Starship Home (35 page)

In the clearing outside the starship, Ulf and Rocky waited, while inside on the bridge, the Don was trying to persuade Meg and the others to accept his protection for the night. For, as he said, ‘The Slarn may give Marlowe what he wants, and when they do this place will be full of Slarn marines.’

Zachary cast a questioning glance at Marine, who shrugged. ‘I would not like to be here when that happens,’ she said in that strange metallic tone the translator mask gave her.

‘It means we’d have to leave Guinevere,’ Meg said, with a concerned look at the screen on which Guinevere’s image glowed. The image smiled. ‘I’m a little too large to fit within the Don’s castle,’ she said, ‘and there is nothing the Slarn may do to me worse than what they have already done.’

And so it was settled. The Don’s party had brought only four horses for the starship team, and so Marine rode pillion behind Zachary, an arrangement which had Zoe grinning and rolling her eyes, much to Zachary’s embarrassment and Harold’s blatant sniggering.

That night in the hall, dinner had not yet been served, when the trouble began. Spider had been deep in conversation with some of the Troll warriors at one of the lower tables, while at the high table the Don sat flanked by Ulf and Meg, and accompanied by Father John, Rocky, Zachary, Harold, Zoe and Marine. The buzz of conversation stilled as Spider slowly rose to his feet. The Don looked at him. He had been expecting this. Spider moved into the clear area between the tables. ‘With respect, my lord,’ he said, ‘a matter pertaining to your honor and the honor of all Trolls. You have three unveiled women at your table, and one is a Slarn sky witch who should be tried for sorcery and then burned at the stake.’

The Don stood, and moved down toward Spider. ‘And a man without a name, a man who slew his own father, is giving me lessons in honor?’

Ulf now also stood and loosened his sword in its scabbard and followed the Don. ‘He’s unworthy of your blade, my lord. Let me take him.’

The Don shook his head, and Ulf stepped back. ‘You were Don once,’ the Don said to Spider, ‘and your own warriors drove you out. Would you be Don again?’

‘I challenge,’ Spider said.

‘He has no right to challenge! He has no name!’ shouted Ulf.

But some of the Troll warriors at the lower table were now beating the table with their fists and stamping their feet in time to the chant of: ‘Challenge! Challenge! Challenge!’

The Don slipped out of his doublet, stripping to the waist, handing his sword belt to Ulf, ripping sword and dagger from their scabbards. Meanwhile Spider was likewise stripping his jacket away, and Troll warriors were removing his spiked greaves, and unstrapping the fighting spikes from his boots. As they took off his shoulder harness, Spider drew his broadsword, discarded one dagger, and drew the poisoned dagger from its sheath.

Meg turned to Father John, her face pale. ‘We have to stop this.’ But Father John shook his head. ‘There is no way to stop it. This is a formal challenge for leadership.’

‘Then that monster could end up as Don?’

‘Pray he doesn’t,’ said Father John, ‘we all endured his murderous rule before he was driven out, and if those times come again, God help us all.’

On the floor, the trestle tables had been pulled back and a fighting space cleared, and the Don and Spider faced each other, surrounded by a circle of Troll warriors. Rocky, white-faced, loyalties torn, now rose from the table, and moved down to join the circle of warriors, who gave way to allow him through to the front row, recognizing his right to be there.

The Don now faced his brother, his mortal enemy, in the duel that both had always known must one day happen. They lifted their swords in salute, and then Spider lunged forward at the Don, lightning fast, but the Don was faster, spinning away like a dancer, and then thrusting. Spider stepped around the thrust. Their swords clashed, and they circled each other, lunging and retreating, looking all the while for openings. ‘When you’re dead, brother,’ Spider hissed, ‘the first thing I’ll do is burn the Slarn witch.’ The Don stayed silent, working Spider, testing his reflexes. Many times as boys and youths they had fenced together, but not for the ten years since Spider’s exile, and both men had learned much and been wounded many times since then. Spider was facing the high table, and yelled, ‘You hear that, Slarn witch? You’ll be burned!’

The Don moved in, attacking strongly with both sword and dagger, Spider parried, and their blades locked; they were face to face. ‘And the second thing I’ll do is take your unveiled woman for my own!’ Spider snarled. The Don pushed him off, feinted, then lunged, catching Spider’s sword arm, drawing blood. Spider rushed him then, and the Don sidestepped, his dagger flickering out, grazing Spider’s ribs.

At the high table, Zachary turned to Father John. ‘What’s all this burning talk?’

Father John sighed. ‘It happened in the past to alleged witches. The Don put a stop to it.’

Meg watched in fear as the duellists thrust and parried. Zoe, alongside her, tried to give her comfort. ‘He’ll be all right,’ she said, hoping, praying that she was correct. But her eyes were on the duellists as they turned, lunged and parried. Then suddenly Spider closed again. The duellists were chest to chest, burning eye to burning eye, weapon hilts locked, and then Spider put one foot behind the Don’s leading ankle, and threw him!

The Don fell, and rolled away as Spider came in fast with the boot. The Don slashed from the floor, and Spider leapt to avoid the flashing blade, then the Don rolled onto his feet and came up lunging with his dagger. Spider fell away, seemingly off-balance, but the fall became a cartwheel which took him down the hall and back onto his feet, perfectly balanced, waiting the Don’s next attack, which came in the form of a
fleche
, a running dive, sword outstretched. Spider gave ground and sidestepped so that the Don’s attack missed him. The Don curled into a somersault, was back on his feet, spun, and then as Spider moved in, the Don kicked his enemy’s sword from his hand. The sword spun away, skittering across the floor of the hall and Spider, expecting no mercy, dropped into a knife fighter’s crouch, waiting for the Don to attack with both sword and dagger.

But the Don looked at Meg, smiled, saluted like a matador, and then tossed his sword to Ulf, and threw his dagger into his right hand, then dropped into the same knife fighter’s crouch as Spider and beckoned him forward with his left hand. ‘Mistake, brother,’ hissed Spider.

At the high table, Meg buried her face in her hands. Zachary was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘He had it won! Why does he always have to be so damn noble!’ But Marine, of all of them, was impressed. She was on her feet, slamming her right fist into her left breast, shouting: ‘Warrior! True warrior!’

‘Here, Marine, we call them idiots. You maybe like being burned at the stake?’

She sat again and shrugged, her eyes on the duellists. ‘True warrior,’ she repeated.

They circled each other. The short blade had changed the game, and each was now more careful. But Spider was more confident now because he knew he had an edge. His thumb caressed his knife hilt and the button which would release the poison to the blade’s tip. He moved in, and then the Don switched his blade to his left hand. Spider saw it, but then the Don switched his dagger to his right hand again and Spider dived in at the Don who shifted his blade again, and lunged, only to find that Spider had also shifted his knife to his left hand, and grabbed the Don’s dagger wrist with his right. The Don grabbed Spider’s knife wrist in turn and they now stood, wrestling for leverage, and then crashed through a trestle table, scattering food and wine, and fell to the ground, rolled over and over, seeking for the upper hand. Spider ended up on top and with a screaming roar like that of a leopard, he bared his sharpened steel fangs and went for the Don’s throat!

With one tremendous effort, the Don threw Spider from him, and they both leapt to their feet, breaking apart, and it was on this break that the tip of Spider’s knife slashed the Don’s forearm. A flesh wound only but the Don blinked, looked at the arm as if amazed, staggered back, and as he felt the poison surge through his veins he sensed what had just happened. With failing strength, he spun away, grabbed a wine jug from ones of the tables, and poured wine over the wound, in the hope of neutralizing at least some of the poison. Then he sipped from the jug and tossed it aside.

Spider smiled, and moved in, wanting to make it look good but not wanting to fall victim to any last effort of the Don’s, while at the top table, Zachary was getting ready to run. He turned to the others. ‘The Don’s going to lose. Marine here’ll be burned as a witch. We’re getting out of here now!’

‘No!’ Meg exclaimed. ‘I can’t leave him.’ She had always resisted the Don’s charms, but deep inside she had come to love him dearly, and seeing him now, in deadly danger at the hands of his evil brother, she could not, would not desert him.

‘In a few minutes,’ Zachary said, speaking brutally as a deliberate ploy to get her thinking rationally, ‘he’ll be leaving you feet first, and then who knows what’ll happen, but it won’t be nice.’

She shook her head, determined to stay to the end, believing against all odds that the Don could still snatch victory from what looked like a hopeless situation. For Spider was now stalking the Don, who was shaky on his feet, his reflexes markedly slowed. He was blinking, but his opponent kept going in and out of focus. Spider moved in on him, and the Don slashed at him, keeping him at a distance.

Zachary stood. ‘Who’s coming?’

Marine looked at the two fighters, circling one another. ‘Good tactics say “retreat”,’ she said and stood, ready to go. Harold too began to stand but a savage look from Zoe restrained him, and he sat again.

Meg looked at Zachary. ‘You’re never coming back, are you? You’re going to run.’

‘You betcha. He’s going to burn Marine. What’s he going to do with you and Zoe and Harold do you think?’ There were tears in Meg’s eyes and fear in her heart but she could not run. ‘All this nobility, it’s catching,’ said Zachary and then he and Marine began to make their way to the main door of the hall. No one noticed them, for all eyes were fixed on the circling duellists and, skirting the Troll warriors, they left the hall unobserved. As the door swung shut, Spider pounced, thrust, the Don parried the thrust but his own dagger went spinning across the room. He was unarmed now, drugged, and facing his merciless brother, who smiled and moved in. The Don was backing away, swaying on his feet, lurching out of the way of Spider’s feints and mock attacks. Spider was now playing with him, goading him. ‘Going to take your unveiled woman little brother. Take the headship, the castle, the woman and all, little brother.’

Meg, Zoe and Harold were watching in horror as Spider pounced in, the Don made a clumsy attempt to evade the attack, but yet again Spider was toying with him, spinning things out. Meg stood. ‘Don!’ she shouted, ‘you can’t lose! You can’t leave the Trolls and us to him! You can’t!’

And something in Meg’s cry of desolation reached the Don at his deepest core, and for one moment his vision cleared, and he saw, sharply focussed, his brother grinning at him, doing a little dance, switching his dagger from hand to hand.

And the Don leapt! The one chance, the last chance, the last card. He leapt and time seemed to slow in the hall in Trollcastle as the Don claimed his brother! Spider’s grinning face became a mask of shock, of agony, as he looked down at his own dagger embedded to the hilt in his chest, and then the Don fell unconscious to one side, and Spider to the other, face down. Neither moved. Meg, Zoe and Harold hurried from the high table, and Meg pushed through the Trolls to the Don’s side. She knelt over him, weeping, saying again and again, ‘Don’t die. You can’t die.’

Ulf rolled Spider over, checking that he was dead, ready to execute the death blow if he was not, but there was no need. Now he turned his attention to the Don whose pale face and shallow breathing moved the giant warrior to tears. ‘Father John!’ he called, ‘Father John!’ But the priest was already at his side.

Zachary and Marine entered the bridge and were greeted by a wan-visaged Guinevere who asked where the others were. Zachary explained the situation as best he could, saying that by this time the Don would be dead at the hands of his brother. ‘The smart move was to get away,’ he said, ‘but the others wouldn’t take it. So I got Marine out of there before the Don’s brother had her burned at the stake. Did I do wrong?’ Zachary was already feeling bad about deserting the others, but the alternative of staying on still did not make sense.

‘I am not thy judge, dear Zachary,’ said Guinevere, which made Zachary feel even worse.

‘We’ll need Slarnstaffs, ship’s biscuits, medical supplies, knapsacks,’ he said.

‘And thou wilt forsake me,’ Guinevere said sadly but with an edge, ‘when we were so close.’

‘We did our best,’ Zachary said, ‘but everything’s just fallen apart on us. It’s every man for himself now, and your best bet if you want to live is to give yourself up to the Slarn.’

‘If I want to live?’ Guinevere sighed. ‘And if the cost of life is liberty? I have been more at liberty in these short weeks than I have been since I was a carefree maid of Kent.’

They swiftly put together what they needed, and when they were ready to go, Guinevere projected her image, and her phantom lips brushed Zachary’s cheek, and ‘Farewell,’ she said, ‘and my prayers go with thee.’

As Zachary and Marine left the starship, her lights were growing dim.

Meanwhile, in Trollcastle, the Don had been taken into the women’s quarters, and was lying on a couch being tended to by Father John. He had checked the Don’s wound, and he was puzzled. ‘It’s not a serious wound,’ he was saying, ‘but as soon as it was inflicted, the Don’s strength seemed to leave him.’

‘For good reason,’ a voice said and they turned and Rocky was there, holding an object wrapped in cloth. ‘I was laying out my father’s body for burial, and removed the dagger from his chest.’ He unwrapped the object he was holding, revealing it to be Spider’s dagger. ‘The traitor used poison.’

Father John took the dagger and examined it. He pressed the button in the hilt and the acid-yellow fluid dripped from the hole in the tip of the blade. ‘Evil to the last,’ he said.

In his cell on board the starship Charles de Josselin, Marlowe had a visitor, a Slarn marine officer. ‘I am empowered to tell you that you may have Confederacy citizenship the moment we recover the missing starship.’ Marlowe remained silent. ‘Well what do you say? Welcome aboard and welcome home!’

Marlowe looked at the officer with contempt. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You won’t take the word of an officer of the Marine Corps?’

‘An officer of the Marine Corps,’ Marlowe said, giving each word weight, ‘is not empowered to grant citizenship. Do you think I’m a fool? Do you think I’ve survived alone down there on the surface of Satan’s World for fifty years, and don’t know when I’m being lied to?’ There was silence, and then Marlowe went on: ‘If you want that ship alive, you’ll give me what I want in the way I want it, and you’ll do it in the next seven days.’

‘Why seven days?’

‘Two words. Self. Destruct. In seven days there won’t be a starship.’

The officer moved to hatch, which opened before him. He went out, but before the door slid shut again, Marlowe had the last word. ‘Tell them to send me someone who can make a deal!’ The door slid shut again.

When first light crept through the forest it revealed Marine, cradling her Slarnstaff, sleeping near a smouldering fire in the shelter of a rock overhang. Then a twig snapped, and with a soldier’s honed instincts Marine was awake, her Slarnstaff coming up to cover whatever, whoever was approaching. It was Zachary, walking out of the bush with an armful of dead wood for the fire. He put the wood down by the fire and began to feed it. ‘Good morning,’ he said.

‘Good night,’ said Marine.

‘No,’ he said, ‘last night was “good night”, this morning is “good morning”.’

Tiring of language lessons, Marine donned her translator mask. ‘When do we counter-attack?’ she asked.

‘Counter attacking wasn’t high on my task list,’ Zachary replied.

Marine was puzzled. ‘Strategic withdrawal is always followed by plans for counter-attack,’ she explained, as if to a young recruit, but Zachary shook his head. ‘We don’t. What we have to plan is our whole future. The ship either self-destructs in a week, or she gives herself up, or the Slarn find her. Whatever happens, that chapter’s closed. So what we have to do is keep going and find a place to settle down. I’ve been studying the Don’s operation. We could do something like that.’

‘Primitive military dictatorship financed by providing protection to an underclass of peasantry?’

‘Well put. Certainly something like that. It worked for the Don, it could work for us.’

Marine got a ship’s biscuit out of her pack, pushed back her translator mask and then munched on the biscuit.

‘You’re cute, you know that?’ Zachary said.

‘Good morning,’ she replied.

In the women’s quarters of Trollcastle, the Don lay pale and still on the couch, while Father John, off to one side of the room, was talking to two veiled Troll wives. ‘We need leeches,’ he was saying, ‘we’re going to have to bleed him to remove the poison.’

Meg, who was kneeling by the Don’s couch, heard what he said and turned. ‘No! He’s already lost blood!’

‘It’s all we can do,’ said Father John.

Zoe and Harold, who had been sleeping on the floor now woke to hear Meg say: ‘There’s Guinevere. If we can get him into her medipod she can clean the poison out of his system.’

‘She’s dying herself, Meg,’ Zoe said, ‘she can scarcely keep her own systems running.’

‘We can ask her, can’t we?’

‘We don’t even know if she’s still there. Marlowe could’ve talked, the Slarn might already have her …’

Harold cut in. ‘But we don’t know that. We can’t make intelligent decisions without facts to back them up, so I suggest someone goes to the starship to check it out.’

Zoe stood. ‘You’re right. Meg’s needed here. You and me can go.’

Harold had not quite planned it that way. ‘Well I was thinking that you might be better going on your own while I did some heavy-duty planning back here?’

‘Rubbish,’ Zoe said, ‘if two go, one at least can get back alive. Come on. Or do you want to live forever?’

‘Yes I do,’ said Harold, and seeing that this reasonable argument had produced only a sneer of derision, reluctantly got to his feet and followed her out.

As Zoe and Harold came out of the Trollcastle, they found Rocky sitting disconsolately against the wall. They stopped. ‘Are you okay?’ asked Zoe.

He shrugged. ‘Where you off to?’

‘The Ironcastle,’ Harold said, giving the Troll name for the starship. ‘We think she may be able to help the Don.’

Rocky stood. ‘I’ll come with you. Three swords always better than two.’

There was something underlying his words. ‘Are they giving you a hard time in there?’ asked Zoe.

‘Some are blaming me for what my father did,’ he said, reluctantly.

‘Come on then! We could really use some help!’ Zoe said and Rocky’s face lit up in a smile and the three began running in the direction of the starship.

Marlowe was alone in his white cell, and then he was suddenly not alone, for in the corner there now stood the transparent image of a man in the costume of a musketeer from the time of Louis XV of France. Marlowe stared at the apparition and then recovered as he realized who the figure must be. ‘You must be the starship’s pilot.’

‘Must I?’ said the man in French-accented English. ‘But yes, you are correct. My name is Charles de Josselin, and I am indeed the mind and soul of this ship.’

‘So you know Guinevere? ‘

‘Oh yes,’ de Josselin replied, ‘for many hundreds of years we have been comrades in the service of the Slarn.’ Then he gestured. ‘You may talk freely. No one can listen to what we say, I control everything they hear.’

Marlowe knew then that this starship’s pilot wanted something from him, and he could feel advantage flowing in his direction. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I too wish to know where the starship Guinevere has hidden herself.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

‘For reasons purely personal. I have loved Guinevere for many hundreds of years.’

‘Loved?’

‘You think we cannot love? Feel? We were once human like you.’

Marlowe played his first card. ‘I can tell you that she’s alive, but dying for lack of essential elements.’

‘So where is she! I have to go to her!’

‘And I have to go home to the Slarn worlds.’

Charles approached him, his transparent eyes boring into Marlowe’s, and he kept advancing until his transparent image overlapped Marlowe’s solid form. ‘She’s down there, trying to heal herself. Humans? A man, a woman, a girl, a young boy? Are trying to help her?’

Marlowe could feel the alien presence in his mind, soaking up information. ‘Stop it!’ he shouted, ‘get out of my head!’

Charles spoke urgently. ‘Tell me where she is. I won’t tell the Slarn, on my word as a starship, on my word as a musketeer, I won’t tell them but I must know!’

Marlowe believed him, and was on the point of telling him, but a lifetime of heartache and betrayal stopped him. ‘I’ve lived too long down there. I believe you. But I can’t risk my one chance of coming home. I can’t take that risk!’

Zoe, Harold and Rocky moved out of cover into the clearing around the starship, and Zoe called out to her. ‘Guinevere?’ The hatch remained closed. ‘Guinevere?’ she called again.

On the bridge, the screens were alive with swirling colors and fragmented images. Guinevere was in REM sleep and half-dreaming, half-hallucinating. Images from the time of the Great Exit. Zachary playing guitar. Zoe in a rage. Meg and the Don. Harold drenched with water. Looters around their fire. But there were other images too, unrelated to Earth. Streaming stars. Light filtering through stained glass windows. The sudden horrific image of the shock and torment on the face of a witch burning at the stake. Alien beings. Charles de Josselin laughing. And from her speakers, the sound of Zoe’s voice, calling ‘Guinevere!’ And then Zoe’s face coalesced from a screen full of streaming stars and swirling color and Guinevere woke, panting.

‘Guinevere!’

‘Zoe. Forgive me. I slept.’

Outside, the hatch opened slowly. A certain weariness was entering Guinevere’s system. Zoe, Harold and Rocky entered and went to the bridge along half-lit corridors. On the bridge the screens and lights were dim. ‘Has Marlowe told them?’ asked Zoe.

‘Nay. They send for a Confederacy Senator to make him a citizen.’

‘If you’re dying, Guinevere, you should surrender.’ Harold’s tone was severe, he sounded like a headmaster four times his age.

‘Still hope … for freedom. Bring water, prithee, bring me water.’

‘You got it,’ said Harold, ‘leave the hatch open in case you go to sleep again,’ and he and the others ran out.