King's Sacrifice (35 page)

Reaching down,
the Bear caught hold of the hood of Tusk's parka, lifted the
mercenary like a child, and hoisted him up through the hatch.

"My sons
are digging you out," stated Olefsky proudly, pointing to
several large, hulking, fur-covered figures wielding crude shovels or
simply tossing snow into the air using nothing but their hands and
arms.

Half blinded by
the white storm the enthusiastic young Olefskys were creating, Tusk
peered through the flying snow, alarmed at the sound of blows
rattling on his plane's hull. "No! Don't! Thanks, but it's all
right! Really!"

The young men
looked at him from the depths of long, shaggy hair, grinned, and
waved. Obviously, these two couldn't understand Standard Military.

"No! Don't
do that. . . . Uh, Bear"—Tusk fumbled at his translator,
but his gloved fingers couldn't operate it—"could you tell
them thanks for trying to help but that we can generate enough heat
through the hull to melt the snow and"—he winced at a
particularly loud bang—"I really hate to see them go to
all this trouble—"

"Trouble?
It is no trouble!" The Bear laughed, slapped Tusk on the back,
knocking the breath from his body. "You are our guest. But you
are right. These lummoxes would probably do your vessel harm. Enough!
Enough!" Olefsky waved a huge gloved hand.

The young
Olefskys, who looked as if they could have picked up the spaceplane
and shaken the snow off of it if they'd wanted, backed off, grinning
widely. Tusk sat on the hull, gasped for air that was noticeably thin
on top of this mountain, and wondered if his shoulder blades were
still intact. Bear, reaching down, lifted Nola up through the hatch.

"Thank you,
Bear. I can manage. I—"

"I hear you
are a wife! I lass the bride!"

Nola vanished in
the embrace of Bear's huge, fur-covered arms. She emerged flushed and
pink-cheeked and laughing. Glancing over the side of the spaceplane,
she saw the ladder covered with snow and looked somewhat dubiously at
the long drop from the top to the ground.

"Ah! The
way down is difficult. Do not worry. I will help you."

Gathering Nola
up in his arms, Bear called to his sons and, before the woman could
utter a cry, tossed her into the waiting arms of his boys. They
caught Nola securely, set her gently and respectfully on her feet,
each bobbing and ducking a shaggy head in an anxious, friendly
manner.

Nola gulped,
blinked, and looked up dazedly at Tusk.

"No, thank
you!" Tusk said, seeing Bear reaching out his arms for him. "I
can manage on my own! Kid!" He leaned over, shouted down the
hatch. "You coming?"

"In a
minute," Dion returned. "I've got to go over the security
measures with XJ."

"Oh, yeah.
All the excitement, I forgot. I'm gonna take a look around the
plane."

Tusk slithered
down the side of the spaceplane, bobbed and ducked in an exchange of
greetings with the Olefsky brothers, then clambered around the
outside of the plane, endeavoring to determine the extent of the
damage.

Inside, Dion and
XJ were making certain that the space-rotation bomb was safely stowed
away, secure.

"Set up the
security the way the Lady Maigrey had it set up," Dion ordered.
"You have to hear my voice and mine alone, identify my
handprint, and . . . and something of mine—this ring." He
lifted the fire-opal ring that he wore around his neck, exhibited it
to the computer. "I don't think the bomb'll be in any danger on
this planet, but best to be prepared."

"Gotcha.
And if anyone starts messing around with it?"

"You've got
that new brain gas we installed. Use that. Knock them out and sound
the alarm." Dion held up a small device, worn on his wrist.
"I'll be here as soon as I can."

"We're not
sure the gas works. Say, I've got an idea. Why don't you let me try
it out on Tusk?"

Dion smothered a
smile. "It works. Sagan developed it. That's the same gas
Captain Williams was planning to use on us on
Defiant."

"But what
about—"

"It knocks
out most alien life-forms, too. At least according to Dr. Giesk, it
does."

"
Most?
"
repeated XJ gloomily.

"All those
who have the same type of central nervous system or something like
that. Quit worrying." Dion put on a parka over his green wool
sweater. "Lock up after I'm gone."

"It
probably wouldn't have worked on Tusk anyway," XJ muttered.
"After all, it is called 'brain' gas."

Dion grinned,
climbed up the ladder, made good his escape from the computer, only
to find himself half-smothered in the Bear's enthusiastic welcoming
hug.

A short walk
down the steep mountainside from the ledge where XJ was grudgingly
parked brought them to another ledge, bathed in sunlight and
sheltered by gigantic boulders from the wind and snow. Several
enormous beasts were tethered here. At the sight (and undoubtedly the
smell) of the Olefskys, the beasts lifted their heads and brayed—a
head-splitting squeal that started several minor snowslides. The
beasts stood taller than two Olefsky brothers if one had been
standing on another's shoulders, and were wider in girth than the
Bear himself. Long black hair, which looked rough but was remarkably
soft to the touch, covered the beasts' bodies, fell in graceful,
shining cascades from head and back to the ground. Their heads were
horned, with intelligent eyes. They reminded Dion of gigantic goats.

The Olefskys
each mounted one of these creatures—which Bear called
grons—pulling themselves up onto the broad backs by grabbing
hold of handfuls of the long hair and literally climbing up the side
of the patient and apparently thick-skinned animals. Tusk and Nola
mounted, each riding in back of a young Olefsky. Bear insisted that
Dion travel with him.

"You will
explain to me as we ride," said the Bear, "everything that
is going on."

The grons picked
their way down the steep mountainside with an agility remarkable in
such large and seemingly ungainly looking animals. Nola, a muffler
wrapped over her nose and mouth, ostensibly to protect her face from
the cold but in reality to keep out the smell, held on tightly to the
Olefsky in front of her and closed her eyes at the sight of the sheer
drops into jagged-edged rock canyons below.

Tusk, jolted and
jounced, imagined gloomily what his rump was going to feel like after
a few kilometers of this treatment, sighed and wished he'd remembered
to bring along the bottle of jump-juice he'd left behind in the
spaceplane.

"How far
are we going?" he asked his Olefsky.

The young man
turned his head, grinned and nodded.

Tusk sighed
again, pulled off his gloves, switched on his translator. "How
far?"

The young
Olefsky leaned at a perilous angle over the gron's neck and pointed.
Tusk, holding on for dear life, peered over a ledge that plunged
straight down into the tops of a forest of fir trees. A valley with a
lake of shining blue water nestled at the bottom of the mountain
peaks. A castle, standing at the foot of one of the mountains and
looking—from this distance— like a child's toy, was
apparently their destination.

"That far,
huh?" Tusk groaned, sank back down on the gron's broad but
unfortunately lumpy backside, and hunched himself into his parka.
"When'll we get there—some time next month?"

The Olefsky
thought this particularly hilarious, to judge by his laughter, which
sent small rocks bounding down the hillside. Reaching into his
coat—it was either his coat or part of his long beard, Tusk
couldn't be certain—the younger Olefsky pulled out a bottle and
offered it to the mercenary.

"You try?"

Tusk brightened,
took hold of the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed. "What
is it?"

The name of the
stuff came through the translator roughly as "that which keeps
the feet from freezing."

"Hell, I'll
try anything once." Tusk took a swig and immediately understood
the nomenclature. The burning liquid ran through his body, up into
his head, and clear down to his toes.

Cradling the
bottle in his arm, Tusk settled down to enjoy the ride.

Bear and Dion
followed the others at a distance. Though the Bear had asked the
young man to tell him his news, Dion could not, at first, reply. He
had never been in a land like this before, had never breathed air
this pure and cold, sweetly sharp with the spiced smell of pine. The
grandeur and harsh, savage beauty of the towering mountains was
overwhelming to the senses. He gazed up at the tops of the peaks,
towering high above him, white against an azure-blue sky, and
suddenly knew what it must be like to stand at the foot of the throne
of God.

"Now,"
said the Bear, settling his bulk comfortably on the gron, "you
will tell me the truth about what is going on."

Dion lowered his
rapt gaze from the heavens and did so.

Bear listened
attentively, did not interrupt, asked no questions. But the broad,
cheerful face, turning occasionally to look at Dion over a massive
shoulder, lost its grin, became unusually grave and solemn. When Dion
concluded, Olefsky heaved a sigh that was like a gust of wind, tugged
thoughtfully and painfully on his beard.

"I should
have stopped Maigrey. I should have talked her out of going,"
Dion said.

"Ah,
laddie, you would have stood a better chance telling that river to
change its course or commanding the sun not to set tonight. You may
be a king, and one of the Blood Royal, but you are mortal and there
are some forces you cannot control." Bear glanced back over his
shoulder, one shrewd eye glinting from the mass of hair and beard.

Dion,
remembering the rite of initiation, hearing Maigrey's voice saying to
him almost those very same words, said nothing but sat brooding and
silent, watching the snow clouds move in to shroud the mountain
peaks. A few flakes, sparkling and white in what remained of the
sunlight, meandered past him, settled on the Bear's fur coat.

"She would
have gone to him no matter what you did or said to her, laddie. You
know that, in your heart, so stop pummeling yourself over it."

"Maybe so,"
Dion said doubtfully. "But why? That's what I don't understand."

"Don't you,
laddie?" Bear shifted his girth on the gron's back to regard
Dion intently. At length, he shook his head, turned back around to
guide the beast. "Well, but you are very young."

The words came
drifting back through the snow.

Dion bit his
lips, his hands clutched at the gron's hair, fingers dug into the
animal's hide. The gron snorted, cast a rolling eyeball backward to
see what was amiss.

If the Bear
noticed, he made no comment, nor did he look behind him.

"I am sorry
for Sagan," he said in a low voice. "A dark and dreadful
destiny is his, doomed to kill the only thing he loves."

Dion was
shocked. "Loves? Who said anything about love? Not between those
two—"

"Said!"
Olefsky roared, causing the gron to shy and dance nervously along the
path. "Said!"

The Bear brought
the animal to a halt, turned around. "By my heart and bowels,
laddie, who wakes every morning and takes a deep breath and says to
the air, 'Air, I love you.' And yet, without air in our lungs, we
would be dead within moments. And who says to the water, 'I love
you!' and yet without water, we die. And who says to the fire in the
winter, 'I love you!' and yet without warmth, we freeze. What is this
talk of 'said'?"

"But how
could two people who love each other do such terrible things to each
other?"

"Love and
hate are twin babes, born of the same mother, but separated at birth.
Pride, misunderstanding, jealousy prod hate, urge it to destroy its
sibling. But love, if it is armored with respect, will always prove
the stronger."

The clouds had
covered the sun, a grayness settled over the world. The snow began
falling thick and heavy, tumbling straight down out of the sky, not a
breath of wind stirring it. The flakes settled on Dion's eyelashes.
He blinked rapidly, trying to brush them away. He could taste the icy
whiteness on his lips and tongue.

The Bear shook
himself, much after the habit of the animal whose name he bore, and
shifted back around, facing forward, kicking the gron in the sides to
start the animal moving. The others had gone ahead, vanished
completely out of sight. The woods, filling up with snow, were
suddenly, incredibly silent. Dion wondered if Olefsky was angry, but
the Bear's voice, when it spoke again, was filled instead with a
sadness as soft as the falling snowflakes.

"Why do you
think Sagan spent seventeen years of his life searching for the
Guardians? Oh, to find you, of course, laddie. You were important to
him. But not nearly so important as finding the other half of himself
that had been so long missing. And why did she wait seventeen years
in one place for him to find her? Because she could no more run away
from the missing half of herself than her body could run off without
its heart."

"But he was
going to execute her—"

"And did
he?" The glinting eye peered at Dion through the snow that was
whitening the matted hair.

"Well, no.
But only because Maigrey forced him to fight a duel—"

"Forced
him, did she? A Warlord, aboard his own ship with a thousand men at
his command, and one woman
forces
him to fight her in fair
combat?" Olefsky chuckled. "And when that duel took place,
laddie, did either actually kill the other?"

"Only
because the Corasian attack came—"

"Lucky for
them the good God intervened, or they would have had to come up with
some other excuse."

"Sagan
vowed to kill her," Dion said after a moment. "He asked God
to give her life to him. "