“Yes, I agree.” Sweat stood out on Magnus’s brow. “Still, your index of misery is a brilliant idea. We do seem to have found the dozen worst cases of all.”
“Definitely worst! At least my people had enough to eat and decent clothes to wear, and the lords only took the prettiest girls—and didn’t rape them, just seduced them. Okay, we were humiliated at every turn and treated as though we were semi-intelligent conveniences, but at least we didn’t live in misery like this! I hate to say it, but we didn’t know how good we had it!”
“No,” Magnus contradicted, “you just didn’t know how bad some other people had it, or how much worse off you could be. Well, let’s take the planet with the continual warfare for starters. There, I don’t see any sign of the fighting ever letting up, and it’s grinding the serfs to bits. What do you say we try to work a small revolution on the planet Maltroit?”
“Small revolution? A big one, please! The biggest you can manage!”
“No, that would only result in a change of masters,” Magnus objected, “not to mention another bloodbath while they switched places. A small revolution can produce a big improvement in living conditions right away, and an even bigger improvement with each generation. Herkimer, set course for Maltroit.”
Dirk sat down again, frowning. “How can a small revolution make a big difference?”
Magnus began to tell him. Dirk kept asking questions, so the explanation became more and more involved—but Magnus did manage to wrap it up as they went into orbit around Maltroit, five days later.
The guards formed a hollow square around the king’s herald and conducted him into the great hall, where Earl Insol lolled in a huge chair of carven oak. The message was quite clear: if the sentry said words that offended, the guards would become jailers, or worse. The king’s man put on an urbane smile to hide his indignation. The impudent lord wouldn’t dare defy His Majesty!
Would he?
Still, he squared his shoulders as the two guards stepped aside and pointedly did not bow as he said, “Good afternoon, my lord.”
Insol frowned; the herald should have known better than to speak first. No doubt the fool thought of himself as embodying the majesty of the king who had sent him, therefore being at least temporarily equal to the earl. “What says the king?” he demanded, brusquely and with no preamble. The herald fought the urge to scowl at the man’s rudeness. Didn’t His Lordship know he was mistreating not just the herald, but also he who had sent him? “His Majesty sends me to tell you of one Bagatelle, my lord, a dealer in cloths and fabrics.”
The earl’s eye gleamed; he recognized the name. “A common caitiff? What of him?”
“This Bagatelle appealed to our noble king of this land of Aggrand for justice, claiming his goods had been stolen, and himself beaten, by yourself, my lord Earl. His Majesty summons you to his court, that he may hear from your own lips whether or not you have flouted the King’s Peace, and dealt so roughly with one of his subjects.”
The earl sat very still for a minute. Then he said, “Summons? Did you say that this child of a king dares summon an earl twenty years his senior?”
The herald reddened; he was scarcely into his twenties himself. “His is the king!”
“And an impudent upstart he is,” the earl retorted. Then his voice became velvety smooth. “Might he not invite me? Ask me to wait up on him?”
“He has no need! He is the king, and all of his subjects must obey!” But the herald was beginning to have a very nasty feeling about all this.
“It is time this arrogant stripling learned the limits of his power!” the earl snapped. “Ho, guards! Take this impudent chatterbox to the dungeons and strip that gilded cloth from his back!”
As the guards laid hold of him, the herald went pale. “How dare you defy your sovereign lord!”
“Very easily,” the earl said with a wolfish grin. Then, to the guards, “Do not begin to flog him until I am there.” He came quite quickly, and watched, gloating, as they batted the herald from one to another with their fists, as though he were the ball in a game. He watched while the torturer flogged the youth, watched as his men dressed the poor moaning lad in grubby peasant’s leggins and led him out into the courtyard to tie him, stripped to the waist, on the back of a donkey. Then the earl caught the herald’s face in a viselike grip, squeezing on the points of the jaw. “Tell your royal master that he overreaches himself. Tell him that he may not summon his lords, but may invite them with all due courtesy. Tell him to mind his manners henceforth, or his nobles will fall upon him as they fell upon his grandfather, to whip him back within the boundaries of his own estates!”
Then he let go of the herald and swung a riding whip at the donkey’s flanks. The beast brayed in pain and alarm and leaped away, running, with the poor herald clinging to its mane for dear life. Cavalrymen rode after him, laughing and whipping the donkey if it strayed off the road that led back to the royal demesne.
“The king cannot let this insult pass, my lord,” said the oldest of his knights as he watched the donkey bear its bruised and bleeding load away.
“He cannot indeed,” the earl agreed. “He shall come against us, and we shall whip him home shrewdly.” He shrugged. “He had to be taught sooner or later, Sir Durmain. Best to have it out of the way, so soon after his coronation.” He watched the donkey out of sight, then turned to the knight. “Send reports of this event to every other duke and earl in the land, so that each may gird himself for war.”
Coll fled from the hounds, but his knees had already turned to jelly, and his whole body seemed to be liquefying with fatigue. All night he had been making his way through the woods, trying to hide his trail well enough so that the knights wouldn’t find him, but as the sun neared noon over the forest, their hounds had somehow picked up his scent They weren’t near yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Their belling was growing steadily louder.
In a last attempt to lose them, Coll jumped down into a stream. The water was icy so early in the spring, and he knew he couldn’t walk it for long without his feet turning numb. But he kept going, shivering and cursing, hoping to find something that might save him …
There it was, a boulder jutting up from the water with a low-hanging evergreen branch above it! Coll clambered up the boulder, slipping and falling back twice because his feet were already losing feeling and because he was already exhausted. Finally he stood on the boulder, trembling, and raised his spear in shaking hands—but not shaking so badly that he couldn’t catch the crosspiece of the spear in the fork of the branch. Now, if only the crosspiece would hold, and the branch, and his hands …
He couldn’t. He was too exhausted; it was all he could do to hold the spear in the fork of the branch. To haul himself up so far was beyond him.
Then the hounds’ voices suddenly became much louder, and he could hear the beaters shouting, “On, Beau! On, Merveil!” and a knight crying, “Take half of them across! Trace both sides of the bank till you find where he came out!”
Too close by far! Panic shot strength through his arms; Coll climbed up the shaft hand over hand as quickly as any squirrel, caught the branch, and pulled himself up to he trembling on it, panting. He hauled up the spear one-handed, then clung to the smaller branches, his feet lying on others, feeling his perch sway beneath him, waiting for his breath to slow, for the fear and panic to ebb. The fear didn’t, for the pack was coming closer and closer …
And going by on the bank, not five yards from where he lay hidden among the needles! Coll clung tight and prayed that there would be no breeze to carry his scent to the coursing hounds. The saints must have heard him, for the dogs went right on by, belling, their beaters calling encouragement to them.