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The Earl of Chester one of Earl Hubert's two great enemies bore Curtana, "the sword of Saint Edward," says the monk of Saint Albans, "to show that he is Earl of the Palace, and has by right the power of restraining the King if he should commit an error." Either Earl Ranulph de Blundeville was very neglectful of his office, or else he must have found it anything but a sinecure.

Edward, while the Earl of Lancaster carried curtana, the sword of mercy, and his brother Henry the rod with the dove.

"Weapons". The sword is the weapon par excellence in Saxo's narrative, and he names several by name, famous old blades like our royal Curtana, which some believed was once Tristrem's, and that sword of Carlus, whose fortunes are recorded in Irish annals. Wainhead's curved blade seems to be a halbert; "Lyusing" and "Hwiting", Ragnald of Norway's swords; "Logthe", the sword of Ole Siward's son.

Excalibur, Tizona, Gram, Morglay, Durendal, Flamberge, Curtana, Quernbiter; the names were a roll-call of fabulous blades of Old Terran legend. Then they had erupted, suddenly and calamitously, into what was left of the Terran Federation as the Space Vikings, carrying pillage and destruction, until the newborn Empire rose to vanquish them.

Edward's staff, borne by the Duke of Roxburgh, the golden spurs borne by Lord Byron, the sceptre with the cross borne by the Duke of Cleveland, the third sword borne by the Marquis of Westminster, Curtana borne by the Duke of Devonshire, the second sword borne by the Duke of Sutherland, each nobleman's coronet carried by a page, Black Rod and Deputy-Garter walking before Lord Willoughby d'Eresby, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, with page and coronet.

"If he left Curtana twelve hundred hours ago, he's still in hyperspace," Guatt Kirbey said. "It's over two thousand from Curtana to the nearest Old Federation planet." "How far to Tanith?" Duke Angus asked. "I'm sure that's where he's gone. He'd expect me to finish the other ship and equip her like the Enterprise and send her out; he'd want to get there first."

The freighter captain, a small, precise man with a graying beard, alternately puffed at a cigarette and sipped from a beaker of brandy. "I spaced out from Morglay two hundred hours ago," he was saying. "I'd been there twelve local days, three hundred Galactic Standard hours, and the run from Curtana was three hundred and twenty.

Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden headstall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw down rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences.

He poured wine for himself. "Of course, Dunnan's crazy. A crazy man has an advantage, sometimes, like a left-handed knife-fighter. He does unexpected things." "That wasn't such a crazy move," Rovard Grauffis said. "We have very little direct trade with Curtana. It's only an accident we heard about this when we did." The freighter captain's beaker was half empty.

This ship, the Enterprise, spaced out from there several days before I did. I'd say she's twelve hundred hours out of Windsor, on Curtana, now." The room was still. The breeze fluttered curtains at the open windows; from the garden below, winged night-things twittered. "I never expected it," Harkaman said. "I thought he'd take the ship out to the Old Federation at once."