Mamelukes

by Jerry Pournelle

  “Lights in the sky,” Ganton said. “And perhaps new wealth in Nikeis. I need not warn you to be careful in your journey?”

  “Be assured that I will be, Majesty.” Rick smiled crookedly. “When one knows as little as we do, caution is always wise.”

  “And few men know less than we do, Lord Rick.” Ganton managed an answering smile, but it was brief, and his eyes darkened. “Do you believe the great star lords have visited Nikeis? Have they left gifts of great importance? Must the realm fear attack with star weapons from Nikeis?”

  Rick heard the plea in the young king’s voice. He’s as daunted by all this as I am. And he can’t escape any of it any more than I can.

  “I intend to answer those questions as quickly as I can, Majesty,” he said. “In the meantime, nothing that we do know will change what you must do now.”

  Ganton nodded looked at him a moment longer, then nodded.

  “Then Christ be with you, Warlord. And with your men in Nikeis.”

  PART FOUR

  MARE NOSTRUM

  CHAPTER ONE

  PROFESSORE CLAVELL

  Three weeks before the Battle of the Ottarn River

  Gulls cried outside the windows of the Council Hall. A stiff sea breeze brought in a fresh scent of salt and the sea. The high-ceilinged classroom was ornate, decorated by oil paintings of ships and the sea. A large fresco of the Winged Lion of Nikeis dominated one end of the room, and on all four sides elaborate plaster cornices with painted geometric designs topped plastered walls. The desks and chairs were solid and functional, but the table feet were carved into lion paws, and everything shone from new varnish. It was the most elegant classroom Sergeant Lance Clavell had ever seen. Or heard of, for that matter.

  The wall behind Clavell’s lecture table had been stripped of its decorations, and he pointed to the drawings charcoaled onto the whitewashed surface.

  “This is the life cycle of the liver worm,” he said. He pointed to one drawing. “If you look into water drawn from cattle fields, you’ll see small moving flecks. They’re very small, too small for you to make out details, but in fact they’re worms, which we call liver flukes. This is what one would look like if it was big enough to see.” He tapped the diagram behind him.

  “This worm is the cause of many of the diseases found among your cattle. If you allow cattle to drink from water full of cow excrement, you’ll always have the liver worms. They can get into people, too, if they drink that water. The worms make both people and cattle sick. The symptoms are about the same for both people and cows, wasting away, no energy, loss of appetite, sometimes blood in the urine or the stool. Cattle or men, it’s the same disease.”

  Stop a moment. Let them digest that, he thought. Okay, now go on.

  “We’ve asked the star masters we trade with to send us potions that may be effective in treating this, but we don’t have any now, so the only way to prevent having the worms inside you is to avoid them. So it’s important to learn how this spreads—which is mostly by letting people and cattle deposit their wastes upstream of where they drink.”

  Well, they do listen good, Clavell thought. Twenty-two teenagers, four of them girls, scribbled madly on slate boards. Paper was far too expensive to use for student notes, even for these kids from the ruling families of Nikeis, but the professors at the local college—not really a college, but the closest equivalent Clavell had yet seen on Tran, other than Colonel Galloway’s University—assured him that writing notes helped learning even when the notes were erased the next morning in preparation for another day.

  And it may be true, Clavell thought. I think maybe taking notes I never looked at again helped me learn. Can’t be sure. His college days were lost in an alcoholic blur.

  He was pretty sure his pupils spent their evenings using their notes to explain what they’d learned to the local professoriate, and the professors were writing books they’d publish later, but that was fine with him. The professors were part of the old aristocracy. The rulers of Nikeis listened to them even if the old farts thought themselves too important to sit for lectures. The word was getting out fast.

  The students were mostly from merchant and artisan backgrounds. Maybe. At least I think that’s where they come from. I know some do. But one’s the daughter of a high Council member. I don’t know what he does when he’s not being a politician.

  Clavell shook his head wryly. This city-state republic was complicated, a lot more so than Drantos, where lords were lords and peasants were peasants, and everyone pretty well knew where he stood. Nikeis was different. There weren’t any lords. Titles weren’t inherited. Most of the power went to the rich nobles—what the hell is the difference between a noble and a lord? But there is a difference, and everyone here knows it, even if they haven’t explained it to me. Whatever the difference was, it didn’t prevent Nikeisian nobles from doing all the crap Drantos nobles did and shoving their noses deep into business and finance, as well. Or from knowing they were nobles.

  At least they talk to me.

  Everyone in Nikeis was polite, everyone talked all the time, and half the time they were lying. The problem was, which half?

  But that didn’t matter much. Colonel Galloway didn’t care who learned what his traveling medicine shows taught so long as someone learned the lessons. The word was getting out. Germ theory of disease, infection, microscopic parasites, hygiene, inquire into causes, look for causes and don’t just accept that whatever happens is God’s Will. Ask questions and get answers.

  Enlightenment, Colonel Galloway calls it. Enlighten them. So I do. Which makes me a real professore, even if them local professor guys are too haughty to come to my lectures like they were students.

  Clavell had told the leading physicians of Nikeis about the germ theory of disease and the importance of hygiene. They hadn’t argued, but they hadn’t agreed either. Instead he was invited to lecture to selected students. Not medical students, because there weren’t any medical schools; you got to be a doctor by apprenticing to a doctor. But there were students in something very like an undergraduate college. In theory Clavell was part of that, and attending his classes was part of the curriculum for selected students. Which made him a professor, even if he didn’t get invited to many of the college’s social functions.

  Professor Clavell. Clavell chuckled as he thought what some of his college instructors would have thought of that. Lance Clavell had a football scholarship and spent more time studying linebacker tactics than anything taught in an academic classroom.

  He’d spent even more time drinking and smoking pot and generally letting things go to hell until he’d found himself faced with a choice between the army and life on the street. He’d became a gentleman ranker, a college kid in the army, but he could fight and after basic he was in pretty good shape again, so they didn’t make him a clerk. Over time he found that the army and booze together worked well enough. He wasn’t getting anywhere but there wasn’t anywhere he wanted to go. It all worked well enough until that damn flying saucer kidnapped them to Tran. Things started to go to hell then, and he had to start paying attention. Things got better when the troops got back together with Galloway. It could have been a lot worse. Galloway made him a professor . . .

  “Professore.” One of the students had raised his hand.

  Clavell glanced at his seating chart. Fernando Dandolo. Merchant’s son. Dressed expensive.

  “Yes, young Master Dandolo?”

  “We know this wasting sickness, but we never knew the cause. But you’ve told us you come from another world, yet you know of this worm!”

  “Very good, Master Dandolo,” Clavell replied. “It is from—the world I come from, and where your forefathers came from.”

  “Ah. Most thought the wasting sickness a curse, from witches and those who deal with the devil. But we’ve found that it is sometimes helped by ambulato berry tea,” the student said.

  “Does it work?”

  “Professore, I don’t know. It is said to
be helpful. At least with people. I didn’t know that this was the same wasting sickness that cattle get,” Fernando said. His voice had changed, but not all that long ago, and was still high pitched.

  “Can you get me some of that tea? And the berries it’s made from, of course.”

  “Yes, Sir, I would be very pleased to do that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It may be costly,” Ginarosa Torricelli said. “The plant doesn’t grow here.”

  Clavell didn’t have to look up her name on the seating chart. She didn’t dress up, but he thought she’d easily be the prettiest girl in the room if she wanted to be. Probably the richest as well, and her father the councilor was said to be in with the Doge. Unlike the other girls in the class, she was a good student, always dead serious. Bigwig or not, her father was always pleasant, but he had a spooky smile that gave Clavell the creeps.

  “Where does it grow?” Clavell asked, but no one knew. The consensus was that it probably grew in the southern lands south of the southern Roman provinces. Clavell frowned. He’d been in some of those provinces, and he’d never heard of ambulato berries. Harrison might know something. Clavell took out a notebook and made a very short entry with his ballpoint pen. The skipper would want to know about a cure for liver flukes. It might not work, but it was worth trying.

  “I think it must come from the far south. Only the great ocean vessels, the navi, ever bring ambulato berries,” Fernando said.

  “And your father owns two of them,” Ginarosa said. There were giggles, but Fernando nodded in agreement.

  “Are these worms the same as the—uh—bacteria that cause, uh, what you called ‘infections’ of wounds?”

  Lucia Michaeli. He didn’t have to look up her name either. She was always curious and often asked questions, but she got distracted when listening to long answers. Her parents were artisans and owned a bronze foundry. Clavell estimated her to be nine years old or so, but those were Tran years. She was probably at least sixteen in Earth years and she wore subtle makeup and dressed like a woman, not a girl. She was obviously quite aware that she was attractive, as well. Clavell wasn’t sure why she was in classes at all since it was pretty clear her ambition was to be a cortigiana. Of course all the females in Nikeis who weren’t already rich and high up among the ruling families dreamed of being cortigiane. It was an accepted way to power for women.

  Almost accepted. There’d been some fuss last week about suppressing whores, and apparently the Council—one of the Councils, anyway, there seemed to be several of them with overlapping powers—had an ongoing debate over whether some of the cortigiane were whores or entertainers. Fernando had tried to explain it to him but Clavell hadn’t understood very well. Mostly, though, cortigiane were accepted as necessary and even desirable, as well as very expensive. Which didn’t explain why Lucia was in his class. What could a cortigiana learn here that would be useful to her profession? Maybe there was some prestige attached to being educated? Or she could just be naturally curious as well as bright.

  Clavell didn’t know much about cortigiane. He generally consorted with a much lower class of feminine companions. Whores were legal but taxed and regulated, and Clavell was rich by local standards. Colonel Galloway sent his teams out with pretty good funding if they were going to civilized places, and he hadn’t had to spend much because the Signory furnished his quarters free and paid him a stipend to teach.

  I could afford a live-in cortigiana. Maybe I ought to try that. Just for research, of course.

  “Good question, Signorina Michaeli, but it requires more than a simple answer,” he said out loud. “It’s true that both the liver worm—we call them ‘flukes’—and the bacteria that cause infections are tiny animals, but the bacteria are so very much smaller that you’ll never see them without magnifying glasses which we don’t have. The liver flukes are small, but you can see them if you know what to look for.”

  And damn all I wish I knew how to build a microscope! I could show them.

  “There are many kinds of bacteria, and they cause many kinds of sickness. Likewise, there are many small worms that infest humans and our animals. The smallest worm is much larger than the largest bacterium.”

  A church bell rang the afternoon hour marking the end of his lecture.

  “We’ll continue this tomorrow,” Clavell said. “We’ll go through their life cycle, and learn how to prevent these little animals from making you sick and killing you.”

  “Both the worms and the . . . bacteria?” Lucia asked.

  “Yes, of course, both. But tomorrow we look mostly at flukes.”

  Lucia smiled at Clavell as she left the classroom.

  Flirting practice, Clavell thought. Son of a bitch, I’d like a piece of that. Best not. I get enough, this is soft duty. Dunno about her. Artisan class. Not nobility, but rich. Has to be rich or she wouldn’t be here. She acts like she’s available but you never know about girls like that. That’d be enough for Boyd. Any encouragement at all was enough for Boyd, which is why he never got sent out on independent duty. I don’t need his reputation! Skipper would never send me out on soft duty like this. And son of a bitch, this is soft duty!

  The other two girls in his class were clearly from wealthy families, and they didn’t flirt. If they asked questions they were practical. One of them, Marchesina, was the daughter of a Senator and clearly expected to be married to someone of her own rank. That would probably be the Torricelli girl’s future too. Now that was one attractive girl! Her father ranked higher than anyone else’s, as far as Clavell knew. She was also the prettiest of the four, even if she didn’t act or dress like she knew it, and best not go there . . . Clavell supposed both were in school to learn household management. So now I’m a home economics teacher! Well, it’s still soft duty.

  He waited until the others had left, then gathered up his lecture materials. He’d had a leatherworker make him a messenger bag/briefcase to hold all the stuff, and the fashion was catching on. Half the merchants in Nikeis carried something like that now. Clavell wasn’t sure he’d invented the thing, but he hadn’t seen anything like it before he got his, and now they were everywhere.

  It’s good duty here, but it’s time to go back, he thought. Time and past time.

  Giamo Fieschi was waiting for him outside his classroom. Clavell wasn’t sure who Giamo was. Obviously he was a son of one of the ruling families, but if he had any titles he hadn’t told them to Clavell, and Clavell had noticed that anyone who had anything like a title in Nikeis generally used it. Sometimes Giamo sat in on the classes, but mostly he didn’t. He seemed to be the one detailed by the Doge to look after the star lords.

  “Ave, Giamo,” Clavell said. Everyone spoke some kind of Italian here, but most of the upper class also knew the mainland lingua franca spoken throughout Drantos. Clavell had grown up in a mixed neighborhood and spoke some Italian. Probably why the Colonel picked me to come here, he thought. ’Course the Italian I learned is a hell of a lot different from what they speak here! I’d probably have more students if I could lecture in the local brand they speak in Nikeis. Oh, well. I’m picking up some of it.

  Between the mainland lingua franca and his bastardized Italian, Clavell got by. But just barely, he thought. Just kind of languaged out. Never thought I’d learn as many tongues as I know already. Soft duty, except that part. That’s hard, but I manage. Technical words were easy. He just used English, or the older Latin terms if he knew them.

  He and Giamo exchanged pleasantries. As usual, they went on quite a while.

  “Signor Fieschi,” Clavell said after he felt that had gone on long enough, “I must ask. Is my transportation ready? It’s very pleasant here, and your hospitality has been far more than generous, but I really must return to Drantos soon.”

  Clavell had already found out there were few ships for hire in Nikeis. Nothing came into the harbor through the twisting channels of the mud flats and lagoons without permission from the Signory, and there were patrols all aroun
d the complex of islands and marshes. Nikeis was known as Queen of the Seas, and they took the title seriously.

  “I’ve already stayed months longer than Colonel Galloway had expected me to.” Not to mention I don’t want Colonel Galloway to think I’ve deserted.

  Giamo looked dismayed.

  “We understand that you must leave, and the Signori of the Great Council made a ship ready,” Giamo said. “I had hoped to tell you this today, but today there was news from Drantos! Alas, I regret that your ship must now be employed for a different purpose.” Giamo seemed excited, not like the suave diplomat he’d been until now.

  “News?”

  “Alarming news. Grave news. News of war! The Five Kingdoms have invaded Drantos! Even now your Wanax Ganton summons all his allies to resist. The Warlord Rick has been sent to the west to defend against an invasion. He holds his strong points in Chelm, but in the east there has been a great battle. The Companion Morrone was defeated, and the Eqetassa Tylara has been made captive—”

  “Holy shit! Damn all! Signor Giamo, I have to go and go now. Now!” Colonel’s going to have my head!

  “Calmly, calmly!” Giamo gestured wildly. “The Eqetassa is safe. She was made prisoner by Strymon, Prince of Ta-Meltemos, and a man of greater honor does not exist. He would never harm her, nor will her ransom be severe.”

  “Christ be thanked,” Clavell said without any trace of humor. Or of hesitation, he realized. Good to be among fellow Catholics. Well, near enough to Catholics. They have a bishop, and their masses look a lot like what we had when I was a kid, in Latin and everything. “But that doesn’t change the situation! I have to go report to the Colonel.”

  “We agree,” Giamo said. “But there may be difficulties. The Wanax has demanded immediate aid from his allies. It is urgent that we answer the call of our ally, and our forces leave tonight in the only ships available. Without your ship there would be too little transport—even with your ship there’s barely enough for what we must send! They depart at once! The Council will explain as much as we can, and requests that you meet with them at the Doge’s Palace this evening at twilight.” Giamo chuckled. “Surely you can wait that long!”