“No one requires an excuse to learn from a great man.” Cour swiveled around to look at all the students. “You know why you are here? Here, on Ginaz, I mean?”
“Because this is where Jool-Noret started everything,” the dark-skinned trainee from Al-Dhanab said promptly.
“Jool-Noret didn’t do anything,” Cour said, shocking them all. “He was a tremendous Swordmaster, skilled in ninety-three fighting methods. He knew about weapons, shields, tactics, and hand-to-hand combat. A dozen other skilled fighters followed him like disciples, begging Noret to teach them advanced skills, but the great fighter always refused, always put it off with the promise he would train them when the time was right. And he never did!
“One night a meteor struck the ocean offshore and sent a wave crashing into the island where Jool-Noret lived. The water flattened his hut and killed him in his sleep. It was all his followers could do to recover his body, that mummified relic they’ll be proud to show you back on the administration island.”
“But, sir, if Jool-Noret taught nothing, why was the Ginaz School founded in his name?” Resser said.
“Because his disciples vowed not to make the same mistake. Remembering all the skills they’d wanted to learn from Noret, they formed an academy where they could teach the best candidates all the fighting techniques they might require.” The ash-choked breezes ruffled his hair. “So, are you all ready to learn how to become Swordmasters?”
The students answered with a resounding “Yes!”
Cour shook his long gray mane and smiled. The gusts of ocean wind sounded like sharp fingernails scraping the lava cliffs. “Good. We will begin with two weeks of studying poetry.”
• • •
In the minimal shelter of their colorful tents, the trainees slept on the rocks— cold during the night, baking hot during the day. Gray clouds of spewed ash blocked the sun. They sat without chairs, ate dried and salted food, drank tepid water that had been stored in old casks. Everything had an aftertaste of sulfur.
No one complained about the hardships. By then, Swordmaster trainees knew better.
In the rough environment, they learned about metaphors and verse. Even on ancient Terra, honor-bound samurai warriors had valued their prowess in composing haikus as much as they valued their skill with a blade.
When Mord Cour stood on a rock beside a steaming hot spring and recited ancient epics, the passion in his voice stirred the students’ hearts. Finally, when the old man saw that he had made them all teary-eyed, he smiled and clapped his hands. Jumping down from the rock, Cour announced, “Success. Good, now it is time to learn fighting.”
• • •
Clad in flexalloy chain mail, Duncan rode astride an enormous armored turtle that kept snapping at its reins and its rider. Lashed into his saddle, legs spread to encompass the broad plated shell, he balanced a wooden pike with a blunted metal tip. He held the shaft over one wrist and stared across at the three similarly armed opponents.
The fighting turtles were hatched from stolen eggs and raised in cove pens. The sluggish behemoths reminded Duncan of when he’d had to fight while wearing thick plate armor. But their horned jaws could slam shut like blast doors and, when they had a mind to, the turtles could lurch forward with hellish speed. Duncan could see from chipped and broken plates on the shells that these beasts were veterans of more combat than he had ever seen.
Duncan rapped his lance on the turtle’s thick shell, thumping like a drummer. His beast stomped forward toward Hiih Resser’s mount, thrashing its monstrous head from side to side and snapping at anything in reach.
“I’m coming to unseat you, Resser!” But Duncan’s turtle chose that moment to stop, and no amount of urging could get it to move again. The other turtles wouldn’t cooperate, either.
The turtle-joust was the ninth fighting event in a decathlon the students had to pass before they were admitted to the next level of the class. Through five grueling days breathing ash-thick air, Duncan had never placed lower than third— in swim-fighting, long-jumping, crossbows, slingshots, javelins, aerobic weightlifting, knife throwing, and tunnel-crawling. Throughout, standing on his high rock, Mord Cour had watched the proceedings.
Resser, who had become Duncan’s friend and rival, also achieved a respectable score. The other Grumman students formed a clique of their own, clustering around the bullyish leader Trin Kronos, who seemed immensely full of himself and his heritage (though his demonstrated fighting abilities did not set him much apart from the others). Kronos crowed about his proud life serving House Moritani, but Resser rarely talked about his home or family. He was more interested in squeezing every bit of ability from Ginaz.
Each night, deep into the hours of darkness, Duncan and Resser would set to work in the base-tent library with a pile of filmbooks. Ginaz students were expected to learn military history, battle strategies, and personal fighting techniques. Mord Cour had also impressed upon them the study of ethics, literature, philosophy, and meditation . . . all the things he had not been able to learn as a feral boy in the forested cliffs of Hagal.
In evening sessions with the Swordmasters, Duncan Idaho had memorized the Great Convention, whose rules for armed conflict formed the basis of Imperial civilization following the Butlerian Jihad. Out of such moral and ethical thinking, Ginaz had formulated the Code of the Warrior.
Now, while struggling to control his curmudgeonly turtle, Duncan rubbed his red eyes and coughed. His nostrils burned from the ash in the air and his throat felt scratchy. Around him, the ocean roared against the rocks; fumaroles hissed and spat rotten-egg stink into the air.
After constant, ineffective prodding, Resser’s turtle finally lunged forward, and the redhead had all he could do to remain seated and keep his blunted lance pointed in the right direction. Soon all the turtles began to move, lumbering together in a slow-motion frenzy.
Duncan dodged simultaneous pike thrusts from Resser and the second opponent, and struck out at the third with the butt of his own weapon. The blunt end of the lance bashed the student squarely on the chest armor, sending him sprawling. The downed trainee landed heavily on the rough ground, then rolled out of the way to avoid the snapping turtles.
Duncan flattened himself against the shell of his mount, evading another thrust from Resser. Then Duncan’s turtle halted in its tracks to defecate— which took a long time.
Glancing around, helpless in his saddle, Duncan saw the remaining mounted adversary go after Resser, who defended himself admirably. While his turtle completed its business, Duncan waited for precisely the right moment, positioning himself to one side on the hard shell, as near to the combatants as he could get. Just as Resser countered with his own weapon and knocked down the other combatant, he raised his lance in a show of triumph— as Duncan knew he would. At that very moment, Duncan reached over and slammed his pike into the redhead’s side, tumbling Resser off the turtle. Only Duncan Idaho remained, the victor.
He dismounted, then helped Resser climb to his feet and brushed sand from his chest and legs. A moment later Duncan’s turtle finally began to move, lumbering about in search of something to eat.
• • •
“Your body is your greatest weapon,” Mord Cour said. “Before you can be trusted with a sword in battle, you must learn to trust your body.”
“But Master, you taught us the mind is our greatest weapon,” Duncan interrupted.
“Body and mind are one,” Cour responded, his voice as sharp as his blade. “What is one without the other? The mind controls the body, the body controls the mind.” He strutted along the rugged beach, sharp rocks crunching under his callused feet. “Strip off your clothes, all of you— down to your shorts! Take off your shoes. Leave all weapons on the ground.”
Without questioning orders, the students peeled off their clothing. Gray ash continued to fall around them, and brimstone gases sighed up from fumaroles like hell’s breath.
“After this final test, you can all be quit of me, and of this is
land.” Mord Cour pursed his lips in a stern expression. “Your next destination has a few more flowers and amenities.” Some of the students gave a ragged cheer, tinged with uneasiness about the ordeal they were soon to face.
“Since all of you passed a ’thopter-pilot competency test before coming to Ginaz, I’ll keep my explanation brief.” Cour gestured up the steep slope to the high crater lip, surrounded in hazy gray murk. “A craft awaits you on top. You saw it on your way in. The first to reach it can fly away to your clean and comfortable new barracks. Coordinates are already locked into the piloting console. The rest of you . . . will walk back down the mountain and camp here on the rocks again, without tents and without food.” He narrowed the eyes on his ancient face. “Now, go!”
The students raced forward, using their energy reserves to get a head start. Although Duncan wasn’t the fastest student off the mark, he chose his route more carefully. Steep cliff bands blocked some paths halfway up the sheer cone, while other couloirs tapered off to dead ends before reaching the top. Some gullies looked tempting, thin streams and waterfalls promised a slippery, uncertain ascent. Upon seeing the ’thopter high up on the crater rim during their initial approach, he’d studied the slope with avid interest, preparing himself. Now he drew upon everything he had observed. And he started up.
As the terrain steepened, Duncan gained on those ahead of him, skillfully choosing gullies or couloirs, scrambling up rugged, knobby conglomerate rock while others got sidetracked into easy-looking gravel chutes that crumbled beneath their feet and sent them tumbling back down. He ran along connecting ridges and rounded shoulders that did not lead directly to the top but provided easier ground and permitted a faster ascent.
Years ago, when he’d raced for survival in the rugged Forest Guard Preserve on Giedi Prime, Rabban had tried to hunt him down. By comparison, this was easy.
The rough lava rock was sharp beneath Duncan’s bare feet, but he had an advantage over most of his fellow students: calluses developed by years of walking without shoes on the beaches of Caladan.
He skirted a hot spring and climbed a fissure that gave him precarious hand- and footholds. He had to wedge himself into the crack, searching for protrusions and crannies he could use to haul himself up another body length. Some of the rotten rock broke loose and tumbled.
Elsewhere, he had no doubt that Trin Kronos and some of the other self-centered candidates would be doing their best to sabotage the competition, rather than focusing on increasing their own pace.
By sunset he reached the lip of the volcano— the first in his class. He had run without resting, climbed dangerous scree slopes, chosen his route carefully but without hesitation. With other competitors not far behind him, coming up all sides of the cone, he leaped over a steam vent and ran for the waiting ornithopter.
As soon as he spotted the craft, he looked over his shoulder to see Hiih Resser stumble up close behind him. The redhead’s skin was scratched and covered with ash. “Hey, Duncan!” The air was thick with fumes and dust belched out from the crater. The volcano rumbled.
Close to victory, Duncan put on a burst of speed, closing the distance to the ’thopter. Resser, seeing he had no chance of winning, dropped back, panting, and gracefully acknowledged his friend’s victory.
At the crater’s far rim, Trin Kronos pulled himself up from an alternate route, his face flushed and angry at seeing Duncan so close to the waiting ’thopter. When he saw Resser, his fellow Grumman student, stagger to a breathless halt and concede, Kronos looked even more furious. Though they came from the same world, Kronos often went out of his way to express scorn for Resser, to humiliate the redhead and make his life miserable.
In this class, it was survival of the fittest, and many of the students had developed an intense dislike for each other. Just watching the way Kronos harassed his fellow Grumman trainee, Duncan had formed a harsh opinion of the spoiled son of a nobleman. Once Duncan flew off in the ’thopter, Kronos would probably wait for his Grumman friends, and they would pummel Resser to vent their own frustrations.
As Duncan placed one foot in the empty craft, he reached a decision. “Hiih Resser! If you can get here before I strap in and take off, I’m sure the ’thopter will carry two of us.”
Farther away, Trin Kronos put on a burst of speed.
Duncan snapped on his safety harness, touched the retractor bar to shorten the wings for jet-boost takeoff, while Resser stared in disbelief. “Come on!”
Grinning, the redhead found new energy. He sprinted forward as Duncan slid the starter switch into position. In his years of service to the Duke, he’d been taught to fly by some of the best pilots in the Imperium. Now he went through the motions smoothly.
Railing against Duncan’s decision to break the rules, Kronos raced forward, his feet kicking up broken rock. The ’thopter’s instrument panel flashed on. An illuminated orange box told Duncan the jetpods were armed, and he heard the low, powerful hiss of the turbines.
Resser leaped onto the ’thopter skids just as Duncan raised the vehicle with the jet assists. Panting, the redhead grabbed the edge of the cockpit door and held on. He gulped in lungfuls of air.
Seeing he would never make it to the vessel, Trin Kronos stooped to snatch up a jagged, fist-sized lava rock and threw it, striking Resser’s exposed hip.
Duncan depressed a glowing action-sequence button, and the wings snapped up and down, climbing high above the lava cap of the volcano. The jetpods kicked in, and the wings went into lift attitude. He let up on the power. Resser hauled himself all the way inside in a tangle of arms and legs. Wheezing and out of breath, he wedged himself into the meager open space beside Duncan in the cockpit and began to laugh.
The wind of the ornithopter’s beating wings blasted the disappointed Kronos. Left behind, the young man hurled another rock, which bounced harmlessly off the plaz windowshield.
Duncan waved cheerfully and tossed Kronos a handlight from the ’thopter’s supply kit. The Grumman caught it, expressing no gratitude for the assistance in the growing dark. Far behind him, the other students, fatigued and aching, would return to camp on foot to spend a miserable, cold night out in the open.
Duncan boosted power, extended the wings to their fullest setting. The sun sank below the horizon, leaving a red-orange glow across the water. Darkness began to fall like a heavy curtain over the string of islands to the west.
“Why did you do that for me?” Resser asked, wiping sweat off his brow. “This was supposed to be a solo test. The Swordmasters certainly didn’t teach us to help each other.”
“No,” Duncan said with a smile. “It’s something I learned from the Atreides.”
He adjusted the instrument panel illumination to a lambent glow, and flew by starlight to the coordinates of their next island.
Never underestimate the power of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe, no matter the conflicting evidence.
— CAEDMON ERB, Politics and Reality
In an effort to understand how the Sisterhood had short-circuited his demands, the Baron and Piter de Vries huddled in the metal-walled conference room of the Harkonnen military frigate. The ship orbited Wallach IX, weapons ready . . . but with no target. For two days, hourly comlink messages had been sent to the Bene Gesserit, without any response.
For once the Mentat had no answers as to where or how the witches had hidden; no probabilities, projections, or summations. He had failed. The Baron, who accepted no excuses for failure (and de Vries had failed him), was prepared to kill someone in a most unpleasant manner.
Feeling like an outsider, a brooding Glossu Rabban sat to one side watching them, wishing he could offer some insight. “They’re witches after all, aren’t they?” he finally said, but no one seemed interested in the comment. No one ever listened to his ideas.
Disgusted, Rabban left the conference room, knowing his uncle was glad to see him go. Why were they even discussing the situation? Rabban couldn’t tolerate sitting around, getting nowhere.
It made them all appear weak.
As the Baron’s heir-presumptive, Rabban thought he had done well for House Harkonnen. He’d overseen spice operations on Arrakis, had even launched the first surreptitious strike in what should have been an all-out Atreides-Tleilaxu war. Time and time again he had proven himself, but the Baron always treated him as if he were slow-witted, even calling him “a muscle-minded tank brain” to his face.
If they had let me go down to the witches’ school, I could have smelled them out.
Rabban knew exactly what needed to be done. He also knew better than to ask permission. The Baron would only say no . . . and the Baron would be wrong to deny him. Rabban would solve the problem himself and claim his reward. At long last his uncle would see his capability.
In heavy black boots, the burly man strode through the frigate corridors, intent on his mission. Around him the armed ship droned along in the silent embrace of gravity. He heard snatches of conversation as he passed cabins and duty stations. Men in blue uniforms hurried by, performing their duties, always deferential to him.
When he gave his command, the men dropped their tasks and hurried to slide open a bulkhead wall. Rabban stood with his hands on his hips, satisfied to gaze upon the hidden chamber that held a sleek, highly polished vessel, a one-man warcraft.
The experimental no-ship.
He had flown the invisible fighter inside a Guild Heighliner more than a decade ago, and the ship had performed its duty impeccably . . . completely silent and unseen. His pilotry had been flawless, though the scheme had ultimately failed. Too much planning had been the fatal error before. And Leto Atreides— damn him— had refused to behave as expected.
This time, though, Rabban’s plan would be simple and direct. The ship and its contents were invisible. He could go anywhere, observe anything— and no one would suspect. He would spy on what the witches were up to, and then he could wipe out the entire Mother School if he wished.
Dune: House Harkonnen Page 21