Return to Fanglith f-2

by John Dalmas

  I didn't argue with him. For one thing, there wasn't time. By then the mast was lying in the Song ship's bottom with the spar and sails, and Gunnlag ordered all oars manned. It was plain how things were shaping up. Maybe twenty sails were visible now, and I had no reason to think there weren't more. Five others had dropped their sails and veered toward us-five of those nearest the front. Obviously they were being rowed, which meant they were either warships or pirates. And I presumed that pirates didn't travel in large fleets.

  One of the Varangians was handing oars to my shift, and we added our strength to the rowing. The graceful long ship surged, almost seeming to fly on the water. It occurred to me how relative things are-how much they depend on your local frame of reference. Even in mass proximity mode the Javelin could travel in minutes a distance as far as from Fanglith to her moon, and we thought of mass proximity mode as slow. Here we were traveling-what? Not more than than ten miles an hour, I thought, and it seemed fast.

  After a few minutes, Gunnlag's big voice called again, and the bosun slowed our pace a few strokes a minute. We might have to stay ahead of our pursuers for hours, I realized, and it wouldn't do to use ourselves up at the start. I glanced up to see what I could see, which under the circumstances wasn't much. They'd struck their masts too. I returned my full attention to rowing; I had to keep the stroke and not miss the water with my oar.

  Meanwhile we had spare men. There hadn't been oars for all of my shift, and now we had the prize crew aboard as well. So after a while some of us were replaced at our oars to rest, including all three of us non-Varangians. Ordinarily, the Varangians didn't mind rowing, and considering that this was a matter of escape or die, they probably wanted the best oarsmen on the oars. Which didn't include Michael and me, or even Amo.

  I took half a minute to try contacting Deneen, on the off chance she was somehow powered up and tuned in, but got no answer. Then I followed Arno back to Gunnlag Snorrason in the stern, with Michael behind me. Most of the Saracen fleet was out of sight again; apparently they'd continued on their original northwesterly course. Judging from the sun, we seemed to have veered all the way around to somewhat east of north.

  Only three of our original five pursuers could be seen. I suppose the other two had turned aside to capture the horse ship. But the remaining three, I told myself, ought to be more than enough, considering that Arno had no replacement charges for his blaster. And their bows had a lot longer range than my stunner; it was only effective up close.

  Arno was talking to Gunnlag in Norse-he'd gotten pretty good at it-and of course I couldn't understand. So I questioned Michael. From what he said, I got the impression that a warship was more of a troop carrier loaded with infantry than it was a fighting ship. Lots of naval battles on Fanglith amounted to boarding the enemy with your troops and fighting it out with swords. Any one of our pursuers would have two or three times as many fighting men as we had, maybe more.

  No, he said, the Saracens were not the fighters the Varangians were. Mostly they were men of smaller frame, less brawny and not so savage, wearing lighter mail and wielding lighter weapons. That much was well known.

  But they were brave and skilled, and when they caught us they'd be fresh, because slaves did their rowing.

  Could slaves row as hard as the Varangians? I asked. Michael thought not-Byzantine slaves couldn't anyway. But the dromans, the big Saracen warships, had as many as fifty great oars each, each pulled by two men, with the whip to inspire any who didn't pull hard enough.

  After a while we sat down at the oars again for about an hour. The next time I was relieved, the Saracens had gained quite a bit. The Varangians who weren't rowing were arguing with each other and with Gunnlag. Michael explained that some of them wanted to stand and fight while others thought we ought to keep running.

  It seems that Arno had told them earlier that the Normans held most of Sicily now-probably including the part we were headed for. Even if they didn't, a strong party of determined warriors might make their way to Norman territory. And Roger, the Count of Sicily, who was notoriously generous, would be glad to hire Varangians in his army, or help them continue home as Christian pilgrims.

  Those who wanted to run figured we might reach Sicily, and that if we were about to get caught, then we could stand and fight. Those who wanted to make a stand now figured we didn't have a chance to reach Sicily, and they wanted to fight before they got any more tired from rowing. They assumed they were going to get killed anyway, and they wanted to kill as many Saracens as they could while they were at it.

  Michael told me the Varangians were famous for never surrendering. According to him, the most dangerous thing you could do was trap Varangians.

  Finally, Gunnlag had heard enough, and bellowed one short command. The argument thinned down to a few "last words" by some of his men to some of the others, then stopped. We kept going.

  Arno went up to the bow. I followed and sat down next to him. "What decided the argument?" I asked.

  He looked at me and grinned, reminding me of the Arno I'd seen before a few times-happy-go-lucky.

  "I told Gunnlag that if we stopped, the Saracens would come up on us all at once. But if we kept running, they'd probably come up on us one at a time. And that one at a time I could use the device you gave me to sink them or drive them away."

  He took it out of its holster and looked at it thoughtfully, slipping the silent safeties off and on. "It isn't accurate at a distance, and without the recharge cylinders"-he used the Evdashian words for them, of course-"I must make each shot count, which means we must be close, within reach of their arrows. If they come at us all at once, we'll be under heavy fire, and these"-he gestured around to indicate the Varangians- "would stop rowing to fight. We would surely be taken then.

  "Not that I explained all that to Gunnlag. Best he thinks of this as thaumaturgy instead of the handwork of some weapons artificer."

  That took me by surprise. I'd assumed that Arno himself still thought of it as magic.

  "It was then he made up his mind," Arno finished.

  He looked me over. "In your way, you are brave. And you are one of those who are still alive after the danger or chase or fight are past. You proved that in Savoie and Normandy, more than once. Nonetheless, if it comes to it and they close with us, I'll see that one of the Varangians covers you against arrows with a shield. Then, just before the ships touch, you rise up with your stunner and sweep its force along their rail. Some of us will cut the ropes."

  He grinned again. "We will arrive at Palermo yet, you and I."

  Before Gunnlag ordered us back to the oars, I tried the communicator once more, just in case. And once more got no answer. When I sat down to row again, we could see Sicilian hills in a faint line along the horizon.

  At the end of our next shift, the hills were a lot closer, but the Saracen dromans were too. At the end of the shift after that, the nearest two dromans were almost even with each other, and I could imagine them treating it as a race, with us as the prize.

  The bosun quickened our pace, and I wasn't sure I could make it through my next shift. Arno wasn't rowing now; he was with Gunnlag in the stern. He must have had quite a bit of experience with the blast pistol we'd left with him before; I hoped he'd gotten good with it. When at last I was relieved, I could see more than the Sicilian hills, which weren't so high here. I could even make out the shore, we were that close. Maybe three miles, I thought, and turned and went aft.

  Behind us, the Saracens were so near, I could easily see the oars of the nearest two. They'd gotten strung out at last. There was the nearest, then maybe a couple of hundred yards back the second. The third was probably a half mile farther still.

  I couldn't tell whether we were going to reach the shore ahead of them or not. Or what we'd do if we did. Looking down into the long ship's bottom and then over the side at the water, it seemed to me she couldn't draw more than four feet of water. But for seaworthiness, she had a keel. And for all I knew, the keel could be de
ep enough that we'd hit bottom in water over our heads. Or there might be a reef offshore, or a shoal, and we'd pile up on it a quarter or half mile out.

  I supposed the Varangians could swim, but not with hauberks on, or swords at their belts. And in Normandy, I'd discovered the hard way that a blaster, or at least some blasters, wouldn't fire after being submerged in water. Did the dromans have small boats aboard? Would they launch them to attack us as we swam, or to follow us ashore? Did the Normans control this part of the island? If they didn't, were there Saracen troops in the vicinity? Were those hills wild? How far could we travel without being discovered?

  I went aft to wait with Arno.

  The first droman was close enough now that I could see the white of her bow wave, and make out men at her rail. Five would get you ten, I thought, that they had bows strung and ready. The cadence of their rowing was no faster than ours, but their two-man oars gave longer strokes, and their ship, if not as graceful as the long ship, had lines well built for speed.

  At maybe a hundred yards they shot a few trial arrows, which fell close astern of us. The Varangians not rowing stood in the walkway with shields, ready to protect their oarsmen. One also stood by Gunnlag to protect him while he steered. At this point, Arno and I crouched with only our heads above the gunwales. A minute later the Saracens fired a small volley, and the first arrow struck the stern; we heard it thud.

  Arno raised up enough to level the blaster, holding it with both hands, wrists braced on the gunwale. Then he fired, and I saw a flash at the bow of the droman, but I couldn't see if he'd blasted a piece out of the bulwark or actually hit a bowman. A bowman, I decided; I could hear men yelling, and it didn't sound like battle cries. By the flash, his next bolt hit the bow a little above waterline. The hole would have been a good foot wide, I'd think, and hopefully low enough to be taking water. But the droman came on, and a flight of arrows rose visibly from her, so Arno fired two more bolts into the massed archers in the bow.

  This time we heard unmistakable screaming. He must have killed a couple of them, messily, and the droman began to veer off. That's when he lucked out. I mean, it may have been what he was trying to do, but he had to be lucky to do it: As she began to veer, he fired again and apparently hit the mast, because the mast and sail fell across the aft oarsmen.

  Even with luck though, it had been great shooting at that distance, with a pistol. I needn't have worried about Arno's marksmanship.

  By that time, Saracen arrows were falling in and around our stern. Our own oarsmen didn't miss a beat, but neither did those on the second droman. I don't know what their captain thought was happening on the first ship, but it didn't change his mind about anything. At about eighty or ninety yards, a volley of arrows lifted from her bow, and Arno sent two bolts into the mass of archers, then several at her bow.

  The last time he touched the stud, nothing happened: her charge was exhausted. I kept my head down as the arrows started to fall-enough of them that I was surprised none of us was hit, though several stuck in Varangian shields and a number had thudded, vibrating, into the wood of the long ship.

  I popped my head up for another look. Arno must have hit the droman near the waterline with at least two bolts and probably more. She was definitely slowing-probably scooping water.

  Then Gunnlag bellowed an order, and our oarsmen stopped! I didn't realize what that was about for a moment. Arno yelled something in Norse, and Gunnlag looked angrily at him. Arno started talking furiously, and I suddenly realized what was going on. Gunnlag wanted to slow down and disable the other droman; he hadn't realized the blaster was out of charge. Arno was trying to get us rowing again.

  When Gunnlag got the picture, he bellowed the rowers back into action. Meanwhile the third droman was coming on, not more than a quarter mile away now. By that time we were less than a mile from the beach, and the Varangians put their brawny backs into it. At a half mile, the droman slowed. She was quite a bit bigger than we were, and probably rode a few feet deeper. Apparently her captain wasn't willing to beach her.

  We didn't hit bottom until we were less than fifty yards from shore. When the shallow keel grabbed the sand; the long ship jerked sharply, throwing me to the deck. But our momentum and the oarsmen's last stroke took us ten yards farther, tilting to the side. Then we sat on the bottom, resting partly on the keel and partly on the curve of our left side, the water within two feet of our gunwale.

  The droman was still coming, though more slowly now, and maybe three hundred yards back. I could picture her bowmen waiting ready. The Varangians didn't waste time. Grabbing weapons and shields, they piled over the portside gunwale into waist-deep water. The surf was negligible. I followed them, holding my stunner and communicator overhead; we were all ashore within a couple of minutes.

  The droman had veered off, out of bowshot. We'd come through the whole thing without one casualty. There were seventy-eight Varangians on the beach, along with one Norman, one Greek, and one holy monk from India.

  PART FIVE

  THE BATTLE

  TWENTY-THREE

  Once ashore and satisfied that we weren't about to be attacked from the sea, I looked around. The wide beach sloped up to a screen of trees-trees that didn't look like any I'd seen before on Fanglith. Or on Evdash either, as far as that's concerned. Their trunks were like thick rough pillars, without any branches at all. At the top, each of them had a broad crown of what looked like very long leaves, maybe twelve or fifteen feet long, that curved out and down. Each leaf came directly from the top of the trunk, which I suppose was maybe sixty or seventy feet tall.

  Arno told me it was a date orchard, that the trees were date palms. I knew about dates; I'd eaten them aboard the long ship. After looking around for a minute, we walked up the beach and into the orchard, which was only about a hundred feet wide. Behind it was a field of something that looked like grass and that Arno said was wheat. I remembered wheat from Provence and Normandy, but it had been quite a lot taller there. Later in the growing season, I suppose. On the other side of the wheat field was a row of more ordinary-looking trees.

  Eastward about half a mile was a little hamlet of maybe twenty small houses, plus sheds and other outbuildings. On a knoll a little way back of the hamlet stood a castle, not very big but built of stone. I would have seen it from the long ship if my attention hadn't been behind us, while from the beach, the orchard had been in the way.

  We all stopped to look it over, the Varangians talking quietly in their singsong language.

  "A Saracen place," Arno said to me. "Most of Sicily is peopled by Saracens, and there is no Christian church in that hamlet. If there was, we could see the cross. But this could still be Norman territory. Where Guiscard or Roger conquer Saracen ground, they leave the people to their own laws and religion. It saves no end of trouble.

  "From the tower they must have seen our vessel being pursued by Saracen warships, and may have seen us run aground. That they have not sent cavalry to attack us gives me hope that this district is Norman."

  He went over to Gunnlag and they spoke in Norse. Some of the other Varangians entered into the conversation; I wished I could understand what they were saying. When they were done, Gunnlag and Arno led us off across the wheat field, ignoring the hamlet and the tower, heading toward the hills. I asked Michael to find out what was going on, and he fell into step with one of the friendlier Varangians who'd been agreeable to his questions before.

  The more ordinary-looking trees on the other side of the wheat field shaded an irrigation ditch. We stopped there to drink, then started across another wheat field on the other side. As we walked, Michael angled over to me.

  "Some of the Varangians wanted to sack the hamlet," he told me. "Some of the younger ones don't seem very smart; their motto seems to be, act now and let the consequences take care of themselves. But Lord Arno recommended that we reach the hills before nightfall and camp in a place easy to defend. And Captain Gunnlag agreed. They don't want to risk attack in the open by Sar
acen knights, or get surrounded, trapped, in the hamlet. Or antagonizing the Normans, if this place has surrendered to them and been granted Norman protection.

  "Lord Arno believes that if there are Saracen knights in the castle, they are too few to attack us. But the Saracens use pigeons-a kind of bird-to carry messages from one place to another. The steward of this castle could easily have sent word to some nearby lord that a shipload of Christians has come ashore here.

  "Then, by darkness, Lord Arno and some other will go down to the hamlet and see what they can learn- nd out if this district has indeed been conquered by Normans."

  If the district was hostile-still under Saracen rule- and if the castle's marshal had sent a message to some governor by bird or mounted messenger, would we be attacked that night, I wondered? It seemed to me that if a Saracen force came after us, they'd better be a large force; seventy-eight Varangians plus a Norman knight might give them more than they bargained for.

  Plus one Evdashian rebel with a stunner. That should be worth something.

  I wished I'd been able to raise Deneen, though. I counted back on my fingers. This would be the fourth night since she'd left for our uninhabited island. At best I couldn't expect her to be powered up again till the sixth, but I'd still try every now and then.

  None of us was used to hiking. The Varangians and Michael weren't even used to being on land-not lately anyway-and neither was I for that matter. While Arno seldom walked far, and probably never had; he was born and raised a horseman. So the rugged hills were pretty hard on us. Probably less on the Varangians, though. Rowing, the way they did it, worked the thighs hard, and it certainly worked the heart and lungs.

  Of course, the Varangians had a lot more to carry. Each of them wore a heavy sword. Some of them carried a long-handled battle-axe over one shoulder, and others a bow and a quiver of arrows. All of them carried a shield, most an ornamented round shield that Arno told me was Byzantine. But some had a long, rectangular shield slung over their backs, almost big enough to hide behind.