Olver took a biodetector from his pouch and squinted at it. “Two persons along the most direct path,” he said.
Mikel nodded. “Something like that was to be expected,” he replied redundantly. They were all tense. Sunlight glinted off sweat. The wind felt stronger and colder than it was, its rustle in the leaves ahead louder.
Nonetheless the band continued steadily. They had studied, planned, and rehearsed; and they were men of Clan Belov—young men, in whom old stories had come back to life.
A line of candle bamboo, coldly aglow, reared before them. “Go,” said Mikel. He kept his voice quiet. Four deployed right, four left, to cover the flanks. Three followed him straight in through the hedge.
Beyond, in shifting light and shadows, serpentine trees swayed sinuously, iridescence shimmered on pearl bush, an oak spread majestic boughs, moonflowers went from phase to phase, the path wound through endless variety. Around almost every turn waited some surprise, a dancing sculpture, a pool of tinted mist, an arrangement of stones, a miniature antelope that poised in its beauty before it leaped out of view. Ten species of birds caroled in chorus. Fragrances drifted sweet, smoky, spicelike, sometimes slightly intoxicating or erotic or otherwise stimulating.
Where a bridge arched over a brook, a man and a woman stood, perhaps enjoying the place and one another. Their eyes widened in startlement as the invaders appeared. Pistols were already out. Before anyone could shout a warning, the woman crumpled. She would only be unconscious for an hour or so, but lying there in her raiment she was pathetically like a heap of rags.
The man, tall and powerful, had also dropped. It was a lightning-swift deception. The shot at him had missed. He bounded back to his feet. More shots, fired in surprise, went wild. He sprang behind a weeping willow and thence into deeper reaches. A roar trailed after him: “Belov! I know you!”
Mikel’s party traded glances. “I know him too,” Olver said. “Dammas, Arkezhan’s nephew. I’ve seen him run down horses and wrestle bulls.”
“Ill luck,” groaned Teng.
“Proceed the faster,” Mikel ordered. “Vahi’s squad may well take care of him.”
The bridge thudded under their feet. The garden soon gave way to lawn. The house loomed ahead. A machine stopped work, uncertain what this meant. Several peacocks squawked and scattered. The companion detachments broke out into view. They converged from left and right, to join their fellows in the final headlong dash.
Up the ramp and across the portico they went. The main door grew suspicious and began to draw shut. Mikel had prepared for that. Nothing here was planned for serious defense, not after three centuries of the Great Peace. One of his pistols carried explosive rounds. An assembler in a cellar had secretly crafted them for him. He fired with precision. Impact crashed. Shock passed through to the embedded computer. The door halted half open. The raiders stormed inside.
Polished marble encompassed them. Fish swam below a transparent floor. A rampway swept upward. A few individuals, drawn by the noise, saw what was entering and fled. They were merely attendants, ceremonialists, entertainers, or the like. One stood fast, gray, weather-beaten, obviously a kinsman here on a visit. “Who the filth are you?” he exclaimed.
Vahi and Turkan closed in to seize his arms. “Where is Arkezhan Socorro?” demanded Mikel.
“Hoy-ah?” Now the man saw the small clan insignia on the newcomers’ breasts. “Belovs! All of you! What is this outrage?”
“We require direct speech with Captain Arkezhan. We know he’s at home. If we must ransack, there may well be trouble, ancestral treasures damaged, people hurt or even killed. For everybody’s sake, tell us.”
“He—he may be gone—”
Mikel sneered. “So you believe your noble captain forsakes his folk and their heritage in an hour of danger?”
Angry but shaken and bewildered, the man blurted, “Never! I, I saw him last … in the Winter Room.”
“Likely enough,” Teng said. “Doesn’t he often flit to the high North?”
“Claims it inspires him,” Olver growled. “To what foulness this time?”
The loyalty of his followers, their rage on his behalf and his father’s, stirred Mikel’s spirit anew. He had wondered earlier how many there were to whom clanship meant anything other than relationships and rituals. Now, he wondered how many more would have risen like these had he called on them. All?
Then it must be the same for the Socorros. He’d better exploit the advantage of surprise while he had it. “Come,” he said. The men let their prisoner go and ran up the rampway at his heels. The house had been famous for generations; its layout was public knowledge.
Stillness brooded in long halls and spacious chambers. Mikel wondered fleetingly if the house ever called back to mind the days when life and noise filled it, when children had kept it busier than everything else put together. Aghast: Children! But surely, if any were present, they had immediately been taken out of harm’s way.
A pair of men had armed themselves with wine bottles, the only weapons to hand. They stood forlornly brave in the last corridor. Two stun shots laid them out. The invaders burst into the room beyond.
The air was cool here, though the true cold lay in a simulacrum of an Arctic region where some polar cap had been preserved—glacier and snowfield, blue-shadowed white, and a black glimmer of sea between ice floes. The scene dwarfed Arkezhan. He stood before a multifunctional terminal, clutching a fur-lined robe to him. The cabinet was needlessly large, gold-inlaid ebony with a rock crystal desk surface. You always were vainglorious, Mikel thought. If only I could spatter you against those screens like a swatted fly.
Did Arkezhan tremble beneath his garment? His tone certainly quavered shrill: “What are you doing? Are you deranged? Is
