“Thank you,” Rick said. He took the message paper. Tylara stood next to him and read as he did.
“REGRET INFORM YOU LORD CARADOC DO TAMAERTHON KILLED IN STREET RIOTS ONE MARCH FROM DRAVAN. COURT OF INQUIRY HELD BY WANAX RULES ACCIDENTAL DEATH BY FALLING. I AGREE WITH THIS VERDICT. WANAX HAS PROCLAIMED THREE DAYS OF MOURNING AND WILL PERSONALLY COMMAND FUNERAL GAMES. WANAX HAS GRANTED LIFE PENSION AND TITLE TO CARADOC’S CHILD. “AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS, “MASON.”
Rick stared uncomprehendingly at the paper. He felt Tylara’s hand on his arm.
“What is it?” Gwen asked.
“Bad news,” Rick said. As he said it he felt waves of relief wash over him. He was ashamed of that. Yet- “Bad news,” he said again. “Lord Caradoc is dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes,” Tylara answered. “Your husband, my lady. He died in our service, and whatever honors the Wanax has not granted I will give from my purse. Husband, come, and leave the Lady Rector to her grief.” She turned and marched from the room.
Gwen looked from Rick to Les. The pilot opened his arms, an almost imperceptible gesture, and she moved toward him.
Rick carefully closed the door as he left the room. We’re saved again, he thought. For a while, at least. A good man has died, but that accident has saved more than Caradoc alive ever could. We have Les, and with his help the Shcilriuksis won’t destroy everything. Knowledge will survive.
When he reached the quadrangle, they’d put out the fire in the coke oven.
Afterword
The Janissaries saga began with a question in Jerry Pournelle’s mind. If the UFO’s seen for thousands of years are really extraterrestrial spaceships, why haven’t they made contact with human beings? He decided that they were kidnapping human beings for some sort of illegal business. This got Pournelle as far as the opening scenes of Janissaries, with the mercenaries boarding the flying saucer and Tylara’s council of war at Castle Dravan.
A couple of years later Jim Baen, then sf editor at Ace Books, saw the two scenes and liked them. At about the same time Baen’s boss, Tom Doherty, was starting up Ace’s line of illustrated sf novels. He wanted something from Pournelle. Unfortunately, the first story they chose couldn’t be expanded to the point where it could honestly be called a “novel.” So they substituted the story of the mercenaries kidnapped to help aliens grow drugs on Tran.
There was no problem with expanding this story. In fact, when Pournelle hit 60,000 words, Ace was shouting, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” and the story was barely half told. Janissaries was destined to have at least one sequel from the moment it was finished.
Just to make everybody happier (not to mention richer), Janissaries sold better than anybody had expected. It sold lavishly in trade paperback, mass-market paperback, and even a hardcover edition originally intended for libraries! Foreign publishers lined up to bring it out in England and all over the British Commonwealth, in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, Spain, France…
Meanwhile, at the World Science Fiction conventions in Washington in 1974 and Kansas City in 1976, Pournelle met Roland Green, a young fantasy writer from Chicago. He’d liked Green’s two fantasy novels, Wandor’s Ride and Wandor’s Journey. The talk fl-owed freely; Pournelle and Green discovered a good many interests in common (military history, good liquor, the work of H. Beam Piper). Friendship grew, a correspondence began, and eventually Pournelle proposed a collaboration on an sf military-adventure novel. Green flew out to California. When he flew back to Chicago ten days later, he took an outline of Janissaries II and marching orders to produce the first draft.
This meeting of minds promised well. Authors are normally as territorial as grizzly bears; any collaboration starts by having to overcome this fact. Pournelle and Green didn’t have too much of this problem. There were, however, a few others.
-The logistics of a transcontinental collaboration. (Express mail and long-distance phone calls will expedite communication and empty bank accounts.)
-Technological incompatability. (Pournelle uses a word processor, Green used a rapidly-declining Smith-Corona which in fact died to produce Clan and Crown. R.I.P.)
-One of the worst winters in Chicago’s history.(Having your bathroom drain frozen solid for three days does drive away the Muse.)
-Ace Books changing hands twice while the book was in progress. (But a good editor can help overcome even the consequences of having your publisher hawked around the public streets like a kosher dill pickle. Susan Allison and Beth Meacham are good editors.)
-Above all, the fact that like the first Janissaries, Clan and Crown kept growing; both old characters and new started writing their own lines, scenes, and whole chapters. (Green was heard to mutter about “The Incredible Growing Novel” or “The Mercenary Who Ate Poughkeepsie.” He was not tyro enough to argue with his own characters, particularly when all of them were so well armed.)
Problems enough to keep life interesting. Still, two authors who agree on how to tell a story can usually get where they’ve planned to go. And of course, if you’ve done it once, it encourages thinking about doing it again….