The high prince worked his mouth for a moment, perhaps trying to get a bad taste out of it. Then he vaulted into the saddle and spurred his horse away down the hill, as though he could no longer face the men he had condemned to death.
That was certainly what he had done. Blade turned it over and over in his mind and could come up with no other answer. Before sunset tomorrow, they would all be dead by ritual suicide.
The high prince had called it an honor. Blade looked at the other eighteen men, and the relief and even joy on their faces. He realized that it might indeed be an honor. At least by the standards of Gaikon. But-were there other standards for him to follow, here and now?
If he could even think of that question, it would be a hard one to answer. He had the feeling that tonight was going to be full of grim, lonely thinking.
The uroi were quartered in an empty barracks in the military camp to the south of the palace. The servants who waited on them were willing to meet their every want. But those wants were few. Some of the uroi felt they should spend this last night fasting and praying. Those who were less strict still had little appetite for the food set before them. Not even Yezjaro was interested in the wine and the women they could have had. Some of the uroi were simply too tired to think about anything except a good night's sleep.
So no one bothered Blade when he went out after dark to sit under a tree and consider what he should do. He had expected to find his decision brutally hard to make. But that was not what happened.
None of the uroi were going to try to escape. That was obvious. They had done everything they had been living for when Lord Geron's head fell to the floor of his burning house. If they had then joined their ten comrades who were now ashes in the ruins of that house, it would have made no difference to them. Men who felt their lives were over would not disobey an order of their emperor. They had refused to strike at the Hongshu when they had the best of reasons for doing so. They would not defy the emperor when they had no reason except saving their own skins. None of them would. Not even Yezjaro, the cheerful, pleasure-loving young instructor, would try to gain the many years of life he should have ahead of him by defying the emperor.
So if he fled Blade knew he would flee alone.
He probably wouldn't have much trouble getting away from the emperor's precinct and surviving in the woods until he was called back to home dimension. He saw no signs that the uroi were being particularly well guarded. If he picked up his weapons now and strode away into the darkness, it would be easy to leave certain death behind him.
But he would also be leaving behind him eighteen doomed men, who had accepted their doom. Eighteen men who had fought as his comrades in a deadly battle to do their duty, who had in the end accepted him and honored him as first among them. They would call him a coward. If he lived, he would have to live with the knowledge that they had died thinking this of him.
And what would his flight do to the example the uroi wanted to set? The high prince's words had been clear. The servants had made it even clearer. The twenty-nine uroi would go into the legends of Gaikon as men who had stood faithful to their lord to death.
But what would happen to the legend if one of them fled at the last minute? Particularly if the one who fled was the one who had made their swift vengeance possible? Would the flight of that one man diminish what the other twenty-eight had done? Blade knew the codes and standards of Gaikon too well to doubt it. The tale would be flawed and the memory of those who had been his comrades diminished.
Perhaps it was a silly notion. In fact he was quite sure it was looked at soberly. But nonetheless he did not want to take anything away from the legend that the twenty-nine uroi had begun. If that meant accepting Gaikon's standards and the death they would bring-well, so be it.
And there was more. The present emperor might be too weak to inspire people to resist the Hongshu. But the high prince was a warrior, and if he lived to mount his father's throne Gaikon would have an emperor who might want to rule as well as reign.
If that happened, the Hongshu would have a mighty rival. Those who hated the Hongshu would have a rallying point. And the legend of the twenty-nine uroi would be part of that rallying. To weaken the legend might be to reduce the chances of bringing to an end the Hongshu's tyranny. Blade had risked his life in a dozen strange worlds to help their people in one way or another. What was different about accepting an honorable death here in Gaikon, if it would help strike at the Hongshu?
Nothing.
With that settled in his own mind, Blade found it easy to return to the barracks and go peacefully to sleep.
Lord Tsekuin had knelt to die on white sand. The uroi who had avenged him knelt to die on green grass, beyond the forest to the west of the emperor's precinct. But like their lord, each knelt on a small square of black silk. Each wore white, with a red sash. Blade had shoved under his sash the pouch with the diamond, and had put Lady Musura's short sword on the ground in front of him. That would be his death-weapon. It was a last honor that he could do her.
In the center of the circle stood a tall pole. From its top Lord Tsekuin's banner floated out on the evening breeze. A banner proscribed and banned by the Hongshu-but not by the emperor. Or rather, not by the high prince. It was no secret that he had watched the setting up of the pole, and then raised Lord Tsekuin's banner with his own hands.
No, the high prince was being open about what he thought of the Hongshu and the Hongshu's ways of ruling. Was he perhaps trying to spark rebellion even now? Blade couldn't help wondering. But it was idle wondering. Whatever the high prince might be planning didn't make much difference to him. In barely ten minutes he would be either dead or back in home dimension. More likely dead.
The moment of death for the nineteen uroi was fixed for sunset exactly. Blade looked toward the west, where a swollen orange ball seemed to hang in a luminous sky just above spiky black tree-tops. Less than ten minutes-quite a bit less, he suspected. A few minutes more or less didn't matter, in any case. They would make no difference in the astronomical odds against his living to return to home dimension.
Blade had often wondered what would pass through his mind in the last minutes before his death. But now he realized that all his previous imaginings had been meaningless. He was not going to die in the heat of furious action, brought down by great odds or bad luck. Nor was he going to die in bed of old age or illness. In his profession the second had never been very likely. But he had always accepted that as the only other prospect.
He had never imagined that he would be as he was now, sitting and calmly waiting for the signal to die by his own hand.
Calmly? Yes, calmly. He had accepted that there was no alternative that would permit him to live comfortably with himself-or avoid doing harm here in Gaikon. With this acceptance had come a calmness that seemed likely to last until he had no more need for any emotion of any sort.
The sun sank down. Blade felt sweat trickling down the back of his neck. The breeze seemed to be dying away. He could no longer feel it on his skin, and the tops of the trees were no longer bending toward him. They stood motionless against the sunset sky, with the great wavering ball of the sun sinking down toward them-and touching them.