They paused on a ridge. At their feet there was a cliff tumbling through hundreds of meters down to a foam-white river. Across the canyon were mountains and mountains, their snows tinged bloody by the sun. The wind came streaking up the dales and struck the humans in the face.
“I see. Yes, it clears for me.” Sandra regarded him with grave eyes. “You have had to work hard all your life. There has not been time for the pleasures, the learned manners and culture. Not?”
“No time at all, my lady,” he said “I was born in the slums, one kilometer from the old Triton Docks. Nobody but the very poor would live that close to a spaceport, the traffic and stinks and earthquake noise… though you got used to it, still it was a part of you, built into your bones. Half my playmates are now dead or in jail, I imagine, and the other half are scrabbling for the occasional half-skilled hard-and-dirty job no one else wants. Don’t pity me, though. I was lucky. I got apprenticed to a fur wholesaler when I was twelve. After two years, I’d made enough contacts to get a hard-and-dirty job myself — only this was on a spaceship, fur-trapping expedition to Rhiannon. I taught myself a little something in odd moments, and bluffed about the rest I was supposed to know, and got a slightly better job. And so on and so on, till they put me in charge of this outpost… a very minor enterprise, which may in time become moderately profitable but will never be important. But it’s a stepping stone. So here I am, on a mountain top with all Diomedes below me, and what’s next?”
He shook his head, violently, wondering why his reserve had broken down. Being so exhausted was like a drunkenness. But more to it than that… no, he was not fishing for sympathy… down underneath, did he want to find out if she would understand? If she could?
“You will get back,” she said quietly. “Your kind of man survives.”
“Maybe!”
“It is heroic, what you have done already.” She looked away from him, toward the driving clouds around Oborch’s peak. “I am not certain anything can stop you. Except yourself.”
“I?” He was beginning to be embarrassed now, and wanted to talk of other things. He plucked at his bristly red beard.
“Yes. Who else can? You have come so far, so fast. But why not stop? Soon, perhaps here on this mountain, must you not ask yourself how much farther it is worth going?”
“I don’t know. As far as possible, I guess.”
“Why? Is it necessary to become great? Is it not enough to be free? With your talent and experience, you can make good-enough monies on many settled planets where men are more at home than here. Like Hermes, exemplia. In this striving to be rich and powerful, is it not merely that you want to feed and shelter the little boy who once cried himself hungry to sleep back in Triton Docks? But that little boy you can never comfort, my friend. He died long ago.”
“Well… I don’t know… I suppose one day I’ll have a family. I’d want to give my wife more than just a living; I’d want to leave my children and grandchildren enough resources to go on — to stand off the whole world if they have to—”
“Yes. So. I think maybe—” he saw, before she turned her head from him, how the blood flew up into her face — “the old fighting Dukes of Hermes were like so. It would be well if we had a breed of men like them again—” Suddenly she began walking very fast down the path. “Enough. Best we return, not?”
He followed her, little aware of the ground he trod.
XII
When the Lannachska were ready to fight, they were called to Salmenbrok by Tolk’s Whistlers until the sky darkened with their wings. Then Trolwen made his way through a seethe of warriors to Van Rijn.
“Surely the gods are weary of us,” he said bitterly. “Near always, at this time of year, there are strong south winds.” He gestured at a breathless heaven. “Do you know a spell for raising dead breezes?”
The merchant looked up, somewhat annoyed. He was seated at a table outside the wattle-and-clay hut they had built for him beyond the village — for he refused to climb ladders, or sleep in a damp cave — dicing with Corps Captain Srygen for the beryl-like gemstones which were a local medium of exchange. The number of species in the galaxy which have independently invented some form of African golf is beyond estimation.
“Well,” he snapped, “and why must you have your tail fanned?… Ah, seven! No, pox and pills, I remember, here seven is not a so good number. Well, we try again.” The three cubes clicked in his hand and across the table. “Hm-m-m, seven again.” He scooped up the stakes. “Double or nothings?”
“The ghost-eaters take it!” Srygen got up. “You’ve been winning too motherless often for my taste.”
Van Rijn surged to his own feet like a broaching whale. “By damn, you take that back or—”
“I said nothing challengeable,” Srygen told him coldly.
“You implied it. I am insulted, myself!”
“Hold on there,” growled Trolwen. “What do you think this is, a beer feast? Eart’ho, all the fighting forces of Lannach are now gathered on these hills. We cannot feed them here very long. And yet, with the new weapons loaded on the railway cars, we cannot stir until there is a south wind. What to do?”
Van Rijn glared at Srygen. “I said I was insulted. I do not think so good when I am insulted.”
“I am sure the captain will apologize for any unintended offense,” said Trolwen, with a red-shot look at them both.
“Indeed,” said Srygen. He spoke it like pulling teeth.
“So.” Van Rijn stroked his beard. “Then to prove you make no doubt about my honesties, we throw once more, nie? Double or nothings.”
Srygen snatched the dice and hurled them. “Ah, a six you have,” said Van Rijn. “It is not so easy to beat. I am afraid I have already lost. It is not so simple to be a poor tired hungry old man, far away from his home and from the Siamese cats who are all he has to love him for himself, not just his monies… Tum-te-tum-te-tum… Eight! A two, a three, a three! Well, well, well!”
“Transport,” said Trolwen, hanging on to his temper by a hair. “The new weapons are too heavy for our porters. They have to go by rail. Without a wind, how do we get them down to Sagna Bay?”
“Simple,” said Van Rijn, counting his take. “Till you get a good wind, tie ropes to the cars and all these so-husky young fellows pull.”
Srygen blew up. “A free clan male, to drag a car like a… like a Draka?” He mastered himself and choked: “It isn’t done.”
“Sometimes,” said Van Rijn, “these things must be done.” He scooped up the jewels, dropped them into a purse, and went over to a well. “Surely you have some disciplines in this Flock.”
“Oh… yes… I suppose so—” Trolwen’s unhappy gaze went down-slope to the brawling, shouting winged tide which had engulfed the village. “But sustained labor like that has always… long before the Drakska came… always been considered — perverted, in a way — it is not exactly forbidden, but one does not do it without the most compelling necessity. To labor in public — No!”
Van Rijn hauled on the windlass. “Why not? The Drak’honai, them, make all kinds tiresome preachments about the dignity of labor. For them it is needful; in their way of life, one must work hard. But for you? Why must one not work hard in Lannach?”
“It isn’t right,” said Srygen stiffly. “It makes us like some kind of animal.”
Van Rijn pulled the bucket to the well coping and took a bottle of Earthside beer from it. “Ahhh, good and cold… hm-m-m, possibly too cold, damn all places without thermostatted coolers—” He opened the bottle on the stone curb and tasted. “It will do. Now, I have made travels, and I find that everywhere the manners and morals of peoples have some good reason at bottom. Maybe the race has forgotten why was a rule made in the first place, but if the rule does not make some sense, it will not last many centuries. Follows then that you do not like prolonged hard work, except to be sure migration, because it is not good for you for some reason. And yet it does not hurt the Drak’honai too much. Paradox!”