For a long while he brooded and smoked, fiery thatch of hair tossed by the howling winds, wrapped in a suede cloak against the biting chill of Ophmar’s thin air.
His thoughts were many, and dark.
Eventually he rose, still caught in the mental vertigo of indecision. Hunger claimed him, and warmth: he descended from his lonely, Promethean perch, reentered the vast echoing cavern, and made his way to the quarters he shared with Gundorm Varl.
He found there a visitor waiting for him.
“Someone to speak with y’, sir. He said he’d wait, so I let him squat,” Gunder said. Raul nodded briefly, and inspected his uninvited guest with curious eyes.
He was a Rilké warrior—Rilké of the planet Argastra, from the characteristic accouterments he wore. Tall, lean, hawk-faced, dark-skinned—one of the many landless, loot-seeking vagabonds who had been attracted to the Kahani’s cause by the promise of riches lying open for the ruthless taker. His suede cloak was begrimed and tattered—and none-too-expertly patched. His garments were shabby, carelessly thrown together, and the man himself was unobtrusive, proud but yet servile—completely unprepossessing.
However, Raul greeted him politely, however abstracted and busy with his own painful decisions.
“Be welcome to what is mine—will you share wine and food?” he asked absently.
“Of honor, no, kazar. I have eaten.” The Rilké spoke a particularly barbarous and colloquial back-country variant of the Tongue, with a slight stammer caused by a speech- impediment, perhaps. Then Linton saw he had an old scar that stretched glassily from the comer of one eye down to snag and lift a comer of his mouth.
And he was villainously dirty.
And he smelled.
Raul invited him to a more comfortable seat on a nest of bright cushions, and knelt himself, RiIké-fashion.
“I thank the kazar, of gentility!”
“All right. Will you smoke, then?” he said, offering a packet of cigarels (his last, as it happened).
The uninvited guest would, indeed, accept a cigarel—and from the width of his gap-toothed smile and the slight tremor of his long and unclean fingers, his impecuniousness was such that he had probably not tasted smokeweed in months.
For a while they smoked in silence. Custom was that one refrains from questioning a guest, but Linton still had too much thinking left undone to hew too closely to good manners.
“My friend says you have requested speech with me. May one inquire, without dishonor, the nature of your request?” he said, finally.
The hawk-face smiled.
“Thought you might like to chat with an old comrade from the wars—Raul!” he said—in Imperial Neoanglic. Linton stared at him.
“Who the devil are you?”
“Name’s Wilm Bardry, though you knew me as Packer Sexton—we served together on the Harel Palldon, back in ’61 —remember?”
“Yes … yes, I do. But who are you, really? What are you doing here?”
“Spying, I guess. I was spying on the Admiral when we were ship-comrades. I’m still at it.”
Raul half-rose, growling: “Spying on me, are you? One of Pertinax’s friends—”
The note of command rang in Wilm’s voice, an unexpected ring of steel. “Sit down. Shut up. Compare me to that crawling serpent, and I’ll give you a mouthful of broken teeth!” Raul sat back, and Bardry continued.
“Nobody’s spying on you. Why should they—you think we think you’re a renegade or something? Space, you’re the luckiest man in the Cluster right now!”
Confused, Raul burst in: “Luck—what are you talking about, Packer? And, of course—don’t you think I’m a renegade?”
“Wilm, not Packer.”
“Wilm, then, for Arion! What is all this about—”
“Shut up and I’ll tell you. Nobody ever though you were a traitor, except that slimy sneak, Pertinax, and his fat fool of a boss, Mather. You’re just a poor, confused idealist, like we’ve all been, one time or another. Mather’s boss, Brice Hallen, officially dismissed charges against you in full Staff meeting, and bounced the two of them out of the room after making them both look like the sponge-brained incompetents they are. Don’t worry about—and don’t waste my time with—all this ancient history. Tell me what’s happening here.”
“But, I . . . well, all right—but how did you know where I was? And how did you get here?”
“Came in with a boatload of recruits for the Kahani’s little war, of course; why do you think I’m prettied up like a Rilké? As for knowing where you were, I didn’t. But since you took off with Sharl, and he serves her, and she’s here—credit me with enough wits to put one and one together, and not get three, Linton!”
Head whirling, Linton answered Bardry’s grin.
“All set? Boards all green and ready for lift-off? Now: what’s the news at your end?”
“She’s offered to make me Shakar of her whole force. If I turn it down, she gives the baton either to a Nomad named Zarkandu or to the Arthon who arrived an hour ago.”
“Excellent! Didn’t I say you were the luckiest man in the whole kaking Cluster? When are you planning to attack Valadon?”
Linton stared at him blankly.
“Great Arion, you don’t think I was traitor enough to accept, do you?”
Bardry gave a little bark of a laugh.
“I didn’t think you were fool enough to pass it up. So you told her ‘no’—eh?”
Linton nodded, angrily. “If you think I’m going to lead the Arthon’s loot-hungry pirates into the Inner Worlds—”
Wilm grabbed his head with both hands, and groaned. “Oooh! I knew you were a hardheaded Bamassian, but I didn’t know you were a complete idiot! You turned her down! You, an empty-pouched, landless, wandering outlaw—offered the command of the finest host on the Border—give me patience!
“Let me tell you the situation, Linton: I’ll spell it out to you in simple terms. Ready? Now listen carefully. Every Rilké in the Cluster knows the stupid government played a dirty trick on the Kahani. Half the Border is ready to rise when she lifts her banner. Every last native world among the near stars is spoiling for a good Holy War against us vokarthu—not a one of them isn’t eager for independent rule—and watching like hawks to see if she gets it for Valadon. Now.
“On the other other side of Thunderhawk Nebula, sits the Arthon on a new Dais that’s rocking like a skimmer in a wind-storm. Half his nobles are after his head—either for his murder of his brother, or his outrageous taxes, or libertine habits. He probably hasn’t half the brains of a karf in rutting-season, but he knows the only thing that can squelch the griping before it starts getting bloody, and line up his unruly chiefs behind him, is a nice little war with slathers of loot and glory for all, and especially some for him.
“Still tuned in? Right. Now right there across the nebula from Pelaire is a parsec-full of ripe, rich, underguarded Border worlds. He knows the Empire is exhausted after twelve years of war—and not likely to scream too loudly or be too quick to avenge what is, after all, a minor Border raid. And he knows the Border Patrol is undermanned, underarmed, and lacking in ships. It’s perfect!—he’d be more of a fool than he already is, if he didn’t lead a fleet through the Rift for a quick in-and-out-again raid, to scrape off some of the wealth of Omphale and the richer Inner Worlds.”
“I understand all of this,” Linton said. Wilm nodded affably.
“Try a bit more, then. Now, it’s all set up for him. Nothing can stop him … except, just possibly, Valadon, which lies smack in the ‘throat’ of the Rift and has a nice little Patrol garrison with a battery of planet-mounted lasers. It would be sweet as Nomad love, if he could arrange to have all of Valadon rise and overthrow the garrison right about the time his fleet comes streaking through. And what does he find, perched here on tiny Ophmar halfway through the Rift, but the outlawed and exiled Kahani of Valadon, gathering together a little army of her own and scheming to smash the Valadon garrison and take her place on the Dais once again. It’s perfect. As if the Fate-God had set the whole thing up for him. All he has to do is persuade the Kahani to lend him her aid—he can promise her anything, it doesn’t matter—nor is she in any sort of a position strong enough to turn down his offer. Have I still got you in my beam?”