Agent of the Terran Empire df-5

by Poul Anderson

  “Then the Scothanians have been holding the equivalent of a whole army, and didn’t know it!”

  “That’s right,” nodded Walton. “The biggest mistake they ever made was to kidnap Captain Flandry. They should have played safe and kept some nice harmless cobras for pets!”

  Iuthagaar was burning. Mobs rioted in the streets and howled with fear and rage and the madness of catastrophe.

  The remnants of Penda’s army had abandoned the town and were fleeing northward before the advancing southern rebels. They would be harried by Torric’s guerrillas, who in turn were the fragments of a force smashed by Earl Morgaar after Penda was slain by Kortan’s assassins. Morgaar himself was dead and his rebels broken by Nartheof. The earl’s own band had been riddled by corruption and greed and had fallen apart before the royalists’ counterblow.

  But Nartheof was dead too, at the hands of Nornagast’s vengeful relatives. His own seizure of supreme power and attempt at reorganization had created little but confusion, which grew worse when he was gone. Now the royalists were a beaten force somewhere out in space, savagely attacked by their erstwhile allies, driven off the revolting conquered planets, and swept away before the remorselessly advancing Terrestrial fleet.

  The Scothanian empire had fallen into a hundred shards, snapping at each other and trying desperately to retrieve their own with no thought for the whole. Lost in an incomprehensibly complex network of intrigue and betrayal, the great leaders fell, or pulled out of the mess and made hasty peace with Terra. War and anarchy flamed between the stars — but limited war, a petty struggle really. The resources and organization for real war and its attendant destruction just weren’t there any more.

  A few guards still held the almost deserted palace, waiting for the Terrestrials to come and end the strife. There was nothing they could do but wait.

  Captain Flandry stood at a window and looked over the city. He felt no great elation. Nor was he safe yet. Cerdic was loose somewhere on the planet, and Cerdic had undoubtedly guessed who was responsible.

  Gunli came to the human. She was very pale. She hadn’t expected Penda’s death and it had hurt her. But there was nothing to do now but go through with the business.

  “Who would have thought it?” she whispered. “Who would have dreamed we would ever come to this? That mighty Scotha would lie at the conqueror’s feet?”

  “I would,” said Flandry tonelessly. “Such jerry-built empires as yours never last. Barbarians just don’t have the talent and the knowledge to run them. Being only out for plunder, they don’t really build.

  “Of course, Scotha was especially susceptible to this kind of sabotage. Your much-vaunted honesty was your own undoing. By carefully avoiding any hint of dishonorable actions, you became completely ignorant of the techniques and the preventive measures. Your honor was never more than a latent ability for dishonor. All I had to do, essentially, was to point out to your key men the rewards of betrayal. If they’d been really honest, I’d have died at the first suggestion. Instead, they grabbed at the chance. So it was easy to set them against each other until no one knew whom he could trust.” He smiled humorlessly. “Not many Scothani objected to bribery or murder or treachery when it was shown to be to their advantage. I assure you, most Terrestrials would have thought further, been able to see beyond their own noses and realized the ultimate disaster it would bring.”

  “Still — honor is honor, and I have lost mine and so have all my people.” Gunli looked at him with a strange light in her eyes. “Dominic, disgrace can only be wiped out in blood.”

  He felt a sudden tightening of his nerves and muscles, an awareness of something deadly rising before him. “What do you mean?”

  She had lifted the blaster from his holster and skipped out of reach before he could move. “No — stay there!” Her voice was shrill. “Dominic, you are a cunning man. But are you a brave one?”

  He stood still before the menace of the weapon. “I think—” He groped for words. No, she wasn’t crazy. But she wasn’t really human, and she had the barbarian’s fanatical code in her as well. Easy, easy, or death would spit at him. “I think I took a few chances, Gunli.”

  “Aye. But you never fought. You haven’t stood up man to man and battled as a warrior should.” Pain racked her thin lovely face. She was breathing hard now. “It’s for you as well as him, Dominic. He has to have his chance to avenge his father — himself — fallen Scotha — and you have to have a chance too. If you can win, then you are the stronger and have the right.”

  Might makes right. It was, after all, the one unbreakable law of Scotha. The old trial by combat, here on a foreign planet many light-years from green Terra—

  Cerdic came in. He had a sword in either hand, and there was a savage glee in his bloodshot eyes.

  “I let him in, Dominic,” said Gunli. She was crying now. “I had to. Penda was my lord — but kill him, kill him!”

  With a convulsive movement, she threw the blaster out of the window. Cerdic gave her an inquiring look. Her voice was almost inaudible: “I might not be able to stand it. I might shoot you, Cerdic.”

  “Thanks!” He ripped the word out, savagely. “I’ll deal with you later, traitress. Meanwhile—” A terrible laughter bubbled in his throat — “I’ll carve your — friend — into many small pieces. Because who, among the so-civilized Terrestrials, can handle a sword?”

  Gunli seemed to collapse. “O gods, O almighty gods — I didn’t think of that—”

  Suddenly she flung herself on Cerdic, tooth and nail and horns, snatching at his dagger. “Get him, Dominic!” she screamed. “Get him!”

  The prince swept one brawny arm out. There was a dull smack and Gunli fell heavily to the floor.

  “Now,” grinned Cerdic, “choose your weapon!”

  Flandry came forward and took one of the slender broadswords. Oddly, he was thinking mostly about the queen, huddled there on the floor. Poor kid, poor kid, she’d been under a greater strain than flesh and nerves were meant to bear. But give her a chance and she’d be all right.

  Cerdic’s eyes were almost dreamy now. He smiled as he crossed blades. “This will make up for a lot,” he said. “Before you die, Terrestrial, you will no longer be a man—”

  Steel rang in the great hall. Flandry parried the murderous slash and raked the prince’s cheek. Cerdic roared and plunged, his blade weaving a net of death before him. Flandry skipped back, sword ringing on sword, shoulders to the wall.

  They stood for an instant, straining blade against blade, sweat rivering off them, and bit by bit the Scothan’s greater strength bent Flandry’s arm aside. Suddenly the Terrestrial let go, striking out almost in the same moment, and the prince’s steel hissed by his face.

  He ran back and Cerdic rushed him again. The Scothan was wide open for the simplest stop thrust, but Flandry didn’t want to kill him. They closed once more, blades clashing, and the human waited for his chance.

  It came, an awkward move, and then one supremely skillful twist. Cerdic’s sword went spinning out of his hand and across the room and the prince stood disarmed with Flandry’s point at his throat.

  For a moment he gaped in utter stupefaction. Flandry laughed harshly and said: “My dear friend, you forget that deliberate archaism is one characteristic of a decadent society. There’s hardly a noble in the Empire who hasn’t studied scientific fencing.”

  Defeat was heavy in the prince’s defiant voice: “Kill me, then. Be done with it.”

  “There’s been too much killing, and you can be too useful.” Flandry threw his own weapon aside and cocked his fists. “But there’s one thing I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time.”

  Despite the Scothan’s powerful but clumsy defense, Flandry proceeded to beat the living hell out of him.

  “We’ve saved Scotha, all Scotha,” said Flandry. “Think, girl. What would have happened if you’d gone on into the Empire? Even if you’d won — and that was always doubtful, for Terra is mightier than you thought — you’
d only have fallen into civil war. You just didn’t have the capacity to run an empire — as witness the fact that your own allies and conquests turned on you the first chance they got. You’d have fought each other over the spoils, greater powers would have moved in, Scotha would have been ripe for sacking. Eventually you’d have gone down into Galactic oblivion. The present conflict was really quite small; it took far fewer lives than even a successful invasion of the Empire would have done. And now Terra will bring the peace you longed for, Gunli.”

  “Aye,” she whispered. “We deserve to be conquered.”

  “But you aren’t,” he said. “The southerners hold Scotha now, and Terra will recognize them as the legal government — with you the queen, Gunli. You’ll be another vassal state of the Empire, yes, but with all your freedoms except the liberty to rob and kill other races. And trade with the rest of the Empire will bring you a greater and more enduring prosperity than war ever would.

  “I suppose that the Empire is decadent. But there’s no reason why it can’t some day have a renaissance. When the vigorous new peoples such as yours are guided by the ancient wisdom of Terra, the Galaxy may see its greatest glory.”

  She smiled at him. It was still a wan smile, but something of her old spirit was returning to her. “I don’t think the Empire is so far gone, Dominic,” she said. “Not when it has men like you.” She took his hands. “And what will you be doing now?”

  He met her eyes, and there was a sudden loneliness within him. She was very beautiful.

  But it could never work out. Best to leave now, before a bright memory grew tarnished with the day-to-day clashing of personalities utterly foreign to each other. She would forget him in time, find someone else, and he — well — “I have my work,” he said.

  They looked up to the bright sky. Far above them, the first of the descending Imperial ships glittered in the sunlight like a falling star.

  The Warriors from Nowhere

  “Crime,” said Captain Dominic Flandry of the Terran Empire’s Naval Intelligence Corps, “is entirely a matter of degree. If you shoot your neighbor in order to steal his property, you are a murderer and a thief, and will be psychorevised and enslaved. If, however, you gather a band of lusty fellows, knock off a couple of million people, and take their planet, you are a great conqueror, a world hero, and your name goes down in the history books. Sooner or later, this inconsistency seeps into the national consciousness and causes a desire for universal peace. That is known as decadence, especially among historical philosophers who never had to do any of the actual fighting. The Empire is currently in the early stages of decadence, which is the most agreeable time to inhabit: peace and pleasure, and the society not yet rotted so far that chaos sets in. One might say the Empire is a banana just starting to show brown spots.”

  He was not jailed for his remarks because he made them in private, sitting on the balcony of his lodge on Varrak’s southern continent and enjoying his usual noontime breakfast. His flamboyantly pajamaed legs were cocked up on the rail. Sighting over his coffee cup and between his feet, he saw the mountainside drop steeply down to a green sun-flooded wilderness. The light played over a lean, straight-boned face and a long hard body which made him look anything but a petty noble of a sated imperium. But his business — maintaining the status quo of a realm threatened by internal decay and outside aggression — was a strenuous one.

  His current mistress, Ella, offered him a cigarette and he inhaled it into lighting. She was a stunning blonde whom he had bought a few weeks previously in the planet’s one city, Fort Lone . He gathered that she was of the old pioneer stock, semiaristocrats who had fallen on evil times and been sold for debt. With such people he sympathized, but there was nothing he could do about the system; and she could have worse owners than himself.

  He took another sip of coffee, wiped his mustache, and drew a breath to resume his musings. An apologetic cough brought his head around, and he saw his valet, the only other being in the lodge. This was a slim humanoid from Shalmu, with a hairless green skin, prehensile tail, and impeccable manners. Flandry had christened him Chives and taught him several things which made him valuable in more matters than laying out a dress suit. “Pardon me, sir, Admiral Fenross is calling from the city.”

  Flandry cursed and got up. “Fenross! What’s he doing on this planet? Tell him to — no, never mind, it’s anatomically impossible.” He sauntered into the study, frowning. There was no love lost between him and his superior, but Fenross wouldn’t call a man on furlough unless it was urgent.

  The screen held a gaunt, sharp, red-haired face which dripped sweat past dark-shadowed eyes. “There you are! Put in your scrambler, combination 770.” When Flandry had adjusted the dials, the admiral said harshly: “Furlough canceled. Get busy at once.” With a sudden break in his voice: “Though God knows what you can do. But it means all our heads.”

  Flandry sucked in his cheeks with a long drag of smoke. “What is it — sir?”

  “The sack of Fort Lone was more than a raid—”

  “What sack?”

  “You don’t KNOW?”

  “Haven’t tuned the telescreen for a week, sir. I wanted to rest.”

  Fenross snarled something and said thickly, “Well, then, a barbarian horde streaked in yesterday, shot up all the defense posts, landed, and in three hours had put the place to the torch and looted all the available wealth. Also took about a thousand citizens, mostly women. They made a clean getaway before the nearest naval base was even alerted. No telling where they came from or where they went.”

  Flandry cursed again, vividly. He knew the situation. The Taurian sector of the Empire was meant as a buffer; beyond it lay the wild stars, an unexplored jungle swarming with barbarian hordes who had gotten spaceships and atomic blasters too soon and used them only to plunder. There was always war on these marches, raids and punitive expeditions. But still — an attack on Varrak! He found it hard to believe.

  “That’s not our department, sir, unless we’re wanted to track down just who did it,” he ventured. “The Navy does the fighting, I’m told. So why pick on me?”

  “You and every other man in the sector. Listen, Flandry, the barbarians have made away with her Highness, the Lady Megan of Luna, princess of the blood and the Emperor’s favorite granddaughter!”

  “Hmmm — so.” Not a muscle stirred in Flandry’s countenance, but he felt his belly grow tense and cold. “I … see. What clues have you got?”

  “Not many. One officer did manage to hide in the ruins and take a solidographic film — just a few minutes’ worth. It may give us a lead; perhaps the xenological division can identify the raiders from it. But still—” Fenross paused, it obviously hurt him to say so, but he got it out: “We need you.”

  “I should say you do, dear chief.” Modesty was not a failing of Flandry’s. “All right, I’ll flit directly over. Cheers.” He cut the circuit and went back onto the balcony. Chives was clearing away the breakfast dishes and Ella sat smoking. “So long, children. I’m on my way.”

  The girl watched him with eyes like blued silver. “What is it, Nick?” she asked quietly.

  Flandry’s mouth twisted. “I’m not sure yet, but I think I’ve just been condemned to death.”

  It was like a scene from hell.

  Against a tumbled, blazing background of ruin, the barbarians were raging in an armored swarm: huge burly men in helmet and cuirass, some carrying archaic swords. The picture was focused on a dais where a dozen young women were huddled, stripped alike of clothing and hope, the wildness of terror fading before despair. Some of them were being carried off toward a disc-shaped spaceship, others were still in the middle of the horde. They were being sold. Great gems, silver and gold, the loot of the city, were being tossed at the gnomish unhuman figure which squatted on the dais and handed down each purchase to a grinning conqueror.

  The film ended. Flandry looked past the shattered walls of the building where he sat, to the smoking desolation which had bee
n Fort Lone . Imperial marines were on guard, a relief station had been set up, a heavy battlewagon hung in the sky — all of which was too late to do much good.

  “Well,” snapped Fenross, “what d’you make of it?”

  Flandry turned the enlarger knob, until one of the solid-seeming images stood gigantic before him. “Definitely human,” he said. “Except for that dwarf creature, I’d say they were all of Terrestrial race.”

  “Of course! I know that much, you idiot. They must be from some early colony out here which got lost and reverted to barbarism. There have been such cases before. But which one? Is it even on record?”

  “The spaceship is an odd design. I think there are some beings in the Merseian hegemony who still build that type, but it’s not what I would expect barbarians imitating our boats to have.”

  Fenross gulped and his knuckles whitened on the table edge. “If the Merseians are behind this—”

  Flandry gestured at the dwarf. “Tall, dark, and handsome there may offer a clue to their origin. I don’t know. I’ll have to consult the files. But I must say this raid has a strange pattern. Varrak is light-years inside the border. There are plenty of tempting spots closer than this to the Wilderness. Then, the raiders knew exactly where to shoot and bomb to knock out all the defenses. And, of course, they got the princess. Looks very much as if they had inside help, doesn’t it?”

  “I thought of that too. Every survivor of the garrison is being hypnoprobed, but so far none of them have known anything.”

  “I doubt that any will. Our enemy is too smooth an operator to leave such clues. If he had collaborators in the fort, they left with the raiders and we’ll list them as ‘missing, presumed disintegated in action.’ But what’s the story on her Highness?”

  Fenross groaned. “She was taking a tour of the outer marches. Those meatheads back on Terra should have known better than that! Or maybe the Imperial whim overruled them. The Lady Megan has the Emperor around her little finger. Anyhow, she went incognito, with a secret-service detachment to guard her, of course. But the raiders just smashed down the walls of the place where she was staying, shot all her guards, and made off with her and her servants.”