King's Sacrifice (12 page)

"That would
be wise, Brother," the Warlord said dryly.

"I was a
child, as you said, when the Revolution came; a child in the Order,
my lord. I joined when I was six years old. I have always known my
calling, my lord. When I think back on my childhood, I cannot hear my
mother's voice or my father's. I remember hearing only God's.

"The
priests were reluctant to accept me, because I was not of the Blood
Royal. They were going to turn me away, but one came forward, an
older priest, grim and stern, dark and silent. He never spoke, but
placed his hand upon my head."

The young man
paused, as if he thought Sagan had spoken. The Warlord was silent,
however, did not move. After waiting a moment Brother Fideles
continued.

"From that
time on, no word was said against me. I was taken into the monastery
and educated and promised that, in time, if I was still of the same
mind when I grew old enough to make the decision, I would be taken
into the brotherhood. My faith, my determination, never wavered.

"I was
almost eight years old the night of the Revolution. The mobs, led by
soldiers of the rebel army, stormed the monastery walls. We had
received a warning, however. We never knew how or from whence it
came—some said God himself warned his faithful."

The priest's
eyes were lowered again, he did not look at the Warlord.

"We were
ready for them, when they came. We were forbidden to take human life,
of course. None of us were warrior-priests. But under the direction
of the dark and silent priest, we built cunning traps that captured
men alive, rendered them helpless, but did them no harm. We defended
the Abbey with fire and water, with rocks, with blasts of air.

"Many of
our Order died that night," Brother Fideles continued in low,
quiet tones, "but by the Power of the Creator, we defeated our
foe. They fled, most of them, in dread and awe. They felt the wrath
of God. To this day, no one comes near it. We—those of us who
remained—live in peace. I believe you are familiar with the
Abbey of which I speak, my lord. The Abbey of St. Francis."

"I know
it." Sagan spoke without a voice. "Its walls still stand,
then?"

"Yes, my
lord."

"I have not
been back. I did not think—" The Warlord checked himself,
made a gesture to the young man to continue.

"There is
little more to tell, my lord. The Order was outlawed, banned, but it
was not dead. It went underground. We established a secret network,
discovered those who had survived, and kept in contact. Quietly,
circumspectly, we continued to do our work for the Lord. Occasionally
a priest or nun would be captured, tortured. But each died
maintaining he or she was alone in the faith, never revealing the
truth. Our numbers have grown, since then. We are not many, for we
must be careful who we take in, but there are more of us than you
might imagine, my lord."

"None of
them, the Blood Royal?"

"No, my
lord. They are ordinary, like myself. The work we do is ordinary. We
can no longer perform miracles. But it is, I believe, nonetheless
blessed in the eyes of God."

"Perhaps it
is more blessed, Brother Fideles," said Sagan, but he said it so
softly and in a voice laden with such pain that the young man
pretended not to have heard, made no response.

"You bear a
message," Sagan said abruptly, tightly. "You risked your
life to deliver it. Who from? What is it?"

"It is from
the head of our Order, my lord. I am to tell you that a certain
priest, whom you believed died eighteen years ago, is alive."

"Deus!
Oh, God!"

It was a prayer,
a supplication. The Warlord's flesh chilled, his eyes stared ahead
sightlessly, he ceased to breathe.

The male nurse,
alarmed, approached the man, laid his hand upon the wrist, felt for a
pulse.

"My lord,
you are not well—"

"Tell me,
damn you! Tell me!" Sagan's voice sounded ghastly, the command
burst from his mouth as if torn from the chest. Brother Fideles was
frightened to see spots of blood fleck the ashen lips. "Tell me
why you came!"

"My lord,
this priest lies now upon his deathbed. His last wish is to see you
once more, to beg your forgiveness, and to grant his dying blessing
to you—his son."

Moira . . . the
finished shape of our fate.

Mary Renault,
The King Must Die

"Why
doesn't he come, get it over with!" Tusk demanded, pacing back
and forth, ten steps in each direction, with a slight jog hallway to
avoid running into a chair.

"The
delights of anticipation, Sagan's a master at it," Dixter
returned. Lifting his gaze from the book he was pretending to read,
he looked intently at Dion.

Why? he wondered
silently. Why have you done this?

Dion hadn't told
them anything, hadn't spoken a word to them since they'd been
escorted into the young man's quarters. He stood staring out the
viewscreen, stared at the flickering lights of spacecraft, the
steady, ever-burning lights of the stars.

"You're
right, sir." Tusk stopped in mid-pace, pivoted on his heel, and
sat down on the edge of the chair. "By God, I won't give Sagan
the satisfaction of thinking he's got me worried."

He threw his
arms over the chair's metal back, crossed his legs, and concentrated
with grim attention on looking relaxed. Dixter hid a smile, returned
to the book.

"I wonder
if Sagan would marry us, before he executed us, like the Nazi officer
married Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in that movie about the
boat," said Nola dreamily.

She sat in a
chair, her arms stretched out across a desk, her head resting on her
hands. They'd been locked in the room for eight hours now.

"Damn it,
Nola, stop talking about executions!" Tusk exploded. Bouncing up
from his chair, he started to pace again. "Nobody's gonna get
executed." He rounded on the general, demanded for the tenth
time, "There must be something we can do—"

Dixter looked up
from his book. A corner of his mouth twitched. "The door's
locked and sealed. But let's say we did manage to tunnel our way
through a meter of solid null-grav steel. That accomplished, the four
of us, armed, I suppose, with that pair of scissors lying on the
desk, take on ten centurions—"

"I'm sorry
you were all involved in this," Dion said suddenly, coolly. "I
thank you for your attempt to help, but you needn't have. I know what
I'm doing."

There's
something different about him, Dixter thought. Something strange. He
seems fey, as if he were above this reality or beyond it, as if he
were, perhaps, out there with those glittering stars, instead of a
prisoner, confined to his own bedroom.

Tusk shook his
head, came to stand near Dixter. "Begging the general's pardon,
but I think we should try to make a run for it. Some of those men on
guard have been with the kid a long time. If push came to shove—"

Dion turned from
the viewscreen. "No, Tusk," he said, guessing, by the low
tone, what the mercenary was proposing. "I refused to start a
civil war in the galaxy. I won't start one aboard this ship."

"You sure
you made the right decision?"

"Yes, I'm
sure. I know," Dion added, seeing Tusk look skeptical, "because
originally I made the wrong one."

"You're not
makin' sense, kid. 'Course that wouldn't be the first time,"
Tusk added, mopping sweat from his neck. He had, by taking the
aforementioned pair of las-scissors to his uniform, finally managed
to rid himself of the constricting collar.

("You might
as well go ahead and cut it off, Tusk," Dixter had recommended
wryly. "With what's facing us, I wouldn't be overly concerned
about receiving a few demerits for deliberate maltreatment of a
uniform.")

"I meant to
go to the banquet. I planned to tell them we were going to war."

Tusk stopped his
pacing.

Dixter ceased to
pretend to read.

"What
happened, son?"

Nola lifted her
head, shook her curls out of her eyes.

"I told
myself that Sagan was right—war was the only alternative. I was
going to give him the space-rotation bomb."

"Jeez, kid,
I—!" Tusk frowned, clamped his mouth shut.

Dion nodded
slowly. "I know what you're thinking. That I'm a coward and a
liar. After everything I said about not making war on my own people.
But now I had a way out. I was going to give in to Sagan's threats,
let him take over. That way, I could blame him for whatever happens.
I wouldn't have to take the responsibility, wouldn't have to blame
myself. I could always comfort myself with the fact that I didn't
have a choice.

"And so I
made my decision. Or I thought I did. But when I went to leave my
room for the banquet, when I went to walk out the door, it was like
..."

Dion paused,
considering how best to express himself.

"It was as
if a force field had been activated around me. I couldn't walk
through that door. Whenever I tried, my insides seemed to shrivel up.
I began to sweat. I couldn't breathe."

Nola looked
wise, nodded in understanding. Tusk rolled his eyes and glanced at
the general. Dixter kept his gaze, intent and penetrating, fixed on
Dion.

"What did
you do then, son?" The general closed the book, but kept his
finger to mark the place. He'd just noticed something on the page
that he hadn't been reading, and he wanted to check it, to make
certain.

"I told
myself I was coming down with something. The flu, maybe. Or stress. I
went over to the bed and lay down, thinking I'd rest a little, then
go. There was still plenty of time. As I lay there, I admitted to
myself that I
did
have a choice. I could refuse to give in to
Sagan's threats. I could do what I believed was right. After all, I
was the king. I'd taken on the responsibility of caring for the
welfare of my people. I couldn't let them down.

"And the
moment I made the decision, I felt better, calm and relaxed. And I
sent the message," Dion concluded.

"This is
all in that correspondence psych course I took," Nola struck in,
excited. "You knew subconsciously that what you were doing
wasn't right and it was your subconscious that made you sick."

"Subconscious,
my ass! More like something he ate for lunch. Well, what the hell do
you expect to do now? You won't fight. You just gonna stand there and
let him shoot you."

"He won't,"
said Dion softly. "Any more than I could shoot him that night at
Snaga Ohme's."

"Godalmighty
..."

"You don't
have to back me up, you know," Dion pointed out, with a slight
smile.

"It's a
little late to switch sides, kid," Tusk muttered, threw himself
into a chair, and subsided into gloomy silence.

Dion smiled at
his friend, walked back over to stare out the viewscreen.

Far out in
space, beyond the fleet, a pulsar flashed, twice every second.

Dixter returned
to his book, and this time actually saw it. He glanced at the title,
an ominous one.
The King Must Die,
by a twentieth-century
author, Renault. The book was old. It had fallen open to a page, as
Dixter held it in his hands, as if that particular part had been read
many times. One paragraph, near the middle, was marked with a dot of
red ink.

. . . When the
King was dedicated, he knew his moira. In three years, or seven, or
nine, or whenever the custom was, his term would end and the god
would call him. And he went consenting, or else he was no king, and
power would not fall on him to lead the people. When they came to
choose among the Royal Kin, that was his sign: that he chose short
life with glory, and to walk with the god, rather than live long,
unknown like the stall-fed ox.

Dixter rubbed
his stubbled chin, rough with a night's growth of beard. He had heard
a sound, barely audible through the steel door, but easily
identifiable to those who've been listening for it: the muffled tread
of many pairs of booted feet marching in step.

The faint sound
became clearer, seemed to boom like thunder through the tension-tight
silence of His Majesty's quarters. Tusk's head snapped up. Nola sat
straight in her chair, her hand reached out for Tusk's. Dion turned
from the window, to stare calmly and dispassionately at the closed,
sealed door. But Dixter saw that the young man's fingers, clasped
together behind his back, left livid marks on the skin of his hands.
The general slowly shut and laid down his book.

Could they truly
hear, through the door and the metal bulkheads, the thud of fists
striking body armor over the heart, or did they imagine it? Could
they truly distinguish one set of booted footfalls from the others?

Tusk, shining
black and coiled tense as a cornered panther, rose to his feet. Dion
moistened dry lips.

The sealed door
slid open, the Warlord entered. He placed his hand on a control
panel. The door slid shut behind. He stood alone, no guards
accompanied him. He was clad in full battle armor and helm; not his
ceremonial armor, but the accoutrements of war. He wore the
bloodsword at his side. A long cape fell from the shoulders, attached
by golden phoenix pins. The metal face regarded Dion in silence, then
Sagan removed his helm, held it in the crook of his left arm.

His long black
hair, graying now beyond the temples, was slicked back smooth, tied
at the base of the neck with a leather thong. The features of his
face were steel-cold, he might have been still wearing the helm.

The young man's
unrelenting defiance did not crumble. He stood proud, resolute.

When the Warlord
spoke, it was to Dion alone, as if the two of them were alone in the
room, perhaps alone in the universe.

"I have
come to inform Your Majesty that I am leaving."