Paul of Dune by Brian Herbert && Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Brian Herbert && Kevin J. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Novela, Ciencia ficción
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 2008-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

5

The Harkonnens killed my family, and I survived, even though Beast Rabban tried to hunt me down. I fought many battles during my Swordmaster training on Ginaz, then helped Duke Leto’s troops retake Ix from the Tleilaxu, and through it all I survived. I cannot begin to count the number of battles I have fought in the name of House Atreides. Those numbers do not count. The only thing that matters is that I am still alive to defend House Atreides.

—DUNCAN IDAHO, A Thousand Lives

With his wiry black hair and distinctive features, Duncan Idaho bore no resemblance to young Paul Atreides. Since they could not pose as father and son traveling together, they decided instead upon uncle and ward.

They wore comfortable but ill-fitting clothes and carried patched travel sacks, all of which had been picked up at a secondhand market in Cala City. Duncan concealed the Old Duke’s sword beneath a loose cape. Paul’s hair had been cropped short, and his recent scabs and scrapes also altered his appearance. The Swordmaster inspected him and said, “The job of a disguise is not to be perfect, but to deflect attention.”

They boarded a large passenger ferry that slowly crossed the ocean, carrying cargo, farm crews, vacationers who preferred the leisurely pace, and others who were simply too poor to afford a long-distance flight. Most of the passengers in the lower decks were pundi rice farmers who moved from paddy to paddy along the continental coasts, following the monsoon season. Short in stature, they had broad faces and aboriginal features, and they spoke a dialect that Paul did not understand; many were descended from tribes that still resided in the dense jungles, isolated for hundreds of generations. In filmbooks Paul had read about the mysterious “Caladan primitives,” but little was known about them, since for many generations the Atreides rulers had adhered to a policy of noninterference in the natural, self-contained societies.

Some passengers amused themselves by fishing from the main deck. The ferry’s cook dragged a net from the stern and used his catch for the day’s communal meal. All passengers ate at a common table, though Paul and Duncan kept to themselves. Paul was satisfied enough with the thin fish stew and dried wedges of paradan melon.

Once, a storm came close enough to make the large ferry sway back and forth, but Paul had his sea legs and stood on deck with Duncan, watching the clouds and whitecaps, seeing flashes of lightning in the distance. He thought of the stories of electrical creatures named elecrans that preyed upon lost sailors, but this was a more mundane form of lightning, a simple thunderstorm that passed away to the north.

When the ferry finally arrived at the Eastern Continent’s largest city, little more than a village with docks and wooden houses that extended out over the shoreline, they disembarked. Paul regarded the rugged mountains that rose abruptly from the coastline. “Are we going to the interior, Duncan? I don’t see any roads.”

“It will probably be no more than a trail.

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