Lin Carter, page 8
He felt almost dizzy, seized by an aura of personal magnetism such as might have beaten brightly about the person of Alexander, or Caesar, Napoleon or Gandhi, Fuller or Saul Everest, or even Arion the Eternal, who founded the great Imperium upon a dream no less flimsy and romantic than hers. The surge of enthusiasm within him opened doors long closed—pulled him out of habits familiar, and into strange regions where beliefs are shaken, no matter how strongly adhered to, and where golden, glittering impossibilities seemed to hover at the brink of the Possible.
“What happened then?”
She smiled a small, tight, ironic smile.
“What happens to all dreams, at the end, I guess. Your government, you see, wants Valadon ignorant, diseased, dirty, illiterate, and superstitious. Our taxes were raised—too high. The vokarthu experts, professors, teachers, doctors, engineers we had hired among the star-worlds—were impeded in coming to take up new duties with us. Their visas were canceled—they were pressed into service during your war—they were suddenly hired away at higher salaries.”
“And-then?”
Dull-eyed: “He died. He was very young. Shageen, a kind of fever. But I know he died of a rarer, more painful disease, called death-of-dreams. Or broken-heart, if you prefer the truism. And then they set me aside, and put the besotted idiot on the Dais. I would not—truly!—have minded, had his successor chosen to carry on the struggle, to continue the work we had begun. But Hastril is just—a nonentity. All he asks of life is to whip a slave to death now and then, or buy a woman or two more, and always, of course, to have enough viathol about to drug his dull mind into seas of blazing ecstasy. Ah—the waste, the pity, the shame of it all!”
Her voice broke upon the last word, almost with a sob, and he looked away.
“What will you do now?” he asked.
“Fight! These chiefs and lords have promised men and ships, pledged to my banner, to retake Valadon in my name. I await the coming of Yaklar, the Arthon of Pelaire in the outworlds beyond the Nebula—he comes tomorrow to complete negotiations—then I shall strike for what is mine, falsely taken from me.”
Raul frowned a little. He had heard of this Arthon before; no one raised in the Border worlds could have failed to hear of him. A troublesome, warlike Outworlder, known to have long coveted the wealth of the Inner Worlds, and to have conspired before this to their looting. But he also knew the Pelairi to be treacherous—who would use the Kahani of Valadon and cast her aside, once her usefulness was done. He felt an uncomfortable chill of apprehension.
“Why do you need the help of Pelaire?”
“Because I need a man to lead my warriors!” she burst out. “They will never follow a woman, no matter how they love me. Oh, my own Clan, of whom I am now sole Chieftainess for my father (may the Seven give him bliss!) is dead now, they will follow me eagerly enough—beyond the farthest star, and past the gates of the Ninth Hell, if such be my wish! As will certain of the other Clans, the Arglinassam, truly, and the Tahukamnar, in full strength, for Shari is their Chieftain and sworn to my service. But no others. I need a man to lead them, as my war-leader, my Shakar—and I care little whether it be Lord Zarkandu—or this fat-gutted Arthon—but I had hoped it would be you.”
“But I-”
She gestured to the hall below.
“All of them are here because they have heard that a great Shakar from the star-worlds of the Imperium was come to lead them! They are all watching you, although politeness decrees they should not do so openly. They have heard you were a great leader in the Mica Cluster wars, a mighty hero of valor, who have joined my cause. Does this not thrill you—to lead so many warriors into battle? You are here, a fugitive from injustice, as am I—will you not strike a blow for a truly just cause? I do not tempt you with titles or wealth or fame—I know you are man enough not to be bought by them—I tempt you with rarer prizes. To fight against corruption, betrayal, infamy—with truth for your banner, justice for your sword!”
Dumbly, unable to counter arguments that were so closely in tune with his own inward convictions, he struggled to speak.
“I appreciate … I sympathize—”
“Do not accept or refuse—now. Think about it, Lin-ton. There is time. Promise me that you will at least consider my proposal! Do not just decline it without thought. Promise?^
“Very well, I promise that I will think it over.”
Eagerly: “Good! And think, too, of this, Lin-ton: you are cast out from your people, named traitor and outlaw. What will you do—where will you go—how will you spend your days, hence forward? Join me—not as a servant, for I know you resent commands—but as a leader in a noble cause. How better to protest and avenge the injustice that your government has done you, than to battle unselfishly in revenge of the injustice your government has wreaked upon me?”
“I will think of … all these things,” Linton promised slowly.
She smiled, and he noted (bemused) how her smile lit up her lovely face.
“Now go, go in honor, Lin-ton. For I have matters to discuss with these, my chieftains. Tomorrow, when the Ar-thon comes, perhaps we shall speak of these things again. Go—and consider deeply, as you have sworn to me you would I”
He left the dais, nodding briefly to Shari, and strode out of the feasting-hall, the great scarlet cloak swinging and belling from his shoulders, and the golden sword slapping at his thigh.
From the dais, she watched him leave. And the silent chiefs also watched, with admiring and appraising eyes.
And that night he was too full of thoughts and unsettled questions to even think of sleep.
EIGHT
The next day, shortly after “dawn”—for there was no true difference between day and night on a planet whose skies were eternally filled with the clouded glory of Thunderhawk Nebula, only an artificial and arbitrary hour of clock-time— the long-awaited arrival of the Arthon and his party came.
Raul and Gundorm Varl were in the cavern-mouth to watch as the Outworld monarch came down by atmospheric skimmer from his warship orbiting above. There were, in fact, two skimmers, for the Warlord never traveled without his astrologer, his priest, a magician or two, a full squad of his personal guard, and, of course, the various officers and lords of his royal court.
The notorious Arthon turned out to be a tall, fat-bellied and beardless man with a cold smile on his thin lips, a chilling air of condescension, wrapped from head to foot in a magnificent cloak of saffron velvet. He exchanged greetings with the Kahani and her lords that were almost mawkishly effusive and loaded with flowery compliments.
Raul noticed that the Arthon’s guards, of whom there was a surprisingly large number, were great strapping brutes with narrow eyes and sneering lips, profusely armed as if to take a garrison. From the way they stole swift, all-encompassing glances around the landing area, noting the number and allotment of guards and defenses, and from their arrogant, swaggering deportment, Linton thought they resembled hired thugs and bravos more than military officers.
Raul had remained unobtrusively in the background during the greeting ceremonies, and wandered off when the crowd moved into the corridors bound for the council chambers and the very important negotiations upon which so much hung. He felt at loose ends, irritable, uncomfortable, out-of-place. Not knowing just what to do with himself, he wandered out of the cavern mouth to a small ledge overhanging the terrible sheer drop of the gorge, and sat down to smoke and to chew over his thoughts.
It was like an illustration from Dante’s Inferno. Overhead, the wild splendor of the fantastic nebula flung out across the sky stupendous streamers and coils of radiance, like the blast-torn firecloud of some cosmic explosion, frozen by a camera forever in an endless moment of furious expansion. And all about him, to either side and stretching beneath his feet into the impossible depths of the gorge, was a seared and shattered wilderness of tortured, cloven rock, like the debris of the explosion.
Ophmar had an atmosphere, of course, but little water and what moisture there was remained confined deep within the planet’s core, tapped only by deep wells. Hence, no erosion save that of the shrieking wind, had weathered or smoothed these jagged fangs and towering pinnacles of ochre and dark vermilion naked rock into rounded pectorals of hill and mountain, as could be seen on more temperate and more fortunate planets. Ophmar remained forever as she had been in that primordial age, geological epochs ago, when the lava fountains and tom masses of liquescent rock, lifted up in the violence of her thunderous creation, had first hardened and cooled.
Far above, dim-seen against the nebula’s incandescent veil of medusa-locks, the tiny red spark of her primary, from whose bosom she had been cataclysmically tom, burned feebly.
The scene was very fitting to his mood.
For a long while he brooded and smoked, fiery thatch of hair tossed by the howling winds, wrapped in a suede cloak against the biting chill of Ophmar’s thin air.
His thoughts were many, and dark.
Eventually he rose, still caught in the mental vertigo of indecision. Hunger claimed him, and warmth: he descended from his lonely, Promethean perch, reentered the vast echoing cavern, and made his way to the quarters he shared with Gundorm Varl.
He found there a visitor waiting for him.
“Someone to speak with y’, sir. He said he’d wait, so I let him squat,” Gunder said. Raul nodded briefly, and inspected his uninvited guest with curious eyes.
He was a Rilk6 warrior—Rilke of the planet Argastra, from the characteristic accouterments he wore. Tall, lean, hawk-faced, dark-skinned—one of the many landless, loot-seeking vagabonds who had been attracted to the Kahani’s cause by the promise of riches lying open for the ruthless taker. His suede cloak was begrimed and tattered—and none-too-expertly patched. His garments were shabby, carelessly thrown together, and the man himself was unobtrusive, proud but yet servile—completely unprepossessing.
However, Raul greeted him politely, however abstracted and busy with his own painful decisions.
“Be welcome to what is mine—will you share wine and food?” he asked absently.
“Of honor, no, kazar. I have eaten.” The Rilke spoke a particularly barbarous and colloquial back-country variant of the Tongue, with a slight stammer caused by a speech-impediment, perhaps. Then Linton saw he had an old scar that stretched glassily from the comer of one eye down to snag and lift a comer of his mouth.
And he was villainously dirty.
And he smelled.
Raul invited him to a more comfortable seat on a nest of bright cushions, and knelt himself, RiIk6-fashion.
“I thank the kazar, of gentility!”
“All right. Will you smoke, then?” he said, offering a packet of cigarels (his last, as it happened).
The uninvited guest would, indeed, accept a cigarel— and from the width of his gap-toothed smile and the slight tremor of his long and unclean fingers, his impecuniousness was such that he had probably not tasted smokeweed in months.
For a while they smoked in silence. Custom was that one refrains from questioning a guest, but Linton still had too much thinking left undone to hew too closely to good manners.
“My friend says you have requested speech with me. May one inquire, without dishonor, the nature of your request?^ he said, finally.
The hawk-face smiled.
“Thought you might like to chat with an old comrade from the wars—Raul!” he said—in Imperial Neoanglic. Linton stared at him.
“Who the devil are you?”
“Name’s Wilm Bardry, though you knew me as Packer Sexton—we served together on the Harel Palldon, back in ’61 —remember?”
“Yes … yes, I do. But who are you, really? What are you doing here?”
“Spying, I guess. I was spying on the Admiral when we were ship-comrades. I’m still at it.”
Raul half-rose, growling: “Spying on me, are you? One of Pertinax’s friends—”
The note of command rang in Wilm’s voice, an unexpected ring of steel. “Sit down. Shut up. Compare me to that crawling serpent, and I’ll give you a mouthful of broken teeth 1” Raul sat back, and Bardry continued.
“Nobody’s spying on you. Why should they—you think we think you’re a renegade or something? Space, you’re the luckiest man in the Cluster right now!”
Confused, Raul burst in: “Luck—what are you talking about, Packer? And, of course—don’t you think I’m a renegade?”
“Wilm, not Packer.”
“Wilm, then, for Arion! What is all this about—”
“Shut up and I’ll tell you. Nobody ever though you were a traitor, except that slimy sneak, Pertinax, and his fat fool of a boss, Mather. You’re just a poor, confused idealist, like we’ve all been, one time or another. Mather’s boss, Brice Hallen, officially dismissed charges against you in full Staff meeting, and bounced the two of them out of the room after making them both look like the sponge-brained incompetents they are. Don’t worry about—and don’t waste my time with —all this ancient history. Tell me what’s happening here.” “But, I… well, all right—but how did you know where I was? And how did you get here?”
“Came in with a boatload of recruits for the Kahani’s little war, of course; why do you think I’m prettied up like a Rilke? As for knowing where you were, I didn’t. But since you took off with Shari, and he serves her, and she’s here—credit me with enough wits to put one and one together, and not get three, Linton!”
Head whirling, Linton answered Bardry’s grin.
“All set? Boards all green and ready for lift-off? Now: what’s the news at your end?”
“She’s offered to make me Shakar of her whole force. If I turn it down, she gives the baton either to a Nomad named Zarkandu or to the Arthon who arrived an hour ago.”
“Excellent! Didn’t I say you were the luckiest man in the whole kaking Cluster? When are you planning to attack Valadon?”
Linton stared at him blankly.
“Great Arion, you don’t think I was traitor enough to accept, do you?”
Bardry gave a little bark of a laugh.
“I didn’t think you were fool enough to pass it up. So you told her no’—eh?”
Linton nodded, angrily. “If you think I’m going to lead the Arthon’s loot-hungry pirates into the Inner Worlds—” Wilm grabbed his head with both hands, and groaned. “Oooh! I knew you were a hardheaded Bamassian, but I didn’t know you were a complete idiot! You turned her down! You, an empty-pouched, landless, wandering outlaw —offered the command of the finest host on the Border— give me patience!
“Let me tell you the situation, Linton: I’ll spell it out to you in simple terms. Ready? Now listen carefully. Every Rilk6 in the Cluster knows the stupid government played a dirty trick on the Kahani. Half the Border is ready to rise when she lifts her banner. Every last native world among the near stars is spoiling for a good Holy War against us vokarthu—not a one of them isn’t eager for independent rule —and watching like hawks to see if she gets it for Valadon. Now.
“On the other other side of Thunderhawk Nebula, sits the Arthon on a new Dais that’s rocking like a skimmer in a wind-storm. Half his nobles are after his head—either for his murder of his brother, or his outrageous taxes, or libertine habits. He probably hasn’t half the brains of a karf in rutting-season, but he knows the only thing that can squelch the griping before it starts getting bloody, and line up his unruly chiefs behind him, is a nice little war with slathers of loot and glory for all, and especially some for him.
“Still tuned in? Right. Now right there across the nebula from Pelaire is a parsec-full of ripe, rich, underguarded Border worlds. He knows the Empire is exhausted after twelve years of war—and not likely to scream too loudly or be too quick to avenge what is, after all, a minor Border raid. And he knows the Border Patrol is undermanned, underarmed, and lacking in ships. It’s perfectl—he’d be more of a fool than he already is, if he didn’t lead a fleet through the Rift for a quick in-and-out-again raid, to scrape off some of the wealth of Omphale and the richer Inner Worlds.”
“I understand all of this,” Linton said. Wilm nodded affably.
“Try a bit more, then. Now, it’s all set up for him. Nothing can stop him … except, just possibly, Valadon, which lies smack in the ‘throat’ of the Rift and has a nice little Patrol garrison with a battery of planet-mounted lasers. It would be sweet as Nomad love, if he could arrange to have all of Valadon rise and overthrow the garrison right about the time his fleet comes streaking through. And what does he find, perched here on tiny Ophmar halfway through the Rift, but the outlawed and exiled Kahani of Valadon, gathering together a little army of her own and scheming to smash the Valadon garrison and take her place on the Dais once again. It’s perfect. As if the Fate-God had set the whole thing up for him. All he has to do is persuade the Kahani to lend him her aid—he can promise her anything, it doesn’t
matter—nor is she in any sort of a position strong enough to turn down his offer. Have I still got you in my beam?” “Steady on,” Linton grinned, savagely. There was a wild, boyish enthusiasm about Bardry he found infectious.
“Right. Toss another smoke over here, and I’ll—good! Now, then. And here, right in the middle of everything, sit you, eating at your conscience and feeling noble as Arion that you turned down the most glorious, grand and golden opportunity any man ever had offered to him on the bended knees of Destiny! Still don’t read me? Why, great stars of space, man, what’s to keep you from buying the Kahani’s offer, taking command of her army, whipping it together, and ramming it right straight down the Arthon’s fat throat! You get him bottled up—he can’t get his fleet past Ophmar without your permission—even a handful of ships could hold the Rift at this narrow spot against half the Universe till the end o’ time!”
“But-”
“But—hell! You break the Arthon’s advance, and you not only save the Kahani from starting a serious war and making a very bad mistake (right now, Hallen’s government has nothing more on her than they do on you)—but you also preserve the peace and security of Hercules, and save the Inner Worlds from being invaded, smashed wide open and looted bare by this pack of howling savages!
