The Man Who Counts nvr-1 Read online

  Perhaps it was simply that her own husband’s ancestors had risen from the forecastle not many generations back. She had seen him help his crew often enough, working side by side with them in storm or fish run; she had learned it was no disgrace to swing a quernstone or set up a massive loom for herself.

  If labor was pleasing to the Lodestar, as the holy books said, then why should Drak’ho nobles consider it distasteful? There was something bloodless about the old families, something not quite healthy. They died out, to be replaced from below, century after century. It was well-known that deckhands had the most offspring, skilled handicrafters and full-time warriors rather less, hereditary officers fewest of all. Why, Admiral Syranax had in a long life begotten only one son and two daughters. She, Rodonis, had two cubs already, after a mere four years of marriage.

  Did this not suggest that the high Lodestar favored the honest person working with honest hands?

  But no… those Lannach’honai all had young every other year, like machinery, even though many of the tykes died on migration. And the Lannach’honai did not work: not really: they hunted, herded, fished with their effeminate hooks, they were vigorous enough but they never stuck to a job through hours and days like a Drak’ho sailor… and, of course, their habits were just disgusting. Animal! A couple of ten-days a year, down in the twilight of equatorial solstice, indiscriminate lust, and that was all. For the rest of your life, the father of your cub was only another male to you — not that you knew who he was anyway, you hussy! — and at home there was no modesty between the sexes, there wasn’t even much distinction in everyday habits, because there was no more desire. Ugh!

  Still, those filthy Lannach’honai had flourished, so maybe the Lodestar did not care… No, it was too cold a thought, here in the night wind under ashen Sk’huanax. Surely the Lodestar had appointed the Fleet an instrument, to destroy those Lannach beasts and take the country they had been defiling.

  Rodonis’ wings beat a little faster. The flagship was close now, its turrets like mountain peaks in the dark. There were many lamps burning, down on deck or in shuttered rooms. There were warriors cruising endlessly above and around. The admiral’s flag was still at the masthead, so he had not yet died; but the death watch thickened hour by hour.

  Like carrion birds waiting, thought Rodonis with a shudder.

  One of the sentries whistled her to a hover and flapped close. Moonlight glistened on his polished spearhead. “Hold! Who are you?”

  She had come prepared for such a halt, but briefly, the tongue clove to her mouth. For she was only a female, and a monster laired beneath her.

  A gust of wind rattled the dried things hung from a yardarm: the wings of some offending sailor who now sat leashed to an oar or a millstone, if he still lived. Rodonis thought of Delp’s back bearing red stumps, and her anger broke loose in a scream:

  “Do you speak in that tone to a sa Axollon?”

  The warrior did not know her personally, among the thousands of Fleet citizens, but he knew an officer-class scarf; and it was plain to see that a life’s toil had never been allowed to twist this slim-flanked body.

  “Down on the deck, scum!” yelled Rodonis. “Cover your eyes when you address me!”

  “I… my lady,” he stammered, “I did not—”

  She dove directly at him. He had no choice but to get out of the way. Her voice cracked whip-fashion, trailing her. “Assuming, of course, that your boatswain has first obtained my permission for you to speak to me.”

  “But… but… but—” Other fighting males had come now, to wheel as helplessly in the air. Such laws did exist; no one had enforced them to the letter for centuries, but -

  An officer on the main deck met the situation when Rodonis landed. “My lady,” he said with due deference, “it is not seemly for an unescorted female to be abroad at all, far less to visit this raft of sorrow.”

  “It is necessary,” she told him. “I have a word for Captain T’heonax which will not wait.”

  “The captain is at his honored father’s bunkside, my lady. I dare not—”

  “Let it be your teeth he has pulled, then, when he learns that Rodonis sa Axollon could have forestalled another mutiny!”

  She flounced across the deck and leaned on the rail, as if brooding her anger above the sea. The officer gasped. It was like a tail-blow to the stomach. “My lady! At once… wait, wait here, only the littlest of moments — Guard! Guard, there! Watch over my lady. See that she lacks not.” He scuttled off.

  Rodonis waited. Now the real test was coming.

  There had been no problem so far. The Fleet was too shaken; no officer, worried ill, would have refused her demand when she spoke of a second uprising.

  The first had been bad enough. Such a horror, an actual revolt against the Lodestar’s own Oracle, had been unknown for more than a hundred years… and with a war to fight at the same time! The general impulse had been to deny that anything serious had happened at all. A regrettable misunderstanding Delp’s folk misled, fighting their gallant, hopeless fight out of loyalty to their captain… after all, you couldn’t expect ordinary sailors to understand the more modern principle, that the Fleet and its admiral transcended any individual raft -

  Harshly, her tears at the time only a dry memory, Rodonis rehearsed her interview with Syranax, days ago.

  “I am sorry, my lady,” he had said. “Believe me I am sorry. Your husband was provoked, and he had more justice on his side than T’heonax. In fact, I know it was just a fight which happened, not planned, only a chance spark touching off old grudges, and my own son mostly to blame.”

  “Then let your son suffer for it!” she had cried.

  The gaunt old skull wove back and forth, implacably ."No. He may not be the finest person in the world, but he is my son. And the heir. I haven’t long to live, and wartime is no time to risk a struggle over the succession. For the Fleet’s sake, T’heonax must succeed me without argument from anyone; and for this, he must have an officially unstained record.”

  “But why can’t you let Delp go too?”

  “By the Lodestar, if I could! But it’s not possible. I can give everyone else amnesty, yes, and I will. But there must be one to bear the blame, one on whom to vent the pain of our hurts. Delp has to be accused of engineering a mutiny, and be punished, so that everybody else can say, ‘Well, we fought each other, but it was all his fault, so now we can trust each other again.’ ”

  The admiral sighed, a tired breath out of shrunken lungs. “I wish to the Lodestar I didn’t have to do this. I wish… I’m fond of you too, my lady. I wish we could be friends again.”

  “We can,” she whispered, “if you will set Delp free.”

  The conqueror of Maion looked bleakly at her and said: “No. And now I have heard enough.”

  She had left his presence.

  And the days passed, and there was the farcical nightmare of Delp’s trial, and the nightmare of the sentence passed on him, and the nightmare of waiting for its execution. The Lannach’ho raid had been like a moment’s waking from feverdreams: for it was sharp and real, and your shipmate was no longer your furtive-eyed enemy but a warrior who met the barbarian in the clouds and whipped him home from your cubs!

  Three nights afterward, Admiral Syranax lay dying. Had he not fallen sick, Delp would now be a mutilated slave, but in this renewed tension and uncertainty, so controversial a sentence was naturally stayed.

  Once T’heonax had the Admiralty, thought Rodonis in a cold corner of her brain, there would be no more delay. Unless -

  “Will my lady come this way?”

  They were obsequious, the officers who guided her across the deck and into the great gloomy pile of logs. Household servants, pattering up and down window-less corridors by lamplight, stared at her in a kind of terror. Somehow, the most secret things were always known to the forecastle, immediately, as if smelled.

  It was dark in here, stuffy, and silent. So silent. The sea is never still. Only now did Rodonis
realize that she had not before, in all her life, been shut away from the sound of waves and timber, and cordage. Her wings tensed, she wanted to fly up with a scream.

  She walked.

  They opened a door for her; she went through, and it closed behind her with sound-deadening massiveness. She saw a small, richly furred and carpeted room, where many lamps burned. The air was so thick it made her dizzy. T’heonax lay on a couch watching her, playing with one of the Eart’ho knives. There was no one else.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  She squatted on her tail, eyes smoldering into his as if they were equals.

  “What did you wish to say?” he asked tonelessly.

  “The admiral your father lives?” she countered.

  “Not for long, I fear,” he said. “Aeak’ha will eat him before noon.” His eyes went toward the arras, haunted. “How long the night is!”

  Rodonis waited.

  “Well?” he said. His head swung back, snakishly. There was a rawness in his tone. “You mentioned something about… another mutiny?”

  Rodonis sat straight up on her haunches. Her crest grew stiff. “Yes,” she replied in a winter voice. “My husband’s crew have not forgotten him.”

  “Perhaps not,” snapped T’heonax. “But they’ve had sufficient loyalty to the Admiralty drubbed into them by now.”

  “Loyalty to Admiral Syranax, yes,” she told him. “But that was never lacking. You know as well as I, what happened was no mutiny… only a riot, by males who were against you. Syranax they have always admired, if not loved.

  “The real mutiny will be against his murderer.”

  T’heonax leaped.

  “What do you mean?” he shouted. “Who’s a murderer?”

  “You are.” Rodonis pushed it out between her teeth. “You have poisoned your father.”

  She waited then, through a time which stretched close to breaking. She could not tell if the notoriously violent male she faced would kill her for uttering those words.

  Almost, he did. He drew back from her when his knife touched her throat. His jaws clashed shut again, he leaped onto his couch and stood there on all fours with back arched, tail rigid and wings rising.

  “Go on,” he hissed. “Say your lies. I know well enough how you hate my whole family, because of that worthless husband of yours. All the Fleet knows. Do you expect them to believe your naked word?”

  “I never hated your father,” said Rodonis, not quite steadily; death had brushed very close. “He condemned Delp, yes. I thought he did wrongly, but he did it for the Fleet, and I… I am of officer kindred myself. You recall, on the day after the raid I asked him to dine with me, as a token to all that the Drak’honai must close ranks.”

  “So you did,” sneered T’heonax. “A pretty gesture. I remember how hotly spiced all the guests said the food was. And the little keepsake you gave him, that shining disk from the Eart’ho possessions. Touching! As if it were yours to give. Everything of theirs belongs to the Admiralty.”

  “Well, the fat Eart’ho had given it to me himself,” said Rodonis. She was deliberately leading the conversation into irrelevant channels, seeking to calm them both. “He had recovered it from his baggage, he said. He called it a coin… an article of trade among his people… thought I might like it to remember him by. That was just after the… the riot… and just before he and his companions were removed from the Gerunis to that other raft.”

  “It was a miser’s gift,” said T’heonax. “The disk was quite worn out of shape — Bah!” His muscles bunched again. “Come. Accuse me further, if you dare.”

  “I have not been altogether a fool,” said Rodonis. “I have left letters, to be opened by certain friends if I do not return. But consider the facts, T’heonax. You are an ambitious male, and one of whom most persons are willing to think the worst. Your father’s death will make you Admiral, the virtual owner of the Fleet — how long you must have chafed, waiting for this! Your father is dying, stricken by a malady unlike any known to our chirurgeons: not even like any known poison, so wildly does it destroy him. Now it is known to many that the raiders did not manage to carry off every bit of the Eart’ho food: three small packets were left behind. The Eart’honai frequently and publicly warned us against eating any of their rations. And you have had charge of all the Eart’ho things!”

  T’heonax gasped.

  “It’s a lie!” he chattered. “I don’t know… I haven’t… I never — Will anyone believe I, anyone, could do such a thing… poison… to his own father?”

  “Of you they will believe it,” said Rodonis.

  “I swear by the Lodestar — !”

  “The Lodestar will not give luck to a Fleet commanded by a parricide. There will be mutiny on that account alone, T’heonax.”

  He glared at her, wild and panting. “What do you want?” he croaked.

  Rodonis looked at him with the coldest gaze he had ever met. “I will burn those letters,” she said, “and will keep silence forever. I will even join my denials to yours, should the same thoughts occur to someone else. But Delp must have immediate, total amnesty.”

  T’heonax bristled and snarled at her.

  “I could fight you,” he growled. “I could have you arrested for treasonable talk, and kill anyone who dared—”

  “Perhaps,” said Rodonis. “But is it worth it? You might split the Fleet open and leave us all a prey to the Lannach’honai. All I ask is my husband back.”

  “For that you would threaten to ruin the Fleet?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  And after a moment: “You do not understand. You males make the nations and wars and songs and science, all the little things. You imagine you are the strong, practical sex. But a female goes again and yet again under death’s shadow, to bring forth another life. We are the hard ones. We have to be.”

  T’heonax huddled back, shivering.

  “Yes,” he whispered at last, “yes, curse you, shrivel you, yes, you can have him. I’ll give you an order now, this instant. Get his rotten feet off my raft before dawn, d’you hear? But I did not poison my father.” His wings beat thunderous, until he lifted up under the ceiling and threshed there, trapped and screaming. “I didn’t!”

  Rodonis waited.

  Presently she took the written order, and left him, and went to the brig, where they cut the ropes that bound Delp hyr Orikan. He lay in her arms and sobbed. “I will keep my wings, I will keep my wings—”

  Rodonis sa Axollon stroked his crest, murmured to him, crooned to him, told him all would be well now, they were going home again, and wept a little because she loved him.

  Inwardly she held a chill memory, how old Van Rijn had given her the coin but warned her against… what had he said?… heavy metal poisoning. “To you, iron, copper, tin is unknown stuffs. I am not a chemist, me; chemists I hire when chemicking is needful; but I think better I eat a shovelful arsenic than one of your cubs try teething on this piece money, by damn!”

  And she remembered sitting up in the dark, with a stone in her hand, grinding and grinding the coin, until there was seasoning for the unbendable admiral’ s dinner.

  Afterward she recollected that the Eart’ho was not supposed to have such mastery of her language. It occurred to her now, like a shudder, that he could very well have left that deadly food behind on purpose, in hopes it might cause trouble. But how closely had he foreseen the event?

  XI

  Guntra of the Enklann sept came in through the door. Eric Wace looked wearily up. Behind him, hugely shadowed between rush lights, the mill was a mumble of toiling forms.

  “Yes?” he sighed.

  Guntra held out a broad shield, two meters long, a light sturdy construction of wicker on a wooden frame. For many ten-days she had supervised hundreds of females and cubs as they gathered and split and dried the reeds, formed the wood, wove the fabric, assembled the unit. She had not been so tired since homecoming. Nevertheless, a small victory dwelt in her voice: “This is the four thous
andth, Councilor.” It was not his title, but the Lannacha mind could hardly imagine anyone without definite rank inside the Flock organization. Considering the authority granted the wingless creatures, it fell most naturally to call them Councilors.

  “Good.” He hefted the object in hands grown calloused. “A strong piece of work. Four thousand are more than enough; your task is done, Guntra.”

  “Thank you.” She looked curiously about the transformed mill. Hard to remember that not so long ago it had existed chiefly to grind food.

  Angrek of the Trekkans came up with a block of wood in his grasp. “Councilor,” he began, “I—” He stopped. His gaze had fallen on Guntra, who was still in her early middle years and had always been considered handsome.

  Her eyes met his. A common smokiness lit them. His wings spread and he took a stiff step toward her.

  With a gasp, almost a sob, Guntra turned and fled. Angrek stared after her, then threw his block to the floor and cursed.

  “What the devil?” said Wace.

  Angrek beat a fist into his palm. “Ghosts,” he muttered. “It must be ghosts… unrestful spirits of all the evildoers who ever lived… possessing the Drakska, and now come to plague us!”

  Another pair of bodies darkened the door, which stood open to the short pale night of early summer. Nicholas van Rijn and Tolk the Herald entered.

  “How goes it, boy?” boomed Van Rijn. He was gnawing a nitro-packed onion; the gauntness which had settled on Wace, even on Sandra, had not touched him. But then, thought Wace bitterly, the old blubberbucket didn’t work. All he did was stroll around and talk to the local bosses and complain that things weren’t proceeding fast enough.

  “Slowly, sir.” The younger man bit back words he would rather have said. You bloated leech, do you expect to be carried home by my labor and my brains, and fob me off with another factor’s post on another hell-planet?