“I cannot believe it has truly begun,” Madelon breathed.
DeCade grunted. “You will when you see the blood.”
Suddenly a low, deep thrumming filled the air. All heads snapped up, craning back their necks to watch the stars being blotted out in an expanding ellipse. A mutter of fear and awe swept through them, their eyes bulging; then the blot on the sky was gone, and a black ship’s gig pressed down on the meadow grass near them. The thrumming stopped; the churls stood, awed and staring.
Then a whispered cheer hissed from their throats, and they leaped forward, running toward the ship. As they came up, a rectangular section of the side dropped forward and out; bright light cut a swath across the clearing. The churls stopped, uncertain, prickling with superstitious fear, muttering.
A tall, lean figure in tight-fitting black appeared against the light, surveyed them, then stepped out into the meadow. Behind him, another appeared with a cube about a foot and a half on a side. He set it down and turned back to take another like it from a third man, who appeared in the hatch.
The first man wrenched open the crate and lifted out a laser pistol. He held it out, butt first, to the churl nearest him. Hesitantly, the churl took it, and the sky-man lifted out another.
With a moan of delight, the churls pressed in.
The churls from all the villages on the estates of Louvrais had gathered, muttering and shifting nervously about, in a great meadow surrounded by woodlots, just below the Lord’s castle. Now and again, they glanced anxiously at the sky; but the moon hid its face, and the stars watched, uncaring.
Two hundred miles away, Lord Propin finished with his concubine for the evening and rolled over on his side to sleep. The girl lay, keeping her face carefully neutral, listening. Even after she heard the deep, even breathing of sleep, she waited; but her beautiful face slowly contorted with hate and disgust. Finally, sure the Lord was deeply asleep, she rose, glided to his wardrobe, and slid a jeweled dagger from its sheath on an embossed leather belt. She glided back through a single shaft of moonlight to his bedside, and stood looking down at him. Slowly she smiled as she raised the dagger and plunged it home.
To the south, in Lord Ubiquii’s tall, moated castle, two guards stood leaning on their pikes outside the Lord’s bedroom door.
A Butler came discreetly down the hall and stopped to murmur in the ear of the older guard. The guard’s face turned grim; he nodded shortly. The Butler bowed courteously and moved away.
The younger man frowned. “What was that about?”
“It could be trouble,” the older guard said slowly, “but not enough to trouble His Lordship. Go to the guardroom and tell Sergeant Garstang to come here with five picked men.”
The younger man cocked his head to one side, frowning.
“Go!” the older man barked. “Do as you are bid!”
The younger man turned away, still watching his companion out of the corner of his eye.
The elder waited till the younger man had passed from sight, waited till his footsteps had faded away. Then he turned, opened the door he guarded, and went in to murder his Lord.
In Château Grenoble, the kitchen drudge came to the head Butler, murmuring quietly to him. He listened thoughtfully, nodding; she turned away. Then the Butler told one of his footmen to bear a message to a certain Sergeant of Guards. As the footman went, the Butler passed among the other servants, murmuring briefly to each; one by one, they finished what they were doing and went to the kitchens, where they took up knives and cleavers.
They marched up the great stairs toward the chamber where their Lord and Lady lay sleeping, each of them remembering many humiliations, injuries, and loved ones lost. On a landing they met a troop of guardsmen. The sergeant and the Butler exchanged glances, then marched on up the stairs, side by side. Fifty Soldiers and servants followed them.
The castle of Miltrait had a lord with a nasty, suspicious mind; he’d always made sure he kept a good standing army handy within the walls of his keep, and a squad of young lordlings (mostly his own) to stand behind the Soldiers with lasers. The lordlings had stood night watch in the barracks; which was why, though the house churls had opened the gate, the rebel army wasn’t making much headway.
The courtyard was a frenzy of torchlight, hoarse screams, bellows of rage, winking laser beams, and the clatter of steel. At its center stood the Lord, armor bolted over his nightshirt, hewing and hacking about him, bellowing, “On, my bullies, on! Force them out through the gate; free this castle of vermin!” And slowly, bit by bit, the churls were being pushed back to the wall.
But, silent and unseen above them, a huge black egg drifted down, hovering over the battlements. One of its turrets swiveled downward, lining up on the Lord.
He happened to glance upward, saw the dark blot against the stars, and realized what was happening. He sprang backward with a bellow of warning—but the turret tracked him, and a rod of red fire sizzled out, strafing the long line of lordlings.
The Lord died in an instant. Some of his men survived long enough for the knives of the churls to reach them.
Lady Pomgrain fled back through the keep. Behind her, in the great hall, the air danced with laser bolts. Steel clashed on steel. Her husband fought like a maniac with the handful of gentlemen left to him, guarding her line of escape, but the churls pressed them hard; as soon as one was dispatched, another popped up in his place.
The Lady threw open a door on a spiral stair, stepped in, and bolted the door behind her. Up and up she climbed, panting heavily, till she came to a door at the roof of the tower. She leaned against it, gasping till she’d recovered a little of her strength; then, fumbling her keys in her fear, she unlocked it. The door swung open; she all but fell in.
The room was empty and clean, as immaculate as gray stone can be, except for a large metal console with a viewscreen in its center, at the far side of the small room. The Lady staggered over to it, pushed a button, and jewel-lights glowed into life. She threw a key and spoke into a grid on the console’s face: “Alarm, alarm, emergency! The churls have risen on the estates of Pomgrain! They have taken the castle; they are slaying the nobles! Send help; let all men guard their own!”
The message rolled out from her castle in a huge, expanding globe. It touched castle after castle; and where it touched, receiving sets woke into life.
DeCade and Dirk had donned outlaw clothing against the chill of the dark predawn hours, but Dirk still wore the rope belt, and the garnet in his ear.
The garnet buzzed; Dirk tapped recognition on the end of the rope/transmitter. He listened for a few minutes, frowning, then tapped an acknowledgment and turned to DeCade. “The word is out; the churls of Pomgrain took their Lady too late. She sent out an alarm with her communicator. As I understand it, any incoming signal on the emergency frequency automatically turns the receivers on. All the Lords will know it by now.”
“I think they knew it already, from sources closer to home,” DeCade said thoughtfully.
The alarm rattled from communicators all over the land; but in most castles, they spoke to empty air; there was no one near them. Some heard, but also heard the pounding at the door.
In the King’s castle at Albemarle, a young lord jerked up out of a doze, listened a moment, appalled, then dashed from the room, to bear the word to Lord Core.
Core had just ridden in, covered with dust, choleric and choking. He listened incredulously; then he slashed out at the young Lord with the back of his hand, snarling. The lordling leaped back adroitly and was about to take offense when he realized Core was already gone, angrily pacing away, bellowing orders.