Space Viking, H. Beam Piper [best classic romance novels txt] 📗

commonfolk. Assessments on the lords, taxes on the people, inflation to meet the taxes, high prices, debased coinage. Everybody’s being beggared except this rabble of new lords he has around him, and that slut of a wife and her greedy kinfolk.⁠ ⁠…”

Trask stiffened. “You’re not speaking of Queen Flavia, are you?” he asked softly.

Rathmore’s mouth opened slightly. “Great Satan, don’t you know? No, of course not; the news would have come on the same ship I did. Why, Angus divorced Flavia. He claimed that she was incapable of giving him an heir to the throne. He remarried immediately.”

The girl’s name meant nothing to Trask; he did know of her father, a Baron Valdiva. He was lord of a small estate south of the Ward lands and west of Newhaven. Most of his people were out-and-out bandits and cattle-rustlers, and he was as close to being one himself as he could get.

“Nice family he’s married into. A credit to the dignity of the throne.”

“Yes. You wouldn’t know this Lady-Demoiselle Evita; she was only seventeen when you left Gram, and hadn’t begun to acquire a reputation outside her father’s lands. She’s made up for lost time since, though. And she has enough uncles and aunts and cousins and ex-lovers and whatnot to fill out an infantry regiment, and every one of them’s at court with both hands out to grab everything they can.”

“How does Duke Joris like this?” The Duke of Bigglersport was Queen Flavia’s brother. “I daresay he’s less than delighted.”

“He’s hiring mercenaries, is what he’s doing, and buying combat contragravity. Lucas, why don’t you come back? You have no idea what a reputation you have on Gram, now. Everybody would rally to you.”

He shook his head, “I have a throne, here on Tanith. On Gram I want nothing. I’m sorry for the way Angus turned out, I thought he’d make a good King. But since he’s made an intolerable King, the lords and people of Gram will have to get rid of him for themselves. I have my own tasks, here.”

Rathmore shrugged. “I was afraid that would be it,” he said. “Well, I offered my sword; I won’t take it back. I can help you in what you’re doing on Tanith.”

The captain of the free Space Viking Damnthing was named Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan, which meant that he was some Sword-Worlder’s acknowledged bastard by a woman of one of the Old Federation planets. His mother’s people could have been Nergalers; he had coarse black hair, a mahogany-brown skin, and red-brown, almost maroon, eyes. He tasted the wine the robot poured for him and expressed appreciation, then began unwrapping the parcel he had brought in.

“Something I found while raiding on Tetragrammaton,” he said. “I thought you might like to have it. It was made on Gram.”

It was an automatic pistol, with a belt and holster. The leather was bisonoid-hide; the buckle of the belt was an oval enameled with a crescent, pale blue on black. The pistol was a plain 10 mm military model with grooved plastic grips; on the receiver it bore the stamp of the House of Hoylbar, the firearms manufacturers of Glaspyth. Evidently it was one of the arms Duke Omfray had provided for Andray Dunnan’s original mercenary company.

“Tetragrammaton?” He glanced over to the Big Board; there was no previous report from that planet. “How long ago?”

“I’d say about three hundred hours. I came from there directly, less than two hundred and fifty hours. Dunnan’s ships had left the planet three days before I got there.”

That was practically sizzling hot. Well, something like that had to happen, sooner or later. The Space Viking was asking him if he knew what sort of a place Tetragrammaton was.

Neobarbarian, trying to recivilize in a crude way. Small population, concentrated on one continent; farming and fisheries. A little heavy industry, in a small way, at a couple of towns. They had some nuclear power, introduced a century or so ago by traders from Marduk, one of the really civilized planets. They still depended on Marduk for fissionables; their export product was an abominably-smelling vegetable oil which furnished the base for delicate perfumes, and which nobody was ever able to synthesize properly.

“I heard they had steel mills in operation, now,” the half-breed Space Viking said. “It seems that somebody on Rimmon has just reinvented the railroad, and they need more steel than they can produce for themselves. I thought I’d raid Tetragrammaton for steel and trade it on Rimmon for a load of heaven-tea. When I got there, though, the whole planet was in a mess; not raiding, but plain wanton destruction. The locals were just digging themselves out of it when I landed. Some of them, who didn’t think they had anything at all left to lose, gave me a fight. I captured a few of them, to find out what had happened. One of them had that pistol; he said he’d taken it off a Space Viking he’d killed. The ships that raided them were the Enterprise and the Yo-Yo. I knew you’d want to hear about it. I got some of the locals’ stories on tape.”

“Well, thank you. I’ll want to hear those tapes. Now, you say you want steel?”

“Well, I haven’t any money. That’s why I was going to raid Tetragrammaton.”

“Nifflheim with the money; your cargo’s paid for already. This,” he said, touching the pistol, “and whatever’s on the tapes.”

They played off the tapes that evening. They weren’t particularly informative. The locals who had been interrogated hadn’t been in actual contact with Dunnan’s people except in combat. The man who had been carrying the 10 mm Hoylbar was the best witness of the lot, and he knew little. He had caught one of them alone, shot him from behind with a shotgun, taken his pistol, and then gotten away as quickly as he could. They had sent down landing craft, it seemed, and said they wanted to trade; then something must have happened, nobody knew what, and they had begun a