That Way Lies Camelot

  'But he had light hair,' objected Enith, grown blowsy through the years since she had claimed distinction as the captain's latest conquest. 'The man didn't look to me like any gypsy!'

  Still regarding the horse, as if he were pricked by a memory just beyond grasp of his awareness, the armsmaster gestured in contempt. 'You would see as much or as little as that man allowed, for such is the nature of his sorcery.'

  The discussion heated into argument, as darkness deepened over a yard left sadly gloomy by the utter absence of torchlight.

  Upstairs in the hall, before trestles more scarred than he remembered, the stranger paused in the flickering firelight that spilled across the floor before the hearth. On boards scraped bare of wax or polish, he bowed in respect to the Lady. The dimness, or maybe his economy of movement made him seem at one with the shadows as he lifted a pouch from the crook of his elbow. This he placed with a clink on the table beside the embroidery she had abandoned since the last daylight had fled. He did not comment on the dearth of candles as he said, 'This belongs to you.'

  The Lady's silk-dark eyebrows arched up. 'I beg your pardon, sir? My Lord left debts, not debtors, or none that he mentioned at his death.'

  'This one he must have forgotten,' the strange man corrected most gently. 'Let me offer my condolences on your husband's passing, though we were never friends. His heir is the proper recipient. The coin in that purse is Silverdown's gold.'

  'Might I know what service was rendered to require such generous payment?' Piqued to curiosity, the Lady leaned forward enough that the firelight touched her. She locked trembling hands in her lap, though the gesture failed to conceal the calluses that marred her fine skin. Silverdown had fallen on hard times and yet, even as her straits were exposed to the eyes of her visitor, she did not snatch up the pouch. As if need did not demand that she count the money inside, though the fringes of her shawl were dark with tarnish, and her dress had been embroidered at the bodice to hide its past history as a cast off. Poor as Silverdown's Lady might be, her bearing never deserted her.

  She carried herself regally as a queen.

  Her presence was forceful enough that the stranger stood as if tongue-tied, betraying awkwardness before highborn grace. Or perhaps his diffidence stemmed from reluctance to reveal an unpleasantness between himself and the late Lord, whom very few folk had cause to love. In a musical softness that somehow did not convey the impression of grudging character, he said, 'Mark the entry in your ledger as stud fees, and back payment for the purchase of a horse.'

  'I don't understand,' said the Lady. 'My Lord never stood any stallions.'

  Something about her smallness stirred recognition, or maybe her careworn, homely face made him ask, 'Are you the Earl of Tanemar's daughter?'

  Startled to an intake of breath, she admitted, 'I am.' Since her father had fallen out of favor with the King, not many cared to mention his name with kindness.

  'Then,' said the stranger in sweet courtesy, 'ask his grace the Duke of the blue-dun stud he was promised as a gift when your late Lord aspired to become your bridegroom.'

  The Lady glanced aside too quickly. 'I can't,' she admitted after a difficult pause. 'My father has been imprisoned. The fine to secure his freedom is more than my brother or I have in our powers to pay.'

  But politics and the feuding of the highborn lay outside this stranger's concern. His silence grew prolonged. When the Lady at last sought to prompt him, she discovered the chamber left empty. Her elusive visitor had departed. Only the pouch on the table remained as proof of his presence.

  The coins inside were heavy gold, and the full count of them, a miracle. When the Silverdown's ancient steward checked on his mistress hours later, he found the Lady silently weeping. A shining spill of coins lay in her lap, and in sparkling piles around her feet.

  Months later, Silverdown's Lady did the stranger's bidding for more reason than to ease her curiosity. She did not inquire of her father, for the Duke became irritable at reminder that Silverdown's gold had bought his reprieve from the King. The tale was recounted by the butcher, of a man-killing stallion that had been stolen on the same night as a scullion, mistakenly called dumb, and a half-wit, had disappeared without trace from the estate.

  'He was a shirker, a sneak, and a liar, too,' the butcher vehemently summed up.

  The Lady frowned. 'I thought you said he could not speak?'

  'Well, not entirely,' the butcher allowed. He stroked his unshaven chin. 'Trionn never talked to anybody, a queer enough habit to have. He wasn't the sort to care about repayment of a debt. He stole my best blade, you know, the same day he took off with the stallion.'

  The Lady tucked a fallen strand of hair underneath the edge of her hood. 'You got the knife back?' she asked outright.

  The butcher shrugged, then nodded. 'One of the servants caught him crossing the open yard. He never said what he'd intended to do with it,' this last, on a note of self-defense.

  Silverdown's Lady gave back no reproach beyond a sigh. 'From the look on your face, I'd expect that nobody ever asked him.' She reflected a moment on the gold, the value of which added up to a surprising fortune. The man who had repaid the coin, and then gone his way after scarcely a dozen words, had left wealth enough to buy out the estate and its lands, twice over; the irony of that raised a mystery. As if the fortune itself had been the pittance, and the principle behind, the tie to conscience, if I were to guess,' the Lady ventured, 'I should say that none of you knew the boy.'

  The butcher's only answer was a mutter that may have masked contempt.

  Alone in the cut of the wind through the yard, the Lady huddled into her cloak. Fiercely, and for the rest of her days, she regretted her well-bred restraint. Too late she wished she had asked the strange visitor to stay, or at least to take a light supper. He may not have been comfortable telling about himself, but perhaps she might have learned more about the horse that had restored her to fortune and future.

  Double Blind

  The encounter happened entirely without warning, in the thick of battle at Dead Star 31. As if by design, the Fleet's most junior lieutenant sat drumming his fingers at the controls of a state-of-the-art Fleet scoutship. Light from the monitors silvered his aristocratic profile, which expressed bitterness, frustration, and longing. The scout craft Shearborn was commissioned as a chaser, handily styled for concealment. She carried just two plasma cannon. Hit and run, or follow and hide, had been her designer's intentions; 'mop-up following engagement' read the bottom line in her battle orders. Last month, even yesterday, Commander Jensen had burned for a small part in the Alliance offensive at Dead Star 31. Today, while others were earning advancement and citations of valor for crippling the new Khalian dreadnoughts, he ached for action.

  The firing studs so near his tapping fingers were dandy, except there were never going to be enough of them to satisfy the ambition that smoldered beneath the lieutenant's faultlessly correct Fleet bearing.

  Across the cockpit, Harris slouched in the untidy gray of his pilot's coveralls. The wing patch at his shoulder crumpled under his fingers as he scratched himself, paused, then whistled as if at a woman. 'What the hell?' His eyes widened, bright with the reflected flashes of battle off the analog screens.

  Jensen spoke frostily from his crew chair. 'Have you something to report?'

  The pilot raised his eyebrows at the reprimand. His most insolent grin followed, as he banged a key for redefinition, then added in lilting admiration, 'What the blazes is a tub-engined private hauler doing blasting ass across a battle?'

  Narrow-eyed and intense, Jensen regarded the offending speck on the screens, hedged now by flashes of plasma fire as she sliced through warring factions of Khalian and Fleet dreadnoughts. Overhead, the monitor on citizen's frequency blared a curse and a startled challenge; the tone of the officer who hailed the offending merchanter matched that of Harris, exactly.

  As the civilian vessel continued to hurtle across the lines, a prickle of intuition touched Jensen. His
gut went cold and his fingers clenched. 'That's nobody's merchanter.'

  He keyed his board for more data. At once the craft's configuration flashed in design graph on his screen, ugly and ungainly as a toy assembled by a kid from unassuming bits of junk. Recognition struck Jensen like a blow to the vitals. He knew that craft, would remember her anywhere, from any angle, even to his dying moment. What could the Marity be doing carving a line across a Fleet offensive? It meant nothing but the worst sort of trouble; her captain happened to be the craftiest skip-runner in the Alliance.

  Harris stared, captivated at the analog screens. 'Bugger, that pilot's got the gift. Will you look at that evasion?'

  Jensen needed no proof of the Marity's maneuverability. He had personally experienced MacKenzie James's corkscrew style at the helm. Recall left the young officer sweating, not out of nerves but in memory of the aftermath, and a degrading depth of humility a proud man would kill to erase. Jensen reacted this time without thought. 'Follow him.'

  Harris looked up from the screens. Blank with incomprehension, he said, 'What? Are you brain-shocked? That guy's Weasel steaks in the making, mate. He's ducked into the Khalian lines.'

  'I saw.' Jensen turned his chair away. 'I ordered a chase on that hauler. Section seven, bylaw four sixty two point zero, punishment for insubordination.'

  'Court-martial, followed by death without appeal at conviction. I know.' Harris flipped off his pilot's beret and scratched his red-thatched scalp. The hair sprung in snarls beneath his fingers. Challenge lit his eyes, which were blue, and about as innocent as a thief s. 'Your faith in my ability is a compliment, mate. What I'd kiss fish to guess, is what excuse you've got ready for old by-the-book and his-grandpa's-an-admiral Meier. Because if your joyride doesn't get us slagged by Weasels, the commodore's surely going to sling your ass on a plate. Remember section seven, bylaw four sixty five point one, punishment for disregard of standing battle orders and leaving assigned position?'

  Jensen said nothing. He sat straight in his chair, his hair was like combed ebony, and his fingernails trimmed short like a model's. Harris pressed switches and sequenced the Shearborn's condenser coils into recharge for FTL. Then Jensen fussed with the adjustment of his chair belts, as Harris shrugged, punched up the gravity drive, and wrenched their little chaser out of Station.

  Immediate protest issued from the ship-to-ship com speaker mounted above the controls.

  'Commodore Meier, howling for both your balls,' surmised Harris. His fingers hesitated ever so slightly above the flight board.

  'Just carry on!' Jensen tripped a switch, and the angry voice of their superior became buried in background noise as the power banks gunned maximum thrust into the engines.

  Harris grinned in that cocksure manner indigenous to pilots. Skill of his caliber was too scarce to waste; when the boom came down, he could count on some measure of immunity.

  Against the wrath of irate brass, Junior Grade Lieutenant Michael Christopher Jensen, Jr, had only the far-reaching influence of his politician father; if, that was, Jensen senior chose to bend his public stance of calling no favors for his son. Harris preferred to believe that paternal sentiment would prevail as he spun the chaser in a neat turn and opened throttle.

  The lieutenant in command knew otherwise. Heart pounding, Jensen expected that hell would freeze before his family would bail him out of trouble. It had been his father's imperiousness about carving his fortune on his own that had tangled his fate with that of the skip-runner captain in the first place. The Shearborn's pursuit simply resumed unfinished business.

  Vigorous protest arose right on schedule. Commodore Abe Meier's voice barked angrily on emergency interrupt. 'I'll have your officer's bars, boy, and a mark for desertion on your record that even God can't erase.'

  Slammed back into his crew chair by inertia, Jensen laced his fingers to stop their shaking. No threat could make him reconsider; by now, their course was committed. Harris's cocky grin was gone, dissolved into a frown of sweaty concentration.

  'Snarking game of live pool,' the pilot murmured, and intently slapped a control.

  The Shearborn veered, narrowly missing the expanding nebulosity of a plasma burst vessel. Debris pattered against the hull, and something clanged against the port gun housing. Then they were past and screaming a tortuous course through the flank of the Fleet offensive.

  Jensen barely noted the glittering bursts of fire on the analog screens. Harris's wizardry at the helm escaped him utterly. He saw only the white streak that was the Marity, twisting now with the immunity of a miracle through the thick of the Khalian fleet. Dead Star lay beyond, a disk sharp as a compass cut through a backdrop of scattered stars. As if that dark body were a magnet, MacKenzie James steered his craft for the core.

  'Crazy,' Harris muttered over the scream of the gravity drive. 'Slag his coils for sure, if he doesn't slow down to shed heat.'

  Jensen sweated with his uniform fastened to the chin. The course Mac James had chosen was too predictable not to be deliberate. The lieutenant reaffirmed his intent to capture the space pirate. No price was too great to see the Marity's captain brought to justice. 'Don't lose him, Harris.'

  The pilot half spun from the controls. 'I won't melt down an engine for anybody's pleasure, sir. Not to capture the devil himself.'

  Jensen knew Marity's master was the devil incarnate. His shout for Harris to continue was cut off by the rising wail of the proximity alarm.

  The pilot shrugged, stabbed the switch to raise the chaser's shields. The alarms went silent. Seated like a stone image and half-lighted by the angry yellow glitter of the monitors, he continued his silence, clearly challenging his superior to pull rank.

  Jensen refused argument. Ruled by the need to evade the fire of Fleet and foe alike, Harris could not abandon their new course all at once; and a slight change on the analog screens offered a telling reason why the Shearborn should continue.

  Absorbed with planning an evasive maneuver, Harris took longer to notice that the Marity appeared to be braking. If the skip-runner captain who flew her intended to slip pursuit, deceleration cost him the chance. Past Dead Star and the forefront of the battle lines, the Fleet chaser would be on him like a wasp.

  Mac James never made stupid misjudgments.

  Convinced that he witnessed the power lag as the Marity charged her coils for FTL, Jensen grinned with a candor normally kept hidden. The Shearborn was newly commissioned; fitted with gadgetry hot off the design boards, she was capable of following her targets through FTL. 'Harris, close in tight. We're going to trace the Marity's ion trail.'

  'Just a snarking minute!' The pilot shot a glare at his superior. Giving a skip-runner chase across a battle line was a lark he could boast of to buddies, a daredevil affirmation of skills that might bring the customary slap on the wrist for high jinks that tradition accorded a gifted pilot. Deserting the scene of a battle was another thing, a speed-class ticket to court-martial and a firing squad. Left grouchy by the risks just taken, Harris ended with a gesture that brooked no argument. 'Forget it, sonny.'

  Jensen's amusement vanished. His obsidian eyes never left the analog screen, where a tiny fleck of light winked into being. It blinked once, then steadied onto a vector that bent gently and matched course with the Shearborn. The lieutenant keyed for additional data and almost laughed outright in satisfaction. 'We've picked up a stalker mine,' he announced. Even his recalcitrant pilot must now bow to expediency; the only effective evasion was to transit to FTL before the missile closed.

  Harris scanned the readout without alarm. 'Stalker mine's a damned lousy reason to go AWOL, sir, when we carry the coded disarm frequency.'

  'For Fleet any offensive,' Jensen responded. He sounded smug. 'This one's manufactured by the Freeborn. Check your screen, pilot, only do it fast. If you hesitate, Marity escapes, and we get convicted posthumously.'

  Harris shot a withering glare, fingers flying over the controls. 'What's Freeborn hardware doing crapping up this sector, anyway?
It might just get us killed.'

  Jensen answered with a confidence born of ruthless networking. 'Fleet intelligence scoped a Freeborn plot to slam the Khalian rear wave. But the codes for rebel stalkers weren't part of the package.'

  Harris cursed. Jensen's explanation made no sense whatever; since secession from the Alliance, the Freeborn were hostile to the Fleet. But dispute of the fine points made a fool's errand. The damnable fact remained: a stalker mine of enemy manufacture had locked onto the Shearborn as a target. Either Harris abetted Jensen's craziness and punched into FTL, or two million credits' worth of chaser got cremated. The reasonable alternative was to commit desertion in pursuit of a recognized criminal, except that the pilot would need to fly a course like macrame to make transit before the stalker took the Shearborn out.

  Harris tripped the controls with an attitude of reckless abandon. Spun hard against her limits, his spacecraft flexed and groaned under the stresses of centrifugal force. As a grade-one test pilot, Harris had survived a lot of mistakes; he had a sixth sense for gauging tolerances. The chaser might protest, might develop a stress shear or two, but her tail pins would stay tight as she twisted and spun to gain distance from the less maneuverable mine. Harris caressed the machinery, wooing the electronics as he would a lady; the wail of the alarms and the digital display showing the stalker's course of intercept made him itch, as if the hot breath of the hardware fanned the back of his neck.

  Jensen followed only the skip-runner ship that drifted like a lopsided jewel at the rim of Dead Star's disk. Apparently nerveless, he cared for nothing beyond the moment when Marity's image flashed and vanished from the analog screens.

  By then Shearborn was barely inside the requisite radius for an ion trail fix, with the stalker closing fast.

  A green sequence of numbers flooded the navigational screen. Harris waited a panicky moment for resolution of a course readout. When the figure stabilized, he hammered the lever down and blew a kiss in sheer relief. Never in life had he been happier to suffer the queer hesitation in continuity that marked the transit to FTL. He blinked, elated that no explosion had erased his existence. The next instant, triumph died, quenched by the realities of the moment. Harris undipped his seat restraints and rounded angrily on his superior.