The Man Who Counts

I

Grand Admiral Syranaxhyr Urnan, hereditary Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet of Drak’ho, Fisher of the Western Seas, Leader in Sacrifice, and Oracle of the Lodestar, spread his wings and brought them together again in an astonished thunderclap. For a moment, it snowed papers from his desk.

“No!” he said. “Impossible! There’s some mistake.”

“As my Admiral wills it,” Chief Executive Officer Delp hyr Orikan bowed sarcastically. “The scouts saw nothing.”

Anger crossed the face of Captain T’heonax hyr Urnan, son of the Grand Admiral and therefore heir apparent. His upper lip rose until the canine tushes showed, a white flash against the dark muzzle.

“We have no time to waste on your insolence, Executive Delp,” he said coldly. “I would advise my father to dispense with an officer who has no more respect.”

Under the embroidered cross-belts of office Delp’s big frame tautened. Captain T’heonax glided one step toward him. Tails curled back and wings spread, instinctive readiness for battle, until the room was full of their bodies and their hate. With a calculation which made it seem accidental, T’heonax dropped a hand to the obsidian rake at his waist. Delp’s yellow eyes blazed and his fingers clamped on his own tomahawk.

Admiral Syranax’s tail struck the floor. It was like a fire-bomb going off. The two young nobles jerked, remembered where they were, and slowly, muscle by muscle laying itself back to rest under the sleek brown fur, they relaxed.

“Enough!” snapped Syranax. “Delp, your tongue will flap you into trouble yet. T’heonax, I’ve grown bored with your spite. You’ll have your chance to deal with personal enemies, when I am fish food. Meanwhile, spare me my few able officers!”

It was a firmer speech than anyone had heard from him for a long time. His son and his subordinate recalled that this grizzled, dim-eyed, rheumatic creature had once been the conqueror of the Maion Navy — a thousand wings of enemy leaders had rattled grisly from the mastheads — and was still their chief in the war against the Flock. They assumed the all-fours crouch of respect and waited for him to continue.

“Don’t take me so literally, Delp,” said the admiral in a milder tone. He reached to the rack above his desk and got down a long-stemmed pipe and began stuffing it with flakes of dried sea driss from the pouch at his waist. Meanwhile, his stiff old body fitted itself more comfortable into the wood-and-leather seat. “I was quite surprised, of course, but I assume that our scouts still know how to use a telescope. Describe to me again exactly what happened.”

“A patrol was on routine reconnaissance about 30 obdisai north-north-west of here,” said Delp with care. “That would be in the general area of the island called… I can’t pronounce that heathenish local name, sir; it means Banners Flew.”

“Yes, yes,” nodded Syranax. “I have looked at a map now and then, you know.”

T’heonax grinned. Delp was no courtier. That was Delp’s trouble. His grandfather had been a mere Sail-maker, his father never advanced beyond the captaincy of a single raft. That was after the family had been ennobled for heroic service at the Battle of Xarit’ha, of course — but they had still been very minor peers, a tarry-handed lot barely one cut above their own crew-folk.

“Syranax, the Fleet’s embodied response to these grim days of hunger and uprooting, had chosen officers on a basis of demonstrated ability, and nothing else. Thus it was that simple Delp hyr Orikan had been catapulted in a few years to the second highest post in Drak’ho. Which had not taken the rough edges off his education, or taught him how to deal with real nobles.

If Delp was popular with the common sailors, he was all the more disliked by many aristocrats — a parvenu, a boor, with the nerve to wed a sa Axollon! Once the old admiral’s protecting wings were folded in death -

T’heonax savored in advance what would happen to Delp hyr Orikan. It would be easy enough to find some nominal charge.

The executive gulped. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean… we’re still so new to this whole sea… well. The scouts saw this drifting object. It was like nothing ever heard of before. A pair of ’em flew back to report and ask for advice. I went to look for myself. Sir, it’s true!”

“A floating object — six times as long as our longest canoe — like ice, and yet not like ice—” The admiral shook his gray-furred head. Slowly, he put dry tinder in the bottom of his firemaker. But it was with needless violence that he drove the piston down into the little hardwood cylinder. Removing the rod again, he tilted fire out into the bowl of his pipe, and drew deeply.

“The most highly polished rock crystal might look a bit like that stuff, sir,” offered Delp. “But not so bright. Not with such a shimmer.”

“And there are animals scurrying about on it?”

“Three of them, sir. About our size, or a little bigger, but wingless and tailless. Yet not just animals either… I think… they seem to wear clothes and — I don’t think the shining thing was ever intended as a boat, though. It rides abominably, and appears to be settling.”

“If it’s not a boat, and not a log washed off some beach,” said T’heonax “then where, pray tell, is it from? The Deeps?”

“Hardly, captain,” said Delp irritably. “If that were so, the creatures on it would be fish or sea mammals or — well, adapted for swimming, anyway. They’re not. They look like typical flightless land forms, except for having only four limbs.”

“So they fell from the sky, I presume?” sneered T’heonax.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” said Delp in a very low voice. “There isn’t any other direction left.”

T’heonax sat up on his haunches, mouth falling open. But his father only nodded.

“Very good,” murmured Syranax. “I’m pleased to see a little imagination around here.”

“But where did they fly from? ” exploded T’heonax.

“Perhaps our enemies of Lannach would have some account of it” said the admiral. “They cover a great deal more of the world every year than we do in many generations; they meet a hundred other barbarian flocks down in the tropics, and exchange news.”

“And females,” said T’heonax. He spoke in that mixture of primly disapproving voice and lickerish overtones with which the entire Fleet regarded the habits of the migrators.

“Never mind that,” snapped Delp.

T’heonax bristled. “You deckswabber’s whelp, do you dare—”

“Shut up!” roared Syranax.

After a pause, he went on: “I’ll have inquiries made among our prisoners. Meanwhile we had better send a fast canoe to pick up these beings before that object they’re on founders.”

“They may be dangerous,” warned T’heonax.

“Exactly,” said his father. “If so, they’re better in our hands than if, say, the Lannach’honai should find them and make an alliance. Delp, take the Nemnis, with a reliable crew, and crowd sail on her. And bring along that fellow we captured from Lannach, what’s his name, the professional linguist—”

“Tolk?” The executive stumbled over the unfamiliar pronunciation.

“Yes. Maybe he can talk to them. Send scouts back to report to me, but stand well off the main Fleet until you’re sure that the creatures are harmless to us. Also till I’ve allayed whatever superstitious fears about sea demons there are in the lower classes. Be polite if you can, get rough if you must. We can always apologize later… or toss the bodies overboard. Now, jump!”

Delp jumped.