Traitor's Sun (75 page)

Domenic!
Mikhail’s head snapped toward her, and then she started to run through the milling horses and men, past the great flat wagon where the body of Regis Hastur lay in his coffin. A broad chest rose before her eyes, clad in the blue of the Hastur Guards, and she pushed her right hand into it and shoved with all her weight. Despite his greater heft, the man went down on his bottom into the dirt, making a noise as the air was knocked out of him. Behind her, she could sense Mikhail following, and several others trying to make certain he was safe.

Her mouth was dry, and her blood was hammering in her veins so loudly she barely heard the shouts around her. All she could think of was to get to her son as quickly as possible.

By the time she reached the carriage, she was gasping for breath. The door was open, and a pair of legs hung down to the ground. Marguerida moved around the door and peered inside. Domenic looked back at her, his eyes very wide and his face a sickly white. In his hand there was a short dagger, smeared with blood. The torso and head of a man lay sprawled at Nico’s knees, a wound in his thick neck. Katherine was shrunk back into the far corner and Herm was trying to staunch a flow of blood from his left shoulder.

“He didn’t think a boy was any danger,” Nico muttered dazedly, and then vomited up the excellent lunch he had eaten an hour or so before onto the bloody floorboards. The dagger slipped from his fingers and Marguerida swept him into her arms, hugging him fiercely.

Katherine slid across the bench toward her husband. With a sharp movement, she yanked the undersleeve from her chemise, pulling like a madwoman until the stitches gave way. She dragged the torn sleeve out from beneath her tunic and tied it above the wound as fast and tightly as she could, swearing and crying at the same time. Herm was only half conscious, but he kept muttering that he was all right.

Marguerida swallowed hard, assured herself quickly that her son had come to no physical harm, and crawled onto the back of the dead man, her knees pressing against the still warm flesh beneath the clothes. “Here, let me help, Kate.”

“What can you do?” shrilled the other woman, appealing to her with stricken eyes.

“You would be surprised,” she answered, calmness claiming her so suddenly she wondered where her fear had gone. The makeshift tourniquet had slowed the flow of blood, but Herm’s arm was a gory, terrible sight. “Get out of my way!”

Katherine stared at her for a moment, looked as if she would not move, then drew back. Marguerida leaned toward Herm, lifted her still bare left hand, and closed her eyes. By Aldones, she was tired! It felt like an eternity before she could locate the vessels that had been damaged. The cut had missed the artery by no more than a breath, but the wound was bleeding badly.

“What are you doing?” Kate shouted, frightened and furious at the same time.

“Let her be,” Domenic yelled back, then spewed again.

“It is all right, Kate,” came Mikhail’s voice from behind Marguerida. She knew he was standing at the open door of the carriage now, and she felt his weariness as well as her own.

Marguerida tried to close her mind to the sounds around her, the braying of the frenzied mules, the shouts of Guardsmen and Renunciates. That was easier that shutting out Katherine’s panic, Nico’s horror, and her husband’s concern. It seemed to take forever, but at last she managed to focus on nothing but Hermes-Gabriel Aldaran, and for a time, she was isolated with him. She lifted her matrixed palm and moved it across the severed flesh, cauterizing the wound. Momentarily she felt herself falter, and then felt Mikhail support her until she had the strength to complete the task at hand. It would need to be cleansed and sutured, but for now she had stopped the bleeding.

Marguerida finally realized she was kneeling on a corpse, and she drew herself onto the bench beside her son. Her face was covered with sweat, and her hands were trembling. She drew her sleeve across her brow, and caught a whiff of her own fear-charged sweat and the blood on her hands. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Katherine was staring at her, her own hands covered with Herm’s blood, her skin a shade of white Marguerida had never seen before. “He will be all right, Kate, until a healer can clean him up,” she managed to croak.

She was too tired to move, but the noisome atmosphere of the carriage was nearly unbearable. She wanted to get out of the carriage more than anything, but her body refused to move. Then Marguerida saw a pair of strong hands grasp the heels of the dead man still lying on the floorboards, covered with vomit and blood. They yanked hard, and the corpse began to move away. There was a dull, sickening sound as the body hit the earth, and she felt her gorge rise. She swallowed hard, forcing her lunch to stay in her belly, as the door on the opposite side of the carriage was pulled open.

She saw a Guardsman and one of the Renunciates there, eyes anxious. She heard the sound of the dead body being dragged aside, and then Mikhail leaned inside. Herm groaned and opened his eyes slowly. He tried to lean forward and gave a gasp of pain. Katherine leaned forward and put her bloodied hands under his arms, supporting him as much as she could.

“Get him out and bring a stretcher,” Mikhail ordered the Guard on the other side of the vehicle. “Lady Katherine, you might get down now, so it will be easier to reach Herm.” When she did not move, he spoke more sharply. “Ease him back onto the bench and get out!”

She stared at him dumbfounded, and then she slowly moved her husband against the seat and clambered down. “I am never going to get into a carriage again! Never!” Then she started sobbing.

The carriage rocked as the Guardsman climbed in, and the Renunciate reached over and took Herm’s upper body. It took only a few seconds to remove him from the close quarters, but it seemed a very long time to Marguerida, still sitting on the bench, too tired to stir.

“Don’t worry, Mother. That’s Danila, and Aunt Rafi says she is a good healer.” Domenic gave a rather hysterical laugh. “She’s been wanting to get her hands on Uncle Herm for days now. Come on. Let’s get out, too. Here, I’ll help you.”

A hand grasped hers, and then a slender arm encircled her waist. Marguerida smelled her son’s flesh as he pulled her against him, the filthy odor of his breath so near her face nearly oversetting her again. Beneath that the scents of fear and sweat were mingled with woodsmoke and the faintest hint of mountain lavender in the fabric of his clothing. For the first time in her life, she leaned on her firstborn and allowed him to help her to her feet. He was safe, and that was all that really mattered.

Once they were out of the carriage, Domenic did not release his hold on her, but kept his arm around her, as if he knew she would collapse if he let go. Then Mikhail swept both of them into his arms, and she leaned her head against his broad shoulder. The three of them stood there, surrounded by armed men, and the cries of the injured. Something was missing, and after a moment of flogging her tired brain, Marguerida realized that the sound of blaster fire was gone.

Reluctantly, Mikhail released her. “How did that man get into the carriage?” he demanded, his voice angry but sure.

“He broke through our ranks and then fell to the ground,
vai dom
. We . . . I thought he was dead, and there was so much going on. . . .”

“I see,” Mikhail answered, unconsciously mimicking a tone that Regis had used when he was displeased. He glanced around at the bodies of both Terranan and Darkovans that were scattered across the ground. “He was a bit cleverer than his friends. Are you all right now,
caria
?” There was a curt quality to his voice, one she had never heard him use before, and she gave him a sharp look. Then she realized that he was holding himself together by will alone, and that he needed her to be strong.

“Yes, Mik, I am better now.” She lied, and knew it. He probably knew it as well, but he just nodded and gave her a firm squeeze on the shoulder. Nico was still beside her, his arm around her waist, and she looked into his face. It was the same familiar one she knew so well, but he was not the same person who had greeted her a few hours before in Carcosa. The boy was gone forever. Now he was a man. She felt grief, a stab of loss, for a moment, and wished she could call back the innocent child she loved. But it was too late for that.

The sky overhead went dark, and Marguerida looked up, to find the sun shadowed by great black clouds. The wind quickened, gusting around them, fanning the flames on the hillside. Something darker than the clouds came out of the sky, a jagged mass of movement. Carrion crows, a flock of hundreds of the birds, swooped down from the heavens, drawn by the smell of blood and death from who knew where. One, bolder than the rest, hopped down onto the body of the man that Nico had killed and darted a sharp beak into the soft flesh of the face.

Then the storm hit, and rain began to sweep across the devastation on the road and the hillside beyond it. The wind drove the rain against her skin, and she was drenched almost at once. It moved quickly, the wind pushing the torrent forward in a steady line, a downpour that lasted a mercifully brief time before beginning to slacken off. It soaked the burning trees, the dead and the living, washed the blood from the ground, and then scudded away to the east, leaving behind only a few sporadic showers. The fires were out, and a good thing they were, for the survivors had no stamina left to battle a raging forest fire.

“Father, there are still some people up at the top of the hill.”

Mikhail nodded, rain dripping off his face. He turned around and found his brother Rafael and Donal at his back, soaked and silent as shadows. “Rafael, will you take charge of rounding up the survivors? Your Terran is good enough to manage, I think. Get them sorted out as fast as you can. We’ll send them back to Thendara with the wounded.”

“Why don’t we just leave them to die of lung fever?” Rafael Lanart-Hastur was only half jesting. “No, I suppose that would be barbaric.”

“There is still a flyer up there, and if they gather their wits, they can escape,” Nico told his uncle.

“I saw a flyer leave just before the fighting started,” Marguerida said, her voice almost as rough as the caw of the carrion crows that were trying to get at the bodies of the dead.

“That was Vancof, Mother. I caught his thoughts as he took off—he killed Granfell and left for HQ.” Nico shuddered. “What a horrid mind he has.”

Rafael turned and signaled to some of the Guards, then walked away and started up the ruined hillside. The rain had put out the fires, and there were dozens of bodies visible now. Marguerida watched them, remote and unfeeling for a moment.

Marguerida!
The sharp intrusion of Lew Alton was like a slap in the face.
Are you all right?

A great many things happened. Father, but I am too tired to tell you right now.
She tried to order her brain into rational thought.
There will be several carriages of captives and wounded coming into Thendara later. Including Francisco—he tried to kill Mikhail, the damn fool!

Marguerida felt the contact with her father terminate, and turned to her husband. She reached out and slipped her unmatrixed hand through his arm. They stood, shoulder to shoulder in the drizzling rain, silent and lost in their separate thoughts. At last he turned and looked into her face, and she saw a peculiar light in his eyes that had never been there before.

“I never imagined how terrible battle could be,” he said gruffly, as if he was almost ashamed of his feelings. “And I will never forgive the Federation for this cowardly attack.”

Marguerida shook her head. “It wasn’t the Federation, Mik. It was a few men with more ambition than good sense. And speaking of cowardly attacks, let’s not forget
Dom
Francisco.”

He groaned softly, and tears began to trickle from the corners of his eyes. “I can’t bear to think about that betrayal right now!” He swallowed several times, trying to bring himself to speak, as if he could not stand to be silent but had no words. At last he managed, “I never thought I would use my powers . . . the way I did. I turned men into dead things, bare of any dignity. And other men, good men I have known for much of my life, died to keep me alive. I don’t know if I can live with what I did, Marguerida.”

“Mik . . .”

Having begun, Mikhail could not stop the anguished words. “I never really understood why Regis feared me, why my own mother and those others . . . now I do. And it is breaking my heart. I never should have brought . . .”

Marguerida understood, but she knew that she could not let her husband continue in this way. Later, they would both sort out the pain within them, but not now! “Stop it! You did what had to be done, Mikhail.”

“Did I? Did I really? Are you sure I was not just trying to prove myself or some other. . . .”

“Mikhail Hastur—you are a good man and you will make a fine ruler for Darkover, but not if you tear yourself to pieces over things that it is too late to change.”

“Donal was right in the end.” The tears had stopped slipping down his cheeks and he seemed calmer.

Marguerida stared at her husband, bewildered and trying to make sense of his words, her mind confused by his sudden change of mood. “What?”

“Kill them all and let the gods sort it out,” came the voice of the young paxman, still standing nearby. Domenic cast a look of admiration at his kinsman and the start of a grin played across his face.

Mikhail’s shoulders slumped for a second, and then he straightened his spine and looked almost serene, as if he had passed through some inner conflict. “None of us will ever forget this day,” he whispered. “As long as I am alive, I will remember what I did and why—but it hurts,
caria
.”
I am heartsick and tired, but I must not hesitate. I have a world to protect, and I swear that I will do so, no matter how great the cost. I only pray that I am not taking on more than I can endure.