Starship Home

by Morphett, Tony

  For the moment, though, he had left his followers to their decorating tasks while he sorted out some knotty theological problems with Dark One. There was a problem which was concerning him very much indeed and it was this: until Dark One had been translated into the form of the iron castle, he had always spoken to the Eldest through the voices in the Eldest’s head. For the Eldest did not imagine these voices, nor did he invent them as a means to power over his followers. He heard these voices, and he knew they came from Dark One, and that Dark One was using him as his way of communicating with the Human Race, as the Looters called themselves.

  But now Dark One had chosen to speak aloud, and further, had chosen to use the piping tones of a young woman, instead of the manly hissing baritone of the voices within the Eldest’s head. So he now prostrated himself before the iron castle which was Dark One’s new body and said, ‘Dark One? Your most humble servant seeks enlightenment.’

  ‘I am not your Dargwan,’ said the woman’s voice which Dark One was now pleased to be using.

  ‘Dark One jests,’ said the Eldest and quickly went on before his god could interrupt him. ‘Am puzzled because in the time before, Dark One spoke only in my head. No one else could hear. Now Dark One speaks so others hear and with the voice of a woman.’

  The Eldest reminded Guinevere of a very elderly Inquisitor she had once known in her former life, a man whose motto seemed to be I talk but I never listen. ‘I speak with the voice of a woman,’ she said sweetly, knowing exactly the reaction she was going to get, ‘because I am a woman.’

  ‘Nooooooo!’ the Eldest howled, his ear-splitting shriek of horror echoing around the clearing. The Looters ignored it, the Eldest being in the habit of uttering ear-splitting shrieks and also ululating wolf-like howls at quite frequent intervals. To notice them was to risk becoming dinner, so the Looters kept their heads down and continued with their painting.

  ‘Yes,’ said Guinevere, feeling pleased with the ways things were going. Soon this wooden-head knave might tire of the conversation and go away.

  ‘Perhaps you remember,’ said the wooden-head knave in question, ‘in the Dark Beginning of All Things, being alone in the Universe, giving birth through Eternity to the World Egg from which all things grew and were made and then telling all to eat all?’

  Why do they always speak in Capital Letters? Guinevere wondered. The Inquisitor had had the same habit, one that infuriated her even as she deflected his questions and denied the rumors which had circulated in the convent that she levitated while in prayer. ‘I remember nothing of that,’ Guinevere replied, adding silently and if I did I should keep most silent on the subject.

  ‘Has Dark One lost his memory?’ The Eldest asked, and Guinevere could tell by his hopeful tone that that Dark One probably knew things about the Eldest which the Eldest would be very glad to have forgotten.

  ‘Nay, good sirrah,’ she replied, ‘I remember all that thou hast done and all that thou do’st and all that thou shalt do in time to come.’

  At this, the Eldest trembled in fear. ‘We will bring you many skulls. All will pay for all.’

  Hidden in the scrub at the clearing’s edge, a Forester woman watched and listened. After a while, she crept backward in the shadows, then straightened, turned and ran to report what she had seen to Helena. Looters at the iron castle. Now there’s a thing, thought Helena on receiving the news. ‘Fetch an expendable male to use as a messenger,’ she told the woman, ‘the Don must know about this.’

  But when the breathless messenger was ushered into the hall at Troll Castle, the Duke was not to be seen, and the expendable male had to deliver his message to the Duke’s chaplain. Father John listened to the tale, and then nodded, ordered that the messenger be fed and then sent back to Helena with word that the message had been delivered and would be acted upon. But how? thought the priest, the Looters besieging the Iron Castle? What could that mean?

  At the same time as the Forester messenger was sitting down to eat in the castle kitchen, night had fallen and the Don was leading his little party along a track through Sullivan country. Despite the view that the Don shared with Zachary, that a track was something you got ambushed on, he could not afford any injuries. A sprained ankle or a horse’s broken fetlock could slow them down so that daylight when it came would see them exposed and vulnerable on the plain. And then in the distance he saw lights. The Don raised one hand to bring the party to a halt.

  Meg asked what it was, and he pointed to the distant lights. They were flickering, and stretched almost from horizon to horizon. ‘Campfires,’ the Don told her. ‘The three Sullivans we ran into must have been outriders of the main Horde.’

  ‘And there’s the Horde,’ Ulf intoned as he and Zachary came up to join them.

  Zoe, Harold, Rocky and Maze, holding the horses’ leading reins, could hear what was being said. ‘Horde?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘A technical term for the main body of horse nomads,’ said Harold.

  ‘I already knew that,’ snapped Zoe.

  ‘Then why did you ask?’

  ‘Didn’t ask.’

  ‘There are probably thousands of them,’ Harold remarked. All armed with composite bows and scimitars.’

  ‘Shut up, Harold!’ said Meg, who had already worked out the grimmer details for herself.

  Now the wind must have shifted slightly, because they began to hear a distant howling and the staccato beating of hand drums. ‘That’s probably what they do to work themselves up into a killing frenzy,’ remarked Harold.

  ‘Guess what, Harold, it seems to be working on me as well, and since you’re the nearest, you’re going to be it.’ Harold did not really believe that Zoe was worked up into a killing frenzy, but he decided there was nothing lost in pretending to believe her, and fell silent.

  ‘We’ll go around them,’ said the Don.

  Ulf was not sure about that. Other and better possibilities beckoned. ‘There’d be much honor, my lord, in cutting our way through them.’

  ‘Honor’ was rapidly becoming Zachary’s least favorite word. ‘I don’t think so, Ulf. For a start, the word wouldn’t get back and there’s no honor without publicity and applause, am I right?’ Then he felt the Don’s eyes on him. The handsome warlord was looking at him as if some lower order of insect had ventured an opinion on quantum mechanics. ‘But then what would a simple school bus driver know about high and mighty concepts like “honor”?’

  ‘Under normal circumstances,’ the Don said, very slowly, as if to someone who did not speak his language, ‘it would of course be our duty …’

  ‘Duty’, that was another of those dangerous words that could get a man killed in a flash, thought Zachary.

  ‘… our duty,’ the Don continued, ‘to attack and destroy them utterly. But,’ he added, after a pause in which Zachary’s blood ran cold and his heart thudded so violently that he thought everyone must hear it, ‘… but Salt Trek takes precedence. The salt must be gotten home. And then, good Ulf,’ he added, as if tossing a bone to a slavering attack dog who had just been deprived of a juicy child, ‘we may make plans to mount an expedition against the Sullivan Himself and his Horde.’ And then he avoided further argument by leading the party off the track in a direction designed to avoid the line of fires marking the Sullivan encampment.

  In the centre of that encampment, the Sullivan Himself sat, surrounded by his lieutenants, gnawing the bones which were all that remained of their evening meal. Suddenly, a tall figure, wrapped in a dark cloak, entered the circle of firelight. The Sullivan Himself and all of his lieutenants looked up at the intruder and waited. Sudden death was in the air.

  The stranger dropped his cloak and exposed his face. One metal eye glittered in the firelight. It was Marlowe. ‘I seek the Sullivan Himself.’

  ‘I am he,’ said one of the lieutenants.

  Marlowe looked at him and smiled derisively. ‘You are not.’ He looked at the others in turn and finally his basilisk gaze fell on one of them. ‘You are. But you are
not the Sullivan Himself whom I last met.’

  ‘Marlowe,’ said the Sullivan Himself, ‘Old Metal Eye. Where were you when my brother died last month?’

  ‘Far away. What killed him?’

  ‘The pendix gutache,’ said the Sullivan.

  ‘I give you my grief,’ replied Marlowe, and offered the highest praise a plains nomad could receive, ‘Your brother was a stallion among men.’

  ‘I take your grief. Now why do you, a stranger, come into our horse lines at night?’

  ‘I cured your brother’s third wife of the fever last summer, and came to crave a boon of him in return.’

  The Sullivan smiled, revealing the tattoos on the inside of his lips. ‘If it’s a boon from my brother that you crave, I must send you to where he is so you may receive it.’

  Marlow knew the horse nomads, and knew that this was their way of joking, and so replied: ‘I thank you for your kindness but that would be a long journey indeed and I’ve much to do hereabouts. And yet, I seem to remember that among the hordes, the brother of a dead man inherits his brother’s wives. So perhaps she whom I cured is now your wife.’

  ‘If she is, then what I owe you would depend on what manner of wife she is to me.’

  There was silence, and the Sullivan smiled as he watched Marlowe think about his next move. When it came it was direct and to the point. ‘There’s a Troll salt party crossing your turf and I ask for their safe passage.’

  ‘Troll!’ The Sullivan’s reaction was a bitter barking sound. ‘We found four of my outriders dead today, one the son of a blood-brother. They’d died by the sword. Troll work if I ever saw it.’

  ‘I know nothing of that.’

  ‘Do you not?’ In one fluid movement the Sullivan had risen to his feet and drawn his scimitar. ‘You come to my fire by night and tell me you’re the friend of my enemies! That I should give safe passage across my turf to the murderers of the son of my blood oath! Am I a child? Am I a woman? That you insult me like this?’

  ‘Your pardon. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Marlowe? Old Metal Eye who knows all things? Did not know? Where are they? Where is this Troll salt party?’

  ‘Now that, I really do not know,’ said Marlowe.

  ‘Seize him!’ But as the lieutenants moved to obey, Marlowe pivoted, kicking and striking, clearing his way before reaching into his pouch and bringing out a handful of powder which he cast into the campfire. A great pillar of flame flared out of the campfire, blinding the Sullivan and his lieutenants long enough for Marlowe to disappear into the darkness. Before their sight was restored, they heard the receding hoof beats of Marlowe’s horse, taking him to safety.

  The Sullivan was shielding his eyes and screaming commands. ‘I want that Troll salt party! I want them! Get the patrols out!

  62: LOST AND FOUND

  The first light before dawn was bleeding through the trees when the Don’s party, weary from travelling all night, left the plain behind and entered open wooded country. There was some safety in that, for they were not as exposed to view as they were on the flat, treeless expanse of the plain, but the Trolls in the party knew that constant vigilance was still required. They stopped to break their fast with strips of sun-dried beef, flat way-bread and water from their closely-woven canvas water bags, the last of which they shared with their horses. Then they pressed on, hoping that the open grassland was now behind them.

  Their hope was in vain, for within half an hour they found themselves at the further edge of the wooded country and facing more grassland, a strip of about 100 yards lying between them and denser forest. The sun was above the horizon now, so they would be forced either to wait in hiding till nightfall, or cross the open space in full view of any Sullivans who might be abroad. They began to debate their choice, but the Don swiftly put an end to the discussion. ‘We’re out of water. We must cross now.’ Crawling to the edge of the woodland, he scanned the terrain in both directions with an ancient pair of binoculars, then turned. ‘Seems clear,’ he said. ‘Rocky, you scout across, and take Maze, Zoe and Harold with you.’

  Meg was instantly opposed. ‘You’re sending the young ones first?’

  ‘Safer that way,’ the Don explained. ‘We’ll get them positioned on the other side, then the rest of us’ll bring the horses across. That’s when we’re likely to be spotted.’

  ‘Maybe if I went with the kids to look after them?’ said Zachary.

  The four “kids” looked at him with utmost scorn and Rocky eased his sword in its sheath and said ‘Call me a kid again and we’ll be meeting on the field of honor when we get home.’

  ‘You’ll stay with us,’ the Don said to Zachary, and hand-signalled Rocky to go.

  Rocky dropped to his belly and started to tiger crawl across the open space, and then on a count of three, Don signalled Maze to follow him. ‘Don’t bunch up, stay ten yards apart,’ he said and then after a count of five, he signalled Zoe, then after a count of three Harold, to follow. By this time Rocky was already halfway across the strip of grassland, scarcely visible. Maze was totally invisible, a Forester child who had spent her life blending into whatever terrain she found herself. Zoe could be seen, but was getting the hang of things fast, imitating Maze and Rocky. And Harold had his butt in the air. All they could see of him was his butt bobbing along above the grass as if in search of its long-lost owner. ‘That boy could end up with a Sullivan arrow where it really hurts,’ muttered the Don, ‘how we’re ever going to turn him into a warrior, I’ll never know.’

  ‘You never will,’ said Meg, suddenly feeling a strange loyalty to Harold whom she normally saw as the bane of her existence, ‘you’d be better off using his brain.’

  The Don nodded and filed the suggestion away in his mind as being a useful one. Father John had a brain and that came in useful. Perhaps Harold could grow up to be his adviser on such arcane skills as arithmetic and spelling. As the Don watched, Rocky made it safely to the other side of the stretch of grassland, and soon Maze was there alongside him at the forest’s edge. Then Zoe reached them, but Harold’s butt had stopped its bobbing progress across the open ground and was just sticking up like a strange stone, 20 yards short of the far tree line.

  ‘Saints and angels, what’s the boy think he’s doing?’ muttered the Don.

  ‘He’s found something interesting,’ replied Meg.

  ‘He what?’

  ‘One day I took his class on an excursion. He found something interesting and went missing for an hour. I thought he’d been kidnapped.’

  Harold’s butt began to bob again and soon he materialized from beneath it and joined the other three, standing in cover at the edge of the forest. Zoe turned on him. ‘Did you go to sleep out there or what?’

  ‘There was some very interesting spoor out there. I thought it might be lion.’

  ‘You were looking at lion poo?’

  ‘I wrapped a bit in my handkerchief to show the Don. You want to see it?’

  ‘You wrapped a lion turd in your handkerchief? Gross!’

  ‘It’s a clean handkerchief, there’s nothing there that’d spoil the specimen,’ Harold said.

  ‘Don’t speak to me ever again. I know what you’ve got in your pocket,’ said Zoe, and then screamed as four Sullivans rose out of the undergrowth behind them and each grabbed one of the four of them. At this point, things became rather confused.

  The Don, Ulf, Meg and Zachary, on seeing what was happening, started running the salt-laden horses across the open ground toward what had suddenly turned into a melee. As they ran for the far side, a certain amount of mayhem was taking place there. Rocky, on being grabbed, had stamped on the foot of his assailant, driven an elbow back into his gut, winding him, and then turned, stiff-armed him to the side of his head, kneed him in the groin and then, when the Sullivan doubled up, driven his knee into his face. The Sullivan had then dropped like a stone and lain unconscious at Rocky’s feet. Rocky had then turned his attention to what else was going on, in case there was some f
urther honor to be had.

  Maze, Forest child that she was, was handling her own Sullivan in her own way. The moment he had grabbed her, she had twisted and slipped from his grasp, leapt to grasp an overhanging tree branch, swung to gain momentum and then launched herself feet-first at his chest, knocking him to the ground. By the time Rocky turned she was dancing on the Sullivan’s chest, delivering kicks to all parts of his anatomy, particularly the tender parts. To Rocky’s mind, she seemed to have things satisfactorily under control, so he turned his attention to Zoe and Harold.

  Zoe was struggling with her Sullivan assailant, while pouring out a litany of abuse along the lines of ‘Yuk! You smell like a wet dog! You stink! I’m going to throw up!’ to which the Sullivan was saying, ‘You won’t say that when you’re my third wife’, a reply which drove Zoe into such a fury that she broke free of him, drew her Slarnstaff from her belt and, wielding it like a baseball bat, laid him out with it. This was about the same moment that Rocky had finished with his own Sullivan and was looking to help the others. The only other that needed helping was Harold, who was in the firm grip of the fourth Sullivan, who was holding a wicked-looking knife to his throat. ‘Throw down weapons or boy dies,’ said the Sullivan.

  ‘No deal,’ said Rocky.