No one had come out to greet the Emperor.

There were six thousand natives in the plaza, and not a sign of the invaders.

The commander, hiding well back in the shadows in one of the rooms of the central building, watched through the window and noted the evident consternation of the royal entourage with satisfaction. Frater Vincent, standing beside him, whispered, "Well?"

"All right," the commander said softly, "they"ve had a taste of what we got when we came in. I suppose they"ve had enough. Let"s go out and act like hosts."

The commander and a squad of ten men, along with Frater Vincent, strode majestically out of the door of the building and walked toward the Greatest n.o.ble. They had all polished their armor until it shone, which was about all they could do in the way of finery, but they evidently looked quite impressive in the eyes of the natives.

"Greetings, Your Effulgence," said the commander, giving the Greatest n.o.ble a bow that was hardly five degrees from the perpendicular. "I trust we find you well."

In the buildings surrounding the square, hardly daring to move for fear the clank of metal on metal might give the whole plan away, the remaining members of the company watched the conversation between their commander and the Greatest n.o.ble. They couldn"t hear what was being said, but that didn"t matter; they knew what to do as soon as the commander gave the signal. Every eye was riveted on the commander"s right hand.

It seemed an eternity before the commander casually reached up to his helmet and brushed a hand across it--once--twice--three times.

Then all h.e.l.l broke loose. The air was split by the sound of power weapons throwing their lances of flame into the ma.s.sed ranks of the native warriors. The gunners, safe behind the walls of the buildings, poured a steady stream of accurately directed fire into the packed mob, while the rest of the men charged in with their blades, thrusting and slashing as they went.

The aliens, panic-stricken by the sudden, terrifying a.s.sault, tried to run, but there was nowhere to run to. Every exit had been cut off to bottle up the Imperial cortege. Within minutes, the entrances to the square were choked with the bodies of those who tried to flee.

As soon as the firing began, the commander and his men began to make their way toward the Greatest n.o.ble. They had been forced to stand a good five yards away during the parlay, cut off from direct contact by the Imperial guards. The commander, sword in hand, began cutting his way through to the palanquin.

The palanquin bearers seemed frozen; they couldn"t run, they couldn"t fight, and they didn"t dare drop their precious cargo.

The commander"s voice bellowed out over the carnage. "Take him prisoner!

I"ll personally strangle the idiot who harms him!" And then he was too busy to yell.

Two members of the Greatest n.o.ble"s personal guard came for him, swords out, determined to give their lives, if necessary, to preserve the sacred life of their monarch. And give them they did.

The commander"s blade lashed out once, sliding between the ribs of the first guard. He toppled and almost took the sword with him, but the commander wrenched it free in time to parry the downward slash of the second guard"s bronze sword. It was a narrow thing, because the bronze sword, though of softer stuff than the commander"s steel, was also heavier, and thus hard to deflect. As it sang past him, the commander swung a chop at the man"s neck, cutting it halfway through. He stepped quickly to one side to avoid the falling body and thrust his blade through a third man, who was aiming a blow at the neck of one of the commander"s officers. There were only a dozen feet separating the commander from his objective, the palanquin of the Greatest n.o.ble, but he had to wade through blood to get there.

The palanquin itself was no longer steady. Three of the twelve n.o.bles who had been holding it had already fallen, and there were two of the commander"s men already close enough to touch the royal person, but they were too busy fighting to make any attempt to grab him. The Greatest n.o.ble, unarmed, could only huddle in his seat, terrified, but it would take more than two men to s.n.a.t.c.h him from his bodyguard. The commander fought his way in closer.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Two more of the palanquin bearers went down, and the palanquin itself began to topple. The Greatest n.o.ble screamed as he fell toward the commander.

One of the commander"s men spun around as he heard the scream so close to him, and, thinking that the Greatest n.o.ble was attacking his commander, lunged out with his blade.

It was almost a disaster. Moving quickly, the commander threw out his left arm to deflect the sword. He succeeded, but he got a bad slash across his hand for his trouble.

He yelled angrily at the surprised soldier, not caring what he said.

Meanwhile, the others of the squad, seeing that the Greatest n.o.ble had fallen, hurried to surround him. Two minutes later, the Greatest n.o.ble was a prisoner, being half carried, half led into the central building by four of the men, while the remaining six fought a rear-guard action to hold off the native warriors who were trying to rescue the sacred person of the Child of the Sun.

Once inside, the Greatest n.o.ble was held fast while the doors were swung shut.

Outside, the slaughter went on. All the resistance seemed to go out of the warriors when they saw their sacred monarch dragged away by the invading Earthmen. It was every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. And the Devil, in the form of the commander"s troops, certainly did.

Within half an hour after it had begun, the butchery was over. More than three thousand of the natives had died, and an unknown number more badly wounded. Those who had managed to get out and get away from the city kept on going. They told the troops who had been left outside what had happened, and a ma.s.s exodus from the valley began.

Safely within the fortifications of the central building, the commander allowed himself one of his rare grins of satisfaction. Not a single one of his own men had been killed, and the only wound which had been sustained by anyone in the company was the cut on his own hand. Still smiling, he went into the room where the Greatest n.o.ble, dazed and shaken, was being held by two of the commander"s men. The commander bowed--this time, very low.

"I believe, Your Effulgence, that we have an appointment for dinner.

Come, the banquet has been laid."

And, as though he were still playing the gracious host, the commander led the half-paralyzed Child of the Sun to the room where the banquet had been put on a table in perfect diplomatic array.

"Your Effulgence may sit at my right hand," said the commander pleasantly.

XIV

As MacDonald said of Robert Wilson, "This is not an account of how Boosterism came to Arcadia." It"s a devil of a long way from it. And once the high point of a story has been reached and pa.s.sed, it is pointless to prolong it too much. The capture of the Greatest n.o.ble broke the power of the Empire of the Great n.o.bles forever. The loyal subjects were helpless without a leader, and the disloyal ones, near the periphery of the Empire, didn"t care. The crack Imperial troops simply folded up and went home. The Greatest n.o.ble went on issuing orders, and they were obeyed; the people were too used to taking orders from authority to care whether they were really the Greatest n.o.ble"s own idea or not.

In a matter of months, two hundred men had conquered an empire, with a loss of thirty-five or forty men. Eventually, they had to execute the old Greatest n.o.ble and put his more tractable nephew on the throne, but that was a mere incident.

Gold? It flowed as though there were an endless supply. The commander shipped enough back on the first load to make them all wealthy.

The commander didn"t go back home to spend his wealth amid the luxuries of the Imperial court, even though Emperor Carl appointed him to the n.o.bility. That sort of thing wasn"t the commander"s meat. There, he would be a fourth-rate n.o.ble; here, he was the Imperial Viceroy, responsible only to the distant Emperor. There, he would be nothing; here, he was almost a king.

Two years after the capture of the Greatest n.o.ble, he established a new capital on the coast and named it Kingston. And from Kingston he ruled with an iron hand.

As has been intimated, this was _not_ Arcadia. A year after the founding of Kingston, the old capital was attacked, burned, and almost fell under siege, due to a sudden uprising of the natives under the new Greatest n.o.ble, who had managed to escape. But the uprising collapsed because of the approach of the planting season; the warriors had to go back home and plant their crops or the whole of the agriculture-based country would starve--except the invading Earthmen.

Except in a few instances, the natives were never again any trouble.

But the commander--now the Viceroy--had not seen the end of his troubles.

He had known his limitations, and realized that the governing of a whole planet--or even one continent--was too much for one man when the population consists primarily of barbarians and savages. So he had delegated the rule of a vast area to the south to another--a Lieutenant commander James, known as "One-Eye," a man who had helped finance the original expedition, and had arrived after the conquest.

One-Eye went south and made very small headway against the more barbaric tribes there. He did not become rich, and he did not achieve anywhere near the success that the Viceroy had. So he came back north with his army and decided to unseat the Viceroy and take his place. That was five years after the capture of the Greatest n.o.ble.

One-Eye took Center City, the old capital, and started to work his way northward, toward Kingston. The Viceroy"s forces met him at a place known as Salt Flats and thoroughly trounced him. He was captured, tried for high treason, and executed.

One would think that the execution ended the threat of Lieutenant commander James, but not so. He had a son, and he had had followers.

XV

Nine years. Nine years since the breaking of a vast empire. It really didn"t seem like it. The Viceroy looked at his hands. They were veined and thin, and the callouses were gone. Was he getting soft, or just getting old? A little bit--no, a _great deal_ of both.