Her voice broke upon the last word, almost with a sob, and he looked away.
“What will you do now?” he asked.
“Fight! These chiefs and lords have promised men and ships, pledged to my banner, to retake Valadon in my name. I await the coming of Yaklar, the Arthon of Pelaire in the outworlds beyond the Nebula—he comes tomorrow to complete negotiations—then I shall strike for what is mine, falsely taken from me.”
Raul frowned a little. He had heard of this Arthon before; no one raised in the Border worlds could have failed to hear of him. A troublesome, warlike Outworlder, known to have long coveted the wealth of the Inner Worlds, and to have conspired before this to their looting. But he also knew the Pelairi to be treacherous—who would use the Kahani of Valadon and cast her aside, once her usefulness was done. He felt an uncomfortable chill of apprehension.
“Why do you need the help of Pelaire?”
“Because I need a man to lead my warriors!” she burst out. “They will never follow a woman, no matter how they love me. Oh, my own Clan, of whom I am now sole Chieftainess for my father (may the Seven give him bliss!) is dead now, they will follow me eagerly enough—beyond the farthest star, and past the gates of the Ninth Hell, if such be my wish! As will certain of the other Clans, the Arglinassam, truly, and the Tahukamnar, in full strength, for Sharl is their Chieftain and sworn to my service. But no others. I need a man to lead them, as my war-leader, my Shakar—and I care little whether it be Lord Zarkandu—or this fat-gutted Arthon—but I had hoped it would be you.”
“But I-”
She gestured to the hall below.
“All of them are here because they have heard that a great Shakar from the star-worlds of the Imperium was come to lead them! They are all watching you, although politeness decrees they should not do so openly. They have heard you were a great leader in the Mica Cluster wars, a mighty hero of valor, who have joined my cause. Does this not thrill you—to lead so many warriors into battle? You are here, a fugitive from injustice, as am I—will you not strike a blow for a truly just cause? I do not tempt you with titles or wealth or fame—I know you are man enough not to be bought by them—I tempt you with rarer prizes. To fight against corruption, betrayal, infamy—with truth for your banner, justice for your sword!”
Dumbly, unable to counter arguments that were so closely in tune with his own inward convictions, he struggled to speak.
“I appreciate … I sympathize—”
“Do not accept or refuse—now. Think about it, Lin-ton. There is time. Promise me that you will at least consider my proposal! Do not just decline it without thought. Promise?”
“Very well, I promise that I will think it over.”
Eagerly: “Good! And think, too, of this, Lin-ton: you are cast out from your people, named traitor and outlaw. What will you do—where will you go—how will you spend your days, hence forward? Join me—not as a servant, for I know you resent commands—but as a leader in a noble cause. How better to protest and avenge the injustice that your government has done you, than to battle unselfishly in revenge of the injustice your government has wreaked upon me?”
“I will think of … all these things,” Linton promised slowly.
She smiled, and he noted (bemused) how her smile lit up her lovely face.
“Now go, go in honor, Lin-ton. For I have matters to discuss with these, my chieftains. Tomorrow, when the Arthon comes, perhaps we shall speak of these things again. Go—and consider deeply, as you have sworn to me you would!”
He left the dais, nodding briefly to Sharl, and strode out of the feasting-hall, the great scarlet cloak swinging and belling from his shoulders, and the golden sword slapping at his thigh.
From the dais, she watched him leave. And the silent chiefs also watched, with admiring and appraising eyes.
And that night he was too full of thoughts and unsettled questions to even think of sleep.
EIGHT
THE NEXT DAY, shortly after “dawn”—for there was no true difference between day and night on a planet whose skies were eternally filled with the clouded glory of Thunderhawk Nebula, only an artificial and arbitrary hour of clock-time— the long-awaited arrival of the Arthon and his party came.
Raul and Gundorm Varl were in the cavern-mouth to watch as the Outworld monarch came down by atmospheric skimmer from his warship orbiting above. There were, in fact, two skimmers, for the Warlord never traveled without his astrologer, his priest, a magician or two, a full squad of his personal guard, and, of course, the various officers and lords of his royal court.
The notorious Arthon turned out to be a tall, fat-bellied and beardless man with a cold smile on his thin lips, a chilling air of condescension, wrapped from head to foot in a magnificent cloak of saffron velvet. He exchanged greetings with the Kahani and her lords that were almost mawkishly effusive and loaded with flowery compliments.
Raul noticed that the Arthon’s guards, of whom there was a surprisingly large number, were great strapping brutes with narrow eyes and sneering lips, profusely armed as if to take a garrison. From the way they stole swift, all-encompassing glances around the landing area, noting the number and allotment of guards and defenses, and from their arrogant, swaggering deportment, Linton thought they resembled hired thugs and bravos more than military officers.
Raul had remained unobtrusively in the background during the greeting ceremonies, and wandered off when the crowd moved into the corridors bound for the council chambers and the very important negotiations upon which so much hung. He felt at loose ends, irritable, uncomfortable, out-of-place. Not knowing just what to do with himself, he wandered out of the cavern mouth to a small ledge overhanging the terrible sheer drop of the gorge, and sat down to smoke and to chew over his thoughts.
It was like an illustration from Dante’s Inferno. Overhead, the wild splendor of the fantastic nebula flung out across the sky stupendous streamers and coils of radiance, like the blast-torn firecloud of some cosmic explosion, frozen by a camera forever in an endless moment of furious expansion. And all about him, to either side and stretching beneath his feet into the impossible depths of the gorge, was a seared and shattered wilderness of tortured, cloven rock, like the debris of the explosion.
Ophmar had an atmosphere, of course, but little water and what moisture there was remained confined deep within the planet’s core, tapped only by deep wells. Hence, no erosion save that of the shrieking wind, had weathered or smoothed these jagged fangs and towering pinnacles of ochre and dark vermilion naked rock into rounded pectorals of hill and mountain, as could be seen on more temperate and more fortunate planets. Ophmar remained forever as she had been in that primordial age, geological epochs ago, when the lava fountains and torn masses of liquescent rock, lifted up in the violence of her thunderous creation, had first hardened and cooled.
Far above, dim-seen against the nebula’s incandescent veil of medusa-locks, the tiny red spark of her primary, from whose bosom she had been cataclysmically torn, burned feebly.
The scene was very fitting to his mood.