Les shook his head. “I don’t know.” He was silent for a moment.
She waited, hoping he’d trust her again, but instead he said, “But it wouldn’t be good for me. The Shalnuksis would lose control. They’d never get their crop harvested.”
“But without information, how can they expect a small group of mercenaries to get them anything?”
“Maybe they can’t.” There was definite worry in the pilot’s voice. “But it is important. Have you any suggestions?”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Gwen said. “You say the crop is valuable, but they don’t visit the source for hundreds of years—”
“Oh. Yes,” Les said. “But you see, the real surinomaz won’t grow under normal conditions on Tran. Just for a few years out of every six hundred. But for about five years, starting a couple years from now, it grows very well. The mercenaries could demand a pretty stiff price if they knew it.” He sighed. “I guess the best thing will be to set them down near a small village in the right geographical region and hope they’re intelligent enough to manage.”
“They won’t even know the languages—”
“They’ll have to learn them.”
“Why six hundred years?”
“Orbits,” the pilot said. “Tran has two main suns. Both a little bigger and a little hotter than Sol. Planet’s farther away from either of them, so it’s not as warm. Reasonable climate, actually. But even with both suns, surinomaz won’t grow properly. It’s only a weed until the third sun comes close, but then for a short time it’s the best stuff in the galaxy.”
“But what is surinomaz?”
“Ever hear of Acapulco Gold?” the pilot asked.
“Marijuana—you mean drugs?”
“In a way. Look, back on Earth, you’ve just discovered endogenous morphiates. Know what I’m talking about? No? Well, it turns out that the brain manufactures its own painkillers and euphoric drugs. Chemicals similar to morphines. Enough of them in your system, and you have a natural high. Surinomaz makes the stuff, only by the barrelful. It has about the same effect on Shalnuksis as on humans, and they use it about the same way Americans use alcohol. And Tran Natural gets a premium price, like Talisker scotch, or the rarer wines.”
Gwen stared at him.
“I see you don’t approve,” Les said. “Look, what is it to me if the Shalnuksis use drugs? Or to you?”
But there has to be more, she thought. There has to be. Or is it that I can’t accept being in love with a drug dealer? “Isn’t all this illegal?” Gwen asked.
Les shrugged. “The drug traffic isn’t precisely legal, but no one really cares. Keeping Tran a secret—now, that’s highly illegal.”
“But the crop is important to you,” Gwen said.
The pilot was very serious now. “More important than you can guess that the mercenaries succeed.”
“Then you should stay and help them,” she said.
“Can’t. The ship’s too valuable. And this trip has to be kept secret, which means the ship must return as quickly as possible—”
And then, as he always did, he changed the subject.
* * *
The computer’s files on Tran were sketchy. As nearly as Gwen could tell, the planet had never been visited except to obtain a harvest, and there had never been any systematic studies made. No one had been sufficiently curious. There were only groups of traders who had brought mercenary soldiers from Earth with instructions to seize a particular area and cultivate surinomaz, harvest it, and sell the product to ships that would come later.
That had begun in Indo-European times, as Gwen had deduced from the language. She was pleased to find confirmation in the computer’s records. The first humans had been sent to Tran because a dominant life-form, centauroid (vaguely similar to the Greek centaur of legend, but the intelligent and unrelated centauroids she’d seen in other pictures far more so) and about as intelligent as a chimpanzee, could not be trained to do cultivation. She could not find out why humans had been chosen, or why, once they had decided on humans, they had brought a band of Achaean warriors and their slaves instead of planting a high-technology colony.
The original expedition had been expensive. In addition to the Achaeans, the Shalnuksi traders had brought a variety of Earth plants and animals, scattering seeds broadside on the planet and returning years later with more animals and insects. There had been no scientific rationale to what they had brought, no attempt at a balanced ecology. It was instant natural selection; adapt or die.
The records didn’t say so, but Gwen wondered if one of the reasons that surinomaz had become increasingly difficult to cultivate might be the competition from Earth plants, animals, and insects. Tran’s native life-forms used levoamino acids and dextro sugars, like Earth’s, and thus competed for many of the same nutrients.
Tran’s history and evolution was dominated by its suns. The two major suns together gave it at best only a bit more than ninety percent of what Earth receives from Sol; Tran was normally a cold world, with only the regions near the equator comfortable for humans. But then came the cyclic approach of the third star; for twenty years out of each six hundred, Tran received nearly twenty percent more sunlight, a combined total of ten percent more illumination than Earth ever got.
In those times of burning, ice caps melted. Weather became enormously variable, with cycles of drought and rainstorms alternating nearly everywhere. The higher latitudes, in normal times too cold for humans and resembling the Alaska tundra, were warmed and became temperate, experiencing a brief but glorious bloom of life.
The effects of the invader’s passage were devastating to the human cultures. They never rose higher than an Iron Age feudalism. Gwen thought that curious and wanted to talk to Les about it, but she didn’t feel very good and went to bed early.
The next morning she vomited her breakfast.
* * *
In a week she was certain. She went to find Les. He was seated at the control console dictating notes for the mercenaries. When she came in he looked up with a slight frown, annoyed that she’d disturbed him at work. “Yes?”
“I’m pregnant.”
His face ran a gamut of emotions. Surprise, but then something else. It looked almost like horror. He said nothing for what seemed like an eternity. Then, his voice calm, he said, “We have reasonably complete medical robots aboard. I can ask the computer if they’re up to an abortion.”
“Damn you!” she shouted. “Damn you!”
“But—”
“What makes you think I want an abortion? I suppose this is an inconvenience to you. It—”
“Hush. There’s more involved than you know.”
He’s serious, she thought. Deadly serious. Deadly. Now there’s an appropriate word. “Les, I thought you might be pleased.” Tears welled despite her effort to control them. Couldn’t he understand?
“There’s so much you don’t know. Can’t know,” he said. “Gwen, we can’t have a family life. Not as you think of family life—”
“You’re already married. I should have known.” She was alone again. Alone, and she couldn’t go home.
His reaction startled her. He laughed. Then he said, “No. I’m not married.” He stood and came toward her. She moved away. His face changed, the expression softening. “Gwen, it’s going to be all right. You startled me, that’s all. It will be all right. You’ll see.”
She wanted desperately to believe him. “Les, I love you—”
He moved closer. She was afraid, of him and of everything, but she didn’t know what to do; and when he came to her, she clung to him in despair.
Two weeks passed. Les did not mention their future again. They entered Tran’s star system, and Les busied himself finding a suitable place to land the mercenaries.
PART THREE
TYLARA
1
Tylara do Tamaerthon sat at the head of the great wooden council table beneath banners and armor taken in a hundred battles. Her blouse was fine silk, d
yed a cornflower blue to match her eyes, but under it she wore mail. The dagger at her belt had jewels and a pommel carved to the likeness of a gull’s head; a work of art, but the blade was made in Rustengo and was honed to a fine point. Her braided raven-black hair was crowned with a cap of hammered iron.
She was young and beautiful, and every man in the room felt her presence; despite her armor and the dagger at her waist, she seemed small and vulnerable, in need of protection.
Everyone seemed dwarfed in the great hall of Castle Dravan. Like all of the ancient castles of Tran, Dravan stood above caves of ice; there was a faint smell of ammonia in the council room as an acolyte opened a massive door far below them. Above ground, stone arches and great wooden beams stretched massively. Other rooms in the fortress sported rich tapestries and wood paneling, but here the bones and sinews of the castle showed nakedly. The only decorations were mementos of battles won.
There were many of those. Banners from places a hundred leagues and more distant gave mute testimony to the strength of Dravan and the skill of the Eqetas who had ruled here. Tylara looked up at them as if to draw strength down from the rafters.
It was her first meeting of the full council, and she had no real confidence in these westerners. They seemed so little like her husband! And there were only two bheromen in attendance. The others were knights and merchants, a local priest of Hestia—this was a grain-producing region—and the inevitable priests of Yatar, two representatives of the yeomanry, a scattering of guildmasters. They called her Great Lady, and for the moment they respected her as Eqetassa of Chelm; but she was still a stranger who had never lived among them.
Her only real friends were the retinue she had brought from Tamaerthon, and they had no place in the council of this western land.
A messenger stood at the end of the table. What he read was full of flowery phrases and elaborate compliments, but his meaning was clear enough. She heard him out with impatience, then waved to have him led from the room. When he was gone, she looked down the length of the heavy wooden table. “Well, my lords? Wanax Sarakos makes us an offer. Have you advice?”
There was profound silence. Tylara smiled thinly. The silence was more eloquent than any speech could have been. Her bheromen wanted to accept the offer—or at least bargain with Sarakos while they still had something to bargain with. The yeomen and guildmasters—could they want Sarakos here also? Tylara looked at the impassive faces and read nothing. She knew too little of these people, and they were accustomed to hiding their thoughts from the great ones.
But if one of the bheromen spoke for accepting Sarakos, others would join. Or would they? These were her husband’s people. Could they be so little like him? The memory of him stabbed at her, and she saw him as he had been: tanned, laughing, coming to her. She thrust the image from her mind before the tears came, for she had had this dream before, and it ended with reality—with Lamil cold and stiff in his bier.
She keenly felt her youth and inexperience. She was only twelve as they reckoned years here (in Tamaerthon they counted a child a year old at birth and added four more at age nine, so that she would be called seventeen there). She had lived far from these iron hills, and she did not know these people. It said much for her husband—and for the strength of his family—that they obeyed her at all.
“Captain Camithon,” she said. “It seems no one wishes to speak. Perhaps you will advise me.”
Camithon had served three generations of Eqetas of Chelm; his beard had greyed in that service, and his body was scarred with wounds. A long scar from a lance that had narrowly missed taking his eye ran diagonally across his cheek, giving him a somewhat ferocious appearance that he sometimes took advantage of in councils of war. He stood hunched over as if his very bones were tired, and as he stood he muttered about his estates which he had not visited in a year. But his voice was steady enough when he spoke. “The usurper marches with two thousand lances and a great train of foot,” he said. “We have but a hundred lances, and we stand in Wanax Sarakos’ way.”
Tylara nodded gravely as she had seen her father do in clan meetings. Inwardly she wished to shout. Camithon was broadly proclaimed a splendid soldier and perhaps he was, but he could never come to the point until he had reviewed everything a dozen times and more.
She hid her impatience with good grace and thought no one noticed. She had learned endurance if not patience, and that would have to do.
“Dravan is strong,” mused Camithon. He brushed his fingers against the scar on his cheek, as if to remind everyone that he had held Dravan in the battle that earned him his distinctive mark. “Our lady has seen to the granaries and magazines, and well done that was, too. This old castle has killed five armies—but it has never before been held with only a hundred lances, and it has never before been so thoroughly cut off from aid.”
“As if there were any aid to send,” one of the guildmasters muttered.
Camithon’s sword rested on a map unrolled on the table. He lifted the weapon and used it as a pointer. “The Protector is here, ten days and more to the northwest with our Wanax Ganton. He has no more than a thousand lances, and the Protector cannot allow the young king to be penned up in any castle, no matter how strong. Thus he cannot come to our rescue himself, and I doubt he can spare any great strength.”
Tylara wanted to shout. I know all that, her mind screamed. Outwardly she smiled and said, “You give us a hundred lances, but you have forgotten my Tamaerthan archers. I hope this usurper Sarakos makes that mistake. He won’t make it twice.”
There were murmurs of approval from behind her. Tylara’s people could not sit at the council table, but she was attended by them; and the Tamaerthan yeomanry wasn’t afraid to be heard in any council room. In their mountainous plateau by the sea, the clans did not live as peasants lived among the great lords and bheromen of the west.
She had a momentary twinge of homesickness. She longed for her high ridges, with the blue sea to the east, stark mountains rising from it to stand deep blue in dusklight and dawn. It would be so easy to go home. She had only to give up this castle to Sarakos and she could return as the wealthiest lady in Tamaerthon—or she could stay, with all her husband’s lands restored. Sarakos would give her that, and the council would approve. She had only to say the words—
“A hundred lances and two hundred archers are still but five hundred fighting men,” Camithon said. He spoke as if proud of his arithmetic. “Fewer, for not all our knights have squire and man-at-arms. And these walls, though strong, enclose a great area. We have no reserve. Every man is needed at his post. What happens when they tire?”
Now, she thought. Say it now. But she couldn’t. She had sworn. And how could she host her husband’s murderer in his own home? Receive Chelm as a telast of Sarakos? It was unthinkable.
Yet—how do else? If the chief captain had no stomach for a fight, there was no chance at all. She fingered her braids restlessly.
“Yet honor demands that we fight,” Camithon said. He looked down the length of the council table. “Do any dare dispute that?”
Some may have wanted to, but none spoke.
“I have never been one to fight merely for honor,” Camithon said. “I prefer to win. But we can do no good elsewhere, so if we fight, we must hold Dravan. We sit astride the only good road south. Until we are taken, Sarakos can take no great force in search of our young Wanax. We buy time for the Protector.”
“Yatar knows what he’ll do with it,” Bheroman Trakon said. His voice was overly loud, nervous, yet Trakon was a good man who had stood by the old Wanax in his troubles, and had lost much for doing it.
“Unfair, my lord,” Camithon protested. “The Protector is the greatest soldier of Drantos, and he has won before when all seemed darkest.”
“And the Dayfather may produce a miracle,” Trakon said. He did not turn to see the red face of Yanulf, Archpriest of Yatar. “Yet what else can we do? I trust Sarakos not at all. Of the bheromen who have gone over to him, more than h
alf have lost all to his favorites.”
“Which hasn’t stopped dozens more from joining him anyway,” the weavers’ guildmaster muttered. “Half the bheromen—no, three parts of four—have welcomed Sarakos. We fight to no purpose.”
“Do you counsel surrender?” Camithon demanded.
The portly guildmaster shrugged. “It would do no good. Sarakos has his own weavers, and they like not our competition. But it’s a forlorn fight all the same.”
“It is more than forlorn.” Yanulf had stood silent and impassive thus far; now the priest drew himself to full height and spoke with contempt. “Fools. The Time approaches, and you babble of petty dynastic wars.”
“Legends,” Trakon said.
Yanulf smiled thinly. “Legends. Is it legend that the Demon grows in the night sky? Is it legend that the waters rise along the shore? That the lamils breed, and the madweed flourishes in your very fields? Is it legend that we sit in council hall with no fire burning, yet we are not cold?”
“A warm summer,” Trakon said. “No more than that. The Firestealer has been banished from the vault of the sky and stands at zenith each midnight. Of course it is warm.”
There were murmurs from the yeomanry and guildmasters. Yanulf’s voice rose. “And in the Time of Burning,” he intoned, “then shall the seas smoke and the lands melt as wax. The waters of ocean shall lap the mountains. Woe to them who have not prepared. Woe to the unbeliever.” He laughed. “Woe to you, Bheroman. But Yatar will forgive you. My lady, this is not a time for war. It is a time to gather food, to fill the holy caves. Do you not smell the breath of the Preserver? When the Stormbringer approaches, Yatar takes care of his own; and his first sign is the breath of the Preserver.”
“Aye,” one of the yeomen muttered. “My nephew’s an acolyte, and he says the ice has grown half a foot in the past forty-day. Grown, when the Firestealer stands overhead at midnight!”
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