by Gardner Fox
Gron Dhu came swiftly, kicking dust as he walked. A white kilt swung to his stride and the sword and holstered a-gun at his belt moved in rhythm to his swinging legs. He was a handsome man, a warrior, and he came as if to the great victory of his life.
Behind him walked his soldiers, weapons at the ready. For the space of a dozen heartbeats, Gron Dhu studied the metal vault, nodding in satisfaction. Then he looked up at Peganna on its top.
“You found it for me, Peganna. For this, you shall have life. I vow it! No man can say Gron Dhu is an unjust ruler.”
“No man can say Gron Dhu is a ruler,” Peganna answered.
A low growl echoed her words as the nomad clans moved forward a step. Gron Dhu stared around him; to Bran, he seemed oddly shaken at that impetuous movement.
“Are you fools?” he cried out. “I have an army at my back. You are only nomads, people of the hills and the grasslands. How long do you think you could stand before my men?”
“Long enough to kill them all,” shouted a graybeard.
The soldiers behind Gron Dhu looked at one another. Many of them had relatives in the shepherd people, among the darst tenders and the hill dwellers. They had come here to arrest an Earthman, not to engage in civil war. Yet the habit of obedience was so strong in them that had Gron Dhu ordered them to mow down their own people, they might have obeyed.
Gron Dhu looked up at his sister. “Call off your dogs, sister mine. This is between Bran Magannon and myself.”
“You are only a commander among the Lyanir, Gron Dhu. I am their rayanal. It is I who give the orders. Now—give submission! Throw down your weapons belt and I shall show mercy when it comes time to judge your act of rebellion in making me your prisoner.”
The young warlord barked harsh laughter. “Don’t stir my anger, Peganna. I am rayanar, now. You are only a woman who used to be queen.”
Bran thrust forward to stand beside Peganna. This was the opportunity he wanted. “By what authority, Gron Dhu?” he asked clearly, so all might hear his voice.
“By what—by Rronn, Earthman! You listen to me! You defeated us once out there in space with your Empire war fleet—but here on Miranor I am the power. At my word, you could die as you stand!”
“By what authority?” Bran repeated. “You are a rebel against the rightful rayanal. No more. Has Peganna signed over her rights in any document? Has the queen stepped down from her throne, giving your name as the man to ascend it in her place? No.
“You say you are rayanar. Suppose Orsakan there, whom I see just beyond your elbow, were to say to this gathering, ‘I am rayanar of the Lyanir!’ How many of you would take him seriously?”
Gron Dhu laughed mockingly.
Bran nodded. “Exactly. It would be a joke. While Peganna lives, there is only one way Orsakan could become rayanar against the will of Peganna.”
The young warlord scowled. “There is no way! I am of the blood royal. I am a prince of the imperial house. I am not Orsakan.”
“You are nothing more than Orsakan, making claims which he cannot fulfill.” As Gron Dhu started forward, lifting an arm to his warriors, Bran held up a hand.
“People of the Lyanir! Yes, you warriors who serve Gron Dhu, as well! Are the customs of your people illegal in your eyes?”
Ah, that caught them. Even Gron Dhu waited, staring.
Bran grinned. “The only way you can become rayanar is to engage in the ancient custom of the dravi-dor, the duel for the chieftainship, which, since the Queen is involved, will be a raya-kor.”
He heard Peganna gasp beside him, knew she was turning to stare at him, though he did not look at her. He could not guess whether there was anger or laughter in her words as she said, “So! This is what you had in mind!”
She was more perceptive than her brother. Gron Dhu growled, “Peganna is a woman. I cannot fight a woman.”
“You can issue the challenge—unless you’re afraid.”
Peganna said sweetly, “In which case I would appoint a queen’s champion to meet you in open combat, brother mine.”
Gron Dhu stood like a statue. As well as anyone, he knew the corner into which Bran Magannon had backed him. It had been the Earthman who had issued the challenge, no matter how it was disguised by this talk of dravi-kors and queen’s champions. He had pointed the way for Gron Dhu, a way he must set his feet or lose the support even of his army.
The people waited, their eyes hard.
Gron Dhu looked around him. His warriors were waiting as were the nomads. The army had accepted his leadership, understanding that where a woman had failed in the fight with Empire, a man might succeed. Blindly they had followed after him, knowing his fighting qualities, even against their rayanal, believing it for the good of the people.
Yet here they found those people confronting them.
For the first time the army commanders and the warriors themselves understood that what they did was rebellion. No matter how many times Gron Dhu stated the fact, he was not the rayanar so long as Peganna lived or had not been set aside in a fitting manner.
They would have followed him to the death in a battle against a common enemy, even against their own people, if he were their rightful ruler. Bran Magannon had pointed out the truth. Gron Dhu was merely a pretender to the throne, a usurper.
“Are you afraid?” Bran called down.
The warriors stirred, waiting. Gron Dhu heard them stir and turn to one another, wondering at his silence. He was not afraid of Bran Magannon. As a matter of fact he itched to get him on the other side of a weapon, yet he was remembering the words Alvar Drexel had spoken to him, short days before Bran and Peganna had come to Miranor.
The Wanderer always finds a way. It isn’t there for you or me to see—but Bran sees it.
For the first time, Gron Dhu knew doubt. The Wanderer was challenging him. The Wanderer must know a way to beat him. His flesh crawled at the thought. Until short moments ago, he had been rayanor of the Lyanir. Now he was nothing, merely a brother to the queen standing here to issue the challenge of the raya-kor.
“I challenge the rayanal,” he said at last, slowly and heavily. “I assert my right to be rayanar. I will fight to the death for that right in the raya-kor.”
A sigh went from one throat to another. Now the eyes swung toward Peganna who put her hand on Bran Magannon. “I name Bran the Wanderer to be my champion, to fight to the death against the challenger.”
She leaned a little against the Earthman after the words were out, and he felt her shiver. “If you fail, I die, Bran! It isn’t so much my own death I fear, though, as it is your own.”
Bran fumbled in his belt pouch, bringing out the dice of Nagalang. He threw them high. They caught the sunlight and became mere silvery motes falling swiftly to his palm.
He held them. He opened his fingers.
The dragons of Moorn stared up at them. Peganna breathed, “The royal throw, that sweeps the board.”
“Aye, woman. Nothing can top it. Remember it as I fight.”
He put the dice back into his pouch and slipped out of his jerkin. Naked to the middle he would fight, as would Gron Dhu, to show the cuts, to make easy the death stroke, should it come to that.
“You’ll need a sword, Bran.”
“Any one will do.”
“Not any one, no. Come with me.”
She brought him at her heels—for some reason he was recalling the night Peganna and he had played at dice on the planet Makkador, and how this woman had won his life from him—toward her hide tent. She bent in its dimness and lifted the lid of a coffer.
“This was the sword of my father and his father before him,” she said gently, unrolling a length of wool. “It was forged on Lyanol long ago.”
The blade was a gray length of brightness below a cross-hilt, fully three feet in length and a little more than an inch wide, almost to its tapered point. As Bran put his hand about its braided hilt, the sword seemed to leap to his grip.
It was delicately balanced. It shimme
red when he moved it, and darted like the tongue of a snake at his thrust. This was a masterpiece he held in his fingers, the highest product of a race of fighting men.
“I’ll try to be worthy of such a blade,” he growled, knowing humility.
“It was to have been my wedding present to you, long ago,” Peganna smiled. “Take it now to defend my name.”
She stepped into his arms, shivering. Bran felt her silver hair under his lips as he kissed her gently. For such a woman, with such a sword, he would fight until he died.
EIGHT
THE PEOPLE recognized the sword Bran carried in his hand to the little clearing that had been made for the duel. A sound like the whisper of a wind in tall trees moved here and there, for the people recognized his fitness to carry this blade that was named Lyrothonn, as champion of the queen. Were she a man, Peganna would use the sword. Bran carried it, in her name.
Gron Dhu grinned when he saw it.
“This too, shall be mine in a little while,” he said to the Wanderer, moving forward with his blade held out.
Gron Dhu disdained to use the shield. As he waved it aside his eyes touched Bran, and the Wanderer read in them the hate and the controlled fury that said as plain as words that he wanted no shield in the way when he gave the Earthman his death blow.
Bran was satisfied. Though he had practiced the use of the shield in the clan hills with old Parkan, he was more at ease with a free left arm. He stepped forward.
As challenger, Gron Dhu would have the first blow, but no more. They circled like strange dogs, warily, crouched over a little. Gron Dhu was a strong man with long arms and wide shoulders. There would be no easy victory over him, Bran knew—if there was to be victory at all.
The Lyanirn came in with stamping foot, his blade a slash of brilliance. Steel clanged as Bran parried and thrust in a riposte which drove the other man back on his heels. First attack had gone to Gron Dhu, as Bran had wanted. The formalities were over. It was cut and thrust now and with the clanging of the swords, reality for Bran Megannon became nothing except this man in the white-fur kilt on the other side of his swordpoint. Forgotten were the Lyanir onlookers, forgotten except for a corner of his heart was Peganna their queen.
The blades swung and dipped. Gron Dhu was an expert swordsman. Had it not been for those long hours in the hills of the Axe clan, which he had spent with old Parkan, Bran knew he might have been dead three swordstrokes ago. His mind had run ahead of him when he had seen the dravi-kor between Avrak and the older man, and he had known then, with a surety that was a voice in his mind, this was the way to rid themselves of Gron Dhu.
Against this duel he had needed practice, and the ex-chieftain had been happy to teach him the strokes and the parries, the overhead molinellos and sideslashes that were a part of every Lyanirn duel. Slowly in the hills the way of a sword had come back to him. The old muscles, the old knowledge of thrust and riposte, had been reborn in Bran Magannon.
He pushed Gron Dhu back and back, slicing fiercely.
There was a pattern to his moves which he hoped Gron Dhu would see and understand. After every molinello he paused, affording his opponent a slight opening. Gron Dhu would take the overhead slash on his blade and Bran would seem to freeze. A quick man would disengage and drive his blade sideways at the Wanderer, then. If he were swift enough with his stroke, he ought to cut his belly open.
So far, the Lyarirn had not noticed it.
Ah, but he would, he would.
The clanging of the blades went on. Both men were wet with sweat now, though neither of them was tired. Bran Magannon owned a body of whipcord and steel, and Gron Dhu was always in condition.
Shadows grew longer as they fought, sometimes circling again so they might recover their wind. There was grudging admiration in the eyes that faced him, Bran saw, though there was no fear. This was not the easy victory Gron Dhu had pictured in his mind. He was going to have to work to be rayanar of his people. It was a fact that would make his new title all the sweeter.
The blades clashed, drew sparks. Feet sidestepped for balance, points always ready for the thrust, edges alert for the parry. No eye of all those that watched missed any stroke. This was a duel that would go down in Lyanirn history. Those who were here watching it must remember it, to tell it to those who should come after.
Gron Dhu let his eyes widen. By Kronn! The Earthman was growing tired. After his last overhead blow he had paused, seemed almost to wrench himself back into position. In that pause he should have cut sideways at his naked middle. Yes, yes. Now that he thought about it, this was a mannerism of Bran the Lucky. Always after the molinello he took breath and stood rigid in his attacking position.
Fool that he was, not to have seen it sooner!
Gron Dhu grinned. Once more he would test his discovery. He feinted, drew back, let his blade lower a little. Bran came in with the sweeping molinello. His blade rose swiftly to meet it. Sparks flew as the edges grated.
Again Bran had paused, stood helpless.
Excitement danced like fire along his veins as Gron Dhu circled his man, face to face and with his sword at the ready for the death cut. He knew now what he must do to kill Bran Magannon. Let him make just one more of those overhead slashes and he would be a dead man.
Bran came in on darting feet. His blade rose and fell.
Gron Dhu met his sword with the edge of his own. Almost in that instant, as the blades rang, the Lyanirn disengaged. Faster than the eye could follow, his sword swung straight for Bran at his navel, to slice him open, to cut him almost in half.
Steel met steel with a shocking jar that numbed Gron Dhu for an instant. Bran had dropped his hilt so that his sword pointed upward at the sky like a bar before his belly. It had been a trap! A devil trick to lure Gron Dhu into—
Bran disengaged himself from the parry and thrust forward.
His blade went into Gron Dhu deep, its reddened point standing out behind his back. They stood frozen there, dead man and living, Bran in the riposte, Gron Dhu with his blade fallen a little where it had gone when parried.
Then the Lyanirn fell facedown.
Bran turned his eyes from the man he had killed to look about him, at the sky, at the great metal vault, at the people and the warriors standing and staring back at him. He wondered if they saw him as an Earthman at this moment or as the champion of their queen.
A voice rasped, “Peganna, rayanal of the Lyanir!”
It was the young chief, Orsakan. His blade was pointed skyward. A thousand more swords followed its example and a forest of steel lifted, below which Peganna came walking. Gron Dhu was dead. Long live Peganna of the Silver Hair!
The woman knelt beside her brother, made symbols with her fingers above his head which Bran did not understand. It was some sort of rite, he knew, but the weariness in his muscles was so acute it made an ache, dulling the world about him. Dazedly, he stared down at the sword Lyrothonn in his hand. The blade was redly wet with blood. Sighing, Bran knelt to cleanse it in the dirt.
Above his working fingers, Peganna looked at him.
“Thank you, Bran Magannon. You saved not only the woman who loves you but her people as well, this day.” She smiled, reaching out to touch his hand with gentle fingertips. “Had Gron Dhu killed you, he would have given over the Lyanir to the Empire as payers of tribute. I can give them freedom and equality.”
She put her hand in the pouch at the dead man’s belt and lifted out the blue egg. Both hands she placed about it, cradling it between her fingers as though she drew an unknown power from its weight. Then her fingers parted like the petals of a flower and dying sunlight touched the jewel.
“This shall give them the freedom for which they long,” she whispered. From the egg she turned her head to stare at the great vault. “Tomorrow, Bran. Tomorrow we shall go together to the vault and put the egg in that hollow and learn what it is the well of the Molween gave us.”
She accepted his hand that lifted her to her feet. Holding onto the blue egg ti
ghtly, she walked ahead of him to her hide tent.
Bran slept like a tired child. And like a child he dreamed of faceless terrors in the night, of half-seen things hidden in the great vault that came out gibbering to the touch of the egg in its top. Like the mythical box of Pandora, Peganna might be freeing unknown horrors on the world about her, horrors against which there was no weapon, no way of safety.
He was covered with sweat when he woke.
Dawn lay to the east, red and faint on the horizon. The early morning air was cold as he dressed, and when he threw back a tentflap, he saw white mists along the ground. Those mists covered the bottom portions of the metal rectangle, as though they had seeped from it in a poisonous miasma.
The encampment was stirring all about him. Lyanirn warriors moved back and forth on their errands, swordchains clanking. The shepherd folk and the hill nomads moved more softly but just as purposefully. Understanding came to Bran as he watched. This was the day for which the Lyanir had waited over the centuries.
The vault held the answer to their future.
If the vault were filled with weapons, they could compel the Empire to a treaty, force it to give them planets on which to live, be accepted into its hegemony of nations and worlds as an equal. Perhaps this might be so, even if there were no weapons. Breathtaking inventions, marvels of science which neither the Lyanir nor Empire had even imagined, might do it. Man had not lost his power to bargain just because he had gone out to the stars.
Empire would be ready to make a deal, if the price were right. It all depended on what they discovered in the vault. There was a tightness in his middle, Bran found. Suddenly he had to know what secrets lay in that metal rectangle.
Perhaps death had struck the Crenn Lir down before they had the chance to put anything at all inside it. It might be an empty shell, no more. Ah, but—fate could not be so cruel! Even Subb of the Hundred Hates would have some mercy.
Just one artifact, one object to trade for living room!