Return to Fanglith f-2

by John Dalmas

  If we were attacked, I'd have to do without, at least until I could scavenge one from someone who'd been killed-preferably a Saracen if it came to that. Not that I had anything against the Saracens; I might like them better than Normans or Varangians. But I'd committed myself, and besides, I had an "in" with the Varangians, as a holy monk.

  After drinking our fill at a brook, we made camp on a hilltop, where anyone would have to walk or ride up a steep slope to get at us. If we were surrounded, sooner or later we'd have to fight our way down to water, but even I could see that the brook wasn't defensible.

  One thing we hadn't been able to bring from the long ship was food. My stomach was complaining already. It threatened to be a long night, and tomorrow didn't show much promise either.

  Then Arno started back to spy out the hamlet, taking Michael with him because the Greek could speak Arabic. With them gone, there wasn't a man in camp that I could talk to or understand. I very definitely hoped they came back.

  Even as tired as I was, it took me quite a while to fall asleep. Which was unusual. The Varangians had bedded down all packed together-for warmth I suppose. To me though, they smelled too bad for such close quarters, and I slept a little way off from them. I was cold and hungry, and my muscles were starting to stiffen up again. About the time it got dark, the moon came up, too little past full to tell the difference just by looking. When I did get to sleep, I kept waking up or half waking up from cold and the stony ground, but I only got up once, to relieve myself.

  When it was daylight, nearly sunup, I awoke for good. I was really stiff again, from rowing, and maybe partly from hiking up hills and sleeping on the hard ground in the cold. For the first time, I really looked around. Four or five miles south was the sea, with no trace of warships, although I could make out a couple of what I supposed were fishing boats. In every other direction were rugged hills, mostly bare. Here and there were patches of scrub, and in some of the ravine bottoms there were trees. To the north, the hills rose to become mountains.

  Arno and Michael were back, but they were still sleeping so there was no one to tell me what they'd found out. It looked as if something had happened, though; each was wrapped in a blanket. I limped down the hill to the brook and took a long drink, then limped back up, my stomach growling. Water didn't make much of a breakfast. By the time I'd gotten back to the top of the hill, I was warm again, and the worst of the soreness was gone. The sun was looking at us over the next ridge east, and Arno and Michael were both awake.

  No one seemed in any hurry to get on the trail.

  I went over to Arno. "What did you find out?" I asked.

  He grinned and, patting the rock next to him, invited me to sit. "We went to the first house," he said. "I hid beneath a window and sent the Greek to the door with a piece of Saracen silver." Arno hefted the purse at his belt, which held what might be the only money among us now. "He'd lived in Messina when it was still Saracen-there are many Greeks there. He knows Saracan ways and language, and something of their religion-enough to pretend he is one of them, a convert. He told them he'd escaped Varangian priates. And while the Greek talked with them, the Saracans fed him. They'd seen the ship, they said, and later they'd seen the infidel dogs, perhaps a hundred of them, cross the wheat field. The commander of the tower garrison had sent men on horseback to Agrigento and Sciacca to inform the commanders there and ask them to send knights.

  "They also told him that the Normans had captured Palermo, and that there is fighting in the west, and over east around Troina."

  "How did Michael get away?" I asked. "Wouldn't it have seemed suspicious for him to leave, under the circumstances?"

  "It was no problem. They gave him a mat to sleep on and went back to bed themselves. After giving them time to go to sleep, I slipped inside and killed them. Then I ate my fill and we left."

  From a purse he hadn't had the day before, he took a few dates and gave them to me. I stared at them a moment before eating, and even as hungry as I was, they didn't go down easily. I could see why Arno might feel he had to kill them, but he'd said it as casually as if it meant nothing to him. And I suppose it hadn't; he was a Norman.

  "When are we going to start hiking again?" I asked. "Or aren't we?"

  "Gunnlag sent archers out hunting. We'll need food. All Norsemen learn archery as boys, and they are used to hunting on foot. And these hills have many goats." He pointed northward toward the mountains. "That's the way to Norman territory, but it seems to be a long, hard march. We'll do better with meat in our bellies."

  It was on toward midday when we left. By then we'd eaten a half-grown goat. The shares were small, but they helped. Most of the others were footsore-Michael and Arno the worst of all. The ground was rocky, and I was the only one with stiff soles on his boots. In fact, I couldn't see how their soft-bottomed shoes could possibly last across the mountains. Maybe they could make some kind of shoes out of goatskin, I decided.

  After the first half hour of hiking, I got loosened up enough that it didn't go badly at all, but by late afternoon I was bushed again, and hungrier than I could believe! So was everyone else, and we started taking quite a few breaks. Also, it got a lot colder as we got higher up. We'd come to several stone huts, but no one was staying in them. Arno said they might be for herdsmen-that sheep had probably been grazed in these mountains before the Norman invasion. I wondered what sheep ate here. By the looks of the bushes, something ate twigs-perhaps the goats.

  Gunnlag had sent scout/hunters ahead of us, and two of them shot a goat each. We cooked them for an early supper, or half cooked them, by a mountain brook, and ate one of them plus the head of the other. The rest would be breakfast, I was appointed to carry it, in a smelly bag made of its own skin. Then we pushed on. By dusk, when we made camp, we'd passed banks of crusty old snow on some north slopes, and I was prepared for a miserable night. Just about everyone but me was limping now from sore feet, though I didn't hear any complaints.

  Before I lay down, I went a little way off. "To pray," I told Michael. "Tell the Varangians I'm going off by myself to pray to the angel Deneen." I went out on an outcrop and tried the communicator, but got no one. Just as I'd expected. Tomorrow night would be the sixth. I could reasonably hope to get her on the sixth night. If not, then maybe on the seventh.

  After that I went "to bed." This time I didn't let smelly bodies bother me. I lay down against the jam of Varangians to share warmth. I suppose it helped, but it was the coldest, most miserable night I'd ever spent.

  What can I say about the next day? Until late afternoon it was basically the same as the one before: hike up and down steep slopes and pick your way along ravines. The country was high and cold, and if a little less rugged, it was still tough going. We were still in luck with the weather, which was sunny without much breeze, but on the other hand, the scouts only killed one goat. One goat for eighty-one of us. Gunnlag stopped early to camp, and a number of men with bows were sent hunting.

  If they didn't have some luck, we'd be hungrier that night than the first.

  While we lay around in the late sun, we heard a horn off to the south. I asked Arno what he thought it was. He said it sounded like a Saracen war trumpet, but they probably used them as hunting horns too. I asked him what they might be hunting in a time of war like this.

  He grinned at me. "They're hunting just what you think they're hunting," he replied, "Us. And the horn means they've found our trail."

  He got to his swollen feet and, with only a slight limp, walked over to Gunnlag to talk with him about it. By the way Gunnlag looked-standing, staring off toward the sound-he'd come to the same conclusion on his own. I went off to pray to the angel Deneen again. Maybe this time. If not..

  From what I understand about prayer, what I felt when I called Deneen that evening wasn't much different from what the Christians felt when they prayed to their God. Again I didn't get any answer. I began to wonder if, just possibly, my communicator wasn't working. Unlikely. Maybe… I didn't like to think a
bout it, but maybe something was wrong with the Rebel Javelin- something worse than fuel crystallization. No, I told myself, it's just a night too soon.

  And tomorrow night could easily be a night too late. I decided it was time to turn on my remote again, in case she called me.

  The hunters were back sooner than they might have been. They'd heard the horn too. Among them they'd gotten one goat. She'd been gutted, and given to me to carry because we weren't going to stay where we were. It didn't appeal to Gunnlag for a defensive stand. True, it was a high point on a ridge, but an enemy could charge along the crest at us from two sides with only a mild slope to ride up. While on the next major ridge north there was a rounded peak, sort of a knob, that would be a lot easier to defend.

  It was nearly dark when we reached it. By that time we'd heard horns twice more, the last sounding as if it came from the place we'd left two hours earlier. I wondered how many Saracens there were. The Varangians rolled and lugged the available large rocks into a crescent at each end of our position. Only the ends were attackable. The rocks didn't make a wall at all; you could walk between them. But they'd give a little cover from arrows if you knelt behind them.

  Then we sat and squatted in little clusters at the top.

  That's when I realized that someone wasn't with us.

  "Where's Michael?" I murmured to Arno.

  "I've sent him north," he answered. "To see if he can find some Norman force to relieve us. The Saracens will assume we've sent someone, but one man is hard to trail by night."

  "Can they track us at night?" I asked.

  "Saracen knights are like Norman knights in their love of hunting. And the moon will rise before long, with light enough to track a force the size of ours."

  That seemed reasonable to me. Piet had taught us to track during our survival training, and we'd followed well-beaten animal trails by moonlight.

  "How many of them do you think there are?" I asked.

  Arno shrugged. "They think we are a hundred, so they may well be twice that. Quite possibly more. And they are on horses; do not doubt it."

  It occurred to me to wonder what use I'd be up there on the hilltop. The Saracens had to be pretty smart about war, or they wouldn't be a power on Fanglith. And if they were smart, they wouldn't rush us. They'd sit down the hill and let us get good and thirsty. They might not even waste arrows on us.

  And knowing the Varangians, when they got thirsty enough, after maybe a day without water, they'd go down after some. They wouldn't just wait to die. Then the Saracen archers and swordsmen would get a work-out. And whoever won-probably the Saracens-a lot of us would be dead when it was over. Maybe all of us.

  The last of the twilight had died, and moonrise was still an hour or two off. It was as dark as a night in open mountains can get without a good cloud layer. Which was pretty dark. "Arno," I said, getting to my feet, "wish me luck."

  I unbuckled my belt and took my shortsword off of it, then laid the sword by a boulder. My stunner and communicator I kept.

  "What are you going to do?" Arno asked.

  "I'm going hunting. We hunt on Evdash too, you know." Then, after rebuckling my belt, I slipped out through the partial crescent of boulders and started south down the mountain.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Deneen:

  It was still night when we got to the island. I put the Jav down near the little stream, at about where we'd been before. A little farther from it, actually, in case a big rainstorm came along and the creek outgrew its banks.

  With the power off, we'd be down to basics. And I mean basics. Most of our equipment, including kitchen and sanitary equipment, operated off ship's power, while what hand-powered tools we had were designed for working on ship systems and structure. We didn't have so much as a shovel to bury trash with or dig a latrine.

  Somehow, I hadn't thought about any of this until we were on the island. Then, for a couple of minutes, I considered going back to the continent and having Tarel and Moise get us some things, but that would mean being on power again for several hours, and there was the possibility that they might get into trouble on the ground. Possibly trouble that could take days on power to handle. Unlikely, maybe, but I wasn't willing to take the risk.

  Then I remembered that we had the fire starters from our packs, and the shortsword and dagger that Larn had gotten Tarel in Marseille. Plus stunners to hunt with, and Uncle Piet's survival training. And more than anything else, Bubba was with us as our super watch-canid and master hunter.

  We were better off than I'd thought; it wasn't like me to get all shook up with no good reason. That's when I realized how worried and distracted I was about Larn. Which was kind of dumb, because it didn't do anyone any good-Larn or any of us.

  Tarel and I looked around for anything I'd missed that might be useful and didn't require ship's power. Then I shut the power off and we all went out and slept on solid ground-more solid than I was used to.

  I lay there for a while with Larn on my mind. Both in Provence and Normandy, and recently on the ship from Marseille, he'd shown a lot of ability, resourcefulness, and ingenuity, which had helped keep him alive. But an important part of it had been-let's face it-really good luck. And while luck is very good to have, I'd never felt very comfortable about relying on it. It seemed to me that you couldn't know when you'd run out of it-at least, not until it was too late.

  Of course, ability has its limits too, but you at least had some idea of what those limits were. And while you couldn't measure ingenuity or resourcefulness, you knew if you had it or not. just now, Larn's abilities weren't what I could wish they were. For example, his skill with local weapons was almost nonexistent, and Arno had gotten his stunner and blaster away from him. What he had left was his ability to do the right thing at the right time-duck when he needed to. And that's where ability shaded over into luck, which he might or might not have some of at any particular time.

  Or was luck another ability-a kind that people didn't usually recognize as one?

  That's the kind of thing that went through my mind for a while after I lay down beside the Jav. But in half an hour or so I went to sleep anyway.

  We got along through five days and five nights, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be-at least not for me. I may have been a little bossy at times-let's face it, I was-but someone had to be in charge, and it was my hat. On the morning of the sixth day, with everyone on board, I powered up and called for a systems check on the computer. Including a check of the fuel slugs.

  It could have been worse. Crystallization was greatly reduced, but there was still more than I was willing to live with. I'd have to take her out 700,000 miles and run her in FTL mode for a while-lock her into a loop that would bring her back in-system at the same system coordinates. I told Tarel what I was going to do, and told him to explain as much of it as he could to Moise. They'd gotten to be pretty good friends on the island- buddies you could say. And Moise had learned considerable Evdashian through the learning program, although he didn't understand some of our concepts yet.

  So far I'd been impressed with how calmly Moise had reacted to all the strange, and to him far out, things he'd been exposed to since I'd put the spotlight on the pirate ship. I'd wondered a time or two if it was partly because, in his world, they believed in so many supernatural things. Then, when he ran into something real that seemed supernatural, it might not be as big a shock.

  Now, of course, he knew we weren't a threat to him. But it must have been really weird and scary when strange people had hauled him inside a sort of giant boat, or big steel flask, and whisked him into the sky.

  As Tarel started explaining, I headed us outbound and then called the maintenance manual into memory. The entry on fuel crystallization referred to a number of library entries, and now that I had time, it seemed to me I ought to read them. The third one I came to was the one I needed to see. One sequence of events that could lead to crystallization was rare, but it fitted all too well what had happened to the Jav.
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  "Prolonged impacts by heavy blaster charges on a ship's energy shield," it said, "can result in weak magnetization of the power transfer system. Subsequent use of the weapons system, with its translation of the gray force into pulse mode, will initiate crystallization in the fuel slugs."

  I had no idea what that meant, but for the moment, I kept reading, hopeful that I wasn't getting into mental quicksand.

  "Once crystallization is initiated," it went on, "subsequent low-intensity power use, as in mass-proximity mode, and the resulting resistance to normal matrix function, causes feedback to the fuel slugs, extending crystallization rapidly, "When fuel crystallization occurs, do the following: I avoid using the ship's weapons system until the power transfer module has been changed; 2. decrystallize the fuel slugs; and 3. change the power transfer module."

  It fitted. The Jav's energy shield had taken a lot of blaster charges before we'd lifted from Evdash. And I'd discovered serious fuel cell crystallization within twenty standard hours of demonstrating the scout's weapons system for Arno.

  Well, I told myself, I know what to do about it now. Fingers on the keyboard, I called up parts storage and asked for a new power transfer module. It replied that power transfer modules were not part of standard parts stock on scouts. That was followed by a list of places where I could get one-any of the three Evdashian naval stations.

  I muttered an expression that mom and dad wouldn't approve of.

  From there I skimmed on through the rest of the articles, looking for information that might be helpful. There wasn't any. But it seemed obvious that I'd better not use the weapons system again, and in trying to establish a political and military power base on Fanglith, that would be a serious disadvantage.