Glory (32 page)

Then reality set in and he realized that he was not likely to see his mynheera again unless he cooperated.

“What terms?” he mumbled.

Georg Fontein did not even have the grace to be pleased with himself. To overbear an airship captain of questionable ancestry was, after all, a small triumph for the new heir to Winter Kraal.

“Hear me, Lowlander. These are my terms to Eliana Ehrengraf,” Fontein said. “To begin, I will have this kraal and all its kaffirs and chattels.” He paused for effect and then said suggestively: “And I will have both women-- Voerster’s wife and the Voertrekkersdatter.”

In spite of his pain, Klemmer snarled, “You’re insane.”

Georg did not pause. “The girl because she was to have been promised my brother, and the woman because the promise was a fraud. Winter has lost an heir. It is only just that Eliana Voerster spread her legs to supply us with another.”

Damon Ng flung himself along the fabric tunnel, his breath coming hard and a cold sweat on his face. The situation seemed to have very suddenly collapsed into chaos. Nothing hi his previous experience, either in the forest villages of Grissom or aboard the
Gloria Coelis
, had prepared him for this explosion of gratuitous disasters.

He had spent the last two orbits trying to reestablish contact with Jean Marq and failing. The cybernetically moronic unloaders on the landing ground fatuously reported their progress with the cargo to
Glory
’s computer, but all demands for word from Jean Marq were met with a kind of binary incomprehension. Jean had left the lead shuttle. A weapon had been fired. That was all.

To make matters far, far worse was the static-ridden contact by primitive radio with the place called Einsamberg or Einsamtal--Lonesome Mountain or Lonesome Valley-- in the language of Planet Voerster. Damon had only too clear a picture of what had happened there. Duncan and Anya had apparently landed in the middle of some fight between the locals, and Duncan had been wounded. Since that time Anya had used the natives’ transmitter to ask Dietr to prescribe treatment for a
gunshot
wound, in the name of all that was holy. For some reason that was not entirely clear, but had to do with the fighting, Anya could not use her drogue, nor could she use the radio aboard the sled.

The very idea that the Master and Commander was injured and, for all that Damon could glean from the conversations between Anya and Dietr Krieg, might be at death’s door, shattered all the confidence Damon had recently and laboriously constructed for himself.

He moved through the access tunnels inside
Glory
like a projectile: from the bridge to Dietr’s sick bay, then back to the bridge and thence to the hold where the last sled was hangared, and back once again to Dietr. He had left a team of monkeys swarming over the sled, trying to put it back into useable condition. He had forgotten that the sled in question was out of service, and would be until
Glory
reached Aldrin, where the local technology sustained a commerce in components for sublight space vehicles.

He reached sick bay and spun himself into phase with Dietr’s vertical. Two of Mira’s adolescent kittens took exception to the Rigger’s explosive arrival, and jumped for the tube and were gone.

“Shall we fight, Dietr?” Damon demanded. “Can we?”

“Calm yourself, Damon,” Dietr said. “Take deep breaths.”

“The sled is useless, damn it. I should have remembered, by God, I should have!”

“There is no question of us going downworld, boy. There never was. Duncan wouldn’t allow it even if the sled were useable.” A sudden burst of noise came from the communications system. “Be still, now. Let me try to get all this.”

A woman’s voice, overlaid with waves of static (Voerster’s magnetic field was almost as powerful as that of one of the gas giants), came from the speaker on Dietr Kreig’s console.

“That’s not Anya,” Damon said anxiously.

“No. Be still and let me listen.” Dietr had several recorders running. Damon discerned that the woman was speaking in the native Afrikaans. On the same frequency, a man replied. He sounded angry. Then the woman again.

The Rigger could not understand her words, but her tone was unmistakable. It was firm and unafraid. The word that occurred to Damon was regal.

The conversation proceeded for several minutes and then stopped. Damon demanded, “Can you understand that?”

“Not at all,” the neurocybersurgeon said. “Afrikaans-- particularly this Afrikaans--isn’t German. I will have to run it through
Glory
’s translation program.”

Damon protested, “We must do something about Duncan and Anya.”

“Not about Jean Marq?”

“That is not what I meant,” Damon said violently.

Dietr said, “Anya will have to get Duncan back to the ship. There is no other option. I think those people below will refuse to cooperate unless I agree to treat one of them. ‘The daughter of the house’ is the way they put it. Anya says she probably needs a heart valve. I told the Sailing Master all she had to do was get them up here. Then we can worry about what has happened to Jean Marq.”

“Can she do it?”

“Why, youngster, she must, mustn’t she?”

In the manor house the kaffirs who had arrived on the
Volkenreiter
and the house people set up defenses which dated to the time of the Rebellion. Iron shutters for the larger windows and doors, barricades in the outer grounds, traps in the avenues leading to the house. They might be outnumbered by the Planetians, but no one had ever taken Einsamberg’s manor house by storm. For the moment, the situation was a stalemate.

Black Clavius had estimated that the attackers numbered about thirty Highlanders. Eliana had recognized the sons of Vikter Fontein at a distance and had seen one of them fall.

The manor house had radio communication--of a sort-- with the world beyond the Grimsel Mountains. Reception was very poor, had always been because of the surrounding terrain. But Ian Voerster had managed to get through, and he had delivered a fulsome tirade of threats and demands. When Eliana had refused to be intimidated, his anger had grown progressively more abusive and violent. Ian Voerster was not a man accustomed to being challenged as Eliana was challenging him now.
Yes, Broni was with her, and no, Broni would not be returned to her father’s jurisdiction.
She had answered Ian Voerster calmly, even icily, with a contemptuous civility that infuriated him.

Each exchange had made Eliana more determined, and Ian Voerster more furious. Finally, he had said in a voice trembling with rage: “I am sending a detachment of the Wache by airship to return Broni to Voertrekkerhoem and take possession of Einsamberg Kraal. Do not interfere with them.”

To which Eliana replied, “Broni you shall not have. As for Einsamberg, you have no more rights here than that commando of mutants at the foot of the valley. Einsamberg and its lands are covered by a First Lander’s writ. You know this as well as I do. You can send force, Ian, but force does not make you right.”

The Voertrekker-Praesident’s face was livid. “Damn you for an arrogant bitch. I am the law on Voerster, remember it.”

“We have killed Eigen Fontein,” Eliana said calmly. “He tried to attack the Starman. If you come here, guard yourself.”

“You lured the Starman to you,” he accused.

“And one of your highland freaks has wounded him. Ian, you are playing with forces you don’t understand.”

“And you do, shiftless bitch?”

The use of the word “shiftless” had special meaning on Voerster, where by long tradition women of the mynheeren class wore long and concealing quilted gowns with nothing under them. This custom had the force of law, and had ever since the days of the first post-Rebellion Voertrekker-Praesident, who had written in his
Colonial Instructions
that upper-class women should dress in that manner in order “to be both modest and aware of their nakedness.” Meaning their vulnerability.

Eliana refused to give him satisfaction. “Shiftless I may be. But I have the right to defy you in this, and you know it.”

“Tell the people from the ship that their colleague has delivered their cargo. He is my honored guest at Voertrekkerhoem.”

Eliana felt a chill. She had not supposed Ian was so set on having his way that he would risk alienating the Starfolk whom Planet Voerster might need to depend on in the future.

“No matter what you do, Ian, you will not get Broni. This I promise you.”

“We shall see,” Voerster said, and broke the crackling connection.

As the kraalheera of Einsamberg Kraal, the decision to defend or surrender was Eliana’s alone. Even Osbertus, who was given to talking matters to death, and Tiegen Roark, who tended to yearn for risk-free solutions, made no offers of advice. For this Eliana Ehrengraf was grateful.

They had put the injured Starman into one of the grand guest chambers, a cavern of stone walls jammed with ancient, ornate, and incalculably valuable carved wooden furniture.

Eliana stood in the doorway, watching the woman called Anya Amaya and Tiegen Roark care for the Starcaptain. By some mysterious black magic of the mind, Duncan Kr had blocked out the damage done his leg by the shotgun. It was a remarkable performance. The Starman, lean and more darkly appealing than any Voertrekker, had impressive powers. Still, it appeared that Duncan Kr was in considerable pain. Tiegen, his skills as a Healer belittled by the strange talents of the people from space, had almost retired to the role of spectator. That was a pity, Eliana thought. Tiegen, the Tiegen she had known all her life, was capable of more than that.

She walked on through the high-ceilinged hallway lined with portraits of Ehrengraf forebears. Many wore the uniform of the planetary militia that had been formed--and had ruled on Voerster--during the Rebellion. The bitter time of Reconstruction came later. It was during this period that her ancestor, who had sided with the rebellious kaffirs, had been disenfranchised, then arrested and finally “rusticated.” On this very estate, the property of a more conventional cousin, a member of a less rebellious cadet branch of the Ehrengrafs.

From the upper stories, where her kaffirs manned the windows and arrow-slits, she heard an occasional probing shot.
What we have here is a war
, she thought.
Small, but still a war.
And a stalemate that could not last. If Ian ordered in the Wache by airship, the unsettled weather on the Grassersee was a protection. But if he called for help from Fontein, time would grow short very quickly.

Starman Duncan and the woman had come down from orbit without a single weapon. Such a peaceful intent was commendable, Eliana thought, but not helpful in the present circumstances.

She passed a chain-and-counterweight wall clock at the end of the domed hallway. It had been built for Einsamberg centuries ago, as a curiosity. Quartz crystal clocks and the means of making them had been rediscovered, but the antique still worked. It kept track of the hours and the position of the Six Giants. It was cumbersome and anachronistic, and it was a perfect metaphor for Voertrekker society, which had begun to ossify the moment it was planted on this alien soil.

Out of the shadows came one of her house people, a rifle on his back. Eliana wondered:
Have I made a mistake in arming my kaffirs?
It was a thought worthy of Ian Voerster and she knew it.

“Mynheera. The Fonteins are sending the Luftkapitan under a white flag.”

A truce flag, Eliana thought. What nicety. Just as though Georg Fontein were a conquering general instead of a highland bandit.

The kaffir regarded her with level, pale, unreadable eyes. Peculiarly, the whispers about Otto Klemmer’s ancestry had put the kaffirs off.

“Let us see what Field Marshal Fontein wants to tell me,” she said.

Eliana Ehrengraf met Luftkapitan Klemmer in the outer courtyard of the manor house. She was prepared to see that he had been mistreated. Nothing less was to be expected from Planetians. But she had to steel herself at the sight of Klemmer’s battered face and ballooning lower lip. She had heard of the method used by the Highlanders to ensure docility among their prisoners. She had never seen it.

Otto Klemmer, a formal man, refused to be assisted until he had surrendered his white pennant and delivered himself of his message which was sticking like slime in his throat.

“Mynheera,” he said, speaking with great difficulty. “I have been commanded to offer you The Fontein’s terms for surrender.”

“Come inside first, Luftkapitan, and let the Healer tend your wounds.”

Klemmer regarded the slender, erect figure of the Ehrengraf through tearing, watering eyes. She was like a sword-blade, he thought. Tempered and beautiful and, in certain circumstances, deadly. It would not be out of character for a Voertrekker aristocrat to have a messenger killed if the message was demeaning. A fact that had not escaped Georg Fontein, Klemmer thought.
May his feet and hands be broken, his progeny prove sterile and his sexual organs rot.
An ancient kaffir curse. One worthy of the new heir of Winter Kraal.

“I am dishonored enough, mynheera,” the airship captain mumbled. “Let me be rid of the load of bile Fontein sends to Einsamberg.”

Healer Tiegen Roark appeared behind Eliana with Black Clavius at his side. The kaffir scowled at Klemmer’s state and said, in his sonorous voice: “’Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him...’“

Tiegen said furiously, “Stop that babble, old man, and help me with him.”

But Eliana made a commanding gesture. She knew what it meant to the battered airshipman to stand on his feet and deliver his message. “Be silent, Tiegen,” she said.

Clavius, who loathed anyone who deliberately inflicted pain on another, completed his quotation from his beloved Book: “’And repayeth them that hate Him, to destroy them: He will not be slack to him that hateth Him, He will repay him to his face.’“

Klemmer held himself stiffly upright and spoke The Fontein’s words. The claim to house and chattels was insolent, but understandable in the circumstances. But when the airshipman reached the demand for both Broni and the Ehrengraf, the words came near to choking him.