Anen heard the sizzling sound of another beam.  Another shot would kill him.  He jerked at Bara's head as if in a spasm of pain and fell to the sand.  He lay just as he'd fallen, one arm twisted painfully under him.  There were just the six of them in the arena and one of them had shot him!  He was betrayed!  The word echoed in his head---betrayed, betrayed, betrayed---beating time with the throbbing pain.  He lay very still and hoped the traitor would think he was dead.

After the first shock, pain seemed to sharpen his senses.  Boots scrunched on sand.  Anen held his breath.  Someone was breathing quickly and very loudly nearby.  Coming back for one final shot?  Anen couldn't risk a look.

"Get him!" Kosh shouted from somewhere across the arena.  

Despair swept Anen.  Kosh?  Not Kosh?  Boots scrunched quickly closer.  Anen tried to prepare himself for the final shot.  A large hand slid under the collar of his tunic and gently touched the pulse in his throat.

"Alive, thank God," Stanis called to the others.  "Don't move, Anen," he added softly.  "There are men coming from the clinic with a litter.  The Benix brothers are on your other side. We think the man's gone, but we don't want to give him a chance for another shot.  Kosh and Popov have gone after him.  Don't move."  Stanis lifted away the burned edges of Anen's beamer jacket and began to swear, fiercely and quietly.  

There was no other sound in the arena.  Anen tried again to ease the arm he'd fallen on, but that pulled the muscles in his burned back.  Anen heard himself whimper, then he blacked out.  He briefly came to, when he was put on a clinic litter.

"Put it in hover mode," he heard one of the techs say.  "That way we'll be able to push it faster than it'll move by itself."

"His quarters, Troopleader?" another tech asked.

"Main clinic," Popov answered curtly.  "He needs help right now."

Then darkness fell again.  When Anen next opened his eyes, he was in a small, bare room lit by a nightlight near the floor.  The air smelled like medicine.  He was lying face down, strapped to a man-shaped frame.  He strained against the straps, trying to lift his head enough to see something more than the floor.  The movement made the skin on his back feel like it was crinkling up and it hurt incredibly.  Anen put his head back down on the forehead and chin supports with a moan.  This didn't look like the clinic.  He'd had an intimate acquaintance with the clinic since Garden 4.

He fought off panic.  Where am I?  How long have I been like this?  He tried to twist his head to see to the sides, but only succeeded in hurting his back again.  He bit his lip hard to prevent a scream of pain.  Despair washed over him.  HIs House was still in great danger, and he was weaker than a kitten.  Anen heard a door opening slowly and saw the rectangle of light from outside get longer and longer until it lay yellow on the floor beneath his chest.  Shoes went snap, snap, on the polished floor.  Anen twisted his neck to see who it was and the twisting hurt.

"Nay, lord. Don't move." A man's hand with a loose, black sleeve touched his arm gently.  The man moved closer, but the light was so dim that all Anen could see was his dark robe.   The man took Anen's pulse.  "Orderly, the lights."

A dark shape outside the door moved, the lights came on, and the man in the black robe crouched beside the bed with Anen's eyes.

"L'tdauo!" Anen had not recognized the gentle, concerned voice as that of the harsh, acid-tongued man he thought he knew well.

"Da.  Who else would it be?" The acid returned to the doctor's tongue.  L'tdauo studied Anen's face.  "You've been having nightmares, lord.  You struggle with them so much you break open your back again and again.  You were very lucky.  Your metallized jacket reflected enough heat that you have only a middle-degree burn, and your friends got you here at once.  Your whole back is burned."  The doctor looked down at the polished floor for a moment and his voice was lower, rougher, when he continued.  "We thought for a time you were going to die, lord."

"Where am I?"

"Well, milord," the doctor drawled.  "I know the Family always gets treated in Family quarters, but I couldn't have gotten the equipment upstairs, even if there'd been enough time to do it.  Here." L'tdauo stood, leaned hard on one side of the frame, and Anen found himself faceup, resting against the straps and slings that had held him down.  L'tdauo patted Anen's arm.  "There, that's better, isn't it?  Easier for you. Easier for me.  When a man's got fifty winters, his knees aren't what they once were.  Now, what was I saying?  Oh, where you are.  Well, actually this used to be a supply closet.  I had it cleared and disinfected while you were receiving emergency treatment."

Anen blew out a sigh of relief.  "I was afraid at first I'd been captured...."

"Captured, Lord Anen?  In your own castle?"

Anen looked away, ashamed now of his suspicions.  "I didn't recognize this place.  There are a lot of men in the castle from other Houses, there's at least one traitor living here, and I---I suspected my friends."

"It wasn't reasonable, but it wasn't surprising, either, considering your upbringing.  Before any of you were born, lord, your sire had two friends try to turn him over to the Moaekods.  He never got over it.  And your great-grandsire, of course, was a friend to the Moaekod of his generation---until he shamed the Duke by Sealing the woman the Duke expected to wed."  The doctor shook his head, as if, even after all the generations between, he still couldn't believe a man would do such a thing to a friend.  "Right on the Midnight Ship he did it...."

"Was it one of my friends?  No one can load a beam-cartridge for a light-cartridge by accident."

"Like I told you, milord, those five saved your life.  The offworld giant and the Benix brothers shielded you from another attack while Pilot Bubov commed me and then, with Popov, chased down the assassin.  The man had been a com officer until you broke him from service.  Your friends convinced him to talk; he said Lord Gaito had heard of his breaking to the ranks and offered him money and a chance to get back at you.  He took it.  Troopleader Popov found decadalers in his pockets, far more than a com officer could save in years.  Unfortunately, he broke away from Pilot Bubov, who should not have been indulging in such business with his arm in a cast anyway and was stun-killed as he tried to escape through the conservatory skylight.  Your friends assume he was the one who set up the secret com link, also the one who had tortured Aster to death."   L'tdauo laid a hand on one of Anen's in sympathy.  "I was sorry to hear that, lord.  The little creature had been here longer than I .  I shall miss him."

Anen bit back grief.  "I'd hoped he was the only one---a com officer could have talked to Garden 4 and to Moaekod's listening post, could have laid the secret line into the castle.... but to have cash money...." He shook his head and grimaced and was silent from the pain for a moment.  "No one from outside has been her since Congress.  Gaito still has someone in this House."

"That seems to be the case, lord."

Talking seemed to consume a lot of energy.  Anen lay silent for a moment, then said huskily, "I suspected my friends.  When they had done nothing to deserve it, I listened to my sire's lying voice and suspected them!"  In spite of himself, a tear slipped down Anen's cheek.  He bit hard on his lip to prevent any more escaping, but it was no use.  He had lost the strength to resist.  He turned his head away so the doctor would not see.

Dr. L'tdauo produced a large handkerchief and patted up the tears.  "Do not feel shame, young lord," he said gruffly.  "In times after great pain, while the body and will are still weak, tears are acceptable, often unavoidable.  I've seen them in older, less-hurt men than you."  L'tdauo moved towards the door.  "There's a buzzer under your left hand if you need anything.  Go back to sleep.  I'll come again in the morning."  He turned out the lights.

"Doctor?"

L'tdauo paused in the doorway, a silhouette against the light in the hall.

"What day is it?"

"5 Taez, late, milord."

"How long will I be---when will I be all right again?"

"It depends.  Three to four weeks, usually."

"Sentinels!  That long?"

"Your whole back is burned.  Yes, that long.  Longer if you're not careful after we take you off the man-frame."

"That's 5 Lodolum!"

"Da, lord.  Goodnight, milord."  L'tdauo went the rest of the way out and shut the door.

Anen lay awake for a time, staring at the faint shadow of the man-frame that the nightlight made on the ceiling, feeling the damp tracks tears left on his face and neck.  But the effort of talking and the earlier struggle against the straps had left him very tired and he was soon asleep.

Anen spent the next two weeks on the man-frame, being turned "like a griddle cake," as he called it.  He had so many Family visitors that Dr. L'tdauo was forced to limit visiting hours.  Cim and the two older female hostages visited often, properly chaperoned by Lady Einnen, a tall, dour woman of uncertain age, or the Dlinnyy.  The young women played Deeps and Fliers with him or retold the ancient tales of the Puredorv.

"That's courting behavior," Anen complained to the Dlinnyy one afternoon when they were alone.  "I'm tied down and helpless and two young females come courting.  Korol's niece is the only female of age, and she's so colorless I can't even remember her name more than one hour at a time."

"Axanna."

"I don't care what her name is!  It's embarrassing to be courted by someone I don't even like."  The subject of Axanna made Anen want to turn his back and walk away, but the bonds of the man-frame made even a small movement of rejection impossible.  "Besides," he muttered, "the man's supposed to do the wooing."

Lady Anya laughed.  "That is the rumor, yes, but except for the Midnight Ship brides, you'll find that rumor isn't really true.  Watch Cimmaron when she's near young Bubov, for example.

"Cim? Kosh?  Good!  I hope she catches him."

"I thought you didn't like females to do the wooing."

"Cim's special."

"Were the girls on Raaros 'special,' too?  From Stanis's stories, you didn't object to their wooing."

"It's different there." For a moment he saw Ntasha---long arms and legs and curly red hair---and Vara----petite and dark, with slanting eyes and ridiculously long lashes.  "The same behavior was just friendship there.  There was no---seriousness in being with a female.  We enjoyed their company without thinking of marriage and appropriate Family alliances.  On Raaros people marry for love or friendship."

"Ridiculous!" the Dlinnyy snorted, "and dangerous.  Only carefully planned alliances hold society together.  Love is for children like Cimmaron and young Bubov."

"They're both of marrying age, Lady Mother."

"They both know we don't need a marriage to tie our Houses closer.  No, they'll marry elsewhere, both of them."

"What about me?  Are there women of suitable ranks for me among the Families?  This Axanette is the only female of proper age I've met and she's intolerable.  Do I marry a Freewoman?"

"Her name is Axanna. And don't be absurd.  Even if the family would allow it, the Freemen would never let you marry into them.  They won't risk their precious neutrality by marrying into Houses."  The Dlinnyy paused, looking thoughtful.  "We could afford a Midnight Ship in five- or six-years' time, if all goes well.  Maybe you and Kosh and some of the Panshin boys could get together and...."

"The Panshins are Kosh's friends, not mine.  Arad Panshin has refused the help he promised at Congress, remember?"

The Dlinnyy drew back a little, offended.  "You don't have to snarl at me.  The Panshins protected you at Congress, did they not?  What I'm trying to say is, House Kurharay desperately needs another heir.  Vanya's boys are south of the equator with their mother and there they'll stay, at least until our House is safe.  You must think of marrying, soon, and a Midnight Ship bride would bring such prestige to our House."

"Five or six years is too soon.  Vanya's eldest will be eight or nine years old by then, old enough to rule through a regent."

"Humph!" The Dlinnyy tossed her head disdainfully.  "If those boys are raised completely by that woman Vanya married, they're unlikely to have a brain in their heads."

"She came from House Bunin, didn't she?" Anen could help the snide insinuation in his tone.

The Dlinnyy stiffened.  "I didn't say any woman from the Houses would be suitable.  Gaina is a bewitching little thing.  I suppose she can't help it if she has no brains and Vanya didn't object."  The Dlinnyy stood gracefully and smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt.  "We've talked enough, and I have castle business to see to.  I'll be most glad when you can take the reins completely, Son."  She swept out the door.

Anen smiled at the grandeur with which the tiny woman moved, but the humor faded fast.  His nose itched and he could not scratch it.  His neck ached and he would have to call someone to turn him over.  He needed a bedpan and that was the most humiliating part of the entirely unpleasant man-frame experience.  He grimaced and sighed and pressed the call button.

After 25 days, Dr. L'tdauo liberated Anen from the man-frame.  "No strenuous exercises," the doctor ordered sternly, "no stretching those back muscles, no lifting, not so much as a zapper.  Nothing heavier than a fork for another week, at least.  I'll change your dressings in your quarters each day.  Expect it."

"Yessir, Doctor sir."  Anen snapped a salute.  And winced.

L'tdauo gave him a sour smile.  "It serves you right, young man.  Up five minutes and you're already sassy.  Go on, get out of my sight."

Since Bubov's cast was removed about the time Anen was released, the two men worked back to their former combat-ready physical condition together.  Despite the training, despite his improving physical condition, Anen knew Gaito Moaekod could best him in any weapons match, and he had powerful doubts about his own ability to meet and counter any move Gaito, through his trustee, would make against Moaekod.  He knew, come Thawtime, Gaito Moaekod would do something towards the fulfillment of his terrible vow as soon as he could move men and equipment, and Anen had nobody to lead Moaekod against him.  He didn't want to use General Rerfidail, because he felt that General Rerfidail would not obey orders different from what Lido. P. Kurharay would have commanded in a similar situation. Yet Anen had no equally experienced senior officer.  As a result, Anen spent the remainder of Arast and all of Taez with a sense of doom hanging over him.

He was worrying the problem as he watched the soldiers from Bajor, Zeltser, and Bubov training daily with the Purples; the men of the two minor Houses had been unable to return home after the oath-feast because of the weather and had been granted permission to fight with Kurharay.  Anen reminded himself grimly that such permission came only because no House would feed extra men for the winter if those men would not fight for that House.  Without such a promise, Lido would have sent all two hundred away, to let the storms of Ghorr do what they would.  He worried the problem each day after military drills when he went over and over the lists of men and supplies that would be needed to successfully fight off a siege.  Each time Anen went over the lists, he looked for an officer to replace General Rerfidail.  There was no one of equal experience, no one.  Every time he got to this point in his thinking, the process stalled, because Anen had to face the thought that he, as Czar-of-House, would have to lead the fight against Moaedok himself, armed only with book knowledge.  The thought frightened and appalled him.  He had already done what he thought was best for Kurharay in dealing with Garden 4 and with the rebellious vassals.  Each time, the Puredorv had condemned him for cowardice.  Each time he had lost supporters, and the loss of Panshin was a disaster that could not be mended except with a decisive victory over Moeakod in the next encounter.

In addition, there was the strong possibility that, since Astin Moaekod was dead, Thawtime Congress could end the Moaekod trusteeship at once and, with Moaekod allies in the majority, it probably would.  Congress could even decide to remove the Dlinnyy as regent, install some other regent, or remove Anen and replace him as Dlinnyy or Moekod, just because he would not be of age until a month after the Congress meeting.

As a result, Anen learned to live with disaster hanging over his shoulder.  For the rest of the Family, the winter passed in its usual fashion---taking inventories, making weekly trips to chapel for First Day services, visiting by 3D with friends and vassals, and reading or playing games for houses.  Stanis was bored and fussy before Taez was half-over.  

"How can you stand this?" he demanded plaintively of Anen in a private corner of the library.  "Everyone sits around playing and gossiping...." Stanis paused to watch Kosh and Cim, with the chaperone, leave, and his eyes gleamed speculatively.  "Kosh, now, has something to think about."

"It's just puppy love.  They'll get over it."

"Hmmm," was all Stanis answered.  He stood and stretched until his joints cracked.  "I want to do something.  At home, we ski, race ice-boats....."

" 'At home' the wind wouldn't blow you from here to the equator," Anen snorted.  "You'd arrive there frozen stiff.  Nobody goes out in Taez, even for an emergency.  We were fortunate to get all our Elites back the day of Ilin's crash."

"Give me something to with my hands, then, Anen.  I feel like I could crawl out of my skin."

Anen looked at his friends and his mouth twisted thoughtfully.  He chewed his lower lip.  "You did some portraits of Ntasha once, and the big picture of the Academy's mall that blew up with my cabin on the Zhernak.  Paint me something on the bare wall across from my bed, something to remember you by when you've gone home.  Some of the crafthalls in Buruq can supply you with materials."

Stanis started for the door at once.  He touched Anen's shoulder on the way past.  "Thanks, brother.  Maybe my skin and I will still be together come Thawtime."

"Can you find your way?" Anen called after him.

"You know me.  I can find my way out of a maze blindfolded."

Anen smiled to himself.  It was true; Stanis had an uncanny sense of direction.

Stanis settled into his new project right away. "Svarog, the father of Dazhbog and Svarozhits at a Rodnovery temple, scenery from Raaros," he told everyone who asked what he was doing and many who did not, told them at length, and in glowing detail.

On 8 Thal, the Gild broadcast to all members of the Planetary Council that Gild and Patrol officials had finished the investigation of the Zhernak affair, that the trial had begun, and that it should be concluded by 1 Creyrev, ten days before the Thawtime Congress.  Just like everyone else on Mirl'da V, the Moaekods gathered to watch the 3D cast.

"Why has it taken them so long, Anen?" Cim asked when the announcement ended and the picture of the 1st Merchant's office vanished.

"The Patrol ship nearest Mirl'da was three Gild-weeks away.  When the Patrol arrived, the crew and the three surviving passengers had to be questioned, evidence found and analyzed.  Then the Patrol had to find a jury of peers on Ruzuqkdae's home planet and conduct a trial over monitors.  All the while, someone from Gild or Patrol had to pacify the governments of the passenger witnesses, explaining why free citizens were being held in protective custody above a backwater world instead of going about their business elsewhere.  The trial process is very expensive and maybe the Gild had to borrow money from another Gild sector to help pay for it.  In the Federation, the common government pays for such long-distance trials.  Here, the Gild must spend its own profits to protect its reputation, and that does not make the directors of the Gild happy in the slightest.

Anen looked thoughtfully at the now-blank 3D screen.  The surface blurred and vanished as his mind turned inward, to the consequences of the trial for Kurharay and Mirl'da V.  He continued speaking to Cim without taking his eyes from the screen.  "The 1st Merchant told me this morning that, as of this day, the Gild will never again carry a Family passenger anywhere.  From now on we're trapped in our own system.  No more pleasure trips."  Anen took a shuddering breath, then continued with a bitter edge to his words.  "The Midnight Ships mean all other planets will know of us now----kidnapping and terror and killing sometimes.... Sentinels!   The Gild protects its profits at Mirl'da V's cost! How can our planet become more like Divine planets if no one can visit them?  Mirl'da will stagnate, then rot in its traditions and barbarisms!"

Cim put out a comforting hand.  Anen flung it off and bolted from the room.  Cim found him again, much later, sitting crosslegged on his bed, staring at Svarog, already painted in his place at the altar of the Rodnovery temple at his hammer and anvil about to pound a piece of iron into some kind of shape.

"I didn't realize until now that I look at our planet like that, Cim.  I hate the cruelty here and the senseless traditions, traditions kept only because they've always been kept.  If the Gild shuts us out and the Freemen keep themselves apart, the Rodnovs of Mirl'da Vi will take over." Anen stared at his hands, knotted together on his knees.

"Our side hasn't lost yet, Anen," Cim's voice was soft, nearly a whisper.

Anen wriggled his back.  "No?  I was lucky with the zapper.  The next time..."

Cim flung her arms around him and squeezed hard.  "Oh, Anen, I don't want to lose you!"

Anen smoothed her soft brown hair.  "It's the way of our planet, little sister, as you told me not many months ago.  How many of the last ten Dlinnyys lived more than thirty winters?"

"Four."

"More than forty winters?"

"One."

"I've got to look that in the face and learn to accept it, Cim, and it's hard, oh, it's hard!"  Anen put his arms around her and rocked from side to side, his face in her warm hair, feeling her tears on his neck.  "I love life and I love my family.  I want to have children and grandchildren.  I want to be old.  Oh, Cim, I wanted to stay on Raaros!"  There was a long silence, then Anen lifted his head and tipped Cim's back so she looked at him.  "I didn't want you to know that, Cim.  I haven't told anyone else."

Cim buried her damp face in his neck again and held him fiercely tight.  They were still that way when Mooses called from outside the door.  "Congressional Chairman Zubrugov requires your presence in the 3D room, milord."

"Surely it can wait."

"Nyet, lord.  He says now.  Congress rules, something like that."

Anen set Cim away, brushed the tears from her cheeks, kissed her, and got up.  He changed his wet and wrinkled tunic for a dry one, then told Cim, "You can stay here until you feel better."

In the 3D room, the Dlinnyy, General Rerfidail, Useomkdok, and Bardiriom stood waiting.  On the screen, Chairman Zubrugov looked up from some papers he was reading.

"Hello, Kurharay.  Recovered well from your burn, have you?"

"Well enough, milord.  What does the Congress want of me?"

"It is Congressional law that any House intending to besiege another give forty days public notice, so that neutrals in the dispute and noncombatants may leave the siege site."  Zubrugov cleared his throat.  "The Paladin of Masxad, as trustee for House Moaekod, announces a siege of Castle Buruq and city, Kurharay Holding, to begin forty days from this or 9 Erozai of the new year."395Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpwBOwQAJqg

"No noncombatant can possibly leave before 31 Erozai!  You know the weather in Thawtime, milord!"395Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgKiJ7J1KBu

"I'm sorry, Kurharay.  The law makes no provision for weather-related delays.  Masxad and Moaekod have fulfilled the law.  Stand by for siege."  Zubrugov abruptly broke the connection and his image disappeared.395Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlJ9ArSQavx