Space Viking

by H. Beam Piper

  XVI

  So Andray Dunnan was haunting him again. Tiny bits of informationcame in--Dunnan's ship had been on Hoth, on Nergal, selling loot.Now he sold for gold or platinum, and bought little, usually armsand ammunition. Apparently his base, wherever it was, was fullyself-sufficient. It was certain, too, that Dunnan knew he was beinghunted. One Space Viking who had talked with him quoted him assaying: "I don't want any trouble with Trask, and if he's smart hewon't look for any with me." This made him all the more positivethat somewhere Dunnan was building strength for an attack on Tanith.He made it a rule that there should always be at least two ships inorbit off Tanith in addition to the _Lamia_, which was on permanentpatrol, and he installed more missile-launching stations both on themoon and on the planet.

  There were three ships bearing the Ward swords and atom-symbol, anda fourth building on Gram. Count Lionel of Newhaven was buildingone of his own, and three big freighters shuttled across the threethousand light-years between Tanith and Gram. Sesar Karvall, who hadnever recovered from his wounds, had died; Lady Lavina had turnedthe barony and the business over to her brother, Burt Sandrasan,and gone to live on Excalibur. The shipyard at Rivington wasfinished, and now they had built the landing-legs of Harkaman's_Corisande II_, and were putting up the skeleton.

  And they were trading with Amaterasu, now. Pedrosan Pedro had beenoverthrown and put to death by General Dagro Ector during thedisorders following the looting of Eglonsby; the troops left behindin Stolgoland had mutinied and made common cause with their lateenemies. The two nations were in an uneasy alliance, with severalother nations combining against them, when the _Nemesis_ and the_Space Scourge_ returned and declared peace against the wholeplanet. There was no fighting; everybody knew what had happened toStolgoland and Eglonsby. In the end, all the governments of Amaterasujoined in a loose agreement to get the mines reopened and resumeproduction of gadolinium, and to share in the fissionablesbeing imported in exchange.

  It had been harder, and had taken a year longer, to do business withBeowulf. The Beowulfers had a single planetary government, and theywere inclined to shoot first and negotiate afterward, a naturalenough attitude in view of experiences of the past. However, theyhad enough old Federation-period textbooks still in microprint toknow what could be done with gadolinium. They decided to write offthe past as fair fight and no bad blood, and start over again.

  It would be some years before either planet had hyperships of theirown. In the meantime, both were good customers, and rapidly becominggood friends. A number of young Amaterasuans and Beowulfers had cometo Tanith to study various technologies.

  The Tanith locals were studying, too. In the first year, Traskhad gathered the more intelligent boys of ten to twelve from eachcommunity and begun teaching them. In the past year, he had sentthe most intelligent of them off to Gram to school. In anotherfive years, they'd be coming home to teach; in the meantime, hewas bringing teachers to Tanith from Gram. There was a schoolat Tradetown, and others in some of the larger villages, andat Rivington there was something that could almost be called acollege. In another ten years or so, Tanith would be able topretend to the status of civilization.

  * * * * *

  If only Andray Dunnan and his ships didn't come too soon. They wouldbe beaten off, he was confident of that; but the damage Tanith wouldtake, in the defense, would set back his work for years. He knew alltoo well what Space Viking ships could do to a planet. He'd have tofind Dunnan's base, smash it, destroy his ships, kill the manhimself, first. Not to avenge that murder six years ago on Gram;that was long ago and far away, and Elaine was vanished, and so wasthe Lucas Trask who had loved and lost her. What mattered now wasplanting and nurturing civilization on Tanith.

  But where would he find Dunnan, in two hundred billion cubiclight-years? Dunnan had no such problem. He knew where his enemy was.

  And Dunnan was gathering strength. The _Yo-Yo_, Captain VannHumfort; she had been reported twice, once in company with the_Starhopper_, and once with the _Enterprise_. She bore a blazon ofa feminine hand dangling a planet by a string from one finger; agood ship, and an able, ruthless captain. The _Bolide_; she and the_Enterprise_ had made a raid on Ithunn. The Gilgameshers had settledthere and one of their ships had brought that story in.

  And he recruited two ships at once on Melkarth, and there was a gooddeal of mirth about that among the Tanith Space Vikings.

  Melkarth was strictly a poultry planet. Its people had sunk to thevillage-peasant level; they had no wealth worth taking or carryingaway. It was, however, a place where a ship could be set down, andthere were women, and the locals had not lost the art of distillation,and made potent liquors. A crew could have fun there, much lessexpensively than on a regular Viking base planet, and for the lasteight years a Captain Nial Burrik, of the _Fortuna_, had been occupyingit, taking his ship out for occasional quick raids and spending mostof the time living from day to day almost on the local level. Oncein a while, a Gilgamesher would come in to see if he had anything totrade. It was a Gilgamesher who brought the story to Tanith, and itwas almost two years old when he told it.

  "We heard it from the people of the planet, the ones who live whereBurrik had his base. First, there was a trading ship came in. Youmay have heard of her; she is the one called the _Honest Horris_."

  Trask laughed at that. Her captain, Horris Sasstroff, called himself"Honest Horris," a misnomer which he had also bestowed on his ship.He was a trader of sorts. Even the Gilgameshers despised him, andnot even a Gilgamesher would have taken a wretched craft like the_Honest Horris_ to space.

  "He had been to Melkarth before," the Gilgamesher said. "He andBurrik are friends." He pronounced that like a final and damningjudgment of both of them. "The story the locals told our brethrenof the _Fairdealer_ was that the _Honest Horris_ was landed besideBurrik's ship for ten days, when two other ships came in. They saidone had the blue crescent badge, and the other bore a green monsterleaping from one star to another."

  The _Enterprise_ and the _Starhopper_. He wondered why they'd goneto a planet like Melkarth. Maybe they knew in advance whom they'dfind there.

  "The locals thought there would be fighting, but there was not.There was a great feast, of all four crews. Then everything ofvalue was loaded aboard the _Fortuna_, and all four ships liftedand spaced out together. They said Burrik left nothing of any worthwhatever behind; they were much disappointed at that."

  "Have any of them been back since?"

  All three Gilgameshers, captain, exec, and priest, shook their heads.

  "Captain Gurrash of the _Fairdealer_ said it had been over a yearbefore his ship put in there. He could still see where the landinglegs of the ships had pressed into the ground, but the locals saidthey had not been back."

  That made two more ships about which inquiries must be made. Hewondered, for a moment, why in Gehenna Dunnan would want ships likethat; they must make the _Space Scourge_ and the _Lamia_ as he hadfirst seen them look like units of the Royal Navy of Excalibur. Thenhe became frightened, with an irrational retrospective fright atwhat might have happened. It could have, too, at any time in thelast year and a half; either or both of those ships could have comein on Tanith completely unsuspected. It was only by the sheerestaccident that he had found out, even now, about them.

  Everybody else thought it was a huge joke. They thought it would bea bigger joke if Dunnan sent those ships to Tanith now, when theywere warned and ready for them.

  There were other things to worry about. One was the altering attitude ofhis Majesty Angus I. When the _Space Scourge_ returned, the newly-titledBaron Valkanhayn brought with him, along with the princely title and thecommission as Viceroy of Tanith, a most cordial personal audiovisualgreeting, warm and friendly. Angus had made it seated at his desk, bareheaded and smoking a cigarette. The one which had come on the next shipout was just as cordial, but the King was not smoking and wore a smallgold-circled cap-of-maintenance. By the time they had three ships inservice on scheduled three-month
arrivals, a year and a half later, hewas speaking from his throne, wearing his crown and employing the firstperson plural for himself and finally the third person singular forTrask. By the end of the fourth year, there was no audiovisual messagefrom him in person, and a stiff complaint from Rovard Grauffis to theeffect that His Majesty felt it unseemly for a subject to address hissovereign while seated, even by audiovisual. This was accompanied by arather apologetic personal message from Grauffis--now Prime Minister--tothe effect that His Majesty felt compelled to stand on his royal dignityat all times, and that, after all, there was a difference between theposition and dignity of the Duke of Wardshaven and that of the PlanetaryKing of Gram.

  Prince Trask of Tanith couldn't quite see it. The King was simplythe first nobleman of the planet. Even kings like Rodolf of Excaliburor Napolyon of Flamberge didn't try to be anything more. Thereafter,he addressed his greetings and reports to the Prime Minister, alwayswith a personal message, to which Grauffis replied in kind.

  Not only the form but also the content of the messages from Gramunderwent change. His Majesty was most dissatisfied. His Majesty wasdeeply disappointed. His Majesty felt that His Majesty's colonialrealm of Tanith was not contributing sufficiently to the RoyalExchequer. And his Majesty felt that Prince Trask was placingentirely too much emphasis upon trade and not enough upon raiding;after all, why barter with barbarians when it was possible to takewhat you wanted from them by force?

  And there was the matter of the _Blue Comet_, Count Lionel ofNewhaven's ship. His Majesty was most displeased that the Count ofNewhaven was trading with Tanith from his own spaceport. All goodsfrom Tanith should pass through the Wardshaven spaceport.

  "Look, Rovard," he told the audiovisual camera which was recordinghis reply to Grauffis. "You saw the _Space Scourge_ when she camein, didn't you? That's what happens to a ship that raids a planetwhere there's anything worth taking. Beowulf is lousy withfissionables; they'll give us all the plutonium we can load, inexchange for gadolinium, which we sell them at about twiceSword-World prices. We trade plutonium on Amaterasu for gadolinium,and get it for about half Sword-World prices." He pressed thestop-button, until he could remember the ancient formula. "You mayquote me as saying that whoever has advised His Majesty that thatisn't good business is no friend to His Majesty or to the Realm.

  "As for the complaint about the _Blue Comet_; as long as she isowned and operated by the Count of Newhaven, who is a stockholderin the Tanith Adventure, she has every right to trade here."

  He wondered why His Majesty didn't stop Lionel of Newhaven fromsending the _Blue Comet_ out from Gram. He found out from herskipper, the next time she came in.

  * * * * *

  "He doesn't dare, that's why. He's King as long as the great lordslike Count Lionel and Joris of Bigglersport and Alan of Northportwant him to be. Count Lionel has more men and more guns andcontragravity than he has, now, and that's without the help he'd getfrom everybody else. Everything's quiet on Gram now, even the war onSouthmain Continent's stopped. Everybody wants to keep it that way.Even King Angus isn't crazy enough to do anything to start a war.Not yet, anyhow."

  "Not _yet_?"

  The captain of the _Blue Comet_, who was one of Count Lionel'svassal barons, was silent for a moment.

  "You ought to know, Prince Trask," he said. "Andray Dunnan'sgrandmother was the King's mother. Her father was old Baron Zarvasof Blackcliffe. He was what was called an invalid, the last twentyyears of his life. He was always attended by two male nurses aboutthe size of Otto Harkaman. He was also said to be slightlyeccentric."

  The unfortunate grandfather of Duke Angus had always been a subjectnice people avoided. The unfortunate grandfather of King Angus wasprobably a subject everybody who valued their necks avoided.

  Lothar Ffayle had also come out on the _Blue Comet_. He was just asoutspoken.

  "I'm not going back. I'm transferring most of the funds of the Bankof Wardshaven out here; from now on, it'll be a branch of the Bankof Tanith. This is where the business is being done. It's gettingimpossible to do business at all in Wardshaven. What little businessthere is to do."

  "Just what's been happening?"

  "Well, taxation, first. It seems the more money came in from here,the higher taxes got on Gram. Discriminatory taxes, too; pinched thesmall landholding and industrial barons and favored a few big ones.Baron Spasso and his crowd."

  "Baron Spasso, now?"

  Ffayle nodded. "Of about half of Glaspyth. A lot of the Glaspythbarons lost their baronies--some of them their heads--after DukeOmfray was run out. It seems there was a plot against the life ofHis Majesty. It was exposed by the zeal and vigilance of Sir GarvanSpasso, who was elevated to the peerage and rewarded with the landsof the conspirators."

  "You said business was bad, as business?"

  Ffayle nodded again. "The big Tanith boom has busted. It gotoversold; everybody wanted in on it. And they should never havebuilt those two last ships, the _Speedwell_ and the _Goodhope_;the return on them didn't justify it. Then, you're creating yourown industries and building your own equipment and armament here;that's caused a slump in industry on Gram. I'm glad Lavina Karvallhas enough money invested to live on. And finally, the consumers'goods market is getting flooded with stuff that's coming in fromhere and competing with Gram industry."

  Well, that was understandable. One of the ships that made theshuttle-trip to Gram would carry enough in her strong rooms, in goldand jewels and the like, to pay a handsome profit on the voyage. Thebulk-goods that went into the cargo holds was practically taking afree ride, so anything on hand, stuff that nobody would ordinarilythink of shipping in interstellar trade, went aboard. A two thousandfoot freighter had a great deal of cargo space.

  Baron Trask of Traskon hadn't even begun to realise what Tanith basewas going to cost Gram.