Starship Home

by Morphett, Tony

  Zachary was saying: ‘That woman. Did she teach you at high school? How could you bear it? After I nearly had heatstroke trying to rescue her…’

  It was at this moment that the net dropped on them. Troll warriors were falling out of the trees like autumn leaves.

  ‘This is how it happened,’ Harold exclaimed. ‘This is exactly how it happened the first time!’

  As Zachary pointed out the next day, it was a little late to be telling them this, because by the time Harold’s message had sunken in, the Troll warriors had them on their feet and were tying their hands behind their backs, and Marlowe and a giant Troll with a scar on his face were strolling out of cover to inspect them.

  ‘Hi!’ said Zachary with a big, big smile. ‘My name’s Zachary Owens and I’m here to help you with your problems.’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ said the giant Troll warrior.

  ‘Sure. Sure thing, I just wanted to say…’

  The giant Troll glared at Zachary and Zachary shut his mouth tight and nodded.

  ‘You three are coming to see the Don,’ said the giant Trollwarrior.

  ‘Right! A pleasure!’ Zachary said.

  The giant Trollwarrior shook his head and smiled a terrible smile. ‘No,’ he said, ‘whatever else it turns out to be, it won’t be a pleasure.’

  37: THE DON

  On the roof of Trollcastle, under the billow and snap of the two banners, four swordsmen were fighting. All four men were bare-chested and sweating in the heat, but they moved swiftly with the precision and grace of professional sportsmen or dancers.

  It was three of them against one, but the odds somehow appeared even. The man fighting alone was extraordinary in both his speed and his execution. Not a huge man, he moved like a big cat, parrying the blades of the other three, riposting, keeping his opponents off-balance with thrust and cut, making ground, then retreating. He was using two blades, the rapier in his right hand and the parrying dagger in his left, until, his opponents having manouevred him into a corner of the rooftop, with a lightning shift he changed hands, the rapier now in his left hand, the dagger in his right as he drove hard against the opponent on his far left, and broke out of the trap.

  The man was beautiful, not only in his skill as a swordsman, but in the tight musculature of his compact body and the aquiline lines of his head. Dark curling hair was pasted to his skull by sweat, and sweat ran over the old white scars on his chest and arms. Don Robert, by-named The Bold, was the finest swordsman of his generation. He had won his spurs in battle before the age of 14. He had seen his father, Spider The Gross bring the Duchy to the brink of insurrection, and his evil brother Spider The Nameless take it over that brink.

  But Robert The Bold was more like his grandfather Robert The Beautiful than either his brother of father. He was even like him in appearance. The Costellos were an able family, everyone gave them that, but they never came by half-measures. They were good or they were evil, noble or depraved, never a blend.

  Robert, working out that day against three of his men-at-arms, was a physical poem. His brother Spider the Nameless had by some accounts been, and perhaps in exile still was, as fine a swordsman. But Spider the Nameless had on several occasions deliberately killed his own men-at-arms in training. Such a thing Robert would never do. It defined the difference between the two brothers.

  To one side of the four duelling men was a watchman, using an ancient pair of binoculars to scan the road from the forest and he now turned to Don Robert. ‘Sir Ulf’s party’s on the way back, m’ lord. Three prisoners.’

  Robert smiled. ‘Ulf? Take prisoners? Getting soft is he?’ and then, knowing he would soon be called below to talk to the prisoners, he proceeded to wrap up his training session. The Don lunged, let his man-at-arms riposte, and caught the man’s blade in the slot in his rapier’s hilt; with a twist of the wrist, he disarmed him, then flicked the point of his rapier at the man’s exposed throat in a controlled thrust which stopped just short of drawing blood. He was already sidestepping the attack of the two men-at-arms who remained in the game. As he sidestepped he leaned over, and tapped the second man-at-arms on the hamstrings, using the flat of his blade, and then moved into a strong attack on the third, driving him into a corner and ending with the man disarmed and at his mercy. Then he stepped back and saluted his defeated men-at-arms.

  ‘Thank you gentlemen,’ he said, and then began to wind down, sheathing his dagger and, with sword alone moving into a kind of dance, a blend of tai chi and a karate kata with which he always finished his daily training sessions.

  Below, Ulf’s party was just reaching the gates. Zoe, Harold and Zachary, running at the end of ropes, were following the horsemen up to the gates, between the rampant Harley Davidsons. Zachary was looking at the Troll emblem over the gates, and could at last read the writing beneath it. ‘Trolls Motor Cycle Club’ he read, and then ‘they were bikers!’ he laughed, delighted by his discovery.

  ‘What?’ Harold said.

  ‘The Trolls. Back in our day they were bikers. Those are Harley Davidsons, that’s a Motor Cycle Club emblem, these police or whatever they are, they’re descendants of an outlaw biker gang by the look of it…’

  ‘And they’re the new aristocracy?’ asked Harold. He was appalled. These new horse-riding, sword-swinging aristocrats were descended from exactly the sort of people he had been terrified of at school, the ones with oily hair and leather jackets who had done amateur tattoos on each other’s arms at lunch hour. It was not fair. They could at least have been descended from computer programmers, he thought, because we, after all, are the true aristocracy.

  It had once been a conference hall. The chemical company which had owned the building had run staff conferences here, bringing in people from other states and from overseas. It was the height of two normal floors, and had a stage at one end, but it had changed greatly since those days 90 years before when men and women wearing company name tags had sat in here for seminars and lectures and sales conferences and plenary meetings.

  On either side of the steps going up to the stage there was now a rampant Harley Davidson. Denim Troll club colors hung rotting from flagstaffs like army regimental colors in old churches and on the walls hung portraits of the five Dons.

  Don Spider I was depicted wearing biker leathers and denim club colors, leaning on his Harley Davidson, and armed with bowie knife, revolver and shotgun. His son, Robert the Beautiful, was shown by the artist making his last stand at the 2nd Battle of Torrens Bridge. The portrait showed him wearing body armor of a cruder kind than was now the fashion, and fighting with a muzzle-loading pistol and broadsword. The third portrait, showing Don Spider II (The Gross), portrayed him toward the end of his wicked life, armed with rapier and parrying dagger and wearing armor very similar to the current Troll fashion. The fourth portrait, of Don Spider The Nameless, was covered with a cloth. The fifth and last portrait showed Don Robert The Bold, the present Don, wearing black leather with black burnished armor, a gold chain with a gold cross hung about his neck, and standing by a grave with a double headstone. The portrait was recent, unmarked at all by the smoke from the large open fireplace which had been built into one wall of the hall in the time since this was a corporate conference centre.

  Don Robert strolled into the hall, passing his own portrait. As in the portrait he was dressed in black leathers and black half-armor. His sword and dagger were at his belt, and a gold chain and cross were about his neck. He looked like a prince from a storybook, even to the air of sadness which hung about him. Here was a man who had lost something very important to him.

  Following the Don came his chaplain and political adviser, Father John, a black robed priest carrying a thick wooden staff six feet long, more like a fighting staff than a walking stick. They walked up the steps onto the stage and the Don dropped into the big chair which stood at centre stage like the throne or chair of office which it was. Father John sat in a smaller chair on the Don’s right.

  Now the door at the bac
k of the hall opened and Harold, Zoe and Zachary were led in, roped together, with Ulf and two Trolls walking beside them. Marlowe followed at a discreet distance. When they reached the stage, they came to a halt, and Ulf and the Trolls bowed. ‘These are the people living in the iron castle, my lord,’ Ulf said.

  ‘They have names?’ The Don sounded educated. His voice was quiet, firm, and well modulated. There was nothing rough in his tone, nothing forced. He expected to get his own way and he got it. That was all.

  ‘Harold, Zoe, Zachary,’ said Ulf, indicating each in turn as he named them.

  ‘And you’ve built an iron castle on my turf,’ said the Don. He looked at Ulf. ‘What’s inside it?’

  ‘We didn’t … actually get inside, my lord. We tried axes, battering rams…’ Ulf shrugged.

  The Don looked at the prisoners with interest. ‘You’re foreigners, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well actually we come from…’ Harold began, but broke off as Zachary elbowed him to be silent.

  ‘Yes,’ said Zachary, smiling his most charming smile, ‘foreigners, just passing through your royal highness, and we’ll be on our way again any minute…’

  The Don made a gesture which Zachary correctly interpreted as telling him to be quiet, and he obeyed. The Don looked at Harold. ‘I suspect that you were about to tell me the truth. You began to say actually we come from…?’

  ‘Somewhere else very different,’ Harold replied somewhat lamely.

  ‘So let me explain something to you,’ said the Don with a most gentle patience. ‘I am Don Robert Costello. On my turf, I am the law. It follows logically from this that if I should want something, then it’s mine. And if I want to see inside your iron castle, then I see inside it. Say if you understand.’

  ‘Well actually my lord,’ Zoe said, ‘there’s someone inside the castle who … sort of controls the doors. It’s up to her.’

  The Don looked at Ulf and Ulf said: ‘There’s a woman inside the castle, my lord. It was she who wouldn’t let us inside.”

  “A woman who controls a castle. Not unheard of. My own grandmother, the Lady Anne, commanded this castle under siege for 44 days and nights after my grandfather fell at the 2nd Battle of Torrens Bridge. However, in this case, the woman of the iron castle is on my turf and is therefore my servant, and must obey my lawful commands.’ He looked at Ulf. ‘Is this iron castle an interesting thing, would you say, Ulf?’

  ‘Very,’ said Ulf.

  ‘Then it’s my pleasure that we should go and see inside it. And if the lady in charge does not let us in, we shall come back here and I’ll put you three in my dungeons, where you’ll stay until your iron castle rusts away. Say if you understand.’

  ‘We understand my lord,’ said Zachary, whose normally optimistic view of life was by this stage veering toward a more pessimistic outlook. He had met people like Don Robert before, and he knew that for all their fine manners and high faluting speech, they were hard to con, and very dangerous when crossed.

  38: MARCHING ORDERS

  Zoe, Harold and Zachary were all getting very tired of running at the end of a rope. ‘I’m beginning to think,’ Harold panted, as they ran along after the horses, ‘that Mr Quayle was a humanitarian.’

  ‘Who’s Mr Quayle?’ asked Zachary.

  ‘Sports master at school,’ Harold wheezed as the dust from the horses’ hooves filled his throat.

  ‘Good pain!’ Harold and Zoe chanted together.

  ‘That was his motto,’ said Zoe.

  ‘But he never towed us along on ropes,’ said Harold.

  ‘Because he never thought of it,’ said Zoe.

  ‘Stop talking!’ shouted Ulf, on the principle that prisoners who talked were plotting escape or worse.

  Ulf was riding in the lead with the Don and Father John. Behind them rode the 14-year-old Troll whom Guinevere had thought might be a page or young squire. In fact he was Rocky Costello, son of the exiled Spider The Nameless, and adopted son and squire to his uncle, Don Robert. It was Rocky who held the end of the rope to which Zoe, Harold and Zachary were attached. Both leading and following the main party there were mounted detachments of Troll men-at-arms.

  As they came into the clearing, those who had not yet seen the starship sat back in their saddles and gaped at her size. The Don and Father John slowly crossed themselves, and the Don said to his chaplain, ‘What devil’s house is this?’

  ‘No house, my lord, but a Slarn starship,’ said the priest, who had seen drawings of such things in the library of his order’s mother house.

  ‘So are these Slarn?’ asked the Don, waving a hand in the direction of Harold, Zoe and Zachary.

  Father John shook his head. The Don was already assessing the starship. He was not afraid of it. Buildings, starships, they did not frighten him. He dismounted and approached the starship. ‘How do I talk to it?’ he asked Ulf.

  ‘Just talk. The woman talks back.’

  ‘Who am I talking to?’ the Don asked the starship.

  ‘I am the Lady Guinevere.’

  ‘All right Lady Guinevere, I want to come in.’

  Zachary winked at the others. Some chance this Don had of getting Guinevere to open up!

  ‘Who art thou?’

  ‘I am the Don Robert Costello, lord of Damplepon, enforcer and arbiter of the High Law, scourge of the ungodly. And I want in!’

  If Guinevere had a weakness it was for high-handed, sword-swinging, hard-riding arrogant aristocrats with beaky noses, curly black hair, well-formed calves and fine manners. A nun she might have been, but that had not dimmed her appreciation of a touch of class, a bit of style in the male. The Don was like the men that she had grown up among, he was like her father and her brothers and their friends.

  So when the Don put the proposition to her in that fashion, she almost purred with nostalgia. ‘Oh my lord I do love thy style,’ she said. ‘I have not met thy like for nigh 600 years. I prithee enter.’

  ‘Now listen, Guinevere,’ Zachary began, but the hatch of the starship was already sliding back and the ramp was coming down.

  Don Robert turned in the saddle. ‘Ulf, Father John, the prisoners, with me. The rest of you secure the area.’

  ‘Please? My lord?’ Marlowe was desperate to get inside the starship.

  ‘Very well, Marlowe, you may join us.’ The Don, with generations of arrogance behind him, was already strolling up the ramp and into the starship.

  When they reached the bridge, the Don looked around. Inside himself, he was slightly awed, but on the outside an observer would have thought that he had been on the bridge of a starship every day of his life. Ulf on the other hand was looking slightly uneasy. Ask Ulf to scale a siege ladder with his sword between his teeth and boiling oil raining down around him, or charge the burning gateway of a citadel, fight his way home through odds of ten to one, and he was your man, but anything that in any way suggested the supernatural had him shaking in his boots. ‘I don’t like this Don, it’s wizard’s work. A simple service of exorcism, please Father…’

  ‘Welcome,’ said Guinevere, appearing on the screen.

  ‘Tell her to come out from behind the window,’ pleaded Ulf.

  ‘That I cannot do, my lord,’ she said, and smiled at Ulf in such a sweet way that he began to lose his sense of trepidation. ‘Now good my lords, sit ye down, and shall we talk of family trees, and coats of arms, and joustings for fair ladies’ hands, and desperate battles ‘gainst all odds, and courts of love and suchlike merry things?’

  ‘Later,’ said the Don. ‘What I want to talk about right now is what all this is doing on my turf.’

  ‘Look, your royal highness,’ Zachary said, ‘we’re just stuck here for a little while. We’ve got some engine trouble with the starship, and once we’re up and running again, we’ll be off, no trouble, but in the meantime we’re actually contributing something to your kingdom.’

  The Don looked at him with hooded eyes. Zachary did not like the look. It was a very calm look. Zachary had ne
ver had anyone look at him to measure him for a coffin but he imagined that it would be rather like the way the Don was looking at him now.

  ‘Ahm,’ said Zachary, ‘what I mean is my lord, that we’re doing things for your people. We’re the good guys. We’ve even started a school in the village.’

  ‘You’ve started a what in the what?’ the Don asked sharply.

  ‘A school? In the village? Teaching the Foresters to read and write? Now would we do that if we meant any harm?’

  The Don turned on Ulf in fury. ‘Why didn’t I know this? What do I pay spies for? A school?’

  ‘What’s wrong with starting a school?’ said Zachary.

  ‘Universal literacy is the key to economic advancement,’ said Harold.

  ‘I thought everyone wanted schools,’ said Zoe.

  ‘You people are either crazy or working for my enemies,’ the Don said. ‘Which is it? Did the King of Vic put you up to this? The Sullivans? Who?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Harold said.

  ‘Teaching peasants to read and write. You claim you don’t understand what teaching peasants to read and write means? I tell you what it means, it means the end of civilization as we know it!’

  ‘I think this guy may be a neo-conservative,’ Zachary said.

  Marlowe spoke. ‘If you slay them or send them into exile, my lord,’ he said, ‘I can promise to take this starship off your turf.’

  The Don pondered those choices for a few seconds and then shook his head. He did not want any complications or delays. ‘Cut their bonds, Ulf. They’re an infection. They, the demon dwelling, all have to go at once.’

  As Ulf cut Harold and Zoe and Zachary free of the cords binding their hands behind their backs, the Don said: ‘The school stops now. You three and this devil house get off my turf by this time tomorrow.’