John Dalmas - Return to Fanglith

"A shutdown should reverse it," I thought back at her.

"According to the systems manual," she answered, "it will have to be about a six- to ten-day all-systems shutdown. The only alternative is to head outbound and go into FTL. Eight or ten hours at FTL would decrystallize it, but that's too iffy."

Even a day at FTL sounded better to me than a six-to ten-day shutdown. "What's iffy about it?" I asked.

"We'd need to get out about 700,000 miles before I'd try FTL. Fanglith's a little more massive than Evdash. That's 700,000 miles in mass proximity mode, with crystallization accelerating all the way. The computer says it's marginal whether we could go FTL when we got out there. The crystallization might have gone too far. So I plan to go back to the island we visited. It's the safest place I know of on Fanglith, and we'll get along okay there. After six days, if the reversal isn't complete, maybe then I'll take her out and go FTL to finish it.

"Now what I need to know is, do you want me to pick you up and take you with us? I don't like leaving you with no one to bail you out if things come apart down there."

To my surprise, I wasn't even tempted. "No," I told her, "I'm pretty safe here, for Fanglith. I doubt if anyone around here is interested in messing with Arno, and he doesn't want anything to happen to me. And as far as the ship ride to Palermo is concerned, we'll be following the Norman-controlled coast all the way. I don't think we have anything to worry about; just get that crystallization reversed.

"Anything else to report?" I added.

"No, that's it. I'll say goodbye now and we'll be on the island before daylight. I'll be in touch again in six or eight days. Ten at most." She stopped then for a moment, a stop that I knew was just a pause.

"Larn?"

"Yeah?"

"I just want you to know that besides being my brother, you're also my best friend."

Well I'll be darned, I thought. "Thanks, sister mine. That goes both ways." And I meant it.

With that she cut off, and I could picture her accelerating westward toward the island coordinates. I lay there savoring our conversation for a minute or two before I went back to sleep.

The sirocco began to die down late the next morning. The locals said we were lucky, that usually it lasted longer, just before dusk the ship arrived from Reggio, probably the biggest ship I'd seen close up on Fanglith, with a taller, heavier mast than usual and a square sail instead of the usual triangular one. Tomorrow, Arno said, we would leave.

The next morning we met with the captain in a steel-gray dawn. The wind was out of the north now, and chilly instead of gritty. It would be best to lie at the dock a while, he said. The wind would make the Strait of Messina hard to navigate northbound. But Arno was a Norman and the captain wasn't. We would start this morning, Arno insisted, and if we had too much trouble, we could put in at Reggio or Messina. Roger had his own docks in both ports, which we could use without fee; Arno had a letter of authorization.

The captain shrugged and agreed. He was Greek, and his French quite broken, but I got the idea that it wasn't a big deal to him either way-sail or lie at the dock. We started loading the horses.

Most of the deck could be taken up in sections, like a mosaic of hatch covers. Each horse stall in the hold was just wide enough for a destrier, with a sort of leather sling so the horse couldn't fall in rough weather and maybe break a leg. The horses were loaded in-you could almost say they were inserted in their stalls- with a block and tackle fastened to a boom. That seemed to be the reason, or a reason, for the taller, heavier mast: It served as part of the boom rig for loading the horses.

When all sixty horses had been loaded, we cast off- Arno, Brislieu, and three sergeants, along with their squires, myself, and the ship's crew. The crew kept giving me sideways looks and plenty of room; Arno had spread the word that I was a holy monk from India. I didn't know whether he had some purpose in this or if it was his sense of humor.

The breeze was brisk, but nothing like a storm. The captain took us around the point of land just west of Mileto and we entered the wide, lower end of the long, funnel-shaped strait. The wind picked up a bit then, and he tacked northwestward across it. An hour later, though the clouds were breaking up, it was blowing considerably harder, and the ship was pitching pretty badly. Arno agreed that we should turn southwest and make for a little bay north of Taormina, the harbor of Taormina still being held by Saracens. But before long they decided that Catania was a better choice. It was considerably farther, but safer; we wouldn't have to sail across the wind.

Then, around mid-afternoon, the wind began to slack off markedly, and Arno had us turned north again. I was beginning to get a better idea of how hard it could be, with sailing rigs as crude as ours, to travel by sea with nothing more than wind power. I'd be willing to bet that sport sailors back on Evdash had a lot fewer problems with wind direction than the Fanglithans did.

At any rate, after five hours at sea we were quite a lot farther from Palermo than when we started. The swell continued pretty high, lifting our bow, then the entire ship, letting it slide down the back side, but we weren't taking spray across the deck anymore. The captain had the crew remove some of the hatches so the horses could have sunshine and fresh air.

As we zigzagged clumsily northward, we saw a sail riding the wind southward toward us-a square sail like our own. The captain told us it was almost surely not Mediterranean; Mediterranean vessels carried triangular sails. Ours was an exception, designed for hauling destriers.

Before long we could make out her hull, which was slender. My first thought was pirates, and that was Arno's thought too. But the captain said a corsair would have a triangular sail; this looked like a ship of Norse pilgrims on its way home from the Holy Land.

The word "Norse" triggered Arno's interest. The Norse, he told me, had founded Normandy, and some of his ancestors had been from Norse kingdoms. Also, the Varangian mercenary regiments in the Byzantine armies were Norse, and were famous fighting men. He asked the captain if we could sail near enough for a close look at their ship, and after a moment's hesitation, the captain agreed. He changed our tack so that we'd pass close to her.

The Norse ship moved fast by Fanglithan standards, riding high in the water, and soon we got a good look at her. Her lines were as smooth as the pirate's had been, and more slender. A "long ship," our captain said; he'd never seen one before, but he knew of them. Most Norse ships were broader, he told us, to carry cargo. We passed her at a distance of no more than two hundred feet, and there seemed to be fifty men or more on board her, most of them watching us. One of them had climbed her mast to the spar, presumably to get a better look.

Then we were past, and our attention left her. No one was even aware when she began to put about; she was mostly through her turn when our steersman noticed and called out. By that time her sail was down and she had oars in the water, her oarsmen pulling hard. Over the next few minutes, the Normans and I watched her draw up on us. It took skill to row in a swell like that. Our captain changed our course northwestward, angling toward the Sicilian coast, but it was obvious that she'd catch us. With the primitive Fanglithan sail rigs, oars worked a lot better in a headwind.

And Deneen was hundreds of miles away with all systems shut down, which meant no radio.

When the long ship had drawn near, I could see one of her men in the bow with a grapple in his hand, rope attached, I could imagine the technique: When they were close enough, he'd throw it and hook us. Brislieu had strung his bow, but Arno warned him sharply not to shoot. The Norse, he said, might all have bows, many to our few. Instead he drew his-my-blast pistol.