Space Viking

by Henry Beam Piper

  But where would he find Dunnan, in two hundred billion cubic light-years? Dunnan had no such problem. He knew where his enemy was.

  And Dunnan was gathering strength. The Yo-Yo, Captain Vann Humfort; she had been reported twice, once in company with the Starhopper, and once with the Enterprise. She bore a blazon of a feminine hand dangling a planet by a string from one finger; a good ship, and an able, ruthless captain. The Bolide; she and the Enterprise had made a raid on Ithunn. The Gilgameshers had settled there and one of their ships had brought that story in.

  And he recruited two ships at once on Melkarth, and there was a good deal of mirth about that among the Tanith Space Vikings.

  Melkarth was strictly a poultry planet. Its people had sunk to the village-peasant level; they had no wealth worth taking or carrying away. It was, however, a place where a ship could be set down, and there were women, and the locals had not lost the art of distillation, and made potent liquors. A crew could have fun there, much less expensively than on a regular Viking base planet, and for the last eight years a Captain Nial Burrik, of the Fortuna, had been occupying it, taking his ship out for occasional quick raids and spending most of the time living from day to day almost on the local level. Once in a while, a Gilgamesher would come in to see if he had anything to trade. It was a Gilgamesher who brought the story to Tanith, and it was almost two years old when he told it.

  "We heard it from the people of the planet, the ones who live where Burrik had his base. First, there was a trading ship came in. You may have heard of her; she is the one called the Honest Horris."

  Trask laughed at that. Her captain, Horris Sasstroff, called himself "Honest Horris," a misnomer which he had also bestowed on his ship. He was a trader of sorts. Even the Gilgameshers despised him, and not even a Gilgamesher would have taken a wretched craft like the Honest Horris to space.

  "He had been to Melkarth before," the Gilgamesher said. "He and Burrik are friends." He pronounced that like a final and damning judgment of both of them. "The story the locals told our brethren of the Fairdealer was that the Honest Horris was landed beside Burrik's ship for ten days, when two other ships came in. They said one had the blue crescent badge, and the other bore a green monster leaping from one star to another."

  The Enterprise and the Starhopper. He wondered why they'd gone to a planet like Melkarth. Maybe they knew in advance whom they'd find there.

  "The locals thought there would be fighting, but there was not. There was a great feast, of all four crews. Then everything of value was loaded aboard the Fortuna, and all four ships lifted and spaced out together. They said Burrik left nothing of any worth whatever behind; they were much disappointed at that."

  "Have any of them been back since?"

  All three Gilgameshers, captain, exec, and priest, shook their heads.

  "Captain Gurrash of the Fairdealer said it had been over a year before his ship put in there. He could still see where the landing legs of the ships had pressed into the ground, but the locals said they had not been back."

  That made two more ships about which inquiries must be made. He wondered, for a moment, why in Gehenna Dunnan would want ships like that; they must make the Space Scourge and the Lamia as he had first seen them look like units of the Royal Navy of Excalibur. Then he became frightened, with an irrational retrospective fright at what might have happened. It could have, too, at any time in the last year and a half; either or both of those ships could have come in on Tanith completely unsuspected. It was only by the sheerest accident that he had found out, even now, about them.

  Everybody else thought it was a huge joke. They thought it would be a bigger joke if Dunnan sent those ships to Tanith now, when they were warned and ready for them.

  There were other things to worry about. One was the altering attitude of his Majesty Angus I. When the Space Scourge returned, the newly-titled Baron Valkanhayn brought with him, along with the princely title and the commission as Viceroy of Tanith, a most cordial personal audiovisual greeting, warm and friendly. Angus had made it seated at his desk, bare headed and smoking a cigarette. The one which had come on the next ship out was just as cordial, but the King was not smoking and wore a small gold-circled cap-of-maintenance. By the time they had three ships in service on scheduled three-month arrivals, a year and a half later, he was speaking from his throne, wearing his crown and employing the first person plural for himself and finally the third person singular for Trask. By the end of the fourth year, there was no audiovisual message from him in person, and a stiff complaint from Rovard Grauffis to the effect that His Majesty felt it unseemly for a subject to address his sovereign while seated, even by audiovisual. This was accompanied by a rather apologetic personal message from Grauffis—now Prime Minister—to the effect that His Majesty felt compelled to stand on his royal dignity at all times, and that, after all, there was a difference between the position and dignity of the Duke of Wardshaven and that of the Planetary King of Gram.

  Prince Trask of Tanith couldn't quite see it. The King was simply the first nobleman of the planet. Even kings like Rodolf of Excalibur or Napolyon of Flamberge didn't try to be anything more. Thereafter, he addressed his greetings and reports to the Prime Minister, always with a personal message, to which Grauffis replied in kind.

  Not only the form but also the content of the messages from Gram underwent change. His Majesty was most dissatisfied. His Majesty was deeply disappointed. His Majesty felt that His Majesty's colonial realm of Tanith was not contributing sufficiently to the Royal Exchequer. And his Majesty felt that Prince Trask was placing entirely too much emphasis upon trade and not enough upon raiding; after all, why barter with barbarians when it was possible to take what you wanted from them by force?

  And there was the matter of the Blue Comet, Count Lionel of Newhaven's ship. His Majesty was most displeased that the Count of Newhaven was trading with Tanith from his own spaceport. All goods from Tanith should pass through the Wardshaven spaceport.

  "Look, Rovard," he told the audiovisual camera which was recording his reply to Grauffis. "You saw the Space Scourge when she came in, didn't you? That's what happens to a ship that raids a planet where there's anything worth taking. Beowulf is lousy with fissionables; they'll give us all the plutonium we can load, in exchange for gadolinium, which we sell them at about twice Sword-World prices. We trade plutonium on Amaterasu for gadolinium, and get it for about half Sword-World prices." He pressed the stop-button, until he could remember the ancient formula. "You may quote me as saying that whoever has advised His Majesty that that isn't good business is no friend to His Majesty or to the Realm.

  "As for the complaint about the Blue Comet; as long as she is owned and operated by the Count of Newhaven, who is a stockholder in the Tanith Adventure, she has every right to trade here."

  He wondered why His Majesty didn't stop Lionel of Newhaven from sending the Blue Comet out from Gram. He found out from her skipper, the next time she came in.

  * * * * *

  "He doesn't dare, that's why. He's King as long as the great lords like Count Lionel and Joris of Bigglersport and Alan of Northport want him to be. Count Lionel has more men and more guns and contragravity than he has, now, and that's without the help he'd get from everybody else. Everything's quiet on Gram now, even the war on Southmain Continent's stopped. Everybody wants to keep it that way. Even King Angus isn't crazy enough to do anything to start a war. Not yet, anyhow."

  "Not yet?"

  The captain of the Blue Comet, who was one of Count Lionel's vassal barons, was silent for a moment.

  "You ought to know, Prince Trask," he said. "Andray Dunnan's grandmother was the King's mother. Her father was old Baron Zarvas of Blackcliffe. He was what was called an invalid, the last twenty years of his life. He was always attended by two male nurses about the size of Otto Harkaman. He was also said to be slightly eccentric."

  The unfortunate grandfather of Duke Angus had always been a subject nice people avoided. The unfortunate gra
ndfather of King Angus was probably a subject everybody who valued their necks avoided.

  Lothar Ffayle had also come out on the Blue Comet. He was just as outspoken.

  "I'm not going back. I'm transferring most of the funds of the Bank of Wardshaven out here; from now on, it'll be a branch of the Bank of Tanith. This is where the business is being done. It's getting impossible to do business at all in Wardshaven. What little business there is to do."

  "Just what's been happening?"

  "Well, taxation, first. It seems the more money came in from here, the higher taxes got on Gram. Discriminatory taxes, too; pinched the small landholding and industrial barons and favored a few big ones. Baron Spasso and his crowd."

  "Baron Spasso, now?"

  Ffayle nodded. "Of about half of Glaspyth. A lot of the Glaspyth barons lost their baronies—some of them their heads—after Duke Omfray was run out. It seems there was a plot against the life of His Majesty. It was exposed by the zeal and vigilance of Sir Garvan Spasso, who was elevated to the peerage and rewarded with the lands of the conspirators."

  "You said business was bad, as business?"

  Ffayle nodded again. "The big Tanith boom has busted. It got oversold; everybody wanted in on it. And they should never have built those two last ships, the Speedwell and the Goodhope; the return on them didn't justify it. Then, you're creating your own industries and building your own equipment and armament here; that's caused a slump in industry on Gram. I'm glad Lavina Karvall has enough money invested to live on. And finally, the consumers' goods market is getting flooded with stuff that's coming in from here and competing with Gram industry."

  Well, that was understandable. One of the ships that made the shuttle-trip to Gram would carry enough in her strong rooms, in gold and jewels and the like, to pay a handsome profit on the voyage. The bulk-goods that went into the cargo holds was practically taking a free ride, so anything on hand, stuff that nobody would ordinarily think of shipping in interstellar trade, went aboard. A two thousand foot freighter had a great deal of cargo space.

  Baron Trask of Traskon hadn't even begun to realise what Tanith base was going to cost Gram.

  XVII

  As might be expected, the Beowulfers finished their hypership first. They had started with everything but a little know-how which had been quickly learned. Amaterasu had had to begin by creating the industry they needed to create the industry they needed to build a ship. The Beowulf ship—she was named Viking's Gift—came in on Tanith five and a half years after the Nemesis and the Space Scourge had raided Beowulf; her skipper had fought a normal-drive ship in that battle. Beside plutonium and radioactive isotopes, she carried a general cargo of the sort of luxury-goods unique to Beowulf which could always find a market in interstellar trade.

  After selling the cargo and depositing the money in the Bank of Tanith, the skipper of the Viking's Gift wanted to know where he could find a good planet to raid. They gave him a list, none too tough but all slightly above the chicken-stealing level, and another list of planets he was not to raid; planets with which Tanith was trading.

  Six months later they learned that he had showed up on Khepera, with which they were now trading, and had flooded the market there with plundered textiles, hardware, ceramics and plastics. He had bought kregg-meat and hides.

  "You see what you did, now?" Harkaman clamored. "You thought you were making a customer; what you made was a competitor."

  "What I made was an ally. If we ever do find Dunnan's planet, we'll need a fleet to take it. A couple of Beowulf ships would help. You know them; you fought them, too."

  Harkaman had other worries. While cruising in Corisande II, he had come in on Vitharr, one of the planets where Tanith ships traded, to find it being raided by a Space Viking ship based on Xochitl. He had fought a short but furious ship-action, battering the invader until he was glad to hyper out. Then he had gone directly to Xochitl, arriving on the heels of the ship he had beaten, and had had it out both with the captain and Prince Viktor, serving them with an ultimatum to leave Tanith trade-planets alone in the future.

  "How did they take it?" Trask asked, when he returned to report.

  "Just about the way you would have. Viktor said his people were Space Vikings, not Gilgameshers. I told him we weren't Gilgameshers, either, as he'd find out on Xochitl the next time one of his ships raided one of our planets. Are you going to back me up? Of course, you can always send Prince Viktor my head, and an apology—"

  "If I have to send him anything, I'll send him a sky full of ships and a planet full of hellburners. You did perfectly right, Otto; exactly what I'd have done in your place."

  There the matter rested. There were no more raids by Xochitl ships on any of their trade-planets. No mention of the incident was made in any of the reports sent back to Gram. The Gram situation was deteriorating rapidly enough. Finally, there was an audiovisual message from Angus himself; he was seated on his throne, wearing his crown, and he began speaking from the screen abruptly:

  "We, Angus, King of Gram and Tanith, are highly displeased with our subject, Lucas, Prince and Viceroy of Tanith; we consider ourselves very badly served by Prince Trask. We therefore command him to return to Gram, and render to us account of his administration of our colony and realm of Tanith."

  After some hasty preparations, Trask recorded a reply. He was sitting on a throne, himself, and he wore a crown just as ornate as King Angus', and robes of white and black Imhotep furs.

  "We, Lucas, Prince of Tanith," he began, "are quite willing to acknowledge the suzerainty of the King of Gram, formerly Duke of Wardshaven. It is our earnest desire, if possible, to remain at peace and friendship with the King of Gram, and to carry on trade relations with him and with his subjects.

  "We must, however, reject absolutely any efforts on his part to dictate the internal policies of our realm of Tanith. It is our earnest hope,"—dammit, he'd said "earnest," he should have thought of some other word—"that no act on the part of his Majesty the King of Gram will create any breach in the friendship existing between his realm and ours."

  * * * * *

  Three months later, the next ship, which had left Gram while King Angus' summons was still in hyperspace, brought Baron Rathmore. Shaking hands with him as he left the landing craft, Trask wanted to know if he'd been sent out as the new Viceroy. Rathmore started to laugh and ended by cursing vilely.

  "No. I've come out to offer my sword to the King of Tanith," he said.

  "Prince of Tanith, for the time being," Trask corrected. "The sword, however, is most acceptable. I take it you've had all of our blessed sovereign you can stomach?"

  "Lucas, you have enough ships and men here to take Gram," Rathmore said. "Proclaim yourself King of Tanith and then lay claim to the throne of Gram and the whole planet would rise for you."

  Rathmore had lowered his voice, but even so the open landing stage was no place for this sort of talk. He said so, ordered a couple of the locals to collect Rathmore's luggage, and got him into a hall-car, taking him down to his living quarters. After they were in private, Rathmore began again:

  "It's more than anybody can stand! There isn't one of the old great nobility he hasn't alienated, or one of the minor barons, the landholders and industrialists, the people who were always the backbone of Gram. And it goes from them down to the commonfolk. Assessments on the lords, taxes on the people, inflation to meet the taxes, high prices, debased coinage. Everybody's being beggared except this rabble of new lords he has around him, and that slut of a wife and her greedy kinfolk...."

  Trask stiffened. "You're not speaking of Queen Flavia, are you?" he asked softly.

  Rathmore's mouth opened slightly. "Great Satan, don't you know? No, of course not; the news would have come on the same ship I did. Why, Angus divorced Flavia. He claimed that she was incapable of giving him an heir to the throne. He remarried immediately."

  The girl's name meant nothing to Trask; he did know of her father, a Baron Valdiva. He was lord of a sma
ll estate south of the Ward lands and west of Newhaven. Most of his people were out-and-out bandits and cattle-rustlers, and he was as close to being one himself as he could get.

  "Nice family he's married into. A credit to the dignity of the throne."

  "Yes. You wouldn't know this Lady-Demoiselle Evita; she was only seventeen when you left Gram, and hadn't begun to acquire a reputation outside her father's lands. She's made up for lost time since, though. And she has enough uncles and aunts and cousins and ex-lovers and what-not to fill out an infantry regiment, and every one of them's at court with both hands out to grab everything they can."

  "How does Duke Joris like this?" The Duke of Bigglersport was Queen Flavia's brother. "I daresay he's less than delighted."

  "He's hiring mercenaries, is what he's doing, and buying combat contragravity. Lucas, why don't you come back? You have no idea what a reputation you have on Gram, now. Everybody would rally to you."

  He shook his head, "I have a throne, here on Tanith. On Gram I want nothing. I'm sorry for the way Angus turned out, I thought he'd make a good King. But since he's made an intolerable King, the lords and people of Gram will have to get rid of him for themselves. I have my own tasks, here."

  Rathmore shrugged. "I was afraid that would be it," he said. "Well, I offered my sword; I won't take it back. I can help you in what you're doing on Tanith."

  * * * * *

  The captain of the free Space Viking Damnthing was named Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan, which meant that he was some Sword-Worlder's acknowledged bastard by a woman of one of the Old Federation planets. His mother's people could have been Nergalers; he had coarse black hair, a mahogany-brown skin, and red-brown, almost maroon, eyes. He tasted the wine the robot poured for him and expressed appreciation, then began unwrapping the parcel he had brought in.