Driving down from above, von Schlichten and his Kragans slithered over floors increasingly greasy with yellow Ulleran blood. He had picked up a broadsword at the foot of the first stairway down; a little later, he tossed it aside in favor of another, better balanced and with a better guard. There was a furious battle at the doorways of the throne room; finally, climbing over the bodies of their own dead and the enemy’s, they were inside.
Here there was no question of quarter whatever, at least as long as Firkked lived; North Ulleran nobles did not surrender under the eyes of their king, and North Ulleran kings did not surrender their thrones alive. There was also a tradition, of which von Schlichten was mindful, that a king must only be killed by his conqueror, in personal combat, with steel.
With a wedge of Kragan bayonets around him and the picked-up broadsword in his hand, he fought his way to the throne, where Firkked waited, a sword in one of his upper hands, his Spear of State in the other, and a dagger in each lower hand. With his left hand, von Schlichten detached the bayonet from the rifle of one of his followers and went forward, trying not to think of the absurdity of a man of the Sixth Century A.E., the representative of a civilized Chartered Company, dueling to the death with swords with a barbarian king for a throne he had promised to another barbarian, or of what could happen on Uller if he allowed this four-armed monstrosity to kill him.
It was not as bad as it looked, however. The ornate Spear of State, in spite of its long, cruel-looking blade, was not an especially good combat-weapon, at least for one hand, and Firkked seemed confused by the very abundance of his armament. After a few slashes and jabs, von Schlichten knocked the unwieldy thing from his opponent’s hand. This raised a fearful ululation from the Skilkan nobility, who had stopped fighting to watch the duel; evidently it was the very worst sort of a bad omen. Firkked, seemingly relieved to be disencumbered of the thing, caught his sword in both hands and aimed a roundhouse swing at von Schlichten’s head; von Schlichten dodged, crippled one of Firkked’s lower hands with a quick slash, and lunged at the royal belly. Firkked used his remaining dagger to parry, backed a step closer to his throne, and took another swing with his sword, which von Schlichten parried on the bayonet in his left hand. Then, backing, he slashed at the inside of Firkked’s leg with the thousand-year-old coup-de-Jarnac. Firkked, unable to support the weight of his dense-tissued body on one leg, stumbled; von Schlichten ran him neatly through the breast with his sword and through the throat with the bayonet.
There was silence in the throne room for an instant, and then, with a horrible collective shriek, the Skilkans threw down their weapons. One of von Schlichten’s Kragans slung his rifle and picked up the Spear of State with all four hands, taking his post ceremoniously behind the victor. A couple of others dragged the body of Firkked to the edge of the dais, and one of them drew his leaf-shaped short-sword and beheaded it.
* * * *
At mid-afternoon, von Schlichten was on the roof of the Palace, holding the Spear of State, with Firkked’s head impaled on the point, while a Terran technician aimed an audio-visual recorder.
“This,” he said, with the geek-speaker in his mouth, “is King Firkked’s Spear of State, and here, upon it, is King Firkked’s head. Two days ago, Firkked was at peace with the Company, and Firkked was King in Skilk. If he had not dared raise his feeble hand against the might of the Uller Company, he would still be alive, and his Spear would still be borne behind him. So must all those who rise against the Company perish.… Cut.”
The camera stopped. A Kragan came forward and took the Spear of State, with its grisly burden, carrying it to a nearby wall and leaning it up, like a piece of stage property no longer required for this scene but needed for the next. Von Schlichten took out his geek-speaker, wiped and pouched it, and took his cigarette case from his pocket.
“Well, this is the limit!” Paula Quinton, who had come up during the filming of the scene, exploded. “I thought you had to kill him yourself in order to encourage your soldiers; I didn’t think you wanted to make a movie of it to show your friends. I’m through; you can find yourself a new adjutant!”
Von Schlichten tapped the cigarette on the gold-and-platinum case and stared at her through his monocle.
“You can’t resign,” he told her. “Resignations of officers are not being accepted until the end of hostilities. In any case, I shouldn’t care to have you go; you’re the best adjutant, Hideyoshi O’Leary not excepted, I ever had. Sit down, colonel.” He lit the cigarette. “Your politico-military education still needs a little filling in.
“At Grank, we have two ships. One is the Northern Lights, sister ship of the Northern Star. The other is the cruiser Procyon, the only real warship on Uller, with a main battery of four 200-mm guns. How King Yoorkerk was able to get control of those ships I don’t know, but there will be a board of inquiry and maybe a couple of courts-martial, when things get stabilized to a point where we can afford such luxuries. As it is, we need those ships desperately, and as soon as he gets in, I’m sending Hideyoshi O’Leary to Grank with the Northern Star and a load of Kragan Rifles, to pry them loose. The audio-visual of which this is the last scene is going to be one of the crowbars he’s going to use.”
“Oh! I get it!” Her eyes widened with pleasure at having finally caught on; she accepted the cigarette and the light von Schlichten offered. “Good old nervenkrieg!”
“Yes. A little idea I adapted from my Nazi ancestors of four hundred and fifty years ago. Hideyoshi’s going to treat King Yoorkerk to a movie-show. Want to bet he won’t loosen up and release Procyon and Northern Lights and unblockade the Grank Residency after he sees that shot of Firkked’s head leering at him off the point of that overgrown asagai? As I said, that’s only the last scene, too. I’ve been having scenes shot all through this fight; some of them are really horrifying.”
“But why did you have to fight Firkked yourself?” she asked. “You took an awful chance, with two hands to his four.”
“Not so awful, remember what I told you about the physical limitations of Ullerans. But I had to kill him myself, with a sword; according to local custom that makes me King of Skilk.”
“Why, your Majesty!” She rose and curtsied mockingly. “But I thought you were going to make Jonkvank King of Skilk.”
He shook his head. “Just Viceroy,” he corrected. “I’m handing the Spear of State down to him, not up to him; he’ll reign as my vassal, and, consequently, as vassal of the Company, and before long, he won’t be much more at Krink either. That’ll take a little longer—there’ll have to be military missions, and economic missions, and trade-agreements, and all the rest of it, first—but he’s on the way to becoming a puppet-prince.”
Half an hour later, a large and excessively ornate air-launch, specially built at the Konkrook shipyards for King Jonkvank, was sighted coming over the mountain from the east. An escort of combat-cars was sent to meet it, and a battalion of Kragans and the survivors of Firkked’s court were drawn up on the Palace roof.
“His Majesty, Jonkvank, King of Krink!” the former herald of King Firkked’s court, now herald to King Carlos von Schlichten, shouted, banging on a brass shield with the flat of his sword, as Jonkvank descended from his launch, attended by a group of his nobles and his Spear of State, with Hideyoshi O’Leary and Francis N. Shapiro shepherding them. As the guests advanced across the roof, the herald banged again on his shield.
“His Majesty, Carlos von Schlichten,”—which came out more or less as Karlok vonk Zlikdenk—“King, by right of combat, of Skilk!”
Von Schlichten advanced to meet his fellow-monarch, his own Spear of State, with Firkked’s head still grinning from it, two paces behind him.
Jonkvank stopped, his face contorted with saurian rage.
“What is this?” he demanded. “You told me that I could be King of Skilk; is this how a Terran keeps his word?”
“A Terran’s word is always good, Jonkvank,” von Schlichten replied, omitting the titles, as was prop
er in one sovereign addressing another. “My word was that you should reign in Skilk, and my word stands. But these things must be done decently, according to custom and law. I killed Firkked in single combat. Had I not done so, the Spear of Skilk would have been left lying, for any of the young of Firkked to pick up. Is that not the law?”
Jonkvank nodded grudgingly. “It is the law,” he admitted.
“Good. Now, since I killed Firkked in lawful manner, his Spear is mine, and what is mine I can give as I please. I now give you the Spear of Skilk, to carry in my name, as I promised.”
The Kragan who was carrying the ceremonial weapon tossed the head of Firkked from the point; another Kragan kicked it aside and advanced to wipe the spear-blade with a rag. Von Schlichten took the Spear and gave it to Jonkvank.
“This is not good!” one of the Skilkan nobles protested. He had a better right than any of the others to protest; he had, a few hours before, ridden in at the head of a company of his retainers to swear loyalty to the Company. “That you should rule over us, yes. You killed Firkked in single combat, and you are the soldier of the Company, which is mighty, as all here have seen. But that this foreigner be given the Spear of Skilk, that is not good!”
Some of the others, emboldened by his example, were jabbering agreement.
“Listen, all of you!” von Schlichten shouted. “Here is no question of Krink ruling over Skilk. Does it matter who holds the Spear of Skilk, when he does so in my name? And King Jonkvank will be no foreigner. He will come and live among you, and later he will travel back and forth between Krink and Skilk, and he will leave the Spear of Krink in Krink, and the Spear of Skilk in Skilk, and in Skilk he will be a Skilkan.”
That seemed to satisfy everybody except Jonkvank, and he had wit enough not to make an issue of it. He even had the Spear of Krink carried back aboard his launch, out of sight, and when he accompanied von Schlichten, an hour later, to see Hideyoshi O’Leary off for Grank, he had the Spear of Skilk carried behind him. When he was alone with von Schlichten, in the room that had been King Firkked’s bedchamber, however, he exploded: “What is all this foolishness which you promised these people in my name and which I must now carry out? That I am to leave the Spear of Skilk in Skilk and the Spear of Krink in Krink, and come here to live.…”
“You wish to hold Skilk?” von Schlichten asked.
“I intend to hold Skilk. To begin with, there shall be a great killing here. A very great killing: of all those who advised that fool of a Firkked to start this business; of those who gave shelter to the false prophet, Rakkeed, when he was here; of the faithless priests who gave ear to his abominable heresies and allowed him to spew out his blasphemies in the temples; of those who sent spies to Krink, to corrupt and pervert my soldiers and nobles; of those who.…”
“All that is as it should be,” von Schlichten agreed. “Except that it must be done quickly and all at once, before the memories of these crimes fade from the minds of the people. And great care must be taken to kill only those who can be proven to be guilty of something; thus it will be said that the justice of King Jonkvank is terrible to evildoers but a protection and a shield to those who keep the peace and obey the laws. Thus you will gain the name of being a wise and just king. And when the priests are to be killed it should be done under the direction of those other priests who were faithful to the gods and whom King Firkked drove out of their temples, and it must be done in the name of the gods. Thus will you be esteemed a pious, and not an impious, king. As to why you must be a Skilkan in Skilk, you heard the words of Flurknurk, and how the others agreed with him. It must not be allowed to seem that the city has come under foreign rule. And you must not change the laws, unless the people petition you to do so, nor must you increase the taxes, and you must not confiscate the estates of those who are put to death, for the death of parents is always forgiven before the loss of patrimonies. And you should select certain Skilkan nobles, and become the father of their young, and above all, you must leave none of the young of Firkked alive, to raise rebellion against you later.”
Jonkvank nodded, deeply impressed. “By the gods, Karlok vonk Zlikdenk, this is wisdom! Now it is to be seen why the likes of Firkked cannot prevail against you, or against the Company as long as you are the Company’s upper sword-arm!”
Honesty tempted von Schlichten, for a moment, to disclaim originality for the principles he had just enunciated, even at the price of trying to pronounce the name of Niccolo Machiavelli with a geek-speaker. On second thought, however, considerations of policy restrained him. If Jonkvank ever heard of The Prince, nothing would satisfy him short of an Ulleran translation, and von Schlichten would have been just about as happy over an Ulleran translation of a complete set of Bethe-cycle bomb specifications.
XII.
The Shadow of Niflheim
The sun slid lower and lower toward the horizon behind them as the aircar bulleted south along the broad valley and dry bed of the Hoork River, nearing the zone of equal day and night. Hassan Bogdanoff drove while Harry Quong finished his lunch, then changed places to begin his own. Von Schlichten got two bottles of beer from the refrigerated section of the lunch-hamper and opened one for Paula Quinton and one for himself.
“What are we going to do with these geeks,”—she was using the nasty and derogatory word unconsciously and by custom, now—“after this is all over? We can’t just tell them, ‘Jolly well played, nice game, wasn’t it?’ and go back to where we were Wednesday evening.”
“No, we can’t. There’s going to have to be a Terran seizure of political power in every part of this planet that we occupy, and as soon as we’re consolidated around and north of Takkad Sea, we’re going to have to move in elsewhere,” he replied. “Keegark, Konkrook, and the Free Cities, of course, will be relatively easy. They’re in arms against us now, and we can take them over by force. We had to make that deal with Jonkvank, or, rather, I did, so that will be a slower process, but we’ll get it done in time. If I know that pair as well as I think I do, Jonkvank and Yoorkerk will give us plenty of pretexts, before long. Then, we can start giving them government by law instead of by royal decree, and real courts of justice; put an end to the head-payment system, and to these arbitrary mass arrests and tax-delinquency imprisonments that are nothing but slave-raids by the geek princes on their own people. And, gradually, abolish serfdom. In a couple of centuries, this planet will be fit to admit to the Federation, like Odin and Freya.”
“Well, won’t that depend a lot on whom the Company sends here to take Harrington’s place?”
“Unless I’m much mistaken, the Company will confirm me,” he replied. “Administration on Uller is going to be a military matter for a long time to come, and even the Banking Cartel and the mercantile interests in the Company are going to realize that, and see the necessity for taking political control. The Federation Government owns a bigger interest in the Company than the public realizes, too; they’ve always favored it. And just to make sure, I’m sending Hid O’Leary to Terra on the next ship, to make a full report on the situation.”
“You think it’ll be cleared up by then? The City of Montevideo is due in from Niflheim in a little under three months.”
“It’ll have to be cleared up by then. We can’t keep this war going more than a month, at the present rate. Police-action, and mopping-up, yes, full-scale war, no.”
“Ammunition?” she asked.
He looked at her in pleased surprise. “Your education has been progressing, at that,” he said. “You know, a lot of professional officers, even up to field rank in the combat branches, seem to think that ammo comes down miraculously from Heaven, in contragravity lorries, every time they pray into a radio for it. It doesn’t; it has to be produced as fast as it’s expended, and we haven’t been doing that. So we’ll have to lick these geeks before it runs out, because we can’t lick them with gunbutts and bayonets.”
“Well, how about nuclear weapons?” Paula asked. “I hate to suggest it—I know what they d
id on Mimir, and Fenris, and Midgard, and what they did on Terra, during the First Century. But it may be our only chance.”
He finished his beer and shoved the bottle into the waste-receiver, then got out his cigarettes.
“I’d hate to have to make a decision like that, Paula,” he told her. “The military use of nuclear energy is the last—well, the next-to-last—thing I’d want to see on Uller. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it’s a decision I won’t have to make. There isn’t a single nuclear bomb on the planet. The Company’s always refused to allow them to be manufactured or stockpiled here.”
“I don’t think there’d be any criticism of your making them, now, general. And there’s certainly plenty of plutonium. You could make A-bombs, at least.”
“There isn’t anybody here who even knows how to make one. Most of our nuclear engineers could work one up, in about three months, when we’d either not need one or not be alive.”
“Dr. Gomes, who came in on the Pretoria, two weeks ago, can make them,” she contradicted. “He built at least a dozen of them on Niflheim, to use in activating volcanoes and bringing ore-bearing lava to the surface.”
Von Schlichten’s hand, bringing his lighter to the tip of his cigarette, paused for a second. Then he completed the operation, snapped it shut, and put it away.
“When did all this happen?”
She took time out for mental arithmetic; even a spaceship officer had to do that, when a question of interstellar time-relations arose.
The H. Beam Piper Megapack Page 47