Дэймон Найт - Orbit 5

“I can’t order you to go there, Argaven,” says the Stabile. “Your own conscience—”

“I gave up my kingdom to my conscience, twelve years ago. It’s had its due. Enough’s enough,” says the younger man. Then he laughs suddenly, so that the Stabile also laughs; and they part in such harmony as the Powers of the Ekumen desire among men.

Horden Island, off the south coast of Karhide, was given as a freehold to the Ekumen by the Kingdom of Karhide during the reign of Argaven XV. No man lived there. Yearly generations of seawalkies crawled up on the isle’s barren rocks, and laid and hatched their eggs, and nursed their young, and finally led them back in long single file to the sea. But once every ten or twenty years fire ran over the island and the sea boiled on the shores, and if any seawalkies were on the beaches then, they died.

When the sea had ceased to boil, the Plenipotentiary’s little electric launch approached. The starboat ran out her gossamer-steel gangplank to the deck of the launch, and a man started to walk up it as a man started to walk down it, so that they met in the middle, in midair, between sea and land, an ambiguous meeting.

“Mr. Ambassador Horrsed? I’m Harge,” said the one from the starboat, but as he spoke the one from the seaboat knelt down and said aloud, in Karhidish, “Welcome, Argaven of Karhide!”

As he straightened up he added in a quick whisper, “You come as yourself— Explain when I can—” Behind and below him on the deck of the launch stood a sizeable group of men, gazing up at the newcomer with grim faces. All were Karhiders by their looks; several were old.

Mr. Harge stood for a minute, two minutes, three minutes. erect and perfectly motionless though his grey cloak tugged and riffled in the cold wind that was blowing. He looked once at the dull orange sun to the west, once at the grey land northward across the water, back again at the silent men who watched him. Then he strode forward so suddenly that the Plenipotentiary Horrsed had to get aside in a hurry. He stepped onto the deck amidst the silent men, and spoke to one of the old ones. “Are you Ker rem ir Kerheder?”

“I am.”

“I knew you by that, Ker—the lame arm.” He spoke clearly; there was no guessing what emotions he felt. “Guessed you, rather. Are there others of you I knew? I cannot recognize you. Sixty years—”

They were all silent. He said nothing more.

All at once one of them, a man scored and scarred with age like wood that has been through fire, got down laboriously on his knees. “My Lord King, I am Bannith of the Guard of the King’s Household, you served with me when I was Drillmaster, and you a boy, a young boy,” and he bowed down his bald head in homage or to hide quick senile tears. Certain others knelt then, stiff and frail, bending down bald and grey and white heads; the voices that hailed him as king quavered with emotion and with age. One, Ker of the crippled arm, lifted his fierce, furrowed face (Argaven had known him as a timid boy of thirteen) and spoke to those who still stood unmoving, watching Argaven: “This is he. I have eyes that have seen him, and that see him now. This is the King.”

One or two of the younger men also knelt. Most did not. Argaven looked at them, from face to face, one after another.

“I am Argaven,” he said. “I was king. Who reigns now in Karhide?”

“Emran,” one answered.

“My son?”

“Your son Emran,” said old Bannith, but Ker cried fiercely, “Argaven, Argaven reigns in Karhide: I have lived to see the bright days return. Long live the King!”

One of the younger men looked at the others. “So be it,” he said. “Long live the King!” He knelt, and they all knelt.

Argaven took their homage unperturbed, but when later a moment came he turned on Horrsed the Plenipotentiary, demanding, “What is this? What has happened to my country? Did the Stabile expect this to happen, and not warn me? I was sent here to assist you, as an Aide from the Ekumen—”

“That was twenty-four years ago,” said the Plenipotentiary. “Things go ill with your country, and King Emran has broken relations with the Ekumen. I’m not really sure what the Stabile’s purpose in sending you here was, at the time he sent you; but at present, we’re losing our game here; and so the Powers on Hain suggested to me that we might move out our king.”

“But I am dead,” Argaven said. “I have been dead for sixty years, man!”

“The King is dead,” said Horrsed, “long live the King.”

Then, as some of the Karhiders approached, Argaven turned from the Plenipotentiary and went over to the rail. Grey water bubbled and slid busily by the ship’s side. The shore of the continent lay now to their left, grey patched with white. It was cold: a day of early winter in the Ice Age of a bleak world where men lived only in the tropics, and the seasons varied from cold to colder. The ship’s engine purred softly. Argaven had not heard that purr of an electric engine for a dozen years now, the only kind of engine Karhide’s slow and stable Age of Invention had chosen to employ. The sound of it was very pleasant to him.

He spoke abruptly without turning, as one who has known since infancy that there is always someone there to answer: “Why are we going east?”

“We’re making for Kerm Land, sir.”

“Why Kerm Land?”

It was one of the younger men, a bright-eyed, stout fellow, who replied. “Because that part of the country is in open rebellion against the—against King Emran, sir. I am a Kermlander: Perreth ner Sode, at your service.”

“Is the king in Erhenrang?”

“Erhenrang was taken by Orgoreyn six years ago. The king is in the new capital, east of the mountains—the Old Capital, actually, Rer.”

“He lost the West Fall?” Argaven said, and then turning full on the stout nobleman, “He lost the West Fall? He surrendered Erhenrang?”

Perreth quailed, but answered promptly, and with a sudden gleam as of conviction in his eyes, “We’ve been hiding behind the mountains for six years, sir.”

“Is the uprising still on?”

“King Emran signed a treaty with the Confederation of Orgoreyn five years ago, ceding them the western provinces.”

“A shameful treaty, sir!” old Ker broke in, fierce and quavering. “A fool’s treaty! Emran dances to the drums of Orgoreyn. We, here, are all rebels and exiles—the Ambassador there is an exile with a price on his head!”

“He lost the West Fall,” said Argaven. “We took the West Fall for Karhide seven hundred years ago—” He looked round on the others again with his strange, keen, unheeding gaze. “What kind of king is he?” he demanded; but when none dared answer he dismissed the question and asked, “How strong are you in Kerm Land? What provinces are with you? What forces have you? Where do the Nobles stand?”

“Against us, sir; the country with us, mostly.”

Argaven was silent awhile.

“Has he a son yet?”

“He had. The Prince was killed in the western battles, six years ago.”

“He served with the Guard, as you did, sir,” old Bannith put in. “Killed in the retreat from Erhenrang, at seventeen years old—”

“The heir is Girvry Harge rem ir Orek, sir,” said Perreth.

“Who the devil is he? -—What was the Prince’s name? The king had no son, when I began my journey here.”

“His name was Argaven.”

Now at last comes the dark picture, the snapshot by firelight—firelight, because the power plants of Rer are wrecked, the trunk lines cut, and half the city is burning. Snow flurries heavily down above the flames and gleams red for an instant before it melts in midair, hissing faintly.

Snow and ice and partisans keep Orgoreyn at bay on the west side of the Kargav Mountains. No help came to the Old King, Emran, when his country rose against him. His army fled and his city burns, and now at the end he is face to face with the usurper. But he has, at the end, something of his father’s arrogance: he pays no heed to the rebels. He stares at them and does not see them, lying on his back in the dark hallway, lit only by mirrors that reflect distant fires, where he killed himself.