Rogue Dragon Read Online Free PDF Page A

struck at him, leaped away free. In another moment she was lost in the screaming crowd.

III
    The mob did not manage to free the convicted man but did manage to wreck the Court House thoroughly, and was in the act of burning it when the hastily summoned soldiery attacked. The standing army of the City-State of Peramis was small, but it was disciplined and the mob was not. Hence the battle, though nasty and brutish, was also short. The plebs, still roaring defiance, scattered, leaving their dead behind them.
    The murderer, who had killed the Gentleman in a fight over more compensation for his hunt-trampled crops, was executed as scheduled; and in the usual manner: bound and gagged and hanged by his feet in the main square, he was filled with arrows by a squad of masked archers.
    Whether this was a mistake or not, was much discussed at the Lodge. Chief Commissioner Narthy, killing time until the arrival of the weekly aerospace ferry for ConfedBase—the only area of Earth under direct Galactic rule, it was located on the landmass which the Kar-chee had created out of the Andaman Islands—“Hunter” Narthy treating the lounge-bar to a farewell round of drinks, insisted it was a mistake.
    “Why, they’ve given the mob a martyr,” he said, sipping. “Everyone of those poor, down-trodden plebs that witnessed the execution is a potential rebel leader. No… the execution should have been carried out privately, if at all. Then a program of education and land-reform, taking into cognizance the legitimate aspirations of the pleb-peoples—”
    But an elegantly-dressed trader from the Blue Worlds shook his head. On the contrary, he said, to do in secret what had always been done in public would have been to admit to a fear of the mob. And nothing, he said, is more calculated to increase a mob’s power.
    “Besides,” he went on, caressing his glass, “what legitimate aspirations of the pleb-peoples’ exist? Every Doghunter would like to be a Gentleman, and who can blame him? But who can agree that this is a legitimate aspiration? An armada can’t consist of all admirals, can it? As for the right of Hunts to go across plowed land—why, it’s part of the age-old principal of eminent domain. This planet has no other resource but its Hunts, no other justification for Confederation being here—or for anyone from outside ever visiting the place.”
    A middle-aged Company PR man nodded. “And without us,” he said, “the place would sink back into barbarism. You can’t base a civilization on planting potatoes. No, we owe it to our ancient Mother World to continue our fructifying contact with it.”
    However convinced the lounge-bar was, much of the population of Peramis thought otherwise. The atmosphere in the streets was hostile, several visitors were jostled or stoned, and that night a Gentleman’s country seat was attacked and burned and a number of its loyal servants slain. All in all, Jon-Joras thought he understood why Dr. Cannatin had decided to set up his base of operations elsewhere. He sought out Jetro Yi.
    “What do you think of arranging my king’s hunt in another city-state?” he asked. “Sartor or Hathis or Drogue? It would not do for his visit to be disturbed by all this unrest.”
    Jetro shook his head. “It would stir up jealousy, P.M. Utterly. We always try to avoid creating antagonisms of that sort.”
    Jon-Joras scanned the map. His finger pointed. “How about this area called The Bosky? Base the hunt in Peramis, officially, but have it there, in no-man’s-land.”
    However, Jetro even more earnestly opposed this. He doubted that such arrangements could be completed in time—he was, in fact, certain that they could not. Jon-Joras afterwards concluded that Jetro was likely much more concerned with the loss of his commission if the Hunt was held in another district… but he felt himself ill-equipped to argue against those who held the local ground. He allowed himself to be persuaded that the