by David Weber
"What do you know of the Faith?!" Marchant spat. "You parrot the words, but their meaning is not in you! The very key about your neck proclaims it, for woman was never meant to rule. 'Gather your sons to build the world God ordains, and guard your wives and daughters well. Protect them and teach them, that they may know God's will through you.' Through you!" Marchant repeated, glaring furiously at her. "God Himself tells us Woman is to be governed by Man, as a father governs his children, not to violate His law by setting herself against His will! You and your accursed Star Kingdom infect us all with your poisons! You lead our young men into godless war and our young women into the sins of pride and debauchery, turning wife against husband and daughter against father!"
"I think not, Sir." Honor allowed an edge of ice into her own voice as she met the clergyman's glare and chose another passage from The New Way. "'Fathers, do not close your minds to the words of your children, for they are less fixed in the old ways. Nor should there be strife between a man and his wives. Love them and heed their council. We are all the Sons and Daughters of God, Who created us Man and Woman that we might comfort and aid one another, and a day will come when Man will need Woman's strength as well as his own.'"
Marchant went purple as murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. Honor felt Reverend Hanks' approval and sensed his own surprise at her command of the Church's teachings, but she kept her eyes on Marchant and awaited his next attack.
"How dare you speak of a man and his wives?" the clergyman hissed. "The union of holy marriage is a sacrament, ordained and blessed by God, while you, who fornicate in the pleasures of the flesh, spit upon all it means!"
Nimitz's snarl burned in Honor's right ear. A deep, angry growl went up from the crowd, and Andrew LaFollet cursed savagely under his breath, but her own mind was cold and clear and her eyes were deadly.
"I do not spit upon the sacrament of marriage, nor upon any other sacrament," she said, and more than one listener quailed before her icy tone, "but your own Book says, 'Without love, there can be no true marriage; with love, there can be nothing else.' And again, Sir, Saint Austin wrote, 'Yet I say to you, do not rush to marriage, for it is a deep and perfect thing. Test first, that you may be certain you are called to it by love, and not simply by the pleasures of the flesh which will consume themselves and leave only ashes and misery.'" Her dangerous brown eyes stabbed Marchant like paired lasers, and her voice was very, very quiet. "I loved Paul Tankersley with all my heart. Had he lived, I would have married him and borne his children. But I am not of your Church, however much I respect it, and I followed the customs to which I was born, as I would expect you to follow yours."
"And so you proved your unclean nature!" Marchant shouted. "You and all your sin-filled people who worship at the shrine of sensuality have no place among God's chosen!"
"No, Sir. So I proved only that I loved a man as God intended and shared his love in a way different from your own." Honor's voice was as cold and level as ever, but tears streaked her cheeks as the anguish of Paul's death twisted within her like a knife, and Nimitz's harsh, angry snarl rippled over the sound system once more. She stood like a tall, slim statue, facing her enemy with her pain plain on her face, and the mutters from the crowd turned darker and angrier as they saw it.
"Lies!" Marchant screamed. "God struck down the man with whom you rutted like some beast of the fields as punishment for your sins! It was His judgment upon you, harlot!" Honor went bone-white, and vicious satisfaction twisted Marchant's expression as he realized he'd hurt her at last. "Woe be unto you, Harlot of Satan, and to the people of this steading when God's sword smites them through you! God knows the truth of your whores heart, and..."
A sudden, bass-throated roar boiled up from Honor's subjects. It buried Marchant's voice like an ocean, and he stopped abruptly, mouth hanging open, fury-congested face suddenly pale as he realized he'd gone too far at last. He'd violated a bone-deep, thousand-year code of conduct when he publicly attacked a woman, and only the deep, instinctive respect for his collar and Honor's readiness to answer his diatribe with reasoned argument had balanced his shocking breach of all decent behavior. That balance vanished now. Every citizen of Harrington Steading knew the story of her love for Paul Tankersley and now it had ended. Now they saw her agony as Marchant ripped open her wounds, and a dozen men surged towards the clergyman.
He shouted something, but the ugly crowd bellow swamped his amplified voice, and he scrambled frantically up the bleachers. His feet slipped as he reached the uppermost tier, but he regained his balance and scurried desperately along the empty seats while the crowd thundered in pursuit, and Honor fought free of her pain and turned to grab LaFollet's shoulder.
"Stop them, Andrew!" He stared at her, as if unable to believe his own ears, and she shook him fiercely. "They'll kill him if we don't stop them!"
"Uh, yes, My Lady!" LaFollet jerked out his com and started barking orders, and Honor wheeled back to the podium mike.
"Stop!" she shouted. "Stop it! Think what you're doing! Don't make yourselves like him!"
Her amplified voice carried even through the roar, and a handful of men stopped, but her subjects' fury was out of control. Other Harringtons charged on, and they were gaining. Marchant fled madly, running for his very life while a knot of green tunics battled through the crowd towards him, and Honor clung to the podium, willing her guardsmen to reach him first.
They didn't. A shout of triumph went up as a flying tackle brought Marchant down, and he and the man who'd caught him rolled down the bleachers, bouncing from seat to seat. The pack converged like hungry hounds, and someone jerked him to his feet. He cowered down, covering his head with his arms and hands while fists and feet battered him, and then, miraculously, the Guard was there. They closed in, knocking his attackers aside, enclosing him in a ring of green-on-green uniforms and hustling him from the bleachers amid a hurricane of catcalls and shouted threats, and Honor sagged in relief.
"Thank God," she breathed, covering her face with one hand as her Guard dragged the battered, bleeding, half-conscious clergyman to safety while Nimitz hissed with fury on her shoulder. "Thank God!" she whispered again, and then lowered her hand, blinking on tears, as an age-frail arm went about her.
Reverend Hanks drew her close, and she needed his support. Nor did she feel any patronization in the fierce, furious disgust for Marchant's cruel bigotry flowing from him through Nimitz, and she leaned against him, trembling with the residual anguish Marchant's words had waked and her awareness of how close he'd come to death.
"Yes, My Lady, thank God, indeed." Hanks' resonant voice quivered with anger, and he turned her away from the crowd and produced a handkerchief. She took it and dried her eyes, still leaning against him, and he continued in that same harsh voice. "And thank you, too. If you hadn't reacted so quickly..." He broke off and shook himself, then drew a deep breath.
"Thank you," he repeated, "and I beg you to accept my apologies on behalf of Father Church. I assure you," he said, and if his voice was calmer, it was also harder, and more implacable, than she'd ever thought the gentle Reverend could be, "that Brother Marchant will be ... dealt with."
CHAPTER SIX
"Hail"
Honor's right foot came down on the polished floor, quickly and neatly, her weight centered, and her wooden practice sword flashed. Master Thomas' blade caught the head cut, and her left foot swept around behind her, carrying her to his left. She shifted her weight, driving his sword back to gain a split-second's freedom, then slid her own weapon down his, twisted her wrists, and feinted a cut to his left arm in a single blur of movement.
"Hail" she shouted again, diverting her stroke into a whistling torso cut as he moved to parry, but his parry had also been a feint.
"Ho!" He floated aside, graceful as a dancer or a cloud of smoke, and Honor grunted as his blade cracked down on her padded right forearm just before her own strike went home. She lowered her sword instantly and bent her head to acknowledge the touch w
hich had preempted her own attack, then stood back and took her right hand from her hilt. She shook it for a moment, grimacing at the tingle in her fingers, and Master Thomas raised his mask with a smile.
"The best offense, My Lady, is sometimes to offer your opponent a juicy target in order to turn her attack against her."
"Especially when you can read her like a book," Honor agreed. She removed her own mask and mopped her face on the sleeve of her fencing tunic. It was similar in cut to the gi she wore for her coup de vitesse workouts, but stiffer and heavier. Grayson had long ago adopted high tech substitutes for more traditional fencing armors, and the tunic was designed to let her move easily yet absorb blows which could easily break unprotected limbs.
Unfortunately, it was not so well designed as to prevent bruising, for Grayson's swordmasters subscribed to the theory that bruises taught best.
"Oh, I wouldn't say you were quite that obvious, My Lady," Master Thomas disagreed, "but you might cultivate a more, ah, subtle approach."
"I thought I was being subtle!" Honor objected, but her fencing master shook his head with another smile.
"Perhaps against someone else, My Lady, but I know you too well. You forget this isn't a real battle, and you think in terms of decision. Given an opportunity to achieve outright victory, your instinct is to seize it even at the expense of taking damage yourself, and in a real fight, I'd probably be dead now, while you would simply be wounded. But in the salle, you must always remember that it's the first touch which counts."
"You did it on purpose, didn't you? Just to make your point."
"Perhaps." Master Thomas smiled serenely. "Yet it also gave me the victory, didn't it?" Honor nodded, and his smile broadened. "And whether I did it as an object lesson or simply to win is really beside the point. I was able to do it by taking advantage of the way you think, because I knew your arm cut would be only a feint when I offered you the opening to the body."
"Did you, now?" Honor cocked an eyebrow at him.
"Of course, My Lady. Did you really think my guard could be that weak by accident?" Master Thomas shook his head sadly, and Nimitz bleeked a laugh from his perch on the uneven parallel bars.
"You," Honor said, wagging a finger at the cat, "can just be quiet, Stinker!" She turned back to Master Thomas and tugged at the end of her nose while her eyes crinkled in amusement. "Would you have tried something like that against someone you didn't know as well as you know me?"
"Probably not, My Lady, but I do know you, don't I?"
"True." Honor shook her arm again. "It is a bit hard to surprise someone who's taught you everything you know, isn't it?"
Master Thomas grinned and raised one hand in the referee's gesture that signified a touch, and she chuckled. Thomas Dunlevy was the second ranking Swordmaster on Grayson, and she felt honored by his agreement to train her. Unlike Grand Swordmaster Eric Tobin, who'd out-pointed him by only the tiniest margin for the grand mastery, Master Thomas had no problem with the fact that she was a woman. Tobin had been horrified by the very notion of training a mere female; Master Thomas' only concern had been whether or not the mere female in question could master the sword, and, like virtually all Graysons, he'd seen the video Palace Security's cameras had shot the night Honor saved Protector Benjamin's family from assassination. Indeed, he'd agreed to teach her the sword without charge if she agreed to teach him coup de vitesse, and he was as vulnerable to surprises there as she was here.
Honor had accepted willingly, and not just because she loved teaching the coup. For most Graysons, the sword was simply another form of athletic competition, and that, in great part, was how Honor saw it, too. Yet it was more than that for her, as well. She was the only living holder of the Star of Grayson, which, by law, made her Protector's Champion, and the Protector's symbol was not a crown, but a sword. It had been a bit difficult for Honor to learn the trick of substituting "the Sword" where a subject of Queen Elizabeth would have said "the Crown," but she was getting the hang of it, just as she'd learned that Graysons used "the Keys" to refer to the Conclave of Steadholders.
But the point was that Benjamin Mayhew's symbol was a sword, and that archaic weapon had a very special significance here. Any Grayson could learn the sword, but the law allowed only those who'd attained at least the rank of Swordmaster, or those who were Steadholders, to carry a live blade. And while Grayson had no equivalent of Manticore's code duello, its fundamental law still enshrined any steadholder's right to trial by combat against the Protector's decrees. No one had resorted to it in over three T-centuries, yet the right remained, and such challenges could be settled only with cold steel.
Honor had no expectation of ever being called upon to fulfill her obligation as Benjamin IX’s champion, but she didn't believe in surprises, either. Besides, it was fun. Her own training had never included weapon work, for the coup was strictly an unarmed style, but it had given her a firm basis for Master Thomas' lessons, and she'd found the elegance of steel suited her, though it wasn't a bit like the sports of foil and epee fencing still practiced in the Star Kingdom of Manticore.
Grayson's original colonists had fled Old Earth to escape its "soul-destroying" technology, and the first few generations had renounced technological weapons. But they'd still been products of an industrial society, with absolutely no background in the use of primitive weapons, so when the sword reemerged among them, they'd had no basis on which to build the techniques for its use. They'd had to start from scratch, and, according to Master Thomas, tradition held that they'd based their entire approach on something called a "movie" about someone called "The Seven Samurai."
No one could really be certain after so long, since the "movie" (if there'd ever truly been such a thing) no longer existed, but Honor suspected the tradition was accurate. She'd done some research of her own after beginning her lessons and discovered that "samurai" referred to the warrior caste of the preindustrial Kingdom of Japan on Old Earth. Grayson's library data base contained virtually no information on them, but her request to King's College on Manticore had produced quite a bit of background, and Master Thomas had joined her study of it with intense interest.
She still hadn't tracked down the word "movie," but the connotations suggested some form of visual entertainment medium. If so, and if the Graysons had based their own swordplay on such a thing, its creators seemed to have done their research more thoroughly than modern HD writers did theirs. King's College had sent along a description of the traditional swords of ancient Japan, and the Grayson weapon bore a pronounced resemblance to the katana, the longer of the two swords which had identified the samurai. It was a bit longer, about the same length as something the records called a tachi, with a more "Western-style" guard and a spine that was sharpened for a third of its length, which the katana's hadn't been, yet its ancestry was evident.
Master Thomas had been fascinated to learn the samurai had actually carried two swords, and he was experimenting with adding the shorter of them, the wakizashi, to his own repertoire, evolving his own techniques for fighting with both of them. He had visions of introducing them as an entirely new school, but he'd also been delighted by the university librarians' inclusion of background on a fencing style called "kendo." Kendo was similar to existing Grayson styles, but he'd licked his chops as he identified differences between them. He was already developing a brand-new series of moves by combining them, and he looked forward to next year's planetary finals and an overdue settlement with Grand Master Eric.
"Well," she said now, working her fingers as the last tingles drained out of diem, "I suppose I should be grateful practice swords don't have edges. On the other hand, you realize you've just motivated me to land at least one touch of my own, don't you?"
"A man's, or woman's, reach should always exceed her grasp, My Lady," Master Thomas agreed with a gleam of humor, and Honor snorted.
"My reach, indeed! All right, Master Thomas," she lowered her mask and stepped back into the guard position, "let's be about it."
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br /> "Of course, My Lady." Master Thomas took his own position and they exchanged salutes, but the soft, insistent tone of the salle's door buzzer sounded before either of them could make another move.
"Darn!" Honor lowered her blade. "Looks like you've been saved by the bell, Master Thomas."
"One of us has, My Lady," he replied, and she chuckled again, then turned her head as James Candless crossed to the door. He touched a button and listened for a moment, then straightened with an expression of surprise.
"Well, Jamie?" Honor asked.
"You have a visitor, My Lady." There was something a bit odd in her armsman's tone, and Honor cocked her head.
"A visitor?" she prompted.
"Yes, My Lady. High Admiral Matthews asks if it would be convenient for you to receive him."
Honor's eyebrows rose in astonishment. High Admiral Matthews here to see her? She had enormous respect for him, and they'd come to know one another well during and after their fight to defeat Masada's attack on Grayson, but why was he here? And why, her eyebrows lowered, furrowing in thought, hadn't he warned her he was coming?
She shook herself. Whatever it was, it was probably too important to waste time changing to receive him.
"Please ask him to come in, Jamie."
"Of course, My Lady." Candless opened the salle door and stepped through it, and Honor turned to her instructor.
"Master Thomas..." she began, but the swordmaster simply bowed and headed for the dressing rooms.
"I'll leave you to your meeting, My Lady. We can reschedule the rest of today's session later this week, if you like."
"Thank you. I'd like that very much," she said, and he nodded and vanished just as Wesley Matthews entered the salle behind Candless.
"My Lady, High Admiral Matthews," the armsman said with a bow, and stepped into his proper place behind his Steadholder. Nimitz slithered down from his perch on the bars, and Honor handed her practice sword and protective headgear to Candless, then stooped to gather the cat in her arms.