John Dalmas - Return to Fanglith

As soon as the bells had stopped ringing, Carolus and Key no lowered their heads and began to pray out loud. I didn't know the prayers, but it was expected of me so I did the best I could: I recited a poem, "The Greening of Dancer's Desert," in Evdashian:

'Twas on the planet Dancer In the System Farness Meth, There spread a windswept desert Named the Emptiness of Death, The director, Kalven Denken, Wearied by its furnace breath, Swore to plant its desolation, End the Emptiness of Death He never dreamed what it would cost, Nor the kind of coin. In faith, Had he known, he'd not have sworn To plant the Emptiness of Death…

I kept going until the others stopped, and when we were done, Garolus scowled at me suspiciously. Isaac ben Abraham looked on with interest, and again with that hint of amusement.

"What heretical tongue was that?" Carolus demanded.

It smelled like trouble for sure. My answer was as much a surprise to me as to him, and based on what Arno of Courmeron had said at the monastery two years earlier. "That was Aramaic," I told him. "The language of our Lord Jesu Christ."

I could only hope Carolus didn't speak Aramaic. He frowned. "It sounded like Saracen to me," he said suspiciously.

It was Isaac ben Abraham who answered. "It does indeed. We Jews speak Aramaic in our churches and homes, in the reading of the Talmud. Also, we speak it in trade with Jews of other lands. From his dialect, obviously Larn learned it in the Holy Land, from Syrian monks, whose tongues are not colored by any vernacular." He looked at me with respect. "Truly, I am impressed."

I was more than impressed. I was relieved, but also a little worried. I couldn't imagine what reason Isaac ben Abraham might have had for lying me out of trouble.

After that, the contest was an anticlimax for me. We were to calculate in rounds-the best of nine would win. In each round, ben Abraham would pose a problem and we'd both calculate the answer. Then I'd pose one. If we tied a round, each of us winning a half, then we were supposed to replay the round until one of us won both halves.

But of course I won right away. I didn't know what to expect from Isaac ben Abraham then, or his household guards. I only hoped I wouldn't have to use my stunner. But what he did was pay Carolus and Reyno what they'd won, weighing out the coins to satisfy Carolus that they hadn't been shaved. Reyno was practically dancing, and Carolus's usually sour face was actually smiling as he paid me my ten gold bezants.

Then ben Abraham had wine poured again. "And what will you do with your winnings, young Larn?" he asked.

"I'm not sure how much I can buy with ten bezants," I told him. "I'd like to buy food-fresh meat, cheese, fish, and flour. And dried fruit, if I can get any. And rent a donkey to take it to friends I know, who are hungry."

Carolus looked at me as if I was crazy, but didn't say anything. Ben Abraham looked at me as if he'd like to know what I was really all about. Reyno looked at me as if he didn't really see me; his thoughts were on the girl he might be able to marry now.

By evening I had a donkey loaded with freshly butchered beef, a huge round cheese, dried fish, dates, olives, and other foods I'd bought in the market. Plus two daggers, two short swords, and a set of cheap local clothes for all three of us. The short swords were way the most expensive: a bezant each. Except for a dagger that I'd fastened to my belt, all of it was loaded in two big baskets slung across the donkey's back. They almost hid the donkey.

And I also owned the donkey! I hoped I could bring him back to the market and sell him for what I paid for him. But if I simply had to let him loose, that would be okay too, because I still had two of my gold pieces left.

I left the city gate just before it closed at sundown, and followed the road westward, leading my donkey by his rope halter, Off to my left was the sea, beautiful in sunlight, and a beach with no one on it. After a little while I turned off on a trail that wound its way down to it.

The beach seemed like the nearest decent landing place, except for the road itself. After unloading the baskets onto the sand, I tied the donkey to a bush a little way above the beach-far enough that the scout shouldn't scare him out of his wits. Then, when it was dark, I called Deneen to come get me. When they landed, Bubba trotted down the ramp and off into the brush above the beach without a word. He needed to get out and stretch his legs and hunt. Knowing Bubba, I had no doubt he'd catch fresh meat by dawn, when he was to meet us. And no way would he bother my donkey, or anyone's livestock. Well-not my donkey, anyway. But he was bound to be pretty desperate for a proper meal.

After Tarel and I got my purchases loaded into the scout, we took off, and Deneen parked us twenty-one miles above Marseille. There I loaded the contents of my recorder into the computer, and while Deneen and Tarel started putting the food away, I had the linguistics program analyze the language contents against the Provencal and Norman it already knew. It didn't take long-a few seconds. Then I had the computer copy it into the learning program. When that was done, I sat down in the copilot's seat, put on a learning skullcap, and proceeded to upgrade my knowledge of Provencal, running through all we knew of it now until I had it thoroughly.

That done, I took off the skullcap, got up, and went back to the little galley. Deneen was bloody to the elbows. "Next time," she said, looking up at me grimly, "see if you can get the meat cut up into pieces that'll fit into storage. This place doesn't have the facilities for cutting up forty-pound hunks of beef-especially tough beef!"

I could see what she meant. They were trying to work on a counter fourteen inches wide. And not only were they bloody, and the counter bloody, but blood was dripping onto the floor and had smeared the wall behind the counter. She and Tarel had taken off their shoes, and their feet were smeared red. So far, they'd gotten about a fourth of the beef cut and wrapped for putting away.

"Sorry," I said.

She held up one of the belt knives we'd had on Evdash. "This is the biggest thing we have to work with," she added, a little less hostile now. "It would help if you bring a butcher knife next time, even if you do bring the meat in smaller pieces. And we need rags to wipe blood with. We're trying not to use paper toweling; we're almost out of it."

She gestured at the large cleaning drum, where I could see the clothes I'd bought. "I put them in there on sanitize, in case they've got any of those mean little critters you got infested with our last trip here," She grinned then, sheepishly. "Oh, and let me thank you for bringing all these tasties, brother mine. You really did do good work getting them, and I honestly appreciate it. It's just that the meat needs a few improvements in preprocessing."

"Can I help in here?" I asked.

"There's not room for three at once. No, just stand there and admire us, and tell us what you have in mind to do next."

So I did. Before dawn I'd go back to my donkey. Then I'd return to Marseille and see if I could have a long talk with Isaac ben Abraham; I had the notion I could learn even more from him than I had from Brother Oliver two and a half years before. Certainly he could expand our knowledge of Provencal a lot. And if it was unusual to transport horses by sea, then, as a shipowner, ben Abraham might know of Arno. I had no idea how many shipowners there were in Marseille, or even if Arno had gotten this far with his horse herd. It was a long dangerous distance from Normandy.

"Then," I finished, "we may have enough information to plan intelligently."

"I'd like to go with you next time," Tarel put in. "I'd like to get a firsthand feel for what it's like down there."