Prince of Tanith, page 10
“But I remain a man,” Lucas countered.
Noam surveyed him carefully, as if he were being tested. “A man? If Your Highness insists. But my people, at least . . . well, there’s talk of a temple . . .”
“Great Ghu!” Lucas said, eyes wide. “You can’t be serious!” Alvyn Karffard, who had stopped by the bartending robot to get a refill, overheard and snickered.
“If it displeases my Prince,” Noam said, with a slight bow, “I shall put a stop to it. But my second wife, Lady Firita, she is passionate about it. She was . . . taken by one of Spasso’s men,” he said, his lip curling into a sneer. “And was forced to serve the demon himself. It is she who is supporting the idea. Vigorously.” He said it not like a powerful noble with a unruly subject, but like a husband who is wary of displeasing his wife.
Lucas could, unfortunately, relate to that. And he only had the one wife to contend with – he couldn’t fathom how Noam could manage three!
“I . . . I don’t want to cause . . . Oh, to Nifflheim with it! Let me think about it, okay?” he asked, desperately. “I’ll send word if I want it stopped.”
“As Your Highness wishes,” Noam said, bowing again, diplomatically. He thought he detected a trace of smirk on the neobarb’s lips.
Lucas slunk away after that revelation, even more impressed with the neobarbarian king than he had been. He was unsurprised when Alvyn Karffard grabbed him by the elbow soon afterwards – as usual, Alvyn had overheard the whole conversation.
“You should let him,” he counseled. “Build the temple, I mean.”
Lucas frowned. “I didn’t come to Tanith to set myself up as a god,” he reminded.
“I think the reasons you came to Tanith are moot, at this point,” the portly old Space Viking pointed out as he sloshed his drink around in his glass. “Regardless of what they were, here-and-now you are trying to establish a kingdom.”
“Princedom,” Trask corrected, although he knew as well as anyone that the distinction was academic at best. “We went with ‘Princely Realm of Tanith’ because it sounded classy, remember? And we didn’t want to overreach ourselves? Keep our options open? Besides, I thought we had already established it?”
“Oh, Your Highness jests,” Karffard said, grinning. “You’ve named it, filled a couple of crucial jobs, but even now what you have built won’t outlive you long. Yet. To make Tanith more than say Hoth, Xochitl or Nergal, those other Space Viking ports, you’re going to have to go far beyond where you are now, my boy. For instance, ensuring the loyalty of the people.”
“My people are loyal,” Lucas said, defensively.
“Some of your people are loyal,” Karffard said. “Fanatically so, even. I’ve flown with Harkaman for almost twenty years now, Lucas, and I’ve never seen him so personally devoted to any of his employers before. Parenthetically, have you noticed a change in him recently? A new spring in his step – I’m thinking a woman is involved.”
“Really? That is interesting!” Lucas said, suddenly interested. He knew his Admiral was far from celibate, but he’d never heard of any particular woman being associated with him – much less one that would inspire a spring in his step. He vowed to observe his chief military officer a little more closely.
“In any case, he, myself, the rest of the Council, a couple of score more, maybe, you can count on as personally loyal to a fault. And then everyone else is just enjoying the fruits of what you’ve wrought without needing to support you yet. If Tanith woke up tomorrow with you dead, say, and Spasso in power for some reason . . . well, not to sound hurtful, but most of your subjects wouldn’t be bothered.”
Lucas groaned. “I know, I know,” he said, tiredly. “But what does that have to do with some silly neobarb temple?”
“With men of educated character,” Karffard said, philosophically, “a prince can appeal to their ideals, and so earn their loyalty by his majestic example. But it’s a lot easier to just grow loyalty from the ground up. In some places, like Gonshu, the local kings insist that they are either of divine descent or are otherwise blessed by the gods, and so personal loyalty gets bound up with religious fervor. I’m not saying you have to claim descent from divinity—”
“Good – my late mother would never stand for it,” Lucas said, wryly.
“But I do think that there is a powerful political advantage in this kind of religious-style adoration. There is danger too – don’t misunderstand. But since a good third of our infantrymen now come from Tradetown and environs, establishing your . . . elevated status to those recruits from childhood is your best bet to ensure their lifelong loyalty.”
“I’ll consider it,” sighed Lucas. “It just seems so . . . unseemly!”
Karffard laughed at his monarch’s discomfort. “Perhaps. But I’d let it progress naturally. Even encourage it a little. Let them build it, attend the opening, make a speech. If I know old Noam, he’s probably planning it as a big tourist attraction.
“But you can’t afford to let Sword World prejudices keep you from maintaining the strength of the Realm. Not anymore. And the strength of the Realm isn’t exclusively in space ships and soldiers. As time goes by, Tanith is going to look a lot less like a Sword World colony. We’ve already got a flood of Mardukans, independent Space Vikings, and soldiers-of-fortune from around the galaxy, in addition to the natives. All of those are going to have to mix together if you want a real, viable civilization here, and not just a procurement scheme with nuclear weapons.”
Lucas thoughtfully agreed, then wandered off to find his wife.
By the time the moon was looming overhead, near to midnight of Tanith’s 24.7 Standard hour day, Lucas was already feeling the effects of both the fine liquor and the hundreds of conversations. Once he decided he was done for the evening, he collected Valerie and allowed Harkaman – as ostensible host – to walk him out to his aircar.
“A lovely event, Your Grace,” Valerie said smoothly as she double-kissed Otto Harkaman good-bye. She was not a small woman, but she still had to stand on her tip-toes to reach his cheek. Harkaman had taken to his wife almost as if she were his daughter, a fact that Lucas found a relief. Indeed, she bantered with the old ship’s captain like a sassy niece, something he’d not seen anyone else get away with.
“It was a decent party,” Otto agreed. “Although it’s not a real Space Viking party unless someone gets stabbed, shot, or beaten.”
“The night is still young,” Lucas pointed out with a chuckle as they mounted the stairs to the landing stage. “I’m sure something will turn—”
Just at that moment, he felt a whir through the air and heard the sound of something solid and metal bounce off the ferroconcrete of the landing stage and roll a little towards the aircar. Though he hadn’t been in combat in over a year, Lucas instantly recognized the thing as some sort of grenade – once you hear a sound like that in battle, you never forget it.
As horror and fear overtook him, he found himself grabbing Valerie and pulling her to the ground, covering her body with his. The blinding fear he’d felt the day that Elaine had been so brutally torn from him coming to his mind unbidden. He felt Otto pushing them both to the ground, his huge body covering them to shield them from the blast.
But before the expected report could come, another figure leapt across the landing stage and threw himself over the explosive, catching the brunt of the blast in his chest and protecting Lucas, his bride, and his Admiral from certain death. He felt the concussion blast even as it took his hearing away, and then the eerie silence was punctuated by the smell of cordite smoke and burning flesh.
There was activity and people yelling around him, but he couldn’t hear yet from the temporary deafness from the blast. He found himself shaking a wide-eyed Valerie and screaming to see if she was okay, getting a shaken nod for an answer. Soldiers surrounded them, their submachine guns pointed in every direction, and then Otto was pulling him to his feet.
It took a few moments to sort out exactly what had happened, but by the time the ringing in his ears had stopped, and he was assured that both he and his bride were unhurt, Harkaman had the situation well in hand. Lucas himself ordered more than half the squad that had formed around them to escort Valerie inside. Duke Rathmore and Lady Essen went as well, the Duke carrying his ceremonial dagger and the Sword World noble sporting a small, ladylike pistol in her fist. In front of Valerie walked the hulking Baron of Bentfork, former king of Tradetown, his massive native-crafted broadsword held in his hand like it had grown there.
“It was thrown from over there, in the shrubbery,” the old space captain shouted, grimly. To Lucas’ overtaxed and ringing ears it sounded distant and muffled. “One of my men – one of the elites from Festersan’s unit – jumped on the grenade. The medics are attending to him now, but it doesn’t look good. He was wearing armor, of course, but that wasn’t a mere anti-personnel grenade: that was an anti-armor weapon, or I’m a busty cabaret dancer. Whomever did this wanted to make sure they finished the job.”
“Find out who it was,” Lucas ordered, his voice gravelly and distant in his own ears. “I want them in hand before the moon sets. No ship leaves port. I want a search of the grounds, aircav pods in the sky—”.
“I’m attending to it, Your Highness,” Harkaman said, evenly. “Might I suggest that you take the princess back to--?”
“No,” Lucas said, stubbornly, realizing what his friend was trying to do. “And I’m not just being stubborn. This was an assassination attempt, Otto. If they missed me here, where would the next most likely place to finish the job be?”
“Your new palace,” Harkaman nodded. “Of course. I’ll have a platoon secure it. And you’re right, whoever did this is running in a straight line away from here. This is actually your safest refuge.”
“I’m not going to get in your way, Otto, you can run the investigation. But I want to know the instant—”
“I know, Lucas, I know,” he said, gently, one friend to another. “I was there that day, too, remember? This is . . . all too similar.”
“Exactly,” he sighed. That’s right. Otto had been there. Not an hour before Andray Dunnan’s disastrous attack, he had been lecturing him Harkaman about the perils of his trade at the bar. Then all had turned to pain and blood and death.
“Admiral!” called one of the commandos who stood next to where a combat medic crouched with Countess Dorothy. The head doctor of the planet was working busily on the man’s chest and abdomen, his blasted armor removed and discarded. Already a robomedic kit was pumping blood and stabilizing agents into the man’s arm. Countess Dorothy looked grim, however, and her beautiful gown was utterly ruined with the brave man’s blood. “The man, he wants a word with you! And His Highness!”
The two men knelt next to the young soldier’s head, his mouth caked with blood and his face singed with horrific burns.
“I want to thank you for what you did, Corporal Gatworth,” Lucas said, earnestly, reading the man’s name off of his uniform. “You saved me and my wife, and Admiral Harkaman. The Realm owes you a debt.”
“No time,” the man gasped eyes wide but unfocused. “Prince Lucas – you are in terrible danger!”
“Easy, son,” Harkaman said, brushing the man’s singed hair out of his eyes. “We’re safe, now. Our people are all around us.”
“Not this,” the man gasped. “There are . . . others . . . I was sent . . . to protect you . . . warn you . . . ” he said, as his eyes began to unfocus even more.
“What? Others? Sent by whom?” Harkaman demanded.
“I’ve given him morphine,” Countess Dorothy said, testily, “he’ll be unconscious in a moment. He’s in unbearable pain.”
“Blast!” swore Harkaman. “Who sent who? You?”
“Danger,” the man croaked. “Prince Trask . . . in danger . . . was sent . . .”
“Sent by who?” Trask asked. “Who sent you?”
The man seemed almost unconscious, then became lucid for the briefest of moments. “The Wizard . . . sent me . . .” he whispered, and then passed out unconscious.
“Wait! The wizard? Who the devil is ‘the wizard’?” Lucas asked. “And why am I in danger?”
“Is he going to regain consciousness?” Harkaman asked Countess Dorothy, anxiously.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” she admitted, after a moment’s pause. “The armor protected him from the shrapnel, but no human body can stand a concussion wave like that, from that range. He has severe and pervasive internal bleeding, half of his organs are ruptured. If he lives another hour, I’d count it as a miracle!”
“Who is he?” asked Lucas.
“Find me this man’s squad leader,” Harkaman ordered. It took only moments for the man to appear. “Tell me who he was,” the Admiral said, pointing.
“That’s Corporal Sam Gatworth,” the sergeant said, gruffly. “Good man. He’s been with us for about six months. One of those odds-and-sods that came here looking for employment around the time of your wedding, Your Highness,” he said, suddenly realizing that he was in the presence of his sovereign, not just his commanding officer.
“Where’s he from?” Lucas asked.
The sergeant shrugged. “I have no idea, sir. I can have our company exec look into it—”
“Within the hour,” Lucas ordered. “I want the entire contents of the man’s bunk, his service record, everything he owned brought here, is that understood?”
“Y-yes, Your Highness!” the sergeant said, snapping to attention and saluting before he loped off, yelling orders into his radio as he went.
“Why so curious?” Harkaman asked when the man had left earshot.
“I can understand why someone would want to assassinate me. I’ve got a few enemies.”
“Well, yes,” Otto admitted. “I’ve noticed they don’t last very long, however.”
“So far,” Lucas admitted. “My point is, I can understand why someone would want to assassinate me. I cannot understand why someone – particularly someone named ‘the wizard’ – would send someone here to protect me.”
“He could have just been in shock and raving,” Otto pointed out. “He was getting pain medication.”
“When a man is that badly injured, and is still conscious, he doesn’t rave,” Lucas countered. “In fact, he thinks about the things that are most important to him, because he fears death. I know that’s what I just did. So I can’t imagine that he’d leap to nonsense so quickly, not when he knew who I was.”
“You make a good point,” Harkaman admitted. “Okay, so why would someone send someone else half-way across the galaxy to save you?”
“After ‘who just tried to blow me up?’, that question is high on my list of priorities,” Lucas assured him, grimly.
Unsurprisingly, considering the number of men who were looking, they found the would-be assassin quickly. A servant was found hiding in a section of the estate that was still under construction, nearly incomprehensible with fear. The soldiers dragged him out and got him back to the manor without more than a few unnecessary bruises – apparently Cpl. Gatworth had been an easy-going and popular comrade.
The man was in his middle-years, and spoke Lingua Terra with a heavy Tanith native accent. He said his name was Trall, and he carried things, but that was all he would say.
Lucas had him brought into Otto’s library, where he and Valerie and much of the rest of his court had retired – those who had not gone home after being questioned by security. There were almost as many armed guards in the room as civilians, so there was little danger of the prisoner escaping.
In fact, there was little danger of the prisoner doing much of anything but cowering mutely. He would not respond to questions with more than whimpers and grunts, even when prompted with physical force.
Boake Valkanhayn took the lead in the interrogation, using a blind fury and a command of invective picked up on over a dozen worlds and a lifetime of unpleasantness. Still the man wouldn’t speak, even when Valkanhayn drew his dagger threateningly.
