The Skies Discrowned (18 page)

Ten minutes later he tensed—a quiet, distant rattling and whirring was audible and growing momentarily louder. He curled his fingers around his sword hilt and waited, scanning the road more carefully now. The sound, punctuated now and then by coughing or an interval of muted metallic rattling, eventually became recognizable: it was that of a man riding a bicycle.

A moment later Frank saw the dim glow of the bike’s headlight; he could hear the man puffing now as he pedaled the thing along, and he heard also,
very
faintly, the long scratch of a sword being drawn. Don’t do it, Frank thought furiously. Can’t you idiots see that he’s a scout, running
ahead of the shipment to make sure the way is clear? Frank held his breath, but the bicyclist passed on by the ambush without even changing the rhythm of his breathing. When the sound had dwindled away behind him, Frank let out a soft sigh of relief.

The shipment ought to be along promptly now, he thought; and sure enough, he saw, dimly in the distance, twin pinpricks of light that could only be the headlights of a Transport truck. He took a chance and gave a low whistle to alert his men. They send their scouts damned far ahead, Frank thought. We could have killed that bicyclist easily, and even if he’d yelled the truck is too far behind him to have heard it. Or maybe the bicycle was wired with flares; if we’d knocked it over, a dozen skyrockets would have pinpointed the ambush and likely set us all afire.

The truck was closer now, and he could hear its knocking motor labor up a slight rise. Well, Frank thought, it’s all in the lap of the gods now.

Nearer and nearer it came, until, when it was fifty feet in front of him, two steel-headed crossbow quarrels flashed out of the shrubbery, both slanted to the south, and tore into the truck’s front tires. The vehicle was doing perhaps fifty miles per hour, so the stop, after the explosive loss of the tires, was a screeching, grinding, sparking slide.

Frank had hoped the truck would stop directly below him—it didn’t, quite, so he dropped out of the tree into the downward-slanting, dust-clouded headlight beams and with two blows of his dagger-hilt smashed the bulbs. The driver and two guards leaped out of the cab, brandishing swords at Frank, and were cut down by arrow-fire from the bushes.

Frank whipped out his sword, leaped to the hood and then to the top of the cab. Wooden boxes covered with a tarpaulin filled the truck bed; stretched across several of them was the limp body of another guard—apparently knocked unconscious when the truck was stopped. Even as Frank watched, one of the ambushers sank a dagger into the uniformed body.

Frank’s men now dragged the four bodies into the shrubbery while Frank climbed into the cab. He put the gear shift lever into neutral, and his well-trained crew pushed the crippled truck while Frank steered it off the road. The massive vehicle was carried by its own weight several yards into the bushes. Frank’s ten men cut branches from nearby trees and draped the truck with them, and aside from the cuts in the asphalt from the tire rims, there were no signs that anything had happened here.

“All right,” Frank whispered. “Quick, now, there might be a scout behind them, too. Everybody take one of these boxes and follow me. Forget the rest of them—this time we’ll take only what we can carry.”

Each of the eleven men shouldered one of the boxes from the truck bed and filed away eastward. After about a hundred and fifty yards, they came to a wider dirt road. Turning right, the party followed it south for a
quarter of a mile. Once Frank thought he heard shouts behind them, but it was very faint. The boxes were getting heavy and awkward, but no one spoke or even slackened the pace.

They finally reached the clearing where the eleven sleepy horses were tied. Frank and his men stowed their boxes in the saddlebags, mounted, and galloped away east—a bit awkwardly and unsteadily, for none of them were really competent horsemen.

When the last of the brigands had left the room, Frank turned to Hodges and the four other men at the table.

“Hand me that crowbar, will you, Hodges?” he asked. Hodges passed it to him. Frank pried up the nailed-down lid of the first box and lifted it off. In the box, wrapped in many sheets of waxed paper, were twelve .45 calibre semi-automatic pistols, glistening with oil. In the next box lay a thousand rounds of ammunition and twelve clips.

“Good God!” muttered Hodges. “Open the rest of them!”

Frank quickly opened the next box and found twenty rectangular sponges, rough on one side for scouring. The next box Frank pried apart held flat cans of saddle soap, as did the next two. Six metal bottles of kerosene lay in the next one, and the eighth box was filled with more saddle soap. The last four boxes held, respectively, hand-soap, pamphlets on diabetes, a hundred fountain pens (but no ink) and more saddle soap.

Frank opened a drawer in the table and pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch. “Well,” he said, stuffing the pipe, “the guns and ammunition will be handy. Hell, all of it’s handy in one way or another. These scouring sponges, now …”

Hodges, who had been looking strangled, now exploded in helpless laughter. “Yeah,” he gasped. “These scouring sponges, now.” He picked one of them up. “Nothing but the best. Duke’s choice!” He picked up two more and began juggling them.

“For God’s sake, man,” said Frank. “Pull yourself together.”

“Sorry, sire,” sniffled Hodges, wiping tears out of his
eyes.
“It’s been a long evening.”

“For all of us,” Frank agreed. “Now listen. We picked them off easily tonight, because they weren’t expecting anything—their precautions were minimal and the four guards we ran into were just tokens. Also, the shipment itself seems to have been a … fairly minor one. It won’t ever be this easy again.”

“Right,” agreed Hodges. “Next time they’ll have a lot of alert, heavily armed guards riding along. So why continue? To corner the market in sponges and saddle soap?”

Frank held a lit match over his pipe-bowl and puffed rapidly on it. “No,” he said, tamping it now. “Maybe you’ve forgotten those twelve pistols. And there are two purposes to these raids—to scavenge things for ourselves and to impede the Transports. And of the two the second is more important.

“Maybe you’ve also forgotten all those reports of construction going on in the Goriot Valley. They’re building offices, barracks, factories for all we know! And when they’re finished, more Transports will move in than any of you dreamed existed! How many times do I have to point this out? The Subterranean Companions will be a forgotten joke inside of a year. In the meantime, though, their supplies are being landed at the Barclay Depot and driven up the Cromlech Road to the palace or the valley. If we interfere with those shipments, we put off the day the Transports take complete charge of this planet.”

“He’s right, Hodges,” spoke up one of the previously silent councilors. “It’s the least we can do.”

“Right!” agreed Frank eagerly, his bronze ear glittering in the torchlight. “It is the least, a mere … temporary cure. We have to, eventually, get rid of the Transport entirely, which means, of course, getting rid of Costa as well.” He puffed on his pipe for a moment, sending thick smoke-coils curling to the ceiling. “We’ve got to find an heir—a prince.”

“There
arent
any, besides Costa himself, who has no children,” said Hodges with some exasperation. “And you can’t simply come up with a likely-looking pretender—you’d have to have documents, proof, things no forger could counterfeit.”

“I can’t help that,” Frank shrugged. “That’s what we need.”

Tom Strand jogged up the steps of the Transport General Offices’ building and grinned at his reflection in the front window as he straightened his tie. Ah, you’re a bright-looking lad, Tommie, he told himself. He pulled open the door and approached the stern-faced woman behind the receptionist’s desk.

“Uh, hello,” said Tom shyly. “I was asked to come … that is, I have an appointment with Captain Duprey.”

The woman pursed her lips and flipped through her appointment book. “You’re Thomas Strand?”

“That’s right.”

“He’s expecting you. Second floor, room two-twelve.”

“Thank you.” Tom found the stairs after a few wrong turns and soon was knocking on the door of Room 212. He was told to come in, did so, and found himself in a pleasant, sunlit office, facing a smiling man with gray temples and laughter lines around his eyes.

“Tom Strand? I’m Captain Duprey.” The officer half-stood and warmly shook Tom’s hand. “Sit down, Tom. Will you have some brandy?”

“Yes, thank you.” Tom was gratified and profoundly flattered to be on such friendly terms with a Transport officer.
I hope I’m equal to whatever job they have for me
, he thought.

“Well, Tom,” said Duprey, pouring two glasses, “you’re in a position to do the Transport a big favor. And”—he looked up—“the Transport is not ungrateful to people who do it favors.”

“I’ll be … glad to be of service, sir.”

“Good! I knew you were a smart lad when I saw you. I can certainly see we’ve picked the right man! Here, drink up.”

“Thank you, sir.” For a moment they both simply savored the brandy. “Are you loyal to your Duke, Tom?” asked Duprey with a sharp look.

“Oh,
yes
sir!” Tom had, to be sure, his private doubts and dissatisfactions, but knew when to keep them to himself. “Absolutely,” he added with fervor.

“Good man!” Duprey looked ready to burst with his admiration for Tom. “Now,” he said, lowering his voice solemnly, “you were, I believe, a close friend of Francisco de Goya Rovzar?”

“Yes,” said Tom, mystified by this turn. “He and his father disappeared about a year ago. I heard they were sent to the Orestes mines.”

“I’ll tell you what happened, Tom. They were in the palace when Costa overthrew Topo’s decadent rule, and they resisted arrest. The father was killed and young Francisco escaped into Munson. You’ve heard of the Subterranean Companions?”

“Yes. They’re the ones who’ve been raiding your supply shipments, aren’t they?”

“That’s right, Tom. Well, Francisco has become their king and is the instigator of these raids!”

“He’s the king?” asked Tom in amazement. “Are you sure? How did he get to become king?”

“I understand he murdered the previous king, which is how succession works with these killers and thieves. Barbaric.”

“It certainly is,” Tom agreed. “I can see how he’d do well at it, though.

My father is a fencing instructor, and Frankie was always his star pupil.”

“Is that right? Yes, that explains a lot of things.” Duprey flipped open a wooden box on his desk. “Have a cigar, Tom,” he said. “Genuine Havanas, all the way from Earth.”

Tom took a cigar, glorying in his apparent equality with this space-wise, experienced old soldier. Duprey lit it for him, and Tom puffed at it with an expression of determined enjoyment.

“This brings us right to the point,” Duprey went on. “I won’t mince words, for I see you’re a man who likes to know straight-out what’s what. Frank Rovzar is a criminal and a leader of other criminals. He is almost certainly responsible for the deaths of … let’s see … eighteen Transport soldiers, several of them officers, and his raids on our shipments are becoming more costly all the time. You see the position he puts us in?”

“I certainly do, sir.”

“Good. Now what I … what the Transport asks of you is that you enlist in the Subterranean Companions. We’ll provide you with a credible story, of course. Then you can pretend to re-establish your friendship with him; get close to him; and then, quickly and mercifully, execute him. You’ll be acting as a representative of the state, naturally, and when you return from this valuable mission you’ll be given a high position in our company—as Well as a cash reward for Rovzar’s death. It’s a fairly dangerous adventure, I know, and many men would fear to take opportunity’s somewhat bloody hand. But, unless I’m mistaken, you’re made of sterner stuff.”

Tom gulped his brandy, trying hard to mask the uncertainty inside him.
Even for a high position in the Transport
, he thought,
can I coldly kill old Frank? Still if I turn Duprey down I’ll likely wind up in jail myself

“I’m always ready to do my country’s bidding,” Tom said with a pious look. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

“I knew you were our man!” said Duprey with the sort of smile one saves for a true comrade.

Unlike Blanchard, Frank made it a point to attend as many meetings of the Subterranean Companions as he could. He liked to keep up on the news and to learn as much as possible about the workings of the organization he’d become king of. Generally he sat to the side, smoking thoughtfully, only occasionally speaking up to add something or ask a question of Hodges.

Tonight he squinted curiously through a haze of latakia smoke at Hodges, who had just claimed to have an announcement to make about “the deceased king, Tolley Christensen.”

“After the duel in which Tolley Christensen was killed,” Hodges read from his notes, “his sword was picked up, together with the sword of King Blanchard. The two swords were observed to cling to each other. Upon investigation, Tolley’s sword proved to be magnetized. This is a trick expressly forbidden in the bylaws, and therefore I declare that Tolley’s admittedly brief reign was won by unfair means, and is, because of that, invalidated. Henceforth, then, our present King Francisco Rovzar is to be remembered as the successor to King Blanchard, with none between.”

Frank felt a quick panic. That means that Tolley wasn’t king when I killed him, he thought. Therefore, technically, I’m not really the king now. Damn it, Hodges, I wish you’d cleared this with me before announcing it.
Oh hell
, he thought. Even if they do appoint someone else, I can always pull the
ius gladii
out of the hat again. And they’ll know I will, so they won’t try it even if they think of it.

A magnetized sword, eh, Tolley? Were you that scared of Blanchard? In the legendry and superstition of the understreet thieves, a magnetized sword was reputed to be much deadlier than an ordinary one; but Frank couldn’t see that it would make any difference. It just might, he thought, make getting a bind a little easier, and it might make your parries a little quicker—but it would do the same for your opponent, too.