Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  Halfway to the Reservoir the train made a stop, and two men got on, the chief called Time Ops and another whom Matt recognized from pictures as the Planetary Commander. The latter took the seat facing Matt. He sat there swaying lightly with the car’s renewed motion, holding Matt in steady scrutiny.

  Matt’s own face was sweating, but only because of the plastic coverall. Sb, he was thinking: this is what a king looks like in the flesh. At once, heavier and less rocklike than his television image. But this was after all a Modem king, and so the king-spirit in him would not be the same as it had been for Ay.

  The ruler of the Moderns asked: “I understand you thought it important to see me before you dropped?” When there was no immediate response he added: “You understand me?”

  “Yes. Learning Ay’s speech has not driven yours out of my head. I wanted to see you, to see with my own eyes what it is that makes a man a king.” Some of the faces in the background wanted to laugh when they heard that, but they were afraid to laugh and quickly smoothed themselves out into immobility.

  The Planetary Commander did not laugh, but only glanced sideways at Time Ops before asking Matt: “They’ve taught you what to do if the dragon-machine comes after you?”

  Matt saw Time Ops nod slightly to the Planetary Commander.

  “Yes,” said Matt. “I am to make the machine chase me, get it to move around as much as possible . . .”

  When the train stopped, the Planetary Commander waved the others to get off first, so he and Matt were left alone in the car. He said then: “I will tell you the real secret of being a king. It is to be ready to lay down your life for your people, whenever and however it is needed.”

  The Planetary Commander was not lying; he meant what he said, or he thought he meant it Maybe the words concealed some deeper meaning, too, for in the next moment he seemed to fear that perhaps he had said too much. He began to speak in loud words of encouragement, smiling and clapping Matt on the shoulder as they walked off the train together.

  Derron was waiting on the trackside platform in the low, roughhewn cavern to grip hands with Matt in the style of Ay’s time. Matt looked for Lisa, but only those were here who had work to do. He associated Lisa with Derron in his mind and wondered vaguely why his two friends did not mate. Maybe he would mate with Lisa himself, if he came back from this mission and she were willing.

  The tutors and others hustled Matt off to wait by himself in a small room. He was told he could get out of the coverall, which he did thankfully. He heard another door open somewhere nearby, and into his room came the smell of the vast body of clean water being preserved in the reservoir during the siege.

  On a table lay the sword designed for him by Modern wizards; he picked it up and drew it from its scabbard, looking at it curiously. The edge looked keen, but no more than naturally so. The unaided eye could see nothing of what the Modems had shown him through a microscope—the supersharp edge that rose from the ordinary-looking one when Matt’s hand, and ids alone, gripped the hilt. In his hand this sword cut ordinary metal like cheese and armor plate like wood, nor was the blade dulled in doing so. The Moderns said it had been forged of a single molecule; Matt had no need to understand that and did not try.

  But he had come to understand much. In recent days, sleeping and waking, Matt had had history poured like a river through his mind. And there was a new strength in his mind that the Moderns had not put there, which they said was due to his twenty thousand years’ passage from the direction of the beginning of the world toward the direction of its end.

  With this teaching and this strength he saw now very clearly that it was the Modems who were the odd culture, the misfits in Sirgol’s history. By mere count of years, the Moderns were far closer to Ay than Ay was to Matt’s original People. But in their basic modes of thinking and feeling, Ay and The People were much the closer, to each other and to the rest of humanity.

  Only such physical power as the Modems now wielded was going to destroy the berserker—or could have created them. But when it came to things of the spirit, the Moderns were stunted children. From their very physical powers came their troubled minds, or from their troubled minds came their power over matter—it was hard to say which; but in either case, they had not been able to show Matt how to put on the spirit of a king, which he was now required to do.

  Another thing he had come to understand—the spirits of life were very strong in the universe, or they would long ago have been driven from it, by the berserker-machines of accident and disease and hatred, if not by those that came in metal bodies. So now, as Ay would have done before embarking on a dangerous voyage, Matt raised his hands in the wedge-sign of Ay’s religion and murmured a brief prayer, putting what he felt into the form that Ay would have used.

  That done, he saw no reason to stay any longer shut up in this little room. So he buckled on his sheathed sword, opened the door and stepped out.

  The scene was busy, as he had known it would be. Officers and workers hurried past, this way and that, calling out orders and information. Others worked singly and in little groups. Most were utterly intent on their tasks; but a few faces turned toward Matt as he emerged from the little room where they had put him away until it was time for him to be used. The faces were annoyed, fearful lest he cause some disruption of the schedule.

  He ignored the. faces when he saw Ay’s helmet waiting for him on a stand. He went to it and picked it up, and with his own hands placed the silver-winged thing on his head.

  It had been an instinctive gesture, and the faces watching were enough to show him that the instinct had been right. Not that the faces were pleased. Watching him, they fell into an unwilling silence that was mirror enough to show his kingship. Then in another moment they were turning back to their tasks with loud practical enthusiasm, ignoring as best they could the new presence in their midst.

  Some of his tutors came hurrying up again, saying they had just a few more questions. He understood they had sudden need to reassure themselves that they were his teachers still and not his subjects. He would not give them such comfort. Their time of power over him had passed, and he ignored them.

  He strode impatiently through the knots of technicians. Some looked up angrily when they were jostled, but when they saw him they kept silent and made way. Soon he was looking down Once more into the wrinkle-circled eyes of the Planetary Commander.

  “I grow impatient,” said Matt. “Are my ship and my men ready, or are they not?”

  VII

  On his earlier trip to Reservoir H, Matt had seen the crew of Ay’s ship asleep while machines stretched their muscles to keep them strong, lamps threw slivers of sunlight on their faces and arms to keep them tanned, and electronic familiars whispered tirelessly to them that their young lord lived.

  This time, the men were on their feet, though they moved like sleepwalkers, with eyes still shut. They had been dressed again in their own clothes, armed again with their own harness and weapons. Now they were being led from Lukas’ manor down to the beach and hoisted back aboard their ship. The mist generators had long ago been turned off, and the cave of Reservoir H, with its thin crescent of beach, was an eerie sight under the black distant curve of its ceiling. From high up under that ceiling, lights like cold little suns threw shadow-petals round every man and object on the sand.

  Matt shook Derron’s hand again and the hands of one or two more he liked, then waded briefly through the fresh water and swung himself up onto the deck. A machine was coming to push the ship out into deep water.

  Time Ops followed Matt on board and on a quick tour of inspection that took both of them into the royal tent. “. . . stick to your briefing especially regarding the dragon. Try to make it move around as much as possible if you should see it. Even if there’s damage or casualties. Those can be reversed . . .”

  He ceased talking as Matt turned to face him, holding in his hands a replica of the winged helmet on his head. He had just picked the second helmet up from atop the treas
ure chest. “I have heard all your lectures before. Take this with you and give a lecture to those you command. And now, get off my ship, unless you mean to pull an oar.”

  Time Ops glared in anger at the superfluous helmet, grabbed it and got it. After that, Matt paid the Modern world no more attention. He went to stand beside Harl, who had been set like a sleepy statue beside his steering oar. The other men were all unconscious on their benches.

  Their hands moved slightly on their oars’ worn wood as if glad to be back, making sure they were where they really fitted.

  With a hum of power, the ship was pushed free of the beach. Matt saw a shimmering circle grow beneath her—and then, with scarcely a splash, the overhead lights and the black water and the cave were gone. Seabirds wheeled away into an open morning sky, crying their surprise at the sudden appearance of a ship. There was free, salt air in Matt’s face and a groundswell under his feet. The horizon dead ahead was marked with the blue vague line he had been told to expect—Queensland. Off to starboard, a reddened sun was just climbing clear of dawn.

  “Harl!” Matt roared out the name, at the same time thwacking his steersman so hard on the shoulder that Harl nearly toppled even as his eyes broke open. “Must I watch alone all day, as well as through the end of the night?”

  He had been told that these words in his voice would wake the men, and so it happened. The warriors blinked and growled their way out of their long slumber, and some started rowing before their spirits were fully back in control of their bodies. But in the next few seconds they had somehow put a ragged stroke together.

  Matt moved between the benches, making sure all were fully awake, bestowing curses and half-affectionate slaps such as no one else but Ay would dare give these men. Before they had been given time to start thinking or wondering they were established in a familiar routine. And if, against the commanded forgetfulness, any man’s mind still harbored visions of a dragon and a slaughtered chief, no doubt that man would be more than glad to let such nightmare vapors vanish with the daylight.

  “Row, boys! Ahead is the land where, they say, all women are queens!”

  It was a good harbor they found waiting for them. This was Blanium, the capital, a town of some eight or ten thousand folk, a big city in this age. Immediately inland from the harbor, on the highest point of hill, there rose the gray keep of a small castle. From the high battlements the Princess Alix was doubtless peering down at the ship, to catch a first distant look at her husband-to-be.

  In the harbor were eight or ten other vessels, traders and wanderers, few for the season and for all the length of quay. Empire trade was falling off steadily over the years, civilized seamen and landsmen alike faced evil days. But let Ay live, and a part of the civilized world would outlast this storm.

  In scattered rivulets of folk a throng was dribbling down Blanium’s steep streets, to form along the quay as the long-ship entered the harbor. By the time the oarsmen had pulled into easy hailing distance, and the cheers on shore had started, Matt beheld nearly a thousand people of all ranks waiting to see him land. From the castle, whence of course the ship had been spied a great distance out, there bad come down two large chariots of gilded wood, drawn by hump-backed loadbeasts. These had halted near the water’s edge, where men of rank had dismounted and now stood waiting.

  The moment of arrival came, of songs and tossed flowers of welcome. Ropes were thrown ashore, and a crew of dockmen began to make the long-ship fast beside the quay, riding against a bumper of straw mats. Matt leaped ashore, concealing a sigh of relief at being released from the rise and fall of the sea. It was probably well for Ay’s reputation that the voyage had been no longer.

  Voicing sentiments spoken more plainly by the crowd, the delegation of nobles earnestly bade him welcome. King Gorboduc sent his regret that he ailed too much to come down to the harbor himself. Matt knew that Gorboduc was old and historically had only about a month to live beyond this day. He was still without a male heir, and the Queensland nobles would not long submit to the rule of any woman. And for Alix to marry any one of the Queensland nobles might displease the others enough to bring on the very civil war that she and her father sought desperately to avoid. So the king’s thoughts had turned to Ay—a princely man of royal blood, young and capable, respected if not liked by all, with no lands of his own to divide his loyalty.

  Leaving orders with Harl to see to the unloading of the ship and the quartering of the crew, Matt took from Ay’s coffer the jewels he had been told would be most suitable as gifts for king and princess. And then he of course accepted a chariot ride up the hill.

  In the Modems’ world he had heard of places in the universe where loadbeasts came in shapes that allowed men to straddle and ride them. He was just as well satisfied that such was not the case on Sirgol. Learning to drive a chariot had presented problems enough, and today he was happy to be able to leave the reins in another’s hands. In fact Matt needed one hand to hold on and the other to wave to the crowd. As the chariots clattered up through the steep streets of the town, folk came pouring out of buildings and alleys to salute Matt with cries of welcome. He hoped they were making no mistake.

  The high gray walls of the castle loomed close. The chariots at last rumbled over a drawbridge and into a narrow courtyard. Matt was saluted by sword and pike and given a mass introduction to a hundred minor officials and gentry.

  In the great hall of the castle there were gathered a score of more important men and women. When Matt was ushered in to the sound of trumpet and drum, only a few of these showed anything like the enthusiasm of the crowds outside. From history Matt knew that most of these powerful people were suspending judgment on Ay, their smiles no more than polite and waiting. And there were others among them whose smiles were totally false. Matt knew Nomis’ tall, white-robed figure at sight; he bad been warned against the wizard as being Ay’s bitter enemy.

  But there was pure joy in the lined and wasted face of King Gorboduc. He rose from his chair of state to cry welcome, though his legs would support him only for a moment. After the exchange of formal greetings the king sank back into his seat and added, in his quavery voice: “Young man, your father and I shared many a fight and many a feast. May he rouse well in the Warriors’ Castle, tonight and always.”

  Ay would certainly have mixed feelings regarding such a wish, and Ay was never the man to speak out what he felt. “I thank you, Gorboduc, for meaning to wish my father well. May his spirit rest forever in the Garden of the Blessed above.”

  Gorboduc was taken with a coughing spell, perhaps half-deliberately so he need take no offense at being corrected by an upstart in his own hall. But Nomis in his white robe strode forward to take advantage of the moment.

  He did not look at Matt. “You nobles of the realm! Will all of you stand silent while the gods of your fathers are insulted?” There was a murmur of agreement.

  “I meant no insult to any here,” said Matt, raising his voice slightly. And then at once he wondered if that had been too mild a thing to say, too near an apology to have come from the real Ay. Nomis was sneering openly, and some of the others were looking at Matt with new calculation.

  The tension eased as Gorboduc, recovered from his coughing fit, ordered his daughter led forth by her attendant women. From behind a gauzy veil, Alix’s lively eyes smiled briefly at Matt; he thought the Moderns had spoken truly, there would be many worse lifelines than Ay’s to follow to the end.

  While preparations were being made for the exchange of gifts, a friendly noble whispered to Matt that if he had no objection the king preferred that the betrothal ceremony be completed at once. It would mean unusual haste, but there was the matter of the king’s health.

  “I understand,” Matt answered quietly. “If Alix is agreeable, I am.” Her eyes flicked at him again, very briefly and intensely. In a few moments he and she were standing side by side with joined hands.

  At the king’s order, Nomis came with a great show of reluctance to perform the ceremon
y of formal betrothal. Midway through, he raised his eyes to the audience when asking the ritual question, whether anyone present had objection to the proposed marriage. And Nomis showed not the least surprise when a loud answer came from one at whom he was staring.

  “I do object! I have long sought the princess for my own. And it seems to me that the sea-rover will be better mated with my sword.” The deep voice was perhaps a shade too loud for real confidence to be behind it. But the speaker looked formidable enough; he was young and tall, wide shouldered, with arms thick enough to make the average man a sturdy pair of legs . . .

  There was no historical record of Ay’s fighting a duel at his betrothal ceremony, an item not likely to have been overlooked by the chroniclers. Had he already failed to play Ay’s part, by giving one too-soft answer that encouraged a challenge?

  Anyway there was no doubt about what had to be done now. Matt hooked his thumbs into his wide leather belt and drew a deep breath. “Will you speak your name?”

  The giant answered: “I need no introduction to any person of quality here. But that you may address me with the proper respect, know that I am Yunguf, of the house of Yung. And I claim the Princess Alix for my own.”

  Matt bowed. He was very courteous, as Ay would be. “Since you appear to be a worthy man, Yunguf, we may fight at once to decide this matter. If you have no reason to delay?”

  Yunguf flushed; his control slipped for a moment, and Matt saw that beneath it the man was certainly frightened.

  Alix put her veil aside and looked soberly at Matt. “May you fare well in this matter, lord. My affections have never belonged to that man, nor indeed has he ever asked for them until now.” She had drawn Matt a little aside and spoke in a low voice.

  “Then why—?”

  “I do not know, unless—” Her expressive eyes flicked once toward Nomis, who was now intoning a blessing of the Old Religion over Yunguf’s arms.