The Warlock of Sharrador

The Thorn blaster that lay melting on the thick pile of his officer's quarters was the opening shot in the extermination program.

The McCanahan let the breath from his lungs in a sudden relief. He sat with his back propped against the leg of the chair, and the hand that held his own Thorn shook so that he put his wrist on his naked knee. He was a tall man, a man grown hard and fit with the mechanical fitness that was the hallmark of all officers of the Solar Intergalactic Command. Blond hair was cropped close to the conformations of his head, giving his face a hard, carven look.

The mark of deep space was in Kael McCanahan's eyes, and in the catlike walk and movements of his big body. He had been processed as only Spacefleet officers were processed, in these days of the Empire, with a cold precision to his mind and a careful hardness to his body.

He came off the floor and began to dress, sliding into the white uniform with its crimson facings, pushing feet into highly polished jet boots. His mind went to his father, the Sire Patric McCanahan, who was Earth representative at the court of the High Mor, overlord of Senorech.

"If they've made their try for me, they've already made it for him," he told the room.

He buttoned his white jacket that had the golden eagles at collar and cuffs. He whipped the leather service belt around his middle. He fastened the black blaster holster to its pivot.

The door opened to a fingerpress, and he was out in the long, metaloid hall, moving with long strides. A woman came out of the shadows to meet him, running.

"Kael! Kael--wait!"

It was Cassy Garson, in her white nursing uniform that was always a little too tight for her curved body. Like many other Earth officers on the distant planets of the empire, the McCanahan had fond memories of the Nursing Auxiliary of the Fleet. Cassy Garson had been a lot of fun, on a dance floor or under the curved canopy of a canalboat, or on the silken cushions of a reflexifloor.

Her soft hands caught his, and he could feel her body's tremblings as she came against him. "Kael, you've heard! Oh, Kael, I'm scared! What'll they do to us?"

"Talk sense, Cassy!" he snapped, knowing his nerves frayed and jumpy because of the metal thing he had melted in his room. He softened his voice, and told her of it.

Her dark eyes were frightened things. "They killed your father tonight! The same way, probably. A Thorn blaster was found a foot from his gloved hand. It looks like suicide. The High Mor has sent word that we're to leave. All of us. No more Earthers on Senorech!"

Cassy whispered in the stillness of the corridor, "We've orders to be aboard the Eclipse by noon. To chart our course for Antares. To get out of the Rim planets and stay out."

The McCanahan drew a deep breath. His tight collar choked him, and a vein swelled and throbbed in his hard face. "He's afraid of the sfarri. Sfar is close to the High Mor's home galaxy. May the gods curse a man so driven by fear he'd murder a man who wished him nothing but good!"

Cassy shook against him. "Kael, let's rouse the others! We've got to be on the Eclipse by noon!"

There was nothing he could do now, nothing except swallow the bitter truth that he was running from a fight, that he was leaving his dead father on an alien planet with not even a shamrock to blow in the breeze above his grave. His father, one of the Bloody McCanahans, who had scratched their names on graves from Mars to Makron, who had been born to the service of the golden eagles, and now lay with no man to whisper a prayer over his dead body.

McCanahan shook himself like a cat stretching after a sleep. The anger boiled within him, locked inside his guts by his tight lips. "I'm going to get his body, Cassy. I'll take it back with us for decent burial."

Her hands tightened until the red nails cut into his flesh. "You're a fool, Kael McCanahan! A stubborn fool that's walking to his death! Don't you understand? That's just what the High Mor wants you to do! He'll have his dragon killers waiting for you, like cats standing at a mouse-hole in the kitchen flooring!"

"Let them wait," he growled, but her hand dragged him along the corridor, to door after door of the fleet barracks. They roused the honor guard, eighty men in all, the most allowed on Senorech by the High Mor. Men tumbled from their bunks with sleep glazing their eyes, but they wakened fast enough, with Cassy and the McCanahan to whip them into action.

They found Captain Edmunds of the Eclipse half dressed. A small, chunky man, he showed the years of his service in the crowsfeet at the corners of his eyes and the faint silver that threaded his curly black hair.

"I'm sorry, Kael. You're The McCanahan now, but that doesn't mean a thing, not after what's happened. Get aboard the ship. I'll bring the men, and whatever they want to take along."

Cassy said, "I've alerted the nurses. They'll be ready at blast-off time."

Within an hour, it was done. Sober men in white uniforms were filing out of their quarters by twos and threes, with their warbags slung over shoulders or hanging by leather thongs from their wrists. They moved across the city in a body, nurses in their center, their hands wrapped on the walnut butts of their service blasters.

McCanahan lost himself five minutes before Captain Edmunds took them out of barracks, toward the silver bullet that was the S.I.C. Eclipse. He stepped from Cassy Garson's side, into an intersecting corridor, and moved down a flight of steps to the basement. It was easy, down here among the great heating tubes and dynamos, to stand and wait until the bootfalls faded. Cassy came once to a ramp, and called, but her voice echoed hollowly in the cellar unanswered.

Twenty minutes after they were gone across the city, McCanahan was sliding through the shadows cast by the monolithic buildings, and moving along the broad avenue flanking the Jaddarak canal. Ahead of him were the white bulks of the government buildings. Somewhere in those towering multi-windowed edifices, his father lay dead, with a Thorn blaster close to his hand.