“How can trees walk?”
“They move their roots in the mud slurry, shift into channels, and fill them up. A passage perfectly clear one month will be blocked the next.” In disgust, the captain cast his obsolete diagrams over the side, where the thin papers floated away on the currents. “I may as well just close my eyes and pray.”
“We can all pray,” Stilgar said, “but that should not be our only plan.”
Six mysterious lights glistened out of the growing dimness of dusk, and Stilgar saw it as the signal he had been waiting for. The decks of the gunbarges were crowded with Fremen shouting insults at the swamp rats who hid in the skeletal forests along the labyrinth of waterways.
Stilgar shouted, “They are within reach! Time to pursue them.” “I advise caution,” the captain said. “Do not underestimate Lord Basque.”
“And he should not underestimate the armies of Muad’Dib.”
With a chattering roar that sounded like one of the attacking dragonflies that had plagued them through the marshes, ten shallow-draught needleboats ripped out of the fog, spraying a wake of brackish brown water. Onboard, Basque’s swamp rats held projectile rifles, which they fired into the press of Fremen on the decks. The needle-boats turned about, firing a few more potshots, then raced back into the depths of the swamp.
Without waiting for a unified effort, two gunbarges surged forward, racing after them. Stilgar immediately saw what the rebels were doing. “A trap!”
But the pilot of the second gunbarge didn’t hear. The huge vessel pressed ahead with its powerful engines, and within moments found itself mired in slick mud and shallow water.
From the high hala-cypress branches, the real ambush struck, as Basque’s men fired down upon the trapped gunbarge. At such close quarters the barge’s heavy artillery proved useless, but that didn’t stop the Fremen from launching huge explosives from the deck guns, blowing up sections of the swamp. Fireballs ignited marsh gas and caused secondary eruptions. Yelling and howling, many of the Fremen dropped down into smaller boats and raced into the maze of trees, but the water there made Stilgar greatly uneasy.
“Shields on!” the barge captain shouted. Moments later, renewed shimmering barriers floated across the deck, protecting the soldiers but at the same time preventing them from firing their projectile weapons. The giant gunbarge pushed forward, until it scraped its keel on the mud.
“We can’t go any farther,” the captain said.
Stilgar activated his body shield and told his men to do the same. “We will proceed on our own rafts, and then fight on foot.”
Before they could disembark, submerged rebels in breather suits rose up from the murky water, passing slowly through the gunbarge’s main shield. Eight of them worked swiftly and efficiently together. Stilgar spotted them only after they had planted explosives against the gunbarge’s hull and then stroked away, passing back through the shield. He howled a warning.
Several of his men dropped overboard and bobbed in the water just as Gurney Halleck had taught them to do. They tried to pry the explosive mines loose, but the devices detonated within seconds. The swift shock wave hit against the shield, then reflected back into the gunbarge, causing even more damage. A wall of fire and hot gases bowled Stilgar over, knocking him to the deck. Coughing and blinded, he staggered to the rail, feeling the deck tilt as the scuttled gunbarge lurched and settled.
Unable to catch himself, Stilgar tumbled overboard. In the water, the cool, slimy wetness soothed his fresh burns. Dozens of bodies, and parts of bodies, floated next to him. The gunbarge was wallowing.
Stilgar swam toward the trees, anxious for something solid to hold onto. One of Basque’s men surfaced beside him in a breather suit and tried to attack, but Stilgar already had his crysknife out. He severed the man’s air hose, slashed his neck, and shoved him still twitching into a billowing crimson cloud in the marsh water.
More screams and explosions reverberated through the mist-muffled air. Two more gunbarges had been ruined by explosive mines, and another had run aground. Large artillery kept booming, leveling the forest, ripping the swamp to shreds, presumably hitting Basque’s camp, by accident if by no other means.
Nothing stopped the Fremen, now that their anger was piqued. “Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!” they screamed, splashing forward. Stilgar had no doubt that many of them would drown, perhaps most, as they were still so unfamiliar with water. Others launched small boats.
Though the rebels continued to pick them off, the wave of Jihad fighters proved stronger than superior firepower or better defenses. His soldiers did not know how to lose, nor how to retreat.
As he sloshed his way to the knobby hala-cypress roots, Stilgar found the chaotic battle exceedingly confusing. Despite his skill in desert warfare, he did not comprehend naval tactics. He was a dry-land fighter, undefeated in hand-to-hand combat. He knew the names for every type of wind in the desert, for the shapes of dunes, and the meanings of distant clouds. But this place was alien to him.
By the time he reached the center of the swamp, standing in thigh-deep water and holding onto the moss- slick roots, enough of the screaming Fremen had survived to reach the swamp-rat camp that they made short and bloody work of the remaining rebels. He knew he must have lost hundreds of men in his battle group, but they had died in glorious service to Muad’Dib, and their families would claim that they had wanted nothing else.
He dragged himself out of the water and saw to his disgust that his legs, chest, and stomach were covered with dozens of fat, oily leeches that swelled and pulsed as they gorged themselves on his blood. He was glad that no one had seen him, for he instinctively yelled like a woman and slashed at the parasites with his crysknife, popping each blood-filled leech and ripping it from his skin.
The fighting was mostly over by the time he composed himself and trudged toward the fires of the destroyed camp and the few remaining tortured screams, as the Fremen fell upon any swamp rat who had been unlucky enough not to die in battle.
“We have won, Stil! We crushed them in the name of Muad’Dib,” said young Kaleff, who looked as if he had aged more than ten years since their conquest of Kaitain.
“Yes, another victory.” Stilgar was surprised at how hoarse his voice had become. This was not the same as a razzia against Harkonnens. This did not feel as great an accomplishment as attacking the Padishah Emperor’s huge metal hutment during a sandstorm. No, annihilating a rebel infestation on this swampy, gloomy world was not at all the same kind of fight to which he had been born. Leeches, walking trees, mud, and slime… he could not drive away the thought of how much he longed for dry sand again — the way a world was supposed to be.
6
The successful leader defines his own success and does not allow lesser men to change that definition.
The birth of Shaddam Corrino’s first grandson — and first male heir — should have been feted with festivities and cheering crowds on glorious Kaitain. But as the fallen Emperor stood inside the birthing chamber and watched Wensicia receive her newborn baby, he thought only about what he had lost.
All those years of grooming Irulan… wasted. As Wensicia often reminded him, he had pinned his hopes on the wrong daughter.
Holding the infant now, Wensicia pretended to be happy, but even she could not hide her disappointment that her son, the next in the Corrino line, would never take his rightful place as Emperor.
On that fateful day after the defeat on the plains of Arrakeen, Irulan had come to her father, offering a solution. “But here’s a man fit to be your son.”
He’d been a fool to listen to her. Though she had wed Paul Atreides, Irulan apparently had no influence with her husband, no formal role in government (not that he’d ever granted his own wives any more power than Irulan had). She was less than a trophy wife: Irulan had become Muad’Dib’s puppet, writing ridiculous stories as propaganda to make the religious fanatics see him as a messiah.
In nearly five years she had not even managed to get herself pregnant, which would have at least brought
