The next day, from about five miles up, we watched something that was pretty gory but also very interesting. A band of eight robbers—these robbers were on foot—came out of the woods and attacked a group of about twenty unarmed people who were traveling together. It was fear, knives, and walking staffs against swords and savagery. Just as they were getting into it, one of the mounted warriors called "knights" rode over a rise, saw what was happening, and charged, his broadsword raised. Only two of the robbers escaped to the shelter of the woods. He chased down and killed every one of the others.
I knew right then who I wanted to talk to and learn from. He didn't look all that safe to be around, but he was on the right side in the fight, and he was certainly a lot different from the monks.
The problem was how to get him to talk with me. We'd seen no sign that knights talked with anyone on the road except other knights. And we'd noticed that they didn't usually camp by the road at night. Usually they stopped at one of the castles or monasteries late in the day. Because I didn't have much information about knights, I decided a direct approach was as good as any, so I told Deneen and Bubba what I had in mind.
They didn't raise any objections and, to my surprise, I felt a little disappointed about that. I guess I'd been hoping they'd talk me out of it, and hadn't really realized it. Anyway, like it or not, it was time to get on with it.
I dropped the cutter down into a forested canyon back in the mountains and then flew down the canyon toward the road, skimming just above the treetops. That way, the cutter wouldn't be seen from the road, and hopefully by no one at all. Landing in a small opening in the woods, I got out with my daypack on my back and my stunner on my hip. My clothes weren't like anyone else's around there—I was wearing a jumpsuit, of course—but I could pose as a traveler from faraway India, wherever that was.
Brother Oliver had talked a little about India. It was a faraway country that apparently a lot of people had heard of but just about no one had been to, so it was a good place to fake being from.
Where I landed, the canyon had widened into a sort of rounded draw between low mountain ridges. I knew that about a mile ahead it opened into a farmed valley near a road. I'd go there and meet the knight when he came by. After that I'd have to play it by ear.
By rights I should have kept on feeling nervous, I suppose, but once I was in the woods and walking, I felt cheerful and confident, and decided I might as well enjoy the feeling. Birds were chirping, and the air smelled good, probably from the kind of needle-leafed trees that made up most of the forest.
I hadn't given myself much time to spare. When I stepped out of the cool shady forest into the bright sun, I was about a hundred feet from the road. The knight, riding in my direction, was only about a quarter of a mile away. When I reached the dirt road, I stood on it facing him, wondering what to do next. I was sure he'd never seen anyone dressed like me, or anyone with their hair in a grown-out school cut, for that matter. As he approached, I spread my arms, but he didn't slow down or seem at all interested in going around me. From his scowl, it looked as if he'd ride right over me unless I got out of his way.
So I called to him. Not in Provençal—anyone he met might speak to him in Provençal—but in Evdashian. "Mr. Warrior! I need your help! I really do!"
He didn't stop scowling, but he did stop the massive warhorse he rode on. At a distance of fifteen feet, I could see that he wasn't much older than me. His unshaven beard, thin and downy-looking, was mostly on his chin and above the corners of his mouth, yet his left cheek had a big white scar below the eye that went all the way to his jaw.
He was a little shorter than me, but quite a bit huskier, even allowing for the chain mail hauberk that he wore. Its sleeves came down only to his elbows, and his hands and wrists were surprisingly thick and powerful looking. All in all, he looked like he'd make a great charging center on our banner team at school, but I doubted that banner would be rough enough for him.
He wore a low conical steel cap with a narrow piece that stuck down along the top of his nose to protect it. The cap fitted over a sort of mail hood that covered his neck and throat. All in all, he looked pretty well protected against the kinds of weapons we'd seen on Fanglith.
His hard blue eyes looked me over: I didn't look like a monk or pilgrim, knight or robber. I had my story ready, though. What I needed now was time to tell enough of it to get his interest.
"I do not know your tongue," he said. "Speak French."
I'd never heard of French, but I supposed it was what he was speaking. It was enough like Provençal that I'd understood what he'd said, and Provençal was the only Fanglith language I knew. I'd have to use it. "Excuse me, sir knight," I said, speaking slowly. "I do not know French. I can speak Provençal though, if not well. I need your help, for I am foreign. I must learn more of this country. Otherwise I fear that, in my ignorance, I will do myself dangerous trouble."
When I'd finished saying it, I felt as if I'd just made the galaxy's weakest case for help. But instead of just riding on over me, he looked me over carefully.
"Why should I help a foreigner?" he asked. "You are no priest or monk, nor any pilgrim by the look of it. And clearly you are neither knight nor sergeant."
Among Normans in the eleventh century, when a squire completed his training—commonly at age fifteen—he was graduated as a sergeant. Knighthood was awarded later, for acts of valor in battle.
I know that now. But at the time I didn't even know what he meant by "sergeant." Apparently though, if I didn't fit in one of those categories, I had to buy help. I wondered if that was part of the culture here, or if this guy was selfish all on his own.
"Uh, I can make it interesting for you," I said. "I—God has given me the power to make small miracles! Miracles that can help fill your stomach along the road." I'd gotten the idea from my talks with the monks that people in Provence, and Christians in general, were really interested in miracles. But the knight's face turned positively sour.
"I am no chaser of miracles," he said. "I've heard many claimed but have yet to see one."
But he didn't move as if to ride on, so I took that as an invitation. And I saw my miracle coming to me: a low-flying hawklike bird swooping along about twenty feet above the grainfield on the other side of the road. I suppose it was looking for some small animal to eat. Almost without thinking, I palmed my stunner from my belt, thumbing it to full power as I pointed it, and pressed the firing stud. The hawk was far enough away that, even at full power, I wasn't all that sure the stunner would affect it. But instantly it fell out of the air without a flutter.
I turned back to the knight. "I don't know if they're good to eat or..." I began. Then I stopped, because he looked positively shocked. He turned his head to peer off across the field, and I followed his gaze. For the first time, I noticed several men on horseback about a quarter-mile away at the edge of a woods. Two of them had what might have been hawks sitting on their arms.
"Friend foreigner," the knight said quietly, "pray to God that those folk over there do not connect you with the death of their bird. Otherwise, you are a dead man."
This was a dangerous place for someone who didn't know the local customs and taboos! And I suddenly realized that any one of them with a bow could stand back well out of range of my stunner and put an arrow through me! A stunner would be fine against a sword, but I should have brought a blaster, too.
One of the people left the others and galloped his horse through the field, trampling the young crop. Like the knight I was with, this person wore a hauberk and helmet. He didn't carry a bow, and so far he hadn't drawn the sword I could now see at his side. But he glanced toward us as he rode, and I could feel the scowl, even if I couldn't see it from there.
Near the place where the hawk had gone down, he reined back his horse and swung out of the saddle almost like a trick rider. Then he stalked through the foot-tall grain, looking for the bird. It took him less than half a minute to find it. Picking it up, he looked it over and then stroked it. Apparently it wasn't dead.
Then he called to his horse, which came to him at once. With the bird in one arm, and in spite of the heavy hauberk and sword, he swung easily into the saddle and galloped back to his friends. He never glanced at us again.
The young knight looked at me with more interest now. He also looked slightly amused. "That was two miracles," he said. "First you caused the bird to fall. Second, you seem to have gotten away with it." For a minute or two we watched the people with their hawks on the other side of the field. When the rider got there, he handed the hawk to someone else, perhaps its owner. None of them looked across at us. Instead, after about half a minute of examining the bird, they trotted their horses into the woods and out of sight.
"Yes," said the knight, "you've gotten away with it." He looked at me. "What is your name and rank?" he asked.
"My name is Larn," I said. "I have no rank except student, but my father is..." I paused, groping for the word. "He is ... an advisor to rich nobles," I said hopefully.
He didn't look impressed. "Strange that he didn't send you to be trained as a knight, if he is noble," he said. "They must have strange customs in your land."
He nodded slightly then, as if he'd just made a decision. "My name is Arno of Courmeron. I am a Norman." He said it as if a Norman were the best thing on this world to be. Then he moved his horse up beside me and reached down with a hand. "You can ride behind me for a time," he said. "We will talk further."
I took the hand and he pulled. He was so strong it startled me. It was like being launched. I hardly had time to swing my leg over the horse's broad rump before I found myself sitting there holding on to the high back of the saddle. And the hand he'd grabbed mine with was the hardest hand I'd ever imagined, as if the palm were armored. It had to be fifty percent callus.
The monks hadn't smelled as bad up close as he did. I wondered if he'd ever had a bath.
He spoke to the horse and it began to jog along again. I didn't know what a Norman was, but I supposed it meant someone from a certain place. On Fanglith, travel and communication were primitive and incredibly slow. Besides which, of course, they wouldn't have computers to store records and information. In fact, from what Brother Oliver had said, only a few people here could even read and write! Even a lot of the Brothers couldn't—the ones he called "lay brothers," whose job was to work instead of study.
So with such slow travel and communication, and such limited data storage and retrieval, obviously each little part of the planet's land surface had to rule itself. The amount of territory and people that one government could keep track of and defend and rule had to be pretty small. The Brothers had referred to kingdoms and duchies and principalities and imperia and electorates. The computer didn't have all the terms sorted out yet, but they seemed to refer to self-ruling areas of different sizes and importances. Or maybe to how independent they really were. An imperium definitely seemed to be a small-scale equivalent to our word empire [Empire here is the translation of the Evdashian word (kuther).]—a collection of different places and ethnic populations under one ruler. But on Fanglith the places were regions on the planet's surface instead of whole planets and systems.
Anyway, I suspected that a Norman was probably a person from a specific one of those units—a kingdom or duchy or something. I decided I'd better learn more about Normans.
"Excuse my ignorance, Arno of Courmeron," I said, "but I'm such a foreigner that I do not know the word 'Norman.' "
He turned and looked at me, his eyes narrowed. "How do you not know of Normans? All Christendom knows of us. William the Bastard has conquered England. In Italy, the Tancred brothers have conquered most of the south from the Lombards and Byzantines and taken much of Sicily from the Saracens. How did you come here from Italy and not know of us?"
A good question, I thought, but he'd never believe the true answer. I'd just have to feel my way and tell him as much truth as he might be willing to more or less accept. "I've never been in Italy," I said.
"That is the Cenis Pass behind us," he answered. "If you came over it, you've been in Italy." He turned in the saddle as he said it, and he definitely looked impatient with what seemed like lies to him.
"Sir Arno," I said, "you may be unbelieving of miracles, but you have already seen one today. The fact is that I did not come here over Cenis Pass on either foot or horseback. Instead of telling you about it, let me show you. Can we get down on the ground for a few minutes?"
He didn't answer right away. We just kept riding. A little way ahead, a broad-crowned tree stood by the road, a tree with leaves instead of needles. When we reached its shade, he stopped the horse. "All right," he said, "show me this new miracle."
I slid off the horse. Arno followed, watching me skeptically. "All right," I said, "first of all I'm a—driven out person."
"An exile," he said. "A refugee."
"An exile," I repeated, "who, with his parents and sister, was driven from his home in a country called Morn Gebleu. We went from there to a country called Evdash."
I watched Arno to see what he thought of all this. I couldn't read his expression, but at least he was still listening. "That was years ago," I went on, "when I was a little boy. Then recently men came to Evdash from Morn Gebleu to take us back there to prison. My parents had to flee for their lives. My sister and I weren't at home then, but we knew that our parents would come to this part of the world if they escaped.
"So Deneen and I—Deneen is my sister—Deneen and I used a miracle to come here. It's a kind of miracle that many people in Evdash and Morn Gebleu use to travel long distances. Let me show you."
I said that last—"Let me show you"—not any too soon, because Arno was starting to look impatient again. Then I walked out into the sunshine and looked up, scanning the blue bowl of sky until I found it, not more than a tiny speck. Arno had followed me, looking skeptical. I pointed upward.
"Up there. Do you see that tiny dark spot?"
He looked up and around, then back at me, scowling again, his eyes narrowed. He hadn't seen it, probably partly because it was just a speck, and partly because he didn't expect anything could be up there except birds or maybe angels.
"Just a minute," I said. I took the communicator from my utility belt. "Deneen," I said in Provençal, "come straight down one mile right away."
Her voice came out of my communicator as clearly as if she'd been standing next to us; she was speaking Provençal, too. "Straight down one mile. Yes, brother dear."
I glanced at Arno before I looked up again. He was too much in command of himself to look really startled at this, but the scowl was gone and his eyes were wider, staring at the communicator. Meanwhile, the speck in the sky was getting bigger, becoming an oblong. I pointed again.
"Up there. You can see it now."
This time he did. "What is it?" he asked.
"A boat made to travel in the sky."
He was looking at me very thoughtfully now, He wasn't scared or awed or even nervous. "And you can command it by speaking to that amulet?"
"I can't command it from here," I said. "Deneen, my sister, commands it when I'm on the ground. She's the one you heard talking to me. It can only be commanded by someone riding in it. I can say what I want done. Then she does it if she agrees. Ordinarily she agrees."
"And your sister commands it."
I nodded. "Right," I said. "When I'm not in command, she is."
Arno was looking at me with something like respect for the first time. At least that's now I thought he was looking at me. "I want to ride in this sky boat," he said.
I kind of panicked then; I knew that something wasn't right. I don't know whether there was a flash of greed in those blue eyes or what. I just knew it wouldn't do to have this muscular warrior on board with his sword and big dagger and hard deadly hands. And instead of being cool and working my way out of it, I snapped, "No! It is not allowed!"
Quick as anything, one of those big hands grabbed for me, and I jumped backward about four feet. My stunner was in my hand before my feet touched the ground. Really! No exaggeration! And a good thing, too, because when his first grab missed, he followed through, lunging after me. He had me by my left sleeve and right arm even as I pressed the firing stud. Instantly he fell to his knees with a surprised look and tipped over on his face.
For an instant I had this terrible thought that I'd killed him. I stared at the stunner in my hand, then saw with relief that at some point or other after shooting the hawk, I'd thumbed the intensity back to low again. I hadn't blown his synapses, just paralyzed him temporarily.
What the stunner does is slow the nervous system way down. It especially affects the extremities—the efferent nerves to the arms and legs. After he woke up, he'd be pretty weak and helpless for a while, especially after being zapped at such close range.
I turned him over, and to my surprise he was conscious, his eyes open. "I forgot about the other amulet," he mumbled slowly and thickly.
He was lying in the middle of the road, and a group of half a dozen travelers were just coming into sight around a woods-bordered curve a quarter-mile away. So I grabbed him under the arms and dragged him off the hoof-beaten surface into the grass beneath the tree. Then I went to his horse and took down the mantle tied in front of the saddle. I put it under Arno's head as a pillow.
"What did you plan to do with the sky boat when you had it?" I asked.
One corner of his mouth twitched in a slight smile, the best he could do just then. "Become the King of Sicily," he mumbled. "Then—who knows? The King of Apulia as well. Perhaps the Emperor of Christendom. A sky boat should be of great value in warfare, especially in winning the support of the barons. And who knows what other marvels might be found on board?"
Even with his nervous system slowed way down, his intelligent dark-blue eyes were intense. King of Sicily and some other place! Emperor of Christendom! A king, if I understood it right, was a ruler whose power was limited only by the amount of military support he had. And emperors we learned about in history class, back on Evdash.
Those were big ambitions for a common warrior, particularly one who didn't look much older than me. But maybe the obstacles weren't as great on Fanglith, or at least among the Normans, as they'd be back home.
It occurred to me then that Arno was a barbarian, and I had overcome him. He might be lying there thinking about revenge, and waiting for the stun to wear off. Revenge or not, he wanted my "amulets" and my "sky boat." I moved back a few feet and sat leaning against the tree. It might also be a good idea, I decided, to seem like an ally to him while I got as much information and as many new words as possible. Then I'd leave. Staying around him was just too dangerous.
"If you had a sky boat," I pointed out, "you'd also need people who know how to fly it and take care of it."
That's when it struck me that he might be a big help in getting my parents free, in case they were actually prisoners. He could be a lot more than a source of information and vocabulary. Dangerous or not, he knew how things were done here. He was a potential ally for us, if it turned out we needed one.
"And if you ever become a king," I went on, "you'd have a kingdom to run. Worse than that, if you ever got to be emperor, you'd have a whole empire to run! You'd have to, uh, keep the barons under control, settle disputes, collect taxes, and keep track of where the money was and who had how much property. You'd give orders to do things, but then you'd need people to see that they actually got done."
The blue eyes clouded with thought. He knew that what I'd just said was true. It was true with any government; I hadn't lived my whole life hearing my parents talk without learning things. But Arno probably hadn't really looked at it before.
To become the ruler of the Federation or a planet, you needed to be a skilled politician. On a world like this one, you'd also have to be a good general. And then, when you'd made it, when you'd become the ruler, you also needed to be a good executive, and appoint good administrators who could handle situations and routine, and give you good advice. Then you made sure they did. If you didn't see to it yourself that the place ran decently, your rule would be one disaster after another.
On Fanglith, running a country would be pretty tough. Judging by the castles scattered over the countryside, and the walled towns, and the robbers we'd already seen, there wasn't much order and security. Most of the people seemed to be ragged and hungry, while the nobility did whatever they could get away with.
"If we're going to help you get to be king or emperor," I went on, "maybe we can help get you a truly great, uh—I don't know the word. Someone who takes care of things for a king. A chief assistant."
"A prime minister," said Arno.
"A prime minister," I repeated. I'd done it, I decided. I'd gotten him looking at me as someone potentially valuable to him as an ally instead of just a victim. Then my attention went to the half dozen travelers, who were only a couple of hundred feet away now. They'd slowed down, paying a lot of attention to us and talking quietly among themselves. I didn't feel good about their intentions, and I didn't have anything they could recognize as a weapon. To them we were a disabled knight and an unarmed kid.
They stopped at last about twenty-five feet away, and one who seemed to be the leader smiled at me. He was a short, chunky, bald-headed man with thick, stubby-fingered hands and filthy clothes.
"Good day, young sir," he said to me. "What is the matter with your master? Taken ill, maybe?"
Two of the others were sidling toward the warhorse. "Let the horse be!" I snapped at them. "He belongs to Sir Arno!"
They both stopped, looking more cautious than scared. They couldn't see any reason, really, why they couldn't just do whatever they wanted. But they weren't quite sure what to make of me yet. I sounded like someone dangerous. The burly leader bobbed his head up and down, and smiled as he took two or three short steps toward us. By that time my stunner was in my hand.
"Well then," he said, "why doesn't Sir Arno tell us to be gone? He seems quite helpless, lying by the road as limp as old rope. And honest folk needs a living." He sized me up again, then suddenly pulled a knife and started for me. I zapped him and he pitched forward, his mouth falling open. One of the men near the horse moved as if to climb on, so I zapped him, too. The others, cackling like kertfowl, stepped back and formed a little cluster.
"You!" I said, pointing to the biggest, "have the others drag those two off the road to the other side!" He got right into being a boss, snapping orders at his friends, and in seconds the two I'd stunned had been dragged by the feet into the grass. The previous leader was bleeding; he'd fallen on his knife and cut himself. I thumbed the stunner setting up nearly to medium and put them all to sleep then. I couldn't keep watching them and I couldn't trust them. All I could do was hope that none of them had a bad heart.
But I didn't like it. In a game like this, the losers were likely to get killed or maimed. I preferred the kind where you shook hands afterward and played a rematch in a few weeks.
"Are they dead?" Arno said slowly behind me. I turned and saw him half sitting up, leaning on an elbow. He had to be really strong to come back that much that soon, from anything I'd ever heard or read about stunners.
"No," I said. "They'll wake up after while. Then their heads will hurt for a while longer, but they'll be okay."
"You should have killed them," he said. "That's what they were going to do to us."
"Are they bandits?" I asked.
"No. Otherwise they wouldn't have held back the way they did. They are probably pilgrims, going to the Holy Land."
Holy and Holy Land I'd come to understand pretty well from the monks, but pilgrim I only partly understood. I didn't really understand why pilgrims went to the Holy Land.
"Pilgrims!" Arno repeated. "They'll probably end up slaves or dead men instead of praying at the Holy Sepulcher. I've heard that the Seljuks have taken the Holy Land, and that Christian pilgrims go there at their peril."
He rolled over, got to his hands and knees, then raised himself into a kneeling position. "You're right about the headache," he added.
"Don't get up," I told him. "I don't trust you."
He nodded and gave me a little lopsided grin. "You're a strange one, foreigner. But while you may be ignorant, you are not stupid. You learn."
"That's the reason I came to you," I told him. "To learn. What makes you think you could get enough support to become the king of—what was that place again?"
"Sicily. The granary of the Mediterranean."
I guessed what granary meant, but he had to explain Mediterranean to me. Sicily was an island, a big island in the Mediterranean Sea. It produced a very large amount of a food grain called wheat, that provided a lot of the bread eaten in the countries around that sea. Apparently bread was the principal food on Fanglith, or one of them.
"Sicily is very rich," he went on, "very fertile, and still held in part by the Saracens—the paynims."
The Saracens, I already knew, were a non-Christian people who had conquered a large part of the world—or at least a large part of the world that the monks knew about.
"Robert the Cunning," Arno went on, "the Duke of Apulia and Calabria, is a Norman. He is also the master of other regions of lower Italy, and most of eastern Sicily, a great captain in battle, and the craftiest lord in all of Christendom, if not the world. But the barons mistrust him, and many hate him, because he undertakes to curb their brigandage. So many rent their swords to whatever rival proclaims himself, whether Norman, Lombard, or even Byzantine—to any but the Saracen.
"With a flying boat I could easily gather to me a few young sergeants and knights at home in Normandy—younger sons free to give fealty where they wish. Using them properly, I could easily make myself master of some Sicilian fief, with a strong castle and its own troop of knights. Then it would be easy to take over some wealthy coastal town. A baron with a flying boat and magic amulets would be the wonder of Christendom, and I could soon enough have an army to do with."
Maybe he could, I thought. Anyone who got to be a king had to start somewhere, unless he inherited the job.
"How old are you, Arno?" I asked him.
"I'll be eighteen before the first frost," he said.
"And you've finished your training?"
"Of course. More than two years ago. If eight years is not enough, one might as well be a villein or a monk."
"And you've already been to war?"
"How do you suppose I won my spurs? Of course I've been to war!"
"I see. I don't know how things are done in this part of the world."
"I was with Roger, the duke's younger brother, when we destroyed the Saracen army outside Misilmeri. We killed or captured every man of them, although at the start they outnumbered us greatly.
"I don't know how many Saracens I killed. Twenty, at least. Our mail is heavier, and our swords. Thus our strokes cleaved them, but theirs most often only bruised, unless they struck our faces or hands." His fingers moved slowly to the big scar on his face. "And our horses are larger, and our formations much tighter, so they could not withstand our charges nor isolate our men.
"At the end, we were bruised and sore from shoulder to knee, and weary beyond belief, but not many of us had been killed. Until then I'd been a sergeant, with only a few minor skirmishes to my credit. After the battle, I was one of the sergeants chosen by Roger to be knighted for valor."
Another small group of travelers had been approaching on the road, and we stopped talking to watch them, I with my stunner in my hand. They looked at us, then at the six guys lying unconscious in the grass, and hurried by us, looking worried. When they were past, Arno began to talk again.
"When the fighting was over, exhausted though we were, we took the rings and purses from the Saracen dead. And there were thousands dead. The Saracen knights wear rings of great value, and carry coins of gold and silver, to pay their ransom with if they are taken prisoner. But Roger asked a greater ransom for the many who'd surrendered. And when the emir ransomed them, Roger gave to each of us a large purse of gold coins, keeping little of it for himself."
Arno grinned broadly, the first real grin I'd seen on him. "The Saracens have great wealth. It is only right that Christian knights relieve them of some of it."
"Then why did you leave Sicily?" I asked.
"To return to Normandy. And the reason..." He sat there for a few seconds as if looking at how to explain it. "Truly, the dream of most Norman knights is not mine," he said at last. "Battles are fine, but they are not enough for me. In time, Robert and Roger will conquer the rest of Sicily, to be sure. And I would doubtless be rewarded with a fief of my own there. But I would never be content to be a baron, for in the lawless south they do little but fight. There is fighting and hardship, and all too often death from one of the fevers that strike armies in the heat of summer there. One fights for his suzerain, and between times he fights brigands and his neighbors, who sometimes are one and the same."
He looked hard at me, as if he wanted me to really understand. "It leads nowhere. While at the same time, there are men in those lands known as 'merchants,' who live in comfort and luxury beyond our dreams in Normandy. Their wealth is unbelievable.
"So I was going home with my purse to buy a small herd of Norman warhorses. Warhorses of sufficient size are not raised in Italy or Sicily, and are worth a small fortune there. I would drive my horses to Marseille and hire some ship's captain to take us to Salerno or Amalfi. There I could sell them for a fine profit—several times the cost of buying them and taking them there.
"There are risks, of course. One could lose his horses and his life to brigands on the road to Marseille. While on the sea are storms and pirates, and a horse can die of seasickness. But risks are part of becoming a merchant, or of anything worth being."
Now he fixed me with his eyes. "But if we should become partners, you and I," he continued; "we could reach much higher than any merchant or baron. We can rule kingdoms. An empire."
Our conversation had taken longer than it looks like, because I interrupted quite a few times that I haven't shown here, to have him explain words to me. By then a couple of the guys I'd put to sleep had begun to groan, and a pair of knights were in sight about half a mile away, riding westward down the road from the direction of Cenis Pass.
I knew Arno was pretty much recovered, and it felt like the time to leave.
I got up. "Arno," I said, "I'll think about the partnership. How can I recognize you from the sky? The little cloth thing on your lance is too small, even though we can make things look large from the sky boat."
"I'll make a much larger pennon," he said. "A red one, cut from the cloak of yonder pilgrim." He pointed to one of the men in the ditch.
"Good." I began to back away, not willing to turn my back on him so close. I wondered how in the world I could work with anyone I felt that way about. The answer to that was that I wouldn't. I'd let him think I might, but he was just too dangerous to be around.
"And Arno," I said, "one more question. Do monasteries ever hold prisoners?"
He looked at me with a puzzled expression. "I think not," he said, "or rarely. Monks are a peaceful lot. Their purpose is not war, but to see to the proper worship of God and the salvation of souls."
"What about convents?" I asked.
"That's different. I doubt that they actually hold prisoners. But some of the women are there against their wishes, sent by their families because there is no dowry for them or because they refused to marry."
I knew there were other questions I'd wish later on that I'd asked. But just now I didn't know what they were, and so far I'd done pretty well. "And Arno," I said as one of them came to me, "if someone dressed like me walked up to a monastery and didn't know how to speak Provençal or any other language they knew there, what would happen to him? Say he was lost and just walked up and knocked on their door."
He looked at me with a puzzled expression. "I think they would shelter him until they had taught him Provençal, or Swabian, or whatever was the language of the land. Then they would no doubt try to persuade him into their brotherhood." He cocked his head to one side then and raised an eyebrow. "But if he showed them such miracles as you did me, miracles not done in the name of God, they might well think him a wizard, and kill him."
I thanked him and left, jogging up the slope and into the forest, with one eye over my shoulder at first, in case he started after me. Once in the trees, I headed straight for the opening where Deneen had left me. It was in the bottom of the canyon; I couldn't miss it. On the way I called her, and she flew down the canyon just above the treetops, the way I had. She was waiting for me in the opening when I got there.
As soon as I got back on board, I fed the contents of my recorder into the computer, while she swooped back up among the fluffy white clouds that were building over the mountains.
I'd learned a lot in my morning with Arno—a lot more than new words.