Space Viking

by H. Beam Piper

  XIV

  The _Lamia_'s detection picked them up as soon as they were out ofthe last microjump; Trask's gnawing fear that Dunnan might attack intheir absence had been groundless. Incredibly, he realized, they hadbeen gone only thirty-odd Galactic Standard days, and in that timeAlvyn Karffard had done an incredible amount of work.

  He had gotten the spaceport completely cleared of rubble and debris,and he had the woods cleared away from around it and the two tallbuildings. The locals called the city Rivvin; a few inscriptionsfound here and there in it indicated that the original name had beenRivington. He had done considerable mapping, in some detail of thecontinent on which it was located and, in general, of the rest ofthe planet. And he had established friendly relations with thepeople of Tradetown and made friends with their king.

  Nobody, not even those who had collected it, quite believed theireyes when the loot was unloaded. The little herd of long hairedunicorns--the Khepera locals had called them kreggs, probably acorruption of the name of some naturalist who had first studiedthem--had come through the voyage and even the Battle of Beowulfin good shape. Trask and a few of his former cattlemen from Traskonwatched them anxiously, and the ship's doctor, acting veterinarian,made elaborate tests of vegetation they would be likely to eat.Three of the cows proved to be with calf; these were isolated andwatched over with especial solicitude.

  The locals were inclined to take a poor view of the kreggs, atfirst. Cattle ought to have two horns, one on either side, curvedback. It wasn't right for cattle to have only one horn, in themiddle, slanting forward.

  Both ships had taken heavy damage. The _Nemesis_ had one pinnaceberth knocked open, and everybody was glad the Beowulfers hadn'tnoticed that and gotten a missile inside. The _Space Scourge_ hadtaken a hit directly on her south pole while lifting out from theplanet, and a good deal of the southern part of the ship was sealedoff when she came in. The _Nemesis_ was repaired as far as possibleand put on off-planet patrol, then they went to work on the _SpaceScourge_, transferring much of her armament to ground defense,clearing out all the available cargo space, and repairing her hullas far as possible. To repair her completely was a job for a regularshipyard, like Alex Gorram's on Gram. And that was where the workwould be done.

  Boake Valkanhayn would command her on the voyage to and from Gram.Since Beowulf, Trask had not only ceased to dislike the man, but wasbeginning to admire him. He had been a good man once, before illfortune which had been only partly of his own making had overtakenhim. He'd just let himself go and stopped caring. Now he had takenhold of himself again. It had started showing after they had landedon Amaterasu. He had begun to dress more neatly and speak moregrammatically; to look and act more like a spaceman and less like abarfly. His men had begun to jump to obey when he gave an order. Hehad opposed the raid on Beowulf, but that had been the dyingstruggle of the chicken-thief he had been. He had been scared, goingin; well, who hadn't been, except a few greenhorns brave with thevalor of ignorance. But he had gone in, and fought his ship well,and had held his station over the fissionables plant in a hell ofbombs and missile, and he had made sure everybody who had gone downand who was still alive was aboard before he lifted out.

  He was a Space Viking again.

  Garvan Spasso wasn't, and never would be. He was outraged when heheard that Valkanhayn would take his ship, loaded with much of theloot of the three planets, to Gram. He came to Trask, fairlyspluttering about it.

  "You know what'll happen?" he demanded. "He'll space out with thatcargo, and that'll be the last any of us'll hear of him again. He'llprobably take it to Joyeuse or Excalibur and buy himself a lordshipwith it."

  "Oh, I doubt that, Garvan. A number of our people are goingalong--Guatt Kirbey will be the astrogator; you'd trust him,wouldn't you? And Sir Paytrik Morland, and Baron Rathmore, andLord Valpry, and Rolve Hemmerding...." He was silent for a moment,struck by an idea. "Would you be willing to make the trip in the_Space Scourge_, too?"

  Spasso would, very decidedly. Trask nodded.

  "Good. Then we'll be sure nothing crooked is pulled," he saidseriously.

  After Spasso was gone, he got in touch with Baron Rathmore.

  "See to it that he gets as much money that's due him as possible,when you get to Gram. And ask Duke Angus, as a favor to give himsome meaningless position with a suitably impressive title, LordChamberlain of the Ducal Washroom, or something. Then he can primehim with misinformation and give him an opportunity to sell it toOmfray of Glaspyth. Then, of course, he could be contacted to sellOmfray out to Angus. A couple of times around and somebody'll sticka knife in him, and then we'll be rid of him for good."

  * * * * *

  They loaded the _Space Scourge_ with gold from Stolgoland, andpaintings and statues from the art museums and fabrics and furs andjewels and porcelains and plate from the markets of Eglonsby. Theyloaded sacks and kegs of specie from Khepera. Most of the Kheperaloot wasn't worth hauling to Gram, but it was far enough in advanceof their own technologies to be priceless to the Tanith locals.

  Some of these were learning simple machine operations, and a fewwere able to handle contragravity vehicles that had been fitted withadequate safety devices. The former slave guards had all becomesergeants and lieutenants in an infantry regiment that had beenformed, and the King of Tradetown borrowed some to train his ownarmy. Some genius in the machine shop altered a matchlock musketto flintlock and showed the local gunsmiths how to do it.

  The kreggs continued to thrive, after the _Space Scourge_ departed.Several calves were born, and seemed to be doing well; the biochemistryof Tanith and Khepera were safely alike. Trask had hopes for them.Every Viking ship had its own carniculture vats, but men tired ofcarniculture meat, and fresh meat was always in demand. Some day,he hoped, kregg-beef would be an item of sale to ships putting inon Tanith, and the long-haired hides might even find a market inthe Sword-Worlds. They had contragravity scows plying betweenRivington and Tradetown regularly, now, and air-lorries were linkingthe villages. The boatmen of Tradetown rioted occasionally againstthis unfair competition. And in Rivington itself, bulldozers andpower shovels and manipulators labored, and there was always arising cloud of dust over the city.

  There was so much to do, and only a trifle under twenty-fiveGalactic Standard hours in a day to do it. There were whole daysin which he never thought once of Andray Dunnan.

  A hundred and twenty-five days to Gram, and a hundred andtwenty-five days back. They had long ago passed. Of course, therewould be the work of repairing the _Space Scourge_, the conferenceswith the investors in the original Tanith Adventure, the businessof gathering the needed equipment for the new base. Even so, he wasbeginning to worry a little. Worry about something as far out of hiscontrol as the _Space Scourge_ was useless, he knew. He couldn'thelp it, though. Even Harkaman, usually imperturbable, began to befretful, after two hundred and seventy days had passed.

  They were relaxing in the living quarters they had fitted out at thetop of the spaceport building before retiring, both sprawled wearilyin chairs that had come from one of the better hotels of Eglonsby,their drinks between them on a low table, the top of which wasinlaid with something that looked like ivory but wasn't. On thefloor beside it lay the plans for a reaction-plant and mass-energyconverter they would build as soon as the _Space Scourge_ returnedwith equipment for producing collapsium-plated shielding.

  "Of course, we could go ahead with it, now," Harkaman said."We could tear enough armor off the _Lamia_ to shield any kindof a reaction plant."

  That was the first time either of them had gotten close to thepossibility that the ship mightn't return. Trask laid his cigar inthe ashtray--it had come from President Pedrosan Pedro's privateoffice--and splashed a little more brandy into his glass.

  "She'll be coming before long. We have enough of our people aboardto make sure nobody else tries to take the ship. And I reallybelieve, now, that Valkanhayn can be trusted."

  "I do, too. I'm not worried about what might happen on
the ship.But we don't know what's been happening on Gram. Glaspyth andDidreksburg could have teamed up and jumped Wardshaven beforeDuke Angus was ready to invade Glaspyth. Boake might be landingthe ship in a trap at Wardshaven."

  "Be a sorry looking trap after it closed on him. That would be thefirst time in history that a Sword-World was raided by Space Vikings."Harkaman looked at his half-empty glass, then filled it to the top.It was the same drink he had started with, just as a regiment thathas been decimated and recruited up to strength a few times is stillthe same regiment.

  The buzz of the communication screen--one of the few things in theroom that hadn't been looted somewhere--interrupted him. They bothrose; Harkaman, still carrying his drink, went to put it on. It wasa man on duty in the control room, overhead, reporting that twoemergences had just been detected at twenty light-minutes due northof the planet. Harkaman gulped his drink and set down the empty glass.

  "All right. You put out a general alert? Switch anything that comesin over to this screen." He got out his pipe and was packing tobaccointo it mechanically. "They'll be out of the last microjump andabout two light-seconds away in a few minutes."

  Trask sat down again, saw that his cigarette had burned almost tothe tip, and lit a fresh one from it, wishing he could be as calmabout it as Harkaman. Three minutes later, the control tower pickedup two emergences at a light-second and a half, a thousand or somiles apart. Then the screen flickered, and Boake Valkanhayn waslooking out of it, from the desk in the newly refurbished commandroom of the _Space Scourge_.

  He was a newly refurbished Boake Valkanhayn, too. His heavilybraided captain's jacket looked like the work of one of the bettertailors on Gram, and on the breast was a large and ornate knight'sstar, of unfamiliar design, bearing, among other things, the swordand atom-symbol of the house of Ward.

  "Prince Trask; Count Harkaman," he greeted. "_Space Scourge_, Tanith;thirty-two hundred hours out of Wardshaven on Gram, Baron Valkanhayncommanding, accompanied by chartered freighter _Rozinante_, Durendal,Captain Morbes. Requesting permission and instructions to orbit in."

  "Baron Valkanhayn?" Harkaman asked.

  "That's right," Valkanhayn grinned. "And I have a vellum scroll thesize of a blanket to prove it. I have a whole cargo of scrolls. Onesays you're Otto, Count Harkaman, and another says you're Admiral ofthe Royal Navy of Gram."

  "He did it!" Trask cried. "He made himself King of Gram!"

  "That's right. And you're his trusty and well-loved Lucas, PrinceTrask, and Viceroy of his Majesty's Realm of Tanith."

  Harkaman bristled at that. "The Gehenna you say. This is _our_ Realmof Tanith."

  "Is his Majesty making it worth while to accept his sovereignty?"Trask asked. "That is, beside vellum scrolls?"

  Valkanhayn was still grinning. "Wait till we start sending cargodown. And wait till you see what's crammed into the other ship."

  "Did Spasso come back with you?" Harkaman asked.

  "Oh, no. Sir Garvan Spasso entered the service of his Majesty, KingAngus. He is Chief of Police at Glaspyth, now, and nobody can callwhat he's doing there chicken-stealing, either. Any chickens hesteals, he steals the whole farm to get them."

  That didn't sound good. Spasso could make King Angus' name stink allover Glaspyth. Or maybe he'd allow Spasso to crush the adherents ofOmfray, and then hang him for his oppression of the people. He'dread about somebody who'd done something like that, in one ofHarkaman's Old Terran history books.

  * * * * *

  Baron Rathmore had stayed on Gram; so had Rolve Hemmerding. Therest of the gentlemen-adventurers, all with shiny new titles ofnobility, had returned. From them, as the two ships were gettinginto orbit, he learned what had happened on Gram since the _Nemesis_had spaced out.

  Duke Angus had announced his intention of carrying on with theTanith Adventure, and had started construction of a new ship atthe Gorram yards. This had served plausibly to explain all theactivities of preparation for the invasion of Glaspyth, and haddeceived Duke Omfray completely. Omfray had already started a shipof his own; the entire resources of his duchy were thrown into aneffort to get her finished and to space ahead of the one Angus wasbuilding. Work was going on frantically on her when the Wardshaveninvaders hit Glaspyth; she was now nearing completion as a unit ofthe Royal Navy. Duke Omfray had managed to escape to Didreksburg;when Angus' troops moved in on the latter duchy, he had escapedagain, this time off-planet. He was now eating the bitter bread ofexile at the court of his wife's uncle, the King of Haulteclere.

  The Count of Newhaven, the Duke of Bigglersport, and the Lord ofNorthport, all of whom had favored the establishment of a planetarymonarchy, had immediately acknowledged Angus as their sovereign. So,with a knife at his throat, had the Duke of Didreksburg. Many otherfeudal magnates had refused to surrender their sovereignty. Thatmight mean fighting, but Paytrik, now Baron, Morland, doubted it.

  "The _Space Scourge_ stopped that," he said. "When they heard aboutthe base here, and saw what we'd shipped to Gram, they startedchanging their minds. Only subjects of King Angus will be allowedto invest in the Tanith Adventure."

  As for accepting King Angus' annexation of Tanith and accepting hissovereignty, that would also be advisable. They would need a SwordWorld outlet for the loot they took or obtained by barter from otherSpace Vikings, and until they had adequate industries of their own,they would be dependent on Gram for many things which could not begotten by raiding.

  "I suppose the King knows I'm not out here for my health, orhis profit?" he asked Lord Valpry, during one of the screenconversations as the _Space Scourge_ was getting into orbit."My business out here is Andray Dunnan."

  "Oh, yes," the Wardshaven noble replied. "In fact, he told me, in somany words, that he would be most happy if you sent him his nephew'shead in a block of lucite. What Dunnan did touched his honor, too.Sovereign princes never see any humor in things like that."

  "I suppose he knows that sooner or later Dunnan will try to attackTanith?"

  "If he doesn't, it isn't because I didn't tell him often enough. Whenyou see the defense armament we're bringing, you'll think he does."

  It was impressive, but nothing to the engineering and industrialequipment. Mining robots for use on the iron Moon of Tanith, andnormal-space transports for the fifty thousand mile run betweenplanet and satellite. A collapsed-matter producer; now they couldcollapsium-plate their own shielding. A small, fully robotic, steelmill that could be set up and operated on the satellite. Industrialrobots, and machinery to make machinery. And, best of all, twohundred engineers and highly skilled technicians.

  Quite a few industrial baronies on Gram would realize, before long,what they had lost in those men. He wondered what Lord Trask ofTraskon would have thought about that.

  The Prince of Tanith was no longer interested in what happened toGram. Maybe, if things prospered for the next century or so, hissuccessors would be ruling Gram by viceroy from Tanith.