Return to Fanglith f-2

by John Dalmas

  That done, I took off the skullcap, got up, and went back to the little galley. Deneen was bloody to the elbows. "Next time," she said, looking up at me grimly, "see if you can get the meat cut up into pieces that'll fit into storage. This place doesn't have the facilities for cutting up forty-pound hunks of beef-especially tough beef!"

  I could see what she meant. They were trying to work on a counter fourteen inches wide. And not only were they bloody, and the counter bloody, but blood was dripping onto the floor and had smeared the wall behind the counter. She and Tarel had taken off their shoes, and their feet were smeared red. So far, they'd gotten about a fourth of the beef cut and wrapped for putting away.

  "Sorry," I said.

  She held up one of the belt knives we'd had on Evdash. "This is the biggest thing we have to work with," she added, a little less hostile now. "It would help if you bring a butcher knife next time, even if you do bring the meat in smaller pieces. And we need rags to wipe blood with. We're trying not to use paper toweling; we're almost out of it."

  She gestured at the large cleaning drum, where I could see the clothes I'd bought. "I put them in there on sanitize, in case they've got any of those mean little critters you got infested with our last trip here," She grinned then, sheepishly. "Oh, and let me thank you for bringing all these tasties, brother mine. You really did do good work getting them, and I honestly appreciate it. It's just that the meat needs a few improvements in preprocessing."

  "Can I help in here?" I asked.

  "There's not room for three at once. No, just stand there and admire us, and tell us what you have in mind to do next."

  So I did. Before dawn I'd go back to my donkey. Then I'd return to Marseille and see if I could have a long talk with Isaac ben Abraham; I had the notion I could learn even more from him than I had from Brother Oliver two and a half years before. Certainly he could expand our knowledge of Provencal a lot. And if it was unusual to transport horses by sea, then, as a shipowner, ben Abraham might know of Arno. I had no idea how many shipowners there were in Marseille, or even if Arno had gotten this far with his horse herd. It was a long dangerous distance from Normandy.

  "Then," I finished, "we may have enough information to plan intelligently."

  "I'd like to go with you next time," Tarel put in. "I'd like to get a firsthand feel for what it's like down there."

  I looked at that and felt uncomfortable with it, but I couldn't come up with any strong reason why he shouldn't. He was as old as I'd been the first time I'd landed alone on Fanglith, and he already knew quite a lot of the language. "All right by me," I answered. "It'll probably be safer with two of us. Tell you what: I'll help Deneen. You wash up and spend some time on the learning program, upgrading your Provencal. Then, after we try on our new clothes, we'd better get some sleep. We need to get down there before daylight."

  Deneen set the scout's honker, and it woke us up an hour ahead of estimated daybreak. Then, twenty-one miles above Marseille, we ate a quick breakfast while watching for the first sign of dawn to touch the horizon, which, from our altitude, was four hundred miles east. That would give us roughly twenty minutes to get down and on the beach and let Deneen get away while it was still full night on the surface. When the first touch of dawn showed, far to the east, we hurriedly finished eating and stowed our dishes in the cleaner. Then Deneen dropped the twenty-one miles to the beach. As we slowed for landing, the infrascope showed what had to be Bubba lying a few dozen yards from the donkey- far enough, and no doubt downwind, not to upset it seriously. Except for those two, there was nothing large and warm blooded anywhere near.

  When we landed and Tarel and I stepped down the ramp, Bubba was at its foot. "Catch anything worth eating?" I asked him.

  He grinned-something he hadn't been doing a lot of. "Even rodents good after long time on ship's food," he woofed, then trotted up into the cutter.

  Even without any overcast, we couldn't see far in the moonless night. The cutter was lost in darkness only seconds after the door closed.

  Nothing had happened to my donkey while I was gone, but a lot had happened to the bush I'd tied him to. He'd eaten most of the tough little leaves and a lot of the smaller twigs. I untied his halter rope and we started up the slope from the beach. Looking off to my right, it seemed as if there was already a hint of gray dawn where the land met the eastern sky. By the time we got to the road, there was a distinct wash of gray along the horizon, and even with lots of stars still bright above us, we could see a little better.

  It was pretty much daylight when we reached the city gate, and we squatted there with a few others, backs to the wall. Minutes later we watched sunlight touch the hilltops to the northwest, and heard the heavy gate bar being drawn back. We stood up, getting out of the way, heard the hinges groan, then the gates were pushed open by the gate guards.

  It's not surprising that so many Fanglithans are burly and strong for their size. Just about everything seems to be done by muscle power, and lots of simple things, like opening the massive, timbered gates, are heavy labor. Of course, not all Fanglithans are husky and strong, by any means. Their genetics dictates that lots of them will have slim builds, and I suspect that most of them weren't properly nourished as children. That's probably why they're mostly short by our standards; at least it's a better explanation than genetics. Their parent stock hadn't been any different from our own, or not much different, anyway. They'd been mind-wiped

  political prisoners dumped on Fanglith eighteen thousand or so years ago by the mad emperor Karkzhuk.

  Another thing about Fanglithans – a surprising number have lost their teeth. They don't seem to have any idea of dental care, and that probably interferes with proper eating. I suspect that quite a few of them have chronic physical ailments that would be easily cured in high-tech societies, or wouldn't have happened in the first place.

  Like I said though, a lot of them are husky and strong-looking, even if short, and that included the gate guards who watched us enter. But they saw nothing troublesome in Tarel and me, even as big as we were by their standards. We were dressed now in native clothes, and the shortswords and daggers on our belts weren't unusual.

  We went first to the marketplace, where I sold my donkey back to the man I'd bought it from. He only offered me half what I'd paid him for it, and as a matter of form and principle, I dickered him up to two-thirds. He wasn't more than about five feet tall, but it didn't seem to bother him at all that Tarel and I, five-ten and six-one, were really big by Fanglithan standards – or at least by standards in Provence and Normandy.

  From the marketplace we went straight to Isaac ben Abraham's. The armed servant at the door recognized me, but had us wait in the courtyard while he sent someone to notify his master. The man was back in a minute, and escorted us to ben Abraham's office.

  The merchant's eyes, alert and wise, watched us in. "You are back quickly," he said, then chuckled. Ben Abraham's version of a chuckle was more of a deep rumble. "If your friend is another rapid calculator," he added, "I am not in the mood for more contests. What may I do for you?"

  I'd thought a bit, in my bunk before I slept, of how I would answer that question – how I'd open the conversation to get us the kind of information we needed. "My lord," I said, "you are a learned man, while in this land I am ignorant of much I should know, as you no doubt noticed. Yesterday you saved me from possible trouble, with what you said about my 'Aramaic,' which I believe you knew was not Aramaic at all."

  "Nor any other language I have ever heard," he answered. "Not Greek nor Italian nor Spanish nor Arabic. Nor Armenian nor Swabian, as far as that's concerned. Certainly not Hebrew, and definitely not Aramaic." He paused, his gaxe sharpening. "Your calculations were fast beyond belief. Are you Indian?"

  "No, I'm not Indian, although I told Carolus the stonecutter that I was. Carolus doesn't care for things that feel mysterious to him, and I needed to tell him something he could accept. In fact, I'm from a land called Evdash, and so far as I know, no one
in this part of the world has heard of it except from me.

  "And that brings me to another matter. I have been in Provence before, and also in Normandy, two and a half years ago. At that time I had as a friend and ally a Norman knight named Arno de Courmeron. I would like to find him again. When we parted, I had provided him with a herd of war horses, and he intended to drive them south to Marseille…"

  At that point, Isaac ben Abraham's bushy eyebrows arched. I decided he must know Arno, or at least have heard of him, unless he was reacting to what I'd said about providing Arno with a herd of war horses.

  "… from where," I continued, "he intended to take them to Sicily by ship. Do you know anything about him?"

  He nodded. "This Arno has come through twice-the first time, incredibly, with only two mercenaries to help him. It seemed impossible that three men could have brought forty war horses hundreds of dangerous miles from Normandy, with brigands and barons hungry for plunder all along the way."

  Forty! Unless that was a rough approximation, he'd actually increased his herd after we'd left him. "When was the last time?" I asked.

  "Late last summer. He had three knights and sergeants with him that time, and three villeins. And again, forty horses. All mares this time-all of the war horse breed."

  "Did any stories follow him?" I wondered if he'd made a name for himself with the stunner and blast pistol we'd left him.

  "None that I've heard. He came to me asking for transport. I'd hauled Norman war horses before, for William of Caen, and your Arno had heard of me. I built their stalls so the horses cannot fall in a storm and break their legs."

  "What did you think of him?"

  "Of Arno de Courmeron? A very hard man, like every other Norman I've met. And very young for what he was doing. By all reports, at his age-at any age- most Normans of noble birth think only of fighting and plotting. It is that or the clergy. A Norman knight turned merchant was new to me.

  "What is your interest in him?" ben Abraham asked then. "Or in any Norman? You do not seem warlike."

  I didn't try to think an answer, just let the words come. "My own land, Evdash, has been conquered by the evil Glondis Empire-an empire that could someday come even to Christendom and try to enslave it. I hope to build a kingdom here that is wise and just, and powerful, that can defeat Glondis when the time comes. It seems to me that the Normans could help, and Arno de Courmeron is the Norman I can best work with."

  Ben Abraham's face had gone unreadable. He nodded. "There is something about you that is different," he said. "I have no idea what it is. You have a power that is not force, and perhaps you can do what you say. But I will tell you something that perhaps you do not realize.

  "I have talked with more than a few Normans-even with the steward of Robert Guiscard, whom the Bishop of Rome now has anointed Duke of Sicily as well as Apulia. And I deal with many people from almost every part of the known world. I am always interested in people, and what they have to say, and my home and table are not unknown. So they talk to me-merchants, ship's captains, traveling nobles. And sometimes I travel, for trade. I once spent two weeks in the court of the Saracen Lord of Palermo; many wise men are his guests, and hold long discourse there. I have talked with the secretary of the Bishop of Rome, and shared wine with the Lombard mayor of Amalfi. I have dined with merchant princes in Byzantium, and discussed commerce with the steward of Philip the Fair, the Prankish king, in his castle at Paris.

  "All of these have had much experience with Normans, and I would like to describe for you the impression I have gained from them. The Normans are more than adventurous: They have an extreme restlessness, and a recklessness that often leads them to victory, although sometimes it takes them to their own destruction. They have a thirst for power that seems beyond quenching. There is no people in the known world who exceeds them in their love of fighting-not even the bloody Vikings, from whom the Normans drew their founders and their name. They have a courage that is frequently foolhardy, and a craftiness that leads often into treacheries both outrageous and bloody.

  "And I have heard it said that those who go to Italy are the worst of them all. Their overlord in Italy, Robert of Apulia, is even called Guiscard, 'the Cunning,' and wears the name with pride."

  I wouldn't understand all of ben Abraham's words until I'd run them through the linguistics program aboard the scout, but I understood enough to make my stomach knot.

  "You may wish to enlist the help of the Normans," ben Abraham went on, "but the Normans help mainly themselves. To whatever they can take."

  I nodded, feeling his black eyes on me, remembering the Norman Baron, Roland de Falaise, his utter lack of honesty, his attempt to have me clubbed to death by trickery. Even Arno had tried treachery against me, twice. Though he'd also saved my life, not to mention helping us rescue Deneen from the political police and capture the Federation corvette. Which the Normans, with the recklessness ben Abraham had just mentioned, had then blown apart, along with thirty of their own knights.

  Yet ben Abraham made the Normans seem even more dangerous than I remembered them, mainly by showing them to me as a culture, not as a few dozen warriors. And by letting me see them through someone's eyes besides my own.

  But I had to start somewhere, and Arno seemed like a good somewhere.

  "I thank you for your warning," I told ben Abraham. "I have experienced some of what you described. It is why I wish to find Arno; I know him well enough that I believe I can work through him." I hope, I added to myself.

  "I would not dissuade you," ben Abraham said. "Only, make sure you know what you're dealing with. Your own ambitions are not less than any of theirs, and I sense in you a strength of your own that I suspect can be formidable, though not brutal. Yours is an ambition of a kind that dukes with armies have undertaken and failed with, but every kingdom was begun by someone, and often against great odds."

  It was really embarrassing to hear him say it. It made me feel like a huge fraud-I was only Larn kel Deroop- but this was no time to correct his impression of me.

  "Thank you," I said, and moved the conversation on to other things-mainly the geography, peoples, and princes of the Mediterranean. There wasn't any question that ben Abraham was the smartest man I'd met on Fanglith-the best informed and least given to statements that sounded like runaway imagination and superstition.

  And a born teacher who'd obviously rather instruct a couple of young strangers like Tarel and me than attend to business. A couple of times his secretary looked in at us, as if he had questions that needed answering, but ben Abraham frowned him back from the door.

  I recorded all of it. I'd feed it to the computer that night and receive it back through the learning program, the words analyzed and defined. I have a darned good memory, and good logic circuits of my own. But for linguistics analysis, the computer was parsecs ahead of me, and the learning program would help me remember it.

  Finally it was lunchtime, and Tarel and I ate with ben Abraham as his guests. Then I arranged passage for myself to Reggio di Calabria, in Italy, on one of ben Abraham's ships, which was leaving in four days. Reggio was just across the Strait of Messina from the Sicilian port where Arno had taken his horse herd.

  When I'd paid my fare, I had just one gold piece left, plus the silver I'd gotten when I sold my donkey that morning.

  Ben Abraham walked us to the courtyard, and as we shook hands, I asked him one last question. "My lord," I said, "yesterday you told Carolus the stonecutter an untruth, to shield my own. Why?"

  His face was serious when he answered. "I am a Jew," he said. "And in the lands of Christendom, any non-Christian is always in at least some small risk of his life for being what he is. It seemed to me that you might be in serious risk of yours unless I spoke for you."

  Our eyes held for a moment before I thanked him for his courtesies and help. As Tarel and I walked away, it seemed to me that I was alive only through the risks, large and small, of strangers-certainly on Evdash, and perhaps now, here in Marseille. And
by Father Drogo and Pierre the tanner in Normandy, as far as that was concerned-men who had no reason beyond their own ethics to have helped me.

  TWELVE

  When we left Isaac ben Abraham, there still were hours to wait before calling Deneen back down. It seemed to me we might as well spend it learning something, so Tarel and I walked down to the waterfront to see what we could see.

  The ships weren't much, they looked even smaller up close than they had in large magnification from a few miles above. The ones we looked at had a mast, though on some of them it was lying in the bottom of the ship, or in a few cases, on the deck or the dock or the beach. Most of them weren't decked over, though; all they had as decks amounted to flooring in the bottom of the ship. Others were partially decked over, fore and aft, with the midships open, and a few were decked over from stem to stern.

  We talked to some sailors about ships and the places they'd been-sailors who spoke Provengal, Their talk of places was a bit of this and that, and a lot of it sounded- umm, more or less imaginative. I got the impression that part of the time they were lying on purpose, as if they were trying to see how much we'd believe. We (mainly me-Tarel didn't say very much) also questioned them about the names of different ships' parts and gear. Mostly the men on different ships used the same terms, so I felt they were honest with us on that. I didn't have Evdashian equivalents for most of their terms, but I recorded brief descriptions of the parts in Evdashian-enough to serve as memory tags to go with the Provencal words.

  Then we walked the streets of Marseille, asking questions of artisans and shopkeepers. By late afternoon we were more than ready to eat dinner and leave. The inn we stopped at looked better than others we'd seen, but it wouldn't begin to pass a health department inspection on Evdash; they'd board it up and burn it down. It was even worse than the dining hall in Baron Roland's castle in Normandy. The food was edible-a vegetable stew, a chunk of roast beef, coarse, dark, smelly bread, and smellier cheese. It was the dirt and grease that bothered us most, and again I was thankful for the immunoserum we'd taken.