Short Fiction - Poul Anderson (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

about promising safety to those who did. He heard how the rebels had been killing his friends. He went to Slavatozik here, whom he could trust, and later they got in touch with me. I’d used this hiding place before, and gathered all the fugitives I could find here.” Janazik shrugged, a sinuous unhuman gesture. “Since then I’ve seen Carse, at a distance, riding around like a prince of the blood, with a troop of his own personal guardsmen. I suspect he really runs things now. Volakech wants power, but only Carse can show him how to get it.”

“And Ellen⁠—?”

“No sign of her. But as I said, I think she’s in hiding somewhere, or the guards wouldn’t be out looking for a woman. She wouldn’t give herself up.”

“Not Ellen.” A grim pride lifted Anse’s head.

“Remains the problem of finding her before they do,” said Gonzales Alonzo. “If they catch her and make her plot an orbit for the rocket, they’ll have the Star Ship⁠—which means power over the whole planet.”

“Not that I care who’s king,” growled Pragakech. “But you know that Masefield Carson never did want to use the ship to get out to the stars. And I want to see those other worlds before I die.”

“To the thirteenth hell with the other worlds,” snarled Bolazan. “Aligan was my king, and it’s for me to avenge him and put his rightful heir on the throne.”

“We all have our motives for wanting the blood of Volakech and Carson,” said Janazik. “Never mind that now; the important thing is how to get at their livers. We’re few, Anse. Here are all the free humans we know of, except Masefield Ellen. There can’t be more than two or three at large, and perhaps ten dead. That means the enemy holds almost a hundred humans captive. Discounting children and others who are ignorant of Terrestrial science, it still means they’ll be able to operate the guns, the steel mill, the atomic-power plant⁠—all the new machines except the rocket boat, and they only need Ellen for that.”

Anse nodded, slowly. “What is our strength?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Not much. I know where about a hundred Khazaki warriors are hiding, ready to follow us whenever we call on them, and there will be many more sitting at home now who’ll rise if someone else takes the lead. But the enemy has all the guns. It would be suicide.”

“What about the Khazaki who fled?” Usually, in one of the planet’s violent changes of governments, the refugees were powerful nobles who would be slain as a safety measure if they stayed at home but who could, in exile, raise strong forces for a comeback. Such a one had Volakech himself been, barely escaping with his life after his disastrous attempt to seize the throne a few years back.

“Don’t be more stupid than you can help,” snorted Janazik. “By the time they can have rallied enough to do any good, Volakech and Carson will have the Star Ship, one way or another, and then the whole world is at their mercy.”

“That means we have to strike back somehow⁠—quickly!” Anse stood for a moment in thought.

The habits of his warring, wandering years were coming back to him. He had faced death and despair before, and with strength and cunning and bluff and sheer luck had come through alive. This was another problem, more desperate and more urgent, but still another problem.

No⁠—there was more to it than that.

His face grew bleak, and it was as if a coldness touched his heart. Carson was Ellen’s older brother, and even if they had quarreled from time to time he knew she had always felt deeply bound to him. Carse is everything I never was. He stayed in Krakenau and studied and became an educated man and a skilled engineer while I went hallooing over the world. He’s brave and a good fighter⁠—so am I⁠—but he’s so much more than that. I imagine it was his example that made Ellen learn the astrogation only her grandfather knew.

And now I’m back from roaming and roving with Janazik, and I’m trying hard to settle down and learn something so that I won’t be just a barbarian, a wild Khazaki in human skin, when we go out to the civilization of the stars. So that I won’t be too utterly ashamed to ask Ellen to marry me. And it was all going pretty well until now.

But now⁠—I’m fighting her brother⁠—

Well⁠—he pushed the thought out of his brain. After all, apparently she was in opposition to Carse’s plans too.

“I wonder why they tried to kill me?” he asked aloud, more to fill in the time while he thought than out of curiosity.

“You’d be of no use to Carson, having no technical education,” said Janazik, “while your knowledge of fighting and your connections with warlike groups make you dangerous to him. Also, I don’t think he ever liked your paying attention to Ellen.”

“No⁠—he always said I was a waster. Called me a⁠—an absorbed Khazaki. I’d’ve split his skull if he hadn’t been Ellen’s brother⁠—No matter now. We’ve more important things to talk over.”

Have we, now? he thought sickly. Carson must know Ellen well, better than I do. If he thinks he can have me killed without making her hate him, then⁠—maybe I never had any chance with her then⁠—

“How’d you happen by?” he asked tonelessly.

“I’ve been out from time to time, looking for Ellen and killing guardsmen whenever I could catch them alone.” Janazik’s white fangs gleamed in a carnivore’s smile. “And, of course, I expected you back from your fishing trip about this time, and watched for you lest you blunder into their hands.”

Anse began to pace the floor, back and forth, his head bent to avoid the basement rafters. If Carson was in control, and out to kill him.⁠ ⁠… There was more to it than that, of course. The whole future of the planet Khazak, perhaps of the fabulous Galactic civilization itself, was balanced on the edge