“We need a vantage, a place to defend.”
Dagon pointed up into the rocks and scrub. “Up there.”
They took him at his word and scrambled that way.
“I will stay.”
As he helped Suen up the slope Cheydar watched him suspiciously. Dagon returned the look then grinned and disappeared into the scrub of bushes and cycads. Cheydar had no time for him now. The priest soldiers had broken into a run and were spreading out.
“Check your targets,” he told his sons. “Our friend is down there, if friend he be.”
“Of course he is, father,” said David. “He is the daybreak warrior.” Cheydar ignored that, cracked down the barrel of his gun, inserted an iron dart, then worked the hand pump on the charge cylinder. The leading soldier was close enough now. He brought the intricately carved butt of his gun up against his shoulder, flipped up the sight, then aimed and fired in one. The crack of the air gun was vicious and immediately followed by the horrible crunch of impact. A priest soldier staggered back with his hands coming up to a suddenly bloody face. There were two more cracks and a dart hit the rocks just in front of him and went whining over his head. He ducked down.
“Yes!” shouted Eric. Crouched down Cheydar saw that his son had hit one of them in the thigh. That one was struggling for cover. Another lay with a bloody throat. There had been no exclamation from David. The rest were now in cover provided by the bushes around their camp, and no doubt would be drawing close. Cheydar recharged the cylinder on his gun and put in another dart. Only in close fighting would he resort to the spare cylinders on his belt. His sons, he saw, were doing the same. He watched, allowed himself a little smile when he saw Eric aiming at a swiftly moving figure in black, then lowering his gun. Let us see what you are worth, Dagon. A scream was swift to answer him, followed only moments after by the gagging gurgle Cheydar recognised as the sound issuing from a cut throat. One or two? He wondered.
“Who is he?” Suen asked.
“Just a killer, out to make a name for himself,” whispered Cheydar, but it did not sound right. There was a yell. Two soldiers running, a figure standing. Eric aimed again and David knocked his gun aside with the barrel of his own. Cheydar felt a fist closing in his stomach. Now. It was beautiful, if death can be called that. The two swords; crescents of morning sunlight. One man down on his knees his forehead against the ground, the other man standing for a moment until his head toppled from his shoulders. Cheydar had only seen the second blow.
“Fast,” Eric breathed.
“Perfect,” said David, his observation analytical.
Cheydar had no words. His mouth was dry. He looked from the scene to see one priest soldier running away just as fast as he could. He levelled his air gun, adjusted the sight for the extra distance, fired. The man sprawled then crawled on for a little while, his back rapidly soaking with blood. He tried to haul himself up by the hard dark green leaves of a cycad, then he fell again. Cheydar turned to his sons.
“Go down, see that they are all dead. Get their supplies, weapons, all we might need.” There was nothing in the Code against looting the dead.
Steeleye was the name of the third moon, or the Still Moon, for since the time of its cataclysmic arrival it had remained stationary in the sky above, day and night. In appearance it was a polished ball of metal, and there was something ominous about it, something attentive. It had appeared in the time when Cheydar had trained for service, causing floods and earth quakes. It stood vigil in the sky when he learned bladework, unarmed combat, and the maintenance of dart guns. That time was exciting; change was imminent, things would happen… But the years passed, the tides settled and the ground ceased to shake. And the only change had been the growth in the power and oppressiveness of the Cariphate. It seemed like a betrayal to Cheydar. The moon just became ordinary. He turned his attention back from it to the conversation.
“He would not have allowed it. He would not allow the Cariphe to do the things he does. His Proctors would stop the killing. His Proctors would enforce His law.”
He could see Suen regretted the outburst the moment she finished. She shouldn’t have said that, but wasn’t it true? All that her husband had believed: a better time, a golden age that would come again. Suen closed her eyes and shook her head. Her anger was always greatest when she missed him most, but in Cheydar’s experience railing against injustice only brought it down on you.
“Why did the Proctors go away?” he asked, embarrassed and clumsily trying to move away from the subject of Tarrin’s execution as he poked at the fire with a stick. He wasn’t really interested in why the Proctors had gone away. He wondered if anything about those indestructible monsters of the past and their ten-thousand year old demigod master could have anything to do with him and his life.
“They did not go away. They are sleeping,” said Sheda with that certainty only a teenager can have.
“Daddy said they sleep in the Forbidden Zone and that they can be woken.” As she finished speaking she looked at David and flushed at her own boldness.
Now wouldn’t that be something, thought Cheydar, and shivered. He stared through the flames at Dagon. The man had been very quiet and still. Eventually he spoke.
“Why should you want to wake them?” he asked.
“Justice!” spat Suen, but she sounded suddenly unsure.
“The only justice they bring is the Owner’s,” Dagon replied. “They enforce only his laws and his laws say nothing about you people killing each other.”
“‘You people.’ You do not consider yourself one of us?” Suen asked. Dagon looked briefly annoyed. “A manner of speech, nothing more. But I tell you this, I have read the Agreement.”
Suen snorted her disbelief.
Cheydar said, “It is etched into a metal pillar around which the Ompotec temple is built. Only select members of the priesthood are allowed to see it.”
Dagon smiled mildly and shook his head. “Wrong, there are in all fifty-eight of the message pillars and every death post around the forbidden zones has the Agreement etched in its surface. Anyone prepared to take a bit of a walk can read it. I’ve seen it many times.” Suen and Cheydar stared at him. They did not know how to refute that. He continued, “Understand that the priesthood uses any and all methods to gather power to itself. Like all religious organizations its greatest power stems from the claim to forbidden knowledge, the ability to intercede with the divine, all of that, though the Owner is hardly divine.”
“What does it say?” asked David, speaking for the first time that evening, uncomfortably aware of Sheda’s attention firmly fixed upon him.
Dagon glanced at him. “It is quite simple: No one to enter the forbidden zones, no building in or corruption of the Wilder zones, no more taken from them by a human than a human can carry without mechanical aid. There is also a population stricture, but that is hardly necessary as the population here is in decline.”
“There has to be more than that,” said Suen.
“There is not. The Owner is a great believer in personal responsibility. Beyond preventing damage to his property he doesn’t have much more interest in planetary populations.”
“You are an Owner expert all at once,” said Suen.
“I’ve studied him all my life.”
“Like my husband.”
Dagon regarded her very directly, “No, not like your husband. My research was into original materials, not the wishful thinking and distortion that came after.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Owner has fascinated scholars for centuries and a great deal has been written about him, and a lot of what has been written is simply not true.”