"Shoot for the legs, you fool!" barked the baron.
The rattling hiss came again. They fell in the shrubs, whimpering softly.
Meikl turned away with a choking spasm in his throat, looked around for Letha. She had vanished from the glade.
"Haul them to the dispensary, keep them prisoner," the baron was growling.
Meikl turned on him. "Now it"s come to this, has it?" he snapped. "From the beginning, they were willing--even eager, to give what we wanted.
Why did they _stop_ being willing?"
"That"s enough, Meikl!"
"I"ve hardly started. You came here like a tyrant, and they served you like a friend. You couldn"t bear it. "Brethren", they said. But there"s nothing about "brethren" in the tactical handbooks, is there, Baron?"
"Shut up."
Ven Klaeden said it quietly, as if bored. He crossed slowly to stand before the a.n.a.lyst and stare at him icily.
"You speak of the unconscious inheritance of culture, a.n.a.lyst--the kulturverlaengerung. And you have accused me for being a carrier of the war plague, eh?"
Meikl paused. The baron"s eyes were narrowed, stabbing as if in judgment or triumph.
"Well, Meikl? Is that what we"ve done? Inflicted them with conflict?
Brought back the old seeds of hate?"
The a.n.a.lyst drew himself up slightly. "You just killed a man, a man of dignity," he snarled, "and you cut two others down like weeds."
"Innocent old men." The baron"s mouth twisted into a snarl.
"They wanted nothing but to help us."
"Yes, Meikl? And we are the barbarians, eh?"
The a.n.a.lyst spoke disdain with his eyes.
The baron straightened in sudden hauteur. "_Look down at the ground, a.n.a.lyst_," he hissed.
Ven Klaeden"s sudden change of tone impelled him to obey. His eyes fell to the turf at his feet--moss covered sod, rich and dark beneath the green.
The baron kicked a hole in the moss with the toe of his boot. "Tell me where the infection came from, a.n.a.lyst," he growled. He sc.r.a.ped at the hole with his heel. "And why is the dirt so _red_ right here?"
Meikl glanced up slowly. Two men were coming through the shrubs, walking warily along the path toward the clearing. Ven Klaeden seemed unaware.
He leaned forward to speak through his teeth.
"I give them nothing but what they gave our fathers--their own inner h.e.l.l, Meikl--the curse they so carefully forgot. In their Eden."
The man was mad ... perhaps. Meikl"s eyes followed the men who approached through the shrubs. One of them carried a burden--the limp body of a girl, occasionally visible through the low foliage as they drew nearer. One of the men was a junior officer, the other a native.
After a moment, he recognized the native....
"Evon!"
As he called out, the baron whirled, hand slipping to the hilt of the ceremonial sword he wore in the presence of the Geoark. The men stopped.
Meikl stared at the limp figure in the arms of the native.
"_Letha!_"
"Dead," Evon hissed. "They killed her for running...."
They emerged from the shrubs into full view. The officer was holding a gun.
"Put that away!" ven Klaeden snapped.
The young officer laughed sourly. "Sorry, baron, I"m from the committee."
"_Guard!_"
There"s no one in earshot, Baron."
"Fool!" Ven Klaeden arrogantly whipped out the sword. "Drop that gun, or I"ll blade-whip you!"
"Easy, baron, easy. I"m your executioner...."
The baron straightened haughtily and began a slow advance, a towering figure of icy dignity in the sun that filtered through the foliage.
"... but I want to take care of this one first." The renegade waved the gun toward Meikl. "You, Baron, you can have it slower--a needle in your official rump."
Ven Klaeden, a figure of utter contempt, continued the slow advance with the sword. The officer"s lips tightened. He squeezed the trigger. Ven Klaeden hesitated, jerking slightly, then continued, his hand pressing against his abdomen, doubling forward slightly. The officer fired again--a sharp snap of sound in the glade. The baron stopped, wrestling with pain ten feet from the pale renegade.
Suddenly he flung the sword. It looped in mid-air and slashed the man"s face from chin to cheekbone. He tripped and tumbled backward as ven Klaeden slipped to his knees on the moss.
Meikl dived for the gun. By the time he wrestled it away from the officer with the b.l.o.o.d.y face, ven Klaeden was sitting like a gaunt Buddha on the moss, and the body of Letha lay nearby, while a confused Evon clutched his hands to his face and rocked slowly. Meikl came slowly to his feet. The renegade officer wiped his face of blood and shrank back into shrubs.
"Get him," croaked ven Klaeden.
Scarcely knowing why, the a.n.a.lyst jerked the trigger, felt the gun explode in his fist, saw the renegade topple.
There was a moment of stillness in the glade, broken only by ven Klaeden"s wheezing breath. The baron looked up with an effort, his eyes traveling over the girl, then up to the figure of the child of Earth.
"Your woman, Earthling?"
Evon lowered his hands, stood dazed and blinking for a moment. He glanced at Meikl, then at the girl. He knelt beside her, staring, not touching, and his knee encountered the blade of the sword.
"You have brought us death, you have brought us hate," he said slowly, his eyes clinging to the sword.
"Pick it up," hissed the baron.
"You will never leave. A party of men is wrecking what you have done.
Then we shall wreck your ships. Then we...."