Barrington Bayley - Star Winds

“Your Grace!” The captain of the guard rushed to the limp form, taking the lolling head in his hand. “Two of you over here, on the double!”

Rachad sidled hastily over to Matello, his face feverish. “Round them all up—quick!” he hissed. “Before they realize they’ve been tricked!”

“Tricked?”

“They think the duke ordered them to open the Aegis—but that’s not the duke at all! It’s an homunculus I made!”

“Eh?” Matello growled, not fully understanding what Rachad was talking about. But his earnest advice was good enough. He glanced round at his men who were still streaming after him through the doorway.

He thrust out his sword, and roared: “Kill them all!”

The ensuing fight was brief and bloody. The pikemen were totally bewildered. Only when actually attacked did they move, in sudden panic, to defend themselves, wielding their long pikes with skill, so that several of Matello’s liegelings were stretched out on the floor before full possession was taken of the plaza.

While men continued to pour through the gateway, Matello wiped his sword on a pied tunic and returned to stare thoughtfully at the body of Rachad’s homunculus. Already it was beginning to shrivel up. The purple cloak, also organic in nature, had become like a huge withered leaf.

“How did you manage it?” he asked. “I had almost given you up.”

“It wasn’t possible to open the Aegis straight away,” Rachad explained eagerly. “It was too well guarded. I’ve been working with Master Amschel, in his laboratory. That was where I got the idea of making an homunculus replica of the duke, under my mental control. And it worked!”

Rachad was bursting to tell the whole story. Surreptitiously he had guided the rapidly weakening homunculus through the Aegis. For the last stages of the journey he had been obliged to support the ephemeral creature by letting it lean on his shoulder. Then, at the gateway, there was the stunned astonishment on the part of the guards, as they heard the reedy voice of their duke order them to open up. At first they had reacted with inbred reluctance. Three times the homunculus had pressed his command, and only the actual presence—so they thought—of their master had prodded them out of their stupor, making them perform the incredible act, something they had been sure they would never see in their lifetimes.

But when he tried to launch into his tale Matello shut him up with an impatient wave of his hand. “Later,” he said, but nevertheless he clapped Rachad fondly on the shoulder. “It was a brilliant piece of work, my boy. You’ve saved all our lives, though you don’t know it, and I’ll remember that.”

Straightening, he began to bark orders. “Commandant, see to it that everybody gets in here without delay, before the Kerek find out what’s happening. Then close up these doors again, and we’ll organize a general takeover of this place. There might still be a bit of fighting to do.”

“With odds in our favor, this time,” Zhorga added. He grinned at Rachad. “You’ve done well, shipmate. I’m proud of you.”

They went through the Aegis like a storm.

The impact of hardened fighting men, drawn both from Matello’s forces and King Lutheron’s, on the sybarite’s paradise was like that of a barbarian horde on a soft, decadent culture—which, in exaggerated form, was exactly what the interior of the Aegis represented. There was practically no resistance and Matello, sensing his followers’ relief at having escaped imminent death at the hands of the Kerek, allowed them a brief catharsis of rape and ransack. Artworks were smashed, sumptuous drapes torn down in acres of billowing finery to reveal the bare adamant beneath, and for a while the omnipresent haunting music was mingled with coarse bellows of triumph.

Flammarion, moving with surprising agility by means of his warping wings, attached himself to the party led by Baron Matello and proved as eager as any. But his search had only one object—the Duke of Koss himself, the man who had spent a lifetime as his creditor.

They eventually found the defeated duke deep down in the fortress. He lay limply on a samite couch, a servant girl dabbing at his brow with scented water. He seemed to be in a state of collapse.

He stirred feebly when Matello and his men burst into the chamber. His face was fully as pale and deathlike as the face of the homunculus that had recently impersonated him. “Who are these strangers who disturb my peace?” he murmured, his voice so faint as to be barely audible. “Vandals, despoilers, desecrators of my pleasure…”

“We are here because you failed to do your duty, Koss!” Baron Matello stormed.

From behind him Flammarion came forward. He reared up over the supine noble like a threatening cobra. “Now is the time to remind you of our contract, Your Grace!” he exclaimed, his voice vibrant with passion.

“What strange beast is this?” the duke queried breathlessly. “Ah yes, the builder of my retreat, of my cosmos.”

“My fee! I am here to collect my fee, unpaid for all these years!”

“But the Aegis was not invulnerable, master builder,” the duke replied in a pained whisper. “No payment is due.”

“Not invulnerable?” Matello demanded incredulously.

“Why, no… as is attested by your presence here…” The duke smiled faintly. Then he uttered a sigh.

His head suddenly lolled.

“He took poison,” the girl told them. “It takes a few minutes to work.”

Matello grabbed the duke’s head by the hair and turned it so as to lift an eyelid with his thumb. Then, with a grunt, he let it drop.

“Well that’s that. Don’t worry, Flammarion, there’s plenty of stuff here. I’ll see you get your reward.”

Flammarion’s response was dolorous and labored. “But the logic of his argument is inescapable,” he droned. “To collect payment, I must first force access to the Aegis; yet once that is done the terms of the contract are broken. How completely the old duke tricked me! I can accept no fee.”

“What are you worried about? Take what you want anyway.”

“No. The ethic of my craft will not permit sharp practice. What an ill day it was when I ventured into Maralia! I have labored in vain!”

“Well, it probably won’t make any difference,” Baron Matello muttered to the others as Flammarion shuffled despondently away. “The way things look, we’ll all have to spend the rest of our lives here.”

As the months passed, the atmosphere within the Aegis sank into gloom. Outside, the Kerek were encamped in force. A constant barrage of ballista missiles, cannon balls and sticky fire was hurled against the sloping walls of the fortress. Galleys sailed overhead and dropped immense stones from great heights. None of this was felt or even heard within the adamant casing, however. Once the original exultation of victory and escape was over, the Aegis’s all-pervading reservoir of silence, of cloying degeneracy, took over.

King Lutheron made some effort to prevent this. He tried to keep his own people apart from the Duke of Koss’s followers as much as possible and forbade most of the pleasures the fortress offered, tearing apart the intricate bordellos, destroying extensive apartments whose weird artistic purpose offended him, and spoiling the dream-slime by mixing acid in it. But nothing, not even the regular military drill he insisted on, seemed able to halt the slow, steady slide into listlessness.

It could not even be said that the whole of the Aegis had fallen into his possession. When Rachad attempted to lead a party through the inner maze, it was to find that he no longer knew the way. Amschel had rearranged the labyrinth, rendering his number code useless and prompting him to retreat hastily, afraid of becoming lost or possibly trapped. He had refused to venture into it again despite Matello’s gibes.