“I suppose,” he went on with a rising inflection which indicated he supposed no such thing, “you as a fighting man find that as—unpleasant as Taddeusz did?”
Hansen looked at the king out of the corner of his eyes. “No,” he said, “I don’t. If I can work myself out of a job here, then . . . then I’ll have accomplished something. Something.”
He shrugged, then barked a laugh. “Anyway,” he said, wondering if Golsingh would understand just what he was admitting, “the job I’m doing at the moment’s always been the only important thing to me. That hasn’t changed since I wound up here.”
“Yes, well . . . ,” Golsingh said to his warchief’s back. “In a duel, skill and the quality of one’s armor are the important; but in a battle, a melee . . . often the better man falls to the lesser.”
“I said I fucked up,” Hansen said. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t’ve been out there tonight, it just means that I don’t know everything. Yet.”
“You’ve trained the men very well,” Golsingh said. “And the Thrasey contingent, of course. We miss your company when you’re in Thrasey, you know.”
He cleared his throat again. “Unn often asks when you’ll be returning. When you’re at Thrasey or . . . just away from Peace Rock.”
Hansen looked at the king. “Krita’s still missing?” he asked.
Golsingh nodded. “Yes,” he said. He toyed with his moustache before resuming, “Unn—we—would be very upset if something happened because you’d put yourself in a position that someone else could have handled just as well.”
Hansen held the rag over his face and eyes. He wondered if the hot, prickling flush he felt crawling over his skin was visible to the man sitting behind him.
“You see,” Golsingh continued softly, “I need you if my—dream of peace is to succeed. And that’s more important to me than anything.”
“You don’t need me,” Hansen replied in a thick voice.
He dropped the cloth into the basin and faced the king. “You’ve learned the important part,” he said. “Strike for the head and never mind the little shit, that’ll come when the head falls.”
Golsingh opened his mouth to speak, but Hansen chopped him off with an abrupt motion of his hand.
“Tactics?” Hansen continued. “Malcolm and Maharg can handle that now. Maybe there’s still some tricks they haven’t got yet, but they’ve learned how to learn, and that’s the important thing.
“You don’t need me anymore.”
The king stood up. His face wore a quiet smile. “Be careful tomorrow,” he said. “That’s all I ask. We ask.”
He walked to the flap, then looked over his shoulder again at Hansen. “After all,” he said, “you’re also my friend.”
Hansen continued to stare at the tent flap long after it had closed behind Golsingh.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“We have to destroy them!” Rao snarled, more to himself than to his peers gathered with him in North’s hall. “Ruby destroyed Diamond, so we have to destroy Ruby.”
“We mustn’t let anger rule us,” said Miyoko. She stared at her tented fingers, and her words—like Rao’s—were a personal litany.
“We’ll destroy Ruby,” North said from the high seat. If Rao’s anger was volcanic, then North’s face was a thundercloud and his words clipped flashes of lightning.
From behind a veil of light Penny snapped pettishly, “We can’t do that, we’re linked. And anyway, it’s just one of those things that happens, and I don’t think we ought to let ourselves get so upset.”
Dowson pointedly dropped the shield of light behind which he usually sheltered to save the sensibilities of his peers. He floated before them, a brain in a tank of oxygenated fluid.
The outer surface sublimed from the cone of colored ice beside him. His words washed across the assemblage: “Our oaths and our selves guarantee the existence of Ruby.”
“Forget that!” said Rao as his wife clutched his forearm with tears of concern in her eyes. They all knew the degree of single-mindedness of which Rao was capable, but Ngoya knew her husband best of all. “We guaranteed Diamond, didn’t we? And they destroyed it. Ruby killed Diamond, so Ruby has to die!”