Dune (68 page)

Gurney obeyed, thankful for the filters.

Paul spoke, his voice muffled by the filter: “Which of your crew don’t you
trust, Gurney?”

“There’re some new recruits,” Gurney said. “Offworlders . . . ” He
hesitated, wondering at himself suddenly. Offworlders. The word had come so
easily to his tongue.

“Yes?” Paul said.

“They’re not like the usual fortune-?hunting lot we get,” Gurney said.
“They’re tougher.”

“Harkonnen spies?” Paul asked.

“I think m’Lord, that they report to no Harkonnen. I suspect they’re men of
the Imperial service. They have a hint of Salusa Secundus about them.”

Paul shot a sharp glance at him. “Sardaukar?”

Gurney shrugged. “They could be, but it’s well masked.”

Paul nodded, thinking how easily Gurney had fallen back into the pattern of
Atreides retainer . . . but with subtle reservations . . . differences. Arrakis
had changed him, too.

Two hooded Fremen emerged from the broken rock below them, began climbing
upward. One of them carried a large black bundle over one shoulder.
“Where are my crew now?” Gurney asked.

“Secure in the rocks below us,” Paul said. “We’ve a cave here — Cave of
Birds. We’ll decide what to do with them after the storm.”

A voice called from above them: “Muad’Dib!”

Paul turned at the call, saw a Fremen guard motioning them down to the cave.
Paul signaled he had heard.

Gurney studying him with a new expression. “You’re Muad’Dib?” he asked.
“You’re the will-?o’-the-?sand?”

“It’s my Fremen name,” Paul said.

Gurney turned away, feeling an oppressive sense of foreboding. Half his own
crew dead on the sand, the others captive. He did not care about the new
recruits, the suspicious ones, but among the others were good men, friends,
people for whom he felt responsible. “We’ll decide what to do with them after
the storm.” That’s what Paul had said, Muad’Dib had said. And Gurney recalled
the stories told of Muad’Dib, the Lisan al-?Gaib — how he had taken the skin of
a Harkonnen officer to make his drumheads, how he was surrounded by death
commandos, Fedaykin who leaped into battle with their death chants on their
lips.

Him.

The two Fremen climbing up the rocks leaped lightly to a shelf in front of
Paul. The dark-?faced one said: “All secure, Muad’Dib. We best get below now.”

“Right.”

Gurney noted the tone of the man’s voice — half command and half request.
This was the man called Stilgar, another figure of the new Fremen legends.

Paul looked at the bundle the other man carried, said: “Korba, what’s in the
bundle?”

Stilgar answered: “ ‘Twas in the crawler. It had the initial of your friend
here and it contains a baliset. Many times have I heard you speak of the prowess
of Gurney Halleck on the baliset.”

Gurney studied the speaker, seeing the edge of black beard above the
stillsuit mask, the hawk stare, the chiseled nose.

“You’ve a companion who thinks, m’Lord,” Gurney said. “Thank you, Stilgar.”

Stilgar signaled for his companion to pass the bundle to Gurney, said:
“Thank your Lord Duke. His countenance earns your admittance here.”

Gurney accepted the bundle, puzzled by the hard undertones in this
conversation. There was an air of challenge about the man, and Gurney wondered
if it could be a feeling of jealousy in the Fremen. Here was someone called
Gurney Halleck who’d known Paul even in the times before Arrakis, a man who
shared a camaraderie that Stilgar could never invade.

“You are two I’d have be friends,” Paul said.

“Stilgar, the Fremen, is a name of renown,” Gurney said. “Any killer of
Harkonnens I’d feel honored to count among my friends.”

“Will you touch hands with my friend Gurney Halleck, Stilgar?” Paul asked.

Slowly, Stilgar extended his hand, gripped the heavy calluses of Gurney’s
swordhand. “There’re few who haven’t heard the name of Gurney Halleck,” he said,
and released his grip. He turned to Paul. “The storm comes rushing.”

“At once,” Paul said.

Stilgar turned away, led them down through the rocks, a twisting and turning
path into a shadowed cleft that admitted them to the low entrance of a cave. Men
hurried to fasten a doorseal behind them. Glowglobes showed a broad, dome-
ceilinged space with a raised ledge on one side and a passage leading off from
it.

Paul leaped to the ledge with Gurney right behind him, led the way into the
passage. The others headed for another passage opposite the entrance. Paul led
the way through an anteroom and into a chamber with dark, wine-?colored hangings
on its walls.
“We can have some privacy here for a while,” Paul said. “The others will
respect my –”

An alarm cymbal clanged from the outer chamber, was followed by shouting and
clashing of weapons. Paul whirled, ran back through the anteroom and out onto
the atrium lip above the outer chamber. Gurney was right behind, weapon drawn.

Beneath them on the floor of the cave swirled a melee of struggling figures.
Paul stood an instant assessing the scene, separating the Fremen robes and
bourkas from the costumes of those they opposed. Senses that his mother had
trained to detect the most subtle clues picked out a significant fact — the
Fremen fought against men wearing smuggler robes, but the smugglers were
crouched in trios, backed into triangles where pressed.

That habit of close fighting was a trademark of the Imperial Sardaukar.

A Fedaykin in the crowd saw Paul, and his battlecry was lifted to echo in
the chamber: “Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!”

Another eye had also picked Paul out. A black knife came hurtling toward
him. Paul dodged, heard the knife clatter against stone behind him, glanced to
see Gurney retrieve it.

The triangular knots were being pressed back now.

Gurney held the knife up in front of Paul’s eyes, pointed to the hairline
yellow coil of Imperial color, the golden lion crest, multifaceted eyes at the
pommel.

Sardaukar for certain.

Paul stepped out to the lip of the ledge. Only three of the Sardaukar
remained. Bloody rag mounds of Sardaukar and Fremen lay in a twisted pattern
across the chamber.

“Hold!” Paul shouted. “The Duke Paul Atreides commands you to hold!”

The fighting wavered, hesitated.

“You Sardaukar!” Paul called to the remaining group. “By whose orders do you
threaten a ruling Duke?” And, quickly, as his men started to press in around the
Sardaukar: “Hold, I say!”

One of the cornered trio straightened. “Who says we’re Sardaukar?” he
demanded.

Paul took the knife from Gurney, held it aloft. “This says you’re
Sardaukar.”

“Then who says you’re a ruling Duke?” the man demanded.

Paul gestured to the Fedaykin. “These men say I’m a ruling Duke. Your own
emperor bestowed Arrakis on House Atreides. I am House Atreides.”

The Sardaukar stood silent, fidgeting.

Paul studied the man — tall, flat-?featured, with a pale scar across half
his left cheek. Anger and confusion were betrayed in his manner, but still there
was that pride about him without which a Sardaukar appeared undressed — and
with which he could appear fully clothed though naked.

Paul glanced to one of his Fedaykin lieutenants, said: “Korba, how came they
to have weapons?”

“They held back knives concealed in cunning pockets within their
stillsuits,” the lieutenant said.

Paul surveyed the dead and wounded across the chamber, brought his attention
back to the lieutenant. There was no need for words. The lieutenant lowered his
eyes.

“Where is Chani?” Paul asked and waited, breath held, for the answer.

“Stilgar spirited her aside.” He nodded toward the other passage, glanced at
the dead and wounded. “I hold myself responsible for this mistake, Muad’Dib.”

“How many of these Sardaukar were there, Gurney?” Paul asked.

“Ten.”

Paul leaped lightly to the floor of the chamber, strode across to stand
within striking distance of the Sardaukar spokesman.
A tense air came over the Fedaykin. They did not like him thus exposed to
danger. This was the thing they were pledged to prevent because the Fremen
wished to preserve the wisdom of Muad’Dib.

Without turning, Paul spoke to his lieutenant: “How many are our
casualties?”

“Four wounded, two dead, Muad’Dib.”

Paul saw motion beyond the Sardaukar, Chani and Stilgar were standing in the
other passage. He returned his attention to the Sardaukar, staring into the
offworld whites of the spokesman’s eyes. “You, what is your name?” Paul
demanded.

The man stiffened, glanced left and right.

“Don’t try it,” Paul said. “It’s obvious to me that you were ordered to seek
out and destroy Muad’Dib. I’ll warrant you were the ones suggested seeking spice
in the deep desert.”

A gasp from Gurney behind him brought a thin smile to Paul’s lips.

Blood suffused the Sardaukar’s face.

“What you see before you is more than Muad’Dib,” Paul said. “Seven of you
are dead for two of us. Three for one. Pretty good against Sardaukar, eh?”

The man came up on his toes, sank back as the Fedaykin pressed forward.

“I asked your name,” Paul said, and he called up the subtleties of Voice:
“Tell me your name!”

“Captain Aramsham, Imperial Sardaukar!” the man snapped. His jaw dropped. He
stared at Paul in confusion. The manner about him that had dismissed this cavern
as a barbarian warren melted away.

“Well, Captain Aramsham,” Paul said, “the Harkonnens would pay dearly to
learn what you now know. And the Emperor — what he wouldn’t give to learn an
Atreides still lives despite his treachery.”

The captain glanced left and right at the two men remaining to him. Paul
could almost see the thoughts turning over in the man’s head. Sardaukar did not
submit, but the Emperor had to learn of this threat.

Still using the Voice, Paul said: “Submit, Captain.”

The man at the captain’s left leaped without warning toward Paul, met the
flashing impact of his own captain’s knife in his chest. The attacker hit the
floor in a sodden heap with the knife still in him.

The captain faced his sole remaining companion. “I decide what best serves
His Majesty,” he said. “Understood?”

The other Sardaukar’s shoulders slumped.

“Drop your weapon,” the captain said.

The Sardaukar obeyed.

The captain returned his attention to Paul. “I have killed a friend for
you,” he said. “Let us always remember that.”

“You’re my prisoners,” Paul said. “You submitted to me. Whether you live or
die is of no importance.” He motioned to his guard to take the two Sardaukar,
signaled the lieutenant who had searched the prisoners.

The guard moved in, hustled the Sardaukar away.

Paul bent toward his lieutenant.

“Muad’Dib,” the man said. “I failed you in . . . ”

“The failure was mine, Korba,” Paul said. “I should’ve warned you what to
seek. In the future, when searching Sardaukar, remember this. Remember, too,
that each has a false toenail or two that can be combined with other items
secreted about their bodies to make an effective transmitter. They’ll have more
than one false tooth. They carry coils of shigawire in their hair — so fine you
can barely detect it, yet strong enough to garrote a man and cut off his head in
the process. With Sardaukar, you must scan them, scope them — both reflex and
hard ray — cut off every scrap of body hair. And when you’re through, be
certain you haven’t discovered everything.”

He looked up at Gurney, who had moved close to listen.
“Then we best kill them,” the lieutenant said.

Paul shook his head, still looking at Gurney. “No. I want them to escape.”
Gurney stared at him.

“Sire . . . ” he breathed.

“Yes?”

“Your man here is right. Kill those prisoners at once. Destroy all evidence
of them. You’ve shamed Imperial Sardaukar! When the Emperor learns that he’ll
not rest until he has you over a slow fire.”

“The Emperor’s not likely to have that power over me,” Paul said. He spoke
slowly, coldly. Something had happened inside him while he faced the Sardaukar.
A sum of decisions had accumulated in his awareness. “Gurney,” he said, “are
there many Guildsmen around Rabban?”

Gurney straightened, eyes narrowed. “Your question makes no . . . ”

“Are there?” Paul barked.

“Arrakis is crawling with Guild agents. They’re buying spice as though it
were the most precious thing in the universe. Why else do you think we ventured
this far into . . . ”

“It is the most precious thing in the universe,” Paul said. “To them.”

He looked toward Stilgar and Chani who were now crossing the chamber toward
him. “And we control it, Gurney.”

“The Harkonnens control it!” Gurney protested.

“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it,” Paul said. He waved a
hand to silence further remarks from Gurney, nodded to Stilgar who stopped in
front of Paul, Chani beside him.

Paul took the Sardaukar knife in his left hand, presented it to Stilgar.
“You live for the good of the tribe,” Paul said. “Could you draw my life’s blood
with that knife?”

“For the good of the tribe,” Stilgar growled.

“Then use that knife,” Paul said.

“Are you calling me out?” Stilgar demanded.

“If I do,” Paul said, “I shall stand there without weapon and let you slay
me.”

Stilgar drew in a quick, sharp breath.

Chani said, “Usul!” then glanced at Gurney, back to Paul.

While Stilgar was still weighing his words, Paul said: “You are Stilgar, a
fighting man. When the Sardaukar began fighting here, you were not in the front
of battle. Your first thought was to protect Chani.”

“She’s my niece,” Stilgar said. “If there’d been any doubt of your Fedaykin
handling those scum . . . ”

“Why was your first thought of Chani?” Paul demanded.

“It wasn’t!”

“Oh?”

“It was of you,” Stilgar admitted.