The traveler nodded, sighed, and pulled the slender gun from his pouch.
Thrumm!
The burly man dropped like a stone, crumpling into a sack of sinew and bone on the clay below the first step.
“Kill him!” screamed one of the younger men at the stairs top.
Thrumm!
He too dropped, rolling down the steps and scattering some of the now more-disorganized guards.
Thrumm!
Clank!
Although a second attacker had thought himself hidden as he raised a spear for a cast, both his body and the spear followed the first man down the steps.
“Hold it!”
The traveler stepped out of the shapeless black cloak, standing back from the foot of the stairs in an Imperial-style singlesuit without insignia. Insignia or not, it looked like a uniform.
Radiating authority, both with his eyes and the black weapon in his left hand, his eyes swept the score of ill-armed soldier guards.
“You tired of this dung? Tired of marching through dust? Tired of other men’s women? Tired of no fire of your own?”
“Kill him!” The screamed command was shrill, from one of the two remaining “officers” on the landing under the pillars at the top of the stairs.
“You come down here and kill me, if you can.” The total contempt in the traveler’s voice silenced all the guards. The men on the steps shuffled and turned to look behind them.
“Come on…”
“…see you do it…”
“…always orders…no piggut…”
The traveler let the grumbles mount, then casually aimed the weapon.
Thrumm!
“You? You!” His voice cracked up the steps toward the remaining officer. “You challenge me?”
There was no answer. The man looked one way, down at the troops turning upward toward him, then back the other way, moving toward the nearest pillar. Too late.
Thrumm!
Clank!
“All right! You want a change?” charged the slender man. “Fine. Go in there and bring me King Kernute. I’ll fight him hand to hand, or sword to knife. Whatever he wants.”
The guards did not move, but shuffled their feet.
“You’re scared of Kernute?”
Thrumm!
Another soldier dropped.
“Better be more scared of me.”
Several figures looked up the stairs, but did not move.
Thrumm!
“Get me Kernute!”
One guard looked down at the last casualty and started to run for the gate.
Whhhrrr.
Crack!
His body pitched forward onto the clay.
“Get me Kernute.”
The thirteen remaining guards began to shamble up the stairs, slowly at first, then more quickly as they disappeared into the palace.
The traveler smiled, but moved up the steps to the top, selecting a pillar near the far left end of the row of mismatched and discolored columns. He leaned against the stone, out of view of anyone within the palace’s upper stories.
The sounds from within were mixed.
Several feminine shrieks, male shouts, were followed by the clashing of swords, clanging, and bellowing. Then a few muffled voices.
Finally, the traveler heard footsteps, and swords clanking.
“Who comes to challenge the great King Kernute?”
By this time, an entourage had spilled out onto the stairs. A handful of more highly armed guards, dressed in blackened leathers and mismatched breastplates, surrounded a single man, a man who stood a full head taller than the tallest of the guards.
Beside the guards and the king stood three women, one older, her hair streaked with gray, but her face and figure still that of a young woman, and two younger women but a few years out of girlhood.
Separated from the official entourage were the soldiers prodded into the palace by the traveler. One clutched a bloody arm, and there were nine others holding swords awkwardly, as if unsure of what to do next.
The traveler counted. Less than twenty armed men—about what he had expected. He stepped around the column and down the steps toward Kernute, avoiding the bodies still sprawled where he had dropped them.
“I challenge, Kernute.”
As he neared the king, he could see some of the personal guards shake their heads. The ruler was clearly of greater stature, strength, and girth. The traveler appeared slim, dusty, and comparatively unarmed.
“You?” bellowed the monarch. “I wouldn’t soil my sword…”
As if his outrage were a signal, the tallest of the personal guards charged from beside the king, spear in one hand, sword in the other, shield dropped on the clay.
This time the traveler did not use the slender black weapon which remained hidden, but waited, motionless, until the guard was nearly upon him.
Then he moved, and like a bolt of lightning blurred in the vision of those who watched.
Clank!
The guard lay on the clay, unbreathing, his neck at the odd angle that indicated it had been broken.
“I challenge,” answered the slim stranger. “And if you keep putting it off, you won’t have enough guards left to protect you, let alone your miserable little town.” He gestured toward the bodies lying across the stairs and courtyard.
“What weapons?”
“You? Whatever you want.”
“None of your magic.”
“Only my hands, a rock or two, perhaps my knives.”
“Your hands and knives against my sword and shield?”
“Why not?”
The traveler motioned to the personal guards. “Stand back.” He looked at the soldiers. “You! There!” He gestured them toward the base of the steps.
The boy and girl who had accompanied the traveler watched from beneath the exterior wall of the grounds, twenty meters distant, as if they could still not believe that the traveler would topple King Kernute.
Kernute advanced slowly, letting his shield cover as much as possible.
The stranger watched, hands on his belt, his eyes taking in not only the king, but the four remaining personal bodyguards and the ruler’s apparent wife/consort.
His hands flicked once, and a silvery knife appeared in his left hand. Twice and another appeared in his right.
Kernute was more than two meters away from the man in the dark olive singlesuit when he jumped and his sword licked out quickly.
The traveler did not seem to move, but he was not where the sword was.
“…magic…”
“…quick…”
Another sword probe followed, and another. Both missed.
“Stand still, you…”
“Sorry, Kernute,” said the traveler as the knife streaked from his left hand.
The four members of the personal guard stiffened as they watched the king tumble face forward over his shield.
“Ohhhh!” One of the girls buried her head in the arms of the older woman with the gray-streaked hair.
“Stop!” snapped the traveler as one of the black-leathered men lurched a step toward him.
The guard stopped.
“You four, get moving. Out of Gondolan. Not long before the townspeople will start to take you apart.”
One looked at the traveler, then at the guards on the steps, before dropping his shield and scuttling toward the gate. A second shook his head as he dropped shield and followed, but more warily, as if he expected the town to be waiting outside the gate for him.
“You’re the new king, I suppose?” asked the older woman as she cradled her daughter.
“No. Could care less.” The traveler’s hawk-yellow eyes raked the mismatched group. “This happened because the king did not welcome travelers. Strong-arm tactics don’t work, not for long.
“But me…I have a long way to go…miles to go.”
He had walked over to the heap which was composed of the black cloak and his pack, picked up both with a quick motion, still watching
the remaining soldiers, and noting that the guard with the bloody arm had also slipped away.
“What you decide to do with your town is up to you. Suggest a bit more friendliness. Might stop terrorizing the neighbors. The Empire doesn’t like that sort of thing. More important, I don’t, either.”
He shook the thin black cloak and folded it into the pack before hoisting it back onto his shoulders. Last, he walked over to the deceased ruler and retrieved his knife, wiping it quickly on the dead man’s tunic and replacing it in its sheath. He stood, surveying the small crowd.
“Up to you. Try to do better next time.”
He began to walk toward the gate, his pace so quick that he had passed through the northern barriers to the palace and into the small town before there was any reaction at all from the stunned group.
Belatedly, the boy and girl who had watched from next to the wall, squatting, scurried to their feet and after him.
“Devilspawn follow him…”
“Devilkiller…”
“…watch for the traveler…”
The soldiers looked at each other in the chaos that dropped on them in the stranger’s absence, then at the bodies strewn across the palace grounds as if by a lethal wind.
The king’s widow sought to console one daughter, while an amused smile played around the lips of the older girl as she watched the remaining bodyguard strip off his black leathers and edge toward the widow.
Several hundred meters to the south, a shopkeeper parted with a few items, and thereafter, a few minutes later, a town gate opened, but did not close.
LIII
“We are not pleased with your response to Our inquiry,” stated the thin man behind the antique wooden desk and the double energy screens.
“I understand that, Your Majesty.” The speaker sat quietly in the narrow and straight-backed chair. His tunic and matching trousers were a somber blue, darker than his piercing blue eyes, and almost as black as his boots.
“Then why do you not act?”
“If Your Majesty wishes, I will send a full squad of Corpus Corps troops to Old Earth. That will leave two full squads to handle what has historically taken four or five squads. Training for replacements will proceed at half schedule, and once it becomes known that we have lost a squad on Old Earth, you will have double the unrest on the outer rim systems. But, if you wish, I will dispatch a squad.”
“Morren, are you telling Us that this…this antique relic…this broken down ex-commodore…can destroy a full squad of the best Corpus Corps troops?”
“No. But no one on Old Earth is likely to turn on a local legend, from what I know. Since no one knows where on Old Earth he might happen to be, a squad would be necessary just to locate him.”
“Why not locate him with regular Service personnel?”
“The last effort to find and stop him took three squadrons filled with regular personnel. I might remind Your Majesty that the efficiency ratings of those squadrons were considerably higher than the current averages. We could locate Gerswin with regular personnel, if Your Majesty wishes to pull at least one squadron from the rim patrols. But to pin down Gerswin would still take half a squad, and the probability of success would be less than sixty percent.”
“If that is the best you can do, then perhaps We should find a new Eye.”
“That is Your Majesty’s choice. The failure to stop Gerswin has brought down the three previous Eyes, who, frankly, had a great deal more to work with, and considerably fewer internal problems to resolve for their Emperor.”
“Are you telling Us that you cannot find and terminate this relic who has caused the Empire so much unrest and loss?”
“No, Your Majesty. I am frank in telling You the cost of such an operation. The choice is Yours. I can only serve.”
The thin man who wore the title of Emperor and who sat behind the antique desk of his predecessors frowned. Finally, he looked back up at his chief of Intelligence.
“Did you know this when you accepted your position?”
“Not for certain, Your Majesty, but I did suspect it might prove to be the case.”
“Why?”
“Gerswin couldn’t destroy the results of his first physical examination, the one before he became cautious. He also built the biggest commercial barony ever put together in a single lifetime—without anyone understanding its extent until he walked away and let its collapse ruin the economies of more than a dozen systems.”
“So what is the man, an immortal genius with the talents of a dozen Corpus Corps types and the soul of the devil?”
“That might overstate the case, Your Majesty. Then again, it might not.”
His Imperial Majesty continued to frown.
“Might I have your leave to depart, Your Majesty? You can always request my termination.”
“Go…go, Morren. Let him rot on Old Earth, and preserve what you can for Your Emperor.”
“As Your Majesty wishes.”
LIV
The wind coming off the Inland Sea streamed the once-black cloak from his shoulders like wings, and the red sun perched on the western horizon outlined him like a black marble statue above the angled stones and marble columns that remained.
The oldest of the old cities, that was all the cat-eyed people had called it, but ruins were ruins, whether they were buried beneath the purpled clay of the high plains, or but half-buried and standing on a hillside above the Inland Sea.
The lower edge of the crimson sun touched the water, and the gray and wispy high clouds melted pink. The dark water took on a maroon tinge. Once it had been called a wine-dark sea, and now it was again, though it was neither sailed nor crossed by the scattered peoples along its shore. That, too, was as it had been in the first beginning.
He had stayed too long, too long after he had helped them found and defend their settlement, too long indeed, for even the children, incredibly quick, bright, bowed as he passed.
He turned until the sun was at his back, not that the fading light carried much warmth, and began to walk upward toward the row of fallen columns for another look at the statue.
His boots clicked on the stone underfoot, the steps fractured and cracked, but still in place.
He nodded a greeting to her, her face already in shadow.
Without further gestures, he sat on the column to her right, squinting as the last rays of the sun cast a glow at the base of the fallen goddess. Her face was beautiful, in the old style, the style of a Caroljoy, but remained expressionless. Her arms were long since gone, but neither she nor he looked to hold or to be held.
He studied the white lines, the unblinking eyes, while the light dimmed.
Soon, the fog would creep in, climbing the hill toward the fallen pillars and tilted white stone blocks.
Glancing down at his cloak, no longer crisp black, but worn, faded almost into olive, with the use of the past years, worn and patched, the last patches those provided by Charletta, who had patched it while complaining that Berin would let her do nothing strenuous until their child was born, until her time had come.
He snorted as he looked at the stone goddess.
“Your time has long gone, and mine also.”
If you say so.
“Already, this continent is reawakening. Was the worst of all. I belonged to the dead times.”
You cannot die.
“Nor can you.”
I lived only while people remembered.
“Remember? Soon I will remember little.”
You do not want to remember.
“Don’t want to forget either. Where does that leave me?”
She did not answer, and he looked away from the perfect white face of the recumbent woman and watched the upper tip, the last crimson slivers, of the sun drop below the watery horizon, watched the long shadows lengthen, dancing from slow wave to slow wave.
“Well, my lady, we had our times.”
It is early for self-pity.
“I forget. You have watched more centurie
s than I have.”
I have seen nothing.
“Have I? Tell me I have seen. Watched while others lived, loved, and died. Watched and killed, killed and watched. Pulled strings, played god, and for what? For what?”
You have lived, if not how you wanted. You have lived.
He could not refute her last statement, and did not try, as he sat on a ruined column, keeping company with a statue, as the twilight became night. Knowing that the next day—the next day, for he had waited too long—he must begin the trip to the place of his beginning.
LV
Above the faded olive singlesuit, patched and dusty, hawk-yellow eyes glittered beneath tight-curled blond hair. The jaw remained elfin, and the skin smooth, but there was a tiredness behind the youthful features reflected only in the lagging steps, where each stride stopped short of briskness, each step mirrored more than mere fatigue.
The afternoon sun glared down at the solitary figure on the empty road as he trudged westward, staff in hand, pack on back.
The gently rolling hills to his right sported an uneven growth of assorted bushes and trees, none more than twice the traveler’s height, and all less than a pair of decades old.
Nodding without pausing, he contemplated what would one day be a forest, recalling when the area had boasted little beyond purpled clay, landpoisons, and a few clumps of the purple grass that had been all that could grow.
Glancing to his left, he observed the recently tilled soil, and the dark green tips of the sponge grains beginning to peer through the soil that retained a tinge of purple.
A faint rumble whispered from the west.
With a sigh, the traveler turned from the packed clay road less than five meters wide and marched northward into the underbrush, finally halting underneath a small oak and seating himself to wait for the road roller to pass on eastward to the newly developed coastal settlements.
Not that anyone expected him, nor wanted him, but meeting even a roller crew in the middle of the piedmont would raise questions, and there would be enough of those when he reached the high plains. Time enough for the questions then.
He stretched out his legs and waited, listening for the faint sounds he hoped were there—the twitter of the insects, the chirp and rustle of remaining or returning birds, as well as the reintroduced species, those few that had been preserved on New Augusta, New Colora, or in reserves throughout the Empire.
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