As might be expected, the Beowulfers finished their hypership first.
They had started with everything but a little know-how which had
been quickly learned. Amaterasu had had to begin by creating the
industry they needed to create the industry they needed to build a
ship. The Beowulf ship--she was named _Viking's Gift_--came in on
Tanith five and a half years after the _Nemesis_ and the _Space
Scourge_ had raided Beowulf; her skipper had fought a normal-drive
ship in that battle. Beside plutonium and radioactive isotopes, she
carried a general cargo of the sort of luxury-goods unique to
Beowulf which could always find a market in interstellar trade.
After selling the cargo and depositing the money in the Bank of
Tanith, the skipper of the _Viking's Gift_ wanted to know where
he could find a good planet to raid. They gave him a list, none
too tough but all slightly above the chicken-stealing level, and
another list of planets he was _not_ to raid; planets with which
Tanith was trading.
Six months later they learned that he had showed up on Khepera, with
which they were now trading, and had flooded the market there with
plundered textiles, hardware, ceramics and plastics. He had bought
kregg-meat and hides.
"You see what you did, now?" Harkaman clamored. "You thought you
were making a customer; what you made was a competitor."
"What I made was an ally. If we ever do find Dunnan's planet, we'll
need a fleet to take it. A couple of Beowulf ships would help. You
know them; you fought them, too."
Harkaman had other worries. While cruising in _Corisande II_, he had
come in on Vitharr, one of the planets where Tanith ships traded, to
find it being raided by a Space Viking ship based on Xochitl. He had
fought a short but furious ship-action, battering the invader until
he was glad to hyper out. Then he had gone directly to Xochitl,
arriving on the heels of the ship he had beaten, and had had it out
both with the captain and Prince Viktor, serving them with an
ultimatum to leave Tanith trade-planets alone in the future.
"How did they take it?" Trask asked, when he returned to report.
"Just about the way you would have. Viktor said his people were
Space Vikings, not Gilgameshers. I told him we weren't Gilgameshers,
either, as he'd find out on Xochitl the next time one of his ships
raided one of our planets. Are you going to back me up? Of course,
you can always send Prince Viktor my head, and an apology--"
"If I have to send him anything, I'll send him a sky full of ships
and a planet full of hellburners. You did perfectly right, Otto;
exactly what I'd have done in your place."
There the matter rested. There were no more raids by Xochitl ships
on any of their trade-planets. No mention of the incident was made
in any of the reports sent back to Gram. The Gram situation was
deteriorating rapidly enough. Finally, there was an audiovisual
message from Angus himself; he was seated on his throne, wearing
his crown, and he began speaking from the screen abruptly:
"We, Angus, King of Gram and Tanith, are highly displeased with our
subject, Lucas, Prince and Viceroy of Tanith; we consider ourselves
very badly served by Prince Trask. We therefore command him to return
to Gram, and render to us account of his administration of our colony
and realm of Tanith."
After some hasty preparations, Trask recorded a reply. He was sitting
on a throne, himself, and he wore a crown just as ornate as King Angus',
and robes of white and black Imhotep furs.
"We, Lucas, Prince of Tanith," he began, "are quite willing to
acknowledge the suzerainty of the King of Gram, formerly Duke of
Wardshaven. It is our earnest desire, if possible, to remain at
peace and friendship with the King of Gram, and to carry on trade
relations with him and with his subjects.
"We must, however, reject absolutely any efforts on his part to
dictate the internal policies of our realm of Tanith. It is our
earnest hope,"--dammit, he'd said "earnest," he should have thought
of some other word--"that no act on the part of his Majesty the King
of Gram will create any breach in the friendship existing between
his realm and ours."
* * * * *
Three months later, the next ship, which had left Gram while King
Angus' summons was still in hyperspace, brought Baron Rathmore.
Shaking hands with him as he left the landing craft, Trask wanted to
know if he'd been sent out as the new Viceroy. Rathmore started to
laugh and ended by cursing vilely.
"No. I've come out to offer my sword to the King of Tanith," he said.
"Prince of Tanith, for the time being," Trask corrected. "The sword,
however, is most acceptable. I take it you've had all of our blessed
sovereign you can stomach?"
"Lucas, you have enough ships and men here to take Gram," Rathmore
said. "Proclaim yourself King of Tanith and then lay claim to the
throne of Gram and the whole planet would rise for you."
Rathmore had lowered his voice, but even so the open landing stage
was no place for this sort of talk. He said so, ordered a couple
of the locals to collect Rathmore's luggage, and got him into a
hall-car, taking him down to his living quarters. After they were
in private, Rathmore began again:
"It's more than anybody can stand! There isn't one of the old great
nobility he hasn't alienated, or one of the minor barons, the
landholders and industrialists, the people who were always the
backbone of Gram. And it goes from them down to the commonfolk.
Assessments on the lords, taxes on the people, inflation to meet
the taxes, high prices, debased coinage. Everybody's being beggared
except this rabble of new lords he has around him, and that slut of
a wife and her greedy kinfolk...."
Trask stiffened. "You're not speaking of Queen Flavia, are you?"
he asked softly.
Rathmore's mouth opened slightly. "Great Satan, don't you know? No,
of course not; the news would have come on the same ship I did. Why,
Angus divorced Flavia. He claimed that she was incapable of giving
him an heir to the throne. He remarried immediately."
The girl's name meant nothing to Trask; he did know of her father, a
Baron Valdiva. He was lord of a small estate south of the Ward lands
and west of Newhaven. Most of his people were out-and-out bandits
and cattle-rustlers, and he was as close to being one himself as
he could get.
"Nice family he's married into. A credit to the dignity of the
throne."
"Yes. You wouldn't know this Lady-Demoiselle Evita; she was only
seventeen when you left Gram, and hadn't begun to acquire a
reputation outside her father's lands. She's made up for lost time
since, though. And she has enough uncles and aunts and cousins and
ex-lovers and what-not to fill out an infantry regiment, and every
one of them's at court with both hands out to grab everything they
can."
"How does Duke Joris like this?" The Duke of Bigglersport was Queen
Flavia's brother. "I daresay he's less than delighted."
"He's hiring mercenaries, is what he's doing, and buying combat
contragravity. Lucas, why don't you come back? You have no idea what
a reputation you have on Gram, now. Everybody would rally to you."
He shook his head, "I have a throne, here on Tanith. On Gram I want
nothing. I'm sorry for the way Angus turned out, I thought he'd make
a good King. But since he's made an intolerable King, the lords and
people of Gram will have to get rid of him for themselves. I have my
own tasks, here."
Rathmore shrugged. "I was afraid that would be it," he said. "Well,
I offered my sword; I won't take it back. I can help you in what
you're doing on Tanith."
* * * * *
The captain of the free Space Viking _Damnthing_ was named
Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan, which meant that he was some
Sword-Worlder's acknowledged bastard by a woman of one of the Old
Federation planets. His mother's people could have been Nergalers;
he had coarse black hair, a mahogany-brown skin, and red-brown,
almost maroon, eyes. He tasted the wine the robot poured for him
and expressed appreciation, then began unwrapping the parcel he
had brought in.
"Something I found while raiding on Tetragrammaton," he said.
"I thought you might like to have it. It was made on Gram."
It was an automatic pistol, with a belt and holster. The leather was
bisonoid-hide; the buckle of the belt was an oval enameled with a
crescent, pale blue on black. The pistol was a plain 10-mm military
model with grooved plastic grips; on the receiver it bore the stamp
of the House of Hoylbar, the firearms manufacturers of Glaspyth.
Evidently it was one of the arms Duke Omfray had provided for Andray
Dunnan's original mercenary company.
"Tetragrammaton?" He glanced over to the Big Board; there was no
previous report from that planet. "How long ago?"
"I'd say about three hundred hours. I came from there directly, less
than two hundred and fifty hours. Dunnan's ships had left the planet
three days before I got there."
That was practically sizzling hot. Well, something like that had to
happen, sooner or later. The Space Viking was asking him if he knew
what sort of a place Tetragrammaton was.
Neobarbarian, trying to recivilize in a crude way. Small population,
concentrated on one continent; farming and fisheries. A little heavy
industry, in a small way, at a couple of towns. They had some nuclear
power, introduced a century or so ago by traders from Marduk, one of
the really civilized planets. They still depended on Marduk for
fissionables; their export product was an abominably-smelling
vegetable oil which furnished the base for delicate perfumes, and
which nobody was ever able to synthesize properly.
"I heard they had steel mills in operation, now," the half-breed
Space Viking said. "It seems that somebody on Rimmon has just
re-invented the railroad, and they need more steel than they can
produce for themselves. I thought I'd raid Tetragrammaton for steel
and trade it on Rimmon for a load of heaven-tea. When I got there,
though, the whole planet was in a mess; not raiding, but plain
wanton destruction. The locals were just digging themselves out of
it when I landed. Some of them, who didn't think they had anything
at all left to lose, gave me a fight. I captured a few of them, to
find out what had happened. One of them had that pistol; he said
he'd taken it off a Space Viking he'd killed. The ships that raided
them were the _Enterprise_ and the _Yo-Yo_. I knew you'd want to
hear about it. I got some of the locals' stories on tape."
"Well, thank you. I'll want to hear those tapes. Now, you say you
want steel?"
"Well, I haven't any money. That's why I was going to raid
Tetragrammaton."
"Nifflheim with the money; your cargo's paid for already. This,"
he said, touching the pistol, "and whatever's on the tapes."
* * * * *
They played off the tapes that evening. They weren't particularly
informative. The locals who had been interrogated hadn't been in
actual contact with Dunnan's people except in combat. The man who
had been carrying the 10-mm Hoylbar was the best witness of the lot,
and he knew little. He had caught one of them alone, shot him from
behind with a shotgun, taken his pistol, and then gotten away as
quickly as he could. They had sent down landing craft, it seemed,
and said they wanted to trade; then something must have happened,
nobody knew what, and they had begun a massacre and sacked the town.
After returning to their ships, they had opened fire with nuclear
missiles.
"Sounds like Dunnan," Hugh Rathmore said in disgust. "He just went
kill-crazy. The bad blood of Blackcliffe."
"There are funny things about this," Boake Valkanhayn said. "I'd say
it was a terror-raid, but who in Gehenna was he trying to terrorize?"
"I wondered about that, too." Harkaman frowned. "This town where he
landed seems, such as it was, to have been the planetary capital.
They just landed, pretending friendship, which I can't see why they
needed to pretend, and then began looting and massacring. There
wasn't anything of real value there; all they took was what the men
could carry themselves or stuff into their landing craft, and they
did that because they have what amounts to a religious taboo
against landing anywhere and leaving without stealing something.
The real loot was at these two other towns; a steel mill and big
stocks of steel at one, and all that skunk-apple oil at the other.
So what did they do? They dropped a five-megaton bomb on each one,
and blew both of them to Em-See-Square. That was a terror-raid pure
and simple, but as Boake inquires, just who were they terrorizing?
If there were big cities somewhere else on the planet, it would
figure. But there aren't. They blew out the two biggest cities,
and all the loot in them."
[Illustration]
"Then they wanted to terrorize somebody off the planet."
"But nobody'd hear about it off-planet," somebody protested.
"The Mardukans would; they trade with Tetragrammaton," the
acknowledged bastard of somebody named Morvill said. "They have
a couple of ships a year there."
"That's right," Trask agreed. "Marduk."
"You mean, you think Dunnan's trying to terrorize _Marduk_?" Valkanhayn
demanded. "Great Satan, even he isn't crazy enough for that!"
Baron Rathmore started to say something about what Andray Dunnan
was crazy enough to do, and what his uncle was crazy enough to do.
It was just one of the cracks he had been making since he'd come
to Tanith and didn't have to look over his shoulder while he was
making them.
"I think he is, too," Trask said. "I think that is exactly what he
is doing. Don't ask me why; as Otto is fond of remarking, he's crazy
and we aren't, and that gives him an advantage. But what have we
gotten, since those Gilgameshers told us about his picking up
Burrik's ship and the _Honest Horris_? Until today, we've heard
nothing from any other Space Viking. What we have gotten was stories
from Gilgameshers about raids on planets where they trade, and every
one of them is also a planet where Marduk ships trade. And in every
case, there has been little or nothing reported about valuable loot
taken. The stories are all about wanton and murderous bombings. I
think Andray Dunnan is making war on Marduk."
"Then he's crazier than his grandfather and his uncle both!"
Rathmore cried.
"You mean, he's making a string of terror-raids on their trade
planets, hoping to pull the Mardukan space-navy away from the home
planet?" Harkaman had stopped being incredulous. "And when he gets
them all lured away, he'll make a fast raid?"
"That's what I think. Remember our fundamental postulate: Dunnan is
crazy. Remember how he convinced himself that he was the rightful
heir to the ducal crown of Wardshaven?" And remember his insane
passion for Elaine; he pushed that thought hastily from him. "Now,
he's convinced that he's the greatest Space Viking in history. He
has to do something worthy of that distinction. When was the last
time anybody attacked a civilized planet? I don't mean Gilgamesh,
I mean a planet like Marduk."
"A hundred and twenty years ago; Prince Havilgar of Haulteclere, six
ships, against Aton. Two ships got back. He didn't. Nobody's tried
it since," Harkaman said.
"So Dunnan the Great will do it. I hope he tries," he surprised
himself by adding. "That's provided I find out what happened. Then
I could stop thinking about him."
There was a time when he had dreaded the possibility that somebody
else might kill Dunnan before he could.