A hand caught his wrist on the upswing. Dirk whipped about, snarling … and stared up into DeCade’s impassive face.
“You butcher dead meat,” said the giant.
Dirk stared up at him, reason slowly returning. He turned to look down at Core.
The Lord was a fountain of blood, a dozen red mouths pumping life from his chest. Dirk raised his eyes; Core’s eyes were dull, glazed, his mouth twisted in a last agony of humiliation.
“He is dead,” Dirk muttered, scarcely able to believe it.
Slowly he rose, eyes still on the corpse. “He’s always been there, as long as I can remember—my nemesis, looming up, deadly, at the center of creation, his shadow darkening my world, preventing me from doing anything good…”
“So they all have been, to all of us,” DeCade rumbled. “Believe it, Dulain, and know peace in the depths of your heart: he is dead.”
And finally, Dirk began to believe it.
At last he raised his eyes, realizing that the chamber was quiet. The outlaws stood, silently watching him—ten of them. The other ten lay dead with the Lords, in the carpet of blood. Dirk looked at the living, at their set, brooding faces, and realized each man saw himself in Dirk, at that moment.
Tiny in the stillness, there was whimpering.
CHAPTER 15
Dirk turned slowly, frowning. The idiot King was huddled into a ball at the head of the bed, his beard filled with spittle, his lips flecked with foam. His eyes were blank with terror. Disgust welled up in Dirk—and the beginning of a vast guilt.
“There is no time for pity,” DeCade rumbled. “They fight in the courtyard below. Quickly! Take this poor hunk of flesh; bind his arms and bring him with us.”
The idiot huddled himself tighter against the headboard, hands in his mouth, mewling.
Dirk frowned. “Why? Can’t we leave the poor thing alone?”
DeCade shook his head. “Idiot he may be, but he is nonetheless King. Do you not know what kings are, Outworlder? They are symbols, most powerful ones. Show a symbol in chains, and the men who fight for it fight as though they, too, were weighed down by chains.”
Dirk closed his eyes, nodding, and three outlaws laid hands on their King, to bind his arms and pull him to his feet. They handled him as gently as they could, Dirk noticed; he wondered whether it was from the dimmed aura of royalty that still clung to him, or from sympathy.
Then they were rushing down the hallway to keep up with DeCade’s long strides, half-carrying the poor idiot. As Dirk caught up with him, DeCade said over his shoulder, “Summon your ships. Tell them to land just outside the castle walls and fire a shot over the battlements.”
Dirk stared up at him in surprise. Then he shrugged and took off his rope belt. “It’s your party.” He contacted the ship and relayed the message. All the Captain said was, “Copied, and in execution. End contact.”
They strode on through hallways eerily deserted. “Did they leave none to guard their keep?” DeCade growled, glancing suspiciously from side to side.
“I don’t think they were planning on an inside job,” Dirk said dourly. “You must admit that the party you ordered for the front yard doesn’t exactly look like a diversion.”
Then they burst out onto a balcony, and Dirk stared down at the “party,” appalled, as the roar of battle struck him. The courtyard was one huge, clamoring, churning mass. It was steel and wooden clubs—nothing more—for the churls were so thoroughly intermingled with Lords that no one dared fire a laser, for fear of hitting a friend. Steel rang and clattered below; steel hewed heads and drank blood. Steel would decide the night.
And the Lords had been trained to the sword from their cradles. The courtyard was clogged with dead bodies, among whom the Lords were not fairly represented.
But still the churls pressed in through the gate, every man eager for his chance at his persecutors. It was steel against masses of flesh, swords against numbers; and Dirk saw clearly that the numbers would weigh down the swords and grind them into the earth—but only at an unbelievable cost. The churls would win the land they tilled, but they would pay with seas of blood.
Beside him, DeCade called, “They must be silenced long enough to hear my voice. Where are your ships?”
Dirk searched the skies, craning his neck. Then he saw it—a star that moved. “There!” He grasped DeCade’s head, to sight along his pointing arm. “One mass diversion coming up—or down, as the case may be.”
The star separated into two; both grew, swelling into planets, then moons; and, faintly over the roar of battle, Dirk began to hear a mutter. It grew to a bellow as the two moons swelled up and stretched out into tall, pointed flareships, dropping down at them on cushions of flame. Thunder shook the whole castle as two huge, bright towers fell out of the sky, screaming and howling. Then at last, every man in the courtyard froze, staring up in terror at the huge fiery mouths that spewed down toward them. Dirk saw men cower, saw lips stretched wide in shrieks. But all he could hear was the thunder that filled the world.
At the last moment, the two towers seemed to veer to the sides as they shot down outside the castle walls, tall, bright turrets stretching up above the top of the keep. Still the thunder bellowed. Then the engines cut out, and silence struck the courtyard like a physical blow.
Then a double thunderclap split the night as two huge white balls of flame exploded above the courtyard from the ship’s guns. A vast, raw scream of fear raked up from the packed mass of men, and a cleared circle appeared magically in the center of the court as Lords and churls alike jammed back frantically toward the walls, clambering over their fellows to get away from the juggernaut that must surely fall on them.
Dirk took a long, deep breath. It was definitely a most glorious way of stopping a battle.
Then he realized that it wasn’t. The Lords knew what spaceships were; they would come out of it quickly, and turn to slaughter dazed churls.
Just then, DeCade’s voice roared in his ear, filling the courtyard: “Behold your King!”
Every head in the courtyard swung about, staring. DeCade gestured, and two outlaws swung the idiot King high for all eyes to see. He screamed and struggled, kicking wildly, trying to break free, then went limp, sobbing in terror. Looking down, Dirk saw all the Lord’s faces loosen, saw the certainty of doom settle over them.
With one ragged voice, the churls cheered; and Dirk saw the Lords’ faces hardening again, in despair.
Thunder split the night again; a searing white fireball exploded, chopping a watchtower off the battlements.
Silence held the night again; and the look of doom came back to the Lords’ faces, as they realized how high above them the gun turrets stood, how easily they could fire down on them.
Then one of the tall towers spoke, in a booming, gargantuan voice. “At your pleasure, Grandmaster DeCade! What would you have us do?”
DeCade glared down at the packed Lords, waiting, and Dirk saw understanding begin in their eyes. DeCade saw it, too. Only then did he speak, in a voice that carried to every inch of the yard: “If these Lords do not do as I command—burn out this courtyard!”
The churl’s eyes stretched wide in disbelief, but the Lords looked on DeCade’s set, granite face and knew he was as good as his threat.