"I wish I were a Space Viking!"
"Well, you can't be, Count Ravary. You're an officer of the Royal Navy. You're supposed to fight Space Vikings."
"I won't fight you."
"You'd have to, if the King commanded," the old captain told him.
"No. Prince Trask is my friend. He saved my father's life."
"And I won't fight you, either, count. We'll make a lot of fireworks, and then we'll each go home and claim victory. How would that be?"
"I've heard of things like that," the captain said. "We had a war with Odin, seventy years ago, that was mostly that sort of battles."
"Besides, the King is Prince Trask's friend, too," the boy insisted. "Father and Mummy heard him say so, right on the Throne. Kings don't lie when they're on the Throne, do they?"
"Good Kings don't," Trask told him.
"Ours is a good King," the young Count of Ravary declared proudly. "I would do anything my King commanded. Except fight Prince Trask. My house owes Prince Trask a debt."