The Man Who Counts

IV

The dugout held some hundred natives, all armed, some wearing helmets and breastplates of hard laminated leather. A catapult, just visible through the dark, was mounted at the bows; the stern held a cabin, made from sapling trunks chinked with sea weed, that towered up almost like the rear end of a medieval caravel. On its roof, two helmsmen strained at the long tiller.

“Plain to see, we have found a navy ship,” grunted Van Rijn. “Not so good, that. With a trader, I can talk. With some pest-and-pox officer with gold braids on his brain, him I can only shout.” He raised small, close-set gray eyes to a night heaven where lightning ramped. “I am a poor old sinner,” he shouted, “but this I have not deserved! Do you hear me?”

After a while the humans were prodded between lithe devil-bodies, toward the cabin. The dugout had begun to run before the gale, on two reef points and a jib. The roll and pitch, clamor of waves and wind and thunder, had receded into the back of Wace’s consciousness. He wanted only to find some place that was dry, take off his clothes and crawl into bed and sleep for a hundred years.

The cabin was small. Three humans and two Diomedeans left barely room to sit down. But it was warm, and a stone lamp hung from the ceiling threw a dim light full of grotesquely moving shadows.

The native who had first met them was present. His volcanic-glass dagger lay unsheathed in one hand, and he held a wary lion-crouch; but half his attention seemed aimed at the other one, who was leaner and older, with flecks of gray in the fur, and who was tied to a corner post by a rawhide leash.

Sandra’s eyes narrowed. The blaster which Van Rijn had lent her slid quietly to her lap as she sat down. The Diomedean with the knife flicked his gaze across it, and Van Rijn swore. “You little all-thumbs brain, do you let him see what is a weapon?”

The first autochthone said something to the leashed one. The latter made a reply with a growl in it; then turned to the humans. When he spoke, it did not sound like the same language.

“So! An interpreter!” said Van Rijn. “You speakee Angly, ha? Haw, haw, haw!” He slapped his thigh.

“No, wait. It’s worth trying.” Wace dropped into Tyrlanian: “Do you understand me? This is the only speech we could possibly have in common.”

The captive raised his head-crest and sat up on hands and haunches. What he answered was almost familiar. “Speak slowly, if you will,” said Wace, and felt sleepiness drain out of him.

Meaning came through, thickly: “You do not use a version (?) of the Carnoi that I have heard before.”

“Carnoi—” Wait, yes, one of the Tyrlanians had mentioned a confederation of tribes far to the south, bearing some such name. “I am using the tongue of the folk of Tyrlan.”

“I know not that race (?). They do not winter in our grounds. Nor do any Carnoi as a regular (?) thing, but now and then when all are in the tropics (?) one of them happens by, so—” It faded into unintelligibility.

The Diomedean with the knife said something, impatiently, and got a curt answer. The interpreter said to Wace:

“I am Tolk, a mochra of the Lannachska—”

“A what of the what?” said Wace.

It is not easy even for two humans to converse, when it must be in different patois of a language foreign to both. The dense accents imposed by human vocal cords and Diomedean ears — they heard farther into the subsonic, but did not go quite so high in pitch, and the curve of maximum response was different — made it a slow and painful process indeed. Wace took an hour to get a few sentences’ worth of information.

Tolk was a linguistic specialist of the Great Flock of Lannach; it was his function to learn every language that came to his tribe’s attention, which were many. His title might, perhaps, be rendered Herald, for his duties included a good deal of ceremonial announcements and he presided over a corps of messengers. The Flock was at war with the Drak’honai, and Tolk had been captured in a recent skirmish. The other Diomedean present was named Delp, and was a high-ranking officer of the Drak’honai.

Wace postponed saying much about himself, less from a wish to be secretive than from a realization of how appalling a task it would be. He did ask Tolk to warn Delp that the food from the cruiser, while essential to Earthlings, would kill a Diomedean.

“And why should I tell him that?” asked Tolk, with a grin that was quite humanly unpleasant.

“If you don’t, said Wace, “it may go hard with you when he learns that you did not.”

“True.” Tolk spoke to Delp. The officer made a quick response.

“He says you will not be harmed unless you yourselves make it necessary,” explained Tolk. “He says you are to learn his language so he can talk with you himself.”

“What was it now?” interrupted Van Rijn.

Wace told him. Van Rijn exploded. “What? What does he say? Stay here till — Death and wet liver! I tell that filthy toad—” He half rose to his feet. Delp’s wings rattled together. His teeth showed. The door was flung open and a pair of guards looked in. One of them carried a tomahawk, another had a wooden rake set with chips of flint.

Van Rijn clapped a hand to his gun. Delp’s voice crackled out. Tolk translated: “He says to be calm.”

After more parley, and with considerable effort and guesswork on Wace’s part: “He wishes you no harm, but he must think of his own people. You are something new. Perhaps you can help him, or perhaps you are so harmful that he dare not let you go. He must have time to find out. You will remove all your garments and implements, and leave them in his charge. You will be provided other clothing, since it appears you have no fur.”

When Wace had interpreted for Van Rijn, the merchant said, surprisingly at ease: “I think we have no choice just now. We can burn down many of them, ja. Maybe we can take the whole boat. But we cannot sail it all the way home by ourselves. If nothing else, we would starve en route, nie? Were I younger, yes, by good St. George, I would fight on general principles. Single-handed I would take him apart and play a xylophone on his ribs, and try to bluster his whole nation into helping me. But now I am too old and fat and tired. It is hard to be old, my boy—”

He wrinkled his sloping forehead and nodded in a wise fashion. “But, where there are enemies to bid against each other, that is where an honest trader has a chance to make a little bit profit!”