Mary pushed the blade away with the flat of her hand.
“Go watch for the other one,” she said.
Joe stalked to the mouth of the cave, muttering. She turned and glanced up at the two silver boxes which floated, motionless, a few inches from the high roof of the cave.
She smiled up at the lenses and said, “How do you like this, fight fans?”
Shawn, son of Orn, carried on the conflicts as devised by his father, ordering the technicians to make minor improvements.
But Shawn was wearied by the difficulties of administration of the greatest Empire the universe had ever seen.
With the passage of the years, as the blood of the Kanes thinned, unrest had spread throughout the four hundred and eleven colonies and throughout Mother Earth. This unrest was based primarily on the accelerating reduction of the birth rate.
Colonies which once had numbered in the hundreds of millions had shrunk to half their original number. Shawn had kept the court scientists hard at work on the problem but they spoke to him of the tiring germ plasm, of the diminishing vitality of the race. They at last convinced him that the race of man had passed the crest of vitality and was doomed to gradual reduction in numbers until at last, when all vitality was gone, the weeds and the rot would take over the works of man.
When Shawn at last believed the word of his court scientists, when he knew that the Empire would eventually fall with the race, he embarked on a course of personal extravagance, of dissipation, that exceeded anything previously known during the reign of the line of Kane.
His subjects became increasingly discontented, the malcontent spreading even to the officers of his elite corps of warriors of space.
The flames smouldered deep underground and various secret societies were formed, each pledged to overthrow the empire. Such was the efficacy of the espionage system of the house of Kane that these societies were, for the most part, ignorant of the existence of the others and consequently each underestimated the total power of the spirit of rebellion.
In line with the spirit of malcontent, all decent men wearied of the spectacle of combat, feeling in their hearts that the bitter little battles on Lassa were but an evidence of the harshness of their ruler.
When Shawn found that his billions of subjects were not being entertained by the battles on Lassa, he cleverly recreated their interest by using Lassa as punishment for those he suspected of insubordination, of desiring to overthrow his empire.
He was not so foolish as to send only the rebels against the savages — against the savage dead, as they were called — but carefully kept the proportion down to three loyal and ambitious young officers to one rebel.
There was one minor difference. Once an officer was victorious on Lassa, he was free to rejoin the fleet. But a rebel was condemned to remain until he at last was killed by one of the savages.
What Shawn did not realize was that his subjects, more than sated with the sight of death, had begun to be sympathetic toward the savages and had lost most of the superstitious horror and fear which was the result of the propaganda of his infamous ancestor.
Shawn was careful to see that loyal technicians handled the individual scanners so that, should any condemned rebel attempt to shout his defiance to the listening universe, he would be quickly taken off the receivers of the world.
But Shawn made one mistake. He misjudged the loyalty of one scanner operator, or possibly the operator of the scanner was loyal until he saw what happened in the case of the ex-officer, Anthon.
Or it can be argued that the Empire was in so precarious a state that any incident would have been sufficient.
Chapter VII
Final Gesture
The strands of hide cut deeply into his wrists and ankles and Anthon wondered at the strength of the savage woman who had tied him.
He knew that he was close to the end of his life and felt nothing but fury that his life should have ended in such a meaningless fashion. He would have willingly died in striking one more blow against the rule of the infamous Shawn.
These four savages had fought bravely. At least two of them had.
In the beginning, when he had been searched, when they had found on him the sketch of the castle defences, when he had been condemned to Lassa to fight against savages until he at last was killed, he had thought it best that to go into combat with the idea of being sufficiently clumsy so that death would come easily.
He knew that it would pain his friends, his relatives and those who had plotted with him against Shawn to see his death on the screen, but it had seemed worth the candle to spite Shawn’s plan for him to provide sport and entertainment.
Thus, during the training period, he had made no special effort to become adept with sword and axe as had the loyal officers, who looked upon Lassa not as punishment but as a field where they could gain fame.
He had nothing but contempt for those officers who put personal gain above the needs of the race, above the spirit of rebellion. But Anthon was human — he was a victim of hope — and he found that he did not wish to die so pointlessly.
Possibly, if he remained alive for a sufficiently long period, the Empire would be overthrown and he would be free to help build a new world for mankind. Anthon was a sensitive and intelligent man. He recognized the basic weakness of his stand, and the forlorn slimness of his hope. And now the last of his hope was gone.
Incomprehensibly the girl had saved him from his own sword, held in the uninjured hand of the huge sunburned savage. Basically it was his own fault. Had he been able to steel himself to cut the throat of the woman with one back-handed slash he could then have disposed of the man.
He wondered ironically if the savage woman had saved him from the sword thrust out of some desire to repay him for not being able to strike the blow that would kill her. Surely, when Kor attacked, either the girl or the man would have one free moment in which to kill their bound captive before they died.
He pitied the two of them. They had been brought from their own world of the past to fight vainly against force that would eventually quell them. The girl knelt beside him and, with a bit of cloth, wiped away the blood at the base of his throat. Her eyes were as gentle as her touch.
Anthon wondered at the odd feeling of warmth within him. It had first occurred when he had seen her, standing with the smaller one with the yellow hair. He had not liked the death of the smaller one. He had wanted to interpose himself, to save her, but his resolve had come too late.
And the smaller man had died like a warrior, crippled a strong man even as he died.
He looked up into the blue eyes of the woman in the ragged dark red dress and something in her look was like a note of strange music. He smiled as he thought of the absurdity of feeling affection — even love — for one of the savage dead.
Yet, philosophically speaking, was she dead? She could feel pain and cold and fear. Her touch was gentle. Yes, this was a far different sort of being than the lean, rather astringent women of his own class. This savage one had a deep, lusty strength about her. And she was incredibly brave. She had smiled and when she had asked for death the meaning was clear.
He had but few words of her archaic tongue. He said, “Why not kill?”
“Why it speaks busted English,” Mary said. “Why not kill you? Look, pretty boy. I want to live. Mary wants to live. Understand? How can I do that?”