned slowly to regard the closed door--as though he could see through the wood, Mariana thought, shuddering. “Only three humans knew what I am, Queen. Kelber, Landro--and you.”

  Mariana’s hand went to her throat involuntarily. “Kelber is dead.”

  “And Landro.”

  It was like a blow. Mariana felt a deep and chilling sense of loss. Her eyes filled with tears. It shocked her to know that it mattered so. That silly, sweet-scented man-- that buffoon and tool of women. Landro, dead.

  Then the import of what the cyborg was saying reached her, and she was truly afraid.

  “There’s no need,” she said faintly. “I can help you--”

  The cyborg said, “No.”

  She thought: It comes now, then, that death I have brought to others--so many others.

  For a moment she thought she might fall, beg. But it would do no good. The thing was not a man.

  Her pride returned. Vyks could be greedy and treacherous, vain and cruel, like all men. But they were proud-- and royal Vyks proudest of all.

  The cyborg stood before her like a pillar of doom. He seemed to block out the light.

  A great crack of thunder rattled the mullioned windows. It rolled across the citadel like a wave out of the sky.

  Tallan turned.

  Beyond the gallery Mariana could hear cries of warning and shouted commands.

  Tallan left her and stepped to the door. A Sarissan war-man stood saluting. Others, in the gallery, were running by.

  “Starship, Warleader. The Rhad.”

  Mariana felt a great, leaping hope. A reprieve. A day, an hour, anything. The Rebel and his troops had returned. “How many?” Tallan asked. “One ship, Warleader.”

  Mariana sagged hopelessly. One ship. The Rebel had come to join the rebellion, not to challenge it. She closed her eyes in despair.

  Tallan said in that cold voice like the sound of a drum across a wintry field, “Your time is not yet, Mariana.”

  He closed the door behind him, and she was alone with her thoughts.

  Aboard the Rhadan vessel, Kier was arming. He wore his finest ceremonial armor, and his cape and helmet were bright with the feathered badges of his rank.

  Cavour said, “Reason with him, Ariane. At least let us make a foray in force. He cannot force the cyborg to fight him.”

  “But I can,” Kier said.

  Nevus, the general, stood frowning. “With a thousand Rhad at our backs--”

  Kier regarded the old warrior with affection. “I share your faith in the fighting qualities of the Rhad, Nevus. But ten thousand men wouldn’t suffice to take Nyor, and you know it.”

  Ariane stood torn between pride and grief. “If this is for me, Kier, I ask you not to do it. I beg you, Kier--”

  Kier touched her soft cheek with a mailed hand. “It is not for you, Ariane. You know what it is for.”

  “The Empire,” she said angrily, tearfully. “Let the Empire go, Kier.”

  “You do not mean that, Queen.”

  The girl’s voice was low. “No, I do not mean it.”

  “I say again that you can’t make a cyborg fight you, Kier,” Cavour insisted.

  “I said that I can.”

  “How, in the name of the Spirit? How can you? Why shouldn’t he simply have you taken?”

  Han the Vykan fastened the last buckles of Kier’s mail. He belted him with a star king’s ceremonial weapons: sword, barbed flail, and dagger.

  Brother Yakob appeared breathless in the torchlighted compartment.

  “Starship grounding, Warleader.”

  Kier acknowledged the priest’s message and commanded, “The Navigators stay aboard.” “Yes, King.”

  “And tell Gret that it is time.”

  “I shall, Warleader.”

  Kier said to Cavour, “Tallan doesn’t know it, Warlock, but he must fight me. He cannot refuse and rule.”

  “Black space, why?” Cavour’s face was bleak with despair.

  “Honor.”

  The warlock threw his hands in the air. “What has honor to do with a cyborg? What does Tallan know of honor?”

  “It’s a human concept,” Kier said wryly. “And if he would wear Imperial scarlet, he must learn of it.”

  “Impossible. Insane.”

  “No,” Nevus said roughly. “Kier is right on that point. If he challenges, Tallan must fight or be discredited before the star kings.”

  Ariane studied Kier’s metal-masked face. She understood, as Nevus did. In a feudal society, loyalties stood or fell with the concept of honor.

  But a cyborg, she thought fearfully, was a demon. The enlightened part of
her mind rebelled at the idea, but there it was, lurking deep among the superstitions of a lifetime.

  She said, low, to Cavour, “If he fights the cyb--can he win?” She would have said “can he live,” but the thought of Kier dead was too dismaying to put into words.

  Cavour shook his head. “I think not, Queen.”

  Ariane turned away and made the sign of the Star. In-audibly, she breathed her prayer. “Beatified Emeric protect him.” All the stars in the galaxy would be meaningless to her without her rebel.

  The Rhadan party left the starship with all the pomp and ceremony their limited numbers would allow.

  Kier, flanked by Nevus and Ariane in Rhadan war harness and followed by a mixed guard of Vyks and Rhad, guided his nervous war mare through a landing ground crowded with starships from half a dozen systems across the galaxy.

  At the rear of the small column rode the Vulks, eyeless and silent. The gathered warmen regarded them with suspicion, and many made the sign of the Star to ward off spirits.

  Each starship, Kier noted, was carefully guarded by a war band of its own nationality. He studied the defenses and said to Ariane, “You see, it begins already. We have the makings of a fine little war right here.”

  Ariane, her face hidden behind the metal mask of her Rhad helmet, gentled her fractious mare with a thought and nodded. She did not trust herself to speak. Her eyes searched the hostile eyes of warmen from the rebellious worlds and saw that the Lyri hated the Betelgui, the Altairi the Denebians; the Sarissans hated them all. It was this suspicion and mistrust that the Empire had held in check.

  At the Nyor gate, the Rhad party was met by a party of heavily armed soldiers from Altair. “We are to take you to the warleader,” the officer said brusquely.

  Nevus rode forward and spoke in his harshest parade ground tones. “This is Kier, the star king of Rhada, warman. Don’t they teach military courtesy in Altair?”

  The Altairi stared at the old general for a moment, but he could not hold the gaze of those deep-set, commanding eyes that had seen a hundred battles before he, the Altairi, lifted his first sword.

  “Apologies, general,” he muttered sullenly. He turned to his men and ordered, “Honors for the star king, warmen.”

  The detachment lifted their weapons in salute and fell in on the flanks of the Rhadan troop.

  Cavour, riding abreast of Han the Vykan, murmured, “It seems to me that we have done all this before.”

  Han said, looking admiringly at the riders at the head of the column, “See how bravely she rides, Warlock. She’s not afraid.”

  The warlock studied the youngster’s face and asked, “Are you?”

  “Yes,” Han replied in a quiet voice. “What will happen now?”

  “Kier will challenge Tallan to the traditional Three Encounters.”

  “And then?”

  The warlock did not reply. He shook his head and rode on in silence.

  In the great hall of the citadel of Nyor, the rebel star kings and their higher officers had hastily gathered to see Kier of Rhada accept the overlordship of Tallan of Sarissa as warleader.

  When Tallan entered, the warmen clashed their swords against their armor in applause. The Sarissan had led them to greater booty than they had imagined possible. Those few who still remembered their pledges to Glamiss and his son remained silent and thoughtful.

  There was a smell of burning in the air. From the heights of the citadel could be seen the rising smoke from districts put to the torch by rampaging parties of off-world warriors. The ancient piers along the East River were charred ruins, and the estates of the wealthy clustered at the north end of Tel-Manhat were being looted and burned.

  Isolated bands of Vegans, betrayers betrayed in their turn, were fighting desperate holding actions in the streets, and streams of Nyori refugees were gathering on the western banks of the island, trying to reach the imagined safety of the Jersey shore and the camp of the Vyks.

  Tallan took his place at the head of the long chamber as the Rhadan delegation appeared.

  Kier, standing in ceremonial war gear at the foot of the hall, studied the cyborg. His heart was thudding under his armor, and he felt weighed down by the weight of his weapons, but his face, half hidden by the mask of his helmet, remained impassive.

  Ariane, seeing the cyb for the first time, felt her breath catch. Kier was tall among men of his time and strongly muscled. But the Sarissan was enormous--two full hand-spans higher than the Rhad. To Ariane, his mailed arms looked like tree trunks, the breadth of his chest and shoulders gigantic.

  Erit touched her hand and whispered, “Courage, Queen.” Cavour measured the cyborg with a scientist’s eye and came to the same dread conclusion that was dismaying Ariane. No human being could fight such a creature and live.

  The star king of Deneb, a squat, scarred man who had fought beside Kier at the Battle of Karma, stepped forward and made a conciliating gesture. “You are late, cousin of Rhada. But better late than not at all. Welcome to our new order.”

  Kier walked deliberately forward, his eyes cold under the brow of the helmet. He said evenly, “I do not know you, warman.”

  The battered face of the Denebian king darkened, but before he could speak again, Kier had walked on to face Tallan.

  The cyborg stood with that same stillness that had so disturbed Landro and Mariana. The hooded eyes alone seemed touched with strange life.

  Kier said, “I have not come to join you, cyb. I have come to kill you.”

  A low growl of anger swept the room.

  Tallan said, “I know.”

  “I called you cyb.” Kier’s voice was ringingly clear. There were cries of “Liar!” and worse among the ranks of the kings. These hard-bitten fighting men would never be convinced they had followed an android--a creature so legendary that only a few warlocks believed it could exist other than as an evil spirit. Here and there an older war-man made the sign of the Star. A cyborg might be a myth, but a demon could be something else again.

  Kier drew back a gauntleted hand and struck Tallan across the face--three ritual blows. For a moment the cyborg’s flesh flamed and then quickly paled. Cavour, his warlock’s mind racing, concluded that this was not the effect of anger but of a superior body responding to attack with precision and economy.

  Would a cyborg have the circulatory system of a man? Probably not. If a true scientist were to design a human being, he would be more efficient--produce a body that was not only stronger but also more resistant to injury. Cavour reckoned with sinking heart that a cyborg could not be weakened by ordinary wounds. The thrusts would have to be swift--and mortal.

  The chamber was in an uproar. Kier had struck the three ritual blows of challenge. There could be no reply but combat to the death.

  “Where shall it be?” the cyborg asked.

  Swords clashed excitedly against armor.

  Kier dropped his feathered cape and stood with his hands on his weapons.

  “Here. And now,” he said.

  17

  The Three Encounters was a form of personal combat reserved to individuals of kingly rank. The challenge was ritually delivered by three blows, and the response was customarily an instant commitment to battle. The form of the battle was established during the early years of the Interregnum and consisted of three stanzas of combat fought with the ceremonial weapons of kingship: the sword, the flail and the dagger. The first two encounters were limited in time to five minutes with a two-minute period for rest and assistance after each. Historians suggest that this peculiarly formalized form of combat derived from the ancient pugilistic battles of the Dawn Age, but this is conjecture. The third, and final, encounter was fought with the dagger and was to the death. Of course, a combatant could be killed at any stage of the fight, and frequently was.

  Nv. Julianus Mullerium, Ritual Combat in the Age of the Star Kings,

  middle Second Stellar Empire

  Kier’s first warning of the assault was a roar from the assembled warriors.
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  His sword had only just cleared the scabbard before he saw the cyborg’s blade descending with a shocking accuracy and swiftness. He caught the blow on the flat of his own sword and felt the stunning force of it run through his arm and body.

  In the next instant, he was fighting for his life.

  The cyborg fought with a cold dispassion and efficiency that would, in other circumstances, have filled Kier with admiration. It was as though a superior master-at-arms were conducting a class in the precise use of weapons. Each move was exactly as a hundred years and more of fencing masters had written it. Thrust, parry, and riposte followed in a classic, perfectly executed sequence. But each move was backed by a force and agility Kier had not imagined possible.

  Within moments, the Rhad was drenched with sweat and aching with the impact of blow on blow that set god-metal ringing.

  Tallan, fighting without a helmet, seemed to loom before him like a monstrous wall of spiked force. Each attack Kier was able to launch was met by a parrying blade and followed instantly by counterattacks delivered in textbook fashion.

  Kier could hear the star kings shouting savagely, and he felt the rasp of breath in his throat. He dared not take his eyes from Tallan for the space of an instant.

  The clangor of blades filled the room, and gradually Kier became aware that the metallic noise of battle was all that he could hear.

  Tallan seemed to sense his growing fatigue, and his attack increased in vigor. Kier could not have said that it increased in fury, for there was a coldness to the battle that was unlike anything he had ever encountered in war.

  As the combatants moved about the hall, the crowd of onlookers fell away, and the bloodthirsty shouts died until there seemed to be no one in the hall but the cyborg before Kier.

  Kier could feel himself tiring. Each blow caught on his sword seemed to smash through his body like the impact of a battering ram. The cyborg’s calm eyes fixed him, measured him. He felt himself being steadily forced backward, step by step.