Spirit of Empire 4: Sky Knights (45 page)

“Word travels. Surely you know that.”

“What’s your name?”

“Suliam.”

“You’re wounded. What happened?”

“My gorlac fell on me in battle. My legs no longer work.”

“So you were a warrior?”

“I was a general.”

“You seem young for a general.”

“Not so young when your father is emperor. Nevertheless, I was a good general. My men respected me. My father, well . . . not so much.”

“He seems to be sort of full of himself,” Galborae said, carefully watching Suliam for a reaction.

Suliam burst out laughing. “Well said! I would know your name.”

“I am Sir Galborae. The man next to me is our Teacher, though he is a warrior as well. Beside him is the Sky Lord.”

Suliam’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard tales of all of you,” he said looking back and forth between them
.
“You’re the swordsman?” he asked Galborae.

“I’m just a man like you,” Galborae answered.

Suliam’s eyes went to the sword at Galborae’s waist, then back to his eyes. “You spoke with my father?”

“We did,” Galborae answered. “We expected resistance, but not the complete failure we experienced.”

Suliam’s lips tightened and his body language deflated. “His father was a great leader who united our civilization. He dealt harshly with criminals, and our roads became safe enough to travel without guards. A fast gorlac could take you from one end of our lands to the other in a few weeks. If Grandfather had one failure, it was a failure to teach Father to lead. When he died, our hopes died with him. We’ve been sliding downhill ever since.”

“We learned as much. We’re wondering if our hopes might be better placed in you.”

“Once I would have said yes. Now, I’m a broken man. Fighting demons demands a strong leader. Reuniting our civilization will require an even stronger leader.”

Galborae rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin. “Are you a god?”

A scowl filled Suliam’s face. “He’s no more a god than you or me. His advisors fill him only with the truths he wants to hear. You’d be better served speaking with my brother. He’ll be the next emperor despite Father’s decree, and I think he’ll make a good emperor. I was a soldier, but my brother is a scholar.”

“If you had not been injured, you would have become the next emperor?”

“Yes.”

“We might be able to heal your injury. If we did, would you then become emperor?”

Suliam went silent, deep in thought. When he spoke, he seemed slightly surprised with his answer. “Before my injury, I expected to become emperor with my brother as my closest advisor. A strong warrior backed up by a wise advisor would have had a chance to reunite our lands.” He looked to the Sky Lord and his two sky knights. “Then the demons came, and now you’ve come. Our world is changed forever. I wonder if a scholar backed up by a strong warrior might be more successful.”

Havlock spoke. “You speak with wisdom. We won’t answer that question for you, but know this: our first priority is to remove the demons from these lands. We’re working with many civilizations in the process. We have not come to conquer, only to fight the demons. How each nation rules within their borders is up to them. How they interact with other civilizations might become our business under certain circumstances—we will step in to prevent wars, and we will promote peace—but we will resist interfering inside your borders.”

“You speak of many civilizations. How many?”

“I’m prepared to show you rather than just tell you, but I can only do so from our sky ship. Do you have the courage to go with me?”

Suliam’s gaze traveled between Havlock, Galborae, and Hawke. Havlock did not sense alarm, and that surprised him. Hawke must have been thinking the same thing, for he asked, “Do you ride saurons?”

Suliam nodded. “I do.”

“For you to learn, we have to take you much, much higher than you ever went on your sauron.”

“My life has had little purpose since my injury. I’m ready for anything new. Is now a good time?”

* * * * *

Suliam got the standard program given to any leader who was willing to go through the experience. Following that, he joined Havlock and the senior staff to come up with a plan.

“We could send caravans that would start pecking away at your borders,” Havlock said. “It’s slow but steady.”

Suliam considered, then shook his head. “Our borders have become lawless. Your warriors would spend as much time defending themselves from bandits as they do fighting gleasons. You will have better results if we work outward from the center. As you draw the gleasons from our center, we’ll begin a rebuilding process.” He considered for a time, then said, “We need my brother.”

Havlock nodded. “How do we find him?”

“You don’t. I will.”

Galborae groaned. “Back to the palace, again?”

“Actually, no. He makes his home in a monastery with his wife and family. You’ll have to bring his family with him if you want his help.”

* * * * *

A shuttle settled to the ground outside the gates of a monastery. The squad set up a perimeter, then Galborae and Milae guided Suliam down the ramp on a floater and waited.

By now, approaching a new place had settled into a pattern, but with Suliam making the demands, the process went a lot quicker than normal. The squad fought off two gleason attacks while they waited, Suliam’s eyes missing nothing even though he understood very little. One gleason got close enough that Galborae’s sword came out. Both attacking gleasons turned toward him, but the squad finished them off before Galborae had to intervene.

Suliam’s brother eventually came out through the gate and guided the three into the monastery. Two hours later a larger group came out through the gates, two young boys riding with Suliam on his floater. They went hesitantly into the shuttle, and moments later Milae left the shuttle carrying a huge pack on her back. She went through the gates with a squad right behind her, the gates closed, and the shuttle lifted and disappeared to the west. Ten minutes later two more shuttles settled before the gates. Marines poured from the shuttles pushing floaters loaded with supplies. They disappeared through the main gates but returned time and time again for more supplies. Eventually, the last marine disappeared into the monastery, the gates closed, and the shuttles lifted until they were out of sight. But the shuttles did not leave.

Suliam stayed with his brother, Aldan, through Hawke’s standard introduction program. As the process unfolded over a period of several days, so too did their plans for the future: the brothers decided to rule their civilization as a team of two.

Havlock shook his head at the news. “You’re setting yourselves up for failure. There can only be one captain of a ship.”

Atiana added her thoughts. “You play with fire. A falling out between the two of you could endanger our whole plan.”

Both brothers nodded. “We know the risks,
”
Suliam said, “but it will take my strength and Aldan’s wisdom to defeat the gleasons and return our people to the greatness that was.”

“How will you resolve disagreements?” Atiana demanded.

Suliam’s lips thinned but the corners of his eyes crinkled as he nodded to her. “You say your sky knights will not interfere in local politics, but in your heart you know there will be times you cannot keep that promise. Am I right?”

Atiana looked to Havlock for the answer. He frowned and shifted uneasily. “Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it, Sky Lord,” Suliam said. “Hopefully your interventions will be infrequent, but if you’ve convinced me of nothing else, you’ve convinced me our world is enormous and has many, many different civilizations. There will be strife between them just as there will be strife between brothers.”

He stared hard at Havlock. “You’re our safety net. We will always know that if the day comes when our disagreements turn to feuding, you will be there with the power to remove us, just as you’re going to help us remove Father.”

“Sorry, but no. He’s an internal matter.”

Suliam shook his head. “The matter is internal, agreed, but he will not step down willingly. We can force him out, but we’ll lose a lot of good men in the process, men we need for fighting gleasons. If you’ll provide transportation and maybe a few convincing voyages like what you’ve given the two of us, we can do it peacefully. Our own men are not the problem—they’re no happier with things than we are. It’s father’s personal guards we have to convince, and there are a lot of them.”

He leaned forward. “The alternative is to wait until nature takes its course. Our people deserve better than that.”

Galborae leaned across the table toward him, then changed his mind and shifted to Aldan. “Like your brother, I’m a fighter, not a scholar. What do you, a scholar, say?”

“I say you’re concerned with breaching a precedent that exists only in your minds, not ours. You want a perfect world in which you will never interfere in local issues, but the world is not perfect. You’re interfering in internal matters at this very moment, and I doubt if this is the first time you’ve done so. Even if it is, I’m certain it will not be the last. From Father’s viewpoint, you would be forcing yourselves upon us, but I think we’re all agreed that he does not have our people’s best interests at heart. I, on the other hand, believe that I do, and I, too, am an insider. What if I, an insider,
invite
you
to intervene? The distinction is small, but it’s a distinction nevertheless. I believe you can act in good conscience in our case.”

Havlock pursed his lips and looked away while he thought. When he turned back, his eyes moved from Aldan to Suliam. “I’ll provide transportation, but not men or weapons.”

Suliam nodded. “Until we fight gleasons together.”

Havlock nodded. “Agreed.”

Aldan leaned back with the fingers of his hands intertwined across his stomach while staring at Havlock. “I barely know you, but I believe Tranxte is fortunate to have you as Sky Lord. You have standards which you do not readily abandon, a good sign in a leader. You will be a good safety net for us, but who’s to be our safety net when you’re gone?”

Havlock stared back at this middle-aged man from an emerging society, a man whose whole fabric of reality had just been stretched beyond imagination, a man who despite a great trial still retained a sense of proportion and a sense of humor.

“I see why your brother wants you at his side, Aldan. I’m constantly reminded by others like you that wisdom does not reside only in those of us who come from the stars. I have a feeling I’ll be calling on that wisdom of yours on a regular basis during the coming years. You might even find yourself one day guiding many nations, not just your own. As for my replacement, some of my people are long-lived. I am one such. I will be around for many generations, provided the gleasons do not kill me, the people of Tranxte do not call for my removal, or my own superiors do not remove me.”

“It’s settled then, but nothing happens until my brother is restored to his full strength. I’m not a man of the sword. I cannot act without him.”

Suliam went into the tank and spent three months after that restoring his body to fighting strength. He and Galborae spent long hours with the sword, and they spent longer hours with stunners, blasters, and tactical instruction including effective use of air cover for caravans. His training culminated with a ground position on a foreign king’s caravan, after which it was time for him to return to his people.

* * * * *

Suliam and Aldan, each of them wearing communicators, rode up to the palace at the head of a contingent of Suliam’s personal knights. Havlock watched from high above as two hardened forces stopped just meters apart.

Suliam rode forward and approached the guard captain. “My brother and I have come to meet with the emperor. Stand aside.”

“We’ll stand aside for you two, but not your men,” the captain replied.

“Very well.”

A gap opened before the two brothers. They rode through it and up to the main doors where they dismounted and entered the palace. Outside, a knight from Suliam’s contingent approached the guard captain. A brief, private conversation ensued, then the two of them turned their gorlacs toward the main doors and waited patiently side by side.

Inside, the two brothers approached the emperor who was seated on his throne. Guards lined the walls and stood two deep beside the emperor. The brothers stopped before their father and went to a knee, remaining heads down until he invited them to stand.

“You’re no longer damaged,” he noted to Suliam. “What do you want?”

“We ask for a private audience, Father,” Suliam answered.

“Huh! You approach with your knights and expect me to welcome you with open arms?”

“We do, Father. This is a family matter.”

“No. Say what you’ve come to say.”

Suliam looked around the room studying the guards, then turned back to his father. “You’ve earned a rest, Father. It’s time for your sons to rule. Let us take the burden from your shoulders.”