Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

trials. In prison, they're just martyrs to their cause. Sit around waiting to be traded in some hostage deal. I say we give them something to be afraid of. I say we show them what martyrdom really means."
    "Finn; no! We're Paragons. We're the law!" "We're the King's Justice. It's time we acted like it." Finn drew his sword and held it up, the long blade shining brightly under the winter sun. The crowd roared their approval. Finn walked over to the first of the kneeling ELFs. Lewis hesitated, not sure what to do.
    Finn wasn't going to listen to reason. Not with the survivors of the possessed crowd baying for blood.
    Lewis's hand fell to the gun on his hip, and then moved away again. He couldn't shoot Finn Durandal. A comrade, a brother in arms, the greatest living Paragon. Not over an ELF. But he couldn't let Finn act as judge, jury, and executioner either.
    His hand went to his sword, and suddenly a tanglefield fell over him, pinning him to the spot. He struggled against the enveloping energies, even though he knew it was useless. Back in the security center, the man he'd left behind had taken the chance for a little personal revenge. Maybe he'd guessed
    what Finn had in mind too. Lewis cried out for Finn to stop, but his voice was lost in the half insane baying from the crowd. They had been forced to suffer almost beyond belief, and only one thing would satisfy them now.
    Lewis understood that. Part of him wanted to agree. But what Finn was planning was wrong, so wrong.
    It wouldn't stop the ELFs; only spur them on to even greater horrors in revenge. But most of all, it was wrong for Finn to do this because he was a Paragon. Paragons had to be better than this. They had to be.
    Finn beheaded the first ELF with one stroke of his sword. The crowd cheered and jeered as the severed head bumped and rolled across the bloody sands, its eyes still blinking, the mouth still opening and closing. Lewis wanted to close his eyes, but he made himself watch as Finn strode slowly down the long line of helpless ELFs, taking his time, executing them one by one to the rising adulation of the crowd.
    Like a gladiator in Lionstone's time, Lewis thought sickly. As Finn came to the last ELF, the esper smiled straight into the nearest camera, and laughed triumphantly.
    "You see!" she cried. "We were right about you! You're just as bad as we always said you were! This justifies everything we've done, and everything we'll do; because this is what you'd do to all of us, if you could!"
    "Oh, shut up," said Finn Durandal.
    He brought his sword down hard. But perhaps he was getting tired by then, or careless, because although the blade sank deep into her neck, it didn't sever it. The blade jammed in the vertebrae, and Finn had to jerk and pull at it. The ELF screamed horribly, blood spraying from her mouth. The crowd laughed and mocked her. Finn had to put a boot between her shoulder blades to brace himself before he could jerk his sword free for another blow. This time the head came away, hanging from the gushing stump by a shred of skin. Finn put away his sword, bent over and jerked the head free with his hands.
    He held it up to the crowd and smiled and nodded modestly as it cheered and roared its approval.
    Lewis finally looked away. Not from Finn, not from the severed head, but from what the crowd had become. What was in their faces now was exactly what he'd seen in the ELFs' faces, as they took their pleasure from their thralls. The crowd had been victims in an awful crime. Now Finn had made them willing accomplices in something almost as bad.
    "Damn you, Finn Durandal," Lewis said quietly. "You've betrayed us all."
    Back at the Court some time later, the Ceremony was almost ready to begin. The vast open floor of the Court was now packed from wall to wall with a great heaving mass of the very best people, there to see and be seen, and to bless the new King with their presence and approval. Everyone who mattered, and a great many more who thought they did, or should, had come to Court to celebrate the Coronation.
    Members of Parliament, Paragons of the King's Justice, AIs from Shub downloaded into humanoid robots, clone and esper representatives, a handful of assorted aliens, and a whole bunch of priests from the Empire's official religion, the Church of Christ Transcendent. But the vast majority of the crowd were, of course, the most famous and most sparkling members of High Society.
    There were no more aristocratic Families anymore, of