Douglas Hill - Last Legionary 0 - Young Legionary

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YOUNG LEGIONARY
By
Douglas Hill
Contents
Ordeal
1. The Plateau
2. The Descent
3. The Foothills
4. The Valley
Responsibility
Demolition
Games
Postscript
Young Legionary
The Last Legionary quartet
by Douglas Hill:
Galactic Warlord
Deathwing Over Veynaa
Day of the Starwind
Planet of the Warlord
Douglas Hill
Young Legionary
The earlier adventures of Keill Randor
LONDON
VICTOR GOLLANCZ LTD
1982
©Douglas Hill 1982
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hill, Douglas
Young legionary.
I. Title
823'.914[J] PZ7
ISBN 0-575-03201-4
Photoset and printed in Great Britain by
Photobooks (Bristol) Ltd
Barton Manor, St Philips, Bristol
This one is for BEN
(not before time)
Ordeal
1. The Plateau
The silvery, compact flyer arrowed down through the night sky like a falling star. Landing thrusters flaring,
it dropped towards the colossal spires and towers of the mountains, which dwarfed it into an insignificant
silver speck.
It settled lightly on the bare stone of a plateau, a broad shelf of rock spreading where two of the great
mountains leaned their shoulders together. As the flyer's thrusters cut out, stillness returned to the dark
spaces among the peaks, where a gusting wind moaned as if disturbed by the intrusion. The side of the
flyer lifted smoothly away, spilling light on to the flat rock, and two people stepped out.
One was tall and slender, unmistakably a woman despite the severe cut of her dark-grey uniform, which
had flashes of colour at the wrists and a sky-blue circlet on the upper chest. Her long face was
hollow-cheeked, with deep lines around the mouth, and her short hair was streaked with grey. Yet she
moved with the light-footed grace of an athlete in peak condition.
The other person was a boy no more than twelve years old, slim and dark-haired. He wore no uniform -
in fact he wore nothing except a loincloth of grey material wrapped round his hips. For all his slimness, he
was wiry and well muscled, and his step was as light and lithe as that of his companion.
Wordlessly, they walked to the edge of the plateau and gazed down into the darkness, where a sheer cliff
of rock fell away into invisible depths. The moaning wind gusted into a howl, slashing at them with what
seemed like fangs of ice. But the woman seemed indifferent to the cold as she turned to the boy, studying
him keenly.
'Now I must again state the full process of the Ordeal.' Her voice was melodious, but held the firmness of
years of authority. 'Are you prepared?'
The boy did not move or look at her. 'Yes, Commander Maron,' he said quietly.
She took a deep breath, her eyes still fixed on the boy. 'Keill Randor, you have reached the plateau of
years between childhood and manhood. This plateau where we stand is a symbol of that threshold. And
the Ordeal that awaits you is a symbol of the hardships and struggles to come in the years ahead. Do you
understand?'
'Yes, Commander.'
'In your childhood training,' Maron went on, 'you have shown promise. You must now fulfil that promise.
If you succeed in the Ordeal, you will enter your advanced training with the Young Legionaries. Do you
understand?'
'Yes, Commander.' Again the ritual question drew the quiet ritual reply.
'The Ordeal,' Maron continued, 'requires you to travel from here down through the mountains, unarmed
and unequipped. From the maps you have seen, you know the location of your goal - the Colourless
Valley. I and some others will wait there, for two days, timed from tomorrow's dawn. If you have not
reached us by then, you will have failed the Ordeal. We will then launch a search for you. Have you any
questions?'
Keill stared out into the chill blackness, a hundred questions clamouring in his mind. How many others
have failed the Ordeal? How many have not survived it? What will be waiting for me out there? But he
knew that most of those questions would answer themselves, eventually. And he suspected that the ritual
required him not to ask questions - but instead to show himself ready to face whatever was to come, as
it came. So he replied simply, 'No, Commander.'
In the woman's eyes, still fixed on him, shone a brief flash of approval. And there was something else in
her eyes - a short-lived softening, which might have been sympathy.
'One final thing.' No softening could be heard in her firm voice. 'In the course of your journey you may
encounter one special danger. Not only is it the gravest danger you will have ever faced - it is the most
deadly danger that any legionary can face. Are you prepared?'
Keill struggled to keep his voice calm. 'I am prepared, Commander.'
Maron nodded, and stepped back from the edge of the cliff. 'Then the Ordeal begins. Return safely,
Keill.'
That, too, was part of the ritual, and a standard leave-taking among Keill's people. He turned to face her.
'Return safely, Commander.'
Without another word Maron strode away towards the flyer. It closed around her with a soft hiss, and
the thrusters flared. Smoothly the little machine lifted from the rock, angling steeply upwards. In moments
it was lost to sight behind the looming crags.
Silence and darkness, so complete as to seem almost solid, fell over the plateau where the boy stood -
small, nearly naked, totally alone.
For a long moment Keill remained as he was, staring up at the peaks where the flyer had vanished from
sight. He seemed unaware of the biting wind, or the chill of the bare rocks that glinted in the starlight like
dark metal, as if they were clad in armour.
These were the Iron Mountains, which marched for hundreds of kilometres, range upon range. They
dominated nearly a third of the small continent that was the main habitable area, for humans, on the planet
Moros.
The Iron Mountains were the bleakest, harshest natural feature in all of that bleak, harsh world. Yet life of
sorts could be found, even there - life that was perfectly adapted for survival in that grim environment.
The Ordeal that Keill faced was designed to test the same thing - how capable he was of survival. He
would have to survive the elements, and a journey that would have been gruelling even if he had been
fully clothed and equipped. He would have to find food and water, and to follow the correct route
through the rocky mazes. And he might have to face any of the mountains' various life forms, most of
which were as savagely hostile as the terrain itself.
Commander Maron had said that the Ordeal was a symbol of the years ahead of him. But she might also
have said that it symbolized the life of Keill's ancestors - those people who had first landed on Moros,
and claimed it, during the long-ago centuries when humanity had spread out across the galaxy, in that
mighty outward emigration called the Scattering.
History said that those people had chosen to settle on Moros because it was bleak and harsh - and so
was unlikely to attract other colonists. The original settlers of the planet were a tightly knit, disciplined
group with very firm ideas about how life should be lived, how society should be ordered. They wanted
to be left in peace to put those ideas into practice.
In the event, it had not worked out quite that way.
Certainly, though, the ideas were put into practice. A society grew up that believed in equality, in mutual
support and responsibility, in communality. Its leaders were selected by all the people, and acted as
co-ordinators, not as rulers. Orders and discipline were not imposed, from above, in an authoritarian
way. They sprang from the self-discipline of the people, in which each of them was trained from birth.
For them, self-control and unselfish co-operation became the watchwords of their society, as solid and
binding as a blazing religious faith.
So they had to be, on Moros, to ensure survival. For the colonists had not been left in peace.
The planet itself seemed to oppose them, as if presenting them with a prolonged Ordeal to test their
fitness to live there. It was hard enough to wrest food and shelter from the rugged land, and the bitter
climate. It was far harder when they also had to face the ferocious life-forms of Moros.
Humanity had found no other intelligent beings in all the galaxy. But they had found life-forms in plenty,
and Moros was no exception. The difference was that a high proportion of the creatures on Moros were
vicious, merciless killers - using all their weirdly alien natural weapons in a savage, endless battle for
survival.
That was the lesson of Moros - and the human settlers learned it well. They also learned to fight, fiercely
and tenaciously, to survive. And over the generations, with the self-disciplined co-operation that was the
mainstay of their community, they developed their fighting skills to an amazing level. They became expert
- and more than expert - at every kind of combat, whether unarmed and hand-to-hand, or with the
high-technology weapons of human civilization.
So by the time contact with other colonized planets was made - as the Inhabited Worlds developed
interplanetary trade and communications - the people of Moros were found to be special, even unique.
The rigours of life on their world had turned them into the most skilled and effective fighters in the galaxy.
When they realized that fact, they also realized what the next step in their development might be. And out
of that realization had come - the Legions of Moros.
The Scattering, and the centuries that followed, had changed human nature very little. People had taken
their aggression and violence out to the stars, along with their hopes and faiths and dreams. They had
taken greed, bigotry, power, hunger, fear. And with these tendencies, or because of them, they took a
continuing readiness to make war. In time, some of the warring human worlds saw the special value in the
unique skills of the Legions. And the Legions began to be invited to hire out their skills, as mercenary
soldiers.
Some of those invitations they accepted. Their skills became their primary natural resource, with which
they could trade, and profitably. Yet all the while they had been turning themselves into an unrivalled
military force, they had not forgotten their traditions.
Equality, co-operation, communality remained the solid basis for the Legions as for the first settlers. So
deeply ingrained were these qualities, by then, that they might have been taken for mutations. Their world
knew nothing of greed, selfishness, destructive ambition or other anti-social tendencies. On Moros,
anything anti-social was also anti-survival.
And, as the Legions retained their traditional ethics, so they also retained their individual self-discipline
and sense of order. These equalities too seemed bred into them, almost like mutations. But they also
formed the basis of the Legion training, which began, for every individual, in infancy. And yet the
Legions were well aware that each individual has different capabilities, different aptitudes. It was usually
clear, early in a child's life, where his or her special talents lay. Then their more specialized training would
take different directions, after a series of verifying tests.
And for those children who showed high potential for advanced levels of combat training, the first of
those tests - and one of the most demanding - was the Ordeal.
Commander Maron's flyer had been out of sight for many long moments, but still Keill remained
motionless. The bitter wind howled around him, but he barely noticed it. He felt paralyzed, like a machine
with a broken connection. He did not seem able to think. Only fragments of half-thoughts formed in his
mind - and behind them were feelings, and imaginings, swarming like misshapen, menacing monsters.
He could not collect his thoughts, because he did not dare to confront his feelings. So he stood, numbly,
staring into nothingness, on the edge of panic.
But self-preservation is a powerful force, especially in a child of Moros. Keill's instincts gathered to jolt
him back to reality. And the jolt took the form of an unbidden mental image of his father - tall, straight,
with kindly eyes that could see deep into the hearts of people. He heard his father's voice, a memory of
words that lie had first heard years before.
'Your feelings are like wild creatures. Try to crush them, or to pretend they aren't there, and they'll fight
you - and they'll get stronger. You have to accept them, know and understand them. Your feelings
belong to you: you can't belong to them. Let them come out where you can see them - and then master
them, and make them do your bidding.'
The words echoed through the dazed turmoil of Keill's mind. The basic, most deep-rooted quality of the
people of Moros - self-mastery. He had nearly lost it. And you could not do that on Moros, especially in
the Iron Mountains, and survive.
He became aware that his body was shaking with spasms of uncontrolled shivering. Feeling Number
One, he told himself. Cold. A few more minutes of this, and I wouldn't be able to move if I wanted to.
But even then he remained still. Because in facing that feeling, of cold, he was forced to face another
feeling, the one that was the true cause of his numbed paralysis. Fear. He was wretchedly,
soul-destroyingly afraid.
He was afraid of the bleak, cold barrier of the high peaks. He was afraid of losing his way. He was afraid
of making some foolish slip or misjudgment, which in this environment could be instantly fatal. He was
afraid of the life forms that might be lurking in every shadow around him. Above all, he was afraid of the
nameless Something that Commander Maron had said was the deadliest danger any legionary could
face.
He was afraid of the known, and the unknown. He was afraid of dying, and of failure. He was afraid
even to begin the Ordeal, because he feared that he might not complete it.
And then, because he was at last confronting his feelings honestly, he recognized another emotion within
himself. The recognition shocked him. He was feeling sorry for himself, drowning in a mind-wrecking
pool of self-pity.
As he saw that feeling clearly, anger blazed through him - anger and self-loathing at his own weakness.
Unable to face what might happen, he had nearly given up before anything happened at all.
He glared round at the mountains, letting his anger grow, to fuel his determination and courage. 'Do your
worst,' he said aloud to the glittering, indifferent rock. 'Here I come.'
First, he knew, he had to find shelter for the rest of the night. Perhaps, because these ancient mountains
were cracked and pitted with age, there might be a crevice, even a cave, on the slopes sweeping down
to the plateau. Like - up there?
His eyes, straining to penetrate the darkness, followed the line of the steepest slope up many metres, to
what seemed to be a narrow ledge, flat and gleaming in the starlight. Behind it was a patch of darkness so
deeply black that it could be some kind of opening.
The climb was not difficult for him, even barefoot. His fingers and toes found plenty of holds among the
creases and bumps of the rock face. And the effort warmed him, so that he was no longer shivering when
he reached the ledge and found that his guess had been correct. The opening was a small cave -
cramped, but a protection from the wind.
The thought struck him that this plateau might have been chosen as the starting point for the Ordeal
because it offered this shelter. And that seemed even more likely when, inside the inky darkness of the
cave, his hand brushed over a heap of dry twigs, as if someone had supplied the means for a fire.
It took a long time, and much patient concentration, before friction of one twig on another produced a
thin spiral of smoke. He did not see it, but he smelled it, and it inspired him to greater efforts. He did see
the faint, ruddy glow that finally appeared. And soon after, the cave was glowing with the light from a
small fire, and Keill was curled beside it, feeling warm and relaxed and pleased with himself, drifting
almost at once into a contented sleep.
2. The Descent
The light from an ice-blue morning sky brought him creeping painfully out of his nest. The fire had died
during the night, but the cave had retained enough warmth to protect his body heat - though not enough
to keep him from feeling chilled, cramped and stiff. But a basic Legion routine of exercises, even on that
narrow ledge, soon restored his circulation and loosened his muscles.
He looked around at the mighty peaks, lustrous and dazzling in the sunlight, and took a deep breath of
the crisp air. Time to get going - first of all, by climbing back down to the plateau.
He was gripping the lip of the ledge, his feet reaching down for a toe-hold, when the creature exploded
out of the sky with a grating scream, and struck at him like a spear.
A mountain wyvern, which Keill had seen only in museums. A squat, scaly body, half as tall as he was,
with vast black leathery wings and talons that could chip even the rock of the Iron Mountains. And a
long, heavy beak, dagger-pointed, that was aimed for the centre of Keill's back.
But the slapping rush of the wings had given his reflexes warning enough. Instantly he had twisted away to
one side, dangling from the ledge only by the finger-grip of one hand. The wyvern's beak speared through
empty air, grated briefly on the rock - and then the creature was flapping up in a tight curve that would
bring it hurtling back to try again.
Keill regained a two-handed grip on the ledge, and pulled himself up on to it in one flowing motion. As he
gained his feet the wyvern was upon him. He flung himself back, towards the cave mouth, and again his
speed saved him from the deadly beak. But this time, as the monster flashed past, it struck down with its
glinting talons. And four bright red furrows appeared along the length of Keill's left arm.
Screaming, the wyvern wheeled for another attack. But Keill had plunged into the safety of the cave. He
now guessed that the cave might once have been a nesting place for wyverns, which would explain the
store of dry twigs. And perhaps this one used the ledge as a port of call during a day's hunting. Except
this time, it had found something to eat on its doorstep.
The wyvern would not pursue him into the cave, where its wings would be useless. But he had no time to
wait in the hope that it would eventually go away. He knew that he might have to go out and fight,
bare-handed against those fearsome claws and beak.
A wet warmth on his left hand made him glance down. The wounds on his arm were little more than
skin-deep, and could be ignored for now. But the blood was running stickily down to his hand, and he
did not want his grip impaired. He began to wipe his palm on his loin cloth - and the shadow of an idea
sprang into his mind.
The absurd risk of it made him shiver, but he did not hesitate. He unwrapped the loincloth and shook it
out - a strip of ordinary cloth, long enough to wrap three times round his hips, more than half a metre
wide. Some weapon, he thought.
He steadied his breathing, gathering his energies and power as he had been trained to do almost from the
day he could walk. Then he stepped out to face the wyvern.
The monster screeched, a sound like triumph, and dived. In the last seconds before it reached him, Keill
swung the cloth up and held it in front of himself. The terrible beak stabbed into the centre of the cloth.
But Keill had swayed aside, so that the spearing point missed him by centimetres. And as he did so he
flung the cloth forward, its folds enveloping the head and body of the wyvern.
Blinded, the shrieking monster blundered into the rocky slope. The huge wings flailed, the talons ripped at
the entangling cloth. In an instant it would have been free, rising again in fury. But Keill needed only that
instant.
His right hand became a blur, its rigid edge slicing with measured accuracy into the chaotic flurry of
wings, claws and tattered cloth. It struck perfectly, just at the base of the narrow, scaly head. The snap
of breaking bone was barely audible over the raging creature's screams - except that the screams were
instantly cut off. And the wyvern tumbled lifeless, head lolling, on to the ledge.
Keill slumped back against the rock, realizing that his stomach was knotted with tension, and that he was
panting as if he had been running. Slowly he forced himself back to the relaxed calm that his training
demanded, then freed what was left of his loincloth from the wyvern. Nearly half the cloth's length hung in
shreds - but it still reached almost twice round his hips, he found, as he rewrapped it. Not that he was
troubled by nakedness: his people had no such pruderies. But he knew that his friends would tease him
with nonstop merriment if he went back without the only piece of civilization he had taken with him.
Once again he began the climb back down to the plateau, moving with some urgency now. He was going
to need water soon, to drink and to wash his wound. Eventually he would need food, though he could
fast for a day or two if he had to. But above all, he needed to get going. He had only two days to cover
the distance to his goal - and he had not even left the starting place yet.
From the edge of the cliff on one side of the plateau, he could see a sloping vale far below, its details
miniature but clear in the mountain air. A few patches of vegetation on the vale looked promising, and it
was on the route he would be taking. But he would have to reach it in a roundabout way: tackling the
sheer cliff would be a foolish risk, and would not gain much time.
He left the plateau by means of a windswept, steeply angled rock face that led him towards a deep cleft
in the mountainside. The cleft took him downwards in a careful, step-by-step climb, until he was forced
into a sideways traverse across another steep slope. So he crept along at a cautious pace, clinging with
fingers and toes, as one bare rock face led to another, and another. He thought of how he would look
from a distance - like some wall-crawling insect, sidling its slow and aimless way across the looming
slopes. But he was not aimless. His mind held a detailed image of his route - and every traverse, every
cleft, took him steadily downwards.
It was almost midday before he found a swifter path. Where the flanks of two mountains met, a narrow
and almost vertical crack opened downwards for several hundred metres, towards the vale that he had
seen from the plateau. The sides of the crack were broken and split, and for Keill were as good as a
ladder. He went down it with ease, grateful for the years of barefoot training that had left his soles
leathery and tough.
Eventually the crack petered out into a sloping furrow of gravel and loose rubble. There he paused to
rest, looking downwards with satisfaction. The strip of gravel widened into an expanse of loose scree,
which inclined sharply down to a long, smooth spur of rock. And the spur led down towards the gentle
sweep of the vale, with its vegetation that hinted at the presence of water.
He moved forward, wary of the plunging slope of scree, dotted here and there with small boulders. One
misstep could send him sliding the full distance in an avalanche of gravel and rock. Under his fingers and
toes, small pebbles and trickles of sand slid down and away, like ominous forerunners of the threatened
landslide. But he moved on, watchfully. He was aiming for one of the small, rounded boulders that bulged
out of the scree, which might offer some solidity. But when his foot touched the boulder, he found it was
not solidly fixed. It moved - but it did not slide downwards.
It moved, impossibly, up towards him.
And from under it, or within it, something emerged - and four rows of teeth like needles snapped at his
bare ankle.
But the teeth clashed together harmlessly, for again Keill's reactions saved him. He hurled himself
backwards, falling, braced to roll and come to his feet, to meet another attack. Except that the impact of
his body was too much for the loose scree.
It began to slide. Keill's feet were swept from under him as the slide accelerated. Rolling, tumbling, he felt
the fiery sting of scraped skin on elbows and knees. The whole mountainside seemed to be thundering
down the slope, with him in the midst of it, blinded by dust, helplessly flailing for something solid to stop
his fall.
For an instant a bruising bounce flung him into the air, surrounded by painfully flying pebbles. Instinct
twisted his body in the air, so that he struck the slope again feet first. And as he landed he drove both
feet downwards with crushing power. His heels plunged deep into the sliding gravel - and for a breathless
few seconds he was riding the landslide, standing upright, ankle-deep.
Then he fell backwards, his feet dislodged. But at that moment he and several tons of gravel reached the
bottom of the slope with an echoing roar. Yet he remained on its surface, carried along for many more
metres, but not buried.
Slowly he sat up, grimacing at all the areas of pain on his body. He glanced round, then back up at the
slope, but saw no sign of the boulder that had turned out to be alive. Probably a stonetoad, he thought, in
its camouflaged shell. They were supposed to be venomous as well as vicious - but the landslide seemed
to have swallowed this one up.
He stood up carefully, checking himself over. He had lost some skin, but mostly in superficial grazes,
though several of them were bleeding slightly. But by some miracle - perhaps because of that wild
moment when he had ridden the slide like a skier - no bones were broken.
He knew just how lucky he had been. He also knew that luck had a habit of running out. And he still had
a great deal of distance to cover.
He limped away, along the spur of rock that extended out like a great, flattened wall. And shortly he saw,
with delight, that his luck had not run out yet. From a narrow crack near the top of the spur, a small
underground spring spewed clear mountain water, in a glittering arc that became a cheerily bubbling
cascade down to the vale below.
Eagerly he clambered down to the shallow pool at the base of the spur, and waded in to stand under the
drenching waterfall. The water was icy, and its effect on his cuts, grazes and bruises was fiery. But those
were torments that he welcomed. He raised his face to the water, gulping a mouthful of its frosty purity,
feeling dust and sweat and blood sluicing away, feeling recharged, as if the water was some powerful
stimulant.
Unwrapping his ragged loincloth, he rinsed it as clean as he could, and dabbed carefully at his wounds.
The gashes on his arm, from the wyvern, had crusted over, and began oozing blood again. But they
seemed clean, as did the lesser damage from his fall. Reassured, he climbed reluctantly out of the natural
showerbath on to a flat piece of dry rock nearby. The vale was warm with sunlight and protected from
the wind, and he felt a deep compulsion to stretch out and doze on the sun-warmed rock. But he had no
time for lazing. Rewrapping his loincloth, he moved away across the vale.
Now and then something tiny, bright-shelled and multi-legged skittered away from his path. And once
something less small and thickly furred sprang out of a clump of dry grass and bounced away like a furry
ball. But he merely glanced at them, and walked on. They seemed to be no danger, and they were
certainly not potential food. Almost none of the animals of Moros, and only a few of the plants, could be
eaten by humans. But, for the moment, the water had eased his growing pangs of hunger. He walked on,
lengthening his stride.
3. The Foothills
Beyond the vale stood a lower, secondary range of mountains, like buttresses for the mightier peaks.
Here the slopes were less cruelly steep, and the barrenness of the rock was relieved by occasional
growths of thorny brush or sparse clumps of brownish grass. But this region was no less rugged - for the
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 FontArial FontColorblack FontSize12    BackgroundColorwhiteYOUNGLEGIONARYByDouglasHillContentsOrdeal1.ThePlateau2.TheDescent3.TheFoothills4.TheValleyResponsibilityDemolitionGamesPostscriptYoungLegionary TheLastLegionaryquartetbyDouglasHill: GalacticWarlordDeathwingOverVeynaaDayoftheStarwindPlanetof...

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