Acting on instinct, Paul chose the one on the left and ran headlong through the ominous shadows, barely able to see ahead. He didn’t care about his personal safety, so desperate was he to warn his father.
The corridor brightened, but only a little, and ahead he saw the familiar, powerful, dark-haired Leto standing with his back to him, looking away.
“Father!” Paul called out.
The Duke did not move, did not seem to hear him.
“Father, there is danger!” It was a powerful sensation. His pulse raced, his heart pounded, though he didn’t know what the danger was.
Suddenly, a trio of black-garbed assassins leaped out of alcoves and fell upon Duke Leto, stabbing him with knives. His father wore no shield and quickly succumbed to the deadly attack. Paul bounded forward to stop them, but when he threw himself in their midst, the attackers faded.
His father lay on the floor, bleeding, dying. His gray eyes stared at Paul, and he tried to reach out to his son, but did not have the strength. When Paul bent down to touch him, Leto faded beneath his fingertips, just as the assassins had. The wet red bloodstain remained on the floor where the Duke had lain.
“Father!” Paul shouted into the nightmare, then he screamed.
He awoke again and realized that he had actually cried out. Glowglobes in the room surged to full illumination. He blinked, dazzled by the light, and saw a man in the doorway, sword drawn.
“Young Master? Are you all right?” Gurney Halleck, the scarred and burly weapons master of House Atreides, lunged into the room. He looked around, ready to defend the ducal heir. “Gods below!”
Paul sat on the edge of his bed, shaking. “It’s not me, Gurney. I’m safe. It’s my father! He is in great danger. Right now!”
Gurney looked perplexed, rubbed the inkvine scar on his jaw with his free hand, keeping the sword ready with the other. “He is far away, on Otorio.”
“But it’s something terrible. The Duke is in great danger.”
“How do you know?” Gurney laid a hand on Paul’s shoulder.
“I just know!”
I feast on life, I feast on death.
—BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN
In the bedroom wing of his Carthag headquarters, the Baron finished strangling the boy with one powerful hand. He felt dissatisfied and frustrated. Avoiding a twinge of pain from his other, broken wrist, he shoved the scrawny, naked body off the bed. The young man had resisted like a feral cat, even had the audacity to bite the Baron’s lower lip, making it bleed. Now he touched his sore mouth, muttering a curse. Another injury!
After the rebel attack on the shuttle, his left hand and wrist ached in their medcast, but they were healing. The wound on his head was better, though a deep gash remained above one ear, inside his hairline. He had not expected so much resistance from his pleasure slave. Next time, he would have to ensure the drugs were stronger.
Nor had he expected such violent audacity from the Fremen rabble. More frustration. He should have been at the Padishah Emperor’s gala on Otorio, conducting business, being seen. The Baron worried that Shaddam had noticed his absence, and worried more that he hadn’t.
He swung his bare feet slowly out of the massive bed and retrieved his suspensor belt from a table. After he activated the device, his enormous body felt lighter, even agile. He liked the way the field made his skin tingle.
Two young men, only a little older than the strangled boy, pushed a curtain aside and hurried in with a towel and a robe. As the Baron stood there, they wrapped a clean white cloth around his waist and between his legs, and secured it with a clasp. They slipped the black robe over his shoulders and cinched it at the waist before backing away with simultaneous bows.
The Baron looked down at the slender, broken body on the floor and flexed his good hand. “Hand me that garbage.”
They bent, lifted up the body, and placed it in his reach.
With his good hand, he clasped one of the young victim’s arms and walked lightly with his suspensors, dragging the body along to a sealed and armored window. He opened the pane to a wash of dry heat and maneuvered the compliant corpse onto the windowsill. As the other two servants observed in wide-eyed silence, he grunted and nudged the body through the open window. Looking down, he watched it tumble over the side of the headquarters building and thump onto the sand-covered streets.
The Baron usually ordered underlings to do his killing, but on occasion, he liked to feel the brute force himself. The beautiful boys were like fresh flowers he could pick and discard, before selecting another one.
He watched from the high window, knowing what would happen next. Desperate people were so predictable. Poor street rabble appeared, wearing rags over their ubiquitous stillsuits, and snatched up the body, wrapping it and rushing away. According to rumor—which the Baron believed—the poorest scum in the city rendered the bodies down to reclaim water. How desperate their lives must be!
Leaving the contrast of his lavishly appointed chamber, the Baron took a lift down to the dining hall level, where more Harkonnen servants escorted him to his expanded seat at the head of the long banquet table. The other chairs in the dining hall were empty, though places had been set all around the table.
Rabban strode into the hall, accompanied by his lean younger brother, Feyd-Rautha, who was temporarily visiting from Giedi Prime. Rabban moved like an armored vehicle, while Feyd had a liquid grace. The Baron’s Mentat, Piter de Vries, slithered and glided behind them, his eyes calculating. The stains of sapho juice on his lips looked like blood.
Nursing his throbbing injured hand, the Baron slumped into his chair, like a king about to hold court. “I am hungry.” He called out, “Bring in our special guests.”
A procession of twenty servants came forward through the main doors, each carrying a covered platter. They took positions on the long sides of the table, and one stood behind the Baron’s chair.
After his nephews and Mentat seated themselves in their customary places, the Baron waved his good hand, knowing this had all been rehearsed. In clockwork unison, the servants removed the covers to reveal severed heads resting on plates—the dead rebels who had tried to commandeer the shuttle. In order to fill all the seats at the table, Rabban had rounded up and executed additional suspicious people in Carthag alleys, whether or not they had anything to do with the assassination plot. It didn’t matter.
The eyes of the “guests” were open, staring into eternity.
The Baron focused on the only female among them, the pilot. “Welcome to your first baronial banquet, my dear.” As he spoke, more servants hurried forth with additional platters heaped with food for the feast. Shaking with fear, they placed the food on the table and methodically filled the empty plates in front of the severed heads in a mockery of generosity. Meanwhile, other servants put slabs of meat onto the Baron’s plate, then served his living guests. Poison snoopers above the table scanned the meal and indicated that it was untainted.
When the plates were full, the servants backed away, exiting quietly through doorways and leaving the Baron to his macabre feast. Rabban and de Vries looked amused, while Feyd-Rautha seemed annoyed, impatient with the spectacle. He made no secret that he would rather be back home in Harko City.
The Baron admired the huge platter before him, a roast wolfbeast haunch and a whole guinsey fowl, although he didn’t tear into the meal with his usual enthusiasm. Instead, he lifted his broken hand, frowned at the medcast wrapped around it. But for the attempt on his life, he would have been feasting with all the other nobles in the grand Corrino museum complex on Otorio.