The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  Hap laughed. He looked at the general, and his mirth vanished. “You wouldn’t dare! I am the Supreme Elder of the Church of God!”

  “Yes. And you are also under arrest for treason, and for conspiracy to commit treason.” Millian said it curtly, with dignity. “Crimes punishable by death.”

  Stanson went white. He looked at the hard faces of General Jameson and Admiral Davies. “No. I was saved for a purpose. God could have taken me. I was protected for a reason. It is the will of God that He rule through me! He saved me!”

  “ ‘Saved’ is a very strong word,” Millian responded, his thin form standing tall, his shoulders square and erect. “But I do not doubt that your life was preserved for a reason, and I do not doubt that this is it. If you had died in the wilderness, the world might never have known the depth of the evil in your heart.”

  “The world? Evil in my…but surely you can’t plan to make any of this public? Surely we are men of standing here, who will work this out among ourselves. The dignity of the Church, after all, demands decorum.”

  “It is the nature of evil to hide its own deeds,” Millian offered. “Yes, this will be made public. Your deeds, and the note you penned to prove them, will be made very public.”

  Stanson put his hand to his heart, then grasped the inverted chalice that hung there. “God will smite you for this!”

  “Take him away, son,” Millian ordered.

  Chunk paused. He did not want to be smitten.

  “I’ll walk with you,” Jameson told him. “If God wants to strike someone, He’ll strike me.”

  The churchman was helped to his feet, and a servant brought the cane he had used to enter the room. Stave held him steadily, gently, as he hobbled painfully away, putting almost no pressure on his torn right leg. He spoke all the while. “I’m the Supreme Elder of the Church of Nearing Vast,” he muttered, wincing. “I lead every flock in this kingdom. Every one of them. They will hear my voice. This is not over. I’m the High Holy Reverend Father, appointed by God. Fools, that’s what you all are. Fools and puppets. This is sacrilege. We are now a nation that persecutes the Church. This government is persecuting the Church of God, and God will judge it! You wait…”

  Eventually, his mumbled rant could no longer be heard, as the dragoon and the general led him out, flanking him. The remaining men turned to face their hostess.

  Panna clasped her hands together. “I apologize, gentlemen. I hope you don’t think ill of my hospitality.”

  “Not at all,” they agreed.

  “It was my fault entirely,” Ward offered. But the three remained standing with their queen.

  Panna looked down at the table and was shocked to find the cloth once again white and clean, the candles lit, the centerpiece in place. She had not seen a thing that the servants had done. And now, plates were appearing in front of her guests, hot slices of bread on them, a hunk of creamy butter melting in the center of each piece.

  “Is anyone still hungry?” she asked.

  “I’m famished,” Ward answered.

  “Utterly,” agreed General Millian.

  “Let’s eat,” Dog added.

  A storm was coming. The Achawuk watched him now, more closely than ever. The clouds on the horizon were promising rain, but the clouds within the “rek-tahk-ent,” the One Who Comes Before, were promising far worse.

  Dayton Throme sat up, wiping the soft earth from his hands, then from his forehead. He looked down the hill, saw the people gathered around, looking at him. Talking quietly. They watched him as though he were a living barometer of doom. Zhintah-Hoak had said it. He was growing restless. The words had surprised him, but now he knew they were true. He was spending more time praying, more time walking the villages, less time sleeping. Memories were coming back to him, vivid memories of home, of the sea, of his Nessa, of Packer.

  But how could those things have anything to do with the tannan-thoh-ah, the Mastery? That was about the end of the world, when the flow of nature would embrace all, and overwhelm all, and change all, and man would no longer strive with man, nor with animals. The literal translation, he had eventually realized, was not really about mastery, not like the Vast think of it. Not domination. It was more “mastery with knowing,” or “master-knowing.” As though each would know the other’s secrets. And then there was this saying, that man would become, somehow, in some way no one could quite explain to him, “the glory of the beast.” It was some sort of reversal of fortune, Dayton believed. Somehow men would serve the animals. It only seemed right, Dayton thought, after men had dominated animals, killed them, served them in dishes on colored tablecloths.

  But the tannan-thoh-ah, if it was anything like a Firefish feeding, would not be pleasant. Dayton had watched their battles from the shore. They brought him to every Firefish feeding, hoping, he knew, that the next one might be the great one. Why people such as these would hope for the end of the world, he couldn’t figure. Greedy and lustful and lying people loved their lives and would do anything to save their own hides. Yet these people, with all their noble traits, looked only for the end of it all.

  “You know,” Moore Davies said, almost dreamily, watching the smoke from his cigar rise to the ceiling. “The Marchessa is actually the most experienced Firefish-hunting ship on the seas.”

  Glances were exchanged, and a few throats cleared. The queen’s guests had all retired to the parlor off the dining room, a place not unlike Mather’s private sitting room, with a huge fireplace, polished floors, and comfortable stuffed chairs and sofas.

  “Excepting the Trophy Chase, of course,” Panna said, stating aloud what everyone else was thinking.

  Davies raised an eyebrow. “Including the Trophy Chase, Your Highness.”

  Now he had everyone’s attention. “The Chase is the finest and fastest ship ever built, I grant you that. And she was built to chase the beasts. She was our flagship, our standard-bearer. Yes, she had a couple of longboats and a few lures, and yes, she has maintained the spotlight for all her exploits. But it’s the Marchessa that’s carried most of the huntsmen, mostly all of the lures. The Marchessa has bagged scores of the beasts, scores more than the great Trophy Chase. And she was captained not by the infamous Scat Wilkins or the rightly glorified John Hand, but by your humble servant.”

  “But my dear Admiral,” General Millian said, the light of a new respect in his eyes, “that would seem to make you the world’s preeminent expert on the hunting of Firefish.”

  “Yes, well,” he blushed, “perhaps.”

  “So how is it that you avoided sailing with the rest of the leaders of our fledgling industry to the land of Drammun?” asked General Jameson.

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t on the Hezzan’s list. And I wasn’t about to volunteer.”

  It was a light moment, but it sealed the decision. Hap Stanson was right about one thing. Nearing Vast had a distinct advantage over the Kingdom of Drammun in one regard, and one regard only: the hunting and killing of Firefish. Those captains who had drilled under John Hand for only a day or two in the art of war had been preparing for almost a year to hunt the beasts, and to hunt them in their feeding waters. This was the purpose of the Fleet, why Scat Wilkins had bought the ships, how he had outfitted them. Those captains who could not follow military orders would certainly make their own decisions under duress. Or at least, most of them. And seamen who were untrained in handling live ammunition were fully trained in lighting the fuses of Firefish lures. The same sailors who could not aim a cannon knew how to man a longboat. And the captains and crew who had fared so poorly in the sailing of warships to war were ready and willing to prove their mettle in the sailing of hunting vessels in pursuit of Firefish.

  It was not necessary that domination of the world be the goal. Self-protection would do. So it was now clear

  The Fleet would sail to the Achawuk territory.

  CHAPTER 15

  Snakes

  “Go find and secure the King of the Vast,” Huk Tuth ordered Vasla Vor. They st
ood inside the palace doors now, underground at the eastern entrance, where servants and supplies came and went. Their carriage clattered away toward the livery stables. “I will deal with the Quarto.”

  The General Commander of the Hezzan Guard hesitated. “You are Worthy, my lord. However, I am sworn to take orders only from the Hezzan.”

  Tuth stared at him. Then he reached up and put a knobbly left hand on Vor’s shoulder. “I know you to be a loyal soldier. You have served your Hezzan and your nation well. But you have been deceived. A wife has no right to her husband’s throne. The Quarto has no right to choose a Hezzan.” Vor was unseeing as his mind whirred with the all the logic that put her in power, the arguments she made, the Ixthano she claimed, the dominion the Quarto had granted. Suddenly they all seemed hollow. Now Huk Tuth stepped closer. “You have done your duty as you saw it. No one will hold that against you. But I command the Glorious Military. And the rule of Talon is over. She cannot stand against my troops. Nor can you. For the sake of Drammun, go secure the King of the Vast. Keep him far from her.”

  Vor’s chest expanded, then he let out a solemn breath. “I will do so. And thank you for your commitment to Drammun.”

  Tuth nodded, then turned and walked away, silently sheathing his knife.

  Kron saw it. He hesitated, considering escape. Then he followed after. “With all due respect, Supreme Commander, you cannot simply walk in and defy the Quarto.” Kron hated the pleading tone in his own voice, but he seemed unable to control it. “They have power, more power than you know. The Zealots, Your Worthiness! Many in your own military will follow them rather than you.”

  “Not if the Quarto are dead.” He kept walking.

  Kron shook his head, feeling desperate. “Especially if they are dead! Don’t you see, destroying the Quarto will rend our nation in two! The Zealots will storm the palace.”

  “The Army will put an end to that.”

  “No, there is another way! I can introduce you, help you.” The words echoed until they were lost in the sound of the unrelenting footsteps of the supreme commander, now pounding up the granite stairs toward the Great Meeting Hall of the Hezzan. Sool Kron was amazed at how fast the gnarled old man could move. He needed time, and time was slipping away. “The Quarto put Talon in place, true,” Kron tried again, “but she is a stench in their nostrils, as much as she is in yours. Bloodshed can be avoided. They will welcome a claim to the throne from you. But it must be legitimate, and I can help you define such a claim. It’s what I did with Talon, that’s why they accepted her.”

  Huk Tuth shook his head, and kept climbing.

  Kron was climbing, losing his breath, feeling like he was sliding downward. The words flowed from him now, and for some reason he could not take his eyes from the knife on the supreme commander’s belt. “It’s politics, Commander Tuth. No more and no less. You are new to it, but I am not. It would be my honor, my deep honor to assist you. To serve you.” He stopped climbing. He sounded like a sycophant in his own ears. His chest heaved.

  Now Tuth slowed to a halt, then turned and stepped back down to face Kron. He looked at him eye to eye. “You have aligned yourself with both Talon and the Quarto.” He said it in a gruff rumble that struck fear into the wizened politician. The sound was like a lion’s growl. “And you have convinced them all you are loyal. But you tell me you do not honor the legitimacy of one, nor the beliefs of the other. Now you would have me believe that you would honor and serve me?”

  “I only did what needed to be done,” Kron said quickly. He put his hands out to his sides, vulnerable, pleading, trying to keep his knees from shaking. But his voice quavered uncontrollably. He could not catch his breath “Our nation was headed toward open rebellion…There were riots in our streets, right here outside the palace. And…the military…you were across an ocean. I kept the peace. I brokered a union. It has held until your return. There will be riots again, and worse, if the Quarto is…if you…don’t you see, I can help you!” He was pitiful, and he knew it.

  Huk Tuth’s eyes went cold and distant. The commander’s pallor, his scraggly white hair, he seemed more skull than skin. And then Kron saw a left hand come up, felt it hard and clawlike on the back of his neck, clamped there in a grip he thought might snap his head from his shoulders. He never saw the blade, but the image of the thing hung before his eyes, cold and jagged and gleaming as it plunged, ripping through robes, cracking into his chest, slicing between his ribs, and into his heart.

  Huk Tuth let the body slump down to the steps, and watched it roll limply, pathetically, down the stairs. “Politicians,” he said aloud. Blood covered his own right hand, but the splatter was invisible on his crimson uniform. He wiped the knife on his shirtsleeve, his hand on his hauberk. He looked up the stairs.

  Now, the Quarto.

  Talon stepped outside the door of the guest quarters. Immediately, the hair on the back of her neck stood up, and a chill shot through her. Vasla Vor approached. He stopped, thirty feet away. Talon could read the General Commander instantly. He was a boy caught stealing apples. But he was no boy, and these were not apples he had come to steal. “Guards, take our guests back into their quarters,” Talon ordered easily. Three went, while the original four, positioned there by Vor, hesitated. “All of you,” Talon said with a hiss, not taking her eyes from Vor.

  They obeyed.

  The General Commander of the Hezzan Guard did not move, but watched silently as his seven soldiers took the Vast King and the meager entourage back behind the door. He stepped closer as Talon turned and locked the door, sliding the big iron bolt in place with a precise click. She turned back toward him.

  When she did, he had his pistol aimed at her heart. “It’s over,” he said. “Supreme Commander Tuth is in charge now.”

  “You still want to follow her? Are you kiddin’?” Delaney asked. They had stepped far enough away from the Drammune Guard so as not to be overheard. “No, no, Packer. That was military brass, right there. Did you see his face? You hear her? They ain’t on the same side, Packer. And I’ll bet my rum rations for life he ain’t standin’ there no more when that door opens again. That’s Talon, in case you forgot.”

  “I know who she is,” Packer said. “But we came here, I was led here, to reach out to the Hezzan. And that’s her. And now she’s in trouble.”

  “She ain’t in trouble, she is trouble! She’s no more Hezzan than me,” the sailor insisted.

  Talon’s gaze was deadly calm. “And where is Supreme Commander Mux?”

  Vasla Vor cocked back the hammer of his pistol. “Abbaka Mux was killed in honorable combat.”

  She looked doubtful.

  “By a Vast dragoon,” he added. “So says Huk Tuth, and he is a Worthy man.”

  “Yes. Isn’t he though?” Talon wanted to ask how such a thing could have happened to a supreme commander. But she did not ask. It no longer mattered. She was undone by it. Mux was a Zealot and would never have stood against the Quarto, nor against her once he knew that the Quarto had approved her reign. The Quarto was the key to Mux, and Mux the key to the military. Now the death of one man on a far shore at the hands of a single Vast soldier had ended her reign.

  But it had not undone her power. This she firmly believed. So instead of asking questions, she informed Vasla Vor how the next few moments would unfold.

  “For your disloyalty, General Commander, I will send you to the Dead Lands. There you and the honorable Abbaka Mux may trade stories about your mutual bad luck.”

  He shook his head. “You are a Worthy woman, and a Worthy warrior. But you hold no weapon. It is not right for you to die this way.”

  “All you say is true. And I find it fitting, Vasla Vor, that you should die with the truth on your lips. You served my husband well, and me also for a time. I am sorry that you chose so poorly, here at the end.”

  He could see in her eyes that she had no fear of him, that she believed she could defeat him. And yet she stood fifteen feet away, unarmed. But that stare, that cold
calculation in her…was he missing something?

  Talon saw the shadow rise in his mind, the doubt she had carefully planted there. It was all she needed. The corner of her mouth went up. She moved her eyes to a door twenty feet behind him, and nodded, ever so slightly. Then she looked back at him with a look of victory.

  He knew as he turned away that he should not take his eyes from her. He knew her reputation as an assassin. But he could do nothing else. General Commander Vasla Vor, as Talon well knew, was a man far more accustomed to sending others to fight than he was to fighting himself. Feeling the essence of command in her, knowing she had the silent and deadly Nochtram Eyn at her disposal, all his senses told him that he was outnumbered, that a surprise attack awaited. Of course she would not leave herself so vulnerable. How could he have been so stupid? He looked away to assess the new threat.

  She was in motion the instant his eyes left her. He looked over his left shoulder, and she darted to his right, immediately out of his line of sight. Her hand went into her robes as she moved, and came out with a long knife. Vor dropped to his knees a fraction of a second later. Her blade had pierced his throat, its point entering the base of his brain, severing his spinal cord. And then it was out again, wiped clean and back in its sheath before his lifeless body fell backward onto the cold marble, pistol skittering harmlessly away, unfired.

  She stripped off her robe, revealing her black leathers underneath. She laid the robe on the floor, rolled the body onto it, and tucked the pistol into his belt. Then she dragged him to the doorway at which she had glanced, the entrance to another set of guest rooms. And she left what was once Vasla Vor, the dutiful General Commander of the Hezzan Guard, inside.

  The bolt slid, and the door opened. Talon entered. “We must go. There is danger about.”

  All three men were shocked to see her in her forester’s leathers, a long knife in a scabbard at her belt. Delaney stared holes into Packer.