“That’s as may be,” said Tolk. “The fact remains. If there is any chance of greeting the Full Day from Mannenach Standing Stones, we shall take it. The extra lives which are lost because this may not be the soundest strategy, will be offered in gladness.”

“If it does not cost us the whole befouled war.” Van Rijn snorted. “Devils and dandruff! My own chaplain at home, that pickle face, is not so fussy about what is proper. Why, that poor young fellow there was near making suicide now, just because he got a little bit excited over a wench out of wenching season, nie?”

“It isn’t done,” said Tolk stiffly. He walked from the shop. After a moment, Van Rijn followed.

Wace settled the point of discussion with Angrek, checked operations elsewhere, swore at a well-meaning young porter who was storing volatile petroleum fractions beside the hearth, and left. His feet were heavy at the end of his legs. It was too much for one man to do, organizing, designing, supervising, trouble-shooting — Van Rijn seemed to think it was routine to lift neolithic hunters into the machine age in a few weeks. He ought to try it himself! It might sweat some of the lard off the old hog.

The nights were so short now, only a paleness between two red clouds on a jagged horizon, that Wace no longer paid any heed to the time. He worked until he was ready to drop, slept a while, and went back to work.

Sometimes he wondered if he had ever felt rested and clean, and well fed, and comforted in his alone-ness.

Morning smoldered on northerly ridges, where a line of volcanoes smeared wrathful black across the sun. Both moons were sinking, each a cold coppery disk twice the apparent size of Earth’s Luna. Mount Oborch shivered along giant flanks and spat a few boulders at the pallid sky. The wind came galing, stiff as an iron bar pressed against Wace’s suddenly chilled back. Salmenbrok village huddled flinty barren under its loud quick thrust.

He had reached the ladder made for him, so he could reach the tiny loft-room he used, when Sandra Tamarin came from behind the adjoining tower. She paused, one hand stealing to her face. He could not hear what she said, in the blustery air.

He went over to her. Gravel scrunched under the awkward leather boots a Lannacha tailor had made him. “I beg your pardon, my lady?”

“Oh… it was nothing, Freeman Wace.” Her green gaze came up to meet his, steadily and proudly, but he saw a redness steal along her cheeks. “I only said good morning.”

“Likewise.” He rubbed sandy-lidded eyes. “I haven’t seen you for some time, my lady. How are you?”

“Restless,” she said. “Unhappy. Will you talk to me for a little, perhaps?”

They left the hamlet behind and followed a dim trail upward, through low harsh bushes breaking into purple bloom. High above them wheeled a few sentries, but those were only impersonal specks against heaven. Wace felt his heartbeat grow hasty.

“What have you been doing?” he asked.

“Nothing of value. What can I do?” She stared down at her hands. “I try, but I have not the skills, not like you the engineer or Freeman van Rijn.”

“Him?” Wace shrugged. No doubt the old goat had found plenty of chance to brag himself up, as he lounged superfluous around Salmenbrok. “It—” He stopped, groping after words. “It’s enough just to have my lady present.”

“Why, Freeman!” She laughed, with genuine half-amused pleasure and no coyness at all. “I never thought you so gallant in the words.”

“Never had much chance to be, my lady,” he murmured, too tired and strength-emptied to keep up his guard.

“Not?” She gave him a sideways look. The wind laid its fingers in her tightly braided hair and unfurled small argent banners of it. She was not yet starved, but the bones in her face were standing out more sharply; there was a smudge on one cheek and her garments were clumsy baggings hurled together by a tailor who had never seen a human frame before. But somehow, stripped thus of queenliness, she seemed to him more beautiful than erstwhile — perhaps because of being closer? Because her poverty said with frankness that she was only human flesh like himself?

“No,” he got out between stiff lips.

“I do not understand,” she said.

“Your pardon, my lady. I was thinking out loud. Bad habit. But one does, on these outpost worlds. You see the same few men so often that they stop being company; you avoid them — and, of course, we’re always undermanned, so you have to go out by yourself on various jobs, maybe for weeks at a time. Why am I saying all this? I don’t know. Dear God, how tired I am!”

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?”