warned him that here was a trained fighting man. The eyes were the blue-in-blue of the deep-desert Fremen.
Gurney moved one hand toward his own knife, kept his eyes fixed on the other’s knife. If they dared use rockets, they’d have other projectile weapons. This moment argued extreme caution. He could tell by sound alone that at least part of his skycover had been knocked out. There were gruntings, too, the noise of several struggles behind him.
The eyes of the fighting man ahead of Gurney followed the motion of hand toward knive, came back to glare into Gurney’s eyes.
“Leave the knife in its sheath, Gurney Halleck,” the man said.
Gurney hesitated. That voice sounded oddly familiar even through a stillsuit filter.
“You know my name?” he said.
“You’ve no need of a knife with me, Gurney,” the man said. He straightened, slipped his crysknife into its sheath back beneath his robe. “Tell your men to stop their useless resistance.”
The man threw his hood back, swung the filter aside.
The shock of what he saw froze Gurney’s muscles. He thought at first he was looking at a ghost image of Duke Leto Atreides. Full recognition came slowly.
“Paul,” he whispered. Then louder: “Is it truly Paul?”
“Don’t you trust your own eyes?” Paul asked.
“They said you were dead,” Gurney rasped. He took a half-step forward.
“Tell your men to submit,” Paul commanded. He waved toward the lower reaches of the ridge.
Gurney turned, reluctant to take his eyes off Paul. He saw only a few knots of struggle. Hooded desert men seemed to be everywhere around. The factory crawler lay silent with Fremen standing atop it. There were no aircraft overhead.
“Stop the fighting,” Gurney bellowed. He took a deep breath, cupped his hands for a megaphone. “This is Gurney Halleck! Stop the fight!”
“Fine friends!” someone shouted back. “Half our people murdered.”
“It’s a mistake,” Gurney said. “Don’t add to it.”
He turned back to Paul, stared into the youth’s blue-blue Fremen eyes.
A smile touched Paul’s mouth, but there was a hardness in the expression that reminded Gurney of the Old Duke, Paul’s grandfather. Gurney saw then the sinewy harshness in Paul that had never before been seen in an Atreides—a leathery look to the skin, a squint to the eyes and calculation in the glance that seemed to weigh everything in sight.
“They said you were dead,” Gurney repeated.
“And it seemed the best protection to let them think so,” Paul said.
Gurney realized that was all the apology he’d ever get for having been abandoned to his own resources, left to believe his young Duke … his friend, was dead. He wondered then if there were anything left here of the boy he had known and trained in the Ways of fighting men.
Paul took a step closer to Gurney, found that his eyes were smarting. “Gurney ….”
It seemed to happen of itself, and they were embracing, pounding each other on the back, feeling the reassurance of solid flesh.
“You young pup! You young pup!” Gurney kept saying.
And Paul: “Gurney, man! Gurney, man!”
Presently, they stepped apart, looked at each other. Gurney took a deep breath. “So you’re why the Fremen have grown so wise in battle tactics. I might’ve known. They keep doing things I could’ve planned myself. If I’d only known ….” He shook his head. “If you’d only got word to me, lad. Nothing would’ve stopped me. I’d have come arunning and ….”
A look in Paul’s eyes stopped him … the hard, weighing stare.
Gurney sighed. “Sure, and there’d have been those who wondered why Gurney Halleck went arunning, and some would’ve done more than question. They’d have gone hunting for answers.”
Paul nodded, glanced to the waiting Fremen around them—the looks of curious appraisal on the faces of the Fedaykin. He turned from the death commandos back to Gurney. Finding his former swordmaster filled him with elation. He saw it as a good omen, a sign that he was on the course of the future where all was well.
With Gurney at my side….
Paul glanced down the ridge past the Fedaykin, studied the smuggler crew who had come with Halleck.
“How do your men stand, Gurney?” he asked.
“They’re smugglers all,” Gurney said. “They stand where the profit is.”
“Little enough profit in our venture,” Paul said, and he noted the subtle finger signal flashed to him by Gurney’s right hand—the old hand code out of their past. There were men to fear and distrust in the smuggler crew.