Sisterhood of Dune (66 page)

“My family wanted revenge to wipe the slate clean,” Griffin said, “but I’m sorry I ever went after you.”

With a pinched expression, the tribal leader looked at the two as if they were annoying children. “Neither of you should have come here! You don’t belong here.” He focused a glare on Vor. “We did not know you, Vorian Atreides, nor did we wish to know you, and your enemies have caused grave harm to our people. And you, Griffin Harkonnen, have been so fixated on your blood feud that you ignored what you trample over in your pursuit of this man.”

Sharnak pulled a long, milky-bladed knife from his waist, then yanked a second dagger from one of the men beside him. He tossed both blades onto the sand-covered floor. “Have done with this! Settle your feud between yourselves.
Now.
We do not wish to be a part of it, though we will take your water afterward.”

Vor felt a cold hollowness in his chest. “I don’t want to fight him. This quarrel has gone too far already.”

The Naib was unyielding. “Then I will demand your executions right away—wouldn’t the two of you rather attempt to defend yourselves?”

Gray and shaken, Griffin picked up the knife. He looked at the blade, at Vor. “My sister and I have a lifetime of hatred invested in this moment.”

Vor did not move for the other knife. He had no heart for this fight.

Sharnak looked at Vor with disdain. “You offworlders are fools. Do you intend to let him just strike you down as you stand?”

“Turn us out into the desert,” Vor demanded, “and let us make our own way. We will leave you alone.” He stood stiffly, his arms at his sides.

Disgusted and dismissive, the Naib snapped, “You try my patience. No—I have spoken. Kill them if they don’t fight.” The Freemen drew knives of their own, edged closer.

Vor, though, tried to bargain. “And the victor—you’ll kill him anyway?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Guarantee the life of whoever wins. Promise safe passage to civilization.” Vor narrowed his gray eyes, didn’t flinch at the storm of anger that crossed Sharnak’s face. “Or I will just let him strike me down—better him than desert thieves.”

The assembled Freemen grumbled, but their leader let out a cold laugh. “Very well, on my honor, we will deliver the winner to safety—and we’ll be glad to be rid of you both.”

With great reluctance, Vor bent down for the other dagger and faced Griffin. The young man held up his milky-white blade, moving his arm from side to side to test the weight and feel of the weapon. He looked ready but wary.

“I have my shield belt,” Griffin said, “and I see you have yours. Shall we fight like civilized men?”

“Civilized?” Vor said. “You think this is civilized?”

Naib Sharnak scowled. “Shields? There will be no shields here—hand to hand, knife to knife.”

“I suspected as much,” Griffin said. He drew a deep breath. Then, surprising Vor, he stabbed forward and slashed sideways. The move was a blur of speed, unexpected finesse, and Vor bounded back, barely dodging the razor-sharp blade. Someone had taught this Harkonnen to fight surprisingly well.

In response, he jabbed halfheartedly with his dagger, and Griffin’s reactions were quick. The young Harkonnen switched the knife to his other hand and struck again.

Parrying, Vor felt a glassy clink as edge met edge. These Freemen daggers had no real hilt, no blade guard. As the edges skittered along each other, Vor had to twist his wrist to avoid a deep gash along his knuckles. While the opponents hung poised, dagger against dagger, Vor reached out with his left hand and gave Griffin a hard shove on the chest, making the young man stumble backward. Then, as Griffin caught his balance, Vor cut a quick slash down his left bicep, drawing blood but avoiding an artery.

“Do you yield?” Vor didn’t want to kill him.

The Harkonnen winced, danced backward, and brandished his knife to protect himself. “I can’t—in the name of House Harkonnen I must fight to the death.”

Vor knew the burden of family honor all too well. This long-standing feud had already soured the Harkonnens against him for generations, and the nuances of honor added other complexities: If he simply surrendered and let the young man win, he doubted if Griffin would feel vindicated or satisfied … and yet, the Freemen would take him to safety.

The Freemen threw cheers and insults alike; Vor didn’t think they cared which man won—they just wanted to see bloodshed for Ishanti’s death. Naib Sharnak regarded the competition in grim silence.

Vor drove in, pushing hard. Over the course of his life, he had acquired a great deal of experience in hand-to-hand fighting, but he’d lived at peace and avoided personal combat for decades. He was out of practice. Nevertheless, he closed with the young man, trying to cut him again but not fatally.

Griffin, though, had no such reservations, and he fought with unexpected and precise skill. His technique was unlike anything Vor had fought before, and the doubt behind his adversary’s eyes hardened into confidence, as if he heard an encouraging voice in his head.

“Did I tell you I went to Kepler? Your planet?” Griffin said, not even out of breath. “I spoke with your family.”

Vor felt suddenly cold. He brought up his knife just in time to fend off a strike.

“Your wife, Mariella. An old woman.” Griffin’s words were fast, staccato. “Do you know she is dead?”

He chose the instant of shock precisely, and his dagger passed through Vor’s defenses and struck his chest just below the right shoulder—by no means a deadly wound, but the pain was sharp.
Mariella!
The fight went out of Vor in a cold rush, yet the instinct for survival remained. He pushed back as Griffin leaped on top of him and raised his hand to block another cut, then Vor kicked out, striking Griffin in the thigh. Both men rolled over.

Bleeding from the wound in his shoulder, Vor could barely move his right arm. He was filled with rage.

On the ground with Vor, Griffin struck another blow, an energetic stab that Vor blocked with his blade, but his grip was too weak, and the dagger dropped from his fingers. In a last defense, Vor reached up with his left hand and seized his opponent’s wrist to keep the blade poised and away from him. “What did you do to her?”

Griffin dug two stiffened fingers into the deep cut in Vor’s shoulder. The explosion of pain made Vor dizzy, and a moment later Griffin had the milky-white blade pressed against his throat.

The young man finally answered with a hint of sorrow in his voice. “I didn’t harm her. I arrived on Kepler during her funeral.” He pressed the knife closer. “I never wanted to hurt your entire family, as you did to mine. I just wanted … wanted you to know that all Harkonnens do not deserve the disgrace you piled on us.”

Vor did not beg for his life. He lay still, feeling the sharp blade against his neck, waiting for the deep and final cut. His many years, his long connections with Xavier and Abulurd Harkonnen, and all the generations afterward, had come to this.

He let his words come out in a whisper. “And will taking my life restore your family honor?”

Griffin crouched on top of him, his shoulders hunched. The blade trembled against Vor’s carotid artery. Tears welled in the young man’s eyes, and his expression cycled from anger through uncertainty to dismay.

Finally, he lifted the dagger, stood up with a look of disgust, and cast the knife aside. “I
choose
not to kill you, Atreides, as a matter of honor. You are responsible for what you did to House Harkonnen, but I am responsible for myself.” With his left foot, he kicked both knives away and faced the Naib and the muttering Freemen. “The feud is over.”

“You are weak,” Sharnak said. “You crossed the galaxy seeking revenge, and now you are too much of a coward to kill your mortal enemy?”

Griffin scowled. “I don’t have to explain my decision to you.”

Vor struggled to his feet. His bleeding shoulder throbbed, but he blocked the pain. The desert people glared at both of them and moved closer.

Sharnak clenched his fist. “Griffin Harkonnen, you stole water from the tribe, and that crime warrants your death. Vorian Atreides, you are his accomplice. The blood feud may be over between you, but the water-debt to my people must be paid. We will take your bodies’ water, and may the universe forget about you both.”

“Wait.” Vor fumbled inside the pockets of his tight desert suit, using his left hand. Blood had soaked his outfit, but the fabric’s water-absorption capability would reclaim it—if he lived that long. His fingers found the packet he sought, and he yanked it out. He tossed the small pouch onto the floor where the sand still showed patterns of their scuffle. “You value water over people. I believe I’ll mourn Ishanti more than you do.”

The Naib looked at the pouch as if it were filled with scorpions. “What is this?”

“If our crime is stealing water, I repay you with water chits from working on the spice crew, everything I earned. Redeem them in Arrakis City for five times the water that Griffin stole.”

The Freemen looked down at the packet. Many in the tribe were outcasts who had never left the great sandy basins, but others had gone into the city; they knew how to spend the credits. The Naib seemed uncertain about the offer.

Vor pressed, “Would you kill us anyway and just take my credits? Do your people have honor, or are you just thieves, after all?”

The Freemen were not satisfied. “He owes us more than water,” one warrior pointed out.

“Take their water,” another said.

But the Naib drew himself up. “We are not thieves, or murderers. No number of water chits can repay us for the suffering you have brought, but Ishanti found some value in your lives. I will not have her spirit angry with us, so I do this for
her,
not you.” His brows drew together, then he bent to snatch the water tokens from the floor. “But you must leave the sietch and go far away.”

Sharnak looked around at the desert men, waiting for them to challenge his decision, but he was their Naib. They respected his words, and no one spoke against him.

“So be it,” the tribal leader said. “One of my people will take you in Ishanti’s skimcraft. We know of a weather-monitoring station many kilometers from here. There we will leave you alone. Use the communication in that place to send a message. But do not ever return here.”

In a formal, cold demonstration of his censure, Naib Sharnak turned his back and refused to look again at Vorian or Griffin—an act eerily similar to how Vor had turned his back on Abulurd Harkonnen after his conviction for cowardice. “We want nothing more to do with either of you.”

Computers are seductive, and will employ all of their wiles to bring us down.

—
MANFORD TORONDO,
The Only Path

For Raquella, this was the stuff of nightmares.

She, Valya, and a dozen Sorceress watchers stood on the high cliff, gazing at a sky filled with gold-hulled Imperial warships that dropped like locusts from a giant spacefolder in orbit. It was mid-afternoon, and beyond the assault force the sky was clear and blue, deceptively tranquil, with the distant volcanoes slumbering.

As soon as she recognized the Corrino lion insignia, she realized this was not an undisciplined attack from a hodgepodge of fanatics, but that did not diminish her concern. Previously, she might have assumed an official Imperial response would be more reasoned, more disciplined, but after the tragedy of Anna, the Emperor had every reason to be wrathful.

Raquella knew that her own life, and the very existence of the Sisterhood, was on the line.

“At least he did not bring the Butlerians with him,” she said, glancing at Valya, who stood pale and tense beside her. Ship after ship settled onto the sweeping silvery-purple canopy that had been designated as a landing area. “Perhaps that is one small glimmer of hope.”

In the cave city beneath the high viewpoint, she watched Sisters scurrying about in confusion. She heard their agitated voices, their cries of alarm; even the members of Dorotea’s faction had good reason to be worried. They realized they might have unleashed a dragon.

For all their training and focus on mental abilities, for all their meditation and muscle control, the Sisters were not an army. Even the handful of Sorceress descendants could do little to fight battles with their psychic powers.

Emperor Salvador Corrino, on the other hand, had brought a fully armed military force.

Resistance would only serve to antagonize him and rain down destruction upon the Sisterhood. No, they must not fight, Raquella decided. She would accept the blame and die for what had happened to Anna Corrino, if that preserved the Sisterhood. Thanks to the good work of Sister Valya, none of the Imperial searchers would find evidence of the illegal computers. Any other accusations Dorotea had made would fall flat.

As uniformed Imperial soldiers disembarked from the military transport craft on the treetops, the Reverend Mother was struck by how very youthful the men were, even the officers who followed them. The air was a hum of machinery, terrible efficiency, and impending violence. Smaller suspensor gunships dropped down along the sheer cliffside, hovering in place with weapons directed toward the cave openings. A bombardment would bring down the rocks on the trails, seal the tunnels, and kill all the Sisters. But thus far no shots had been fired.

Karee Marques gathered a dozen intimidating-looking Sorceresses around Raquella. Long ago, their legendary psychic powers had inspired awe and fear, but that was little more than a faded memory now. “We will help defend the Sisterhood, Reverend Mother,” Karee said. “The Emperor would never attempt such a bold invasion if we had more Sorceresses.”

“There’s nothing you can do, Karee. They will kill us all if we try to do battle.” She began to walk down to meet the troops. “We must find some way to satisfy them.”

A large, ornate suspensor ship drifted down to the already crowded landing area, and Raquella could see military officers hurrying about their duties. On the polymerized treetops, soldiers rushed to form a cordon, preparing for the arrival of the Imperial flagship. A ramp with handrails shot from the side of the vessel, and uniformed soldiers streamed across the ramp, their weapons glowing from the ready-charges. Elite troops … the Emperor’s personal guard.