The Captain th-2 Page 5

  The sherbets were now on the table, in their shallow silver bowls, with matching silver teetos, which is perhaps best translated as ‘spoons’. They are, however, actually narrow, hollow, rodlike utensils with a small, concave, rather spatulate termination. The concave spatulate termination justifies us, I would think, in speaking of the utensil as a spoon. I should add, however, that it may also be used to draw fluids upward into the mouth, and, in this sense, can function as a straw.

  Julian left the sherbets where they had been placed. He did not touch them, no more than the ices. He felt, perhaps, that the acceptance of even these trivial hospitalities might somehow seem to indicate an accommodation to his inconvenience, as though he might then seem to find it at least marginally acceptable. Otto, although he was commonly curious about many matters, did not, either, sample the ices or the sherbets. There had been openings beneath the chairs.

  He recalled how the servitor, in his second visit to the room, bringing, surprisingly, unrequested, the sherbets, had looked about, and then, relievedly, marked his position. His guess had been correct then, it seemed, that he had not been visible from the aperture, not in that location.

  Julian continued to pace the room.

  Otto, the giant, did not betray impatience.

  Yet some have lamented that greater courtesy was not shown in this matter by the imperial court, that the audience was not more promptly granted.

  Otto watched a fly alight on the rim of one of the bowls of sherbet. There were flies here, too, then, even within the palace.

  Then there came another fly, and another.

  So there are flies in the palace, thought Otto. They were there, crawling there, like raisins, on the rim of a silver bowl, a vessel worth perhaps a rifle, even on a world where such were scarce, the possession of which could mean a magistracy. He wondered if the flies comprehended the perils of their delicious arctic? Doubtless some would become lost, perhaps even die, freezing, ensnared in the viscous trove.

  Otto considered the couches about the table. On reclined on them while eating. That was something one had to learn to do, to eat in such a position. Was it so comfortable, so luxurious, so civilized, really, he wondered. They had not had such arrangements on the Alaria, he recalled. To be sure, worlds differ, customs differ, and one can get fewer people at a table with such an arrangement.

  But Otto did not think he would care to get used to such an arrangement. It is difficult to rise quickly from such a couch, to unsheath a weapon, to defend oneself. Better the stool or bench, which could be kicked back, from which one could spring to one’s feet.

  Julian sat down, on one of the curule chairs.

  He did not move it.

  That is dangerous, my friend, thought Otto.

  Perhaps it is always dangerous to sit in such chairs, on the high seats, thought Otto.

  But men will sit upon them, and kill to do so. Do not all thrones rest on no more than a latch, or bolt, which might, perhaps when one expects it least, be withdrawn?

  Otto’s thoughts, as he waited, drifted back to the Meeting World, and a time when Julian, in virtue of complex circumstances, had been little more than his prisoner.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Do not cry out, or betray emotion,” had said Otto to his companion, who was at his heel, in a short, ragged tunic, much as might have been a slave. But on his body there was no sign of bondage, nor had he been branded, that the mark on his body might bespeak one subject, as much as a slave girl, to exchange, to barter, to gifting and pricing.

  “I will not,” said Julian.

  They were flanked by Ortungs.

  An Ortung ship, one which still bore the scars of the encounter with the Alaria, had come to orbit over Varna, which was the world to which two life rafts, or escape capsules, caught in similar gravitational geodesics, had drifted, that following their departure from the Alaria. In the first capsule had been a gladiator, one who had been carefully trained in the school of Pulendius on Terennia, he, and a prize won in contest, a dark-haired girl, named Janina, who need not significantly concern us, as she was slave. In the second capsule had been one man and three women. The three women were as follows, a wealthy, lovely, highly intelligent, mature woman, and two younger women, a slender, attractive blonde and an exquisitely figured, delicately and sensitively featured brunette, the sort made for chains, and surely one beautiful enough to bring a good price in almost any market. The man had been a young naval officer, an ensign in the imperial navy.

  It was a muddy track they followed, as there had been a rain that morning.

  The landing craft, or lighter, as one might think of it, a small vessel suitable for comings and goings, for negotiating the shallows of space, from the Ortung ship, had come down gently, not far away, in a circular, rain-soaked meadow, small, delicate animals fleeing beneath its descending shadow and heat. From it several individuals had disembarked, the broad-bladed, green, wet grass, fragrant, edged with rain, soon cutting at their ankles, muchly different from the grass about the craft, farther out oddly dried, despite the invading dampness surging back into the meadow, and close in, even yards from the twelve thrust chambers, blackened and burned. Among those disembarking were Otto and Julian. They had come from Varna. The entire matter had to do with a challenge.

  “There seems no reason for your counsel,” remarked Julian.

  “We have not yet come to the grove,” said Otto.

  “I do not understand,” said Julian.

  “The Ortungs have borrowed certain practices from the Timbri,” said Otto.

  In this area, the path was, now, less muddy, and, to some extent, graveled. Clearly this was a path now, a real path, or walk, one bearing some signs of attention, no longer a simple track, such as might have been consequent on the passage of some party in single file, their numbers obscured, deliberately perhaps, by the linearity of their progression. The soles of their sandals, as they followed the path, pressed, here and there, small stones deeper into the soft soil. Tiny alkaline trickles of water, whitish, made their way, sometimes haltingly, in no more than a sudden succession of intermittent drops, backward, behind the walkers, down the slope, among the tiny, awash, dislodged stones.

  The Vandalii or Vandal nation, consisting of its five tribes, the smallest and least auspicious among them the Wolfungs, were not untypical of barbarian peoples. Such tended, almost as a matter of habit, and surely of custom, to enjoy uneasy, if not actually hostile, relations with their neighbors, wherever they might be found, which was often at hand, given the frequent movements, the periodic migrations, of such folk. These enmities tended to be long-lasting, and the hostilities involved, though intermittent, as one group might be forced to give way to another, tended to be pursued with vigor and cruelty. The surviving, successful tribes, particularly as lands, and worlds, became more scarce, tended, through culture, breeding, and tradition, through trials and raids, and the lessons of songs and deeds, to become stronger, prouder, less patient, quicker to anger, more cruel and more warlike, as the less adept, gentler, weaker, more pacifistic tribes, in accordance with the decrees of reality, recorded in the judgments of history, tended to be ruthlessly supplanted, destroyed, enslaved, made tributary, such things. In the light of such considerations, and in order that a fuller understanding of these matters may be conveyed, we mention that the Alemanni, of which the Drisriaks were a tribe, and the Ortungs a secessionist tribe, were a particularly successful people. It should also be pointed out that the Alemanni and the Vandals, another of the fiercest, and once one of the most successful, of such barbarous nations, were traditional, hereditary, enemies. The empire, of course, introduced into these scarlet equations new and terrible variables, its own existence and ambitions, new, powerful, unfamiliar weaponry, discord, bribery, intimidation, treachery, and such. In some generations of war with the empire the Vandals, despite some initial successes with weaponry furnished by enemies of the empire, were gradually reduced and decimated, the tribes scattered, denied significan
t weaponry and such. The remnants of the Wolfungs, for example, generations ago, had bee transported to an exile world, far from familiar spacelanes. Its name was Varna. There they had been left, it seemed forgotten, though doubtless their presence was noted on some imperial records, that in case, for example, in some byway of time or politics, it might seem suitable for the empire to recollect them and recall them, perhaps as federates, or as woodsmen, to clear worlds, or peasants, to sow and reap, to supply produce, perhaps to remote stations, or to the limitanei, the far-flung border troops. The Alemanni, it might be noted, on the other hand, had never had more than a series of terrible skirmishes with the empire. Always they had managed to draw back, and then wait, and then begin again their testing, their probing, their sniffing and prowling at the imperial borders. Sometimes, even, their ships had penetrated to the capitals of provincial worlds. Had the Alemanni been differently situated, in both space and time, and had they encountered the empire earlier, and under conditions comparable to those of the Vandalii, it seems not unlikely that their fate might have been similar. But they had not. It was only in the last generation that they had significantly appeared on the horizon of the empire.

  “You need not have come with me,” said Otto to his companion, Julian. “The matter obtains between the Ortungs and the Wolfungs.”

  “I am curious to see how these things are resolved,” said Julian.

  “It will not be difficult to understand,” said Otto.

  In the records of the empire this world had only a number, and not a name, as many worlds. We do not know the number, nor are we sure, today, of the world, for much which might have been useful for making such determinations has been lost. The number of the world would have been, as we do know, the number of its star, followed by a numerical suffix, giving its position, counting outward from the star. The world presumably still exists, of course, on which the events took place which we are recounting. We just do not know which world it is. Possibilities have been proposed, but they remain confessedly conjectural. The world did have a name in the logs of the Alemanni, but, even so, the matter remains obscure. The Alemanni name, cumbersomely transliterated as ‘Tenguthaxichai’, is said to mean “Tengutha’s Camp,” or, perhaps, “The Camp of Tengutha,” the nature of the genitive indicator being a matter of dispute among scholars. I personally favor “Tengutha’s Camp” as there is some reason to believe, from other constructions, that the expression transliterated as ‘ichai’ in Alemanni may have meant a hidden camp, or lair. We do not know who the Tengutha in question might have been, but the name itself was common in several of the barbarian nations. We choose to avoid these various problems by referring to this world as the Meeting World, to be sure a title which might serve to designate almost any world. Meeting worlds, however, at least worlds chosen for meetings of the sort with which we are concerned, where disputes among barbarians were to be resolved, worlds rather like, in a sense, those of lonely beaches on desert islands, or those like the surface of barren skerries in the icy sea, were normally isolated, uninhabited worlds, worlds where detection and interference, you see, were unlikely.

  “You did not bring weapons,” said Julian.

  “It was I who issued the challenge,” said Otto. “It is they who will choose the weapons.”

  The remnant of the Wolfungs, exiled on Varna, now armed with no more than primitive weapons, and eking out their living in the forests, in the ancient manners, had been discovered by scouts of the Drisriaks, the parent tribe, or conjectured such, of the Alemanni nation. Much pleasure had it given the Drisriaks to discover their ancient enemies in such straits, in effect, disarmed and at their mercy. Many of the Wolfungs had been slaughtered, in the festivals of blood, saving, of course, the fairest of their daughters, which constitute always delicious, pleasing spoils for the conquerors. The Wolfungs had then, kneeling, denied chieftains, their heads to the dirt, humbled to the yoke of their masters, been permitted to survive, as a tributary people. This tribute was regularly collected by envoys of the Drisriaks, a tribute consisting largely of produce, amber, resin, precious woods, furs, herbs, and women. Some two years ago, however, Ortog, a prince of the Drisriaks, with followers, and ships, declared his house secessionist, and himself king of a new tribe, the Ortungs, or Ortungen. Ortog then, as he had when a prince of the Drisriaks, plied the crafts of his people, in such matters as piracy, trading, reaving where feasible within the empire, collecting tributes, and so on. It was shortly before his envoys, now in the name of the Ortungen, came to collect the tribute from the Wolfungs that the two aforementioned life rafts, or escape capsules, from a sacked and gutted, then destroyed, putative cruise ship, the Alaria, had beached on Varna. Ortog, who had earlier fallen into the hands of bounty hunters and traitors, and had been turned over to imperial forces at the remote station of Tinos, had been a prisoner on the Alaria, being transported to the Telnarian worlds, when she was overtaken by his ships and disabled.

  “I hear it again,” said Julian, “the clash of cymbals!”

  “The Timbri,” said Otto, “are fond of such instruments in their observances.”

  “There is singing, too,” said Julian.

  “Yes,” said Otto.

  The singing was in female voices, for such were the officiants, priestesses.

  The party continued to wend its way upward, on the graveled, wet path.

  Preceding Otto were two men, Hendrix and Gundlicht, of the Ortungen, men of Ortog, who had come, earlier, to the Wolfungs for the tribute. They had been surprised to learn that the Wolfungs had taken a chieftain, which they had forbidden to them, and that the tribute was refused. It had not been deemed appropriate, however, to return to the ship, arm the weaponry, and destroy the Wolfungs, and their forests, for a thousand latimeasures. The explanation for this had to do with a set of unusual circumstances.

  “I hear again the cymbals,” said Julian.

  “Yes,” said Otto.

  The singing, too, could be heard, once more.

  It began to rain again.

  Above, in a sort of level place, through which the path led, and then, beyond it, once more ascended, toward the top of a hill, there was a thick copse.

  It is a small thing we do here, thought Otto. It does not matter much. What is the life, or death, or the fates and fortunes, of a few men, or rabbits or dogs, to the world.

  Gundlicht, in one hand, clutched what appeared to be a tightly rolled bundle of soiled, brocaded fabric. It was damp with rain.

  “That is the grove, above,” said Otto.

  Again, tiny trickles of water, alkaline rivulets, flowed between the small stones, much as rivers might have flooded about boulders strewn in their path. The whitish waters stained the soles of their sandals, and, as they occasionally fought for footing, it splashed about their ankles, lashed from the grass in the meadows below. Sometimes a passing sandal dislodged a small rock, a pebble even, breaking some tiny dam, and the water rushed in its frenzied smallness down the slope. How the most fearsome of natural phenomena can be enacted on small stages, for the forces at work here, on the slope, were not so much different from those which, on grander platforms, might have awed and discomfited populations, for the smallest of winds, bending a blade of grass, is not so different, save in force and volume, from the mighty storms which uproot forests, nor the stirring of a hand in a bowl of water so different, save in its dimensions, from the vast, thunderous waves that can shake and drown continents. But even the trickles, the small drops, in their numbers, conjoined, confluent, become weighty with menace. Molecules of gas constitute both the breeze and the hurricane, as drops of water form both the gentle rain and the violent sea.

  But it is hard to know, thought Otto, the turning out, of small things.

  “Look,” said Julian, pointing downward. Dilute, in the rivulets, mixing in with the whitish wash descending the slope, were tenuous streaks of red, serpentine in the gravel.

  “Do not stop,” said Hendrix.

  “What is that?” aske
d Julian.

  “It does not concern you,” said Hendrix.

  “It is blood,” said Otto.

  The gladiator had come to be raised on the shields of the Wolfungs, as their chieftain. It was he who had refused the tribute to the Ortungs, he who had issued the challenge to Ortog, king of the Ortungs.

  “Aii!” said Julian, as they reached the level, as he caught sight of a dark shape, back among the shadows, suspended from a branch.

  The path led through the grove.

  “What is it?” asked Julian of Gundlicht, who was ahead, on the right.

  “Silence, pig,” said Gundlicht.

  “Do not speak so to him,” said Otto. “He is a free man.”

  “He is a Telnarian pig,” said Gundlicht.

  “He is a citizen of the empire,” said Otto.

  “So, too, as I understand it,” laughed Gundlicht, “were three others in your village.”

  “But they were women,” said Otto.

  Gundlicht laughed again, knowingly.

  The path was now on the level. The trees of the copse, or grove, were thick on either side. It had stopped raining now, but it was still half-dark, from the roiling clouds. There was little sound but that of the passage of the men, the tiny sounds of small stones being trod upon, the descent of drops of water from the branches of trees.

  “There, another, back there, amongst the trees,” said Julian.

  “Keep silent,” said Hendrix. “This is a holy place.”

  There were the tracks of a two-wheeled cart to one side. These could be easily discerned, from some damp pressed-down grass, to the left of the path, and, here and there, where a wheel had left the path, by marks in the mud.

  “There is another, there,” said Julian.

  “You cannot see much from the path,” said Gundlicht.

  “Wait,” said Julian.

  “Do not stop,” said Hendrix.

  “Let him go,” said Otto.

  The group waited on the level, and Julian entered the grove. Otto, in a moment, followed him, and then Hendrix and Gundlicht. Otto and Julian were not prisoners. They had come because of the challenge.