The Man Who Counts

XVII

Wace stood on the deck of the Rijstaffel and watched his enemy come over the world’s rim.

Slowly, he reached into the pouch at his side. His hand closed on a chunk of stale bread and a slab of sausage. It was the last Terrestrial food remaining: for Earth-days, now, he had gone on a still thinner ration than before, so that he could enter this battle with something in his stomach.

He found that he didn’t want it after all.

Surprisingly little cold breathed up from underfoot. The warm air over the Sea of Achan wafted the ice-chill away. He was less astonished that there had been no appreciable melting in the week he estimated they had been creeping southward; he knew the thermal properties of water.

Behind him, primitive square sails, lashed to yard-arms of green wood on overstrained one-piece masts, bellied in the north wind. These ice ships were tubby, but considerably less so than a Drak’ho raft; and with some unbelievable talent for tyranny, Van Rijn had gotten reluctant Lannachska to work under frigid sea water, cutting the bottoms into a vaguely streamlined shape. Now, given the power of a Diomedean breeze, Lannach’s war fleet waddled through Achan waves at a good five knots.

Though the hardest moment, Wace reflected, had not been while they worked their hearts out to finish the craft. It had come afterward, when they were almost ready to leave and the winds turned contrary. For a period measured in Earth-days, thousands of Lannachska huddled soul-sick under freezing rains, ranging after fish and bird rookeries to feed cubs that cried with hunger. Councilors and clan leaders had argued that this was a war on the Fates: there could be no choice but to give up and seek out Swampy Kilnu. Somehow, blustering, shining, pleading, promising — in a few cases, bribing, with what he had won at dice — Van Rijn had held them on Dawrnach.

Well — it was over with.

The merchant came out of the little stone cabin, walked over the gravelstrewn deck past crouching war-engines and heaped missiles, till he reached the bows where Wace stood.

“Best you eat,” he said. “Soon gives no chance.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Wace.

“So, no?” Van Rijn grabbed the sandwich out of his fingers. “Then, by damn, I am!” He began cramming it between his teeth.

Once again he wore a double set of armor, but he had chosen one weapon only for this occasion, an outsize stone ax with a meter-long handle. Wace carried a smaller tomahawk and a shield. Around the human’s, it bristled with armed Lannachska.

“They’re making ready to receive us, all right,” said Wace. His eyes sought out the gaunt enemy war-canoes, beating upwind.

“You expected a carpet with acres and acres, like they say in America? I bet you they spotted us from the air hours ago. Now they send messengers hurry-like back to their army in Lannach.” Van Rijn held up the last fragment of meat, kissed it reverently, and ate it.

Wace’s eyes traveled backward. This was the flagship — chosen as such when it turned out to be the fastest — and had the forward position in a long wedge. Several score grayish-white, ragged-sailed, helter-skelter little vessels wallowed after. They were outnumbered and outgunned by the Drak’ho rafts, of course; they just had to hope the odds weren’t too great. The much lower freeboard did not matter to a winged race, but it would be important that their crews were not very skilled sailors -

But at least the Lannachska were fighters. Winged tigers by now, thought Wace. The southward voyage had rested them, and trawling had provided the means to feed them, and the will to battle had kindled again. Also, though they had a smaller navy, they probably had more warriors, even counting Delp’s absent army.

And they could afford to be reckless. Their females and young were still on Dawrnach — with Sandra, grown so white and quiet — and they had no treasures along to worry about. For cargo they bore just their weapons and their hate.

From the clouds of air-borne, Tolk the Herald came down. He braked on extended wings, slithered to a landing, and curved back his neck swan-fashion to regard the humans.

“Does it all go well down here?” he asked.

“As well as may be,” said Van Rijn. “Are we still bearing on the pest-rotten Fleet?”

“Yes. It’s not many buaska away now. Barely over your sea-level horizon, in fact; you’ll raise it soon. They’re using sail and oars alike, trying to get out of our path, but they’ll not achieve it if we keep this wind and those canoes don’t delay us.”

“No sign of the army in Lannach?”

“None yet. I daresay what’s-his-name… the new admiral that we heard about from those prisoners… has messengers scouring the mountains. But that’s a big land up there. It will take time to locate him.” Tolk snorted professional scorn. “Now I would have had constant liaison, a steady two-way flow of Whistlers.”

“Still,” said Van Rijn, “we must expect them soon, and then gives hell’s safety valve popping off.”

“Are you certain we can—”

“I am certain of nothings. Now get back to Trolwen and oversee.”

Tolk nodded and hit the air again.

Dark purplish water curled in white feathers, beneath a high heaven where clouds ran like playful mountains, tinted rosy by the sun. Not many kilometers off, a small island rose sheer; through a telescope, Wace could count the patches of yellow blossom nodding under tall bluish conifers. A pair of young Whistlers dipped and soared over his head, dancing like the gay clan banners being unfurled in the sky. It was hard to understand that the slim carved boats racing so near bore fire and sharpened stones.

“Well,” said Van Rijn, “here begins our fun. Good St. Dismas, stand by me now.”

“St. George would be a little more appropriate, wouldn’t he?” asked Wace.

“You may think so. Me, I am too old and fat and cowardly to call on Michael or George or Olaf or any like those soldierly fellows. I feel more at home, me, with saints not so bloody energetic, Dismas or my own good namesake who is so kind to travelers.”

“And is also the patron of highway men,” remarked Wace. He wished his tongue wouldn’t get so thick and dry on him. He felt remote, somehow… not really afraid… but his knees were rubbery.

“Ha!” boomed Van Rijn. “Good shootings, boy!”

The forward ballista on the Rijstaffel, with a whine and a thump, had smacked a half-ton stone into the nearest canoe. The boat cracked like a twig; its crew whirled up, a squad from Trolwen’s aerial command pounced, there was a moment’s murderous confusion and then the Drak’honai had stopped existing.

Van Rijn grabbed the astonished ballista captain by the hands and danced him over the deck, bawling out,

Another canoe swung about, close-hauled. Wace saw its flamethrower crew bent over their engine and hurled himself flat under the low wall surrounding the ice deck.

The burning stream hit that wall, splashed back, and spread itself on the sea. It could not kindle frozen water, nor melt enough of it to notice. Sheltered amidships, a hundred Lannacha archers sent an arrow-sleet up, to arc under heaven and come down on the canoe.

Wace peered over the wall. The flamethrower pumpman seemed dead, the hoseman was preoccupied with a transfixed wing… no steersman either, the canoe’s boom slatted about in a meaningless arc while its crew huddled — “Dead ahead!” he roared. “Ram them!”

The Lannacha ship trampled the dugout underfoot.

Drak’ho canoes circled like wolves around a buffalo herd, using their speed and maneuverability. Several darted between ice vessels, to assail from the rear; others went past the ends of the wedge formation. It was not quite a one-sided battle — arrows, catapult bolts, flung stones, all hurt Lannachska; oil jugs arced across the water, exploding on ice decks; now and then a fire stream ignited a sail.

But winged creatures with a few buckets could douse burning canvas. During all that phase of the engagement, only one Lannacha craft was wholly dismasted, and its crew simply abandoned it, parceling themselves out among other vessels. Nothing else could catch fire, except live flesh, which has always been the cheapest article in war.

Several canoes, converging on a single ship, tried to board. They were nonetheless outnumbered, and paid heavily for the attempt. Meanwhile Trolwen, with absolute air mastery, swooped and shot and hammered.

Drak’ho canoes scarcely hindered the attack. The dugouts were rammed, broken, set afire, brushed aside by their unsinkable enemy.

By virtue of being first, of having more or less punched through the line, the Rijstaffel met little opposition. What there was, was beaten off by catapult, ballista, fire pot, and arrows: long-range gunnery. The sea itself burned and smoked behind; ahead lay the great rafts.

When those sails and banners came into view, Wace’s dragon crewmen began to sing the victory song of the Flock.

“A little premature, aren’t they?” he cried above the racket.

“Ah,” said Van Rijn quietly, “let them make fun now. So many will soon be down, blind among the fishes, nie?”

“I suppose—” Hastily, as if afraid of what he had done merely to save his own life, Wace said; “I like that melody, don’t you? It’s rather like some old American folk songs. John Harty, say.”

“Folk songs is all right if you should want to play you are Folk in great big capitals,” snorted Van Rijn. “I stick with Mozart, by damn.”

He stared down into the water, and a curious wistfulness tinged his voice. “I always hoped maybe I would understand Bach some day, before I die, old Johann Sebastian who talked with God in mathematics. I have not the brains, though, in this dumb old head. So maybe I ask only one more chance to listen at Eine Klelne Nachtmusik.”

There was an uproar in the Fleet. Slowly and ponderously, churning the sea with spider-leg oars, the rafts were giving up their attempt at evasion. They were pulling into war formation.

Van Rijn waved angrily at a Whistler. “Quick! You get upstairs fast, and tell that crockhead Trolwen not to bother air-covering us against the canoes. Have him attack the rafts. Keep them busy, by hell! Don’t let messengers flappity-flip between enemy captains so they can organize!”

As the young Lannacha streaked away, the merchant tugged his goatee — almost lost by now in a dirt-stiffened beard — and snarled: “Great hairy honeypots! How long do I have to do all the thinkings? Good St. Nicholas, you bring me an officer staff with brains between the ears, instead of clabbered oatmeal, and I build you a cathedral on Mars! You hear me?”

“Trolwen is in the midst of a fight up there,” protested Wace. “You can’t expect him to think of everything.”

“Maybe not,” conceded Van Rijn grudgingly. “Maybe I am the only one in all the galaxy who makes no mistakes.”

Horribly near, the massed rafts became a storm when Trolwen took his advice. Bat-winged devils sought each other’s lives through one red chaos. Wace thought his own ships’ advance must be nearly unnoticed in that whirling, shrieking destruction.

“They’re not getting integrated!” he said, beating his fist on the wall. “Before God, they’re not!”

A Whistler landed, coughing blood; there was a monstrous bruise on his side. “Over there… Tolk the Herald says… empty spot… drive wedge in Fleet—” The thin body arced and then slid inertly to the deck. Wace stooped, taking the unhuman youth in his arms. He heard blood gurgle in lungs pierced by the broken ends of ribs.

“Mother, mother,” gasped the Whistler. “He hit me with an ax. Make it stop hurting, mother.”

Presently he died.

Van Rijn cursed his awkward vessel into a course change — not more than a few degrees, it wasn’t capable of more, but as the nearer rafts began to loom above the ice deck, it could be seen that there was a wide gap in their line. Trolwen’s assault had so far prevented its being closed. Redstained water, littered with dropped spears and bows, pointed like a hand toward the admiral’s floating castle.

“In there!” bawled Van Rijn. “Clobber them! Eat them for breakfast!”

A catapult bolt came whirring over the wall, ripped through his sleeve and showered ice chips where it struck. Then three streams of liquid fire converged on the Rijstaffel.

Flame fingers groped their way across the deck, one Lannacha lay screaming and charring where they had touched him, and found the sails. It was no use to pour water this time: oil-drenched, mast and rigging and canvas became one great torch.

Van Rijn left the helmsman he had been swearing at and bounded across the deck, slipped where some of it had melted, skated on his broad bottom till he fetched up against a wall, and crawled back to his feet calling down damnation on the cosmos. Up to the starboard shrouds he limped, and his stone ax began gnawing the cordage. “Here!” he yelled. “Fast! Help me, you jelly-bones! Quick, have you got fur on the brain, quick before we drift past!”

Wace, directing the ballista crew, which was stoning a nearby raft, understood only vaguely. Others were more ready than he. They swarmed to Van Rijn and hewed. He himself sought the racked oil bombs and broke one at the foot of the burning mast.

Its socket melted, held up only by the shrouds, the enormous torch fell to port when the starboard lines were slashed. It struck the raft there; flames ran from it, beating back frantic Drak’ho crewmen who would push it loose; rigging caught; timbers began to char. As the Rijstaffel drifted away, that enemy vessel turned into a single bellowing pyre.

Now the ice ship was nearly uncontrollable, driven by momentum and chance currents deeper into the confused Fleet. But through the gap which Van Rijn had so ardently widened, the rest of the Lannacha craft pushed. War-flames raged between floating monsters — but wood will burn and ice will not.

Through a growing smoke-haze, among darts and arrows that rattled down from above, on a deck strewn with dead and hurt but still filled by the revengeful hale, Wace trod to the nearest bomb crew. They were preparing to ignite another raft as soon as the ship’s drift brought them into range.

“No,” he said.

“What?” The captain turned a sooty face to him, crest adroop with weariness. “But sir, they’ll be pumping fire at us!”

“We can stand that,” said Wace. “We’re pretty well sheltered by our walls. I don’t want to burn that raft. I want to capture it!”

The Diomedean whistled. Then his wings spread and his eyes flared and he asked: “May I be the first on board it?”

Van Rijn passed by, hefting his ax. He could not have heard what was said, but he rumbled: “Ja. I was just about to order this. We can use us a transportation that maneuvers.”

The word went over the ship. Its slippery deck darkened with armed shapes that waited. Closer and closer, the wrought ice-floe bore down on the higher and more massive raft. Fire, stones, and quarrels reached out for the Lannachska. They endured it, grimly. Wace sent a Whistler up to Trolwen to ask for help; a flying detachment silenced the Drak’ho artillery with arrows.

Trolwen still had overwhelming numerical superiority. He could choke the sky with his warriors, pinning the Drak’honai to their decks to await sea-borne assault. So far, thought Wace, Diomedes’ miserly gods had been smiling on him. It couldn’t last much longer.

He followed the first Lannacha wave, which had flown to clear a bridgehead on the raft. He sprang from the ice-floe when it bumped to a halt, grasped a massive timber, and scrambled up the side. When he reached the top and unlimbered his tomahawk and shield, he found himself in a line of warriors. Smoke from the burnings elsewhere stung his eyes; only indistinctly did he see the defending Drak’honai, pulled into ranks ahead of him and up on the higher decks.

Had the yelling and tumbling about overhead suddenly redoubled?

A stumpy finger tapped him. He turned around to meet Van Rijn’s porcine gaze.

“Whoof and whoo! What for a climb that was! Better I should have stayed, nie? Well, boy, we are on our own now. Tolk just sent me word, the whole Drak’ho Expeditionary Force is in sight and lolloping here ward fast.”