The Forever Hero (79 page)

Separated from the official entourage were the soldiers prodded into the palace by the traveler. One clutched a bloody arm, and there were nine others holding swords awkwardly, as if unsure of what to do next.

The traveler counted. Less than twenty armed men—about what he had expected. He stepped around the column and down the steps
toward Kernute, avoiding the bodies still sprawled where he had dropped them.

“I challenge, Kernute.”

As he neared the king, he could see some of the personal guards shake their heads. The ruler was clearly of greater stature, strength, and girth. The traveler appeared slim, dusty, and comparatively unarmed.

“You?” bellowed the monarch. “I wouldn't soil my sword…”

As if his outrage were a signal, the tallest of the personal guards charged from beside the king, spear in one hand, sword in the other, shield dropped on the clay.

This time the traveler did not use the slender black weapon which remained hidden, but waited, motionless, until the guard was nearly upon him.

Then he moved, and like a bolt of lightning blurred in the vision of those who watched.

Clank!

The guard lay on the clay, unbreathing, his neck at the odd angle that indicated it had been broken.

“I challenge,” answered the slim stranger. “And if you keep putting it off, you won't have enough guards left to protect you, let alone your miserable little town.” He gestured toward the bodies lying across the stairs and courtyard.

“What weapons?”

“You? Whatever you want.”

“None of your magic.”

“Only my hands, a rock or two, perhaps my knives.”

“Your hands and knives against my sword and shield?”

“Why not?”

The traveler motioned to the personal guards. “Stand back.” He looked at the soldiers. “You! There!” He gestured them toward the base of the steps.

The boy and girl who had accompanied the traveler watched from beneath the exterior wall of the grounds, twenty meters distant, as if they could still not believe that the traveler would topple King Kernute.

Kernute advanced slowly, letting his shield cover as much as possible.

The stranger watched, hands on his belt, his eyes taking in not only the king, but the four remaining personal bodyguards and the ruler's apparent wife/consort.

His hands flicked once, and a silvery knife appeared in his left hand. Twice and another appeared in his right.

Kernute was more than two meters away from the man in the dark olive singlesuit when he jumped and his sword licked out quickly.

The traveler did not seem to move, but he was not where the sword was.

“…magic…”

“…quick…”

Another sword probe followed, and another. Both missed.

“Stand still, you…”

“Sorry, Kernute,” said the traveler as the knife streaked from his left hand.

The four members of the personal guard stiffened as they watched the king tumble face forward over his shield.

“Ohhhh!” One of the girls buried her head in the arms of the older woman with the gray-streaked hair.

“Stop!” snapped the traveler as one of the black-leathered men lurched a step toward him.

The guard stopped.

“You four, get moving. Out of Gondolan. Not long before the townspeople will start to take you apart.”

One looked at the traveler, then at the guards on the steps, before dropping his shield and scuttling toward the gate. A second shook his head as he dropped shield and followed, but more warily, as if he expected the town to be waiting outside the gate for him.

“You're the new king, I suppose?” asked the older woman as she cradled her daughter.

“No. Could care less.” The traveler's hawk-yellow eyes raked the mismatched group. “This happened because the king did not welcome travelers. Strong-arm tactics don't work, not for long.

“But me…I have a long way to go…miles to go.”

He had walked over to the heap which was composed of the black cloak and his pack, picked up both with a quick motion, still watching the remaining soldiers, and noting that the guard with the bloody arm had also slipped away.

“What you decide to do with your town is up to you. Suggest a bit more friendliness. Might stop terrorizing the neighbors. The Empire doesn't like that sort of thing. More important, I don't, either.”

He shook the thin black cloak and folded it into the pack before hoisting it back onto his shoulders. Last, he walked over to the deceased ruler and retrieved his knife, wiping it quickly on the dead
man's tunic and replacing it in its sheath. He stood, surveying the small crowd.

“Up to you. Try to do better next time.”

He began to walk toward the gate, his pace so quick that he had passed through the northern barriers to the palace and into the small town before there was any reaction at all from the stunned group.

Belatedly, the boy and girl who had watched from next to the wall, squatting, scurried to their feet and after him.

“Devilspawn follow him…”

“Devilkiller…”

“…watch for the traveler…”

The soldiers looked at each other in the chaos that dropped on them in the stranger's absence, then at the bodies strewn across the palace grounds as if by a lethal wind.

The king's widow sought to console one daughter, while an amused smile played around the lips of the older girl as she watched the remaining bodyguard strip off his black leathers and edge toward the widow.

Several hundred meters to the south, a shopkeeper parted with a few items, and thereafter, a few minutes later, a town gate opened, but did not close.

“We are not pleased with your response to Our inquiry,” stated the thin man behind the antique wooden desk and the double energy screens.

“I understand that, Your Majesty.” The speaker sat quietly in the narrow and straight-backed chair. His tunic and matching trousers were a somber blue, darker than his piercing blue eyes, and almost as black as his boots.

“Then why do you not act?”

“If Your Majesty wishes, I will send a full squad of Corpus Corps troops to Old Earth. That will leave two full squads to handle what has historically taken four or five squads. Training for replacements will proceed at half schedule, and once it becomes known that we have lost a squad on Old Earth, you will have double the unrest on the outer rim systems. But, if you wish, I will dispatch a squad.”

“Morren, are you telling Us that this…this antique relic…this broken down ex-commodore…can destroy a full squad of the best Corpus Corps troops?”

“No. But no one on Old Earth is likely to turn on a local legend, from what I know. Since no one knows where on Old Earth he might happen to be, a squad would be necessary just to locate him.”

“Why not locate him with regular Service personnel?”

“The last effort to find and stop him took three squadrons filled with regular personnel. I might remind Your Majesty that the efficiency ratings of those squadrons were considerably higher than the current averages. We could locate Gerswin with regular personnel, if Your Majesty wishes to pull at least one squadron from the rim patrols. But to pin down Gerswin would still take half a squad, and the probability of success would be less than sixty percent.”

“If that is the best you can do, then perhaps We should find a new Eye.”

“That is Your Majesty's choice. The failure to stop Gerswin has brought down the three previous Eyes, who, frankly, had a great deal more to work with, and considerably fewer internal problems to resolve for their Emperor.”

“Are you telling Us that you cannot find and terminate this relic who has caused the Empire so much unrest and loss?”

“No, Your Majesty. I am frank in telling You the cost of such an operation. The choice is Yours. I can only serve.”

The thin man who wore the title of Emperor and who sat behind the antique desk of his predecessors frowned. Finally, he looked back up at his chief of Intelligence.

“Did you know this when you accepted your position?”

“Not for certain, Your Majesty, but I did suspect it might prove to be the case.”

“Why?”

“Gerswin couldn't destroy the results of his first physical examination, the one before he became cautious. He also built the biggest commercial barony ever put together in a single lifetime—without anyone understanding its extent until he walked away and let its collapse ruin the economies of more than a dozen systems.”

“So what is the man, an immortal genius with the talents of a dozen Corpus Corps types and the soul of the devil?”

“That might overstate the case, Your Majesty. Then again, it might not.”

His Imperial Majesty continued to frown.

“Might I have your leave to depart, Your Majesty? You can always request my termination.”

“Go…go, Morren. Let him rot on Old Earth, and preserve what you can for Your Emperor.”

“As Your Majesty wishes.”

The wind coming off the Inland Sea streamed the once-black cloak from his shoulders like wings, and the red sun perched on the western horizon outlined him like a black marble statue above the angled stones and marble columns that remained.

The oldest of the old cities, that was all the cat-eyed people had called it, but ruins were ruins, whether they were buried beneath the purpled clay of the high plains, or but half-buried and standing on a hillside above the Inland Sea.

The lower edge of the crimson sun touched the water, and the gray and wispy high clouds melted pink. The dark water took on a maroon tinge. Once it had been called a wine-dark sea, and now it was again, though it was neither sailed nor crossed by the scattered peoples along its shore. That, too, was as it had been in the first beginning.

He had stayed too long, too long after he had helped them found and defend their settlement, too long indeed, for even the children, incredibly quick, bright, bowed as he passed.

He turned until the sun was at his back, not that the fading light carried much warmth, and began to walk upward toward the row of fallen columns for another look at the statue.

His boots clicked on the stone underfoot, the steps fractured and cracked, but still in place.

He nodded a greeting to her, her face already in shadow.

Without further gestures, he sat on the column to her right, squinting as the last rays of the sun cast a glow at the base of the fallen goddess. Her face was beautiful, in the old style, the style of a Caroljoy, but remained expressionless. Her arms were long since gone, but neither she nor he looked to hold or to be held.

He studied the white lines, the unblinking eyes, while the light dimmed.

Soon, the fog would creep in, climbing the hill toward the fallen pillars and tilted white stone blocks.

Glancing down at his cloak, no longer crisp black, but worn, faded almost into olive, with the use of the past years, worn and patched, the last patches those provided by Charletta, who had patched it while complaining that Berin would let her do nothing strenuous until their child was born, until her time had come.

He snorted as he looked at the stone goddess.

“Your time has long gone, and mine also.”

If you say so
.

“Already, this continent is reawakening. Was the worst of all. I belonged to the dead times.”

You cannot die
.

“Nor can you.”

I lived only while people remembered
.

“Remember? Soon I will remember little.”

You do not want to remember
.

“Don't want to forget either. Where does that leave me?”

She did not answer, and he looked away from the perfect white face of the recumbent woman and watched the upper tip, the last crimson slivers, of the sun drop below the watery horizon, watched the long shadows lengthen, dancing from slow wave to slow wave.

“Well, my lady, we had our times.”

It is early for self-pity
.

“I forget. You have watched more centuries than I have.”

I have seen nothing
.

“Have I? Tell me I have seen. Watched while others lived, loved, and died. Watched and killed, killed and watched. Pulled strings, played god, and for what? For what?”

You have lived, if not how you wanted. You have lived
.

He could not refute her last statement, and did not try, as he sat on a ruined column, keeping company with a statue, as the twilight became night. Knowing that the next day—the next day, for he had waited too long—he must begin the trip to the place of his beginning.

Above the faded olive singlesuit, patched and dusty, hawk-yellow eyes glittered beneath tight-curled blond hair. The jaw remained elfin, and the skin smooth, but there was a tiredness behind the youthful features reflected only in the lagging steps, where each stride stopped short of briskness, each step mirrored more than mere fatigue.

The afternoon sun glared down at the solitary figure on the empty road as he trudged westward, staff in hand, pack on back.

The gently rolling hills to his right sported an uneven growth of assorted bushes and trees, none more than twice the traveler's height, and all less than a pair of decades old.

Nodding without pausing, he contemplated what would one day be a forest, recalling when the area had boasted little beyond purpled clay, landpoisons, and a few clumps of the purple grass that had been all that could grow.

Glancing to his left, he observed the recently tilled soil, and the dark green tips of the sponge grains beginning to peer through the soil that retained a tinge of purple.

A faint rumble whispered from the west.

With a sigh, the traveler turned from the packed clay road less than five meters wide and marched northward into the underbrush, finally halting underneath a small oak and seating himself to wait for the road roller to pass on eastward to the newly developed coastal settlements.

Not that anyone expected him, nor wanted him, but meeting even a roller crew in the middle of the piedmont would raise questions, and there would be enough of those when he reached the high plains. Time enough for the questions then.

He stretched out his legs and waited, listening for the faint sounds he hoped were there—the twitter of the insects, the chirp and rustle of remaining or returning birds, as well as the reintroduced species, those few that had been preserved on New Augusta, New Colora, or in reserves throughout the Empire.

The insects resumed their twitters immediately, even before he stopped moving, but the heavy and moist air brought no sounds of birds or other larger species.

As the rumbling of the roller grew from a whisper into a grumbling, the cargo vehicle topped a hill and gathered momentum to plunge down its slope on its eastward route.

Within minutes, the grumbling roar had dwindled back into a whisper.

The traveler stood, flexing his shoulders as if to remove the tightness, reshouldered his backpack, and picked up his heavy, but wellworked staff.

Soon, he would need to refill his water bottle, and to see what he could find to supplement the food he carried. Soon—but not for another five or ten kays, at least.

His steps were even as he returned to the road, where the heavy red dust had already settled back to blur the wide traces of the cargo rollers where they had flattened the right of way even more smoothly than before.

The respite had refreshed him, and his steps were brisker. He began to whistle one of the newer tunes he had composed in the last few years. Although he recalled the older ones, and whistled them now and again in his blacker moments, he usually avoided them and the memories they brought back.

At the top of the next hill, he paused to survey the gentle hills that rose into the eastern Noram mountains. He could see the darker green of their forested slopes, where the ecological recovery had been quicker than on the slower draining and clay-based hilly plains where he stood.

How long had it been since he had overflown this area?

He pushed the thought away and started down the western slope of the hill, his booted feet leaving barely a trace on the shoulder of the packed clay road.

Three kays westward, he paused again upon a hilltop, when he saw a single man standing beside a machine—a locally built tractor type pulling a tilling rig.

He shrugged and continued downward, until at last he stood beside the machine, observing the man who struggled with an assembly that controlled the tilling bars dragged by the tractor. The tractor, obviously of local design and manufacture, bore more patches than the traveler's singlesuit, but appeared clean and in good repair.

“Hades…,” muttered the operator, refusing to pay any attention to the traveler.

In turn, the traveler seated himself in the midafternoon shade of the large wheels and waited, taking a sip from his nearly empty water bottle.

“Hades…double Hades…grubbin' Impie design…”

The blond man finished the water and replaced the bottle in the harness attached to his pack, stretching his legs out to wait for the other to complete the repair or surrender to the need for assistance.

Clank!

Plop!

A large hammer dropped beside the traveler, who looked up without curiosity.

“Perfectly good machine…useless because some idiot tech decided it was easier to copy from a stupid Imperial design…”

“That bad?” asked the blond-haired man as he watched the operator clamber down from the tractor.

“Wouldn't be hard at all if I had Imperial tools, three hands, and a graving dock to immobilize the whole stupid assembly!”

The operator had the long-armed and narrow-faced look of shambletown ancestry, but wore a relatively new jumpsuit, which carried only recent dirt and grease. His black hair was short, and he wiped his forehead with a brown cloth, which he replaced in a thigh pocket of the jumpsuit.

“Mind if I take a look?” asked the traveler.

“Be my guest. Not scheduled for a pickup for hours yet. Don't seem to have the tools to fix it.”

After nodding sympathetically, the traveler climbed up to the assembly with an ease that spoke of familiarity with both equipment in general and repairs in awkward locales.

The man in the olive jumpsuit frowned as he surveyed the jammed assembly. In one respect, the operator was correct. The Imperial design, obviously adapted from a flitter-door system, was far too complicated.

Still—Imperial designs usually had more than one solution.

He bent over the assembly, looking at the far side upside down. A wry smile creased his face as he straightened and checked the small tool kit which the operator had left.

Not ideal, but he thought what he had in mind would work. Even permanent connections could be removed, if you knew their structure.

Click. Click
.

With the right angle, the hidden releases, and an extreme amount of pressure, he managed to get the “permanent” coupling released.

The loss of pressure on the line allowed the assembly to drop into
place. With the pressure off the line, he was able to release the other end of the connector.

As the operator had probably known, the check valve was jammed with debris and hardened fluid. Within a few minutes he had it clean again, and ready to reconnect. Doing the best he could, he cleaned out the tubing and the fittings before he reassembled them.

Finally, he closed the tool kit and climbed back down to the puzzled operator.

“Think it should work now. Want to try it?”

The operator shook his head, wiping his forehead once more with the brown cloth.

“How did you do that?”

“Had some familiarity, once, with that sort of design. A few tricks I happened to remember.”

“That Hades-fired assembly gives us more problems than the rest of the equipment put together. I've never seen anyone fix one that quickly.”

“Luck, I suppose.”

“Where are you headed?”

“West.”

The operator surveyed the traveler, looked from the patched and faded singlesuit to the western mountains, taking in the backpack and staff resting against the tractor wheels.

“On foot?”

“Simpler that way. No hurry. Feet don't break down if you rest them now and again.”

The operator shook his head. “Still a few wild Mazers loose. I wouldn't recommend going much beyond the next check station. Better to catch a ride with one of the road rollers. They'd be happy to take you. They like the company.”

The traveler nodded. “Appreciate the suggestion.”

“You sure look familiar. Swear I saw you someplace.”

“Not likely. Been a long time since I passed this way.”

“Well…whatever. I appreciate the help. Appreciate it a lot. Anything I can do for you? Like to give you a lift, but…” The Recorps operator surveyed the half-tilled field.

“Understand. You've got a job.”

The operator nodded. “Stet. Beats running the hills. Even if I don't see the lady more than once a week. Kids always have enough to eat. Not like the old days, bless the captain.”

“Pardon?”

“Not like the old days, I said.”

The traveler smiled faintly, nodded, and bent to pick up the pack and staff. Straightening, he twirled the staff one-handed and inclined his head momentarily toward the Recorps tech.

“Good luck,” he called to the operator as he set out toward the road and the mountains toward which it led.

“Sure not like the old days…captain and all…” He could hear the operator murmuring as the tech began to check out the equipment before returning to his tilling.

The traveler waited until he had crossed the next hilltop before resuming his whistling.