Space Viking by H. Beam Piper (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

A ship came in from Bigglersport, a heavily armed chartered freighter. There was sporadic fighting in a dozen places on Gram, now⁠—resistance to efforts on the part of King Angus to collect taxes, and raids by unidentified persons on estates confiscated from alleged traitors and given to Garvan Spasso, who had now been promoted from Baron to Count. And Rovard Grauffis was dead; poisoned, everybody said, either by Spasso or Queen Evita or both. Even with the threat from Xochitl, some of the former Wardshaven nobles began talking about sending ships to Gram.

Less than a thousand hours after he had left, Ravallo was back in the Black Star.

“I went to Gimli, and I wasn’t there fifty hours before a Mardukan Navy ship came in. They were glad to see me; it saved them sending off a pinnace for Tanith. They had news for you, and a couple of passengers.”

“Passengers?”

“Yes. You’ll see who they are when they come down. And don’t let anybody with side-whiskers and buttoned-up coats see them,” Ravallo said. “What those people know gets all over the place before long.”

The visitors were Lucile, Princess Bentrik, and her son, the young Count of Ravary. They dined with Trask; only Captain Ravallo was also present.

“I didn’t want to leave my husband, and I didn’t want to come here and impose myself and Steven on you, Prince Trask,” she began, “but he insisted. We spent the whole voyage to Gimli concealed in the captain’s quarters; only a few of the officers knew we were aboard.”

“Makann won the election. Is that it?” he asked. “And Prince Bentrik doesn’t want to risk you and Steven being used as hostages?”

“That’s it,” she said. “He didn’t really win the election, but he might as well have. Nobody has a majority of seats in the Chamber of Representatives but he’s formed a coalition with several of the splinter parties, and I’m ashamed to say that a number of Crown Loyalist members⁠—Crowd of Disloyalists, I call them⁠—are voting with him, now. They’ve coined some ridiculous phrase about the ‘wave of the future,’ whatever that means.”

“If you can’t lick them, join them,” Trask said.

“If you can’t lick them, lick their boots,” the Count of Ravary put in.

“My son is a trifle bitter,” Princess Bentrik said. “I must confess to a trace of bitterness, too.”

“Well, that’s the Representatives,” Trask said. “What about the rest of the government?”

“With the splinter-party and Disloyalist support, they got a majority of seats in the Delegates. Most of them would have indignantly denied, a month before, having any connection with Makann, but a hundred out of a hundred and twenty are his supporters. Makann, of course, is Chancellor.”

“And who is Prime Minister?” he asked. “Andray Dunnan?”

She looked slightly baffled for an instant then said, “Oh. No. The Prime Minister is Crown Prince Edvard. No; Baron Cragdale. That isn’t a royal title, so by some kind of a fiction I can’t pretend to understand he is not Prime Minister as a member of the Royal Family.”

“If you can’t⁠ ⁠…” the boy started.

“Steven! I forbid you to say that about⁠ ⁠… Baron Cragdale. He believes, very sincerely, that the election was an expression of the will of the people, and that it is his duty to bow to it.”

He wished Otto Harkaman were there. He could probably name, without stopping for breath, a hundred great nations that went down into rubble because their rulers believed that they should bow instead of rule, and couldn’t bring themselves to shed the blood of their people. Edvard would have been a fine and admirable man, as a little country baron. Where he was, he was a disaster.

He asked if the People’s Watchman had dragged their guns out from under the bed and started carrying them in public yet.

“Oh, yes. You were quite right; they were armed, all the time. Not just small arms; combat vehicles and heavy weapons. As soon as the new government was formed, they were given status as a part of the Planetary Armed Forces. They have taken over every police station on the planet.”

“And the King?”

“Oh, he carries on, and shrugs and says, ‘I just reign here.’ What else can he do? We’ve been whittling down and filching away the powers of the Throne for the last three centuries.”

“What is Prince Bentrik doing, and why did he think there was danger that you two would be used as hostages?”

“He’s going to fight,” she said. “Don’t ask me how, or what with. Maybe as a guerrilla in the mountains, I don’t know. But if he can’t lick them, he won’t join them. I wanted to stay with him and help him; he told me I could help him best by placing myself and Steven where he wouldn’t worry about us.”

“I wanted to stay,” the boy said. “I could have fought with him. But he said that I must take care of Mother. And if he were killed, I must be able to avenge him.”

“You talk like a Sword-Worlder; I told you that once before.” He hesitated, then turned again to Princess Bentrik. “How is little Princess Myrna?” he asked, and then, trying to be casual, added, “and Lady Valerie?”

She seemed so clearly real and present to him, blue eyes and space-black hair, more real than Elaine had been to him for years.

“They’re at Cragdale; they’ll be safe there. I hope.”

Attempting to conceal the presence on Tanith of Prince Bentrik’s wife and son was pushing caution beyond necessity. Admitted that the news would leak back to Marduk via Gilgamesh, it was over seven hundred light-years to the latter and almost a thousand from there to the former. Better that Princess Lucile should enjoy Rivington society, such as it was, and escape, for a moment now and then, from anxiety about her husband. At ten⁠—no, almost twelve; it had been a year and a half since Trask had left Marduk⁠—the boy Count of Ravary was