John Dalmas - Return to Fanglith

We didn't talk any more about Tarel's proposal, if you could call it that. He didn't seem inclined to make a problem out of it. But she'd opened my eyes a bit by telling me.

Tarel had been attentive to Deneen, helping when it was her turn to fix meals or wash dishes. He really was a good guy, had been ever since we'd known him. Courteous and considerate, aware and intelligent… Even reasonably good-looking. And as I said before, surprisingly strong-one of those people who seems to have been born strong. I couldn't help but wonder what Deneen might have said if he wasn't so darned serious about things. He just very seldom laughed or

even smiled very widely.

As for Bubba, we didn't see much of him till just before we were ready to leave. He seemed cheerful enough when he got back, but he was different from the way he'd been at home on Evdash. There wasn't the sense of openness I'd always felt from him before. It was as if he was withholding himself a little, as if there was something he was keeping to himself. Sometimes it was really noticeable, particularly now that I was paying attention.

Our vacation lasted three days and two nights. The third night we spent parked above Marseille again. At dawn of the fourth day, a raw, breezy, overcast morning, I was waiting at the town gate.

Two hours later I was on one of Isaac ben Abraham's ships, heading east through a choppy sea, a following wind pushing us along. And briskly, considering how small our triangular sail was, and how blunt the ship's broad bow.

Somehow, I felt glummer than Bubba at his glummest, as serious as Tarel. And a little seasick from the ship's pitch and roll, although I got over that pretty quickly. Tomorrow maybe it'll clear up, I thought, and we'll have sunshine. Maybe I'll feel better then.

The ship had been one of the larger in Marseille, all of sixty feet long. Loaded as she was, her gunwales amidships were only about four feet above the water. The full length was decked. Below deck there were dozens of bales of what they call "wool" on Fanglith- the curly and remarkably thick hair of an animal called "sheep." One of the other passengers told me the fur is cut off the sheep's entire body, right down to the skin, and grows back to be recut the next year. The hairs are so tangled together that when they cut them off, they hang together in a mat.

Below deck were also thousands of ingots of copper, silver, and lead-especially lead-which were mainly what made the ship ride so low in the water. Besides the cargo of wool and ingots, there were nine passengers, all men. We slept on the bales of wool below deck and ate the same food as the ship's crew.

Before long I was sharing my clothes again with minute biting insects, called lice and fleas, that seem to be ever-present pests on Fanglith.

The next day was nicer-clear, though still chilly- the wind continuing from the west. For a while, a school of very large fish swam alongside us, more or less in formation. Their smooth-looking gray bodies moved along in a series of arcs, curving clear of the water and then back in. The sailors called them porpoises.

In late afternoon we saw a headland to the southeast, a high ridge. One of the passengers told me it was the north end of a large island named Corsica, which the Saracens had once held but had been driven from years before. Before dark we'd rounded it and were heading south, more slowly now, with the wind and the island on our right. With the wind from the side we not only went slower, we also roiled heavily, and for a while I felt a little seasick again.

At dawn the next day we were out of sight of land once more. The wind had eased quite a lot, but was still from the west, arid our progress was slower yet. I spent a lot of the day asking questions of the other passengers, secretly recording our talks, but I got tired of that after a while and went below deck to kill time napping.

I was wakened by loud, excited talk. A pirate ship had been spotted, and I followed other passengers up onto the deck to see what it looked like. Head on, I couldn't see how long it was, but even seeing it from a distance it seemed to be more slender, and probably rode less deeply in the water. It had a sail, triangular like ours, and I thought I could make out oars hurrying it along. Our captain had turned us to run ahead of the light wind, but after watching for a while it was obvious that the pirate ship was gaining on us.

I was standing by the rail beside a merchant passenger who'd been to sea a lot. "How can you tell they're pirates?" I asked him.

He looked at me as if I was dense. "Because they're using oars. Only warships and pirates use oars. And because, by their lines, they're Saracens. Plus, they changed course toward us as soon as they saw us."

"What happens if they catch us?" I asked.

"They board us." He drew a shortsword and tested its blade grimly with a thumb. "And it's not if, it's when. Our only chance is that some warship, Pisan or Genoese, will show up. Don't hold your breath."

"What happens when they catch us?"

"We fight until either they kill us all or we surrender. Any of us taken alive will be held for ransom or made slaves. If you have no one to ransom you, you'll do well to die fighting."

"How much is the ransom?"

He looked me over, appraising my clothes. "More than you have," he said sourly, and turned away to watch the pirate ship again.

I watched, too-long enough to estimate that we had less than an hour, maybe half an hour, before they caught us. The sun was already down, the light beginning to fade a bit. If we could stay ahead of them long enough, I thought, maybe we could hide in the darkness. But no. I scanned the sky and there was the moon, half full now, pale in the early evening. The way they were closing the gap, they'd be close enough to see us by moonlight if they hadn't actually caught us before dark.

Of course, I could always use my blast pistol. I couldn't imagine them trying to board us after I'd fired a few charges into them. But that would make me a lot more conspicuous than I was ready to be-or rather, the wrong kind of conspicuous. Which didn't leave much for me to do but call in my one-ship space fleet, the biggest in the system.

I went down the stern ladder below deck again, among the ingots. Three of the passengers were down there, sitting near the ladder, talking quietly. I passed them and sat down amidships.

They were watching me now, the strange foreigner with all the dumb questions, so when I put the remote in my ear, I made it look as if I was scratching. Fanglithans do a lot of that. Then I took my communicator off the belt inside my cape, palming it, and when I took it out, I pretended to raise my crucifix with the same hand and kiss it.

"Jav, this is Larn," I murmured in Evdashian. "Jav, this is Larn. Come in please. Over."

"Larn, this is the Javelin," It was Deneen's voice in my ear, also in Evdashian. "There seems to be a bogey chasing you. He's gaining on you. Over."

"Right," I answered. "They're pirates. I don't want to shoot them up myself if I can help it; I'm not ready for that kind of publicity. So here's what I want you to do. If we can stay ahead of them till it's pretty much dark, I'd like you guys to sink them with your heavy blaster. Got that?"

"Sure. If you can stay ahead of them till it's pretty much dark, we're to sink them with our number one blaster. What if they catch you while it's still fairly light? Are you going to take care of them yourself then, or do we step in?"

Apparently the three passengers watching me could hear me faintly. Two of them crossed themselves and began to pray. They probably assumed that praying was what I was doing, and decided it was a good idea.

"I'm not sure yet," I answered. "I'll have to play it by ear. I'm going back up on deck in a minute to watch, but meanwhile, as it stands now, I don't want you to shoot them up till it's too dark for anyone down here to see what's doing the shooting. It's all right if they see something up there, but not what the something is. Got that?"