The Rebel of Rhada (16 page)

Kier kicked at a destroyed metal case. It toppled, trailing wires and flakes of burned insulation. “A cyb is a demon. Was Landro
that
superstitious?”

“There is a legend--” Cavour began.

“Warlocks and their legends,” Kier said, looking about him.

“Nevertheless. In the
Book of Warls.
And other places. Cybs were not demons.” “What then?”

“They were everywhere once, or so the stories go. Servants, workers. Soldiers, even. No man could defeat a cyb in battle.”

Kier looked doubtful.

They searched the ruins through the long twilight, Cavour exclaiming at each new find. “A treasure house, King. And someone burned it. By the Spirit, what savage could destroy all this--?”

The light was swiftly fading into dark when Cavour stopped searching and knelt in the rubble. He brushed ashes away from a grisly find in the ruins.

An arm.

Cavour touched it with a fingertip. The skin was strangely unburned. Tiny wire filaments shimmered faintly.

Kier asked, “Is it the warlock’s body?”

“No,” Cavour replied in a low voice.

Kier touched the arm. He could not say how he knew, but he did, and a shiver ran through him. It was the arm of a manikin. Not human.

“Yes,” Cavour breathed reverently. “A cyborg. By all the dark gods, the man was a genius. To do this--
here
with almost
nothing.
The
Warls
and junk two thousand years old--”

Kier’s eyes glittered with challenge. He was remembering that Cavour said no man could defeat a cyborg in battle and he, Kier, was first and last a warrior. “Man or demon, Cavour?”

Cavour sat back on his haunches. “Both. Neither. This one never lived--”

Kier stood, swinging the cruelly barbed flail gently against his boot. “It wasn’t this poor corpse that drove Landro mad.”

Cavour rose to his feet and steadied himself against a blackened wall. “No.”

“So there was another cyb.” “Yes. I feared so from the first.”

“All that talk about an immortal, a man of the Golden Age,” Kier said, his voice edged. “It’s Tallan, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It must be,” the warlock said wearily.

“Tallan,” Kier said. Slowly a savage smile drew his lips into a thin line. “So we aren’t fighting ghosts and demons, then. And a star king that is not even a man would turn everything we’ve fought for upside down and set the clock back four thousand years.
The challenge is mine, Cavour.”

And the warlock, his head filled with the legends of another time and fearing for his young master, could only agree.

“So be it, King,” he said.

When faced with an adversary holding the better fighting ground but not yet firmly established there, the leader of warmen would do well to consider the tactic of the frontal assault without regard to actions on the flanks. The possible gains, however, must be very carefully weighed against the risks, for the price of failure is most certainly death.

Prince Fernald,
On Tactics,
early Second Stellar Empire period

If I have labored hard and staked my all on this undertaking, it is for the love of that renown which is the noblest recompense of man.

Attributed to one Hernan Cortez,
a military adventurer of the middle Dawn Age, Hispanic period

That upheaval of empire which historians know as “Mariana’s Rebellion” was most grievously misnamed.

Nv. Julianus Mullerium,
The Age of the Star Kings,
middle Second Stellar Empire period

The starships fell upon Nyor with a volley of sonic booms out of a hazy warmish sky. The arrested Vykan troops encamped across the river from the city saw the invasion force falling like a shower of great meteorites on the mound of Tel-Manhat. Disarmed by Imperial edict, they could only watch and wonder while their officers gathered and made hopeless plans to overpower the Vegan units guarding the camp.

Sentinels of the Veg stationed now in the Empire Tower were given a fine view of the landing operations as some forty great starships grounded beyond the walls. Some recognized the vessel bearing the markings of the war-leader Landro and breathed more easily, assured that they were supported now in their mutiny by warmen of Deneb, Altair, Betelgeuse, Lyra, and half a dozen smaller holdings.

But the invading troops debarked and deployed with grim swiftness, and before the landing was forty minutes old, a force of twenty thousand armed men stood before the almost unguarded gates of Nyor.

The Vegan officers of the city garrison had warned their troops of an imminent augmentation of the forces of the rebellion, but the invaders were so warlike in intent and maneuver that there were several sharp skirmishes outside the city wall. The confused Vegans were quickly overcome, and survivors of the fights galloped into the city shouting confused alarms.

By midday the entire city was in the grip of panic. An attempt was made by a group of Vegans and native militia to defend the approaches to the city and the gates. The name of Tallan the Sarissan swept from tongue to tongue, and officers of the citadel guard rode breakneck to the scene of the fighting with royal commands from the Queen-Empress Mariana to cease hostilities at once.

Frightened and befuddled, the defenders listened to conflicting orders, emerged from their positions, and were swiftly and mercilessly cut down by squadrons of Sarissans.

The Nyori, responding to ancient habits, fled indoors and shuttered their houses.

The Imperial troops waited for further orders from the Queen-Empress.

There were none.

A special commando of Sarissans, led by the warleader Tallan, had occupied the citadel, slaughtered the unsuspecting Vegans of the guard, and had taken the hereditary throne of the Vykan Galactons.

Mariana was a prisoner.

By nightfall, Nyor and the Empire were in the hands of the rebellion.

Tallan said, “So we meet at last, Queen.”

Mariana, her face gray with strain and shock, stood quite still listening to the unfamiliar sounds about her. In the next room Lady Constans was weeping. In the gallery beyond the doorway to the Galacton’s bedchamber, she could hear the clash of harness and weapons and the loud voices of warmen. There were laughter and coarse jokes in many tongues. From somewhere below came the noise of glassware breaking and, from the city, a smell of burning. The taste and stench and sound of defeat-- a defeat so swift and treacherous that she could still scarcely credit what had happened.

She looked bleakly at the towering figure of the cyborg. The creature’s presence sent a sick shiver through her body. She was filled with anger, dismay, and revulsion as she thought:
I subsidized this thing. I created this madness.

She gathered herself and stood proudly. She still wore the Imperial scarlet, and she was a Vykan queen. “Why have you done this thing?” she demanded.

The cyborg’s eyes were cold, inhuman. “At least you don’t tax me with treachery,” Tallan said. “That would have been ironic, indeed.”

“I tax you with nothing, cyb,” Mariana spat out the epithet. “Irony is a
human
prerogative.”

The cyborg stood with uncanny stillness. It seemed to Mariana that not a muscle in that great frame moved. “Kelber programmed me well, after all,” he said. “In four thousand years men have still not learned. But that does not matter. Your city is my city now. And wasn’t it great Glamiss who said: ‘Who rules Nyor rules the stars?’ “

Mariana felt the stomach-wrenching fury of a royal rage. “You took my city because we thought you came in my service, cyb. But can you hold it?” She could hear her voice rising, growing shrill with the force of her disgust and bitterness. “Will the star kings follow a cyborg?”

Again that inhuman stillness. The Sarissan did not move.
Great Spirit,
Mariana thought wildly,
the thing does not even breathe.
Behind the expressionless eyes tiny sparks seemed to be moving, gleaming and fading like witchfires.
No,
she thought,
surely I imagine that. It is alive, after all. Truly alive. It could be killed.

“No,” Tallan said impassively, “the star kings would not follow a cyborg. I should have to meet each one in combat and kill him. Your human ways would demand it. That is why I have kept it from them.” He turned slowly to regard the closed door--as though he could see through the wood, Mariana thought, shuddering. “Only three humans knew what I am, Queen. Kelber, Landro--and you.”

Mariana’s hand went to her throat involuntarily. “Kelber is dead.”

“And Landro.”

It was like a blow. Mariana felt a deep and chilling sense of loss. Her eyes filled with tears. It shocked her to know that it mattered so. That silly, sweet-scented man-- that buffoon and tool of women. Landro, dead.

Then the import of what the cyborg was saying reached her, and she was truly afraid.

“There’s no need,” she said faintly. “I can help you--”

The cyborg said, “No.”

She thought:
It comes now, then, that death I have brought to others--so many others.

For a moment she thought she might fall, beg. But it would do no good. The thing was not a man.

Her pride returned. Vyks could be greedy and treacherous, vain and cruel, like all men. But they were proud-- and royal Vyks proudest of all.

The cyborg stood before her like a pillar of doom. He seemed to block out the light.

A great crack of thunder rattled the mullioned windows. It rolled across the citadel like a wave out of the sky.

Tallan turned.

Beyond the gallery Mariana could hear cries of warning and shouted commands.

Tallan left her and stepped to the door. A Sarissan war-man stood saluting. Others, in the gallery, were running by.

“Starship, Warleader. The Rhad.”

Mariana felt a great, leaping hope. A reprieve. A day, an hour,
anything.
The Rebel and his troops had returned. “How many?” Tallan asked. “One ship, Warleader.”

Mariana sagged hopelessly. One ship. The Rebel had come to join the rebellion, not to challenge it. She closed her eyes in despair.

Tallan said in that cold voice like the sound of a drum across a wintry field, “Your time is not yet, Mariana.”

He closed the door behind him, and she was alone with her thoughts.

Aboard the Rhadan vessel, Kier was arming. He wore his finest ceremonial armor, and his cape and helmet were bright with the feathered badges of his rank.

Cavour said, “Reason with him, Ariane. At least let us make a foray in force. He cannot force the cyborg to fight him.”

“But I can,” Kier said.

Nevus, the general, stood frowning. “With a thousand Rhad at our backs--”

Kier regarded the old warrior with affection. “I share your faith in the fighting qualities of the Rhad, Nevus. But ten thousand men wouldn’t suffice to take Nyor, and you know it.”

Ariane stood torn between pride and grief. “If this is for me, Kier, I ask you not to do it. I
beg
you, Kier--”

Kier touched her soft cheek with a mailed hand. “It is not for you, Ariane. You know what it is for.”

“The Empire,” she said angrily, tearfully. “Let the Empire go, Kier.”

“You do not mean that, Queen.”

The girl’s voice was low. “No, I do not mean it.”

“I say again that you can’t make a cyborg fight you, Kier,” Cavour insisted.

“I said that I can.”

“How, in the name of the Spirit? How can you? Why shouldn’t he simply have you taken?”

Han the Vykan fastened the last buckles of Kier’s mail. He belted him with a star king’s ceremonial weapons: sword, barbed flail, and dagger.

Brother Yakob appeared breathless in the torchlighted compartment.

“Starship grounding, Warleader.”

Kier acknowledged the priest’s message and commanded, “The Navigators stay aboard.” “Yes, King.”

“And tell Gret that it is time.”

“I shall, Warleader.”

Kier said to Cavour, “Tallan doesn’t know it, Warlock, but he must fight me. He cannot refuse and rule.”

“Black space,
why?”
Cavour’s face was bleak with despair.

“Honor.”

The warlock threw his hands in the air. “What has honor to do with a cyborg? What does Tallan know of
honor?”

“It’s a human concept,” Kier said wryly. “And if he would wear Imperial scarlet, he must learn of it.”

“Impossible. Insane.”

“No,” Nevus said roughly. “Kier is right on that point. If he challenges, Tallan must fight or be discredited before the star kings.”

Ariane studied Kier’s metal-masked face. She understood, as Nevus did. In a feudal society, loyalties stood or fell with the concept of
honor.

But a cyborg, she thought fearfully, was a demon. The enlightened part of her mind rebelled at the idea, but there it was, lurking deep among the superstitions of a lifetime.

She said, low, to Cavour, “If he fights the cyb--can he win?” She would have said “can he live,” but the thought of Kier dead was too dismaying to put into words.

Cavour shook his head. “I think not, Queen.”

Ariane turned away and made the sign of the Star. In-audibly, she breathed her prayer. “Beatified Emeric protect him.” All the stars in the galaxy would be meaningless to her without her rebel.

The Rhadan party left the starship with all the pomp and ceremony their limited numbers would allow.

Kier, flanked by Nevus and Ariane in Rhadan war harness and followed by a mixed guard of Vyks and Rhad, guided his nervous war mare through a landing ground crowded with starships from half a dozen systems across the galaxy.

At the rear of the small column rode the Vulks, eyeless and silent. The gathered warmen regarded them with suspicion, and many made the sign of the Star to ward off spirits.

Each starship, Kier noted, was carefully guarded by a war band of its own nationality. He studied the defenses and said to Ariane, “You see, it begins already. We have the makings of a fine little war right here.”

Ariane, her face hidden behind the metal mask of her Rhad helmet, gentled her fractious mare with a thought and nodded. She did not trust herself to speak. Her eyes searched the hostile eyes of warmen from the rebellious worlds and saw that the Lyri hated the Betelgui, the Altairi the Denebians; the Sarissans hated them all. It was this suspicion and mistrust that the Empire had held in check.