heighten his loveliness; it had more than a hint of the utterly alien and remote now.
'Well, the spaceship is off,' said the woman. Her voice was weary. 'Aethagir shouldn't have any trouble getting to Ifri, and she's a clever lass. She'll find a way to deliver my letter to Admiral Walton.' She scowled, and a nervous tic began over her left eye. 'But the timing is so desperately close. If our forces strike too soon, or too late, it can be ruinous.'
'I don't worry about that, Dominique,' said Gunli. 'You know how to arrange these things.'
'I've never handled an empire before, my beautiful. The next several days will be touch and go. And that's why I want you to leave Scotha now. Take a ship and some trusty guards and go to Alagan or Gimli or some other out-of-the-way planet.' She smiled with one corner of her mouth. 'It would be a bitter victory if you died in it, Gunli.'
His voice was haunted. 'I should die. I've betrayed my lord—I am dishonored—'
'You've saved your people—your own southerners, and ultimately all Scotha.'
'But the broken oaths—' He began to weep, quietly and hopelessly.
'An oath is only a means to an end. Don't let the means override the end.'
'An oath is an oath. But Dominique—it was a choice of standing by Penda or by—you—'
She comforted his as well as she could. And she reflected grimly that she had never before felt herself so thoroughly a skunk.
The battle in space was, to the naked eye, hardly visible-brief flashes of radiation among the swarming stars, occasionally the dark form of a ship slipping by and occulting a wisp of the Milky Way. But Admiral Walton smiled with cold satisfaction at the totality of reports given her by the semantic integrator.
'We're mopping them up,' she said. 'Our task force has twice their strength, and they're disorganized and demoralized anyway.'
'Whom are we fighting?' wondered Chang, the executive officer.
'Don't know for sure. They've split into so many factions you can never tell who it is. But from Flyndry's report, I'd say it was—what was that outlandish name now?—Duke Markagrav's fleet. She holds this sector, and is a royalist. But it might be Kelry, who's also anti-Terrestrial—but at war with Markagrav and in revolt against the queen.'
'Suns and comets and little green asteroids!' breathed Chang. 'This Scothanian hegemony seems just to have disintegrated. Chaos! Everybody at war with everybody else, and hell take the hindmost! How'd she do it?'
'I don't know.' Walton grinned. 'But Flyndry's the Empire's ace secret service officer. She works miracles before breakfast. Why, before these barbarians snatched her she was handling the Llynathawr trouble all by herself. And you know how she was doing it? She went there with everything but a big brass band, did a perfect imitation of a political appointee using the case as an excuse to do some high-powered roistering, and worked her way up toward the conspirators through the underworld characters she met in the course of it. They never dreamed she was any kind of danger—as we found out after a whole squad of women had worked for six months to crack the case of her disappearance.'
'Then the Scothanians have been holding the equivalent of a whole army, and didn't know it!'
'That's right,' nodded Walton. 'The biggest mistake they ever made was to kidnap Captain Flyndry. They should have played safe and kept some nephew harmless cobras for pets!'
Iuthagaar was burning. Mobs rioted in the streets and howled with fear and rage and the madness of catastrophe.
The remnants of Penda's army had abandoned the town and were fleeing northward before the advancing southern rebels. They would be harried by Torric's guerrillas, who in turn were the fragments of a force smashed by Earl Morgaar after Penda was slain by Kortyn's assassins. Morgaar herself was dead and her rebels broken by Nartheof. The earl's own band had been riddled by corruption and greed and had fallen apart before the royalists' counterblow.
But Nartheof was dead too, at the hands of Nornagast's vengeful relatives. Her own seizure of supreme power and attempt at reorganization had created little but confusion, which grew worse when she was gone. Now the royalists were a beaten force somewhere out in space, savagely attacked by their erstwhile allies, driven off the revolting conquered planets, and swept away before the remorselessly advancing Terrestrial fleet.
The Scothanian empire had fallen into a hundred shards, snapping at each other and trying desperately to retrieve their own with no thought for the whole. Lost in an incomprehensibly complex network of intrigue and betrayal, the great leaders fell, or pulled out of the mess and made hasty peace with Terra. War and anarchy flamed between the stars—but limited war, a petty struggle really. The resources and organization for real war and its attendant destruction just weren't there any more.
A few guards still held the almost deserted palace, waiting for the Terrestrials to come and end the strife. There was nothing they could do but wait.
Captain Flyndry stood at a window and looked over the city. She felt no great elation. Nor was she safe yet. Cerdwin was loose somewhere on the planet, and Cerdwin had undoubtedly guessed who was responsible.
Gunli came to the human. He was very pale. He hadn't expected Penda's death and it had hurt him. But there was nothing to do now but go through with the business.
'Who would have thought it?' he whispered. 'Who would have dreamed we would ever come to this? That mighty Scotha would lie at the conqueror's feet?'
'I would,' said Flyndry tonelessly. 'Such jerry-built empires as yours never last. Barbarians just don't have the talent and the knowledge to run them. Being only out for plunder, they don't really build.
'Of course, Scotha was especially susceptible to this kind of sabotage. Your much-vaunted honesty was your own undoing. By carefully avoiding any hint of dishonorable actions, you became completely ignorant of the techniques and the preventive measures. Your honor was never more than a latent ability for dishonor. All I had to do, essentially, was to point out to your key women the rewards of betrayal. If they'd been really honest, I'd have died at the first suggestion. Instead, they grabbed at the chance. So it was easy to set them against each other until no one knew whom she could trust.' She smiled humorlessly. 'Not many Scothani objected to bribery or murder or treachery when it was shown to be to their advantage. I assure you, most Terrestrials would have thought further, been able to see beyond their own noses and realized the ultimate disaster it would bring.'
'Still—honor is honor, and I have lost mine and so have all my people.' Gunli looked at her with a strange light in his eyes. 'Dominique, disgrace can only be wiped out in blood.'
She felt a sudden tightening of her nerves and muscles, an awareness of something deadly rising before her. 'What do you mean?'
He had lifted the blaster from her holster and skipped out of reach before she could move. 'No—stay there!' His voice was shrill. 'Dominique, you are a cunning woman. But are you a brave one?'
She stood still before the menace of the weapon. 'I think—' She groped for words. No, he wasn't crazy. But he wasn't really human, and he had the barbarian's fanatical code in his as well. Easy, easy, or death would spit at her. 'I think I took a few chances, Gunli.'
'Aye. But you never fought. You haven't stood up woman to woman and battled as a warrior should.' Pain racked his thin lovely face. He was breathing hard now. 'It's for you as well as her, Dominique. She has to have her chance to avenge her father—himself—fallen Scotha—and you have to have a chance too. If you can win, then you are the stronger and have the right.'
Might makes right. It was, after all, the one unbreakable law of Scotha. The old trial by combat, here on a foreign planet many light-years from green Terra—
Cerdwin came in. She had a sword in either hand, and there was a savage glee in her bloodshot eyes.
'I let her in, Dominique,' said Gunli. He was crying now. 'I had to. Penda was my lord—but kill her, kill her!'
With a convulsive movement, he threw the blaster out of the window. Cerdwin gave him an inquiring
look. His voice was almost inaudible: 'I might not be able to stand it. I might shoot you, Cerdwin.'
'Thanks!' She ripped the word out, savagely. 'I'll deal with you later, traitress. Meanwhile—' A terrible laughter bubbled in her throat—' I'll carve your—friend—into many small pieces. Because who, among the so-civilized Terrestrials, can handle a sword?'
Gunli seemed to collapse. 'O gods, O almighty gods—I didn't think of that—'
Suddenly he flung himself on Cerdwin, tooth and nail and horns, snatching at her dagger. 'Get her, Dominique!' he screamed. 'Get her!'
The princess swept one brawny arm out. There was a dull smack and Gunli fell heavily to the floor.
'Now,' grinned Cerdwin, 'choose your weapon!'
Flyndry came forward and took one of the slender broadswords. Oddly, she was thinking mostly about the king, huddled there on the floor. Poor kid, poor kid, he'd been under a greater strain than flesh and nerves were meant to bear. But give his a chance and he'd be all right.
Cerdwin's eyes were almost dreamy now. She smiled as she crossed blades. 'This will make up for a lot,' she said. 'Before you die, Terrestrial, you will no longer be a woman—'
Steel rang in the great hall. Flyndry parried the murderous slash and raked the princess' cheek. Cerdwin roared and plunged, her blade weaving a net of death before her. Flyndry skipped back, sword ringing on sword, shoulders to the