John Dalmas - Return to Fanglith

A minute later someone else was dragged into the scout, and a voice said, "That's it! I've got Tarel too. Close her up and take her up!"

It was dad!

"Wait!"

I don't know how I got it out, but I said it. Slurred and slowly I had pronounced the word. And again, "Wait!"

"Hold it," he said. "What is it, Larn?"

"Frien's. Don'… leave… frien's… Be… killed."

I wasn't sure if he could understand or not.

"Jenoor, blast a couple of bolts against a wall, to keep anyone back who might be thinking of rushing us." I heard a rifle thud out three bolts.

Jenoor! He'd said Jenoor!

"Help me, Aven," he said. "He's heavy and he feels boneless. I need him up on my back." Between the two of them, my parents got me onto his back with my head flopped over a shoulder. He had to move bent over so I wouldn't fall off.

"Larn," he said as he carried me back down the ramp, "We're going over among the bodies. Tell me when I come to the right one. Can you do that?"

"Two," I mumbled. "Two… frien's."

"Two," he said. "I got that." We went back among the bodies, pausing over one after another, seeming to take forever. Most of a minute, I suppose. We'd looked at eight or ten before we came to Gunnlag.

"Him," I said.

"Right."

The next was Moise. "Him."

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

There was growling, then an espwolf barked out "Down!" We hit the ground, arrows hissed, and the rifle thudded again, and again. Dad was back on his feet, had grabbed me under the arms, dragging me hurriedly, roughly, to the cutter and up the ramp. I hadn't known he was so strong; I'm not sure he had either. He dumped me and ran back out. I heard shouting in Norman, clashing of swords-clashing of swords?-more thuds from the blaster, and in half a minute another body was dragged in and dropped. The confusion of sounds continued outside, but for then the blaster was silent, and dad was gone again. The blaster thudded twice more, and a moment later once. Dad was back with another body, breathing hard.

"In, Jenoor! Aven, close her and lift!"

There were espwolves aboard, too-more than one.

Not Bubba, obviously. Lady and the pups-pups who'd been half-grown when I'd seen them last, but were near full-size now.

The door shut out the moonlight, and gradually the cabin illumination came on.

We'd be well above the ground now, I knew. The cutter's windows couldn't be opaqued like the scout's could, but we'd be high out of sight in the night sky. I didn't know what to think, what to feel, it had all happened so fast.

Then Jenoor was on her knees beside me, crying all over me, and I didn't worry about it anymore-just lay there with my eyes spilling over. It seemed impossible that she was still alive, and for an empty moment I was sure I'd wake up to find I'd been dreaming again.

After half an hour though, she was still there, and I was functioning well enough to talk better, even though I couldn't move much. By that time, Tarel and Moise and Gunnlag were talking, too. Slowly of course. Tarel had explained to Moise who these people were, and Moise had been explaining to Gunnlag. I was impressed with how matter-of-fact Gunnlag seemed about the whole thing.

I noticed, though, that Jenoor sat near with her stunner on her lap, just in case.

"Dad," I said, "there's one more guy we need to get back there." The words still didn't flow at normal speed, but they were clear now.

"One more? How do we get him?"

"I'm not sure. But I'd like to try to bring him out, too. I owe it to him. He's a Varangian, like Gunnlag. A barbarian warrior. A huge guy, tall, and strong as a gorn."

He didn't answer right away.

I remembered how Arno had recovered from a light stunning, back in Provence. After he got so he could talk decently, it hadn't been an hour before he could get around pretty well. "When I can get around all right," I added, "say in half an hour or so, we can go back. I'll think of a way."

"Tall, you say. Did he fight with a two-handed sword?"

I knew right then what he was going to tell me. I remembered the sound of swords back there.

"Yes," I answered.

And he wouldn't even have had a helmet. He'd given me his.

"Larn," dad said quietly, "it's too late for him. Some men came running toward me, from the other side of the cutter, and before Jenoor had a chance to fire, he came out of the shadows and cut them off. He was kind of hopping, as if something was wrong with one of his legs. He killed a couple of them before they cut him down, then Jenoor took care of the others."

I felt a surge of grief! Ketil. Big, mean, ugly Ketil. I couldn't even guess how many men he'd killed in his life. But still, I hadn't felt this bad since we'd raised from Evdash, leaving Piet and Jenoor. It was embarrassing. It took a minute or more before I trusted myself to talk again, and it was dad who broke the silence.

"Where are Deneen and Bubba?" he asked. "We quartered most of the continent between the northern sea and the Mediterranean, looking for the radiation signature of a scout, and had just about decided you hadn't come to Fanglith. Then I remembered you and Arao talking about 'Sicily,' and this island seemed to fit the description. But instead of getting an instrument read on a ship's systems, the wolves got an esp locational on you and Tarel "

"Deneen's got the scout on an uninhabited island in the western ocean," I told him, "with all systems off. She's had serious problems with fuel crystallization, apparently from the scout taking multiple blaster charges on the shield."

"Can you guide us there?"

"Sure. But she ought to be all right for now, and there's something else I'd like to check on first. Arno's back near the castle somewhere. Not in the castle; at least I don't think so. Back in the hills. Hopefully, with about ten warriors. Varangians."

Varangians! It hit me then: Varangians had attacked our ship, taken us captive, killed half a dozen Normans, lost Arno's horse herd for him, and planned to sell us as slaves. And we'd ended up allied with them against- who? Some of Arno's fellow Normans.

Fanglith's a crazy world! I told myself. Well, maybe not crazy, but the rules were awfully strange, so far as there were any. It occurred to me that this was not a world for a rebel base. Someday, possibly, but not now. Not for a long time. It was too unpredictable.

Testing my legs and balance, I got to my feet slowly but unassisted. It turned out that standing made me feel better.

"So you want to find Arno," dad said.

"Right. It shouldn't take long."

"Can you find him with the night scanner?"

"Sure," I said, and with my arms half out for balance, I walked carefully to the copilot's seat, next to mom. She smiled without speaking. She looked beautiful, even if her eyes were a little soggy, and I grinned at her. Then I returned us to coordinates five miles above Gilbert's castle. At that height, we didn't need to go hunting for Arno. On the screen I could see a troop of ten mounted men waiting on the road half a mile from the castle. That had to be them, I thought, then spotted a single rider approaching the castle wall. That would be Arno.

I took us down, intending to call him with the loud hailer. But he stopped, so I decided to wait a minute and see what he was going to do. Killing the cabin light, I dropped to 250 feet with the sound receptor on high.

Arno:

It had been good to get out of the dark and rocky ravine, where even with moonlight a horse could easily stumble and fall. In the open valley I'd been able to turn my attention to the castle and what I might find there.

It did not seem to me that Gilbert would have sent ten Varangians out to be killed without having plans to dispose of the others. The question was whether he'd been more successful inside the castle than out.