The Days of Glory Page 5

  But his opposition is cut short before it really starts. He looks into Heljanita’s crooked wheel and is ready enough to do what it suggests. He commits suicide instead of trying to stop Eagleheart’s plan.

  He has a great deal of faith in Stormwind and is deeply affected by Stormwind’s death. But never at any time has he the strength to keep faith with Stormwind and carry on what Stormwind started. Perhaps he is not to be blamed for that. Stormwind himself did not keep faith.

  It is useless to criticize Robert Hornwing for what he did not do. After all, it was not that he was a fool, or even a weakling. He was only a failure, as were most of the great heroes of the war.

  STORMWIND’S DECISION

  Stormwind wandered alone in the darkness. He was wondering what to do. More important, he was balancing what he ought to do against what he wanted to do. He was not clear about either of those things, and so his problem was complex. He was not merely struggling with his conscience— which is inevitably a futile fight—he was trying to find out what his conscience wanted him to do.

  Robert Hornwing was looking for him. Hornwing, as his cousin and his friend, thought that it was incumbent upon him to look for Stormwind and offer help. He had been puzzled by Stormwind’s speech, and had listened a little harder than most. But he had got no clear impression of what Stormwind had been trying to say and had gathered only that Stormwind was troubled. And so he wanted to offer his help not realizing that the help which Stormwind needed he was unwilling to give.

  He found his cousin, eventually, sitting under a tree, plucking leaves from the lower branches and letting them drift to the ground from his near lifeless fingers.

  “What are you doing?” asked Hornwing.

  Stormwind shrugged. “Thinking about Eagleheart. Thinking about me. And the war.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Hornwing laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t want you to do anything. It’s for you to decide. I can’t offer you any advice because I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m not sure what you are trying to achieve. Do you want to pick a fight with Eagleheart?”

  “Not really. I’m thinking of doing the opposite, and leaving altogether.”

  “You can’t do that,” protested Hornwing. “If you take out your ships we would be bound to lose the war. Even if only you withdrew, we would be seriously weakened. As a commander, you would be difficult to replace. As a warrior, impossible. It would be disastrous to the morale of the fleet.”

  Stormwind laughed. “Your thoughts run along different lines from mine. Besides, I am beginning to think that it might be better for everyone if we did lose the war.”

  That was near heresy, to Hornwing—and to almost any other Beast or Human. It was a straightforward denial of a whole way of life. It almost placed Stormwind in the same category as Eagleheart, but whereas Eagleheart was genuinely different, Stormwind was only confused.

  Hornwing said nothing. The surprise he felt at Storm-wind’s suggestion placed Stormwind’s troubles—whatever they were—well beyond his comprehension. He simply waited for Stormwind to elaborate, if he cared to.

  But Stormwind only wanted to talk. He did not want to say anything. “It’s not easy,” he murmured. “I sit out here, away from the firelight, and I look up into the sky and see the stars. There’s my home, and your home, and the home of every one of us somewhere in that long silver streamer the Humans call the milky way. Were very near the edge out here. Most of the stars in the galaxy are lost in that ribbon of light. Sabella, Ligia, Sula, Chrysocyon. Not Home though. Its sun is somewhere over there. You can’t even see our suns as separate entities. The bright, lone stars belong to someone else. It makes one feel a difference, between our home and the Home of the Humans. But it’s only an optical illusion.

  “Someone I once knew used to be always saying ‘Listen to the stars.’ They speak silently, but you can understand what they say. I keep asking myself whether all that isn’t worth defending, and how I can best defend it.” Stormwind moved his arm in an arc delineating the milky way. “Galactic civilization reduced to a white haze in the sky. That’s all it is in our minds—just a mutely glowing shadow built into chains of nucleic acid molecules. How important are the things it stands for?

  “I don’t know. I’ve always been too self-centered to wonder about that. I never listened to the stars.’ But now something of great importance is happening right here and it concerns me directly. It would help if I had the man who advised me to listen to the stars here now, to tell me what things mean. But he’s dead. He tried to teach me, but he died before I was ready to learn. Will I die before you and the others are willing to listen to me?”

  He finished with an appeal for help, but he knew that no help was forthcoming. Hornwing had no help to offer. In time, he would regret that he had not at least tried; but for the moment, Hornwing could only say, “I’m sorry.”

  Stormwind gestured with his hand, hopelessly.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m all alone. I have to make my decision by myself. But I have to be so careful If I withdraw, I have to be certain that what I’m doing is absolutely right. Because it will cost a great deal. Every man in the galaxy will see it as something it isn’t. They’ll call it cowardice, or stupidity. The Humans will be the last people to give me credit. If I try to do what I think is right, I’ll be condemned for it forever. And it might not even stop him. He might go on and do what he has always intended to do.

  “And he must be stopped. His ambitions are simple murder. I’ve tried to think of another way of doing it, short of murdering him, but I can’t find one. The Beasts won’t listen to me. So I have to do what I can.

  “Can’t even you see that his stirring up hate for the Humans is wrong? Can’t you see that it can only lead to ruin? His ideas of racial pride are nonsense. His elevation of the mark of the Beast to a symbol—a manifestation of a fundamental difference—is stupid and destructive. The mark of the Beast means nothing. What is there to stop Beast and Human intermating?”

  “They don’t,” said Hornwing.

  “Not very much. But there’s no unwritten law against it. Could you tell a hybrid from a Beast or a Human? Of course not. You’d call him a Beast if he bore the mark, and a Human if he didn’t. You probably have Human blood in your veins. So have I. So has Eagleheart. There hasn’t been a great deal of introgression from Human to Beast lines, but in ten thousand years…the mark of the Beast means no more than red hair or blue eyes. Eagle-heart’s crusade is senseless.”

  “I think you’re misjudging him,” said Hornwing hesitantly. “You’ve said a lot of things about him that you have no real evidence for. I think you’re reading far too much into his speech. Of course, he’s a bit arrogant. He gets carried away. Maybe he didn’t even mean all the things he said. I’m sure he doesn’t believe all the things you claim that he does. I watched him while you were speaking to the assembly. He was furious. I think you misread him badly. You’re making far too much of a few exaggerations in a speech. I think you should forget all of this.”

  Stormwind looked into Hornwing’s earnest eyes. “You’re blind,” he complained—not bitterly, but with a hint of hopelessness. “You were at the trial, you listened to his speech. But you don’t understand. You didn’t see what was there to be seen.

  “I’ve made up my mind. If only to protect you and others like you from your own blindness, I must withdraw from the war. The ships of the Ursides will not lift from Diadema until the matter between Starbird and Skywolf is settled, and the war is over.”

  CONSEQUENCES OF DECISION

  No assembly was called. None was needed. Every Beast on Diadema knew of Stormwind’s decision by morning. The Ursides did not like it. But although Eagleheart commanded the fleet, their only responsibility was to the lord of Sabella, and they had to abide by his decision. Their dislike was quickly made apparent. Saul Slavesdream, himself a lord, might have spoken, but he remained silent. He too
disliked the decision, and theoretically it was not binding upon him. But politically, what Sabella did, Vespa was bound to do. And whatever Stormwind did, Slavesdream would follow without question. He refused to defend his friend against any charges which were made against him. He refused to say anything at all. But he was absolutely determined that if the Ursides were grounded on Diadema, so were the small force of Lutrides he had brought from Vespa.

  Eagleheart was angry at first, and then his anger gave way to worry. Chaos was also afraid. Both felt that without one of its greatest individual warriors, and one of the strongest contingents of ships, the fleet was weakened far beyond any real hope of winning the war. They had taken comparatively heavy casualties on Merion, perhaps even heavier than the Humans. But they had seemed expendable in the interests of introducing new dimensions gradually into the war. But those missing men would be doubly missed now. The Beasts were in very bad trouble.

  Eagleheart and Chaos, and with them Judson Death-dancer, Daniel Skywolf and Cain Rayshade, went to see Stormwind. Robert Hornwing stayed away. The minor lords awaited news anxiously.

  Stormwind at first refused to speak to them at all. Then, after Deathdancer claimed that he and his fellows had a right to know why Stormwind was throwing away their cause, he came out of his ship and faced them.

  He was surprised to see that none of them were openly hostile—not even Eagleheart, apparently…The commander of the fleet had decided that diplomacy must take precedence over personal feelings. If necessary, and if he thought that it would work, he would beg Stormwind to return. But he allowed Deathdancer to ask the question of why Stormwind had chosen this course of action.

  Stormwind replied: “My quarrel is not with you, Lord Deathdancer of Falcor, but with the commander of the fleet. I feel that I can no longer commit either myself or the men for whom I am responsible to his command. I sympathize with Lord Skywolf of Sula, and I am confident that his personal quarrel with David Starbird is a just one. But I can no longer agree that Eagleheart of Chrysoeyon is solely concerned with that quarrel. He is preparing for a war of his own, that will have nothing to do with Star-bird’s abduction of the girl to whom Skywolf lays claim.

  “I no longer believe that I, nor any other Beast lord, have any direct involvement in Skywolfs affair of honor. We are being used. Perhaps we should never have joined the fleet in the first place, and if so, it is our mistake and we should admit it. But be that as it may, I feel bound by my honor to withdraw my support from what I now perceive to be the aims of the commander of the fleet.”

  “Others would not call it honor,” said Skywolf. Deathdancer silenced him quickly, but the words had been spoken more with disappointment than with accusation.

  “We need you, Lord Stormwind,” said Deathdancer. “We need your ships and we need your own great fighting ability. Without you this war might easily be lost. In that case, an affair of honor will be lost because of strife between those concerned with one side of the quarrel. That is not an honorable settlement. I think that having committed yourself to our cause when Lord Skywolf asked you to join the fleet, you must now honor your obligation. I see no way that you can withdraw with honor because by withdrawing you are doing irreparable damage to the honorable settlement of Lord Skywolfs quarrel.”

  “Lord Skywolf has allowed the settlement of his quarrel to be subverted. Eagleheart has changed the cause for which you fight. You may not even realize it because he has been clever and he has the gift of tongues. You were bursting with courage and generosity last night, and your malleability was exploited. You listened to propaganda in the guise of patriotism. While your lips drank wine, your ears drank poison. I was committed only to the cause for which I was asked to join the fleet. That was a good cause, although I no longer think that this was a good way to settle it. That cause has been lost. You and I, Lord Deathdancer, no longer belong here. All our commitments ended when Eagleheart began to preach about the unity of Beasts against Humankind. The purpose of this war is no longer honorable, and I am compelled to take no further part in it.”

  “I can quite understand,” said Mark Chaos gently, “that you were unhappy about what happened to the girl. Perhaps, in time, I will come to regret that myself. But I believed, and still believe, that what we did had to be done. It is over now, and I ask you to forget it. I can understand how the relationship between what Lord Eagleheart said at the trial and what he said that evening must have made you think that he was implying things that you did not like. But every word he said was true and just. I ask you to consider carefully and see that your anger has been aroused by the execution, not by the change in objectives which you claim to have noticed.

  “Remember what you promised Daniel Skywolf when you joined us, and honor that promise.”

  “Lord Chaos,” said Stormwind, “you are a clever man. I think you are clever enough to know that what you have said is all lies.”

  Chaos contrived to look hurt and regretful, and not in the least angry about the insult.

  “I fear. Lord Stormwind,” he replied, “that I—unlike yourself—still believe us to be on the same side, and therefore I am not free to take exception to your words. I had hoped to persuade you to see what lies behind your rashness, not to goad you into anger. I apologize sincerely for any offense my efforts may have caused.”

  Stormwind shook his head tiredly, ignoring the sneering irony in Chaos’s words.

  “Go away,” he said. “I have said all that I intend to say. You know my reasons now. I will not stand here and allow you to call me a fool or a liar.”

  Chaos raised his eyebrows to claim innocence of any such intention, but Deathdancer glowered at him. Ralph Eagleheart led his companions away. He wore a look of sorrow on his face that was somewhat more convincing than Chaos’s exaggerated air of having been misunderstood. Death-dancer and Cain Rayshade both looked disappointed and puzzled. Eagleheart’s sorrow was for his dreams, which now seemed fainter once more.

  VIEW FROM THE HOUSE OF STARS

  Starcastle of Home likes to look out of the small windows set high in the spires of his palace. They tower high over the rest of the miniature city, and he can see a long way into the desert. In name, if little else, he is monarch of all he surveys, but he never feels that way when he looks out of the high windows. He feels like a child peeping out into the great big world so remote and illimitable.

  At night he can see through the hemisphere of omega-energy, which domes the city and protects it from nameless evils as though it were not there. By day he can see it as a pale, spectral barrier as it distorts the sunlight passing through it. It is as though by day it hides the city, but by night—when the city most needs protection from the ghostly forces of the imagination—it is not there. It seems to guard the city from the friendly sun, but not from the hostile stars.

  Where the House of Stars stands now, there was once a city a hundred times as large, and arterial roads running out into the industrialized suburbs in all directions. Now there remains only the myth of that claustrophobic, filthy mess. The high, cramped apartment buildings, office blocks and automated factories have been deliberately erased and built anew on thousands of other worlds. The roads have been destroyed. The desert was created in an age of lust for empty, desolate, wasteful space. The city that stands here now is fanatically clean. There is no industry. Nothing at all of value is produced on Home now. Centuries of overcrowding made the pendulum swing the other way entirely when the pressure was suddenly lifted and all the galaxy was accessible in a matter of days. Emptiness and loneliness became things of value. Quietness and cleanliness became precious. Before, they had been priceless because they were totally unavailable.

  But that was all a long time ago. Now people have become able to hate the emptiness and resent the loneliness. But even though they are able to, they are not allowed to. The old ideals cling tight. The straitjacket of the way Star-castle’s ancestors thought still commands the way society ought to behave.

  So the desert sta
ys desert. And the people stay unhappy.

  STARCASTLE

  Lord Starcastle of Home is nominally the most important man in the universe. He is the figurehead of galactic civilization. He guides the stars in their courses, is the emperor of the Human race and the overlord of the Beast nations.

  He is woefully unfitted to the task. He is a good man, and an intelligent one, but he is not ruled by his intelligence. He is proud, but sick and weak. He is forever afraid of nameless phantasms which he cannot see and hesitates to believe in. An unkind fate led him to marry a woman who was just as weak and ineffectual, who made him worse instead of giving him strength.

  He looks the part of the father of the stars: he is tall and handsome, with coppery-golden hair, liquid brown eyes and a charm that makes him popular with the Beasts. Among his own race he is not so popular. The relationship between Starcastle and his people is hard to explore because he is a man who responds and justifies what others think of him. He is sensitive to dislike and responds to it by making himself difficult to like. If feared, he would be terrible, if despised, despicable.

  But there is only a vague, almost trivial dislike. Starcastle is not the example to his race that he ought to be. His faults are obvious; he encourages them into the open rather than trying to conceal them. His social adjustment is lax, and he is not above reproach. He accepts the social stigma of bearing many children, either to demonstrate something to himself, or perhaps to justify the dislike which might have been illusory in the first place.

  Starcastle is an unhappy man. He does not like his crown and throne. But he owes what he is to history, and he must try to be grateful. He cannot abdicate; he must make the best of it.