Then, on my way back to Normandy, I'd met the star man beside the road that comes down from the Cenis Pass into the valleys of Savoie. I could barely understand his speech, which was Provengal poorly spoken. He had seemed unarmed and as innocent as a girl- almost too innocent to survive beneath heaven. But then I learned what powers he held, glimpsed what force I might gain from him, and suddenly the life of a merchant seemed small and trivial. While wealth, it seems, was after all only part of what I wanted. Now I could see a kingdom, even an empire, waiting to be grasped by getting his weapons and skyboat into my hands. I had but to wait-bide patiently and strike when the time was right.
But the time was never right. And at last it had seemed to me that my best chance was to deal honorably with the star folk-Larn and his father and the great wolf that seemed to think and speak like a man. And finally I had it in my hands-the great warship of the sky, taken from their enemies by might of Norman arms, and by the star folk's own cunning and daring, which even a Norman could admire.
And then that great fool, Roland de Falaise, destroyed the warship, and with it all our knights and sergeants except Brislieu, whom I had sent on an errand. I know it was Roland who did it; no other could have been so perverse. The warship had burst in the air with a force unbelievable.
With that, my dream of empire had been in tatters. It seemed then that my only chance was to take the skyboat from the star folk. But my attempt was without cunning or force, ineffective, and my offer of fealty to them if they would take me with them to their world was both ill-advised and rejected. I was back to horses again, and to my earlier dream of being a merchant.
In time I almost convinced myself again that it was all I truly wished. And indeed I made much progress. Then I had eaten supper in the Greek inn near the cathedral, overheard the captain's tale, and found the star man once more.
And there it was again: The dream, the possibility, of empire! If I could gain their skyboat and their weapons, and use them cleverly…
Larn:
As late as it was, I didn't feel sleepy at first. For one thing, my thighs and rear end weren't used to riding horseback. And for another, I was chilly. But mainly I had stuff on my mind.
It seemed to me that as smart as Arno was, he wasn't in a position to be my number-one man on Fanglith. He wasn't the native leader I needed. The kind of man I should be looking for was someone already established in power. His Count Roger maybe, or even better, the duke, Robert Guiscard. Those guys already had armies, and ruled pieces of real estate that apparently were pretty big and important for a planet like Fanglith, where communication and transportation were so primitive. Give them communicators and air support and let their enemies see a demonstration by a turret blaster, and they wouldn't have to fight to conquer.
I shifted on my grass pile, trying to get more comfortable. Arno, I told myself, would be my front man, my introduction to Roger or Robert.
"It sounds as if you're getting it all sorted out."
Deneen's voice in my ear startled me, and I heard her laugh. "We're sitting about a hundred yards above you with the windows opaqued. There are so few people awake down there that Bubba can follow your thoughts. He's been giving us a running summary, "I've been thinking about possible rescue plans," she went on. "If you'd like, I can put Tarel down on the roof of the building you're in; there's a trapdoor in it. He could take a stunner and have a remote in his ear, and Bubba and I could guide him in finding you."
I looked at that. "Bubba, can you read Arno's thoughts?" I asked with my mind. "It would help to know more about what he's thinking."
There was a long pause, a minute or longer. Bubba's form of speech was hard to understand over a communicator, and I could picture him giving his answer to Deneen.
"Arno's still awake," she said at last, "but Bubba hasn't been paying much attention to him. He's not used to Norman French, or to the nonverbal mix in Arno's thoughts. The general tone doesn't feel threatening, but if you want, he'll monitor and see what he gets."
I knew that Bubba does better with people whose thought style he's used to. "Fine," I said. "If Arno's still awake, Bubba can monitor him for a while, and if he learns anything I ought to know about, tell me.
"Meanwhile, let's leave things the way they are-at least for now. I'll play things by ear, and you can bail me out later if necessary. I'm pretty sure Arno plans to take me to Sicily with him, and that's where I need to go anyway. That's where Robert and Roger are."
That's about all that needed saying just then. We "talked" a minute longer just for company, but I knew it was hard work for Bubba, so we ended off. Then I got myself as comfortable as I could and waited, scratching, for sleep. It seemed to me that, in spite of the lice and fleas, I'd rather be down here than up there: it was more interesting.
Now there was a different viewpoint for me! I was learning to relax and enjoy the situation. Give me a little time and maybe I'd make a good adventurer after all!
EIGHTEEN
The next day wasn't all that enjoyable though. For one thing, I felt as if l should have slept a few more hours. And the weather had changed; it was beginning to be windy again, but out of the south this time-a warm wind gritty with sand. The sirocco, they called it, out of Africa. By the time we'd climbed into our saddles to help fetch Arno's horses, it was a stiff breeze, damp and almost hot. We chewed grit, breathed grit, and got grit in our eyes. Nobody there seemed very happy about it.
It could last for days, they told me, though it might be gone tomorrow. If it ever came to a vote, I'd vote for gone tomorrow.
The country behind Mileto was rough, with draws and little canyons, and Arno's herd was scattered in several loose bands with some young locals keeping track of them. There were three stallions, thirty-seven big mares, and thirty-three foals-a lot of horses. It took us till afternoon to get them all down out of the hills and penned near the wharf. There Arno selected sixty to take to Palermo this trip. That was all the ship would hold-the biggest horse ship available in Reggio.
Then we went back to the tower-the donjon, they called it-and actually bathed! The Normans were quite cheerful about it-not only Arno, but Brislieu and their squires. They even had soap, and what the soap lacked in quality, the Normans made up for with scrubbing.
It was the first time I'd had my clothes off since before I'd boarded the ship at Marseille. There were red blotches-bug bites-all over my body; it was pretty impressive. They didn't bother me the way they had at first though. And the Normans didn't have the blotches. It was as if the body quit reacting much to them after a while.
When we'd gotten rid of the grit temporarily, we had a meal. Then Arno and I sat alone in the shelter of a garden wall to talk. I'd thought he might present me to Roger's wife, but he didn't. I decided that one, he didn't know how to explain me; and two, he didn't want them to know what sort of resource I was.
What we did do was talk about the kind of kingdom or empire he'd run, if he had one. First of all, he said, he would establish his sovereignty over the Greeks- the Byzantines. Then he'd bring the cleverest artisans and weapons makers of Byzantium to his court, which would be at Palermo. At the same time, he'd send me back to the heavens to get more of our powerful weapons, an idea that fitted in with my own.
Also, he would not, he said, allow the barons to build castles; it encouraged them to defy the king. He'd let each subject people rule themselves by their own laws and leaders, after swearing fealty to him as their sovereign. Guiscard had begun to do this, and was finding that it greatly reduced revolts and other unrests.
And again following Guiscard's example, he would appoint Jews and Greeks to administer the offices of government. They had the knowledge, could read and write and compute; and besides, he said, Normans had no genius for the job.