John Dalmas - Return to Fanglith

When Gunnlag got the picture, he bellowed the rowers back into action. Meanwhile the third droman was coming on, not more than a quarter mile away now. By that time we were less than a mile from the beach, and the Varangians put their brawny backs into it. At a half mile, the droman slowed. She was quite a bit bigger than we were, and probably rode a few feet deeper. Apparently her captain wasn't willing to beach her.

We didn't hit bottom until we were less than fifty yards from shore. When the shallow keel grabbed the sand; the long ship jerked sharply, throwing me to the deck. But our momentum and the oarsmen's last stroke took us ten yards farther, tilting to the side. Then we sat on the bottom, resting partly on the keel and partly on the curve of our left side, the water within two feet of our gunwale.

The droman was still coming, though more slowly now, and maybe three hundred yards back. I could picture her bowmen waiting ready. The Varangians didn't waste time. Grabbing weapons and shields, they piled over the portside gunwale into waist-deep water. The surf was negligible. I followed them, holding my stunner and communicator overhead; we were all ashore within a couple of minutes.

The droman had veered off, out of bowshot. We'd come through the whole thing without one casualty. There were seventy-eight Varangians on the beach, along with one Norman, one Greek, and one holy monk from India.

Once ashore and satisfied that we weren't about to be attacked from the sea, I looked around. The wide beach sloped up to a screen of trees-trees that didn't look like any I'd seen before on Fanglith. Or on Evdash either, as far as that's concerned. Their trunks were like thick rough pillars, without any branches at all. At the top, each of them had a broad crown of what looked like very long leaves, maybe twelve or fifteen feet long, that curved out and down. Each leaf came directly from the top of the trunk, which I suppose was maybe sixty or seventy feet tall.

Arno told me it was a date orchard, that the trees were date palms. I knew about dates; I'd eaten them aboard the long ship. After looking around for a minute, we walked up the beach and into the orchard, which was only about a hundred feet wide. Behind it was a field of something that looked like grass and that Arno said was wheat. I remembered wheat from Provence and Normandy, but it had been quite a lot taller there. Later in the growing season, I suppose. On the other side of the wheat field was a row of more ordinary-looking trees.

Eastward about half a mile was a little hamlet of maybe twenty small houses, plus sheds and other outbuildings. On a knoll a little way back of the hamlet stood a castle, not very big but built of stone. I would have seen it from the long ship if my attention hadn't been behind us, while from the beach, the orchard had been in the way.

We all stopped to look it over, the Varangians talking quietly in their singsong language.

"A Saracen place," Arno said to me. "Most of Sicily is peopled by Saracens, and there is no Christian church in that hamlet. If there was, we could see the cross. But this could still be Norman territory. Where Guiscard or Roger conquer Saracen ground, they leave the people to their own laws and religion. It saves no end of trouble.

"From the tower they must have seen our vessel being pursued by Saracen warships, and may have seen us run aground. That they have not sent cavalry to attack us gives me hope that this district is Norman."

He went over to Gunnlag and they spoke in Norse. Some of the other Varangians entered into the conversation; I wished I could understand what they were saying. When they were done, Gunnlag and Arno led us off across the wheat field, ignoring the hamlet and the tower, heading toward the hills. I asked Michael to find out what was going on, and he fell into step with one of the friendlier Varangians who'd been agreeable to his questions before.

The more ordinary-looking trees on the other side of the wheat field shaded an irrigation ditch. We stopped there to drink, then started across another wheat field on the other side. As we walked, Michael angled over to me.

"Some of the Varangians wanted to sack the hamlet," he told me. "Some of the younger ones don't seem very smart; their motto seems to be, act now and let the consequences take care of themselves. But Lord Arno recommended that we reach the hills before nightfall and camp in a place easy to defend. And Captain Gunnlag agreed. They don't want to risk attack in the open by Saracen knights, or get surrounded, trapped, in the hamlet. Or antagonizing the Normans, if this place has surrendered to them and been granted Norman protection.

"Lord Arno believes that if there are Saracen knights in the castle, they are too few to attack us. But the Saracens use pigeons-a kind of bird-to carry messages from one place to another. The steward of this castle could easily have sent word to some nearby lord that a shipload of Christians has come ashore here.

"Then, by darkness, Lord Arno and some other will go down to the hamlet and see what they can learn- nd out if this district has indeed been conquered by Normans."

If the district was hostile-still under Saracen rule- and if the castle's marshal had sent a message to some governor by bird or mounted messenger, would we be attacked that night, I wondered? It seemed to me that if a Saracen force came after us, they'd better be a large force; seventy-eight Varangians plus a Norman knight might give them more than they bargained for.

Plus one Evdashian rebel with a stunner. That should be worth something.

I wished I'd been able to raise Deneen, though. I counted back on my fingers. This would be the fourth night since she'd left for our uninhabited island. At best I couldn't expect her to be powered up again till the sixth, but I'd still try every now and then.

None of us was used to hiking. The Varangians and Michael weren't even used to being on land-not lately anyway-and neither was I for that matter. While Arno seldom walked far, and probably never had; he was born and raised a horseman. So the rugged hills were pretty hard on us. Probably less on the Varangians, though. Rowing, the way they did it, worked the thighs hard, and it certainly worked the heart and lungs.

Of course, the Varangians had a lot more to carry. Each of them wore a heavy sword. Some of them carried a long-handled battle-axe over one shoulder, and others a bow and a quiver of arrows. All of them carried a shield, most an ornamented round shield that Arno told me was Byzantine. But some had a long, rectangular shield slung over their backs, almost big enough to hide behind.

If we were attacked, I'd have to do without, at least until I could scavenge one from someone who'd been killed-preferably a Saracen if it came to that. Not that I had anything against the Saracens; I might like them better than Normans or Varangians. But I'd committed myself, and besides, I had an "in" with the Varangians, as a holy monk.

After drinking our fill at a brook, we made camp on a hilltop, where anyone would have to walk or ride up a steep slope to get at us. If we were surrounded, sooner or later we'd have to fight our way down to water, but even I could see that the brook wasn't defensible.

One thing we hadn't been able to bring from the long ship was food. My stomach was complaining already. It threatened to be a long night, and tomorrow didn't show much promise either.

Then Arno started back to spy out the hamlet, taking Michael with him because the Greek could speak Arabic. With them gone, there wasn't a man in camp that I could talk to or understand. I very definitely hoped they came back.

Even as tired as I was, it took me quite a while to fall asleep. Which was unusual. The Varangians had bedded down all packed together-for warmth I suppose. To me though, they smelled too bad for such close quarters, and I slept a little way off from them. I was cold and hungry, and my muscles were starting to stiffen up again. About the time it got dark, the moon came up, too little past full to tell the difference just by looking. When I did get to sleep, I kept waking up or half waking up from cold and the stony ground, but I only got up once, to relieve myself.