Wolfling

Chapter 10

Galyan’s words seemed to echo all about them. Looking at Slothiel, Jim saw the other High-born begin to stiffen and straighten. Galyan was the tallest of the High-born that Jim had seen, with the exception of the Emperor himself. But Slothiel was almost as tall. And now that he abandoned his carefully indifferent slouch, it could be seen how tall he was. The two men, both well over seven feet, faced each other across a distance of perhaps a dozen feet of carpeting.

“You’ve never been able to teach me anything, Galyan,” said Slothiel in a dry, hard voice. “If I were you, I wouldn’t expect to begin now.”

“Slothiel, don’t be an idiot!” Afuan spoke up. But Galyan cut her short.

“Never mind!” he said sharply, his lemon-yellow eyes still glittering unmovingly on Slothiel. “Who are we to tell Slothiel what to do? As he said—we’ve never been able to teach him anything.”

“ ‘We?’ ” Slothiel smiled bitterly. “Are you into the Emperor’s second person plural already, Galyan?”

“Did I say— we?” responded Galyan. “A slip of the tongue, Slothiel.”

“Then you don’t intend to kill him?” said Slothiel, indicating the frozen figure of the Emperor with a slight movement of his head.

“Kill him?” said Galyan. “Of course not. Care for him—that’s what I’m going to do. Vhotan never did take the best care of him. He’s not well, you know.”

“Are you?” asked Jim.

Galyan’s eyes flickered for a moment to Jim.

“Be patient, little Wolfling,” Galyan purred. “Your time is coming. Right now I’m amusing myself with Slothiel.”

“Amusing yourself?” said Slothiel with a grim irony that matched the cruel humor in Galyan’s voice. “You’d better be thinking up explanations for how Vhotan died.”

“I?” chuckled Galyan. “The Emperor’s Starkiens killed Vhotan, at the Emperor’s order. You saw that.”

“And who killed the Starkiens?” said Slothiel.

“You, of course,” said Galyan. “You went out of your head at the sight of Vhotan ordered killed for no reason—”

“No reason?” echoed Slothiel. “What about that disguised blue distortion light? Jim never had the Alpha Centauran Governor send it to Vhotan. That was your doing.”

Galyan twitched a finger. Melness scuttled forward and sideways, to pick up the small granitic-looking shape from the carpet and tuck it into a pocket in his kilt. He retreated hastily behind Galyan again.

“What distortion light?” asked Galyan.

“I see,” said Slothiel. He took a deep breath. “But of course I didn’t kill the Starkiens.”

“I wouldn’t go around telling the other High-born that, if I were you,” said Galyan. “The Emperor will need someone to look after him; now that Vhotan’s dead, I’ll be taking our uncle’s place. If you go around telling a wild story like that, the Emperor may well decide that you need treatment and isolation for your own good.”

“Oh? But even if I say nothing,” drawled Slothiel, “those three Starkiens were killed by a heavy-duty intersperser. The other Starkiens, when they get back, will wonder how three of their number could have been killed by a rod while those three were wearing full power bands. I can prove that I haven’t been near the heavy-duty weapon armory for years.”

“No doubt,” said Galyan. “But you said, ‘when the other Starkiens get back.’ You see, they won’t be back.”

Slothiel looked about suddenly at Jim. Jim nodded.

“So the Wolfling brought back word of our little traps on the colony planets, did he?” said the voice of Galyan. Both Jim and Slothiel looked back at the tall High-born. “You know then, Slothiel. The Starkiens won’t be back. I’ve got it in mind to create some new Starkiens—some responsible to me rather than to the Emperor. At any rate, you see your own choice. Be silent—or be removed from the social scene.”

Slothiel laughed, and reaching over, drew the rod from the loops in Adok’s belt.

Galyan laughed also, but with a half-incredulous note of contempt in his voice.

“Have you really lost your senses, Slothiel?” he said. “We’ve fenced as boys. You’ve got fast reflexes, but you know that no one’s faster than I am. Except—” He nodded at the still-paralyzed figure of the Emperor.

“But we haven’t tried it as men,” said Slothiel. “Besides, I’m a little tired of all our play-acting here on the Throne World. I think I’d like to kill you.”

He took a step forward. Galyan stepped hastily back onto the polished surface of the ballroom floor and slowly drew the rod from the loops in his own belt.

“Shall we bet on it?” he said. “Let’s bet a banishment amount of Lifetime Points, Slothiel. How about fifty Lifetime Points? That ought to put either one of us over the limit.”

“Don’t talk to me of toys,” said Slothiel, slowly advancing foot after foot, as Galyan equally slowly backed and circled away from him. “I think I’ve lost my taste for gambling. I want something a little more exciting.”

They were almost in the center of the polished floor area now. There was still a dozen feet between them, but tall and bent over as they were, their wide shoulders hunched forward, the rods held low before them, it seemed as if scarcely one of their own long arm lengths separated the two of them.

Abruptly the rod in Slothiel’s hand spouted the white lightning of its charge. At the same time, he leaned back and to one side in an attempt to outflank Galyan.

Galyan, however, crouched under the white bolt, which crackled where his head had been a moment before, and spun on his heels, still in crouched position, to come up facing Slothiel and with his own rod shooting white fire.

A little faster, and Galyan would have been able to drive the fire of his own rod under the line of fire from Slothiel’s rod. However, the moment of Galyan’s turning was enough time to allow Slothiel to lower the aim of his own weapon, so that the discharge from Galyan’s rod met the discharge from Slothiel’s head on, and the two lines of white fire splashed harmlessly into an aurora of sparks. From that first moment, the lines of fire from the two rods were never disengaged.

Following the first wild gamble by both men (and Jim had practiced at the rods enough with Adok to understand what gambles they had been)—Slothiel’s attack and Galyan’s counter—both of the High-born fought defensively and warily for more than a dozen fairly routine engages. As Jim had discovered with Adok, fighting with the rods was very similar to fencing with sabers, provided they were sabers that changed lengths frequently and unexpectedly. The focal point of the fire put forth by the rods—that point at which the discharge was most destructive—was at the tip of an inner cone of pure white light, and this cone could be extended by the man holding the rod, at will, from a length of six inches to ten feet. This was the point at which the utmost power of the rod was exerted. Directly in counter, the point of the cone of fire in one rod could be blocked only by the point of the cone of fire in another. However, if the cone tip should miss its target and the opposing rod could project its cone tip into the stream of fire behind the other tip, the penetrative cone could be bent aside, so that the attacking cone could go on to strike its target.

It was not just a matter of deflecting the stream of fire from the opponent’s rod, therefore, but of deflecting it with a portion of your own flame, which was stronger than that part of the opponent’s flame it encountered.

Slothiel and Galyan moved about the polished floor, each careful to avoid being backed against one of the green-draperied walls. From the encounters of their weapons came a steady succession of spark showers—exploding suddenly into near-fountains of light when the two cone points were the parts of the flames to make contact. Galyan was smiling grimly, thin-lipped and narrow-nostriled. Slothiel, on the other hand, after his first savage attack, fought with a sort of dreamy grace and a relaxed face, as if this were not a duel to the death but some minor sporting engagement in which he had perhaps backed himself with a small bet.

But Slothiel’s apparent indifference was no true clue to the way in which the duel was progressing. Hardly more than a few weeks ago, it would have looked to Jim more like some smoothly expert dance by two large men with some sort of Roman candles in their hands—a dance intended to demonstrate the rhythm of the man and the beauty of the fireworks rather than anything else. Now he knew better. Moreover, because he knew better, he was able to see that the duel could have only one ending. As graceful and swift as Slothiel was, half a dozen times already Galyan had almost caught him on the disengage from an encounter of the cone tips of their weapons. Sooner or later Slothiel’s luck and skill would not prevent him from being a little bit too slow in deflecting the other man’s fire.

Galyan was, indeed, the quicker of the two. And in this sort of duel, that meant everything.

In fact, as they all watched, the end came. Galyan leaped to his left suddenly, struck high with his flame, dropped down under the line of Slothiel’s countering discharge, and flicked up again inside to slash across Slothiel’s left thigh and left upper arm, which held the rod.

Slothiel went down on the polished floor on his right knee, his left arm dangling. His rod dropped and skidded a little way across the floor.

He laughed up into the face of Galyan.

“You find it funny, do you?” panted Galyan. “I’ll wipe that smile off your face!”

Galyan lifted his rod to bring it down across Slothiel’s features.

“Galyan!” shouted Jim, running forward.

The sound of his voice did not stop Galyan, but the rapid beating of Jim’s shoes upon the polished floor did. Galyan whirled like a cat.

Jim had drawn the rod from his own belt as he ran. He had just time to get it up and send the flame lancing from it, ahead of him, before Galyan’s rod joined its discharge with his in a shower of sparks.

Jim broke the flames of both rods high, disengaged, and stepped back. Galyan laughed.

“Wolfling, Wolfling…” he said, shaking his head. “You never really have learned what High-born means, have you? It seems I’ll have to give you a lesson?”

“Jim!” called Slothiel from the floor behind Galyan. “Don’t do it! You haven’t got a chance! Run!”

“You’re both wrong,” said Jim. Now that he was actually engaged with Galyan, his mind was as cold as ice, and the remote coldness of his voice echoed that iciness within him.

He engaged with Galyan, and they fought through at least a dozen engage-and-disengage actions. Galyan’s eyebrows rose.

“Not bad at all,” he said. “In fact, very good for anyone not a High-born—and unthinkably good for a wild man. I do hate to waste you, Wolfling.”

Jim did not answer. He continued to fight on, warily and conservatively, concerned only with keeping the cone tip of the discharge from Galyan’s weapon always out beyond the cone tip of his own flame and making sure he would not be backed against one of the walls. If he had not had experience fencing with foil, йpйe, and saber back on Earth, he would never have been able to pick up enough of the technique of handling the rods in the few short weeks in which he had trained with Adok. But that experience, combined with his own native ability, was now paying off. Little by little, as the duel went on, he found himself making his moves more surely.

“In fact, why should I waste you?” panted Galyan during one of the engages in which their faces came within a few feet of each other. The white skin of the High-born’s features gleamed with perspiration. “Be sensible, Wolfling, and don’t make me kill you. Slothiel has to die anyway—now. But I had large plans for you, as head of my own, new Starkiens.”

Jim maintained his silence. But he stepped up the pressure of his attack. Off to one side, without warning, he heard the sound of running feet on the bare floor, and Ro’s voice shouting.

“Keep back!”

Jim dared not look up at the moment, but a few seconds later he found himself facing toward the lounge end of the room, and he caught a quick glimpse of Ro, standing beside the fallen Slothiel, holding the rod Slothiel had dropped, and covering Afuan with it. Melness lay sprawled at Adok’s feet, and it looked as if the master servant’s neck had been broken. Only the unmoving figure of the Emperor, standing over the dead Vhotan, was unchanged.

“Who do you think you are?” snarled Galyan suddenly. “When I speak to you, I want an answer, Wolfling!”

Jim countered a high thrust from the taller figure and stepped to the left in a disengage, without a word.

“All right!” said Galyan, showing his teeth in an almost mechanical smile. “I’ve had enough of this! I’ve been playing with you, hoping you’d come to your senses. Now I’m through with that. I’m going to kill you, Wolfling!”

The High-born attacked suddenly, in a shower of sparks, and Jim found himself fighting for his life. Galyan had a tremendous advantage in reach over him, and the taller man was using that reach, as well as the spring in his long legs, to the upmost advantage. Parrying swiftly and continuously, Jim was still forced to give ground. He backed away, and Galyan crowded close upon him, driving him still further backward. Jim attempted to circle to the right, but found that way cut off by the blazing white lightning of Galyan’s weapon. He tried to break to the left, but Galyan outreached him. Out of the corners of his eyes he could see the other walls of the room, and from their distances he knew that the fourth wall must be close behind him. If Galyan could pin him against the wall, the restriction of Jim’s movements would give the High-born an advantage that would end the duel quickly.

Galyan’s teeth were bared fixedly now, and sweat dripped from his chin. His great advantage in reach cut off any escape to right or left. Shortly, also, there would be no possible retreat straight backward for Jim.

There was only one way out of this prison of flame with which Galyan was fencing him about. That was to outdo Galyan at the High-born’s strongest point. Jim must counter Galyan’s attack with an attack of his own, which would force Galyan first to halt, then to retreat in his turn. And in such an attack, there could be only one counter to Galyan’s advantage in reach—and that was speed. Jim would have to be quicker than the High-born.

There was no point in further hesitation. Jim came out of a disengage and attacked savagely. At the first fury of Jim’s onslaught, Galyan gave ground along three steps out of sheer, reflexive surprise. But then he stood his ground.

He laughed hoarsely, pantingly, and briefly. He seemed about to say something, but evidently decided against wasting his breath, of which neither he nor Jim had any to spare. For better than a dozen engages and disengages they stood essentially toe to toe on the gleaming floor, neither one giving an inch.

It was a murderous pace, one that neither man could keep up for another minute without dropping from exhaustion and breathlessness. But Jim did not slacken off, and slowly Galyan’s eyes began to widen. He stared at Jim across the twin, clashing streams of fire, through the showers of white sparks.

“You—can’t—do—” he gasped.

“I am—” panted Jim.

Galyan’s face unexpectedly contorted into a staring mask of fury. He disengaged from Jim’s current attack and went immediately into a sweeping circle with the fire from his instrument—almost the type of maneuver that singlestick fighters call a moulinet.

It was a simple, raw bid to outspeed the cone tip of flame from Jim’s weapon. If Galyan could get ahead of that guarding cone tip, he would have a fraction of a second in which to go back in over Jim’s guard and destroy him. Galyan’s flame whipped over and down, and Jim’s blurred along with it. For a full arc, the desperate race held, without Galyan’s weapon gaining—and then, it was Jim whose cone tip moved ahead.

He gained, coming up on the second arc, broke in over the line of Galyan’s weapon, and shot the full force of his flame into the taller man’s unprotected chest.

Galyan tottered and fell, his own weapon coming around and down, to tap its rod end against Jim’s right side just below the ribs before falling from his hand to the floor. Jim felt a sudden coldness and hollowness inside him. Then Galyan was slumped at his feet.

Jim lifted his head slowly, his lungs pumping heavily to restore oxygen to his exhausted body.

He saw, through sweat-blurred eyes, that Slothiel now held the rod that Ro had held earlier, covering Afuan. Not only that, but Slothiel was, amazingly, back on his feet, although he leaned heavily on Ro. As soon as he had breath left to spare for walking, Jim moved slowly from Galyan’s dead body over toward Ro and Slothiel.

“Jim…” said Slothiel wonderingly, looking at him and slowly putting the rod he held back into his belt. Now he ignored Afuan, as Jim came up, “what are you?”

“A Wolfling,” said Jim. “What’re you doing back on your feet?”

Slothiel laughed, not entirely cheerfully.

“We heal fast, with the help of our power sources, we High-born,” he said. “How about you?”

“I’ll do,” said Jim. He kept his right elbow pressed close against his side. “But I’ve left another body for you to clean up. I think it’s time for me to go home.”

“Home?” Slothiel echoed.

“Back to Earth—the world I came from,” said Jim. “The more thoroughly this is hushed up, the better for the Emperor. Nobody will miss me if I disappear, and you can tell the other High-born that Galyan killed Vhotan and the Starkiens in a fit of madness, and you had to kill him in return to protect the Emperor.”

He glanced over at Afuan, who stood like a tall, white statue.

“That is,” Jim said, “if you can persuade the Princess to keep quiet.”

Slothiel looked at her only briefly.

“Afuan won’t disagree with me,” Slothiel said. “Galyan suggested that if I didn’t agree with him, the Emperor might decide I needed isolation and treatment. The same can apply to her.”

He turned, letting go of Ro, and walked, a little limpingly but completely under his own power, off the polished floor onto the carpet and up to the unmoving figure of the Emperor. Jim and Ro followed him.

Slothiel touched the Emperor lightly on the arm.

“Oran…” he said gently.

For a moment the Emperor did not move. Then, slowly, he straightened and turned about, breaking into a warm smile as he did so.

“Slothiel!” he said. “Good of you to come so quickly. Did you know that I can’t find Vhotan anywhere? He was here just a few minutes ago, and I could swear he hadn’t left the room, but he’s vanished completely.”

The Emperor looked down the long length of the polished floor, around the draperied walls, back up and around the lounge, at the carpet, and at the ceiling, over which the colored shapes still played. He looked everywhere but at the still shape down at his feet.

“You know, I had a dream, Slothiel,” the Emperor went on, wistfully looking back at the other High-born. “It was just last night—or at least, it was some time recently. I dreamed that Vhotan was dead, Galyan was dead, and all my Starkiens were dead. And when I went looking around the palace and the Throne World to find the other High-born to tell them about this, there was no one—not in the palace, not on the whole world. I was all alone. You don’t think I would ever be left alone like that, do you, Slothiel?”

“Not while I’m alive, Oran,” said Slothiel.

“Thank you, Slothiel,” said the Emperor. He looked around the room again, however, and his voice became a little fretful. “But I wish I knew what happened to Vhotan. Why isn’t he here?”

“He had to go away for a while, Oran,” said Slothiel. “He told me to stay with you until he gets back.”

The Emperor’s face lit up once more with his warm smile.

“Well, then, everything’s all right!” he said happily. He threw an arm around Slothiel’s shoulders and looked around the room. “Why, there’s Afuan—and little Ro and our little Wolfling. Ex-Wolfling, I should say.”

He gazed at Jim, and his smile slowly faded into a solemn, rather sad expression.

“You’re going away, aren’t you—Jim?” he said, plainly dredging up the name from some hidden corner of his memory. “I thought I heard you say something about that just now.”

“Yes, Oran,” said Jim. “I have to go now.”

The Emperor nodded, his face still sadly solemn.

“Yes, I heard it, all right,” he said, half to himself. His eyes fastened on Jim. “I hear things sometimes, you know, even when I’m not really listening. And I understand things, too; sometimes I understand them better than any of the other High-born. It’s a good thing you’re going back to your own world, Jim.”

The Emperor’s hand slipped from Slothiel’s shoulder. He took a step forward and stood looking down at Jim.

“You’re full of young energy out there, Jim,” he said. “And we’re tired here. Very tired, sometimes. It’s going to be all right for you and your Wolflings, Jim. I can see it, you know—very often I see things like that, quite clearly…”

His lemon-yellow eyes seemed to cloud, going a little out of focus, so that he stared through Jim rather than at him.

“I’ve seen you doing well, Jim,” he said. “You and the other Wolflings. And what’s well for you is well for all—all of us.” His eyes unclouded, and once more he was focused on Jim again. “Something tells me you’ve done me a signal service, Jim. I think before you go, I’d like to finish your adoption. Yes, from now on I declare you to be a High-born, Jim Keil.” He laughed, a little, suddenly. “… I’m not giving you anything you don’t already have.”

He straightened up and turned back to Slothiel.

“What should I do now?” he asked Slothiel.

“I think you should send Afuan back to her quarters now,” said Slothiel, “and tell her that she’s to stay there until she hears something more from you.”

“Yes.” The Emperor’s glance swung around to fasten on Afuan, but she met it for only a moment, before turning furiously upon Jim and Ro, who stood beside him.

“Mud-face! Wild man!” she spat. “Crawl off into the bushes and mate!”

Jim stiffened, but Ro caught hold of his left arm.

“No!” she said, almost proudly. “You don’t need to. Don’t you see—she’s jealous! Jealous of me!”

Still holding strongly to his arm, she looked up into his face.

“I’m going with you, Jim,” she said. “Back to this world of yours.”

“Yes,” said the Emperor unexpectedly but thoughtfully, “that’s right. I saw it that way. Yes, little Ro should go with him…”

“Afuan!” said Slothiel sharply.

The Princess threw him a glance as full of hatred as the one she had directed at Ro and Jim. She disappeared.

Jim’s head swam suddenly. He took a strong grip on himself internally, and the room steadied about him.

“We have to go quickly, then,” he said. “I’ll send you those Starkiens from my ship, Slothiel. You can keep them close to the Emperor until you’re able to get back as many as possible of the other units who’ve been sent out to the Colony Worlds. If you order them back quickly, you shouldn’t lose too many of them to Galyan’s antimatter traps.”

“I’ll do that. Good-bye, Jim,” said Slothiel. “And thank you.”

“Good-bye, Jim,” said the Emperor. He stepped forward, offering his hand. Jim freed his left arm from Ro’s grasp and took the long fingers awkwardly with his own left hand.

“Adok,” said the Emperor, without letting go of Jim’s hand, but glancing over at the Starkien, “do you have a family?”

“No more, Oran,” answered Adok in his usual flat tone. “My son is grown, and my wife has gone back to the women’s compound.”

“Would you like to go with Jim?” asked the Emperor.

“I—” For the first time since Jim had known him, the Starkien seemed at a loss for words. “I am not experienced in liking or not liking, Oran.”

“If I order you to go with Jim and Ro, and stay with them for the rest of your life,” said the Emperor, “will you go willingly?”

“Yes, Oran. Willingly,” said Adok.

The Emperor let go of Jim’s hand.

“You’ll need Adok,” he said to Jim.

“Thank you, Oran,” said Jim.

Ro’s grip tightened on his arm once more.

“Good-bye, Oran. Good-bye, Slothiel,” said Ro. And at once they were no longer in the palace room, but at the docking berth where Jim had left the ship containing his Ten-units of Starkiens.

Harn was standing just outside the ship, like a man on watch, when they appeared. He turned quickly to face Jim.

“It’s good to see you, sir,” he said.

Jim unexpectedly felt ship and berthing dock waver and slip around him once more. He pulled himself back to clearheadedness again just in time to hear Adok speaking to Harn.

“The High-born Vhotan and the Prince Galyan are dead,” Adok was saying quickly, “and three Starkiens have been killed. The High-born Slothiel has taken Vhotan’s place. You and your men are to go to the Emperor.”

“Yes,” Jim managed to say.

“Sir!” acknowledged Harn, and vanished.

Abruptly they were inside the ship, Jim, Ro, and Adok. Another wave of disorientation passed through Jim, and he felt Ro helping him down gently onto the level surface of a hassocklike bed.

“What is it—Adok!” He heard her voice, but distantly, as if at the far end of a tilted corridor, down which he was sliding, ever faster, ever farther away from her. He made a great effort, and visualized in his mind, first, the spaceport at Alpha Centauri III, and then, from there, the spaceport back on Earth from which he had taken off. It was his last effort—from now on it would be up to the ship. But from what he had read out of the Files of the Throne World’s learning centers, he had no doubt the ship would be able to locate Earth from the directions he had just given it.

He let go, and went back to sliding away down the tilted corridor. But there was one thing more yet he had to do. He fought his way back to consciousness and Ro for a second.

“Galyan burned my side as he died,” he muttered to her. “Now I’m dying. So you’ll have to tell them for me, Ro. On Earth. Tell them… everything…”

“But you won’t die!” Ro was crying, holding him fiercely with both her arms about him. “You won’t die… you won’t …”

But even as she held him, he slipped out of her grasp and went sliding—this time with no further check or hope of return—down that long tilted corridor into the utter darkness.