Piper, H Beam - The Space Viking

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Space Viking
By H. Beam Piper
Version 0.0
(Please increment the version if you make corrections)
INSIDE COVER NOTES:
BY THE LIGHT OF BURNING WORLDS
Lucas Trask of Traskon was not an admirer of the Space Vikings; raiding,
pillage and killing were not avocations to his liking. And on this
long-awaited day of his marriage to the lovely Lady Elaine, all unpleasant
thoughts seemed far away. But Lucas was to be suddenly awakened to a world of
chaotic violence, where murder followed murder, and the only motive to rival
avarice was revenge. For Lucas, the old life was dead, and the new life he had
chosen led out into the trackless realms of galactic space and the surfaces of
pillaged planets with one objective always in mind-the death of a renegade
spaceman. SPACE VIKING is an epic of interstellar adventure that will compare
with Asimov's Foundation novels and Heinlein's Starship Troopers.
BACK COVER NOTES:
After a galaxy-wide war had left the planetary federation in ruins, every
surviving civilized world was on its own. And that was a perfect setup for the
marauders from the far-out rim.
Trask was one of those dreaded Space Vikings, a warrior spaceman with a crew
and a ship that struck terror to a thousand worlds. But Trask had a special
personal interest in scourging the stars-he wanted to draw upon himself the
fire of a certain enemya renegade planet-wrecker with a yen for galactic
empire-building.
SPACE VIKING is H. Beam Piper's greatest novel of interstellar adventure.
BIO:
H. BEAM PIPER is rather enigmatic where his personal statistics are concerned.
It may be stated that he lives in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, that he is an
expert on the history and use of hand weapons, that he has been writing and
selling science-fiction for many years to the leading magazines, and that he
is highly rated among readers for his skill and imagination. He has had
several novels published, including mysteries and juveniles. His previous
appearances in Ace Books include two novels written in collaboration with John
J. McGuire: CRISIS IN 2140 (D-227) and A PLANET FOR TEXANS (D-299).
(I believe H. Beam Piper committed suicide in 1964. This book was last
published in 1984)
--------------------------------------------
GRAM
I
They STOOD together at the parapet, their arms about each other's waists, her
head against his cheek. Behind, the broad leaved shrubbery gossiped softly
with the wind, and from the lower main terrace came music and laughing voices.
The city of Wardshaven spread in front of them, white buildings rising from
the wide spaces of green treetops, under a shimmer of sun-reflecting aircars
above. Far away, the mountains were violet in the afternoon haze, and the huge
red sun hung in a sky as yellow as a ripe peach.
His eye caught a twinkle ten miles to the southwest, and for an instant he was
puzzled. Then he frowned. The sunlight blazed on the two thousand foot globe
of Duke Angus' new ship, the Enterprise, back at the Gorram shipyards after
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her final trial cruise. He didn't want to think about that, now.
Instead, he pressed her closer and whispered her name, "Elaine," and then,
caressing every syllable, "Lady Elaine Track of Traskon."
"Oh, no, Lucas!" Her protest was half joking and half apprehensive. "It's bad
luck to be called by your married name before the wedding."
"I've been calling you that in my mind since the night of the Duke's ball,
when you were just home from school on Excalibur."
5
She looked up from the corner of her eye.
"That was when I started calling me that, too," she confessed.
"There's a terrace to the west at Traskon New House," he told her. "Tomorrow,
we'll have our dinner there, and watch the sunset together."
"I know. I thought that was to be our sunset-watching place."
"You have been peeking," he accused,. "Traskon New House was to be your
surprise."
"I always was a present-peeker, New Year's and my birthdays. But I
only saw it from the air. I'll be very surprised at everything inside," she
promised. "And very de lighted."
And when she'd seen everything and Traskon New House wasn't a surprise any
more, they'd take a long space-trip. He hadn't mentioned that to her, yet. To
some of the other Sword-Worlds-Excalibur, of course, and Morglay and Flama-
berge and Durendal. No, not Durendal; the war had started there again. But
they'd have so much fun. And she would see clear blue skies again, and stars
at night. The cloud veil hid the stars from Gram, and Elaine had missed them,
since coming home from Excalibur.
The shadow of an aircar fell briefly upon them and they looked up and turned
their beads in time to see it sink with graceful dignity toward the
landing-stage of Karvall House, and he glimpsed its blazonry-sword and
atom-symbol, the badge of the ducal house of Ward. He wondered if it were Duke
Angus himself, or just some of his people come ahead of him. They should get
back to the guests, he supposed. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her,
and she responded ardently. It must have been all of five minutes since they'd
done that before.
A slight cough behind them brought them apart and their heads around. It was
Sesar Karvall, gray-haired and portly, the breast of his blue coat gleaming
with orders and decorations and the sapphire in the pommel of his dress-dagger
twinkling.
"I thought I'd find you two here," Elaine's father smiled. "You'll have
tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow to-
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gether, but need I remind you that today we have guests, and more coming every
minute."
"Who came in the Ward car?" Elaine asked.
"Rovard Grauffis. And Otto
Harkaman; you never met him, did you, Lucas?"
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"No, not by introduction. I'd like to, before he spaces out." He had nothing
against Harkaman personally; only against what he represented. "Is the Duke
coming?"
"Oh, surely. Lionel of Newhaven and the Lord of Northport are coming with him.
They're at the Palace now." Karvall hesitated. "His nephew's back in town."
Elaine was distressed; she started to say, "Oh, dear! I hope he doesn't"
"Has Dunnan been bothering Elaine again?"
"Nothing to take notice of. He was here, yesterday, demanding
to speak with her. We got him to leave without too much unpleasantness."
"It'll be something for me to take notice of, if he keeps it up after
tomorrow."
For his seconds and Andray Dunnan's, that was; he hoped it wouldn't
come to that. He didn't want to have to shoot a kinsman to the house of Ward,
and a crazy man to boot.
"I'm terribly sorry for him," Elaine was saying. "Father, you should have let
me talk to him. I might have made him understand."
Sesar Karvall was shocked. "Child, you couldn't have subjected yourself to
that! The man is insane!" Then he saw her bare shoulders, and was even more
shocked. "Elaine, your shawl!"
Her hands went up and couldn't find it; she
looked about in confused embarrassment. Amused, Lucas picked it from the shrub
onto which she had tossed it and draped it over her shoulders, his hands
lingering briefly. Then he gestured to the older man to precede them, and they
entered the arbored walk. At the other end, in an open circle, a fountain
played, white marble girls and boys bathing in the jade green basin. Another
piece of loot from one of the Old Federation planets; that was something he'd
tried to avoid in furnishing Traskon New House. There'd be a lot of that
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coming to Gram after Otto Harkaman took the Enterprise to space.
"I'll have to come back, some time, and visit them," Elaine whispered to him.
"They'll miss me."
"You'll find a lot of new friends at your new home," he whispered back.
"You wait till tomorrow."
"I'm going to put- a word in the Duke's ear about that fellow," Sesar Karvall,
still thinking of Dunnan, was saying. "If he speaks to him, maybe it'll do
some good."
"I doubt it. I don't think Duke Angus has any influence over him at all."
Dunnan's mother had been the Duke's younger sister; from his father he had
inherited what had originally been a prosperous barony. Now it was mortgaged
to the top of the manor house aerial-mast. The Duke had once assumed Dunnan's
debts, and refused to do so a second time. Dunnan had gone to space a few
times, as a junior officer on trade and-raid voyages into the Old Federation.
He was supposed to be a fair astrogator. He had expected his uncle to give him
command of the Enterprise, which had been ridiculous. Disappointed in that, he
had recruited a mercenary company and was seeking military employment. It was
suspected that he was in correspondence with his uncle's worst enemy, Duke
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Omfray of Glaspyth.
And he was obsessively in love with Elaine Karvall, a passion which seemed to
nourish itself on its own hopelessness. Maybe it would be a good idea to take
that space-trip right away. There ought to be a ship leaving Bigglersport for
one of the other Sword-Worlds, before long.
They paused at the bead of the escalators; the garden below was thronged with
guests, the bright shawls of the ladies and the coats of the men making
shifting color-patterns among the flowerbeds and on the lawns and under the
trees. Serving robots, flame-yellow and black in the Karvall colors, floated
about playing soft music and offering refreshments. There was a continuous
spiral of changing costume color around the circular robo-table. Voices
babbled happily like a mountain river.
As they stood looking down, another aircar circled low,
8
green and gold, lettered PANPLANET NEWS SERVICE. Sesar Karvall swore in
irritation.
"Didn't there use to be something they called privacy?" he asked.
"It's a big story Sesar."
It was; more than the marriage of two people who
happened to be in love with each other. It was the marriage of the farming and
ranching barony of Traskon and the Karvall steel mills. More, it was public
announcement that the wealth and fighting men of both baronies were now
aligned behind Duke Angus of Wardshaven. So it was a general holiday. Every
industry had closed down at noon today, and would be closed until
morning-after-next, and there would be dancing in every park and feasting in
every tavern. To Sword-Worlders, any excuse for a holiday was better than
none.
"They're our people, Sesar; they have a right to have a good time with us. I
know everybody at Traskon is watching this by screen."
He raised his hand and waved to the news-car, and when it swung its pickup
around, he waved again. Then they went down the long escalator.
Lady Lavina Karvall was the center of a cluster of matrons and dowagers,
around whom tomorrow's bridesmaids fluttered like many-colored butterflies.
She took possession of her daughter and dragged her into the feminine circle.
He saw Rovard Grauffis, small and saturnine, Duke Angus' henchman, and Burt
Sandrasan, Lady Lavina's brother. They spoke, and then an upper-servant, his
tabard blazoned with the yellow flame and black hammer of Karvallmills,
approached his master with some tale of domestic crisis, and the two went away
together.
"You haven't met Captain Harkaman, Lucas," Rovard Grauffis said. "I wish you'd
come over and say hello and have a drink with him. I know your attitude, but
he's a good sort. Personally, I wish we had a few like him around here."
That was his main objection. There were ever and fewer men of that sort on any
of the SwordWorlds.
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II
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A DOZEN men clustered around the bartending robot-his cousin and family
lawyer, Nikkolay Trask; Lothar Ffayle, the banker; Alex Gorram, the
shipbuilder, and his son Basil; Baron Rathmore; more of the Wardshaven nobles
whom he knew only distantly. And Otto Harkaman.
Harkaman was a Space Viking. That would have set him apart even if he hadn't
topped the tallest of them by a head. He wore a short black jacket, heavily
gold-braided, and black- trousers inside ankle-boots; the dagger on his belt
was no mere dress-ornament. His tousled red-brown hair was long enough to
furnish extra padding in a combat-helmet, and his beard was cut square at the
bottom.
He had been fighting on Durendal, for one of the branches of the Royal house
contesting fratricidally for the throne. The wrong one; he had lost his ship,
and most of his men and, almost, his own life. He had been a penniless refugee
on Flamberge, owning only the clothes he stood in and his personal weapons and
the loyalty of half a dozen adventurers as penniless as himself, when Duke
Angus had invited him to Gram to command the Enterprise.
"A pleasure, Lord Trask. I've met your lovely bride-to-be, and now that I meet
you, let me congratulate both." Then, as they were having a drink together, he
put his foot in it by asking, "You're not an investor in the Tanith Adventure,
are you?"
He said he wasn't, and would have let it go at that. Young Basil Gorram had to
get his foot in, too.
"Lord Trask does not approve of the Tanith Adventure," he said scornfully. "He
thinks we should stay home and produce wealth, instead of exporting robbery
and murder to the Old Federation for it."
The smile remained on Otto Harkaman's face; only the friendliness was gone. He
unobtrusively shifted his drink to his left hand.
"Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder," he agreed. "Space
Vikings are professional robbers and murderers. And you object? Perhaps you
find me personally objectionable?"
10
"I wouldn't have shaken your hand or had a drink with you if I did. I don't
care how many planets you raid or cities you sack, or how many innocents, if
that's what they are, you massacre in the Old Federation. You couldn't
possibly do anything worse than those people have been doing to one another
for the past ten centuries. What I object to is the way you're raiding the
Sword-Worlds."
"You're crazy!" Basil Gorram exploded.
"Young man," Harkaman reproved, "the conversation was between Lord Trask and
myself. And when somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell
him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What do you mean, Lord Trask?"
"You should know; you've just raided Gram for eight hundred of our best men.
You raided me for close to forty vaqueros, farm workers, lumbermen, machine
operators, and I doubt I'll be able to replace them with as good." He turned
to the elder Gorram. "Alex, how many have you lost to Captain Harkaman?"
Gorram tried to make it a dozen; pressed, he admitted to a score and a half.
Roboticians, machine supervisors, programmers, a couple of engineers, a
foreman. There was grudging agreement from the others. Burt Sandrasan's engine
works had lost almost as many, of the same kind. Even Lothar Ffayle admitted
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to losing a computerman and a guard-sergeant.
And after they were gone, the farms and ranches and factories would go on,
almost but not quite as before. Nothing on Gram, nothing on any of the
Sword-Worlds, was done as efficiently as three centuries ago. The whole level
of Sword-World life was sinking, like the east coastline of this continent, so
slowly as to be evident only from the records and monuments of the past. He
said as much, and added:
"And the genetic loss. The best Sword-World genes are literally escaping to
space, like the atmosphere of a low gravity planet, each generation begotten
by fathers slightly inferior to the last. It wasn't so bad when the Space
Vikings raided directly from the Sword-Worlds; they got home once in a while.
Now they're conquering planets in the Old Federation for bases, and staying
there."
Everybody had begun to relax; this wouldn't be a quar-
11
rel. Harkaman, who had shifted his drink back to his right hand chuckled.
"That's right. I've fathered a dozen
bastards in the Old Federation, and I know Space Vikings whose fathers were
born on Old Federation planets." He turned to Basil Gorrarn. "You see, the
gentleman isn't crazy, at all. That's what happened to the Terran Federation,
by the way. The good men all left to colonize, and the stuffed shirts and
yes-men and herd-followers and safety-firsters stayed on Terra and tried to
govern the Galaxy."
"Well, maybe this is all new to you, Captain," Rovard Grauffis said sourly,
"but Lucas Trask's dirge for the Decline and Fall of the Sword-Worlds is an
old song to the rest of us. I have too much to do to stay here and argue with
him."
Lothar Ffayle evidently did intend to stay and argue.
"All you're saying, Lucas, is that we're expanding. You want us to sit here
and build up population pressure like Terra in the First Century?"
"With three and a half billion people spread out on twelve planets? They had
that many on Terra alone. And it took us eight centuries to reach that."
That had been since the Ninth Century, Atomic Era, at the end of the Big War.
Ten thousand men and women on Abigor, refusing to surrender, had taken the
remnant of the System States Alliance navy to space, seeking a world the
Federation had never heard of and wouldn't find for a long time. That had been
the world they had called Excalibur. From it, their grandchildren had
colonized Joyeuse and Durendal and Flamberge; Haulteclere had been colonized
in the next generation from Joyeuse, and Gram from Haulteclere.
"We're not expanding, Lothar; we're contracting. We stopped expanding three
hundred and fifty years ago, when that ship came back to Morglay from the Old
Federation and reported what had been happening out there since the Big War.
Before that, we were discovering new planets and colonizing them. Since them,
we've been picking the bones of the dead Terran Federation."
Something was going on by the escalators to the landingstage. People were
moving excitedly in that direction, and
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the news-cars were circling like vultures over a sick cow. Harkaman wondered,
hopefully, if it mightn't be a fight.
"Some drunk being bounced," Nikkolay Trask dismissed it. "Sesar's let all
Wardshaven in here, today. But, Lucas, this Tanith Adventure; we're not making
any hit-and-run raid. We're taking over a whole planet; it'll be another
SwordWorld in forty or fifty years. A little farther away, of course, but-"
"Inside another century, we'll conquer the whole Federation," Baron Rathmore
declared. He was a politician and never let exaggeration worry him. a.
"What I don't understand," Harkaman said, "is why you support Duke Angus, Lord
Trask, if you think the Tanith adventure is doing Gram so much harm."
"If Angus didn't do it, somebody else would. But Angus is going to make
himself King of Gram, and I don't think anybody else could do that. This
planet needs a single sovereignty. I don't know how much you've seen of it
outside this duchy, but don't take Wardshaven as typical. Some of these
duchies, like Glaspyth or Didreksburg, are literal snake-pits. All the major
barons are at each other's throats, and they can't even keep their own knights
and petty-barons in order. Why, there's a miserable little war down in 1
Southmain Continent that's been going on for over two centuries."
"That's probably where Dunnan's going to take that army of his," a
robot-manufacturing baron said. "I hope it gets 1 wiped out, and Dunnan with
it."
"You don't have to go to Southmain; just go to Glaspyth," someone else said.
"Well, if we don't get a planetary monarchy to keep order, this planet will
decivilize like anything in the Old Federation."
"Oh, come, Lucas!" Alex Gorram protested. "That's pulling it out too far."
"Yes, for one thing, we don't have the Neobarbarians," somebody said. "And if
they ever came out here, we'd blow them to Em-See-Square in nothing flat.
Might be a good thing if they did, too; it would stop us squabbling among
ourselves."
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Harkaman looked at him in surprise. "Just who do you think the Neobarbarians
are, anyhow?" he asked. "Some race of invading nomads, Atilla's Huns in
spaceships?"
"Well, isn't that who they are?" Gorram asked.
"Nifflheim, nol There aren't a dozen and a half planets in the Old Federation
that still have hyperdrive, and they're all civilized. That's if `civilized'
is what Gilgamesh is," he added. "These are homemade barbarians. Workers and
peasants who revolted to seize and divide the wealth. and then found they'd
smashed the means of production and killed off all the technical brains.
Survivors on planets hit during the Interstellar Wars, from the Eleventh to
the Thirteenth Centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization. Followers of
political leaders on` local-dictatorship planets. Companies of mercenaries
thrown out of employment and living by pillage. Religious fanatics following
selfannointed prophets."
"You think we don't have plenty of Neobarbarian material here on Gram?" Trask
demanded. "If you do, take a look around."
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"Glaspyth," somebody said.
"That collection of overripe gallows-fruit Andray Dunnan's recruited,"
Rathmore mentioned.
Alex Gorram was grumbling that his shipyard was full of them; agitators
stirring up trouble, trying to organize a strike to get rid of the robots.
"Yes," Harkaman pounced on that last. "I know of at least forty instances, on
a dozen and a half planets, in the last eight centuries, of anti-technological
movements. They had them on Terra, back as far as the Second Century
Pre-Atomic. And after Venus seceded from the First Federation, before the
Second Federation was organized."
"You're interested in history?" Rathmore asked.
"A hobby. All spacemen have hobbies. There's very little work aboard
ship in hyperspace; boredom is the worst enemy. My guns-and-missiles officer,
Van Larch, is a painter. Most of his work was lost with the Corisande on
Durendal, but he kept us from starving a few times on Flamberge by painting
pictures and selling them. My hyperspatial astrogator, Guatt Kirbey, composes
music; he tries to express the
14
mathematics of hyperspatial theory in musical terms. I don't care much for it,
myself," he admitted. "I study history. You know, it's odd; practically
everything that's happened on any of the inhabited planets has happened on
Terra before the first spaceship."
The garden immediately around them was quiet, now; everybody was over by the
landing-stage escalators. Harkaman would have said more, but at that moment he
saw half a dozen of Sesar Karvall's uniformed guardsmen run past. They were
helmeted and in bulletproofs; one of them had an autorifle, and the rest
carried knobbed plastic truncheons. The Space Viking set down his drink.
"Let's go," he said. "Our host is calling up his troops; I think the guests
ought to find battle stations, too."
III
THE GAILY-DRESSED crowd formed a semicircle facing the landing-stage
escalators; everybody was staring in embarrassed curiosity, those behind
craning over the shoulders of those in front. The ladies had drawn up their
shawls in frigid formality; many had even covered their heads. There were four
news-service cars hovering above; whatever was going on was getting a
planetwide screen showing. The Karvall guardsmen were trying to get through;
their sergeant was saying, over and over, "Please, ladies and gentlemen; your
pardon, noble sir," and getting nowhere.
Otto Harkaman swore disgustedly and shoved the sergeant aside. "Make way,
here!" he bellowed. "Let these guards pass." With that, he almost hurled a
gaily-dressed gentleman aside on either hand; they both turned to glare
angrily, then got hastily out of his way.
Meditating briefly on the uses of bad manners in an emergency, Trask followed,
with the others. The big Space Viking plowed to the front, where Sesar Karvall
and Rovard Grauffis and several others were standing.
Facing them, four men in black cloaks stood with their backs to the
escalators. Two were commonfolk retainers; hired gunmen, to be precise. They
were at pains to keep
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their hands plainly in sight, and seemed wishing themselves elsewhere. The man
in front wore a diamond sunburst jewel on his beret, and his cloak was lined
with pale blue silk. His thin, pointed face was deeply lined about the mouth
and penciled with a thin black mustache. His eyes showed white all around the
irises, and now and then his mouth would twitch in an involuntary grimace.
Andray Dunnan; Trask wondered briefly how soon he would have to look at hum
from twenty-five meters over the sights of a pistol. The face of the slightly
taller man who stood at his shoulder was paperwhite, expressionless, with a
black beard. His name was Nevil Ormm; nobody was quite sure whence he had
come, and he was Dunnan's henchman and constant companion.
"You lie!" Dunnan was shouting. "You lie damnably, in your stinking teeth, all
of you! You've intercepted every message she's tried to send me."
"My daughter has sent you no messages, Lord Dunnan," Sesar Karvall said, with
forced patience. "None but the one I just gave you, that she wants nothing
whatever to do with you."
"You think I believe that? You're holding her a prisoner; Satan only knows how
you've been torturing her to force her into this abominable marriage."
There was a stir among the bystanders; that was more than well-mannered
restraint could stand. Out of the murmur of incredulous voices, one woman's
was quite audible:
"Well, really! He actually is crazy!"
Dunnan, like everybody else, heard it. "Crazy, am 1?" he blazed. "Because I
can see through this hypocritical sham? Here's Lucas Trask-he wants an
interest in Karvallmills; and here's Sesar Karvallhe wants access to iron
deposits on Traskon land. And my loving uncle-he wants the help of both of
them in stealing Omfray of Glaspyth's duchy. And here's this loan shark of a
Ffayle, trying to claw my lands away from me, and Rovard Grauffls, the
fetchdog of my uncle who won't lift a finger to save his kinsman from ruin,
and this foreigner Harkaman who's swindled me out of command of the
Enterprise. You're all plotting against me."
"Sir Nevil," Grauffis said, "you can see that Lord Dun-
16
nan's not himself. If you're a good friend to him, you'll get him out of here
before Duke Angus arrives."
Ormm leaned forward and spoke urgently in Dunnan's ear. Dunnan pushed him
angrily away.
"Great Satan, are you against me, too?" he demanded.
Ormm caught his arm. "You fool, do you want to ruin everything, now?" He
lowered his voice; the rest was inaudible.
"No, curse you, I won't go till I've spoken to her, face to face!"
There was another stir among the spectators; the crowd parted, and Elaine was
coming through, followed by her mother and Lady Sandrasan and five or six
other matrons. They all had their shawls over their heads, right ends over
left shoulders; they all stopped except Elaine, who took a few steps forward
and confronted Andray Dunnan. He had never seen her look more beautiful, but
it was the icy beauty of a honed dagger.
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file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20Space%20Viking.txt
"Lord Dunnan, what do you wish to say to me?" she asked. "Say it quickly and
then go; you are not welcome here."
"Elaine!" Dunnan cried, taking a step forward. "Why do you cover your head;
why do you speak to me as a stranger? I am Andray, who loves you. Why are you
letting them force you into this wicked marriage?"
"No one is forcing me; I am marrying Lord Trask willingly and happily, because
I love him. Now, please, go and make no more trouble at my wedding."
"That's a lie! They're making you say that! You don't have to marry him; they
can't force you. Come with me now. They won't dare stop you. I'll take you
away from all these cruel, greedy people. You love me, you've always loved me.
You've told me you loved me, again and again."
Yes in his own private dream world, a world of fantasy that had now become
Andray Dunnan's reality, an Elaine Karvall whom his imagination had created
existed only to love him. Confronted by the real Elaine, he simply rejected
the reality.
"I never loved you, Lord Dunnan and I never told you so. I never hated you,
either, but you are making it very
17
hard for me not to. Now go and never let me see you again."
With that, she turned and started back through the crowd, which parted in
front of her. Her mother and her aunt and the other ladies followed. "You lied
to me!" Dunnan shrieked after her.
"You lied all the time. You're as bad as the rest of them, all scheming and
plotting against me, betraying me. I know what it's about; you all want to
cheat me of my rights, and keep my usurping uncle on the ducal throne. And
you, you falsehearted harlot„you're the worst of them all!"
Sir Nevil Ormm caught his shoulder and spun him around, propelling him toward
the escalators. Dunnan struggled, screaming inarticulately like a wounded
wolf. Ormm was cursing furiously.
"You two!" he shouted. "Help me, here. Get hold of him."
Dunnan was still howling as they forced him onto the escalator, the backs of
the two retainers' cloaks, badged with the Dunnan crescent, light blue on
black, hiding him. After a little, an aircar with the blue crescent blazonry
lifted and sped away.
"Lucas, he's crazy," Sesar Karvall was insisting. "Elaine hasn't spoken fifty
words to him since he came back from his last voyage."
Lucas laughed and put a hand on Karvall's shoulder. "I know that, Sesar. You
don't think, do you, that I need assurance of it?"
"Crazy, I'll say he's crazy," Rovard Grauffis put in. "Did you hear what he
said about his rights? Wait till his Grace hears about that."
"Does he lay claim to the ducal throne, Sir Rovard?" Otto Harkaman asked,
sharply and seriously.
"Oh, be claims that his mother was born a year and a half before Duke Angus
and the true date of her birth falsified to give Angus the succession. Why,
his present Grace was three years old when she was born. I was old Duke
Fergus' squire; I carried Angus on my shoulder when Andray Dunnan's mother was
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file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20Space%20Viking. xtSpaceVikingByH.BeamPiperVersion0.0(Pleaseincrementtheversionifyoumakecorrections)INSIDECOVERNOTES:BYTHELIGHTOFBURNINGWORLDSLucasTraskofTraskonwasnotanadmireroftheSpaceVikings;raiding,pillageandkillingwerenotavocationstohisl...

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