The Man Who Counts

VII

The admiral’s household troops, a hundred full-time warriors, landed with beautiful exactness and snapped their weapons to position. Polished stone and oiled leather caught the dull light like sea-blink; the wind of their wings roared across the deck. A purple banner trimmed with scarlet shook loose, and the Gerunis crew, respectfully crowded into the rigging and on the forecastle roof, let out a hoarse ritual cheer.

Delp hyr Orikan advanced from the poop and crouched before his lord. His wife, the beautiful Rodonis sa Axollon, and his two young children came behind him, bellies to the deck and wings over eyes. All wore the scarlet sashes and jeweled armbands which were formal dress.

The three humans stood beside Delp. Van Rijn had vetoed any suggestion that they crouch, too. “It is not right for a member of the Polesotechnic League, he should get down on knees and elbows. Anyway I am not built for it.”

Tolk of Lannach sat haughty next to Van Rijn. His wings were tucked into a net and the leash on his neck was held by a husky sailor. His eyes were as bleak and steady on the admiral as a snake’s.

And the armed young males who formed a rough honor guard for Delp their captain had something of the same chill in their manner — not toward Syranax, but toward his son, the heir apparent on whom the admiral leaned. Their spears, rakes, tomahawks, and wood-bayoneted blowguns were held in a gesture of total respect: nevertheless, the weapons were held.

Wace thought that Van Rijn’s outsize nose must have an abnormal keenness for discord. Only now did he himself sense the tension on which his boss had obviously been counting.

Syranax cleared his throat, blinked, and pointed his muzzle at the humans. “Which one of you is captain?” he asked. It was still a deep voice, but it no longer came from the bottom of the lungs, and there was a mucous rattle in it.

Wace stepped forward. His answer was the one Van Rijn had, hastily and without bothering to explain, commanded that he give: “The other male is our leader, sir. But he does not speak your language very well as yet. I myself still have trouble with it, so we” must use this Lannach’ho prisoner to interpret.”

T’heonax scrowled. “How should he know what you want to say to us?”

“He has been teaching us your language,” said Wace. “As you know, sir, foreign tongues are his main task in life. Because of this natural ability, as well as his special experience with us, he will often be able to guess what we may be trying to say when we search for a word.”

“That sounds reasonable.” Syranax’s gray head wove about. “Yes.”

“I wonder!” T’heonax gave Delp an ugly look. It was returned in spades.

“So! By damn, now I talk.” Van Rijn rolled forward. “My good friend… um… er… pokker, what is the word? — my admiral, we, ahem, we talk-um like good brothers — good brothers, is that how I say-um, Tolk?—”

Wace winced. Despite what Sandra had whispered to him, as they were being hustled here to receive the visitors, he found it hard to believe that so ludicrous an accent and grammar were faked.

And why?

Syranax stirred impatiently. “It may be best if we talked through your companion,” he suggested.

“Bilge and barnacles!” shouted Van Rijn. “Him? No, no, me talkum talky-talk self. Straight, like, um, er, what-is-your-title. We talk-um like brothers, ha?”

Syranax sighed. But it did not occur to him to overrule the human. An alien aristocrat was still an aristocrat, in the eyes of this caste-ridden society, and as such might surely claim the right to speak for himself.

“I would have visited you before,” said the admiral, “but you could not have conversed with me, and there was so much else to do. As they grow more desperate, the Lannach’honai become more dangerous in their raids and ambushes. Not a day goes by that we do not have at least a minor battle.”

“Hm-m-m?” Van Rijn counted off the declension-comparison on his fingers. “Xammagapai… let me see, xammagan, xammagai… oh, yes. A small fight! I make-um see no fights, old admiral — I mean, honored admiral.”

T’heonax bristled. “Watch your tongue, Eart’ho!” he clipped. He had been over frequently to stare at the prisoners, and their sequestered possessions were in his keeping. Little awe remained — but then, Wace decided, T’heonax was not capable of admitting that a being could possibly exist in any way superior to T’heonax.

“And yours, son,” murmured Syranax. To Van Rijn: “Oh, they would scarcely venture this far out. I mean our positions on the mainland are constantly harassed.”

“Yes,” nodded the Terrestrial, rather blankly.

Syranax lay down on the deck in an easy lion-pose. T’heonax remained standing, taut in Delp’s presence. “I have, of course, been getting reports about you,” went on the admiral. “They are, ah, remarkable. Yes, remarkable. It’s alleged you came from the stars.”

“Stars, yes!” Van Rijn’s head bobbed with imbecilic eagerness. “We from stars. Far far away.”

“Is it true also that your people have established an outpost on the other shore of The Ocean?”

Van Rijn went into a huddle with Tolk. The Lannacha put the question into childish words. After several explanations, Van Rijn beamed. “Yes, yes, we from across Ocean. Far far away.”

“Will your friends not come in search of you?”

“They look-um, yes, they look-um plenty hard. By Joe! Look-um all over. You treat-um us good or our friends find out and—” Van Rijn broke off, looking dismayed, and conferred again with Tolk.

“I believe the Eart’ho wishes to apologize for tactlessness,” explained the Herald dryly.

“It may be a truthful kind of tactlessness,” observed Syranax. “If his friends can, indeed, locate him while he is still alive, much will depend on what kind of treatment he received from us. Eh? The problem is, can they find him that soon? What say, Eart’ho?” He pushed the last question out like a spear.

Van Rijn retreated, lifting his hands as if to ward off a blow. “Help!” he whined. “You help-urn us, take us home, old admiral… honored admiral… we go home and pay-um many many fish.”

T’heonax murmured in his father’s ear: “The truth comes out — not that I haven’t suspected as much already. His friends have no measurable chance of finding him before he starves. If they did, he wouldn’t be begging us for help. He’d be demanding whatever struck his fancy.”

“I would have done that in all events,” said the admiral. “Our friend isn’t very experienced in these matters, eh? Well, it’s good to know how easily truth can be squeezed out of him.”

“So,” said T’heonax contemptuously, not bothering to whisper, “the only problem is, to get some value out of the beasts before they die.”

Sandra’s breath sucked sharply in. Wace grasped her arm, opened his mouth, and caught Van Rijn’s hurried Anglic murmur: “Shut up! Not a word, you bucket head!” Where upon the merchant resumed his timid smile and attitude of straining puzzlement.

“It isn’t right!” exploded Delp. “By the Lodestar; sir, these are guests — not enemies — we can’t just use them!”

“What else would you do?” shrugged T’heonax.

His father blinked and mumbled, as if weighing the arguments for both sides. Something like a spark jumped between Delp and T’heonax. It ran along the ranked lines of Gerunis crew-folk and household troopers as an imperceptible tautening, the barest ripple of muscle and forward slant of weapons.

Van Rijn seemed to get the drift all at once. He recoiled operatically, covered his eyes, then went to his knees before Delp. “No, no!” he screamed. “You take-um us home! You help-um us, we help-um you! You remember say how you help-um us if we help-um you!”

“What’s this?”

It was a wild-animal snarl from T’heonax. He surged forward. “You’ve been bargaining with them, have you?”

“What do you mean?” The executive’s teeth clashed together, centimeters from T’heonax’s nose. His wing-spurs lifted like knives.

“What sort of help were these creatures going to give you?”

“What do you think?” Delp flung the gage into the winds, and crouched waiting.

T’heonax did not quite pick it up. “Some might guess you had ideas of getting rid of certain rivals within the Fleet,” he purred.

In the silence which fell across the raft, Wace could hear how the dragon shapes up in the rigging breathed more swiftly. He could hear the creak of timbers and cables, the slap of waves and the low damp mumble of wind. Almost, he heard obsidian daggers being loosened in their sheaths.

If an unpopular prince finds an excuse to arrest a subordinate whom the commoners trust, there are likely going to be men who will fight. It was not otherwise here on Diomedes.

Syranax broke the explosive quiet. “There’s some kind of misunderstanding,” he said loudly. “Nobody is going to charge anyone with anything on the basis of this wingless creature’s gabble. What’s the fuss about? What could he possibly do for any of us, anyway?”

“That remains to be seen,” answered T’heonax. “But a race which can fly across The Ocean in less than an equinoctail day must know some handy arts.”

He whirled on a quivering Van Rijn. With the relish of the inquisitor whose suspect has broken, he said curtly: “Maybe we can get you home somehow if you help us. We are not sure how to get you home. Maybe your stuff can help us get you home. You show us how to use your stuff.”

“Oh, yes!” said Van Rijn. He clasped his hands and waggled his head. “Oh, yes, good sir, I do you want-um.”

T’heonax clipped an order. A Drak’ho slithered across the deck with a large box. “I’ve been in charge of these things,” explained the heir. “Haven’t tried to fool with it, except for a few knives of that shimmery substance—” Momentarily, his eyes glowed with honest enthusiasm. “You’ve never seen such knives, father! They don’t hack or grind, they slice! They’ll carve seasoned wood!”

He opened the box. The ranking officers forgot dignity and crowded around. T’heonax waved them back. “Give this blubberpot room to demonstrate,” he snapped. “Bowmen, blowgunners, cover him from all sides. Be ready to shoot if necessary.”

Van Rijn took out a blaster.

“You mean to fight your way clear?” hissed Wace. “You can’t!” He tried to step between Sandra and the menace of weapons which suddenly ringed them in. “They’ll fill us with arrows before—”

“I know, I know,” growled Van Rijn sotto voce. “When will you young pridesters learn, just because he is old and lonely, the boss does not yet have teredos in the brain? You keep back, boy, and when trouble breaks loose, hit the deck and dig a hole.”

“What? But—”

Van Rijn turned a broad back on him and said in broken Drak’ho, with servile eagerness: “Here a… how you call it?… thing. It makes fire. It burn-um holes, by Joe.”

“A portable flame thrower — that small?” For a moment, an edge of terror sharpened T’heonax’s voice.

“I told you,” said Delp, “we can gain more by dealing honorably with them. By the Lodestar, I think we could get them home, too, if we really tried!”

“You might wait till I’m dead, Delp, before taking the Admiralty,” said Syranax. If he meant it as a joke, it fell like a bomb. The nearer sailors, who heard it, gasped. The household warriors touched their bows and blowguns. Rodonis sa Axollono spread her wings over her children and snarled. Deckhand females, jammed into the forecastle, let out a whimper of half-comprehending fear.

Delp himself steadied matters. “Quiet!” he bawled. “Belay there! Calm down! By all the devils in the Rainy Stars, have these creatures driven us crazy?”

“See,” chattered Van Rijn, “take blaster… we call-um blaster… pull-um here—”

The ion beam stabbed out and crashed into the mainmast. Van Rijn yanked it away at once, but it had already made a gouge centimeters deep in that tough wood. Its blue-white flame licked across the deck, whiffed a coiled cable into smoke, and took a section out of the rail, before he released the trigger.

The Drak’honai roared!

It was minutes before they had settled back into the shrouds or onto the decks; curiosity seekers from nearby craft still speckled the sky. However, they were technologically sophisticated in their way. They were excited rather than frightened.

“Let me see that!” T’heonax snatched at the gun.

“Wait, Wait, good sir, wait.” Van Rijn snapped open the chamber, in a set of movements screened by his thick hands, and popped out the charge. “Make-um safe first. There.”

T’hoeonax turned it over and over. “What a weapon!” he breathed. “What a weapon!”

Standing there in a frosty sweat, waiting for Van Rijn to spoon up whatever variety of hell he was cooking, Wace still managed to reflect that the Drak’honai were overestimating. Natural enough, of course. But a gun of this sort would only have a serious effect on ground-fighting tactics — and the old sharper was coolly disarming all the blasters anyway, no uninstructed Diomedean was going to get any value from them -

“I make safe,” Van Rijn burbled. “One, two, three, four, five I make safe… Four? Five? Six?” He began turning over the piled-up clothes, blankets, heaters, campstove, and other equipment. “Where other three blasters?”

“What other three?” T’heonax stared at him.

“We have six.” Van Rijn counted carefully on his fingers. “Ja, six. I give-um all to good sir Delp here.”

“WHAT?”

Delp leaped at the human, cursing. “That’s a lie! There were only three, and you’ve got them there!”

“Help!” Van Rijn scuttled behind T’heonax. Delp’s body clipped the admiral’s son. Both Drak’honai went over in a whirl of wings and tails.

“He’s plotting mutiny!” screamed T’heonax.

Wace threw Sandra to the deck and himself above her. The air grew dense with missiles.

Van Rijn turned ponderously to grab the sailor in charge of Tolk. But that Drak’ho had already away to Delp’s defense. Van Rijn had only to peel off the imprisoning net.

“Now,” he said in fluent Lannachamael, “go bring an army to fetch us out of here. Quick, before someone notices!”

The Herald nodded, threshed his wings, and was gone into a sky where battle ran loose.

Van Rijn stooped over Wace and Sandra. “This way,” he panted under the racket. A chance tail-buffet, as a sailor fought two troopers, brought a howl from him. “Thunder and lightning! Pest and poison ivy!” He wrestled Sandra to her feet and hustled her toward the comparative shelter of the forecastle.

When they stood inside its door, among terrified females and cubs, looking out at the fight, he said:

“It is a pity that Delp will go under. He has no chance. He is a decent sort; we could maybe have done business.”

“All saints in Heaven!” choked Wace. “You touched off a civil war just to get your messenger away?”

“You know perhaps a better method?” asked Van Rijn.