Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

“It is ugly, isn’t it?” Fralk’s eyestalks quivered a little.

“Hideous is a better word.” Hogram changed the subject.

“The boats are now ready, I take it?”

“Yes, clanfather.” Fralk never would have come where Hogram’s eyestalks could spy him were that not so. “We have the boats, we have the males to fill them. Now we are only waiting for the waters to grow calmer. As you yourself said, we do not want accidents while we are crossing the gorge.” He knew there would be accidents anyway; if they waited for the waters in Ervis Gorge to be completely calm, they would wait until the flood had drained away.

The odor of resignation Hogram exuded said he knew the same thing. The domain master asked a different question. “How will our males react to being in these boats on the water? They will never have done anything like that before. If they are all blue with fright when they get across, they will prove nothing but prey for the Omalo.”

“Clanfather, I think I am more afraid of Juksal than I could be of any water,” Fralk blurted. This time Hogram’s eyestalks wiggled, and not a little. “Laugh all you like,” the younger male went on, “but I don’t think I’m the only male who feels that way.”

“Good.” Hogram was still laughing. “It’s good to know our veteran warriors can inspire fright. If they do the same to Reatur’s males as to our own, we will surely triumph.” The domain master paused; his eyestalks stopped moving. “Reatur… he worries me.”

“He is able, clanfather,” Fralk said, remembering that Reatur had scared him a good deal more than Juksal ever managed to do. “But he is not as able as you.”

“Hmm. Well, maybe.” Hogram’s skin turned a deeper green; Fralk’s flattery had pleased him. Flattered or not, though, he was still Hogram. “Let me point out to you, eldest of eldest, that I will not be east of Ervis Gorge meeting Reatur. You will.”

Fralk knew that was true. He would just as soon not have been reminded of it, though.

“They did what?” Reatur shouted. All the males who could hear him-which meant a lot of males-turned a couple of extra eyestalks in his direction. That shout meant trouble. What kind they would find out later, but the trouble was already here.

“They ran a whole herd of massi back into Dordal’s domain, clanfather,” the male named Garro repeated.

The domain master did not need to look down at himself to know he was turning yellow. “Dordal has gone mad if he thinks he can get away with that,” he said furiously. “He knows we outweigh him two to one. And he’s a lazy piece of runnerpest voiding to begin with. What stirred his eyestalks up all of a sudden, to let him think he can go raiding without our tying them in knots for him? I’ll take a band of warriors that will-”

Garro interrupted to answer Reatur’s rhetorical question. “A couple of his males were wiggling their eyestalks and jeering that we couldn’t do anything about it because we were too busy worrying about imaginary dangers from across Ervis Gorge.”

“Ervis-“ Reatur felt his breathing pores tightening up, as if they were trying to keep out a bad smell. Unfortunately, he knew the threat from west of the gorge was not imaginary. That limited what he could do. His first angry vision of arming all the males in the domain and leading them up to smash Dordal’s castle melted like ice in a hot summer.

His skin went back to its usual green as calculation ousted rage. “I can’t let him keep those massi,” he said slowly. “If I do, his males will steal more. Not only that, Grebur will think he can nibble at my domain, too. Between them, curse it, they could prove more trouble than the Skarmer.”

“Could and probably will, clanfather,” Garro agreed. “I still don’t see how anyone can cross Ervis Gorge when it’s full of water.”

“Neither do I, but Hogram does,” Reatur said. “The humans’ magic or machine or whatever it was let me talk with him, don’t forget. He thinks he can cross. If he didn’t, why would he try to turn my domain topsy-turvy?”

“Who can tell why a Skarmer does anything?” Garro said scornfully.

“Hogram is sly, but not stupid,” Reatur said. “I wish he were.” The domain master paused a while in thought and then gave his orders. “Find Ternat. Tell him to march eight-no, nine-eighteens of males into Dordal’s domain. They are to take more animals than were stolen from us, and to bring them back to our land. Tell him to move fast, too; no one knows when the Skarmer are coming, and to beat them back we may need every male we can find.”

Garro repeated the orders until Reatur was satisfied he had them all. Then the younger male hurried away. Reatur watched him go. He wished Dordal’s eldest would overthrow him, not the sort of thing a domain master often wished even on an enemy, such wishes had a way of coming back to bite the male who made them.

Reatur abruptly repented of his wish, not because he feared overthrow-Ternat was the best eldest a domain master could hope for-but because Dordal’s replacement might prove competent. Having a competent domain master on his northern border was not something Reatur needed.

Having an incompetent one there was quite bad enough.

What he really ought to do one of these years, he told himself, was topple Dordal and install a loyal male of his own budding- someone like Enoph, say-as domain master up there. That would solve the problem once for all, or at least until Enoph’s eldest succeeded him, which presumably would be Ternat’s problem and not Reatur’s.

And if I set Enoph in Dordal’s place, Reatur asked himself, how is that any different from Hogram’s wanting to put Fralk in mine? For one thing, he thought, Enoph and Dordal were both from the first Omalo bud, not foreigners like the Skarmer. For another, Reatur would be doing the overthrowing, not having it done to him.

He doubted whether Dordal would appreciate that part of the argument. Too bad for Dordal, one of these years.

His plans for doing unpleasant things to his neighbor melted as he saw a male hurrying toward him in a way that could only mean something else had gone wrong. He wanted to turn all six of his eyestalks away from the male, to pretend the fellow did not exist. That, sadly, was not what being domain master was about. “What is it, Apbajur?” he asked, letting the air sigh through his breathing pores.

“We’re beginning to get enough melting on the northern walls of the castle to be a nuisance, clanfather,” Apbajur told him.

Reatur sighed again. That was a nuisance every summer, and in a hot one-as this one was looking to be-a major nuisance. “We’ll just have to start spreading dirt, I suppose,” the domain master said. A good layer of dirt on the roof and walls helped shield the ice beneath from the heat of the sun.

“I thought so, too, clanfather,” Apbajur said. He was a master watermolder and icecarver, and had a good feel for such matters. “But I wanted to get your permission before I started pulling males from the fields for the work.”

“You’d best do it,” Reatur said, though he felt like cursing instead. First, males to watch Ervis Gorge for the Skarmer, then more to deal with Dordal, and now this. The crops would suffer because of it. Of course, they would suffer a good deal more if the Skarmer invasion succeeded or if Dordal’s males kept raiding, and Reatur did not want to live in a castle falling down around him.

Taken by itself, any one thing was always easy to justify. Weighing that one thing against all the others going on at the same time, though, was not so simple.

Two males came rushing toward Reatur from different directions. One was shouting, “Clanfather, the eloca are!”

At the same time, the other cried, “Clanfather, the nosver have got into the!”