The Days of Glory Page 4

  She, too, had her pride and her loyalty. She felt obliged to give her version of the honor of the Beasts. She wanted to deny what Eagleheart had just told the Beasts to believe.

  So she did not beg for mercy. She did not excuse her actions. She appealed, instead, to their humanity. She asked whether the Beasts were animal or man. She told them that by cutting themselves off from the Human race, by thinking of themselves as Beasts and not as men, they were degrading themselves. She told them that their loyalty was not to the Beast race, but to the whole of mankind. She told them that Human and Beast were one and the same thing, and that the mark of the Beast was meaningless.

  But she was nothing but a frightened girl. She knew nothing about the ideas she was trying to convey. She used all the right words, but could not make them sound coherent or convincing. They listened to her, and they understood what she said. But her words carried no impact, they were not translated into thoughts and feelings.

  Daniel Skywolf commanded that she be killed.

  A ripple which was almost surprise passed through the crowd as they were reminded that they were witnessing an affair of life and death. None of the speakers had really made that clear. Some of the Beasts realized for the first time that they had passed a death sentence on a girl.

  Ralph Eagleheart and Mark Chaos were content with the way things had gone, and were perfectly prepared. Chaos already had the execution planned as a theatrical climax to the trial. He acted quickly but unhurriedly. With his face set in a mask of sepulchral seriousness, which did not quite hide his satisfaction, he stepped forward to take the girl by the arm.

  She began to cry.

  Chaos murmured something to the men who waited nearby. Four of them took the girl from Chaos and led her to the judge’s chair.

  Skywolf had risen from the chair and turned it round so that its high back was directed toward the small space where the trial had been conducted.

  “Hold her!” commanded Chaos, his harsh voice cutting through the silence which had fallen.

  The girl began to struggle, and pulled one arm free. She lunged away, toward Stormwind, but was hauled backwards. Stormwind and Hornwing each moved forward, but hesitated and stopped.

  The Beasts dragged the girl back to the chair, and pulled her hard up against it. They twisted her arms round the wooden frame, and held her hard, one either side, so that the girl could not move her shoulders. She quietened down and stood still. Tears ran down her cheeks, but there was no sound of sobbing.

  Chaos permitted himself a quick smile while all attention was still fixed on the girl. Then he signalled with a brief gesture of his hand, and four more of Eagleheart’s men stepped forward, carrying rifles. The Lemurides holding the girl drew as far away as possible while keeping her pinned. The riflemen took careful but rapid aim, and fired—not quite unanimously.

  The girl turned her face away reflexively, and her profile flared briefly with a dazzling brightness. There was a transient echo of flame as the head came back full face and the other side caught fire. Then the flame disappeared completely to leave a slowly dissolving black cinder. Black smoke spouted from the eyes and mouth as the blackened flesh peeled away from browning teeth and stained bone. The eyes became caves and the mouth widened into a grotesque smile.

  Blood welled up from the throat, but was black dust before it flooded through the widening gap where the lower palate had been.

  The rifle fire died, and the weapons were slowly lowered. The riflemen sank back into the anonymity of the watching crowd.

  They let the body fall, and she sank slowly to her knees before crumpling up completely. Red blood began seeping indolently from the wreckage of her head.

  The Lemurides left it there, and Chaos turned without a word to walk away. It was left to a shocked and horror-stricken Stormwind to pick up the corpse and carry it away. The death mask of the face still smouldered.

  The assembled warriors melted away. They did not talk much; they were all too busy remembering and thinking. Chaos’s drama had made a crushing impact on them, and although they might not want to occupy their minds solely with thinking about what they had done, it did not seem appropriate to go back to the normal rounds of idle conversation.

  CONTINUATION OF A THEME

  Night had fallen, and the great fires were lit all through the encampment. The largest of all the fires was on the spot where the trial had taken place, and it was at this same spot that the second assembly of the Beasts took place,. This time it was to hear their leader speaking to them.

  Eagleheart had chosen to press home the advantage he had gained that morning by expanding his ideas while the Beasts were still receptive—the seeds he and Chaos had planted still fresh in their minds. He waited for nightfall in order to capture exactly the right moment. A good deal of wine had circulated in the assembly, the clear star-filled sky and the great fires had created the correct mood.

  Eagleheart and Chaos had planned the speech carefully, paying more attention to structure than in the speeches at the trial. This time there would be something for Eagle-heart’s voice to work with in earnest.

  The Beast lords formed a circle around the fire, the warriors behind them in scattered confusion, seeming much more relaxed than during the trial. They ate and drank while they listened, but they listened with the same concentration they had given to the trial. Eagleheart’s magnetic voice captured their attention and held it.

  Eagleheart began by telling them a little of his dreams. He told them about the world of Chrysocyon, and communicated some of his affection for the industrial region where he had been bom. He told them about the great power stations which plundered heat and molten metal from the center of the planet, and the factories which turned the metal into the hulls of spaceships, farm machinery, and more factories. He painted a highly romantic and not altogether accurate picture of the life of the Beasts on Chrysocyon, the hard work and the great reward. He told them of his pride in the Beasts of Chrysocyon, and told the assembly to feel pride in the Beasts of Chrysocyon.

  He told them of the other worlds he had seen, and he told them the story of how a dream had grown—a dream of the unity of the Beasts and of the greatness of the Beast nations. (This was pure fabrication.) The expansive and dramatic gestures of his hands took in the flames of the big fire, and the patterns of stars in the sky, and made them the background to his picture of the great Beast civilization toiling to extract the wealth of the galaxy from thousands of its worlds. He reminded them of the history of the Beasts. He even talked for a while of Moonglow of Amia, ignoring what Moonglow had worked for and using him as an example of the greatness of the Beasts.

  He played upon their patriotism with sickly prose and absurd melodrama. But the Beasts had never been a subtle people. They listened and accepted what he said. His voice and manner were in complete control.

  For a long time, he did not even mention the Human race. The word “Beast” spilled from his lips a hundred times, until every man was steeped in the consciousness of his own Beasthood. Their own individual personalities became gradually lost in the magnificence of Eagleheart’s theme. They began thinking in terms of Beasts on a grand racial scale. In their own imaginations, the unity and fraternity that Eagleheart spoke about, became a reality. In their minds, if nowhere else, the unity of the Beast nations was an accomplished fact.

  Eagleheart spoke of Skywolf, and how the might of the united Beasts had sprung to his defense at his request, as a gesture which proved their brotherhood and unanimity.

  He began to speak of the Humans then. He told in outraged righteousness how first Starbird and then the whole House of Stars had wronged a Beast. He interpreted that wrong as a wrong done to all the Beast nations—a racial insult. He spoke for a brief while of the nature of Human existence, how the whole race, but most especially the House of Stars, were parasitic upon the Beast nations. Even that, he claimed, was not an evil in itself, but an insult to the honor of the Beasts. He claimed that the Human construct sur
geons had made the Beasts to be inferior, that the Humans still considered the mark of the Beast as a stigma. He showed the House of Stars as an unjust tyrant which even overstepped its own laws to steal from the Beasts they already parasitized.

  He made the very structure of galactic civilization an insult to the Beasts. He made the very existence of Human beings an insult to the Beasts. He passed a little beyond the bounds of reason, in his urgency and effort to put his idea into the minds of the Beasts. Under other circumstances it is doubtful that any of the warriors would have accepted what Eagleheart shouted at them now, but, in the dazzle of the moment, they were carried along.

  Somehow, by unsubtle rabble-rousing, he managed to persuade them that they knew what he was talking about.

  He changed their premises slightly, altered the slant of their logic. He destroyed nothing, but distorted their view of the universe a little. He folded the mirror of their existence into a curved surface which magnified certain things and diminished others. He destroyed nothing that they knew was a reality. Never once did he tell a lie which contradicted a definite fact. He told lies which changed values slightly, that was all.

  He did not tell them where he was leading them to, he merely convinced them that he was going the right way. He did not tell them of the wild climax to his real dreams, of the House of Stars reduced to ashes and the Human race doomed to extinction. He made no promises or predictions at all. He offered to defend their honor, he asked them to defend their own honor, but he never mentioned the consequences of their doing so. He offered them the glory which they had not known they lacked.

  And he asked them if they would follow him. He asked them the question ten or twelve times, using different words every time, and allowing his voice to grow and grow in volume. It was crude, but it was effective. He pulled them into the growing flood of sound, so that they answered him while he was still asking.

  All except one, they joined him in a roar of approval.

  Eagleheart’s dream was coming true. The Beasts had been delivered into his hands as a weapon against the unsuspecting House of Stars. The House of Stars would continue to settle their affair of honor, and never realize that they had become involved in a murderer’s dream.

  THE DISSENTING VOICE

  The one who did not answer with approval was Richard Stormwind. He was, perhaps, a wiser Richard Stormwind than the one who had spoken at the trial. A certain amount of thought had made him realize what he had done at the trial, and he felt himself suddenly stricken with unpleasant knowledge.

  When the rifle beams had consumed the girl’s face, Stormwind had been overcome with horror. When he realized that he had wasted his chance to save her, the horror came back again. But, being what he was, the full force of his grief and shame were directed not inwards but outwards toward Ralph Eagleheart.

  He excused his own failure by convincing himself that the incident had caused scales to fall from his eyes and locks from his thoughts. It had allowed him to see Eagleheart for the first time. In truth, he did not see Eagle-heart at all clearly, but what he imagined he saw was close to the truth.

  Stormwind needed to attach the blame for the girl’s execution to Eagleheart, so he made Eagleheart a cruel, vindictive man who wanted to pervert the affair of honor that was the war into an excuse for slaughter.

  And so, when Stormwind heard Eagleheart’s speech to the assembled Beasts, he was able to interpret it. He was able to see it for what it was. Stormwind began to hate Eagleheart.

  But even through the smokescreen he built to protect his own conscience, he was uncomfortably aware that he had made a bad error, that he owed the dead girl a debt which could not be repaid. He did not lose his vanity. It is said that pride goes before destruction, but it is the man who is endangered, not his pride. Stormwind’s vanity remained as strong as ever, and the injuries it had sustained were as hurtful as ever. But nevertheless he felt the debt, and it was partly because of that debt that he stood up to oppose Ralph Eagleheart in the assembly of the Beasts.

  They listened to him, of course. But they did not hear him as they had heard Eagleheart. His voice did not trap them and hold them, it came from outside, a voice from remote wilderness. He stood where Eagleheart had stood, but where the fire had been only a part of Eagleheart’s stage, Stormwind became a shadow in the flames.

  He told them the history of the Beasts in different terms to the ones Eagleheart had used. He spoke more of Adam December than of Moonglow of Amia. He reminded them that everything the Beasts possessed was Human-given, that the Beasts owed everything to the Human race. He tried to destroy Eagleheart’s image of the Human race as a race of parasites.

  He even warned them about vanity and ambition. They might have laughed at that, but their besotted minds were so full of self-admiration and glory that they could not understand. They did not even hear him. Stormwind was just a ghost—an illusion in the smoke from the fire. His words did not awake the tauntings of their consciences as he had hoped. The Beasts forgot him even while he was speaking.

  He told them about Eagleheart—the Eagleheart he had seen after the trial. He warned them about what lay behind Eagleheart’s fine words, about the things the Lord of Chrysocyon had left unsaid.

  But where Eagleheart had drawn pictures in the sky and made them see, Stormwind could only offer them words and ask them to make their own pictures and see for themselves. He could not inspire them.

  He went on to tell them about the vast power that lay in the forbidden weapons which were hidden beneath the House of Stars. He tried to convince them that to attack the House of Stars was suicide. But he was a long way ahead of them by now, and they did not know what he was talking about. And, of course, he was wrong. The Humans would never use the forbidden weapons. It was not honorable, and the Humans were as bound by the code of honor they had created as the Beasts were.

  Stormwind tried desperately to explain why Eagleheart spoke of honor only to delude them, to make them follow him until it was too late to go back, until he had achieved what he set out to do and made Home a bloodbath. Stormwind tried and tried to make sense, to be coherent, and to communicate to the Beasts what he felt; but he was not sure enough of himself. He had no clear idea of what he was doing. His aims were confused and so were the words he spoke.

  Eagleheart listened with his face twisted in anger and fear, the fire in his belly burning cold as he watched his dream threatened, his deception exposed. But Mark Chaos looked on and smiled, because he could see what was happening. He could sense the collective reaction of the Beasts, and knew that although Stormwind was telling the truth, he was only making a fool of himself.

  Stormwind felt the rejection too. He knew that nothing was happening, that the Beasts refused to listen to him. They had already been filled to capacity with the lies and the false dreams. They would not hear a dissenting voice.

  He looked suddenly into the fire-lit face of Mark Chaos, and was transfixed by the terrible, mocking smile. He could not understand Chaos. He did not know where Chaos fit in. The Aquilan was no mere disciple of Eagleheart, because Eagleheart raged with anger while Chaos only smiled.

  And Chaos smiled on, with a strange delight in his smile. Stormwind had lost. He had failed. Now if and when the same question arose again, and Stormwind’s words were brought forth in accusation, the Beasts would have heard them before, and because they had rejected them once, they would reject them again. Eagleheart was probably safer now than he had been before Stormwind had stood to oppose what he had said. Stormwind had failed for the second time in a day, but this time it was not his vanity which had failed him, but his lack of ability.

  Richard Stormwind conceded defeat. He ended his speech with dull prophesies of darkness and shame. Even he had stopped listening to what he said by now. No one laughed— no one cared. In the midst of glory, they had lost the voice of sanity.

  HORNWING

  Robert Hornwing is just one of many men who might have saved the situation. He has a better ch
ance than most because he is closer to Richard Stormwind than most, and therefore has more opportunity to realize, if not the truth, the danger of what the war is building into. But by the time Hornwing is ready to acknowledge and accept the truth, it is far too late—he is alone.

  He is tall and very powerful, with white skin and very pale blond hair. His eyes are light green. He is, perhaps, one of the strangest of the Beasts in the matter of appearance. The Beasts, in the beginning, were modelled to a widely accepted standard of normalcy; but different worlds make slightly different demands, and Ligia is an odd world in some ways.

  Like Judson Deathdancer, Hornwing is representative of a widespread type of Beast personality. He has a very confused character—his insight varies in depth. He finds it difficult to get a full picture of the world into any kind of focus. There are always things he cannot quite grasp, things he cannot quite see. And so he always has doubts. He is never sure of himself. Hesitation has become a habit.

  He is trapped by a long heritage of the importance of reputation, the duel as a defense of honor, and the arena as sport. The kind of bombastic tirade which Eagleheart is so fond of has been poured into his ears by everyone he knows from a very early age. He lacks the imagination to question Eagleheart, or the mental capacity to break free from his web of lies. Even though Hornwing is not a stupid man, he is not equipped to see the truth when it is rammed into his face.

  He is perpetually forced, throughout the war, to see flashes of truth, and is always frightened and perplexed when they do not agree with his assessment of the world. But the impact never has any real effect. He staggers blindly on down the path he has always trodden before. Eventually, too much truth and irreparable damage to his blurred visualization of the universe causes alienation from Eagleheart.