He thanked Talamein that only the moving of the book and the blessing of the sacrificial wine were left. The two men turned to the altar, out of time, of course, and waved their incense wands at the huge book, which sat in the center.
Then they took two steps forward, both lifting the book at the same time. Ingild started to move toward the right. Theodomir the left. Suddenly the two men found themselves in the middle of a tug-of-war.
"This way," Ingild shouted.
"No, no. you fool, to the left."
Then, almost at the same moment, they both realized who they were. Nervous glances around the empty chapel. Theodomir cleared his throat.
"Uh, excuse me, brother, but on Sanctus the book goes to the left."
"Is it in the treaty?" Ingild asked suspiciously.
Theodomir covered his impatience. "It doesn't matter," he said with difficulty. "In the spirit of ecumenism, you may put it where you like."
Ingild bowed to him. And shuffled off to the right, pleased with the small victory.
They moved quickly to the last part of the ceremony: the blessing and drinking of the wine. The golden chalice of wine sat inside a small tabernacle with a slanted roof. They opened the tiny doors, pulled it out. and then quickly chanted the last few prayers.
Theodomir pushed the goblet toward Ingild. "You first, brother," he said, urging him to drink.
Ingild eyed him, suddenly suspicious. Hesitated, then shook his head.
"No," he said. "You first."
Theodomir grabbed the cup impatiently and chugged down about half of its contents in a very unpropnetlike manner. Then he shoved the cup at Ingild.
"Now you," he snapped.
Ingild hesitated, then slowly took the goblet. He raised it to his lips and sipped cautiously. It tasted fine. He drained the rest of the cup and then set it carefully on the altar.
"It's finished," he said. "Now should we sign those..."
He began to cough. A slight one, at first. Then it came in ever increasing frequency. His face purpled, and then he grabbed his sides and began to scream in pain.
"You fool, you fool." Theodomir cackled. "The wine was poisoned."
"But... but..." Ingild managed through his anguish, "you drank, too."
He toppled to the floor, writhing in agony, blood streaming through his lips from his bitten-through tongue.
Theodomir began dancing around him. Kicking him. Screaming at him.
"It was sanctified for me." he shouted. "Sanctified for me. But not for an addict. Not for an addict."
Ingild tried to struggle to his knees. Theodomir booted him down again.
"Who's the True Prophet, now, you clot? Who's the True Prophet now?"
Parral laughed and laughed and laughed as he watched Ingild's dance of death.
Then he flicked the monitor off. It was over. Oh, indeed it was over.
For a moment he wished young Sten were sitting in front of him. He thought the colonel would have appreciated his plan. There are so many ways to win a war.
And then his heart froze, and he unconsciously ducked, as rockets screamed overhead and sonic waves boomed and jolted his palace.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
"GAD, COLONEL," FFILLIPS said dryly. "The villains have armor." The woman appeared absolutely unworried as the mercenaries and Companions took up fighting positions.
The Bhor, now seeing the commercial potential of backing Sten. had gleefully agreed to help in the landing on Nebta. They had scattered enough window and diversionary missiles over Nebta's capital to confuse even an Imperial Security screen. The Bhor transports had then slammed into the outskirts of the capital. Sten thought that the Bhor skippers had deliberately tried to take out as many monuments, mansions, and memorials as they could.
For once, Sten was glad to note, he'd made an invasion with no casualties—other than one of Vosberh's men, who'd managed to get drunk on stregg and fall headfirst off the landing ramp.
The three hundred soldiers had quickly formed up in battle formation and moved toward Parral's mansion. And then tracks had clanked and the ground rumbled and Sten realized that Parral had given himself a second line of defense. Men against armor.
Panic-factor for any inexperienced soldiers. But for the trained? Sten tried to remember where he'd seen the centuries-old illo of two crunchies staring at a track and commenting, "Naw. Not for me. A movin' foxhole attracks the eye." And then turned to a grinning Alex.
"W'doomit," the man reported. "Parral's troopies hae fifty wee recon tracks an' twenty or so ACVs. Shall w'ae surrender?"
"Try not to hurt 'em too bad" was Sten's only comment.
The Battle of Nebta—the first and probably only one— lasted barely an hour as the vee-formation of tracks clanked into the attack.
Alex picked up a crew-served, multiple-launch, self-guiding rack, carried it forward until the point of the vee-formation was almost on him. Then he triggered the missiles. The small rockets huffed out the tubes, shed their compressed-air launch stages, turned themselves on, and went hunting. Five of the rockets promptly homed on different tracks and turned them into fireballs. The sixth, for reasons known only to its idiot computer-mind, had decided that a statue of one of Parral's ancestors was a more important target and had taken that out.
The ACV vehicles had been short-stopped by a quickly massed wire screen, two meters high. They'd bumped up against the wire, then drifted back and forth while their only semi-trained drivers fought the controls and then those drivers had been calmly sniped down by Sten's soldiers.
The two command tracks had lasted a few minutes longer— as long as it took the ten remaining Lycee kiddies to cut off all commo and for Sten and three men to slip behind them and launch line-of-sight rocketry into their unarmored rear boarding ramps.
It wasn't much of a battle, Sten realized as he saw Ffillips jam a huge crowbar into one assault vehicle's tracks and step back as the crowbar turned into filings and Ffillips commented disappointedly, "Some of my older manuals swear that an obstruction in the idler wheels will stop any track," before she flipped a fire grenade onto the greasy engine exhaust and the track became a bonfire.
And then the tracks were halted and their crews were piling out and Sten now knew why conventional soldiers still wear white undertunics as Parral's last line of defense began surrendering en masse.
"So now, Sten thought, it is time to deal with our friend Seigneur Parral...
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
PARRAL WAS RUNNING out of alternate plans. His great scenario calling for the Jann and the mercenaries to pull a Kilkenney cats on each other had somehow failed. Even his high-tech defense scheme with the imported armor was a bust. So Parral was supervising the loading of the last few art treasures into the ship.
The ship—a modified short-haul, high-speed freighter— had been set down in the middle of the mansion's grounds and the most portable and easily convertible of Parral's treasures stowed on board.
His new plan was to get off Nebta, hunt up some habitable world, and go to ground until the screaming and skirmishing stopped. If it ever did. Because with Ingild dead, the Jann no longer a factor, and his own power-play circumvented, the Lupus Cluster faced the threat of peace for the first time in generations.
He was pretty sure that Sten would turn over Parral's trading routes to the Bhor. Which would leave Parral somewhat less than necessary.
Oh, well, he consoled himself, under no circumstances can that drunk fuzz-kleek Theodomir hold things together for very long. Sooner or later he'd need expert help, money, and someone who could stay sober for longer than two hours. The mansion and Nebta could be rebuilt.