The Rebel of Rhada (17 page)

At the Nyor gate, the Rhad party was met by a party of heavily armed soldiers from Altair. “We are to take you to the warleader,” the officer said brusquely.

Nevus rode forward and spoke in his harshest parade ground tones. “This is Kier, the star king of Rhada, warman. Don’t they teach military courtesy in Altair?”

The Altairi stared at the old general for a moment, but he could not hold the gaze of those deep-set, commanding eyes that had seen a hundred battles before he, the Altairi, lifted his first sword.

“Apologies, general,” he muttered sullenly. He turned to his men and ordered, “Honors for the star king, warmen.”

The detachment lifted their weapons in salute and fell in on the flanks of the Rhadan troop.

Cavour, riding abreast of Han the Vykan, murmured, “It seems to me that we have done all this before.”

Han said, looking admiringly at the riders at the head of the column, “See how bravely she rides, Warlock. She’s not afraid.”

The warlock studied the youngster’s face and asked, “Are you?”

“Yes,” Han replied in a quiet voice. “What will happen now?”

“Kier will challenge Tallan to the traditional Three Encounters.”

“And then?”

The warlock did not reply. He shook his head and rode on in silence.

In the great hall of the citadel of Nyor, the rebel star kings and their higher officers had hastily gathered to see Kier of Rhada accept the overlordship of Tallan of Sarissa as warleader.

When Tallan entered, the warmen clashed their swords against their armor in applause. The Sarissan had led them to greater booty than they had imagined possible. Those few who still remembered their pledges to Glamiss and his son remained silent and thoughtful.

There was a smell of burning in the air. From the heights of the citadel could be seen the rising smoke from districts put to the torch by rampaging parties of off-world warriors. The ancient piers along the East River were charred ruins, and the estates of the wealthy clustered at the north end of Tel-Manhat were being looted and burned.

Isolated bands of Vegans, betrayers betrayed in their turn, were fighting desperate holding actions in the streets, and streams of Nyori refugees were gathering on the western banks of the island, trying to reach the imagined safety of the Jersey shore and the camp of the Vyks.

Tallan took his place at the head of the long chamber as the Rhadan delegation appeared.

Kier, standing in ceremonial war gear at the foot of the hall, studied the cyborg. His heart was thudding under his armor, and he felt weighed down by the weight of his weapons, but his face, half hidden by the mask of his helmet, remained impassive.

Ariane, seeing the cyb for the first time, felt her breath catch. Kier was tall among men of his time and strongly muscled. But the Sarissan was enormous--two full hand-spans higher than the Rhad. To Ariane, his mailed arms looked like tree trunks, the breadth of his chest and shoulders gigantic.

Erit touched her hand and whispered, “Courage, Queen.” Cavour measured the cyborg with a scientist’s eye and came to the same dread conclusion that was dismaying Ariane. No human being could fight such a creature and live.

The star king of Deneb, a squat, scarred man who had fought beside Kier at the Battle of Karma, stepped forward and made a conciliating gesture. “You are late, cousin of Rhada. But better late than not at all. Welcome to our new order.”

Kier walked deliberately forward, his eyes cold under the brow of the helmet. He said evenly, “I do not know you, warman.”

The battered face of the Denebian king darkened, but before he could speak again, Kier had walked on to face Tallan.

The cyborg stood with that same stillness that had so disturbed Landro and Mariana. The hooded eyes alone seemed touched with strange life.

Kier said, “I have not come to join you, cyb. I have come to kill you.”

A low growl of anger swept the room.

Tallan said, “I know.”

“I called you cyb.” Kier’s voice was ringingly clear. There were cries of “Liar!” and worse among the ranks of the kings. These hard-bitten fighting men would never be convinced they had followed an android--a creature so legendary that only a few warlocks believed it could exist other than as an evil spirit. Here and there an older war-man made the sign of the Star. A cyborg might be a myth, but a demon could be something else again.

Kier drew back a gauntleted hand and struck Tallan across the face--three ritual blows. For a moment the cyborg’s flesh flamed and then quickly paled. Cavour, his warlock’s mind racing, concluded that this was not the effect of anger but of a superior body responding to attack with precision and economy.

Would a cyborg have the circulatory system of a man? Probably not. If a true scientist were to design a human being, he would be more efficient--produce a body that was not only stronger but also more resistant to injury. Cavour reckoned with sinking heart that a cyborg could not be weakened by ordinary wounds. The thrusts would have to be swift--and mortal.

The chamber was in an uproar. Kier had struck the three ritual blows of challenge. There could be no reply but combat to the death.

“Where shall it be?” the cyborg asked.

Swords clashed excitedly against armor.

Kier dropped his feathered cape and stood with his hands on his weapons.

“Here. And now,” he said.

The Three Encounters was a form of personal combat reserved to individuals of kingly rank. The challenge was ritually delivered by three blows, and the response was customarily an instant commitment to battle. The form of the battle was established during the early years of the Interregnum and consisted of three stanzas of combat fought with the ceremonial weapons of kingship: the sword, the flail and the dagger. The first two encounters were limited in time to five minutes with a two-minute period for rest and assistance after each. Historians suggest that this peculiarly formalized form of combat derived from the ancient pugilistic battles of the Dawn Age, but this is conjecture. The third, and final, encounter was fought with the dagger and was to the death. Of course, a combatant could be killed at any stage of the fight, and frequently was.

Nv. Julianus Mullerium,
Ritual Combat in the Age of the Star Kings,
middle Second Stellar Empire

Kier’s first warning of the assault was a roar from the assembled warriors.

His sword had only just cleared the scabbard before he saw the cyborg’s blade descending with a shocking accuracy and swiftness. He caught the blow on the flat of his own sword and felt the stunning force of it run through his arm and body.

In the next instant, he was fighting for his life.

The cyborg fought with a cold dispassion and efficiency that would, in other circumstances, have filled Kier with admiration. It was as though a superior master-at-arms were conducting a class in the precise use of weapons. Each move was exactly as a hundred years and more of fencing masters had written it. Thrust, parry, and riposte followed in a classic, perfectly executed sequence. But each move was backed by a force and agility Kier had not imagined possible.

Within moments, the Rhad was drenched with sweat and aching with the impact of blow on blow that set god-metal ringing.

Tallan, fighting without a helmet, seemed to loom before him like a monstrous wall of spiked force. Each attack Kier was able to launch was met by a parrying blade and followed instantly by counterattacks delivered in textbook fashion.

Kier could hear the star kings shouting savagely, and he felt the rasp of breath in his throat. He dared not take his eyes from Tallan for the space of an instant.

The clangor of blades filled the room, and gradually Kier became aware that the metallic noise of battle was all that he could hear.

Tallan seemed to sense his growing fatigue, and his attack increased in vigor. Kier could not have said that it increased in fury, for there was a coldness to the battle that was unlike anything he had ever encountered in war.

As the combatants moved about the hall, the crowd of onlookers fell away, and the bloodthirsty shouts died until there seemed to be no one in the hall but the cyborg before Kier.

Kier could feel himself tiring. Each blow caught on his sword seemed to smash through his body like the impact of a battering ram. The cyborg’s calm eyes fixed him, measured him. He felt himself being steadily forced backward, step by step.

Suddenly, there was a ripping pain across his side. He had seen the thrust coming and had not had the strength to parry it completely.
Now,
he thought, as the blood ran hot under his pierced mail shirt,
he’ll finish me.
There was no despair or fear, for the euphoria of battle was upon him, and he had become exalted with the strange mixture of fatalism and joy that filled the Rhad when they did combat.

But the cyborg fought on as before: coldly, methodically. The style and force combined to produce a virtuoso performance with the sword, but there was not the hot drive of human savagery. Kier felt a tingle of desperate hope.

“Enough!” The squat Denebian had stepped between the combatants, signaling the end of the first encounter.

Kier dropped his sword from his aching hand and stood, legs apart, sucking in breath. His side was numb and wet. He would have stumbled but for Cavour and Han the Vykan rushing to his side and guiding him into the ranks of the silent Rhadan party.

Kier could feel Cavour lifting his armor and calling for bandages to stop the blood flowing down his ribs. Nevus said, “The creature is a devil.”

Ariane, her eyes filled with mingled fear and relief, held onto his mailed hand. She asked Cavour, “Is the wound bad?”

“Bad enough,” the warlock replied, working to bind it.

Kier looked at Erit and Gret. The Vulks were strangely silent, unmoving.

“The flail!” the Denebian called. “The encounter of the flail!”

The star kings rumbled. The first stanza of battle had disturbed them, and they could not say how. None had ever seen Tallan of Sarissa fight, and the strange coldness of the engagement troubled them.

Han shook free the chains of the barbed flail and handed the weapon to Kier. His young face was pale. “The Star be with you, Warleader,” he said.

Kier’s fingers closed over the grip of the cruel weapon, and he stepped forward. His side was beginning to stiffen, and he knew that he must press the attack with all his remaining strength or be defeated.

He snapped the chains forward in a low attack, aiming at the hem of Tallan’s mailed shirt. The air hissed with the speed of the barbs, and Kier felt the tips strike home.

The god-metal of the Sarissan’s armor bent and ripped, and the barbs bit into the flesh underneath.

A trickle of pale blood flowed down the cyborg’s thigh. Nothing more. Kier’s hope faltered. The creature hardly bled. A man would have been crippled by such a blow.

The cyborg moved forward, and for a time Kier could only catch the whistling chains again and again on the haft of his own flail as he was once again forced backward steadily, step by step.

The legends of cybs and demons rose in the Rhad’s mind, and he wondered desperately if this cruelly methodical fighting creature before him was not, actually, some devil risen from the dark dead.

His foot struck the base of a stone column, and he twisted to avoid a smashing blow. He could not. The stones beside him took the main force of the stroke, but there was still force enough in it as it caught his chest to drive the breath from him, rip his mailed shirt, and lay his flesh open to the ribs. He heard Ariane’s despairing cry.

On one knee now, he parried a second downstroke with his flail, and the chains became entangled. Tallan snapped his flail away with a swift movement, and Kier drove himself to stand, desperate and unarmed, against the column.

Death seemed but an instant away in the heavy silence of the crowded chamber. Kier’s body seemed on fire with the pain of his wounds, and he watched with stony eyes as Tallan raised his flail for the finishing blow.

“Enough!” Kier could scarcely believe that the second encounter was finished or that Tallan could stop the descending blow in time even if he wished.

But the blow did not fall. Tallan released his grip on the flail and turned away, as coldly as he had begun the combat.

Kier sagged against the column and closed his eyes. Ariane and Cavour were desperately at his side.

Cavour said, in a strangled voice, “King--you cannot win.”

The fatalism of the Rhad, Kier thought ironically. He fought against the blackness that flickered around the edge of his vision. It was as though inevitable death were stalking him.

He sank to the floor and rested against the column while Cavour worked feverishly on him.

Kier signaled the Denebian to him, and when the scarred face was near his, he said, “If I lose the next encounter, my people are to return to Rhada. They will not fight against you.”

“That will not be enough for the Sarissan,” the Denebian said.

“At least promise me that my aides will be sent home.” Kier touched Han the Vykan’s shoulder and Ariane’s masked face. “The rest can stand hostage.”

Ariane started to speak, but Kier pressed her shoulder with the last of his failing strength.

“That much I can promise, I think,” the Denebian said somberly.

Kier closed his eyes and let his helmet fall to the flagstones.

He felt a warm presence.

Gret was at his side, Erit behind him. It seemed to Kier that Gret was speaking; yet the Vulk’s thin lips did not move, and it seemed that time had slowed, almost stopped. The people around him, Ariane, Han, Cavour, Nevus--all seemed frozen, scarcely moving.

King--do not be afraid.

It was Gret. The mind-touch. Never before had Kier felt it so strongly. It had form and clear reality, a great, soothing warmth.

I could not do this alone. Erit is with us.

Kier nodded drowsily.

We can help you.

Yes,
Kier thought.