Tell Me The Count

by Jonathan Olfert

in Issue 152, September 2024

Seven sails on the horizon, the square rigs of great catamarans, sank dread into Tahure’s heart. He’d been hoisting a dharak terror-bird into a tree for harvest, vines biting into his palms. When the sails caught his eye he froze there at the edge of the beach. He let down the bird’s bulk and watched them come. 

Tahure, said his wife Serra, who had the knack for speaking and keeping an eye out, all from an ocean away. Tahure, answer me: what do you see?

And what could he say? Dozens of men inbound, aiming for the remote island that he’d been shaping into a sanctuary for his family? Traders who might know his bloody reputation, or Barde whalers seeking vengeance against the man who’d made war on their coasts? Or greedy voyagers who would take this place from him before he could make it into a home?

His fist knotted on the flint gutting-knife at his belt. “Just dead men,” he said, and knew Serra understood.

The island had a beautiful cove, a large and obvious shelter. He’d sailed here in a small catamaran; he brought down its mast and dragged the catamaran into the trees. That took time. Come sunset, he’d barely finished covering it with boughs, and the first of the seven large boats cruised into the cove. 

Large indeed: crouched in the undergrowth just off the beach, he revised his estimates. The first sturdy boat held ten — so seventy strangers, give or take, all weathered sailors. This was no migration. A warband, perhaps, or a pilgrimage, or whalers prowling for the Deep People. Their short-cropped hair and slapdash tattoos suggested men of action. So did the spears.

They came ashore around the perimeter of the cove, evenly spaced, likely to keep the boats’ masts and sails safe from each other if a storm kicked up — or to ensure no attacker could burn all their boats at once. That spacing meant they’d need to watch a long, potentially vulnerable perimeter. It meant confidence, but he’d killed confident men before.

As they set that perimeter and gathered firewood for the night, Tahure slunk back into the forest.

His nest was a cage of boughs woven around the forks of a kalicol tree, in dense jungle, near fresh water and a good distance from the cove. More than once he’d used hidden footholds to spring up into the nest with a dharak at his heels. 

Inside, the nest had plenty of space and resources to shelter from storms or dharaks, season kalicol wood for bows, make arrows from shark-teeth and gull-feathers. He had a separate nest for drying meat, and another site entirely for storing food, and other caches and small refuges across much of the island. Come daylight, it wouldn’t take long for the intruders to stumble on one — or find his boat — and realize they weren’t alone. 

He laid on his woven-vine bed and stared up into the dark, thinking long into the night. 

You’re safe, said Serra from far away.

“Hid the boat and went to ground,” Tahure murmured. “Safe as I can be. How was she?”

Not particularly interested in sleep. His wife’s wry exasperation carried through. But I wore her down.

Though few fears took root in Tahure — raider, voyager, a man who’d fought a war alone — he recognized a new one, keen enough to pierce his heart. The fear that all he’d built here would be for nothing, that he’d never make this island a safe home for Serra and their little daughter. That all the blood on his hands would come back on the tide and curse this place for his crimes.

“Tell Layka I saw the Gray People,” he said to the dark, hands laced behind his neck. “The biggest pod I’ve ever seen, at least a hundred of them, chittering and chasing fish. Beating sharks for sport.”

Serra sent him a laugh. She’ll like that. She’s been scared of sharks lately.

Another pang jolted through him. “If I was there I’d show her my arrows. Shark-tooth points for hunting sharks.”

I have one somewhere, a tooth you filed down to an arrowhead. I’ll show her that.

“Soon,” Tahure said after a beat. By which he meant: soon enough she’ll be old enough for the voyage, old enough to live in a place like this instead of a village, and the two of you can join me, and we’ll build our home together. Far away from people who’ll never trust her because of who her father is. And what he’s done.

Aye, love, his wife said. Soon.

He woke restlessly well before dawn. He put fifteen of his best arrows in the woven-grass quiver at his belt, points nestled in a mat of dry moss to keep them from punching through. Of his three bows, he picked the middling one: stronger than the bird-bow, but quicker to draw than the longbow and nimbler in the forest. He tucked an extra bowstring into his belt pouches with the other necessities. For close violence, he chose a spear tipped with a dharak bird’s running-talon, broad as two fingers and subtly curved. A spear like this could punch through the toughest hides.

With that many men, the intruders would need water first and foremost. They’d find a brackish little stream and follow it up. It wouldn’t take them long to locate the spring, one of three on the island. In darker days, Tahure might have simply poisoned the spring, but not here, not on the island that he’d picked as his family’s future. 

Sometimes he watched this spring for pekkara and other small game, huddled in mossy crags that offered easy routes for escape. He set himself up, arrow on the string, and waited.

A little after dawn, here they came to the freshwater: six, seven, eight men carrying large empty waterskins and spears to ward away animals. Those spears looked serious, made with rows of small flint blades set in the edges of wooden spearheads. A weapon like that could glide through your belly like a wind through trees, and was vastly easier to repair or replace than a spear with a full-sized flint head. Sharper than Tahure’s dharak-talon spear, if less durable. It made sense that men with such impressive boats would carry fine weapons. This island had no flint of its own. 

Flint, boats, excellent waterskins, and who knew what else: this vast threat was also an unmatched resource. The kind of windfall that could make this brutal island into a proper home.

His first arrow slashed contemptuously through undergrowth; he’d picked the hardest shot first. The shark-tooth head punched through the sailor’s chest, skewered both lungs, and sank deep. As Tahure nocked another arrow, the first man fell, gasping for a scream that never came. 

The second arrow kissed a sailor’s neck. At first it looked like a miss. Then arterial spray painted the freshwater spring. Dying, the second man slipped on wet rocks and splashed face-first into the spring’s shallow pool.

The others knew their business. Spears up, they got low and scattered into the nearest good cover, stands of undergrowth that hid them from Tahure’s perspective. Some dropped those large waterskins, the better to maneuver and hide. 

Tahure sent a third arrow into the undergrowth and was rewarded with a scream. But a shout answered it from the direction of the cove, a deep booming rage far louder than it should have been. It shivered Tahure. It brought to mind magics far more serious than the simple art that let him and Serra share their voices. 

Something shifted about the light. He glanced up and found a fire perhaps five paces above his head, a bright clean fuelless flame that marked his position as precisely as if he was a candle giving it life. The distant magician knew, somehow, exactly where he was.

A thrown spear lashed up at him; he stumbled back, too late, and the flint scored a thin line across his left forearm. Deep enough to hurt, but not enough to stop him from drawing the bow.

Three arrows from a single place had pushed his luck too far: he backed away into the crags, around and up to a second vantage point behind a rotten log, then a third behind a shrub that blazed with flowers. The fire-marker followed unerringly. War-fever surged and burned in the back of his mind, but he kept his clarity, barely, as he harassed the hiding sailors with arrows. His one saving grace was their lack of bows: the fire above let them know his position, but they only had so many ways to attack. There’d be a time to let himself out of the cage. For now, he just needed to drive them away, avoid a spear to the chest…and hope that fire marker faded. 

Whistled signals pierced the morning. That booming call answered again, and a guttural modulation suggested a specific signal, even a word in some speech he’d never heard. The fire died above him. He trusted the signal’s disappearance as much as he trusted a silent forest full of dharaks. 

The water-party retreated in good order, fast but not panicking, back down the stream toward the distant beach. They left four bodies, which was a bargain for the seven arrows he’d spent. He crept down and reclaimed those arrows from the dead, along with two waterskins and one nice flint-edged spear. The tally, the take, helped keep the war-fever down. 

But just for now. If he’d learned one thing from his blood feuds, it was this: every war burned hot sooner or later, hot and wild and deeply unwise. The art of it was to pick the right moment to become a reaving fool.

They came back in force before noon: twenty men or thereabouts, some with spears and some with bows, enough to secure the spring. Tahure watched from a sheltered treetop outside bowshot — and hopefully, too far away for the enemy’s unknown magic to pinpoint his location.

“Do you think they’ll signal once they get their water?” he said.

Serra hmmmed in the back of his head. ‘All’s well, we got what we came for’ would be a useful thing to know how to say. Did you catch the way they whistled this morning?

“I’m not sure,” he admitted, shifting his balance in the treetop to compensate for a breeze. “When they told their leaders they were under attack or taking losses, it had eight or nine tones, almost a little song. I could try but it’d be a gamble. I’ll listen closer this time.”

From where you are, can you see the boats?

He hooked an elbow under a branch to lean that way, careful to stay within cover. “What am I looking for?”

If the men at the spring signal back, they may get that deep call back in answer, the one you thought was magic. You might see who gives it, which boat he’s on. 

He squinted through the leaves. “Wish I’d brought my longbow. Put a couple of arrows among the water-gatherers at range and I might’ve learned much more.”

Not in the middle of the day, please. I want you back when this is over.

That roused a chuckle. “When you sail here, you’ll find no-one here but me: that much I swear.”

A complex whistle rose from the men at the spring. Another whistle answered from the cove, from nobody he could spot. He grimaced. “They’re signalling, but I’m not seeing a leader or a source.”

Tell me the tunes. I’ll remember them for you.

“Best idea either one of us have had all day, love.” He whistled three signals quietly: his best guess at ‘under attack,’ a clearer and more certain version of ‘errand complete,’ and the last response from the cove. 

The last two share a section of three tones, Serra said thoughtfully, and the first one almost has it. Maybe it means ‘coming home’: a retreat in the first whistle, a straightforward intention in the second, and an invitation or acknowledgement in the third one. She whistled all three, bright and crisp, for his ears only, and Tahure grinned as he made his way down the tree. Against numbers and magic like this, every edge counted.

Dharak birds — flightless, with all the bulk and pride and appetite of a spikelion — hunted by night and by smell. Their favorite prey was red-furred musk-pekkara. When Tahure took a pekkara he sometimes wrapped the pungent little body in broad leaves and weighed it down in a streambed for later use. He had a pekkara stored that way right now, not far from the spring where he’d killed the intruders. 

Around fifteen men dug in around the spring for the night, even fortified the same vantage points where he’d concealed himself this morning. But a significant distance separated the two areas the intruders controlled — the spring and the cove. As night came down, he slipped between those areas and secured the musk-pekkara from the stream. He tucked it into his woven shoulder-bag, where it should stay cold and damp long enough to bring it where he needed. Luring dharaks and living to tell the tale was a matter of timing.

Under cover of darkness, he climbed a storm-rounded rock too tall for dharaks, in patchy trees near the mouth of the cove. The place had two serious disadvantages: no shelter from archers, and no easy escape routes. If cornered here, he could clamber down away from the cove into rocky surf, lose himself in the merciless ocean. That, or make a tough night run along the enemy perimeter toward the island’s heart. But the great rock was, by far, the best place for what he was about to do. 

He eased the wrapped musk-pekkara from his shoulder-bag, and an oblong rock the size of two fists, and a crude rope of kalicol bast. Careful knots bound the carcass and the rock together at the end of the rope. He set his feet and began to swing, keeping his eye on the target: a huge catamaran beached on the other side of the mouth of the cove. Beyond the crew’s fires on the beach, there was dense forest over there, good game-trails. By now they might have encountered dharak birds, but not a full hunting flock, or he’d have heard the violence. 

The hefty rock-and-meat bundle whirled around him, humming, until his muscles screamed. Wary of his footing, he risked one wide final spin and let go. 

The bundle flickered away, arcing against the stars and across the mouth of the cove, high as a longbow’s arrow. If he hadn’t known it was there, known exactly how it would fly, he wouldn’t have seen it at all. 

It thunked into one of the catamaran’s twin hulls: not a crack of stone against wood, but a dull splatter of musk, meat, and offal. 

The ruse was transparent, of course. By now they’d be staring at a thing obviously made and sent by a human, and they’d likely guess it was bait. They’d certainly note that it smelled far stronger than whatever they’d butchered and cooked today.

Perched on the rock, he caught a version of the ‘under attack’ whistle without the ‘coming home/retreat’ part. The whistle came from the boat he’d targeted, across the mouth of the cove. Then the same whistle again, a little later, from the woods beyond. Then again. There were reinforcements moving on the beach, visible as shadows in front of the firelight or flickers of light beyond. And other shapes, faster shapes, came out to meet them. “Yes,” he said to the distant birds. “Come on, you bastards.”

A roar boomed out from another catamaran across the cove, inhumanly loud and close at hand. His head snapped around. The roar hummed in his bones like the worst magic he’d ever encountered. And this time the response was not sound, it was fire. 

Flame burst up, a vast column of it deep in the forest. 

Tahure’s home.

There was no mistaking the location, even at night. Crouched on the rock, eyes wide, Tahure watched as pillars of fire sprouted one by one at other places he recognized, other refuges and storage sites all across the island, two years of work incinerated. The roaring magic could only be targeting them by their relationship to him, to the intruders’ enemy. Any place he’d fought, worked, slept–

“Serra!” he shouted, putting all his paltry magic into the sharing of voices. She had to hear, asleep or not. “Serra, get Layka out of the house! Out now!”

If she answered, he couldn’t hear over the sudden and immediate rush of flame. Fire burst up all across the crest of the great round rock. The carefully-crafted weapons he’d brought — bow, spear, arrows — scorched black and useless. In the heartbeat before the fire reached its full intensity, became a pillar of flame like so many other sites across the island, Tahure leaped. 

He tumbled at the base of the rock, a landing gone wrong. Pain sizzled and jabbed all across his skin — he smelled burnt hair and meat. Prickly undergrowth and sandy soil choked out his smoldering clothes. Shouts were rising nearby. He lurched through the patchy woods, away from the cove, and jumped again, as far out over the rocks as his stunned body would allow.

The ocean closed over him.

We’re safe.

The voice drilled clarity into his skull. He kicked against grasping seaweed, fought his way to the surface. Saltwater rasped at his scorched skin in a thousand places.

The house is ash. But we’re safe. I’ve never heard of magic that could do this. Are you…Tahure, answer me. Answer me.

Tahure thrashed against the pounding surf and found a grip on a hard-edged rock. “I’m here,” he choked out. 

Put your new war aside, love. The sorcery you’re fighting can’t be fought.

He coughed and kept coughing, knowing that the sound could draw the men who searched for him. And there were torches all along the rocky shore. 

“I’ll make this right,” he said at last. “I brought this to your door, I’ll take it away.” 

Perhaps you will, Serra said, but above all, you come back to me. You owe me that.

“I’ll take it away,” he said again, and let the ocean claw him off the rock. He went with it.

Burned or not, shocked or not, he’d spent his life in the water. He swam like a shark, quiet and low-profile, no more thrashing or hesitation. Along the shore and across the mouth of the cove, and up into the woods where the dharaks still clashed with the intruders. 

Without a breeze, blood and pekkara musk hung heavy in the jungle air. Keen-eyed or not, in the dark he tripped over the first bodies he found: a gutted dharak entangled with a human. The fine spear was broken off and gut-fouled. The dead man had carried a bone-handled flint knife in a sheath of woven roots, but violence had cracked that beautiful blade down the middle. Tahure used the broken knife to procure the best weapon in sight: the dharak’s leg. A quick binding of cloth and sailor’s knots braced the foot at right angles to the long-bone, making it a three-taloned club with respectable heft and reach. Quick swipes of the broken knife cleaned away sinew, feathers, and meat to give him a good grip of bare strong bone.

He moved with care. Though he’d jumped quickly, the fire had left his skin tender and sore, and the ocean’s numbness was wearing off. And his war-fever was close, very close, to breaking free: he wanted to shed blood. To dominate. To get these bastards off his island, no matter the cost. 

Then again, he’d already paid the cost. Now his job was to get what he’d earned.

The first living man he found was catching his breath in ragged little gasps that gave away his position in the undergrowth. Tahure played no games this time. He stalked into the brush and brought the dharak-leg club down in a straightforward arc. The three finger-length talons punched deep into the intruder’s skull and neck, drove him down to the ground. War-fever sizzled in Tahure’s hands, behind his eyes. His fingers snapped clear of the club as some weak little part of his heart drowned in bad and bloody memory. He kept the details at bay, shoved off the old shames, the broken faces. 

Be what you need to be to stay alive tonight, said Serra far away. But I want you back alive and human.

With a shuddering breath, Tahure ripped the club from the corpse and stopped fighting the fever.

The old pains whipped away, gone from his heart like smoke on a windy night. He scooped up the dead man’s flint-edged spear in his off hand, took a running step out of the woods, and threw. A fighter was crossing the beach, silhouetted against one of the bonfires; the spear broke his run and threw him sprawling into the flames. 

Of the seven catamarans, three were beached on this side. The middle one had been the source of the voice that called the pillars of fire. Starlight and firelight gleamed on flint, but darkness and wicker barriers hid the details of the men on its twin hulls and central deck. Unwise, uncaring, Tahure headed for that one.

On a better day he could have leaped clear into the catamaran in a single bound. Instead he threw the club into the face of a spearman, gripped the hull with both burned hands, and heaved himself over the edge. 

He sprawled in the bottom of the boat, not far from the wailing man he’d struck with the club. The impact half knocked the breath from his lungs, but he couldn’t pause: men were coming this way with spears, and he wanted their blood. 

An arrow sliced up the outside of his thigh and embedded itself in the wood. Tahure flung himself forward, gasping for air, and snagged the bone grip of the dharak-leg club. He finished off the spearman with a swipe to the neck and snatched up the spear with his off hand.

They paused then, arrayed across the central deck, just out of reach and afraid to close with him. When he lurched forward they stepped back — all but one man, older and barrel-chested, covered in crude mismatched tattoos. The older man breathed deep and roared.

No fire here, not on the precious boat, but the sorcerous noise drove Tahure to one knee, then crushed him against the inside of the hull. It came down like a physical weight. Something deep in his bones sizzled in defiance of a greater magic than anything he’d ever felt or encountered.

The older man matched his glare and snapped a command. Half a dozen men cocked back their arms to throw their spears, or drew arrow-flights to their cheeks.

Tahure bared his teeth in a grin and whistled their signal for Everything’s fine.

He dove forward, abandoning the clumsy spear. Their spears and arrows slashed over him and thunked into the wood. His roll unfolded into a springing leap from the base of the hull to the central deck. The dharak club crunched into an archer’s ribs, tore free, and came down into another man’s chest as he scrambled to draw a knife. 

The binding on the dharak’s foot snapped, and the foot flopped through its limited range of motion, making the club a raking fork. Tahure whipped it across an archer’s belly and turned the bow to driftwood. The mess entangled the club, and the smooth, bloody bone of the grip twisted from Tahure’s hand. 

The magician was backing up now, drawing breath for another roar. Tahure crossed the deck, a sailor in his element, and slammed his open hand into the older man’s throat. He drove the magician back against the great catamaran’s mast. The delicate bones of the throat crunched under his palm. The magician’s eyes bulged as hate and contempt gave way to fear.

An arrow sliced Tahure’s cheek and embedded itself in the mast, perilously close to the magician’s head. With his off hand, Tahure ripped the arrow from the wood and punched the flint arrowhead through his enemy’s skull. 

Stone and bone shattered as he twisted the arrow deep into the wet pink brain to seek whatever spark or gland or vein made magic. The magician went limp in his grip. 

He let the magician fall and whirled — another arrow slashed through the space where he’d been — to face the remaining men unarmed. Oh, there were others scattered around the cove, prowling the woods or guarding their own boats or falling to furious dharak birds, but only a few were here right now. Only a few even understood a human enemy had come aboard one of their catamarans. 

Even bare-handed, he liked his chances. But instead of leaping at them, he got a grip on the fever and did what he felt like Serra would prefer to hear when he told her this story. Or what she’d prefer to see if she was watching now.

He pointed past the last few enemy, across the cove, at a catamaran lurching into the water. Men were pushing a second out to sea in its wake.

Retreat, he whistled in their code, staring down these last few intruders and their spears. Going home.

Tell me the count again, Serra said drowsily. It was midday, but all three of them were tired, and far away, she’d just put Layka down for a nap. For his part, Tahure nestled in a hammock under the catamaran’s deck. At first taking a count of the loot had kept the war-fever down, kept him from chasing the intruders out to sea. Now the count was just a reassurance that he’d come out of this mess with something to show for it.

Columns of smoke drifted up from a dozen places in the forest. He’d salved his burns with cold water despite the bite of salt, and there were other remedies he could gather once he rested a while. All his stockpiles had burned to ash. But he’d taken much more than he’d lost.

“One large catamaran,” he murmured, “at least three times the size of mine, with tight-woven sails, wicker barriers against arrows, comfortable hammocks, and plenty of space for Layka to play on the deck when I come visit. Twenty-four good spears, flint edges set in wooden heads. Fifteen flint knives with bone grips. Four ropes a dozen paces long. Twelve large waterskins. All the dharak talons and feathers we could ever need.” 

And the skull of the man who burned our homes. 

“And that, love, once the fish finish cleaning it.”

Not a bad little war. One of your quicker ones, unless they come back.

“They will. I didn’t…” He grimaced. “Didn’t scare them enough to keep them away for long.”

One man killed how many? No, they’ll remember the maniac with a dharak-foot for a club, Serra said fondly. But you’re right. Claim another island, then?

“This boat is an island.” Tahure eased himself from the hammock and climbed onto the bloodstained deck. “Not the home I wanted to build for you, but…”

She caught his meaning quickly. Her voice went hard and bright and very much awake. Layka is old enough to be safe with boats. She’s young but she’s careful. I take her out every other day.

“I know you do. I watch a little, though I’m not as good at watching from afar as you. Not as good with her either, but I’ll learn.” He picked at a brownish gouge in the mast, right where he’d killed the magician, and felt a grin transform his face. “We could make a home of this ship. Serra, love, we could make a home now.”

Come get your daughter, she said, his perfect partner in this life they’d clawed out, and the life still to come. Anything gets between us, you send it to the bottom of the sea.

©September 2024, Jonathan Olfert

Jonathan Olfert‘s paleofiction, SFF, and horror has arguably proliferated farther than it deserves. His sword-and-sorcery tales have appeared in Old Moon Quarterly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and previously in Swords & Sorcery​, among others. He and his family live in Atlantic Canada.