IV

They halted under the colonnade; beyond, the lower main terrace was

crowded, and a medley of old love songs was wafting from the sound

outlets, for the sixth or eighth time around. He looked at his

watch; it was ninety seconds later than the last time he had done

so. Give it fifteen more minutes to get started, and another fifteen

to get away after the marriage toasts and the felicitations. And

no marriage, however pompous, lasted more than half an hour. An

hour, then, till he and Elaine would be in the aircar, bulleting

toward Traskon.

The love songs stopped abruptly; after a momentary silence, a

trumpet, considerably amplified, blared; the "Ducal Salute." The

crowd stopped shifting, the buzz of voices ceased. At the head of

the landing-stage escalators there was a glow of color and the ducal

party began moving down. A platoon of guards in red and yellow, with

gilded helmets and tasseled halberds. An esquire bearing the Sword

of State. Duke Angus, with his council, Otto Harkaman among them;

the Duchess Flavia and her companion-ladies. The household gentlemen,

and their ladies. More guardsmen. There was a great burst of cheering;

the news-service aircars got into position above the procession.

Cousin Nikkolay and a few others stepped out from between the pillars

into the sunlight; there was a similar movement at the other side of

the terrace. The ducal party reached the end of the central walkway,

halted and deployed.

"All right; let's shove off," Cousin Nikkolay said, stepping forward.

Ten minutes since they had come outside; another five to get into

position. Fifty minutes, now, till he and Elaine--Lady Elaine Trask

of Traskon, for real and for always--would be going home.

"Sure the car's ready?" he asked, for the hundredth time.

His cousin assured him that it was. Figures in Karvall black and

flame-yellow appeared across the terrace. The music began again,

this time the stately "Nobles' Wedding March," arrogant and at

the same time tender. Sesar Karvall's gentleman-secretary, and

the Karvall lawyer; executives of the steel mills, the Karvall

guard-captain. Sesar himself, with Elaine on his arm; she was

wearing a shawl of black and yellow. He looked around in sudden

fright; "For the love of Satan, where's our shawl?" he demanded, and

then relaxed when one of his gentlemen exhibited it, green and tawny

in Traskon colors. The bridesmaids, led by Lady Lavina Karvall.

Finally they halted, ten yards apart, in front of the Duke.

* * * * *

"Who approaches us?" Duke Angus asked of his guard-captain.

He had a thin, pointed face, almost femininely sensitive, and a

small pointed beard. He was bareheaded except for the narrow golden

circlet which he spent most of his waking time scheming to convert

into a royal crown. The guard-captain repeated the question.

"I am Sir Nikkolay Trask; I bring my cousin and liege-lord,

Lucas, Lord Trask, Baron of Traskon. He comes to receive the

Lady-Demoiselle Elaine, daughter of Lord Sesar Karvall, Baron

of Karvall mills, and the sanction of your Grace to the marriage

between them."

Sir Maxamon Zhorgay, Sesar Karvall's henchman, named himself and

his lord; they brought the Lady-Demoiselle Elaine to be wed to

Lord Trask of Traskon. The Duke, satisfied that these were persons

whom he could address directly, asked if the terms of the

marriage-agreement had been reached; both parties affirmed this.

Sir Maxamon passed a scroll to the Duke; Duke Angus began to read

the stiff and precise legal phraseology.

Marriages between noble houses were not matters to be left open

to dispute; a great deal of spilled blood and burned powder had

resulted from ambiguity on some point of succession or inheritance

or dower rights. Lucas bore it patiently; he didn't want his

great-grandchildren and Elaine's shooting it out over a matter

of a misplaced comma.

"And these persons here before us do enter into this marriage

freely?" the Duke asked, when the reading had ended. He stepped

forward as he spoke, and his esquire gave him the two-hand Sword of

State, heavy enough to behead a bisonoid. Trask stepped forward;

Sesar Karvall brought Elaine up. The lawyers and henchmen obliqued

off to the sides. "How say you, Lord Trask?" he asked, almost

conversationally.

"With all my heart, your Grace."

"And you, Lady-Demoiselle Elaine?"

"It is my dearest wish, your Grace."

The Duke took the sword by the blade and extended it; they laid

their hands on the jeweled pommel.

"And do you, and your houses, avow us, Angus, Duke of Wardshaven,

to be your sovereign prince, and pledge fealty to us and to our

legitimate and lawful successors?"

"We do." Not only he and Elaine, but all around them, and all the

throng in the gardens, answered, the spectators in shouts. Very

clearly, above it all, somebody, with more enthusiasm than

discretion, was bawling: "_Long live Angus the First of Gram!_"

"And we, Angus, do confer upon you two, and your houses, the right

to wear our badge as you see fit, and pledge ourself to maintain

your rights against any and all who may presume to invade them. And

we declare that this marriage between you two, and this agreement

between your respective houses, does please us, and we avow you two,

Lucas and Elaine, to be lawfully wed, and who so questions this

marriage challenges us, in our teeth and to our despite."

That wasn't exactly the wording used by a ducal lord on Gram. It was

the formula employed by a planetary king, like Napolyon of Flamberge

or Rodolf of Excalibur. And, now that he thought of it, Angus had

consistently used the royal first-person plural. Maybe that fellow

who had shouted about Angus the First of Gram had only been doing

what he'd been paid to do. This was being telecast, and Omfray of

Glaspyth and Ridgerd of Didreksburg would both be listening; as of

now, they'd start hiring mercenaries. Maybe that would get rid of

Dunnan for him.

The Duke gave the two-hand sword back to his esquire. The young

knight who was carrying the green and tawny shawl handed it to him,

and Elaine dropped the black and yellow one from her shoulders,

the only time a respectable woman ever did that in public, and her

mother caught and folded it. He stepped forward and draped the Trask

colors over her shoulders, and then took her in his arms. The

cheering broke out again, and some of Sesar Karvall's guardsmen

began firing a pom-pom somewhere.

* * * * *

It took a little longer than he had expected to finish with the

toasts and shake hands with those who crowded around. Finally, the

exit march started, down the long walkway to the landing stage,

and the Duke and his party moved away to the rear to prepare for

the wedding feast at which everybody but the bride and groom would

celebrate. One of the bridesmaids gave Elaine a huge sheaf of

flowers, which she was to toss back from the escalator; she held it

in the crook of one arm and clung to his with the other.

"Darling; we really made it!" she was whispering, as though it were

too wonderful to believe.

Well, wasn't it?

One of the news cars--orange and blue, that was Westlands Telecast

& Teleprint--had floated just ahead of them and was letting down

toward the landing stage. For a moment, he was angry; that went

beyond the outer-orbit limits of journalistic propriety, even for

Westlands T & T. Then he laughed; today he was too happy for anger

about anything. At the foot of the escalator, Elaine kicked off her

gilded slippers--there was another pair in the car; he'd seen to

that personally--and they stepped onto the escalator and turned

about. The bridesmaids rushed forward, and began struggling for the

slippers, to the damage and disarray of their gowns, and when they

were half way up, Elaine heaved the bouquet and it burst apart among

them like a bomb of colored fragrance, and the girls below snatched

at the flowers, shrieking deliriously. Elaine stood, blowing kisses

to everybody, and he was shaking his clasped hands over his head,

until they were at the top.

When they turned and stepped off, the orange and blue aircar had

let down directly in front of them, blocking their way. Now he was

really furious, and started forward with a curse. Then he saw who

was in the car.

Andray Dunnan, his thin face contorted and the narrow mustache

writhing on his upper lip; he had a slit beside the window open

and was tilting the barrel of a submachine gun up and out of it.

He shouted, and at the same time tripped Elaine and flung her down.

He was throwing himself forward to cover her when there was a

blasting multiple report. Something sledged him in the chest;

his right leg crumpled under him. He fell--

He fell and fell and fell, endlessly, through darkness, out of

consciousness.

V

He was crucified, and crowned with a crown of thorns. Who had they

done that to? Somebody long ago, on Terra. His arms were drawn out

stiffly, and hurt; his feet and legs hurt, too, and he couldn't move

them, and there was this prickling at his brow. And he was blind.

[Illustration]

No; his eyes were just closed. He opened them, and there was a white

wall in front of him, patterned with a blue snow-crystal design, and

he realized that it was a ceiling and that he was lying on his back.

He couldn't move his head, but by shifting his eyes he saw that he

was completely naked and surrounded by a tangle of tubes and wires,

which puzzled him briefly. Then he knew that he was not on a bed,

but on a robomedic, and the tubes would be for medication and

wound drainage and intravenous feeding, and the wires would be

to electrodes imbedded in his body for diagnosis, and the

crown-of-thorns thing would be more electrodes for an encephalograph.

He'd been on one of those robomedics before, when he had been gored

by a bisonoid on the cattle range.

[Illustration]

That was what it was; he was still under treatment. But that seemed

so long ago; so many things--he must have dreamed them--seemed to

have happened.

Then he remembered, and struggled futilely to rise.

"Elaine!" he called. "Elaine, where are you?"

There was a stir and somebody came into his limited view; his

cousin, Nikkolay Trask.

"Nikkolay; Andray Dunnan," he said. "What happened to Elaine?"

Nikkolay winced, as though something he had expected to hurt had

hurt worse than he had expected.

"Lucas." He swallowed. "Elaine ... Elaine is dead."

Elaine is dead. That didn't make sense.

"She was killed instantly, Lucas. Hit six times; I don't think

she even felt the first one. She didn't suffer at all."

Somebody moaned, and then he realized that it had been himself.

"You were hit twice," Nikkolay was telling him. "One in the leg;

smashed the femur. And one in the chest. That one missed your heart

by an inch."

"Pity it did." He was beginning to remember clearly, now. "I threw

her down, and tried to cover her. I must have thrown her straight

into the burst and only caught the last of it myself." There was

something else; oh, yes. "Dunnan. Did they get him?"

Nikkolay shook his head. "He got away. Stole the _Enterprise_ and

took her off-planet."

"I want to get him myself."

He started to rise again; Nikkolay nodded to someone out of sight.

A cool hand touched his chin, and he smelled a woman's perfume,

nothing at all like Elaine's. Something like a small insect bit

him on the neck. The room grew dark.

Elaine was dead. There was no more Elaine, nowhere at all. Why,

that must mean there was no more world. So that was why it had

gotten so dark.

He woke again, fitfully, and it would be daylight and he could see

the yellow sky through an open window or it would be night and the

wall-lights would be on. There would always be somebody with him.

Nikkolay's wife, Dame Cecelia; Rovard Grauffis; Lady Lavina

Karvall--he must have slept a long time, for she was so much older

than he remembered--and her brother, Burt Sandrasan. And a woman

with dark hair, in a white smock with a gold caduceus on her breast.

Once, Duchess Flavia, and once Duke Angus himself. He asked where

he was, not much caring. They told him, at the Ducal Palace.

He wished they'd all go away, and let him go wherever Elaine was.

Then it would be dark, and he would be trying to find her, because

there was something he wanted desperately to show her. Stars in the

sky at night, that was it. But there were no stars, there was no

Elaine, there was no anything, and he wished that there was no

Lucas Trask, either.

But there was an Andray Dunnan. He could see him standing

black-cloaked on the terrace, the diamonds in his beret-jewel

glittering evilly; he could see the mad face peering at him over

the rising barrel of the submachine gun. And then he would hunt

for him without finding him, through the cold darkness of space.

The waking periods grew longer, and during them his mind was clear.

They relieved him of his crown of electronic thorns. The feeding

tubes came out, and they gave him cups of broth and fruit juice.

He wanted to know why he had been brought to the Palace.

"About the only thing we could do," Rovard Grauffis told him.

"They had too much trouble at Karvall House as it was. You know,

Sesar got shot, too."

"No." So that was why Sesar hadn't come to see him. "Was he killed?"

"Wounded; he's in worse shape than you are. When the shooting

started, he went charging up the escalator. Didn't have anything

but his dress-dagger. Dunnan gave him a quick burst; I think that

was why he didn't have time to finish you off. By that time, the

guards who'd been shooting blanks from that rapid-fire gun got in

a clip of live rounds and fired at him. He got out of there as fast

as he could. They have Sesar on a robomedic like yours. He isn't

in any danger."

The drainage tubes and medication tubes came out; the tangle of

wires around him was removed, and the electrodes with them. They

bandaged his wounds and dressed him in a loose robe and lifted him

from the robomedic to a couch, where he could sit up when he wished;

they began giving him solid food, and wine to drink, and allowed him

to smoke. The woman doctor told him he'd had a bad time, as though

he didn't know that. He wondered if she expected him to thank her

for keeping him alive.

"You'll be up and around in a few weeks," his cousin added. "I've

seen to it that everything at Traskon New House will be ready for

you by then."

"I'll never enter that house as long as I live, and I wish that

wouldn't be more than the next minute. That was to be Elaine's

house. I won't go to it alone."

* * * * *

The dreams troubled his sleep less and less as he grew stronger.

Visitors came often, bringing amusing little gifts, and he found

that he enjoyed their company. He wanted to know what had really

happened, and how Dunnan had gotten away.

"He pirated the _Enterprise_," Rovard Grauffis told him. "He had

that company of mercenaries of his, and he'd bribed some of the

people at the Gorram shipyards. I thought Alex would kill his chief

of security when he found out what had happened. We can't prove

anything--we're trying hard enough to--but we're sure Omfray of

Glaspyth furnished the money. He's been denying it just a shade

too emphatically."

"Then the whole thing was planned in advance."

"Taking the ship was; he must have been planning that for months;

before he started recruiting that company. I think he meant to do

it the night before the wedding. Then he tried to persuade the

Lady-Demoiselle Elaine to elope with him--he seems to have actually

thought that was possible--and when she humiliated him, he decided

to kill both of you first." He turned to Otto Harkaman, who had

accompanied him. "As long as I live, I'll regret not taking you

at your word and accepting your offer, then."

"How did he get hold of that Westlands Telecast and Teleprint car?"

"Oh. The morning of the wedding, he screened Westlands editorial

office and told them he had the inside story on the marriage and

why the Duke was sponsoring it. Made it sound as though there was

some scandal; insisted that a reporter come to Dunnan House for a

face-to-face interview. They sent a man, and that was the last they

saw him alive; our people found his body at Dunnan House when we

were searching the place afterward. We found the car at the

shipyard; it had taken a couple of hits from the guns at Karvall

House, but you know what these press cars are built to stand. He

went directly to the shipyard, where his men already had the

_Enterprise_; as soon as he arrived, she lifted out."

He stared at the cigarette between his fingers. It was almost

short enough to burn him. With an effort, he leaned forward to

crush it out.

"Rovard, how soon will that second ship be finished?"

Grauffis laughed bitterly. "Building the _Enterprise_ took

everything we had. The duchy's on the edge of bankruptcy now. We

stopped work on the second ship six months ago because we didn't

have enough money to keep on with her and still get the _Enterprise_

finished. We were expecting the _Enterprise_ to make enough in the

Old Federation to finish the second one. Then, with two ships and

a base on Tanith, the money would begin coming in instead of going

out. But now--"

"It leaves me where I was on Flamberge," Harkaman added. "Worse.

King Napolyon was going to help the Elmersans, and I'd have gotten

a command in that. It's too late for that now."

He picked up his cane and used it to push himself to his feet.

The broken leg had mended, but he was still weak. He took a few

tottering steps, paused to lean on the cane, and then forced

himself on to the open window and stood for a moment staring out.

Then he turned.

"Captain Harkaman, it might be that you could still get a command,

here on Gram. That's if you don't mind commanding under me as

owner-aboard. I am going hunting for Andray Dunnan."

They both looked at him. After a moment, Harkaman said:

"I'd count it an honor, Lord Trask. But where will you get a ship?"

"She's half finished now. You already have a crew for her. Duke

Angus can finish her for me, and pay for it by pledging his new

barony of Traskon."

He had known Rovard Grauffis all his life; until this moment,

he had never seen Duke Angus' henchman show surprise.

"You mean, you'll trade Traskon for that ship?" he demanded.

"Finished, equipped and ready for space, yes."

"The Duke will agree to that," Grauffis said promptly. "But, Lucas;

Traskon is all you own."

"If I have a ship, I won't need them. I am turning Space Viking."

That brought Harkaman to his feet with a roar of approval. Grauffis

looked at him, his mouth slightly open.

"Lucas Trask--Space Viking," he said. "Now I've heard everything."

Well, why not? He had deplored the effects of Viking raiding on

the Sword-Worlds, because Gram was a Sword-World, and Traskon was

on Gram, and Traskon was to have been the home where he and Elaine

would live and where their children and children's children would

be born and live. Now the little point on which all of it had

rested was gone.

"That was another Lucas Trask, Rovard. He's dead, now."