The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) (16 page)

Not even Fastolf, who had just complained about the more direct option, said anything.

“Okay then, let’s go.”

It only took an hour of walking to get to the foot of the mountains.

“Here,” Morgan said. And then, “I think.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Vere said as she tried to get a look at the map in Morgan’s hands.
 

They were coming up on what looked like an enormous cavern. According to Morgan’s map, however, it was actually a twisting labyrinth of tunnels that stretched through the mountains.

Morgan reached behind her and slid a hand into the back pouch of her pants. “I have a second map in my pocket. Hopefully, it will give us a better—”

Confused, she stopped walking. For a moment, her eyes were narrowed, trying to think where the map could be. Then she turned, found Fastolf, and began walking toward him.

“Give it back or I swear I’ll break your nose so bad no medical computer in the entire galaxy will be able to fix it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fastolf said, popping a piece of candy into his mouth.

Morgan was still making her way toward Fastolf, her fists up at shoulder height. “I’m giving you one more chance.”

“I don’t have it!”

Vere shook her head in disgust. “Fastolf, give it back to her.”

The jokester, all pretense of innocence gone, stopped smiling and withdrew the document from his vest. Before Morgan could get within arm’s reach of him, he tossed it toward her so he could stay safely away.

“I ought to smash your face just for lying,” she said, picking the back-up map off the ground.

“A ship,” Pistol said, looking up at the sky.

For a moment, no one else heard it. Only when it was closer could their ears pick up the noise that the android had been able to hear. A vessel of some kind approaching in the distance.

“Quick, into the mountains,” Morgan said, pushing them along.

Vere waited at the entrance of the stone enclosure to make sure everyone else was inside before she too entered. Surrounded by rock on all sides except for the narrow path in front of them and the wide entrance they had passed through, they turned back and watched a ship hover over the Griffin Fire.

It was obvious from the shape of the craft, a vessel that looked like a series of three O’s tied together by a thin line of silver wings, that it was another bounty hunter. Either this ship had destroyed the others battling above the planet near the Tevis-84 portal or else had slipped past them to focus on the actual target.

Vere thought it was going to fire its cannons at the wrecked ship, but Traskk whispered something in her ear.

“What did he say?” Baldwin asked.

Vere translated: “The bounty hunter must be searching for signs of life. That’s why he isn’t destroying the Griffin Fire. His computer is scanning the surrounding area.”

Seeing that there were no significant signs of life nearby, the ship increased its altitude and began making a slow, wide circle around the crash site.

“Let’s go,” Vere said. “It won’t find us in here.”

Only ten feet into the cave they were enveloped by the cold, dark corridor of rock and dirt.

Morgan said, “In school, they taught us that the entire army of Petric the Notorious became lost in here, went mad, and ate each other until there was no one left.”

Baldwin groaned and looked back toward the entrance until Vere pushed him further forward.

“You must really be great at parties,” Fastolf said, walking past Morgan.

As soon as he made his way by her, she checked her pockets, grabbed him by the shoulder, and whispered, “If you take one more thing of mine, you won’t have hands to steal anything else.”

Vere paused beside them to see what would happen next.

“You’re no fun,” Fastolf said, tossing something back to Morgan, which she returned to her pocket.

“And you have no honor.”

“Honor?” he said, his big belly scraping the side of the stone as he turned a corner. “What is honor? Is it in your heart? Your brain? How do I know
you
have it?”

Before Morgan could reply, Vere moved in between them and put a hand on both of their shoulders. “Okay, you two, keep moving.”

Every once in a while Traskk had a difficult time getting his enormous tail and frame through a twist in the rocks. Each time this happened, rather than trying to squeeze through, he slammed the bulk of his tail against the stone until it crumbled away and made it easier for him to pass.

After watching this happen a dozen times, Vere noticed that the Basilisk’s tail was bleeding from hitting sharp edges of the rock. Even if Traskk’s race was known for its healing abilities, she didn’t like seeing her friend’s self-destructive behavior. The next time it happened, she reached up and patted him on the shoulder and said, “It’s not the rock’s fault that we’re here.”

As if reading her mind, Occulus whispered to her, “That must have been what it was like for the people who loved you when they saw you leave for Folliet-Bright.”

She spun and looked at him with narrowed eyes. He had never said something like that in all the years he had drank with her and the others in Eastcheap. Only now, as she made her way back to her father’s kingdom, did he dare say such a thing.

“The people who loved me were with me at Folliet-Bright,” she said through clenched teeth.

He smiled and held his open palms up to show he meant no harm. “Of course.”

An hour later, though, he said, “You know, your father loved you too,” and she knew he had been trying to wait long enough that she would have calmed down and be willing to hear more.

After six years of knowing her, however, he immediately knew he hadn’t let enough time pass. Her twitching jaw and eyebrow confirmed this. She reached for his arm.

With her fingers wrapped around his wrist, he couldn’t move. The others were walking ahead without realizing anything was going on.

“What do you want?” she said.

He smiled at her pleasantly, the way he had every time he had shared a table with her, A’la Dure, Traskk, and Fastolf. Seeing her hand still holding him in place, probably hurting him even though he wouldn’t admit it, she blushed and let him go.

“I only want what’s best for you.”

“And what’s that?” she asked bitterly.

All of her life, until she had fled to Folliet-Bright, people had disappointed her, either by telling her how to live and what to do or else by abandoning her. When all the other kids got to do whatever they wanted, Vere had to live up to the standard of being a future heir. The only time she had gotten to be herself was when she sneaked away with Galen each day. When everyone else married whomever they wanted, Galen had surely foreseen what their life would have been like and chosen a path without her rather than one with her. Even her father, the man who was supposed to watch out for her and protect her, had said she could serve her kingdom by marrying a man she had never met—after himself marrying someone Vere had never met. She couldn’t blame her mother for falling ill, but she too had left Vere. One after another, the people she had loved had wanted to control her or else had left her.

“And what do you want for me?” she said again, stepping forward so they could feel each other’s breath.

He smiled again, ignoring the fact that she was backing him against the stone wall and that, even if he were fifty years younger she would have beaten him in a fight.

“Vere, I only want you to be happy. I swear.”

She turned then, unable to face him.

“All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy,” he added.

“I was happy at Folliet-Bright.”

But even as she said it, they both knew it wasn’t true. She had spent six years drinking, stealing, and brawling, but no matter how much she had laughed through each off-color joke, every stolen wallet, and all the drunken fistfights, she couldn’t convince anyone else, let alone herself, that she had actually been delighted with her life.

“I just want you to be happy,” he said again.

“And how do I do that?”

“Stop running.”

“If we don’t keep going, the bounty hunters will get us.”

“That’s not what I mean, Vere. Stop running.”

The way he said it, she knew instantly what he meant, and it had nothing to do with any assassins outside the caves.

She turned and, raising her voice, said into his face, “I almost got killed getting here. I’m heading
toward
my father’s kingdom, not away from it. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m on the one planet in the galaxy where a giant green guy wants to chop my head off.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it.

“Say it,” she commanded.

As softly as he could, he added, “Just because you’re doing those things doesn’t mean you aren’t running away.”

“What kind of nonsense is that? What do I have to do to prove to you that I’m not?”

She immediately regretted the question and wished her friend wouldn’t answer.

“You have to make peace with your father. You have to find the Green Knight and accept his challenge.”

“He’s going to kill me.”

“It’s the challenge you accepted.”

He didn’t say it, but she knew what he was thinking. She had run away from Edsall Dark when Galen chose a calling over love. At the same point in her life, her father had been unforgivably practical and temporarily forgot what it was like to be genuinely in love. To top it all off, her father had soon—too soon—remarried after her mother had died. Through all of it, Vere had fled rather than confront the things that weighed her down. Just because she was here again didn’t mean she was ready or willing to be the person who could stand up and face those heartaches.

Before she could say anything, Occulus patted her on the arm and said, “Come on, they’re getting ahead of us.”

It took them a couple minutes to catch up and rejoin the rest of the group. By the time they did, it had become so dark in the system of caves and tunnels that Pistol had activated the illumination setting on his skin. Now, instead of having a slight tint to his skin, he glowed a bright white, lighting the way everywhere he went.

Hour after hour they walked through varying widths and depths of stone tunnels and hollows, always leading roughly toward the kingdom that couldn’t be seen. When they stopped, they paused only long enough to refill their canteens. Fastolf, knowing there was no other alternative but walking, became gloomy and quiet.

After the third time they refilled their water, Vere whispered, “So getting my head chopped off will prove I’m not a coward? I have to die to prove to you I’m not running away?”

Occulus looked pained. “It’s not about being a coward. And it’s not about dying. It’s about being the person you know you can be. It’s about not being satisfied with anything less than you can be.”

Vere rolled her eyes and said, “Because I’m the heir to—”

“No,” he said. “Not because your father is a king. You have the same mission as everyone else in this galaxy. Not because you’re a future ruler, because you’re a person. You can’t be yourself until you stop running away.”

She wanted to yell at him that she had already said she wasn’t running away. He was already walking past her, though, into the darkness. Without protest, she followed along at the end of the line.

After they had been walking for twelve hours, they sat down and Vere told everyone, “We’ll rest here for a little bit. Get whatever sleep you can. We have a lot more walking to do.”

Traskk set about making a fire.

“Keep it small,” Morgan told him. “There’s not much airflow for the smoke to ventilate. We don’t all want to die of smoke inhalation on the way there.” And then, to Vere, “Should we take shifts?”

“I will keep watch,” Pistol said. His skin had gone back to its natural tint and the cave was thrown into darkness, only the small fire Traskk had made providing any light. A small band of yellow light glowed around each of Pistol’s irises and Morgan knew he would be able to detect sounds and movement before anyone else.

Occulus picked a spot of ground next to Morgan and unrolled a blanket.

“What will she do?” Morgan asked.

They looked over at Vere, who was in the middle of taking a drink of something Fastolf had carried with him, the two of them laughing and swearing.

“She’ll do what’s right,” he said.

As they watched, Vere took a gulp from Fastolf’s flask, then handed it back to him.

Morgan frowned. “Your confidence in her seems a little misplaced.”

As he closed his eyes, right before sleep came, he wondered if what she had said was right. Did he have faith in Vere only because he liked her, because he was blind to the type of person she really was? Or had he seen glimpses of the person she could be and knew that deep down, that person was not only still there, but was waiting for a chance to show her strength?

Then, sleep.

33

 
“I can’t believe we’re going to wait here for six days,” the Vonnegan lieutenant said.

Over his shoulder, on the other side of the command deck, too far away to hear, General Agravan was staring out the window of the Modified Commander Class Athens Destroyer he was leading the fleet from. For hours at a time, the general stood at the window with Mowbray’s son, looking out at the other ninety-nine ships at his disposal, at the expanse of space all around them, at the portal that would lead them to Edsall Dark, while he quietly taught the boy lessons about leading and fighting and understanding your enemy. Only the general seemed to know what he was thinking and he either kept his thoughts to himself or else was busy teaching Minot all the things that would one day make him the galaxy’s greatest ruler.

“Enjoy the time,” a colonel said to the lieutenant. “In six more days, I have a feeling we’ll see a battle like we’ve never seen before.”

“Are we destroying the planet or taking control of it?”

Everyone on the ship had been asking the same question. It was easy to lay waste to colonies on various planets and moons, but Edsall Dark was the home of the entire CasterLan Kingdom. The king was there. His throne was there. No one knew if Mowbray had told General Agravan to accept their surrender, or if he would order the fleet’s cannons to begin firing indiscriminately. He had received his orders directly from the leader of the Vonnegan Empire. Only the two of them knew what was in store for Edsall Dark and the rest of the CasterLan Kingdom. Everyone else would have to wait to find out.