The Man Who Counts

XI

Guntra of the Enklann sept came in through the door. Eric Wace looked wearily up. Behind him, hugely shadowed between rush lights, the mill was a mumble of toiling forms.

“Yes?” he sighed.

Guntra held out a broad shield, two meters long, a light sturdy construction of wicker on a wooden frame. For many ten-days she had supervised hundreds of females and cubs as they gathered and split and dried the reeds, formed the wood, wove the fabric, assembled the unit. She had not been so tired since homecoming. Nevertheless, a small victory dwelt in her voice: “This is the four thousandth, Councilor.” It was not his title, but the Lannacha mind could hardly imagine anyone without definite rank inside the Flock organization. Considering the authority granted the wingless creatures, it fell most naturally to call them Councilors.

“Good.” He hefted the object in hands grown calloused. “A strong piece of work. Four thousand are more than enough; your task is done, Guntra.”

“Thank you.” She looked curiously about the transformed mill. Hard to remember that not so long ago it had existed chiefly to grind food.

Angrek of the Trekkans came up with a block of wood in his grasp. “Councilor,” he began, “I—” He stopped. His gaze had fallen on Guntra, who was still in her early middle years and had always been considered handsome.

Her eyes met his. A common smokiness lit them. His wings spread and he took a stiff step toward her.

With a gasp, almost a sob, Guntra turned and fled. Angrek stared after her, then threw his block to the floor and cursed.

“What the devil?” said Wace.

Angrek beat a fist into his palm. “Ghosts,” he muttered. “It must be ghosts… unrestful spirits of all the evildoers who ever lived… possessing the Drakska, and now come to plague us!”

Another pair of bodies darkened the door, which stood open to the short pale night of early summer. Nicholas van Rijn and Tolk the Herald entered.

“How goes it, boy?” boomed Van Rijn. He was gnawing a nitro-packed onion; the gauntness which had settled on Wace, even on Sandra, had not touched him. But then, thought Wace bitterly, the old blubberbucket didn’t work. All he did was stroll around and talk to the local bosses and complain that things weren’t proceeding fast enough.

“Slowly, sir.” The younger man bit back words he would rather have said. You bloated leech, do you expect to be carried home by my labor and my brains, and fob me off with another factor’s post on another hell-planet?

“It will have to be speeded, then,” said Van Rijn. “We cannot wait so long, you and me.”

Tolk glanced keenly at Angrek. The handicrafter was still trembling and whispering charms,. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The… an influence.” Angrek covered his eyes. “Herald,” he stammered, “Guntra of the Enklann was here just now, and for a moment we… we desired each other.”

Tolk looked grave, but spoke without reproof. “It has happened to many. Keep it under control.”

“But what is it, Herald? A sickness? A judgment? What have I done?”

“These unnatural impulses aren’t unknown,” said Tolk. “They crop up in most of us, every once in a while. But of course, one doesn’t talk about it; one suppresses it, and does his or her best to forget it ever happened.” He scowled. “Lately there has been more of such hankering than usual. I don’t know why. Go back to your work and avoid females.”

Angrek drew a shaky breath, picked up his piece of wood, and nudged Wace. “I wanted your advice; the shape here doesn’t seem to me the best for its purpose—”

Tolk looked around. He had just come back from a prolonged journey, cruising over his entire homeland to bear word to scattered clans. “There has been much work done here,” he said.

“Ja” nodded Van Rijn complacently. “He is a talented engineer, him my young friend. But then, the factor on a new planet had pest-be-damned better be a good engineer.”

“I am not so well acquainted with the details of his schemes.”

“My schemes,” corrected Van Rijn, somewhat huffily. “I tell him to make us weapons. All he does then is make them.”

“All?” asked Tolk dryly. He inspected a skeletal framework. “What’s this?”

“A repeating dart-thrower; a machine gun, I call it. See, this walking beam turns this spurred fly wheel. Darts are fed to the wheel on a belt — s-s-so — and tossed off fast: two or three in an eye-wink, at least. The wheel is swivel-mounted to point in all directions. It is an old idea, really, I think Miller or de Camp or someone first built it long ago. But it is one hard damn thing to face in battle.”

“Excellent,” approved Tolk. “And that over there?”

“We call it a ballista. It is like the Drak’ho catapults, only more so. This throws large stones, to break down a wall or sink a boat. And here — -ja.” Van Rijn picked up the shield Guntra had brought. “This is not so good advertising copy, maybe, but I think it means a bit more for us than the other machineries. A warrior on the ground wears one on his back.”

“Mm-m-m… yes, I see where a harness would fit it would stop missiles from above, eh? But our warrior could not fly while he wore it.”

“Just so!” roared Van Rijn. “Just bloody-be-so! That is the troubles with you folk on Diomedes. Great balls of cheese! How you expect to fight a real war with nothing but all air forces, ha! Up here in Salmenbrok, I spend all days hammering into stupid officer heads, it is infantry takes and holds a position, by damn! And then officers have to beat it into the ranks, and practice them — gout of Judas! It is not time enough! In these few ten-days, I have to try make what needs years!”

Tolk nodded, almost casually. Even Trolwen had needed time and argument before he grasped the idea of a combat force whose main body was deliberately restricted to ground operations. It was too alien a concept. But the Herald said only: “Yes. I see your reasoning. It is the strong points which decide who holds Lannach, the fortified towns that dominate a countryside from which all the food comes. And to take the towns back, we will need to dig our way in.”

“You think smartly,” approved Van Rijn. “In Earth history, it took some peoples a long time to learn there is no victory in air power alone.”

“There are still the Drakska fire weapons,” said Tolk. “What do you plan to do about them? My whole mission, these past ten-days, has been largely to persuade the outlying septs to join us. I gave them your word that the fire could be faced, that we’d even have flame-throwers and bombs of our own. I’d better have been telling the truth.”

He looked about. The mill, converted to a crude factory, was too full of winged laborers for him to see far. Nearby, a primitive lathe, somewhat improved by Wace, was turning out spearshafts and tomahawk handles. Another engine, a whirling grindstone, was new to him: it shaped ax heads and similar parts, not as good as the handmade type but formed in wholesale lots. A drop hammer knocked off flint and obsidian flakes for cutting edges; a circular saw cut wooden members; a rope-twisting machine spun faster than the eye could follow. All of it was belt-powered from the great millwheels — all of it ludicrously haywired and cranky — but it spat forth the stuff of war faster than Lannach could use, filled whole bins with surplus armament.

“It is remarkable,” said Tolk. “It frightens me a little.”

“I make a new way of life here,” said Van Rijn expansively. “It is not this machine or that one which has already changed your history beyond changing back. It is the basic idea I have introduced: mass production.”

“But the fire—”

“Wace has also begun to make us fire weapons. Sulfur they have gathered from Mount Oborch, and there are oil pools from which we are getting nice arsonish liquids. Distillation, that is another art the Drak’ho have had and you have not. Now we will have some Molotov cocktails for our own selves.”

The human scowled. “But there is one thing true, my friend. We have not time to train your warriors like they should be to use this material. Soon I starve; soon your females get heavy and food must be stored.” He heaved a pathetic sigh. “Though I am long dead before you folks have real sufferings.”

“Not so,” said Tolk grimly. “We have almost half a year left before Birthtime, true. But already we are weakened by hunger, cold, and despair. Already we have failed to perform many ceremonies—”

“Blast your ceremonies!” snapped Van Rijn. “I say it is Ulwen town we should take first, where it sits so nice overlooking Duna Brae that all the hornbeasts live at. If we have Ulwen, you have eats enough, also a strong point easy to defend. But no, Trolwen and the Council say we must strike straight for Mannenach, leaving Ulwen enemy-held in our rear, and going down clear to Sanga Bay where their rafts can get at us. For why? So you can hold some blue-befungused rite there!”

“You cannot understand,” said Tolk gently. “We are too different. Even I, whose life’s work it has been to deal with alien peoples, cannot grasp your attitude. But our life is the cycle of the year. It is not that we take the old gods so seriously any more — but their rituals, the Tightness and decency of it all, the belonging—” He looked upward, into the shadow-hidden roof, where the wind hooted and rushed about the busy millwheels. “No, I don’t believe that ancestral ghosts fly out there of nights. But I do believe that when I welcome High Summer back at the great rite in Mannenach, as all my forebears have done for as long as there has been a Flock… then I am keeping the Flock itself alive.”

“Bah!” Van Rijn extended a dirt-encrusted hand to scratch the matted beard which was engulfing his face. He couldn’t shave or wash: even given anti-allergen shots, human skin wouldn’t tolerate Diomedean soap. “I tell you shy you have all this ritual. First, you are a slave to the seasons, more even than any farmer on Earth back in our old days. Second, you must fly so much, and leave your homes empty all the dark time up here, that ritual is your most precious possession. It is the only thing you have not weighing too much to be carried with you everywhere.”

“That’s as may be,” said Tolk. “The fact remains. If there is any chance of greeting the Full Day from Mannenach Standing Stones, we shall take it. The extra lives which are lost because this may not be the soundest strategy, will be offered in gladness.”

“If it does not cost us the whole befouled war.” Van Rijn snorted. “Devils and dandruff! My own chaplain at home, that pickle face, is not so fussy about what is proper. Why, that poor young fellow there was near making suicide now, just because he got a little bit excited over a wench out of wenching season, nie?”

“It isn’t done,” said Tolk stiffly. He walked from the shop. After a moment, Van Rijn followed.

Wace settled the point of discussion with Angrek, checked operations elsewhere, swore at a well-meaning young porter who was storing volatile petroleum fractions beside the hearth, and left. His feet were heavy at the end of his legs. It was too much for one man to do, organizing, designing, supervising, trouble-shooting — Van Rijn seemed to think it was routine to lift neolithic hunters into the machine age in a few weeks. He ought to try it himself! It might sweat some of the lard off the old hog.

The nights were so short now, only a paleness between two red clouds on a jagged horizon, that Wace no longer paid any heed to the time. He worked until he was ready to drop, slept a while, and went back to work.

Sometimes he wondered if he had ever felt rested and clean, and well fed, and comforted in his alone-ness.

Morning smoldered on northerly ridges, where a line of volcanoes smeared wrathful black across the sun. Both moons were sinking, each a cold coppery disk twice the apparent size of Earth’s Luna. Mount Oborch shivered along giant flanks and spat a few boulders at the pallid sky. The wind came galing, stiff as an iron bar pressed against Wace’s suddenly chilled back. Salmenbrok village huddled flinty barren under its loud quick thrust.

He had reached the ladder made for him, so he could reach the tiny loft-room he used, when Sandra Tamarin came from behind the adjoining tower. She paused, one hand stealing to her face. He could not hear what she said, in the blustery air.

He went over to her. Gravel scrunched under the awkward leather boots a Lannacha tailor had made him. “I beg your pardon, my lady?”

“Oh… it was nothing, Freeman Wace.” Her green gaze came up to meet his, steadily and proudly, but he saw a redness steal along her cheeks. “I only said good morning.”

“Likewise.” He rubbed sandy-lidded eyes. “I haven’t seen you for some time, my lady. How are you?”

“Restless,” she said. “Unhappy. Will you talk to me for a little, perhaps?”

They left the hamlet behind and followed a dim trail upward, through low harsh bushes breaking into purple bloom. High above them wheeled a few sentries, but those were only impersonal specks against heaven. Wace felt his heartbeat grow hasty.

“What have you been doing?” he asked.

“Nothing of value. What can I do?” She stared down at her hands. “I try, but I have not the skills, not like you the engineer or Freeman van Rijn.”

“Him?” Wace shrugged. No doubt the old goat had found plenty of chance to brag himself up, as he lounged superfluous around Salmenbrok. “It—” He stopped, groping after words. “It’s enough just to have my lady present.”

“Why, Freeman!” She laughed, with genuine half-amused pleasure and no coyness at all. “I never thought you so gallant in the words.”

“Never had much chance to be, my lady,” he murmured, too tired and strength-emptied to keep up his guard.

“Not?” She gave him a sideways look. The wind laid its fingers in her tightly braided hair and unfurled small argent banners of it. She was not yet starved, but the bones in her face were standing out more sharply; there was a smudge on one cheek and her garments were clumsy baggings hurled together by a tailor who had never seen a human frame before. But somehow, stripped thus of queenliness, she seemed to him more beautiful than erstwhile — perhaps because of being closer? Because her poverty said with frankness that she was only human flesh like himself?

“No,” he got out between stiff lips.

“I do not understand,” she said.

“Your pardon, my lady. I was thinking out loud. Bad habit. But one does, on these outpost worlds. You see the same few men so often that they stop being company; you avoid them — and, of course, we’re always undermanned, so you have to go out by yourself on various jobs, maybe for weeks at a time. Why am I saying all this? I don’t know. Dear God, how tired I am!”

They paused on a ridge. At their feet there was a cliff tumbling through hundreds of meters down to a foam-white river. Across the canyon were mountains and mountains, their snows tinged bloody by the sun. The wind came streaking up the dales and struck the humans in the face.

“I see. Yes, it clears for me.” Sandra regarded him with grave eyes. “You have had to work hard all your life. There has not been time for the pleasures, the learned manners and culture. Not?”

“No time at all, my lady,” he said “I was born in the slums, one kilometer from the old Triton Docks. Nobody but the very poor would live that close to a spaceport, the traffic and stinks and earthquake noise… though you got used to it, still it was a part of you, built into your bones. Half my playmates are now dead or in jail, I imagine, and the other half are scrabbling for the occasional half-skilled hard-and-dirty job no one else wants. Don’t pity me, though. I was lucky. I got apprenticed to a fur wholesaler when I was twelve. After two years, I’d made enough contacts to get a hard-and-dirty job myself — only this was on a spaceship, fur-trapping expedition to Rhiannon. I taught myself a little something in odd moments, and bluffed about the rest I was supposed to know, and got a slightly better job. And so on and so on, till they put me in charge of this outpost… a very minor enterprise, which may in time become moderately profitable but will never be important. But it’s a stepping stone. So here I am, on a mountain top with all Diomedes below me, and what’s next?”

He shook his head, violently, wondering why his reserve had broken down. Being so exhausted was like a drunkenness. But more to it than that… no, he was not fishing for sympathy… down underneath, did he want to find out if she would understand? If she could?

“You will get back,” she said quietly. “Your kind of man survives.”

“Maybe!”

“It is heroic, what you have done already.” She looked away from him, toward the driving clouds around Oborch’s peak. “I am not certain anything can stop you. Except yourself.”

“I?” He was beginning to be embarrassed now, and wanted to talk of other things. He plucked at his bristly red beard.

“Yes. Who else can? You have come so far, so fast. But why not stop? Soon, perhaps here on this mountain, must you not ask yourself how much farther it is worth going?”

“I don’t know. As far as possible, I guess.”

“Why? Is it necessary to become great? Is it not enough to be free? With your talent and experience, you can make good-enough monies on many settled planets where men are more at home than here. Like Hermes, exemplia. In this striving to be rich and powerful, is it not merely that you want to feed and shelter the little boy who once cried himself hungry to sleep back in Triton Docks? But that little boy you can never comfort, my friend. He died long ago.”

“Well… I don’t know… I suppose one day I’ll have a family. I’d want to give my wife more than just a living; I’d want to leave my children and grandchildren enough resources to go on — to stand off the whole world if they have to—”

“Yes. So. I think maybe—” he saw, before she turned her head from him, how the blood flew up into her face — “the old fighting Dukes of Hermes were like so. It would be well if we had a breed of men like them again—” Suddenly she began walking very fast down the path. “Enough. Best we return, not?”

He followed her, little aware of the ground he trod.