Paul of Dune

Emperor Muad’Dib

10,197 AG

Four Years After the Beginning of the Jihad

1

If a soldier dies on a battlefield and no one remembers his name, was his service for naught? Muad’Dib’s faithful know better than this, for in his heart he honors the sacrifices they make for him.

—from A Child’s History of Muad’Dib by the PRINCESS IRULAN

Fighting unnoticed beside his fellow soldiers, Muad’Dib wore a ragged uniform that had been cleaned and patchily repaired after being taken from the body of a fallen warrior. Having spent hours in the fight, his knife arm ached, and his ears rang from the explosions and screams. His nostrils burned from drinking in the nauseating cocktail of smells that hung in the air — the acrid discharges of slow explosives, spilled blood, burned flesh, churned dirt.

From so many planetary battlegrounds and so many victories in the four years of the Jihad, the disguised Emperor did not know the name of this world where so many of his followers were dying. During the horrific combat and its aftermath, what did names matter? He was sure this place was little different from the countless others that Gurney and Stilgar had described.

But he had needed to see it for himself, fight with his own hands, spill blood with his own weapons. I owe it to them.

No detailed report from his generals, no council meeting had ever driven home the depths of this hell. Yes, he had escaped with his mother on the night of the Harkonnen takeover of Arrakeen, and yes, he had fought with his Fremen on razzia raids against Beast Rabban, and yes, he had led them to victory against Emperor Shaddam and his Sardaukar. But few of his followers understood the noble goals of this war, especially the common soldiers. Only he could see the whirlwind, and the far worse fate that awaited the human race if his Jihad failed.

As he forged ahead into the future, he saw hazards in every decision, death and pain on every side. It reminded him of the ancient story of Odysseus and his voyage that required him to chart a perilous course between two dangers, the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis — a pair of water hazards that no one raised on Dune could grasp. But here, now, the path ahead seemed less clear, and clouded in a mist of uncertainty. Paul only knew that somewhere beyond this Jihad, perhaps many generations later, lay a safe harbor. He still believed he could guide humankind along the correct, narrow path. He had to believe it.

For those who could not see the large and subtle tapestry of fate, however, this battle was a slaughter of nearly helpless civilians on a formerly peaceful planet.

The reports would call it a victory.

But after years of growing more and more separated from the realities of the Jihad, he had decided he needed more than reports. Reports were not enough to convey what was truly happening across the Imperium… what he had set in motion.

One night inside his quiet, protected Arrakeen quarters that were newly finished by Bludd, he had dreamed of Gurney Halleck, Stilgar, and dozens of other commanders with their legions of Fremen warriors and converts. He valued (and was grateful to) every single one of those men, but he had remained on Dune, perfectly safe, while they fought and died.

Was that enough? He didn’t think so. Duke Leto had personally led Atreides forces against Grumman during the War of Assassins. Paul knew that reading battlefield summaries could never give him the visceral level of understanding that came from experiencing the harsh conditions with his men, the lack of sleep, the explosions, the constant wariness, the blood. He had dispatched vast armies to crush worlds, and the fighters screamed his name as they died for him — while he remained in the comfort of his palace in Arrakeen.

Not enough.

But if he had publicly announced his intention to lead a battle, his generals would have found ways to shield him by choosing a soft planet where there was sure to be only minimal resistance. The battle would have been as false for him as the costume stillsuits that vendors sold to unwary pilgrims. Paul could not simply hide inside his ever-growing citadel and be treated as a god. His father had taught him better than that. The moment a leader forgot his people, he forgot himself.

Not enough, he had told himself again. He needed to do it on his own terms, and a plan had begun to form in his mind….

He knew that if any of his Jihad fighters recognized his features from the silhouetted profile on so many banners or on newly minted coins, they would form a protective barrier around him fifty men thick. Battle commanders would refuse to engage the enemy, pull Muad’Dib to safety, and keep him in an orbiting Guild Heighliner for fear that he might come to harm.

That was why Paul cut and dyed his hair and procured a used uniform before beginning this masquerade as a common soldier. Telling no one but Chani where he was going, he signed up among the blur of recruits joining a new operation. Paul intentionally chose the unit of one of his lesser commanders, Jeurat, someone not familiar with him on a personal level. As a new soldier, he had passed a cursory inspection and demonstrated basic fighting proficiency to a Fremen soldier who could not have been more than eighteen years old. After that, Paul’s unit had crowded aboard a military frigate and flown away from Dune.

Paul knew that the people he left behind would be frantic, though Chani would assure them he lived, without revealing where he had gone or what he was doing. Even so, they would bemoan the thousands of supposedly important decisions they needed him to make. But he wanted them to be weaned from their dependence on Muad’Dib. If they craved a security blanket, they could simply project a holo-image of him and be comforted.

If Paul did not do this thing, he feared he might lose all grasp of the true cost he was asking humanity — all unknowingly — to bear.

Only once had he heard the name of the planet that was their destination, Ehknot. Paul had never seen it marked on any star charts and wondered why it had been labeled such a threat. He doubted even Emperor Shaddam had been aware of this place.

On Ehknot the ground battles of the Jihad changed, and Paul’s unit was forced to fight using different tactics. On two previous embattled worlds, the truly desperate rebels against Muad’Dib — prodded by Earl Memnon Thorvald — had begun to use lasguns recklessly and maliciously, firing upon shielded warriors. Although anyone shooting a lasgun into a shield would be killed by the feedback pulse, the pseudo-atomic detonation produced by the interaction was so devastating that it wiped out thousands of Jihad soldiers at a time. The death toll in those engagements had been appalling. Such fighting had been reviled and forbidden for millennia, antithetical to all civilized rules of warfare. But the rebels discarded civilized rules. One of the greatest taboos of conflict had been broken.

People used such tactics only when they had nothing left to lose, and Muad’Dib’s soldiers learned their lesson, becoming wary. To guard against these shocking suicide tactics, they discarded personal shields, and here on Ehknot they fought on a more primal level. Fremen, who had never liked to rely upon body shields, now took up hand-to-hand fighting with crysknives for close-range work, and projectile weapons to shoot down distant targets. Remembering the old Harkonnen military assault on Arrakeen, some of the commanders even used large artillery guns to blast away physical barricades.

Paul could barely remember his own actions here during the fighting. Once the bloodshed started, he had lost all control of himself. His sight had become only a red haze, and he went into a frenzy more consuming than the most potent spice vision. He did not focus on the razor-thin path to a safe future, did not ponder the vast canvas of history or the requirements prescience had imposed upon him. He merely killed.

Paul’s fighting skills were still superior to those of most of his warriors, for he had been taught by the best: Duncan Idaho, Thufir Hawat, and Gurney Halleck. His mother had shown him Bene Gesserit fighting methods, and