The High Crusade

Chapter XVIII

Many long Tharixanian days passed: weeks of Earth time. Having taken the first planet he aimed at, Sir Roger went on to the next. Here, while his allies distracted the enemy gunners, he stormed the main castle afoot, using foliage to conceal his approach. This was the place where Red John Hameward actually did rescue a captive princess. True, she had green hair and feathery antennae, nor was there any possibility of issue between her species and our own. But the humanlikeness, and exceeding gratitude, of the Vashtunari — who had just been in process of being conquered — did much to cheer lonely Englishmen. Whether or not the prohibitions of Leviticus are applicable is still being hotly debated.

The Wersgorix counterattacked from space, basing their fleet in a ring of planetoids. Sir Roger had taken an opportunity while en route to turn off the artificial weight aboard ship and let his men practice movement under such conditions. So now, armored against vacuum, our bowmen made that famous raid called the Battle of the Meteors. Cloth-yard shafts pierced many a Wersgor spacesuit without fire-flash or magnetic force-pulse to give away a man’s position. With their base thus depleted of manpower, the enemy withdrew from the entire system. Admiral Beljad had grabbed off three other suns while they were occupied with this one, so their new retreat was a long one.

And on Tharixan, Sir Owain Montbelle made himself pleasant to Lady Catherine. And he and Branithar felt each other out, cautiously, under pretext of language study. At last they thought they had touched mutual understanding.

It remained to convince the baroness.

I believe both moons had risen. Treetops were hoar with that radiance; double shadows reached across grass where dew glittered; by now, the night sounds had become familiar and peaceful. Lady Catherine left her pavilion, as often after her children were fallen asleep and she unable to. Wrapped in a hooded mantle, she walked down a lane intended for the street of the new village, past half-finished wattle huts that were blocks of shadow under the moons, and out onto a meadow through which ran a brook. The water flowed and sparkled with light; it chimed on rocks. She drank a warm strange smell of flowers, and remembered English hawthorn when they crowned the May Queen. She remembered standing on the pebble beach at Dover, newly wed, when her husband had embarked on a summer’s campaign, and waving and waving until the last sail was vanished. Now the stars were a colder shore, and no one would see her kerchief if it fluttered. She bent her head and told herself she would not weep.

Harp strings jingled in the dark. Sir Owain trod forth. He had discarded his crutch, though he still affected a limp. A massy silver chain caught moonlight across his black velvet tunic, and she saw him smile.

“Oho,” he said softly, “the nymphs and dryads are out!

“Nay.” Despite all resolutions, she felt’ gladdened. His banter and flattery had lightened so many sad hours; they brought back her courtly girlhood. She fluttered protesting hands, knew she was being coy, but could not stop. “Nay, good knight, this is unseemly.”

“Beneath such a sky, and in such a presence, nothing is unseemly,” he told her. “For we are assured there is no sin in Paradise.”

“Speak not so!” Her pain came back redoubled. “If we have wandered anywhere, ’tis into hell.”

“Wherever my lady is, there is Paradise.”

“Is this any place to hold a Court of Love?” she gibed bitterly.

“No.” He grew solemn in his turn. “Indeed, a tent — or a log cabin, when they complete it — is no place for her to dwell who commands all hearts. Nor are these marches a fit home for you… or your children. You should sit among roses as Queen of Love and Beauty, with a thousand knights breaking lances in your honor and a thousand minstrels singing your charms.

She tried to protest, “’Twould be enough to see England again—’ but her voice would go no further.

He stood gazing into the brook where twin moonpaths glided and shivered. At last he reached beneath his cloak. She saw steel gleam in his hand. An instant she shrank away. But he raised the crosshilt upward and said, in those rich tones he well knew how to use: “By this token of my Saviour and my honor, I swear you shall have your wish!”

His blade sank. He stared at it. She could scarcely hear him when he added, “If you truly wish it.”

“What do you mean?” She drew her mantle tight, as if the air were cold. Sir Owain’s gaiety was not the hoarse boisterousness of Sir Roger, and his present gravity was more eloquent than her husband’s stammering protestations. Yet briefly she felt afraid of Sir Owain, and would have given all her jewels to see the baron clank from the forest.

“You never say plainly what you mean,” she whispered.

He turned a face of disarming boyish ruefulness on her. “Mayhap I never learned the difficult art of blunt speech. But if now I hesitate, ’tis because I am loath to tell my lady that which is hard.”

She straightened. For a moment, in the unreal light, she looked strangely like Sir Roger; it was his gesture. Then she was only Catherine, who said with forlorn courage, “Tell me anyhow.”

“Branithar can find Terra again,” he said.

She was not one to faint. But the stars wavered. She regained awareness leaning against Sir Owain’s breast. His arms enclosed her waist, and his lips moved along her cheek toward her mouth. She drew a little away, and he did not pursue his kiss. But she felt too weak to leave his embrace.

“I call this hard news,” he said, “for reasons I’ve discussed erenow. Sir Roger will not give up his war.”

“But he could send us home!” she gasped.

Sir Owain looked bleak. “Think you he will? He needs every human soul to maintain his garrisons and keep up an appearance of strength. You recall what he proclaimed ere the fleet left Tharixan. As soon as a planet seems strongly enough held, he will send off people of this village to join those few men he has newly created dukes and knights. As for himself — oh, aye, he talks of ending England’s peril, but has he never spoken of making you a queen?”

She could only sigh, remembering a few words let slip.

’Branithar himself shall explain.” Sir Owain whistled. The Wersgor stepped from a canebrake where he had waited. He could move about freely enough, since he had no hope of escaping the island. His stocky form was well clad in plundered raiment, which glittered as with a thousand tiny pearls. The round, hairless, longeared, snouted face no longer seemed ugly; the yellow eyes were even gay. By now Catherine could follow his language well enough for him to address her.

“My lady will wonder how I could ever find my way back along a zigzag route taken through swarming uncharted stars,” he said. “When the navigator’s notes were lost at Ganturath, I myself despaired. So many suns, even of the type of your own, lie within the radius of our cruise, that random search might rec1uire a thousand years. This is the more true since nebulosities in space hide numbers of stars until one chances fairly close to them. To be sure, if any deck officers of my ship had survived, they could have narrowed down the search somewhat. But my own work was with the engines. I saw stars only in casual glimpses, and they meant nothing to me. When I tricked your people — rue the day! — all I did was push an emergency control which instructed an automaton to pilot us hither.”

A lift of excitement brought back impatience to Catherine. She pulled free of Sir Owain’s arms and snapped, “I’m not altogether a fool. My lord respected me enough to try to explain these things to me, however ill I listened. What news have you discovered?”

“Not discovered,” said Branithar. “Remembered. ’Tis an idea which should have occurred to me erenow, but there was so much happening — Well… “Know, then, my lady, that there are certain beacon stars, brilliant enough to be visible throughout the spiral arm of the Via Galactica. They are used in navigation. Thus, if the suns called (by us) Ulovarna, Yariz, and Gratch, are seen to form a certain configuration with respect to each other, one must be in a certain region of space. Even a crude visual estimate of the angles would fix one’s position within twenty or so light-years. This is not too large a sphere to find a given yellow-dwarf sun like your own.”

She nodded, slowly and thoughtfully. “Aye. Belike you think of bright stars like Sirius and Rigel…

“The major stars in the sky of a planet may not be the ones I mean,” he warned. “They may simply happen to lie close by. Actually, a navigator would need a good sketch of your constellations, with numerous bright stars indicated by color (as seen from airless space). Given enough data, he could analyze and determine which must be the beacon giants. Then their relative positions would tell him where they had been observed from.”

“I think I could draw the Zodiac for you,” said Lady Catherine uncertainly.

“It would be of no use, mistress,” Branithar told her. “You have no skill in identifying stellar types by eye. I admit I have little enough: no training at all, merely the casual hearsay about other people’s special crafts which one picks up. And while I did chance to be in the control turret once, while our ship was orbiting about Terra making long-range observations, I paid no special heed to the constellations. I have no memory of what they looked like.”

Her heart tumbled downward. “But then we’re still lost!”

“Not quite so. I should say, I have no conscious memory. Yet we Wersgorix have long known that the mind is composed of more than the self-aware portion.”

“True,” agreed Catherine wisely. “There is the soul.”

“Er… that’s not exactly what I meant. There is an unconscious or half-conscious depth in the mind, the source of dreams and — Well, anyhow, let it suffice that this unawareness never forgets. It records even the most trivial things which ever impinged on the senses. If I were thrown into a trance and given proper guidance, I could draw quite an accurate picture of the Terrestrial sky, as glimpsed by myself.

“Then a skilled navigator, his star tables at hand, could winnow this crop with his arts mathematic. It would require time. Many blue stars might be Gratch, for example, and only detailed study could eliminate those which are in an impossible relationship to (shall we say) the globular cluster assumed to be Torgelta. Eventually, however, he would narrow the possibilities down to that smallish region whereof I spoke. Then he could flit thither, with a space pilot to aid him, and they could visit all yellow-dwarf stars in the neighborhood until they found So!.”

Catherine smote her hands together. “But this is wonderful!” she cried. “Oh, Branithar, what reward do you wish? My lord will bestow a kingdom on you!”

He planted his thick legs wide, looked up into her shadowed face and said with the surly valor we had come to know:

“What joy would a kingdom give me, built from the shards of my people’s empire? Why should I help find your England again, if it only brings more Englishmen ravening hither?”

She clenched her fists and said with Norman bleakness, “You’ll not withhold your knowledge from One-Eyed Hubert.”

He shrugged. “The unaware mind is not readily evoked, my lady. Your barbarous tortures might set up an impassable barrier.” He reached beneath his tunic. Suddenly a knife gleamed in his hand. “Not that I would endure them. Stand back! Owain gave me this. I know well enough where my own heart lies.”

Catherine whirled about with a tiny shriek.

The knight laid both hands on her shoulders. “Hear me before you judge,” he said swiftly. “For weeks I’ve been trying to sound out Branithar. He dropped hints. I dropped hints in turn. We bargained like two Saracen merchants, never openly admitting that we bargained. At last he named that dagger as the price of spreading out his wares for me to see. I could not imagine him harming any of us with it. Even our children now go about with better weapons than a knife. I took it on myself to agree. Then he told me what he has now told you.”

The tautness shuddered out of her. She had taken too many shocks in all this time, with too much fear and solitude in between. Her strength was drained.

“What do you require?” she asked.

Branithar ran a thumb along his knife blade, nodded, and sheathed it again. He spoke quite gently. “First, you must obtain a good Wersgor mind-physician. I can find one with the help of this planet’s Domesday Book, which is kept at Darova. You can borrow it from the Jairs on some pretext. This physician has to work together with a skilled Wersgor navigator, who can tell him what questions to ask of me and guide my pencil as I draw the map in my trance. Later we will also need a space pilot; and I insist on a pair of gunners as well. These can also be found somewhere on Tharixan. You can tell your allies you want them to help search out technical secrets of the enemy.”

“When you have your star map, what?”

“Well, I shall not turn it freely over to your husband! I suggest that we go secretly aboard your spaceship. There will be a fair balance of power: you humans holding the weapons, we Wersgorix the knowledge. We will stand ready to destroy those notes, and ourselves, if you betray us. At long range, we can haggle with Sir Roger. Your own pleas ought to sway him. If he withdraws from the war, transportation home can be arranged, and our nation will undertake to leave yours alone hereafter.”

“If he won’t agree?” Her voice remained dull.

Sir Owain leaned close, to whisper in French: “Then you and the children … and myself… will nonetheless be returned. But Sir Roger must not be told this, of course.”

“I cannot think.” She covered her face. “Father in Heaven, I know not what to do!”

“If your folk persist in this lunatic war,” Branithar said, “it can only end in their destruction.”

Sir Owain had told her the same thing, over and over, all this time when he was the only one of her station on this planet, the only one to whom she could freely talk. She remembered scorched corpses in the fortress ruins; she thought how small Matilda had screamed during the siege of Darova, each time a shellburst rocked the walls; she thought of green English woods where she had gone hawking with her lord in the first years of their marriage, and of the years he now expected to spend fighting for a goal she could not understand. She lifted her face to the moons, light ran cold along her tears, and she said, “Yes.”