Warlords Of Gaikon rb-18

by Джеффри Лорд

  So no one bothered Blade when he went out after dark to sit under a tree and consider what he should do. He had expected to find his decision brutally hard to make. But that was not what happened.

  None of the uroi were going to try to escape. That was obvious. They had done everything they had been living for when Lord Geron's head fell to the floor of his burning house. If they had then joined their ten comrades who were now ashes in the ruins of that house, it would have made no difference to them. Men who felt their lives were over would not disobey an order of their emperor. They had refused to strike at the Hongshu when they had the best of reasons for doing so. They would not defy the emperor when they had no reason except saving their own skins. None of them would. Not even Yezjaro, the cheerful, pleasure-loving young instructor, would try to gain the many years of life he should have ahead of him by defying the emperor.

  So if he fled Blade knew he would flee alone.

  He probably wouldn't have much trouble getting away from the emperor's precinct and surviving in the woods until he was called back to home dimension. He saw no signs that the uroi were being particularly well guarded. If he picked up his weapons now and strode away into the darkness, it would be easy to leave certain death behind him.

  But he would also be leaving behind him eighteen doomed men, who had accepted their doom. Eighteen men who had fought as his comrades in a deadly battle to do their duty, who had in the end accepted him and honored him as first among them. They would call him a coward. If he lived, he would have to live with the knowledge that they had died thinking this of him.

  And what would his flight do to the example the uroi wanted to set? The high prince's words had been clear. The servants had made it even clearer. The twenty-nine uroi would go into the legends of Gaikon as men who had stood faithful to their lord to death.

  But what would happen to the legend if one of them fled at the last minute? Particularly if the one who fled was the one who had made their swift vengeance possible? Would the flight of that one man diminish what the other twenty-eight had done? Blade knew the codes and standards of Gaikon too well to doubt it. The tale would be flawed and the memory of those who had been his comrades diminished.

  Perhaps it was a silly notion. In fact he was quite sure it was looked at soberly. But nonetheless he did not want to take anything away from the legend that the twenty-nine uroi had begun. If that meant accepting Gaikon's standards and the death they would bring-well, so be it.

  And there was more. The present emperor might be too weak to inspire people to resist the Hongshu. But the high prince was a warrior, and if he lived to mount his father's throne Gaikon would have an emperor who might want to rule as well as reign.

  If that happened, the Hongshu would have a mighty rival. Those who hated the Hongshu would have a rallying point. And the legend of the twenty-nine uroi would be part of that rallying. To weaken the legend might be to reduce the chances of bringing to an end the Hongshu's tyranny. Blade had risked his life in a dozen strange worlds to help their people in one way or another. What was different about accepting an honorable death here in Gaikon, if it would help strike at the Hongshu?

  Nothing.

  With that settled in his own mind, Blade found it easy to return to the barracks and go peacefully to sleep.

  Lord Tsekuin had knelt to die on white sand. The uroi who had avenged him knelt to die on green grass, beyond the forest to the west of the emperor's precinct. But like their lord, each knelt on a small square of black silk. Each wore white, with a red sash. Blade had shoved under his sash the pouch with the diamond, and had put Lady Musura's short sword on the ground in front of him. That would be his death-weapon. It was a last honor that he could do her.

  In the center of the circle stood a tall pole. From its top Lord Tsekuin's banner floated out on the evening breeze. A banner proscribed and banned by the Hongshu-but not by the emperor. Or rather, not by the high prince. It was no secret that he had watched the setting up of the pole, and then raised Lord Tsekuin's banner with his own hands.

  No, the high prince was being open about what he thought of the Hongshu and the Hongshu's ways of ruling. Was he perhaps trying to spark rebellion even now? Blade couldn't help wondering. But it was idle wondering. Whatever the high prince might be planning didn't make much difference to him. In barely ten minutes he would be either dead or back in home dimension. More likely dead.

  The moment of death for the nineteen uroi was fixed for sunset exactly. Blade looked toward the west, where a swollen orange ball seemed to hang in a luminous sky just above spiky black tree-tops. Less than ten minutes-quite a bit less, he suspected. A few minutes more or less didn't matter, in any case. They would make no difference in the astronomical odds against his living to return to home dimension.

  Blade had often wondered what would pass through his mind in the last minutes before his death. But now he realized that all his previous imaginings had been meaningless. He was not going to die in the heat of furious action, brought down by great odds or bad luck. Nor was he going to die in bed of old age or illness. In his profession the second had never been very likely. But he had always accepted that as the only other prospect.

  He had never imagined that he would be as he was now, sitting and calmly waiting for the signal to die by his own hand.

  Calmly? Yes, calmly. He had accepted that there was no alternative that would permit him to live comfortably with himself-or avoid doing harm here in Gaikon. With this acceptance had come a calmness that seemed likely to last until he had no more need for any emotion of any sort.

  The sun sank down. Blade felt sweat trickling down the back of his neck. The breeze seemed to be dying away. He could no longer feel it on his skin, and the tops of the trees were no longer bending toward him. They stood motionless against the sunset sky, with the great wavering ball of the sun sinking down toward them-and touching them.

  A trumpet sounded from far away over the trees, from the palace itself. The boom of several massive gongs being slowly beaten followed. Yezjaro raised his head, and his dark eyes stared into Blade's. Blade stared back, and met Doifuzan's stare as well. One hand moved to open his tunic, while the other picked up the short sword lying on the grass in front of him.

  All around the circle, the others did the same.

  Blade unsheathed the short sword and held it out in front of him, its point toward his abdomen.

  Again, eighteen uroi did the same.

  Then, just before Blade could tense his muscles to drive the sword in, pain flared-suddenly, savagely-in his head. Sweat sprang out on his face and hands, and he had to clamp his mouth shut hard to keep from gasping out loud. He did not want to make any sound that would give his comrades the impression that he was losing his nerve.

  But hope was also flaring in him, even more intense than the pain. The computer was calling him, calling him back to home dimension. He was going to make it home! And without dishonor or disgrace. If he simply vanished…

  Then the pain faded, and so did the hope. Blade realized that he might make it home. But he also might still die here in Gaikon. He could not delay his blow much longer. If he did, he would do much of the damage he had feared, whether he died in the end or not.

  No, it was time to do what had to be done. With a convulsive snap of his wrist, he drove the short sword in.

  It struck so hard that the shock kept him from feeling any pain for a moment. Then as the pain struck, before he could start drawing the sword across, his head seemed to explode. His hand dropped away from the sword hilt because he had lost the strength to hold on. Hope rose in him again. With it rose the fear that the soldier standing behind him with a sword might swing prematurely.

  It would be a bloody odd situation if he returned to home dimension in two pieces, or as a headless corpse!

  The twilight seemed to turn to a shimmering green. Blade looked down, saw the sword in his hand flickering and glowing with raw red and golden hues. Across the circle he saw Yezjaro
, bending over as he drew the sword across his stomach. But the instructor's eyes were fixed on Blade, and his face showed more surprise than pain.

  A swish, and Blade saw a sword whistling past. He realized that the soldier behind must have swung to behead him. But he was no longer a solid object to those in Gaikon-or their weapons. Soon they would be gone, and he would be home.

  The greenness was darkening now. Pain roared again in Blade's head, and he found it hard to keep his eyes open. But Yezjaro was still looking at him, and at last the instructor smiled. In a voice distorted by pain and Blade's fading hearing, he shouted:

  «Go in honor, Blade. Go, for Kunkoi has called you first before us all, that you may speak for us.»

  Then the instructor started to crumple forward. He could no longer keep agony from twisting his face. The sword of the soldier standing behind him flashed high, then swept down.

  The flash of that sword was the last thing Blade saw in Gaikon. The green faded into a blackness and Blade sank down into that blackness, losing awareness of his pain, his body, everything.

  Chapter 22

  «-glad I didn't betray the people in Gaikon. But I must say I'm glad to be back, though. Very damned glad.»

  Richard Blade's voice faded away into silence. Lord Leighton reached over and shut off the tape recorder. The click of the switch seemed to J to echo through the little room like a gunshot. He leaned back in the leather armchair, frowned, and took a firm grip on his whiskey and soda.

  «Well, J,» said Lord Leighton into the silence. «What do you make of that?»

  «What precisely do you mean?» asked J. He used his best upper-Establishment senior civil servant's voice to conceal his own private doubts and uncertainties.

  «Isn't it obvious? It seems to me that Richard was completely-sucked into-the patterns of thought in Gaikon. He was about to commit hara-kiri when we brought him back, damn it!»

  «Seppuku,» said J, absently.

  «Eh?»

  «Seppuku is the more formal name for Japanese style ritual suicide. Hara-kiri is a rather vulgar colloquial term. It roughly translates as 'belly slitting.'»

  «I see,» said Lord Leighton. But it was obvious that his mind was not on the correct terminology for what Blade had so so nearly done. After a moment's silence he continued.

  «J, you've known Richard a good deal longer than anybody else with the project.»

  «I have.»

  «Speaking frankly-should we call in the psychiatrists on this one? Does what Richard did indicate that his mind's started to go?»

  There it was, out in the open. The painful but unavoidable question that J had been asking himself ever since he heard what had happened to Blade in Gaikon. Fortunately, he had been considering it long enough so that he had come up with some sort of an answer. It didn't entirely satisfy him, but he was damned if he could think of a better one. If Lord Leighton could, more power to him-as long as it didn't involve throwing Richard to the headshrinkers!

  «Remember the first trips to Dimension X?» J began. «Richard very nearly forgot that he had a home dimension existence while he was in Dimension X. He was disoriented for some time after coming back. He got over that, however, and he certainly shows no signs of it this time. Does he?»

  «No. He seems perfectly normal except for-«

  «That may not be a sign of abnormality. In fact, I'm fairly sure it isn't.»

  «So?» said Lord Leighton, testily. He did not like being disagreed with or interrupted. J was one of the few people from whom he would tolerate either.

  «So consider what an enormous capacity for loyalty Richard has. Loyalty to England, first of all. That's what kept him going for all these trips-that and his love of adventure. For England he'll risk his life again and again and face the prospect of eventually losing it.»

  «Yes. But risking his life is one thing. Deliberately sitting down to kill himself seems to me to be another matter entirely. It argues something odd going on in his mind.»

  «Not necessarily. I think it's that same capacity for loyalty, showing itself in a new way. He's always been willing to do something to help the people of the dimension where he goes. Most of the time he's succeeded. It was the same thing this time. He realized he couldn't avoid doing damage in Gaikon-specifically, damage to the uroi who had fought beside him-unless he did what their standards of duty called for him to do.»

  «Um,» said Leighton, meditatively. He seemed, if not convinced, at least not openly skeptical. «But why should Richard accept their standards?»

  «The people in Gaikon lived by them, and couldn't imagine any others. Richard knew that he couldn't expect them to change, so he decided to accept what they were asking him to do. He's always been very good at understanding what other people want and need. I doubt if he'd have survived as a secret agent as long as he did without that gift. I'm damned sure he couldn't have survived in Dimension X without it.»

  Lord Leighton nodded, and his face showed understanding for the first time. «In other words, Richard Blade is a magnificently adaptable man. We sent him to Gaikon-and he adapted.»

  J laughed. «You've got it in a nutshell.»

  Leighton sighed. «Very well. I suppose we can dispense with throwing Richard to the psychiatrists over this. But I devoutly hope he doesn't have to adapt to this sort of thing very often.»

  «I couldn't agree with you more,» said J.

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