The World Wreckers Read Free

then someone called his name and he saw Danilo come running up to him, drawn
    weapon in hand. The younger man stopped a little way off, lowering his weapon.
    He said, stubbornly and with concealed anger, "Now maybe you'll listen, Lord Regis. If you go out again without a proper escort I swear by all of Zandru's hells that I will not be responsible; I will ask my oath back and return to Syrtis. If the Council doesn't have me flayed alive first for letting you be killed under my very eyes!"
    Regis felt weak and sick; the dead man lying in the street had no ordinary weapon but a nervegun which
    would have made him—no, not a corpse but a vegetable, all his neural circuits paralyzed; he might live,
    spoon-fed and incommunicado, forty years. He said through suddenly trembling lips, "They're getting
    rougher. That's the seventh assassin in eleven moons. Must I become a prisoner in the Hidden City,
    Dani?"
    "At least they don't send dagger men against you any more."
    "I wish they did," Regis said. "I can hold my own with any dagger man on this world; so can you." He looked at Dani sharply; "You're not hurt?"
    "A graze. My arms feel dipped in molten lead, but the nerves will heal." He brushed off Regis'
    concerned queries, his offers of help. "The only help I need, Lord Regis, is your promise not to walk alone in the city again."
    Regis said, "I promise." But his eyes were hard. "Where did you get the weapon, Dani? A Compact-forbidden weapon? Give it to me."
    The younger man surrendered the blaster. He said, "It isn't illegal, vai dom . I went into the Terran Trade City and applied for a permit to carry it here. And when they knew whose body I guarded they gave it to
    me with a good will—and so they should."
    Regis looked troubled. He said, "Call a guardsman to bury that," he pointed to the charred corpse of the assassin. "No point in examining the body, I'm afraid; it will be like all the others, a nameless man, no trace of his whereabouts known. But he needn't lie in the street, either."
    He stood by, distressed and aloof, while Danilo summoned a green-and-black uniformed City Guard,
    and gave orders. Then he turned to Danilo and his eyes were hard.
    "You know the Compact." For generations on Darkover war and combat had been unknown; mostly due to the Compact, the law forbidding any weapon which can go beyond the hand's reach of the user; a law
    which allowed dueling and raiding but wholly prohibited the wide spread of battle or carnage. The
    question, addressed to Danilo, was purely rhetorical—every six-year-old child knew of the Compact—
    and the youth did not answer. But even before Regis' angry gaze—and the anger of a Hastur could kill—
    Danilo Syrtis did not drop his eyes.
    He said, "You're alive and unharmed. That's all I care about, Lord."
    "But what, in the name of any god you like, are we living for , Dani?"
    "I, to keep you alive."
    "And what are we living about? We are living, among other things, so that the Compact be kept on
    Darkover and the years of chaos and cowardly killing never come back to our people!" Regis sounded
    half wild with rage and despair, but Danilo did not quail from his angry stare. He said, "The Compact would be much worse kept with you dead, Lord Regis. I am your most loyal—" the boy's voice suddenly
    shook, "you know my life is yours to keep or spend, vai dom cario ; but do you really know what would become of this world or your people with you dead?"
    " Bredú ." Regis used the word which meant not only friend but sworn brother and reached out with both hands for Danilo's; a rare touch in a telepath caste. He said, "If this is true, my dearest brother, why should seven assassins want me dead?"
    He didn't expect an answer and didn't get one. Dando said, his face drawn, "I don't think they come from our people at all."
    "Is that—" Regis pointed to where the corpse had lain, "a Terran? Not as I know them."
    "Nor I. But face facts, Lord Regis. Seven assassins to you alone; and Lord