Traitor's Sun (74 page)

A slow grin began to grow. He turned and started down the hill, toward the encampment where the techs had set up their equipment. He knew what he had to do now, and it was so obvious and so simple that he could hardly believe it had taken him so long to think of it. To hell with all of them, Granfell and Belfontaine—he was going to take care of Mother Vancof’s little boy.

Halfway down the hill, he saw Miles Granfell climbing toward him, and he smiled to himself. The fool had no idea that Belfontaine had ordered him to kill Granfell, and the man was going to make it easy. His miserable luck was changing at last.

“I was coming to get you,” Granfell told him as he drew near. With a nod, Vancof moved down the hill a few feet more, and then, without a wasted movement, he plunged a knife into Granfell’s throat, using the incline of the slope to compensate for the other man’s greater height. He glimpsed a flicker of surprise in the gray eyes, and there was a spasm of movement from his hands. A bubbling gurgle came from the gaping mouth as blood gushed from the wound and spilled down onto his garment. Then Granfell’s knees buckled, and he went down, sliding down the hill until his body encountered a tree.

Vancof walked over to the corpse, bent down to make certain the bastard was really dead, and yanked out the knife. He wiped the blade on Granfell’s tunic, and kicked the dead man’s torso for good measure. Then he strolled away, whistling under his breath.

A few minutes later he reached the encampment and looked around casually, as if he did not have a care in the world. Most of the troops were already in position, and the only people he saw were a few techs waiting for something to happen. They paid no attention when he strolled toward the two heavy flyers that had ferried them down from the Hellers the night before.

He entered the unguarded door of the closest one, pressed the button to close it behind him, and walked toward the controls. It took no more than a few seconds to sit down and punch the controls into life—the machine was easy to operate and he had flown them before. The engine hummed as he set the coordinates for the spaceport in Thendara.

Vancof heard a dull thump against the closed door of the vehicle, and, very faintly, a shout. Then the flyer lifted effortlessly off the ground and he was aloft, soaring over the trees. He had a last glimpse of the encampment, and of the funeral train stretched along the road. For a second he thought he saw something explode on the road, and wondered what was happening. He gave a shrug and sped away into the air.

Marguerida heard Danilo exclaim beside her. She saw he was pointing into the sky and she saw the shimmering outline of a flyer for a moment, rising above the trees. Almost before she had time to wonder if they were going to be assaulted from above, she heard the howl of voices, and a group of men burst out of the trees ahead of her. They were dressed in Darkovan clothing, muted brown or green tunics, their faces concealed under scarves. They charged into the foremost Guardsmen, swinging thick sticks at the legs of the horses.

But the Guards did not lose control. Instead, they pulled their mounts together, using them as both a defense and an offense. The horses reared and kicked out at the attackers, and at the same time their large bodies protected their riders for a few moments. The Guardsmen began to wield their swords and spears efficiently, cutting at heads and shoulders. There was the twang of bowstrings, and a flight of arrows arced into the trees. From the cries, several found their marks.

Clever, she thought, as she yanked her hand free of her riding glove, then pulled the silken mitt beneath it away. It was almost exactly what real bandits would have done, if they were on foot against men on horses. Behind her she could hear shouting, as the drivers of the wagons and carriages pulled their vehicles into defensive positions around the horse-drawn hearse which bore the body of Regis Hastur and the coaches containing the noncombatants. At the rear of the train, the doors of several carriages opened, and the men who had hidden within them, waiting for just this moment, bolted out.

A second rush of attackers surged from beneath the trees, and she could hear the shrieking of frightened horses. Marguerida extended her hand, palm upward, rejecting the panic that threatened to seize her, and saw Mikhail’s ungloved hand steady above it. As her matrix grounded and supported his, there was no doubt, no hesitation, nothing but a sureness of purpose that calmed her instantly and filled her with an almost euphoric bond of unity as they began to build the wonderful cone of power that only they could create between them.

Light burst from the gleaming jewel on Mikhail’s hand, rising up toward the clouded sky, surrounding her, then widening into a globe of shimmering energy that would protect them, the body of Regis, and those in the guarded coaches. Marguerida slipped into the sensation of completeness that was the joining of her power with that of Mikhail, all the love that they had given one another over the years poured into a single certainty.

She caught fragments of thought as if from a great distance, but the terror within them barely reached her. It was just a jumble of energy, and Marguerida saw it as a whirl of colors, sickly yellows and greens.

The thick sticks fell to the ground, and swords were cast down. The Guardsmen seized the moment and charged the momentarily paralyzed men, and slew a few before stubby metal objects appeared from beneath the muffling garments. There was a bright flash from one then, and a Guardsman fell back with a large hole in his chest. His horse reared and kicked at the attacker, and there was another blast, catching the mount in the muzzle. It fell on the enemy as it died, its weight pinning the man to the earth, while he screamed with fury.

Mikhail drove his thoughts through his matrix, drawing on Marguerida’s supportive energy. A broad beam of light snapped from the blinding facets, wove out from the protective bubble, and fanned across the oncoming fighters. Guardsmen yanked their horses aside, for Mikhail’s weapon could not distinguish friend from foe, and they had been forewarned. It flickered into the cluster of now firing troopers like lightning, searing the men so quickly they could not think to escape its scorching touch.

Everything seemed to slow to a crawl, and all Marguerida could do was endure the hideous vision that opened before her eyes. The dull metal weapons disintegrated, and then the men who held them seemed to . . . fall to pieces. Mikhail had reversed his healing ability, and now he was undoing the very sinews of the enemy. Blood flowed from every bodily orifice, as torsos collapsed in on themselves, the ground was a river of blood as men turned to ghouls then to corpses in a matter of moments.

There was confusion everywhere now, with the Guardsmen desperately scrambling to get out of the reach of Mikhail’s deadly energy, and those who remained of the first attackers running blindly in every direction. The men who had only started to emerge from the cover of the trees were caught unprepared, and had no time to save themselves. The baleful light from Mikhail’s hand spread across the thicket, blasting everything it touched. The conifers went up like torches, and the smell of burned flesh mingled with the hot tree resin, as the ground turned from red to black with bloody ash. Those few more fortunate foes who were beyond the range of this destruction were being ridden down by the Guardsmen.

Fire began to leap from tree to tree now, the rich sap of the evergreens feeding its hunger, adding to the confusion. Now Marguerida could clearly hear screams of pain and fear, and they made her sick. But she did not waver, and neither did Mikhail. Instead, she sensed him guide his horse to one side, and she turned with him, so that his destruction began to work its way down the side of the road toward the back of the train. She tried not to think of the rear of the caravan, where there was no protection for the fighters and the Renunciates. She knew that there were people back there who were dying in the service of the Hasturs. Swords were little use against blasters, but she felt them bravely fighting on regardless.

The sound of the battle began to change, and, as if from a great distance, Marguerida realized that what remained of the enemy had only one thought in its communal awareness—
get away!
Neither she nor Mikhail had imagined how terrifying the manifestation of their power would be to the Federation troops. She heard the occasional sizzle of blaster fire, here and there, between the burning trees, but even as she listened, it became less frequent.

The battle at the front of the train was over almost before it began. A few more were caught in the continuing energy of Mikhail’s matrix. Those who escaped it were hacked down by the guardsmen, or were trapped by the fire. She could hear their mental chorus of despair and disbelief as they perished. These men were stunned by the turn of events, humbled even as they died.

From within the smoke and flames Marguerida saw a mounted man, riding toward the fight, his face still concealed. She sensed his mind, his purpose, and worse, his fatality. It was only for a moment, and she wondered if he would turn away. Instead, he rode directly into the glare of Mikhail’s destruction, raising a gloved hand in a kind of salute as he turned to ash. There was a last thought, strong enough to penetrate her senses even in the chaos.
At least an honorable death.

Mikhail moved his hand slightly, and the protective shield around them started to diminish. Marguerida felt the withdrawal of energy, the painful loss of the tremendous intimacy that they had shared during the brief battle, and then only her own weariness. She closed her eyes, focused on clearing her channels, and slowly felt the exhaustion drop away, to be replaced by ravenous hunger of a sort she had not experienced in years. Then, before she was prepared for it, the shock and grief struck her. So many good men had died in the short minutes of the battle, and more were going to.

Without a word, she pushed aside the emotion, and saw that Mikhail was dismounting, followed by Donal, who was ghastly pale. Two Guardsmen protested this action, but Mikhail was already walking toward the slumped bodies of those who had been outside the circle of his protection. He bent over a fallen Guard, then knelt on the ground beside him, while Donal hovered at his back, vigilant even in his slowly diminishing terror.

The movement of a horse alongside her as she began to swing out of the saddle to join Mikhail seemed perfectly normal, and Marguerida barely noticed it. Then she realized that Francisco Ridenow was riding toward Mikhail, lifting his sword, a look of hatred on his pale face. Donal started to turn at the sound of hooves behind him, but not quickly enough. In a second he was down on the ground, trying to avoid being trampled.

Before she could move, or even try to use the Command Voice to stop Francisco’s attack, Marguerida saw another movement from the corner of her eye. Rafael Hastur’s horse thundered forward and he brought the hilt of his sword down on the head of the Ridenow lord so hard there was an audible crack. The man swayed in his saddle, clutching at the pommel with his free hand, then swung around to bring the blade of his sword down on the neck of Rafael’s horse, missing the rider’s knee by a few inches. The horse shied and screamed, beginning to fall.

Donal scrambled to his feet, his face dripping blood. She saw the young paxman brush his eyes clean, and then he drove his sword into Francisco’s thigh, screaming, “You traitorous bastard!”

Then a half dozen Guardsmen surrounded
Dom
Francisco, and one of them knocked him out of the saddle. He lay unconscious, blood spilling from his leg, and Donal, furious and swaying, raised his weapon to finish what he had begun.

“No!” The word sprang from Marguerida’s mouth without thought.

Donal hesitated, and one of the Guardsmen dismounted quickly and bent over the fallen lord. He looked up at her. “You want him alive,
domna,
or should we let him bleed to death?”

Mikhail pushed between Donal and the Guardsman, his face grim and pale. He studied Francisco for a moment, then knelt down beside him. Without a word, he placed his hand above the wound, the light glittering from the facets of his ring in the red light from the fire behind him. Within the space of a few seconds the bleeding had begun to slow. “I want him alive,” he told the Guard. “Death is too easy an escape.”

“If you say so,
vai dom,
if you say so.” The Guard seemed disappointed.

Marguerida looked down at Francisco, and the entire scene became surreal, as if she could not really grasp what had just happened. Kate had been right. As she tried to grapple with her inner confusion, she felt an agitation bloom at the edge of her mind. It was faint at first, and then it penetrated the cloudiness within her. She turned and stared toward the back of the funeral train, toward the carriages, and felt her heart tighten terribly. She could see movement, the rush of fighters back and forth, punctuated by the occasional wild flare of blaster fire. A clutch of fear seized her guts, twisting them.