The Navigator of Rhada Read Online Free PDF Page B

To his own people, the loss would be grievous--there were so few Vulks left. But to man, to his Empire and his destiny--?
    He turned his featureless face to LaRoss and was about to command the First Minister to take him to the dying star king’s quarters when the ancient stones of Melissande began to throb to the slow beat of a huge, muffled drum. The men in the hall stood quite still, listening. Then through the rainfall came the mournful call of a military trumpet sounding last post.
    Tirzah drew the sign of the Star on his mailed chest. His eyes were suddenly filled with tears. “Kreon is dead,” he said.
     
     

5
     
    TORQUAS XIII ( called the Poet), Eighteenth Vykan Galacton of the Second Empire, 6,212 GE-6,252 GE. Son of Torquas XII and Manana of Eleuthera (daughter of Silentus the Thin, Amir of Epsilon Cygnus 9). Last of the Torquans, Torquas XIII came to the throne after the assassination of Torquas XII by officers of the Vegan Imperial Household Troops. He is known to historians primarily for his association with General the Honorable Alain Veg Tran, victor of the Battle of Eridanus ( 6,209 GE), Imperial Proconsul ( 6,215 GE-6,220 GE), and leader of the AbasNav (anticlerical) party from 6,210 GE to 6,220 GE. . . .
Nav (Bishop) Julianus Mullerium, Anticlericalism in the Age of the Star Kings, middle Second Stellar Empire period
     
    As the authors of almost every revolution that distracted the empire, the Praetorians will demand attention; ... in their arms and institutions we cannot find any circumstances that discriminated them from the legions, save a more splendid appearance and a less rigid discipline.
    Fragment found at Nyor (Tel-Manhat), Earth,
attributed to Edward Gibbon, a historian of the middle Dawn Age period
     
    Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
    Dawn Age proverb
     
    In Earth’s northern latitudes, the season was spring. From the terraces of Tran’s hunting lodge atop the ridge of mountains in the Western Land, the fertile Saclara Valley could be seen through the haze--green from the mountains to the bay, dotted with orchards and thicket-lik e parks.
    To the man from Gonlan, the land seemed lush, overly ripe, and tamed. Yet he knew that packs of great wild dogs roamed the fields of Saclara: dogs maintained by the general as game for the blood sports he loved to the exclusion of almost all else except war and politics.
    The people of the valley, who were descendants of the original survivors of Earth’s Dark Time, habitually went about Tran’s lands in company with armed Vegans, members of the general’s personal guard. This was said to be for their own protection against the wild, semi-intelligent dogs; but it seemed to Karston, born to the freedom of the Rim, that the Veg soldiers served as much to suppress any dissent among the tenants as to protect them from the packs.
    From his vantage point on the uppermost terrace of the fortress-like lodge, Karston could see a party of Veg warmen riding up the long, straight path from the valley. There were six of them, and the scales of the armored horses glinted in the warm spring sunlight.
    There were ground cars in the lodge: three of them. But these were reserved for the personal use of General Tran and his secretary, a stocky Vegan warlock named Quinto. The machines were the newest hovercar design from Nyor, and they could cover the distance from the lodge overlooking Saclara to the spaceport at St. Francis Town in less than an hour. But the tame look of the land was deceptive, and since it was impossible to travel by hovercar anywhere except on the floor of the valley or along the muddy shores of St. Francis Bay, most of the general’s people were horsemen.
    Karston studied the animals with interest as the war party approached the lodge’s outer defenses. Vegan chargers were descendants of the original breeding stock taken to the Vegan planets by the Imperial officers of the First Empire. Like the horses of Rhada,