The Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®. Randall Garrett

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СКАЧАТЬ no one ran to lock the doors that stood between the Viceroy and his enemies, and only a few drew their weapons to defend him. The others fled. Getting out of a window from the second floor of a building isn’t easy, but fear can lend wings, and, although none of them actually flew down, the retreat went fast enough.

      Characteristically, the Viceroy headed, not for the window, but for his own room, where his armor—long unused, except for state functions—hung waiting in the closet. With him went Sir Martin.

      But there wasn’t even an opportunity to get into the armor. The rebel band charged into the hallway that led to the bedroom, screaming: “Death to the Tyrant! Long live the Emperor!”

      It was personal anger, then, not rebellion against the Empire which had appointed the ex-commander to his post as Viceroy.

      “Where is the Viceroy? Death to the Tyrant!” The assassins moved in.

      Swords in hand, and cloaks wrapped around their left arms, Sir Martin and the Viceroy moved to meet the oncoming attackers.

      “Traitors!” bellowed the Viceroy. “Cowards! Have you come to kill me in my own house?”

      Parry, thrust! Parry, thrust! Two of the attackers fell before the snake-tongue blade of the fighting Viceroy. Sir Martin accounted for two more before he fell in a flood of his own blood.

      The Viceroy was alone, now. His blade flickered as though inspired, and two more died under its tireless onslaught. Even more would have died if the head of the conspiracy, a supporter of Young Jim named Rada, hadn’t pulled a trick that not even the Viceroy would have pulled.

      Rada grabbed one of his own men and shoved him toward the Viceroy’s sword, impaling the hapless man upon that deadly blade.

      And, in the moment while the Viceroy’s weapon was buried to the hilt in an enemy’s body, the others leaped around the dying man and ran their blades through the Viceroy.

      He dropped to the floor, blood gushing from half a dozen wounds.

      Even so, his fighting heart still had seconds more to beat. As he propped himself up on one arm, the assassins stood back; even they recognized that they had killed something bigger and stronger than they. A better man than any of them lay dying at their feet.

      He clawed with one hand at the river of red that flowed from his pierced throat and then fell forward across the stone floor. With his crimson hand, he traced the great symbol of his Faith on the stone—the Sign of the Cross. He bent his head to kiss it, and, with a final cry of “Jesus!” he died. At the age of seventy, it had taken a dozen men to kill him with treachery, something all the hell of nine years of conquest and rule had been unable to do.

      And thus died Francisco Pizarro, the Conqueror of Peru.

      THE END

      To be read after you have finished

       “Despoilers of the Golden Empire.”

      Dear John,

      It has been brought to my attention, by those who have read the story, that “Despoilers of the Golden Empire” might conceivably be charged with being a “reader cheater”—i.e., that it does not play fair with the reader, but leads him astray by means of false statements. Naturally, I feel it me bounden duty to refute such scurrilous and untrue affronts, and thus save meself from opprobrium.

      Therefore, I address what follows to the interested reader:

      It cannot be denied that you must have been misled when you read the story; indeed, I’d be the last to deny it, since I intended that you should be misled. What I most certainly do deny is any implication that such misleading was accomplished by the telling of untruths. A fiction writer is, by definition, a professional liar; he makes his living by telling interesting lies on paper and selling the results to the highest bidder for publication. Since fiction writing is my livelihood, I cannot and will not deny that I am an accomplished liar—indeed, almost an habitual one. Therefore, I feel some small pique when, on the one occasion on which I stick strictly to the truth, I am accused of fraud. Pfui! say I; I refute you. “I deny the allegation, and I defy the alligator!”

      To prove my case, I shall take several examples from “Despoilers” and show that the statements made are perfectly valid. (Please note that I do not claim any absolute accuracy for such details as quoted dialogue, except that none of the characters lies. I simply contend that the story is as accurate as any other good historical novelette. I also might say here that any resemblance between “Despoilers” and any story picked at random from the late lamented Planet Stories is purely intentional and carefully contrived.)

      Take the first sentence:

      “In the seven centuries that had elapsed since the Second Empire had been founded on the shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor.”

      Perfectly true. By the time of the Renaissance, the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire knew that their empire was not just a continuation of the Roman Empire, but a new entity. The old Roman Empire had collapsed in the Sixth Century, and the Holy Roman Empire, which was actually a loose confederation of Germanic states, did not come into being until A. D. 800, when Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne) was crowned emperor by the Pope.

      Anyone who wishes to quibble that the date should be postponed for a century and a half, until the time of the German prince, Otto, may do so; I will ignore him.

      A few paragraphs later, I said:

      “Without power, neither Civilization nor the Empire could hold itself together, and His Universal Majesty, the Emperor Carl, well knew it. And power was linked solidly to one element, one metal…”

      The metal, as I said later on, was Gold-197.

      By “power,” of course, I meant political and economic power. In the Sixteenth Century, that’s what almost anyone would have meant. If you chose to interpret it as meaning “energy per unit time,” why, that’s real tough.

      Why nail the “power metal” down to an isotope of gold with an atomic weight of 197? Because that’s the only naturally occurring isotope of gold.

      The “Emperor Carl” was, of course, Charles V, who also happened to be King of Spain, and therefore Pizarro’s sovereign. I Germanicized his name, as I did the others—Francisco Pizarro becomes “Frank,” et cetera—but this is perfectly legitimate. After all, the king’s name in Latin, which was used in all state papers, was Carolus; the Spanish called him Carlos, and history books in English call him Charles. Either Karl or Carl is just as legitimate as Charles, certainly, and the same applies to the other names in the story.

      As to the title “His Universal Majesty,” that’s exactly what he was called. It is usually translated as “His Catholic Majesty,” but the word Catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning “universal.” And, further on in the story, when the term “Universal Assembly” is used, it is a direct translation of the Greek term, Ekklesia Katholikos, and is actually a better translation than “Catholic Church,” since the English word church comes from the Greek kyriakon, meaning “the house of the Lord”—in other words, a church building, not the organization as a whole.

      Toward the end of Chapter One, I wrote:

      “Throughout the Empire, research laboratories СКАЧАТЬ