The Navigator of Rhada (4 page)

With great effort and human cooperation, the Vulk could enter the human mind. Even without a human’s acquiescence, a mature Vulk could sense much that transpired within a man. But LaRoss, Kreon’s First Minister, was that human rarity to Gret: a completely shielded personality. No inkling of what went on within the minister’s tightly controlled brain reached the questing Vulk. “Do you believe Karston dead, Minister?” Gret asked. La Ross shrugged and wrapped his dark cloak around him against the chill air in the hall. “I can only tell you what I saw with my own eyes, Vulk. It would be well if you told it to Alberic just as I tell it to you. He is a Rhad and a warman, and he should understand what it means.” He walked to the narrow window and stood for a moment studying the stony seacoast far below. Night was falling, and the long swells of the Gonlan Sea broke in bursts of dark silver on the rocky coast.

LaRoss spoke quietly. “It was a happy occasion, as you might imagine. Kreon and Karston went to Star Field as friends and allies. There was no need--or so we thought --for anything more than a ceremonial escort. After all, Karston and Janessa were promised when they were still children, and there has never been war between Aurora and Gonlan.” He regarded the Royal Vulk of Rhada with narrowed eyes. “Between Aurora and
Rhada,
yes. Before Gonlan became part of the Rhadan Palatinate--in Aaron the Devil’s time--the Rhad and the Aurori warred and raided. But I forget that you must remember that yourself. You were Aaron’s councilor--”

The Vulk smiled thinly. “I was Aaron of Rhada’s fool and minstrel, Minister. In those days, Vulks had no titles.” LaRoss gave a mock bow. “Forgive me. I forget that it was Kier who changed all that. The great king of the Rhad.”

“He was,” Gret said, “and well you know it. The very greatest of the Rhad. Greater even than the beatified Emeric. But go on.”

“There’s little enough to tell, actually. We arrived at Star Field, and the Elector greeted us well--” LaRoss grimaced. “I admit to being at least partially at fault in this. I have always favored the Auroran alliance for us. I thought the Elector an honorable man. I was wrong. First Kreon was taken ill at the feasting. Then we were attacked--without warning and without the hope of any real resistance. Karston was taken. Several of our officers were killed--”

“The men who attacked you--?”

“You wouldn’t expect them to wear Auroran harness, would you, Master Gret? No, nothing of the sort. Their arms and armor were civilian design--they could have been from any one of the Ten Worlds. But they were
on
Aurora. They were
in
Star Field. Could they have done that if they were strangers?”

Gret made no reply.

LaRoss shrugged and turned away, renewing his scrutiny of the restless, darkening sea.

Tirzah said, “They reckoned without a full understanding of us, though. We are Rhad, after all”--he flushed momentarily and then continued--”men of Gonlan, in any case. We fought our way back to our ship--and we took Janessa with us. She is here now. Below, under guard. That is all there is to say except that Aurora will regret it.”

Gret said, “You, General Crespus. Were you there?”

“No, by the holy Star. I wasn’t, and I should have been. But I was here, inspecting the garrison.”

“It’s just as well,” LaRoss said moodily. “If Crespus had been taken or killed, Gonlan would be without a military leader. I believe that was the intent of the operation. My agents on Aurora send word that they are mobilizing for war--invasion, if they can manage it.”

Gret shrugged and caressed his lyre so that the strings hummed softly. “You have their heiress, after all.”

Tirzah made an impatient gesture. “No, Master Gret, things have gone too far. It’s war, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sorry our Alberic is displeased, but nothing can be done. We ask only that he stay out of it and allow us to settle with the Aurori in our own way.”

Alberic, Gret thought sadly, too old now to take the field against insurgent vassal states, too old to keep the peace on the Rim. Why was it that something warned him that this choice of time, place, and combatants was not coincidental? Was it the plaguing Vulk sense of history? That knowledge that came with long, long life and much knowledge of the galaxy’s only star-voyaging race, man the predator?

One last throw, then, the Vulk thought, like the counter falling on a board where a lost game of stars and comets must be played to the end.

“War between Gonlan and Aurora will give the Imperials an excuse to intervene, councilors. You know that, of course. But do you know what it means? For two hundred years home rule has been a fact in the Rhadan Palatinate. What happens when Torquas’s warships appear here ‘to keep the peace’?”

“Torquas would not dare,” General Crespus said positively.

The Vulk sighed. There was no convincing these touchy outworlders. Perhaps it was as Crespus had said--perhaps he
had
been too long among the politicians of the Inner Worlds and had forgotten that here, on the Rim, disputes were settled with blows and bloodshed. But intervention by the Imperials seemed a virtual certainty to Gret, who knew the temper of the Galacton’s court. Home rule, democracy, these were despised concepts in the Imperial city of Nyor, half across the sky.

But surely there was something more in this? There was a missing factor somewhere, a piece of the puzzle gone, an element not yet clear. The Vulk’s narrow shoulders sagged wearily. Somehow, he was failing in his duty. His intuition told him that he had not penetrated to the heart of the matter, yet he was at a loss how to continue. Perhaps it might be best to go to Kreon and ask to probe his mind. A desperate thing to do with, and to, a dying man. The strain could kill a human untrained in the mind-touch. And should a man die while sharing his mind with a Vulk, the symbiote shared his death. Yet there seemed no other way. Vulks had been dying for men--and at their hands --for three thousand years with a docility and loyalty few men understood. What would one more death mean to history, Gret wondered? To his own people, the loss would be grievous--there were so few Vulks left. But to man, to his Empire and his destiny--?

He turned his featureless face to LaRoss and was about to command the First Minister to take him to the dying star king’s quarters when the ancient stones of Melissande began to throb to the slow beat of a huge, muffled drum. The men in the hall stood quite still, listening. Then through the rainfall came the mournful call of a military trumpet sounding last post.

Tirzah drew the sign of the Star on his mailed chest. His eyes were suddenly filled with tears. “Kreon is dead,” he said.

TORQUAS XIII (
called the Poet), Eighteenth Vykan Galacton of the Second Empire, 6,212 GE-6,252 GE. Son of Torquas XII and Manana of Eleuthera
(daughter of Silentus the Thin, Amir of Epsilon Cygnus 9). Last of the Torquans, Torquas XIII came to the throne after the assassination of Torquas XII by officers of the Vegan Imperial Household Troops. He is known to historians primarily for his association with General the Honorable Alain Veg Tran, victor of the Battle of Eridanus
(
6,209
GE),
Imperial Proconsul
(
6,215 GE-6,220
GE),
and leader of the AbasNav (anticlerical) party from 6,210 GE to 6,220 GE. . . .

In Earth’s northern latitudes, the season was spring. From the terraces of Tran’s hunting lodge atop the ridge of mountains in the Western Land, the fertile Saclara Valley could be seen through the haze--green from the mountains to the bay, dotted with orchards and thicket-lik
e parks.

To the man from Gonlan, the land seemed lush, overly ripe, and tamed. Yet he knew that packs of great wild dogs roamed the fields of Saclara: dogs maintained by the general as game for the blood sports he loved to the exclusion of almost all else except war and politics.

The people of the valley, who were descendants of the original survivors of Earth’s Dark Time, habitually went about Tran’s lands in company with armed Vegans, members of the general’s personal guard. This was said to be for their own protection against the wild, semi-intelligent dogs; but it seemed to Karston, born to the freedom of the Rim, that the Veg soldiers served as much to suppress any dissent among the tenants as to protect them from the packs.

From his vantage point on the uppermost terrace of the fortress-like lodge, Karston could see a party of Veg warmen riding up the long, straight path from the valley. There were six of them, and the scales of the armored horses glinted in the warm spring sunlight.

There were ground cars in the lodge: three of them. But these were reserved for the personal use of General Tran and his secretary, a stocky Vegan warlock named Quinto. The machines were the newest hovercar design from Nyor, and they could cover the distance from the lodge overlooking Saclara to the spaceport at St. Francis Town in less than an hour. But the tame look of the land was deceptive, and since it was impossible to travel by hovercar anywhere except on the floor of the valley or along the muddy shores of St. Francis Bay, most of the general’s people were horsemen.

Karston studied the animals with interest as the war party approached the lodge’s outer defenses. Vegan chargers were descendants of the original breeding stock taken to the Vegan planets by the Imperial officers of the First Empire. Like the horses of Rhada, they had been altered over countless generations to suit the requirements of the men who bred them. And whereas on the Rhadan worlds the animals had been mutated to produce mounts of great swiftness, ferocity, and intelligence, the Veg had bred a strain of armored beasts, immensely strong but sullen and devoid of the rudiments of language and telepathy. Karston watched the sunlight glistening from the armored carapaces and the articulated platelets of silvery hide. The animals suited the Vegan character, he thought with Rim-world arrogance. The Veg were specialists in defense and dedicated to victory through intransigence rather than maneuver.

But the troop had a certain elegance, Karston had to admit--a flamboyance of manner and dress that belied the true character of the races of Vega. The harness worn by the warmen was of extreme design, heavily ornamented with gems and precious metals. The officer in command wore a circlet of brilliantly colored feathers in his helmet, and the horsemen carried crossbows slung across their backs. Vegan Imperials--the praetorians of the Second Stellar Empire. All were laughing and talking, and there seemed no semblance of discipline or order in their approach. Karston wondered what this particular detachment had been doing below in the hazy valley. The officer carried a bundle, slung in a stained black cape, at his saddlebow.

“I see by your expression that you don’t think much of Household Imperials.”

Karston turned to the speaker. General the Honorable Alain Veg Tran had come onto the terrace quite soundlessly. Karston studied the square face, ornamented with a small beard around the tiny, compressed mouth. Tran’s dark eyes were like lumps of tarnished silver in the sunlight. He was a large and athletic man, running slightly to fat now in his fortieth year. His hair was long and caught with silver clasps in the Vegan style, and he wore the unadorned tunic of a Vegan Imperial prefect. His near-austerity contrasted strangely with the peacock magnificence of the troops approaching the lodge gatehouse.

“They’re well enough for parade troops, I suppose,” Karston replied, with a touch of insolence.

A movement of Tran’s thin lips suggested a smile. “Don’t allow their manner to fool you, my young friend. In open battle--give me Rhadans every time, of course. But when the task is subtle, there are no better men than the warmen of the Vegan Imperials. I should think the operation on Aurora would have convinced you of that.”

“Janessa is on Gonlan, not here, General. At least half the operation failed.”

Tran leaned on the terrace rail and looked out over the valley. Far to the west, toward the Sierras, great white towers of cumulus clouds rose from the haze. “I think it is time you learned some facts, Karston. If you are going to dabble in interstellar politics, you must become a realist.” Karston frowned at the older man but said nothing. It occurred to him for the first time that his anxiety to come into his inheritance had brought him to a risky position. He was alone in an Imperial stronghold; in the power of a man whose reputation for ruthlessness was legend throughout the Empire. And he had--his mind would not accept the word “betrayed,” but his actions would certainly be so regarded among his own people if they knew--he had
contrived
to align himself with powers operating on a scale far beyond his own limited hopes and expectations. Alain Veg Tran
was
the Imperial power. Torquas was a verse-writing, remote figurehead. Weak Galactons created strong generals. Tran and his AbasNav party controlled the forces of the Empire: that much was fact.

At the outset, Karston had imagined he could use this power to take what would one day be his, in any case--the power in Gonlan. But power was tricky stuff to handle, and now the young prince was having some second thoughts. Pressure was useful, yes. But it was a matter of degree. And from the first day Karston had allowed the agents of General Tran to approach him on Gonlan without ordering them arrested and delivered to the star king for judgment, the possibility of his own plans being engulfed in the larger battle had existed. But his pride made it impossible for him to admit fear or doubt. Now he replied to General Tran with characteristic arrogance.