October, 10 A.E.-Hattusas, Kingdom of Hani-land
October, 10 A.E.-Troy
November, 10 A.E.-Northeastern Carpathian foothills
September, 10 A.E.-O'Rourke's Ford, east of Troy
October, 10 A.E.-On the coast of northwestern Iberia
September, 10 A.E.-O'Rourke's Ford, east of Troy
October, 10 A.E.-Achaean encampment, near Troy
I like this game," Raupasha said. "But it will be long before I fight to a draw even with your son, much less you, my sister."
Doreen Arnstein looked down at the chessboard, shivering a little in a way that had nothing to do with the cold that was sending fingers through the thick robe wrapped about her. She was playing her son David and Raupasha simultaneously, with a time limit on her moves. That made it a challenge, enough to keep her mind off Ian; the news from Troy wasn't good. In fact, it was desperately bad, and only desperation would have driven Ken to order the last-chance maneuver that was taking place this night.
David had made his move, and went back to the little three-inch reflector she had mounted on this flat rooftop. Originally she'd put that up as a sort of homage to her beginnings; she'd been a student astronomer at the time of the Event, interning at the little observatory on Nantucket run by the Margaret Milson Association. Tonight her son wasn't studying the stars; in between moves, he had the telescope trained to the southwest.
The Arnsteins had been given a royal villa outside the walls of Hattusas; the Islander military had set up around it, sinking wells and installing rudimentary sanitation and getting doctors and their equipment ready. That had been the first priority, even before starting to shuttle in troops and weapons; then they could move westward toward Troy and the Aegean Sea.
Now the campfires and lanterns twinkled about the building in orderly rows, and a long rectangle off to the west marked the Emancipator's landing ground. The chill of autumn fought with the warmth from wood burning in two bronze baskets, and there were fewer bugs splatting themselves there, or against the kerosene lantern on the table beside them. A kettle of sassafras tea kept warm near one brazier; mugs and a platter of cookies stood beside the chessboard.
Doreen fought to keep her attention on the chessmen; there was something reassuring about the feel of the pre-Event plastic, like an old teddy bear. It was a reminder of a world where your husband wasn't threatened by sadistic surgeon-torturers, or mad ex-Coast-Guard warlords, or barbarians with bronze axes…
No, just by cancer, muggers, drive-by shootings, and LA drivers, she thought. Plus if it hadn't been for the Event, you'd never have met Ian, not really-never even have considered marrying him, at least. No David then, or Miriam. I'm going to call her Miriam, by God, and Ion's going to be there to help with the diapers!
"You shouldn't done that," she said to her son. "Look-I'm in a position where you're going to lose this castle, to save your King. In fact…"
The boy came over and scowled, knotting his brow in thought. Doreen felt her heart turn over; he looked so much like his father when he did that. He was tall for his age, with hands and feet that promised something like his father's inches, but his face and build were more like hers. The Middle Eastern sun had burned him brown over the summer and brought out a few russet highlights in his dark curly hair. The scowl turned into a shrug as he reached out and tipped over his King.
He's worried, too, she thought, giving him a quick hug before he turned back to the telescope. Or he'd fight to the death, the way he usually does. And he'd be his usual one-question-after-another self, instead of so quiet.
"Now you will beat me like, how you say, the big bass drum," Raupasha said.
When Doreen was silent for a long moment the Mitannian girl reached out a hand and touched her arm. "I pray to Hebat… Arinna, they call her here in Hattusas… that your man will return and hold the son you bear in his arms," she said gently. "My father died while I was in the womb, and that is a heavy thing."
Doreen found herself blinking back tears, and gave the younger woman's hand a moment's squeeze. "Thanks, kiddo," she said.
"I hope it's a daughter, though," she went on. "One of each."
Raupasha looked a little baffled; many sons was a common goodwill wish in this part of the world. Doreen went on, smiling a little: "Now Ken, he'd be a little disappointed if you'd turned out to be a boy, for instance."
Raupasha's face lit up as if a lamp were burning behind it. "Do you think so? Really?" she said, flushing. "Oh…"
Doreen chuckled. "But there are difficulties. Not least, there's Kenneth. He… feels sort of protective toward you, I think."
Raupasha looked puzzled. "Should a man not feel that he should protect his woman?"
"Well… that depends. I think part of your problem is that he's got this idea you're like a little sister."
Raupasha snorted. "He will have to learn I am not a little girl!" A sigh. "But there are more difficulties than that." She paused and changed the subject. "Doreen, what is a Jew?"
Doreen's eyebrows arched. "Well, it's sort of- ' hmmm. Can't say "religion," because Ian and I aren't believers, much. And religion's a nearly meaningless word here, where you can mix'n match your deities. "-sort of like a tribe."
"But you are all Eagle People, all Nantukhtar, aren't you?"
"Well… yes. It's a little more complicated than that… why do you ask?"
"Because I heard someone say that the Jews are clever, and I wondered what they meant." She chuckled. "If you are a Jew, then playing this game with you makes me think it must be so."
Doreen laughed with a sigh in it, and looked down at the chessboard. "Yes, I think you could say 'clever.' Part of it's that we've usually been few compared to our neighbors and not much liked, so we had to outsmart those who had more… weight of fist than we did. And part of it's that our God made us some fiendishly complicated laws, and we spent a lot of our time studying and arguing about them. Or we made the laws fiendishly complicated so we could spend our time arguing and studying them. That got to be a habit-so we ended up arguing with everybody and studying everything; like me with the stars, or Ian with ancient times."
Raupasha nodded. "It's good to be clever," she said. "It helps when you're not strong, and when you are it makes your strength more-
"It's the ship!" David squealed. "Dad, it's Dad!"
Doreen dashed over and pushed the boy aside, peering through. The Emancipator, right enough. Why haven't they radioed? she thought furiously. Was that a good sign, or a bad? What's been happening in Troy?
"They're over the wall in the lower town," Major Chong said.
"That mean what I think it means?" Ian Arnstein asked.
The air was thick with smoke drifting up from the lower city, smoke that stank of things not meant to burn. Through the narrow window he could see the flames, under an overcast sky darker than the inside of a whale's gut.
And I'm Jonah, in the belly of the beast, he thought, as a red spark arched out from the darkness into the maze of flat-topped buildings. The spark snapped with a vicious quickness, flying dirt and timbers showering skyward, then the shadows fell again. Slightly further away a line of orange fire traced across the night. Flamethrower, he thought. Simple to use; one man on the hose, two working the pumps… and the attackers would be under the stream of burning oil as they fought their way through the narrow twisting streets.
Chong coughed and grimaced; a bandage hid most of the left side of his face, crusted dark. "It means that they're going to be here and damned soon. We cut it close, Councilor."
"I'm not altogether happy about leaving." King Alaksandrus was down there, defending the city. And I talked him into fighting to the last, he thought with a sharp stab of guilt. A wave of sound came with the flicker of the fires, a distant screaming babble of voices, punctuated with explosions and a growing crackle of gunfire.
"Sir, you've got your orders and I've got mine, and the war isn't over yet. There are Marine units only three days' march away."
"That isn't going to do the Trojans much good," Arnstein said, unfolding himself from the chair.
"Neither is getting yourself killed, sir," the Marine said. "You know what the commodore says."
"Yeah, the Light Brigade got what they deserved, like Custer." Ian sighed. "All right." It'll be good to see David again, and Doreen. Even though she's going to ream me out like a Roto-Rooter for getting caught here in the first place.
"Wait a minute," he said. "I thought it was too risky for the airship to set down here?"
"They're not," Chong said. "We've got a big net set up on the highest roof, fastened to a hook on a pole. They're going to snatch us off with a slow approach."
"Oh, joy."
The offices of the Islander mission were as bright as the kerosene lanterns could make them. As he watched the radio operator gave a last tap at the key, flipped open the casing of the radio and began methodically smashing the interior with the butt of her rifle. He winced again, at the waste; at least this was one of the post-Event models, not the irreplaceable pre-Event printed circuits. Others went by with armfuls of documents, throwing them onto the fire in the courtyard outside.
"Let's do it," Arnstein said.
"Right," Chong replied. "I've got the explosive charges ready on my mortars, with all the remaining ammunition."
The palace-citadel of Troy was like a set of adobe sugar cubes piled three stories high around irregular courts; there were gleams off colored shapes on the walls as they passed, a glimpse of hands raised in prayer, a boar turned at bay, a great-eyed goddess leaning on a long sword. Humans were few, palace servants huddled in corners clutching at each other, once a man running by with a golden vase in his arms. A slave, from his skinny shanks and ragged tunic; where he thought he was going with his loot was a mystery, given what Walker's barbarian allies were rumored to do in a captured town. Others lay sodden and unmoving, breached amphorae of wine spilling like blood beside them. That was a lot more sensible, all things considered.
"Up through here, Councilor," Chong said, looking over his shoulder as they came through into a broad upper chamber- part of the queen's suite, he remembered.
The Islander party broke into a trot-mostly Islanders, there were a couple of locals along with the Marine escort, both girls; there had been enough time for that. One of the office staff had snatched up a toddler from somewhere, and the child was making a steady, thin wail. The vanguard of the escort vanished up the next staircase; Ian turned to take a last haunted look at the dying city outside the broad unshuttered windows.
Something happened. Ian Arnstein never remembered exactly what; in the next moment of clarity he found himself lying on his back, with his head twisted up against the wall. An inlaid griffin-footed table lay against his body, but he could see around the edge of it. Things were happening in the darkened room-the kerosene lantern was burning in a corner, the liquid from its reservoir spreading slowly over the gypsum slabs of the floor. Gunshots were strobing, the vicious repeated snaps of revolver fire, the heavier red blades of rifles, a bloom of white-red from a shotgun. But the sounds were distant, muffled; his ears hurt, and he raised a hand to paw feebly at one. His fingers came away red and wet from his face, but he felt no pain.
I should help, he thought.
The words were distant, with an unhuman calm. There was a Python.40 at his waist, but his hand was too weak to do more than touch the checkered walnut of the butt.
The firing had stopped as weapons emptied and cold steel's unmusical clash and rasp took its place. Figures were fighting, figures in Marine kakhi and Coast Guard blue and others in form-fitting black. The black figures were hard to see in the dimness, as if shadows had come to life to kill their creators. He blinked. Hoods, too, he noted in a daze; like ski masks, leaving only a strip across the eyes bare. They carried swords, like Japanese swords, except that they were straight-bladed, and blackened except for a strip along the single cutting edge. The swords wheeled and flashed, blurring through the air, clashing against bayonet and rifle butt.
He saw a Marine drive the twenty-inch blade of his bayonet through the stomach of a black-clad figure, then stagger backward and fall with a spiked disk in his throat. Major Chong was backing unwillingly up the stairs, his katana clashing with the blades of two attackers, the swords flickering like beams of light in a dance of killing beauty.
Then something fell with a soft heavy weight across Arnstein's legs. He looked down and kicked in reflex as he realized it was a body; one of the dark-clad figures, eyes open and staring. There was a soft heavy resistance as the corpse flopped free. The dark clothing was some snug knitted fabric; there were boots and webbing harness of soft black leather as well, and black-enameled metal buckles. The belt bore a pistol holster, empty, and a sword sheath was strapped across the back, slanting to put the hilt over the left shoulder. A hand twitched, glittering; over it was strapped a tiger-claw arrangement of steel blades, more a climbing tool than a weapon.
There was another explosion, up the stairway leading to the roof. This time he could hear it, more or less. The glassy barrier separating him from the world lifted, enough for him to know that he hurt and that his head was a throbbing ache.
Enough for a jet of fear; Chong wasn't supposed to allow him to be taken alive… but the last he could have seen of me was a limp, bloody body lying against the wall.
Then came a snarling roar like nothing else in the post-Event world; the roar of internal combustion engines, close at hand overhead. Another explosion, and the two dark-clad figures who'd pursued Chong tumbled back down, one crawling and dragging the other.
"Grenades," she gasped-the English word, thickly accented. Then more Greek, also with an accent and in gasps as she fought for breath: "Kleo is hurt-wounded me-the thing that flies-with the Red Sword mark, the Lady's enemies, it comes-
There was a heavy thump from above, a chorus of yells, and a rushing mist of water down the staircase like heavy rain-the net being snatched up by the hook, the ballast dumped from the dirigible's tanks for emergency lift, he realized. Freedom, safety, life.
That penetrated the muzziness about his brain a little. He scrabbled with feet and hands, trying to push himself erect. A blade flashed to rest near the tip of his nose, close enough for him to smell the blood on it. He stared up along the length of it, past the gloved hands holding the long hilt in an iajutsu grip, up to the eyes visible through the slit of the mask. They widened slightly.
"This is the one the Goddess told us of!" a light voice said, speaking the archaic Greek of this era.
Arnstein stood as the blade tapped under his chin, shakily raising his hands. He towered over the black-clad fighters. More than he should have. His eyes sharpened; the attackers were short even for Bronze Agers, and slim with it, for all the speed and ferocity of their movements. Women.
Ninjettes, he thought dazedly. Well, I'll be damned. The Republic's military was about a third women, jealously maintained Coast Guard tradition, but he'd never heard that Walker had bothered to upset local taboos that way. Not even the Nantucketers had all-female units.
He licked his lips, trying to nerve himself to fight and force them to kill him. Before he could hands gripped him, ran him back against the wall, plucked the pistol from his belt, searched him with expert skill. A loop of cord was thrown around his hands and jerked tight, a one-way knot. The fresh pain brought him more to himself, and despite fear and hurt he gagged a little at the thick feces-and-blood stink of death, with the sharp acid odor of stomach acids under it.
Others were finishing the Islander wounded; Ian averted his eyes from the knife strokes. They were seeing to their own hurt, sorting them, laying out the dead, bandaging and-it seemed incongruous even now-giving injections from the medical kits some of them carried.
One who seemed to be the leader stopped at a slight figure whose hands clutched at a belly that welled blood, black as the cloth in the darkness. She bent to meet the eyes of the wounded one.
"You are sped beyond healing," she said, after a moment. "How?"
"Here," the wounded girl gasped. She pulled down the mask, exposing her throat and tilting her chin. "So… I go… less disfigured… to Her."
"As you will," the leader said. "You will have your pyre and your ashes will go to Her temple."
She put the point of her sword to the offered spot below the ear, holding it with her left hand. Her right came back, and she slammed the heel of that hand down on the hilt. The victim gave one convulsive jerk and lay still. When the leader came to Arnstein, he was astonished to see a track of tears sparkling down from the eyes to soak into the fabric of her mask.
"You will await the Lady of Pain," she said.
Uh-oh. This is bad, this is very bad.
He knew who she meant. The Despotnia Algeos, the Lady of Pain, Avatar of Hekate. Alice Hong, Walker's bitch-queen, sadist and surgeon. This must be some weird special-operations branch of her lunatic cult. Silence went on, in the thick smell of death and the dimness. The whatever-they-were cleaned their weapons, reloaded their revolvers and shotguns-modern-looking break-open breechloaders much like the Republic's-and kept watch. The noise from the streets was changing, more screams, then a crescendo of firing, light cannon, a strange braaaaap… braaaaaap…
"Can I have some water?" he croaked.
The one who'd been guarding him hit him three times in less than two seconds, with her elbow, with the ball of her foot, and the third time with the pommel of her sword. Pain flooded through him, like white light along his nerves. He was conscious of his own gaping mouth, but for long moments too paralyzed to breathe.
"The Goddess-on-Earth said you must be taken alive," his captor said. "She didn't say you had to be happy." He couldn't see the expression on the face behind the mask, but the eyes were suddenly avid. "You will feed the Dark Goddess well. If I am lucky, I will help with that."
It was several hours before the noises in the city died down, Ian's tongue felt thick, dry, and fuzzy; his head felt fuzzy, too, and he supposed this must be what shock felt like, combined with extreme fear and weariness. He was a scholar of sedentary habits who'd never see sixty again, even if it was three thousand years before he was born, and this sort of thing was not his specialty. Unwillingly, because it would be so tempting to sink down into a fog of apathy, he flogged his mind back to a semblance of alertness. The fighting noises had died down, at least. From the city came the pulsing roar of fires, and underneath that a huge brabbling murmur that poured like a cataract of white noise into the palace windows. Screaming and shouting, he realized. There were nearly thirty thousand people packed into the fifty acres or so of the miniature city below the heights of the palace-citadel. Thousands of Walker's troops were probably pouring into the city, possibly tens of thousands of his barbarian allies. The tribal confederation of the Ringapi had had a rough time since they left the middle Danube, and they had a bad reputation in a sack even when they were in a good mood. That was the death agonies of a whole people he was listening to, a threnody of agony and terror and despair larger than worlds.
Then firing sounded closer; the dull thumps of the flintlock shotguns Walker had handed out to his barbarian allies, and then the crisper bark of rifles. His guards came tensely alert at door and windows. The noise ceased, and there were crashing and screams of pain, laughter and exultant tribal screeching, while the smoke grew thicker. Then:
"The King comes! The King of Great Achaea! The King of Men!"
The harsh male shout cut through the background noise like a knife. The dark-clad women drew their swords and went to one knee facing the door, heads bowed and the blades across the outstretched palms of their hands. Soldiers came into the room, riflemen in gray patch-pocketed tunics and trousers, laced boots, leather webbing harness, and helmets like flared round-topped buckets with a cutout for the face and straps leading to a cup at the chin. An officer with a pistol in his hand and sword at his waist followed, added his quick scan to theirs, then stepped aside.
William Walker strode through, Alice Hong at his side. Ian struggled a little more upright, pushing his back against the blood-speckled, bullet-pocked painted plaster of the wall, smearing red across griffins and lions and proud nobles in chariots. The renegade looked around, raising a brow over his single cold green eye. A smile blossomed as he looked at the captured American.
"Not bad work," he said in English. "Not bad at all, Alice. I must admit I didn't think this Sailor Moon Platoon of yours would be any practical use, but they came through big-time." He switched to Achaean: "You have done well, Claw Sisters. Very well; the King is pleased."
"Never underestimate the power of faith, Lord Enabler," Hong said lightly, as her followers rose and sheathed their blades. "Or of deep manga scholarship."
She wore a stylish version of her cultists' gear, picked out here and there with silver studs. Walker was in something like a loose karate gi of a coarse black silk, with the pants tucked into polished calf-boots and a black-leather belt to hold katana, wazikashi, and revolver. The only touches of color to highlight the piratical elegance were the massive ruby signet ring on his right hand and the crimson wolfshead picked out on his eye-patch. When he grinned the scar that ran up under it moved, and his face went from boyishly attractive to a caricature of evil.
All hail the Demon King, Arnstein thought, surprised at the sardonic note his mind could still muster. Although I've seen something awfully like that… where… That was it; the black outfit Luke Skywalker wore when he walked into Jabba the Hull's palace in the third Star Wars flick, Return of the Jedi.
Oh, Jesus, he thought. I've been captured by psychotic media fans.
Walker took three quick strides, still smiling, and jerked the older man half-erect with a hand wound into his beard.
"What, Professor? No witty repartee? No crushing pop-culture put-downs? I'm disappointed, Dr. Arnstein, I really am."
Arnstein set his teeth against the pain in his face. Well, I did think about saying: I have no use for these two 'droids, but under the circumstances, that would probably be indiscreet.
Alice Hong sauntered over, smiling. "I can take it from here, Will," she said. "Rest assured, he'll give you chapter and verse, very soon."
The wall behind him made it impossible to shrink backward. He wanted to, though.
"Alice, Alice," Walker said, giving a reproving click of his tongue. "You still haven't noticed something."
"What, Will?"
He released the older man and turned, holding up his index finger. "You can only torture a man to death once." He turned back to Arnstein and put the fingertip near his right eye. "But keep in mind, Professor, that you can always do it once. So strive to be useful."
He turned to the gray-uniformed officer and switched to Achaean: "Captain Philowergos, this man is to be taken to the ships under close guard, and shipped to Walkeropolis at the first opportunity."
"Yes, Your Majesty," the man said, saluting and inclining his head. "To Section One?"
"No, no." Walker glanced at Arnstein and winked. "I don't think Operations Minister Mittler likes you, Professor. You've put sticks in the spokes of too many of his wheels-and he's prejudiced. He was a commie in this life, but I think he wore those flashy double-lightning-bolt runes in a previous existence. Hmmm."
A snap of his fingers brought paper and pen. He scribbled quickly. "Category One confinement. You'll be quite comfortable, Professor… physically at least. And when I have the time, we'll have a nice long chat, hey?"
"Oh, Will, really now-are you expecting to turn him to the Dark Side of the Force, or something? Let's interrogate him and kill him. Simpler, safer, more fun."
"Not now, Alice!"
The soldiers clamped hands that felt like iron in gloves of cured ham on Ian Arnstein's upper arms. As they hustled him out the door, he could hear Alice Hong's voice raised in mocking song:
"Jedi get angry-oooo, Jedi get mad-
Give him the biggest lickin' he's every had!
Jedi you can be the Dark Looooord of the Sith…"
Ohotolarix son of Telenthaur, born a warrior of the Irauna teuatha, frowned and dusted sand across the paper of his latest report. He shook his right hand, clasping and unclasping his fingers to rid them of a cramp that his clutch on the quill pen had brought. His hands had taken a while to learn the arts of pen and ink; his first twenty years had been taken up with the skills of a wirtowonnax, spear and axe, rope and rein, plow and spade and sickle. Life as the Wolf Lord's handfast man and chief henchman and Commander of the Royal Guard had taught him more, though. The use of letters was a weapon, and one as deadly as any sword-as any cannon, even. He shook the sand off the paper, folded it, and sealed the triangle with a blob of wax from the candle on his desk, then rose.
A trick of the lamplight showed him his face in the thick wavy window glass. It looked younger than the thirty winters he bore, for he had taken up the King's habit of shaving his face. His yellow hair was cropped above his ears as well; beside his eyes and grooved between nose and mouth were the marks of life, of knowledge and power. He was no more the glad boy the Eagle People had rescued from a coracle swept out to sea during the Irauna teuatha's crossing from the mainland to Alba. Each dawn was not a wonder now, nor each battle a blaze of glory where he would win a hero's undying name, and he did not see in each woman the promise of a fresh garden of delights.
He snorted softly to himself. Winter thoughts. He was in his prime, more skilled in a dozen ways, more deadly than that boy could have dreamed, wiser than he could have imagined.
I have journeyed far by land and sea, gained much, lost much, seen and done things dark and terrible. These are the deeds and rewards of manhood.
"Time to finish the work of the day," he muttered. He took up a folder, then walked out past the gray-uniformed guards, returning their salute; down the stairs and through the residence hall to the main exit.
Days were short here in this season, shorter than they ever grew in Greece; it was not night just yet despite the overcast, but you could tell it would not be long. The air was cold, the sky dark-gray with cloud out of which a scatter of white flakes fell, and the lanternlights lay bright across the wet brick of the pavement. Beside the train of goods waiting to go southward guards stamped and swore and blew on their gloved hands. He grinned to himself as he pulled the cold air deep into his lungs; the Achaeans among Fort Lolo's garrison were like wet cats when the weather was like this, stalking around in affronted amazement. Ohotolarix found the cold charming, much like the winters he remembered from his tribe's first home, the lands along the Channel and the River Ocean in the far west. Wood-smoke blew pungent from brick chimneys, mixed with the smell of supper cooking and the damp mealy scent of the snow.
"Hey, Otto," a voice said.
"Henry," Ohotolarix said in reply; he'd long since ceased resenting how Walker's folk mispronounced his name.
They meant it as a compliment, in any case; and Henry Bierman was high in Lord Cuddy's service. He handed the commander a sheaf of papers of his own, bound in leather and secured with tapelike ribbon. "Here's my latest for Bill Cuddy and the bossman."
"All goes well?" Ohotolarix asked. "I'd have been happier to get them off earlier today."
"Sorry; some things can't be rushed, and the King's Council wanted these figures complete. Things are going great, actually. That iron ore's even better than we thought, seventy-eight percent metal and no impurities; they didn't call these the 'Ore' mountains for nothing."
Ohotolarix juggled languages in his head for a moment, and then smiled a little at the pun. Bierman was a fussy little sort, with thick lenses before his eyes. No shadow of a fighting-man, but able at his work. He went on:
"The second charcoal blast furnace'll be functional before Christmas. Plus the silver-lead and zinc outputs're up, and we're getting useful quantities of gold from the sluice… well, you know."
Ohotolarix nodded, glancing northward. The peaks of the Carpathians were already snow-covered, glimpses of white through the clouds. Mountains fascinated him; he'd been raised in flat country, along the ocean shore, where folk lived on hills to avoid the floods of the marshland. There was a power in those great masses of rock, beyond the wealth of metals in the stone, and the usefulness of them.
And they are far from the sea, easy to fortify at uttermost need. "Let's get them moving, then," he said. "Light enough for a few hours travel, the channel's well marked."
Fort Lolo proper-the place was named for a ruathauricaz in the King's homeland of Montana-had been built on the site of a native stockade; quite an impressive one, no mere line of tree trunks on a mound, but a cut-off hill topped with timber-framed ramparts of rubble and stamped earth. The folk had been much like the Ringapi to the west in speech and customs, but not part of that tribal confederation; long-standing enemies of theirs, rather. The Ringapi lords had been delighted to point his expedition in this direction, back last spring. Nowadays they were a little less pleased, but not in a position to object.
Survivors of the valley's population had been put to work building a proper moat-and-earthwork fort under Achaean engineers, with cannon and quickshooters in well-sited bunkers, and a covered fighting platform for riflemen. Inside were barracks for the two companies of troops and their womenfolk and children, the commandant's house, armories, outbuildings, emergency quarters where the townsfolk and rural colonists might flee in the unlikely event of a siege. The buildings were of squared timbers on brick foundations, with steep-pitched tiled roofs; brick paved the streets between them, and the central square. Many of the dwellers had gathered to watch the departure of the southern caravan.
The guards moved down the long coffles, shoving and shouting at the slaves, who responded with a stunned, sheeplike obedience. Only a dozen of the men who'd oversee the slave drive were rifle-armed Achaean troops. Most were natives in check trousers and plaids or wolfskin cloaks, armed with steel-headed spears and swords that were part of price of their hire. There was no use wasting his elite on such work when most of the journey would be quiet river passage through allied lands, until handover at the White Fort, the northernmost border of Great Achaea on the Danube. The slaves were shaven-headed and linked neck to neck with chains between their collars, handcuffed and hobbled as well, with heavy packs of hardtack and jerked meat on their backs; three in four were males.
Two wagons followed. One held bales of fine furs, and little casks of raw amber-traded from the forest tribes north of the mountains, like most of the slaves; the other boxes of silver and gold ingots. They passed through the dogleg entranceway with its squat guard towers, and then down the gentle slope to the river wharves. The river-natives called it the Growler- was broad but shallow here, running southward until it met a larger stream and that flowed into the Danau, the Great River.
Lady Kylefra finished her inspection of the stock as they went by, yawning as she came to stand beside him. There was careful respect in Ohotolarix's nod; the young woman had been among the first taken as Alice Hong's pupils, back in Alba, before they had to flee to the Middle Sea; that meant she had been brought up to it since childhood. She was a full doctor now, and high in the cult of Hekate of the Night, as the badge at her shoulder showed-sun and moon, entwined by a darkly glittering niello serpent with two heads meeting at the top. Black sun, black moon.
"They're ready to go," Kylefra said, brushing back a lock of ruddy-brown hair.
She spoke in English, which Ohotolarix thought an irritating affectation, as if she were of the royal family or Hong herself.
If she won't speak in the kingdom's language, why not the tongue of home? he thought. The dialect of her teuatha wasn't much different from his. You are no more of the Eagle People than I.
"I've vaccinated them all and checked for anything communicable," she went on; he had to admit that sentence would have needed a couple of English words anyway. "And deloused them, and given the guard corporal instructions on keeping them healthy."
"Good," he replied in official Achaean, although his English was better than hers. "As the King says, a dead slave is a dead loss."
"If we'd waited a bit, I could have gelded the males in this lot, the way I did the ones we're keeping for the mines here," she said. Her tongue came out to touch her upper lip. "They're more docile that way… and the Dark Lady would appreciate so… tasty… an offering."
He'd become quite good at concealing his thoughts and keeping the feelings of the heart away from his face-necessary for a man of position in Meizon Akhaia. He still thought she saw- and inwardly smiled at-his hidden shudder. He'd gone boar-hunting in the mountains all that day, and the endless moaning and sobbing from the pens had still given him a sleepless night. The Horned Man knew Ohotolarix son of Telenthaur was no milksop nor behindhand in manslaying and feeding the Crow Goddess, but…
Bierman didn't bother to hide his disgust, with the insane excess of self-confidence Ohotolarix had noted among the Eagle People followers of Walker at times. Not so much heedless courage such as an Irauna or Ringapi might show… more an unconsciousness that saying what you felt could be dangerous. As if they had to deliberately remember the risk, like someone who'd grown up in a land without wolves absentmindly petting one he met in the woods. The man muttered bitch under his breath, too.
"We need to get the coffles off south soon," the Guard commander replied hastily to the healer-priestess. "In full winter, too many would die on the road, or the rivers may freeze.
Besides, not all of them are going to the mines-some may be selected for skilled work, or become freedmen eventually or even go into the army, and those need their stones."
Kylefra shrugged and sighed. Attendants brought their horses, and they swung into the saddle. More of the curious were watching as they came down into Lolo Town. A group of schoolchildren halted to watch as well, until the collared slave woman shepherding them along gave a cluck and sent them crawling like unwilling snails toward their lessons. Presently hooves and wheels boomed hollow on the boards of the long pier that bridged the broad marshy edges of the Growler. Upstream of it were booms of logs floated down from the mountains; tied up or anchored were flat-bottomed barges. The smell of their cargoes came across the cold water, faint but pungent; beeswax, honey, sacks of potash, piles of leather or rawhides. Others bore the products of Fort Lolo's domains, ingots of copper or dull-shining lead or zinc.
Ohotolarix oversaw the loading of the slaves, the most troublesome cargo, and the amber and precious metals-the riflemen would be sitting on those all the way to the White Fort, in case one of the Ringapi chieftains let greed overcome good sense.
Ah, you're not that youth of nineteen summers anymore, and Sky Father's Mirutha witness it! he thought, chuckling a little. The Irauna had never been a forethoughtful folk. Even more than their distant Ringapi cousins they were headlong warriors, men with fire in their blood and little in their heads but bone. How I have changed, and how much my wehaxpothis has taught me! In his heart, the homely Irauna word for chief still carried more power than the Achaean terms.
When the work was finished he hesitated where the road forked on the way back to the fort; the southward path lay down-valley toward the farms and manors the men of Great Achaea had set out when they took this land. The valley itself widened like a funnel from here, falling away to the vast flat plains southward. Most of it had been open when the Achaeans arrived, some farms and villages, more land left rippling in chest-high grassland, with copses of oak trees here and there, and marshes along the waterside. The snags of sacked native garths still stood in a few places, blackened timbers and crumbling wattle-and-daub, the lumpy remains of a sod roof. Squares of dark earth showed a fuzz of blue-green, winter wheat peeking up ready for its blanket of cold-season snow; dry maize-snooks rustled in others, or the stubbled remains of sunflowers and flax. In a few workers toiled to lift the last potatoes, or watched over the herds.
His own hall was there, and despite its raw newness-only this spring past had they laid out their own fields, after reaping the natives' harvest the first year-it was already his favorite estate, even more than the Sicilian ranch. He had broad acres in many of Great Achaea's provinces, ably managed by stewards, but this one reminded him more of the old homeland; his youngest wife kept the house, with their new son by her. It would do his soul good to spend a day seeing to the fields and new-planted orchards, and most of all looking over his herds in the pens and pastures. Full-fleeced sheep and fat cattle and tall deep-chested horses, the only wealth that was really real, the delight of a man's heart, second only to strong sons. It was just a half hour's ride and the paperwork was mostly done…
Thus he was looking southward and was among the first to see the party riding up toward Fort Lolo. For a moment he knew only angry astonishment that the sentries hadn't raised the alarm. Then he raised his binoculars; there wasn't any dust from the graveled roadway with the wet weather of the last few days, so he could see clearly. A column of horsemen in the gray uniforms and flared steel helmets of Meizon Akhaia, with the red wolfshead banner at their front. A coach behind it, and a train of light baggage wagons-horse-drawn, hence fast but expensive-with a herd of remounts. He had enough time to note that they were of unusual quality before he noticed one rider curving out ahead of the others and then spurring to gallop. A small figure in black on a big slim-legged horse, riding like a leopard, with long loose hair bright gold…
"Princess Althea!" he cried, bowing in the saddle as she drew up.
"Uncle Ohoto!" she replied, leaning over in the saddle to embrace him and kiss his cheek.
"You've grown, daughter of my chief," he said happily, hands on her shoulders. Was it more than yesterday when I came growling across the nursery floor, playing bear for you? "You're almost a woman now-will be, in another few winters."
She'd shot up, and no mistaking; she'd be as tall for a woman as her sire was for a man. The outfit-loose jacket, sash, full trousers in fine black cloth edged here and there with gold, polished boots, long dagger and pistol on a studded belt-didn't look quite so much like a child's dress-up in imitation of her father anymore. Her face had begun to lose puppy fat, and yes, there was something of her father in her eyes as well, for all they were blue rather than green. Something of her mother, too, who had been a chieftain's daughter Walker had captured in a raid.
"But what are you doing here, Althea?"
The girl drew herself up solemnly and waited until a crowd had gathered. "Rejoice!" she said, slightly louder. "The High King is victorious-Troy is fallen!"
They all cheered; the soldiers first, and those from the Achaean lands who knew what it meant, and then the generality. Ohotolarix was as loud as any, although he fought down bitterness; obedient to his lord's orders, he was here in this backwater and not fighting by his side as a handfast man should. He obeyed, but it was hard, hard…
Althea threw up her left hand and a ragged silence fell. "Hear the word of the wannax, the King of Men-sent by him through his own blood, the Princess Althea of the House of the Wolf."
The silence was complete now. "His word to Ohotolarix son of Telenthaur is, Well done, you good and faithful warrior! As the Wolf Lord pushes forward the boundaries of Great Achaea on the plains of Wilusia, among the proud horse tamers of Troy, so his right-hand man Ohotolarix, the lawagetas of his Royal Guard wins him lands and subjects here in the far northland."
She gestured grandly at the herd. "From the plunder of Troy he sends the horses of Wilusia, said to be sired by the North Wind."
Ohotolarix looked them over; not bad at all, especially after a trip like this. Not big, by comparison with Bastard, Walker's steed, but he already possessed a three-quarter-bred stallion of that breed. For a moment a horseman's instincts possessed him, and his mind dwelt on what he could do with these by crossbreeding and breeding back.
"He also sends gold and fine goods- " The guardsmen pulled back covers and the lids of chests; the audience cheered. "-slaves of Troy, bronzeworkers and carpenters and masons, and a daughter of the Trojan King, Alaksandrus."
A girl stepped down from the carriage, auburn-haired and richly dressed in a foreign way. Althea leaned forward and whispered in his ear, giggling slightly: "She looked terrible when we caught her, all skinny. But we fattened her up on the road so you could have fun bouncing her around."
Then she cleared her throat and called a man forward, opening a long rosewood case and handing Ohotolarix a double-barreled rifle, its smooth-polished butt inlaid in ivory and gold with hunting scenes, the barrels gleaming with damascene patterns.
"See how the King of Men honors the greatest of his warrior chiefs! Honor to Ohotolarix, favored of the Wolf Lord!"
Ohotolarix grinned at her and waved to the throng who cried him hail, and felt himself blinking back tears of joy. I might have expected it, he thought. From the best of lords.
It wasn't that he lacked gold cups and fine cloth and jewels, or splendid weapons, or horses, or a girl to give variety to his nights. It was the honor, publicly bestowed. That no matter how far he was from his lord's sight he was never far from his mind or heart, never forgotten.
"Never-" He cleared his throat and continued. "Never shall the House of the Wolf lack for a strong sword at their side, wise counsel, and a life to be laid down for theirs. From me and my sons, and the sons of my sons," he said.
Ohotolarix raised his voice in his turn. "All hail to the Princess Althea and to the Wolf Lord. Tonight we feast!" The gathering broke up in cheers.
That was a feast to remember, although he kept himself moderate, since the princess was there. If something like this had befallen back in the days when Daurthunnicar was High Chief of the Irauna and Walker new-come to Alba, he'd have gotten roaring drunk before the meat was done, there'd have been a death-fight or two, and he'd have finished by taking the Trojan girl on the tables to cheers and rhythmic thumping of drinking horns and hands slapping knees. Instead he contented himself with wine enough to make the light mellow and all men his friends.
Yes, manners were more seemly now, particularly where the commanders sat. That was at the elevated base of the great U-shaped table set pointing its open end toward the feasting-hall's doors. Glass-globed lanterns shed light, and two big stone hearths on either side held crackling log fires in firedogs of massive wrought iron, burning wild apple wood that scented the room. Carved shutters were closed over the glass windows; between them massive wooden pillars rose from the smooth stone floor past the second-story gallery that ringed the feasting-hall and up to the rafters. He'd brought in Ringapi craftsmen to do the pillars in the shapes of Gods and heroes but the tapestries against the wall were southland, bright fabulous beasts and battles and sea creatures, ships and cities. The tables, chairs, and silverware were in the style of Meizon Akhaia, colorful with inlaid work of ivory and semiprecious stones, silky with polishing.
Ohotolarix looked around as he cracked walnuts in his fist and sipped at heated apple wine, thinking of the smoky turf-walled barns Irauna chiefs had called their great halls when he was a young man, and how they'd awed him. If he could have seen this then…
I'd have thought it was Sky Father at feast, in the hall beyond the Sun, with the ancient heroes and warrior Mirutha at his board!
A bard had come with the party from Walkeropolis and the plain of Troy. He sat in the space between the tables when the roast pigs and beefsteaks, the fried potatoes and steaming loaves and honey-sweetened confections were done, plectrum moving on the strings of his lyre as he sang:
Planting his cannon right in front, mouths gaping wide,
Double-shotted the blow, to give it heavy impact,
Wannax Walker hurled hot iron at the gates, full center, smashing
The hinges left and right and the cannonballs tore through,
Dropped earth and stone with a crash and walls groaned and thundered
And our lord burst through in glory, face dark with fury
As the sudden rushing night, and our men blazed on in steel
And terrible fire burst from the godlike weapons that they carried,
Rockets and rifles in their fists. No one could fight them, stay them,
None but the Gods as Walker hurtled through the gates
And his eyes flashed fire…
That had them hammering fists on the tables, and Ohotolarix gave the man a gold chain; he could see it himself, the cannon belching red fire in the night, and the roar of onset as the assault began… Then two of Hong's followers, the select ones known as the Claws of Hekate gave a demonstration of sword work.
Not bad, he thought; they were supple and very fast. I could take either or both, though. I'm just as quick, and weight and reach count for a good deal, in the end.
He signaled an end to the public part of the feast by a show of gilts of his own to men stationed here-horses, ox-teams, silver, bronze, a fine sword, a grant of early discharge and land to one who'd become betrothed to a Ringapi chief's daughter.
At last most of the guests and all the women were gone- except for Lady Kylefra and the princess, both of them exceptions to the usual rules, for different reasons. The commander of the escort company was a man he'd fought beside many times, Born-born like Ohotolarix; his second was an Achaean from Thessaly. They talked of the siege of Troy, feints and counterstrikes and raids, boasting genially of men killed and goods plundered and women raped. He took away an impression that casualties had been higher than anticipated, but not disastrously so.
"You won't find it dull here while the princess is visiting," he said after a while, leaning back in his chair and holding out his cup to a slave. "The hunting here is as good as any I've ever seen-no lions or leopards, but deer, auroch, wolves… bears, bears beyond number. Every once in a while we have an expedition against the natives, or pitch in to help the Ringapi against their neighbors. Just dangerous enough to be real sport, and then we can collect something-slaves and cattle, at least. Something a bit different, before you return to the real war."
The Achaean sighed-he went by the name Eruthos, "the Red," although his hair was dark-brown, so he'd probably shed a lot of blood. He and the Born, Shaukerax, exchanged glances. "We're here until recalled, and so's the princess," he said. "Brought a whole raft of her things, you'll find-boxes of books, servants, and tutors."
"That's right," the girl said; she'd been drinking wine cut with two parts of water, and slowly, but she still spoke with care. "Damn, Harold's still with Father, getting to see all the fun stuff." Then she brightened. "But I forgot to tell you; when we took Troy, we captured I-an Aren-stein."
She pronounced the name slowly and carefully; they'd been talking the Achaean of the court, salted with English words and the Eagle People accent, and it didn't clash that much.
"Hmmm, that is news," Ohotolarix said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
That had been his first sight of the Eagle People, after he woke on their great iron ship; the bearded face of that tall old man, a thing of sanity amid alien madness. It had been Arnstein and his woman who learned the first words of his tongue, too. Later word had come that Arnstein had risen very high among the enemy, become wiseman and adviser to the Islander King, Cofflin, and his emissary to the great rulers of the East.
"A great blow against the enemy," he said.
Althea nodded. "It was Auntie Hong's ninjettes who captured him, the Claws of Hekate," she said eagerly. "They climbed right up into the citadel, the night the city fell-caught him and held him until the Guard got there."
The officers nodded sourly. Kylefra's eyes sparkled at their discomfiture. "And so the two Claws you saw were among those sent with the princess, to help instruct her," she said proudly. "They bore messages from the Daughter of Night for me." She looked at Althea fondly. "In a year or so, Princess, you will be eligible for initiation-there's much they could teach you."
"How to climb up walls and use those cool throwing stars, sure," Althea giggled, then touched a hand to her mouth. "But I'll worship as my father does. And now I should go to bed. May the sweet rest of drowsy night be yours, lords. Lady Kylefra."
Hmmmm, Ohotolarix thought. Now, there goes one who will be as bad to cross as her father, in her time. And afraid of nothing, nothing at all. Odd to think that of a girl, but things were different now… Oh, well, Harold will inherit.
The scar-faced Achaean officer had been exchanging glances with Kylefra. After a moment they excused themselves. Ohotolarix waved the slaves away and poured for himself and Shaukerax, dropping back into their birth-tongue. The speech of the teuatha of the Noble Free Ones sounded a little rusty and strange in his own ears, but it was pleasant to speak it again.
"He'll get more than he bargained for," he said, jerking a thumb after Eruthos, and they laughed together.
"Oh, you know these Achaean stick-at-naughts," Shaukerax half joked. "They'll put it in a girl, a boy, a goat-anything that's handy, even a black-sun witch."
"Surely you do them an injustice," he replied solemnly. "They'll take a sheep before a goat, and an ewe before a ram." Ohotolarix shook his head as their mirth died down. "This Eruthos, is he capable?"
"A born killer. He fought very well indeed before Troy. A friend of his fell in a sortie, while Eruthos was off the field, and he went berserk-slew the enemy commander and dragged his body around as if he couldn't bear not being able to kill him again and again. That's when we named him. His father called him Ach… Akhil… too much wine, I can't pronounce the damned thing, one of those -eus names. He's of good birth, though, his father a petty King and his mother a high priestess. From Thessaly; the Greeks there aren't quite as oily as the southern ones."
Ohotolarix nodded. Shaukerax went on: "It's good to see the work you've done here, too. I remember the first years after we came to Achaea from Alba, and you've done better, faster, by Diawas Pithair. Especially since it's been only, what, barely a year and a bit?"
The Guard commander shrugged. "I had a lot more to work with than the King did to start with," he said. "And I had Great Achaea to draw upon whenever I found something lacking, man or machine. And I didn't have to break the trail or deal with all that tricky Achaean intrigue-if those faithless dogs didn't have lords and kin, they'd betray each his own self for the joy of it."
"These Ringapi do seem more our kind of men."
"That they are. The King told me he'd considered coming here, rather than Mycenae. Sometimes I wish he had."
Shaukerax shook his head violently. "Too far from the sea. Sitting here, how could we take revenge on the cursed Eagle People for breaking our tribe?"
"We could have fought them at a time of our choosing, not theirs. This is a richer land than Achaea, in many ways. And there's a pleasure to building that's as great as raids and wars, I find. But…" He sighed, drank, shrugged.
"A man's fate is as it is," Shaukerax agreed. "I do hope the rest of this war is more entertaining than the siege of Troy; that was more like being a mole than a warrior, and they held out until the men weren't worth selling or the women having."
He grinned and punched Ohotolarix on the shoulder. "Speaking of which, you have that Trojan to prong; she's still a virgin, and if you knew how difficult that was to arrange, with the stallions-on-two-legs I have to command…"
Ohotolarix rose, laughing and slapping the other on his thick shoulder in turn. "We can find you a virgin-a girl, not an ewe-if you want, even if she isn't sired by the ruler of a great city."
Shaukerax finished his wine and wiped his mouth with the back of a hairy ham-sized fist. "You're the one who's been sitting on his arse like a great chief taking his ease, brother," he said cheerfully. "I've been traveling hard for weeks. I want a woman, not a wrestling match. You'll need the exercise."
His host snapped fingers for the steward of the house and gave instructions; the two men parted, promising to meet for a boar hunt soon. He paused on his way up the stairs, looking back over the feasting-hall of the commandant's house as the slaves cleaned and swept and polished. A man's fate was as it was… but the thread could take some strange twists. From the hut of a common warrior-herdsman of the tribe to this! What might have happened if Walker and the Eagle People had not come?
You would have died of thirst in that coracle, fool, he told himself. And many another man who's died in those years since might yet live.
Private Hook heard the cry. "Here they come, the whole fucking lot of them!" from the lookouts on the roof above. He heard it with a little difficulty, because Sergeant Edraxsson was raving in his bunk, calling commands to an imaginary platoon. There was no time to get an orderly now, either, to give him a shot and quiet him down.
"Oh, shut your bloody hole!" he snapped, and threw some water from a jug on the sick man; his wounded foot was giving off a bit of a smell, too, under the sharp aroma of the disinfectant on his bandages.
The raving died down to mumbles. The thunder-rumble of the approaching Ringapi host was much louder; five thousand men made a good deal of noise, walking in a group. Hook had taken over the slit window that had been here before the Islanders came; it gave him a better view and field of fire than any of the improvised loopholes. Right now the view was uncomfortably good. Not good enough, though; the sun was nearly in his eyes, making him squint and making them water.
"Shit on it," he said, and pulled a chest near.
Then he dumped packets of shells on it, ripping them open with his teeth and tossing the heavy paper aside. Wearing the webbing hurt too much, with the left strap pressing on the open sore on his back.
Best place in the station, he thought, with a little sour satisfaction; all those dumb bastards out in the open on the breastworks were exposed to the enemy firing down from the hill, nothing but a ditch and six-foot wall between them and hand-to-hand combat with the enemy's spears and swords. He had three foot of rock-hard mud brick. If you had to be here at all, this was the place to be. I wonder if I could get out after sundown? No, better not, unless things got really desperate. He didn't want to be out there alone in the dark with the fucking locals, either.
Bugle calls and shouts sounded outside. "Set your fucking sights," he said to the other walking wounded. "Four hundred."
He wanted as many of those locals killed as far away from his precious pink buttocks as he could arrange. Hook thoughtfully licked a thumb and wet the foresight of his rifle, watching the approaching host. They weren't just marching up the road from Troy; splitting up into columns, rather, and flowing forward from wall to wall, grove to grove, pausing to build up in little hollows where they couldn't be seen. Chiefs directed them, with horn calls and waving spears.
"Okay, buddy, let's see you manage this," he snarled.
The foremost figures were close enough to distinguish arms and legs from bodies. That meant… he carefully adjusted the sights of his Werder, rested his left hand beside the window, and clamped the forestock to the mud brick with the thumb it lay across. His right snuggled the butt into his shoulder. Lay the sights on that big, confident-looking bastard with the tanned wolf's-head over his helmet and a belt with gold studs, waving a steel longsword and shouting. Breathe out, stroke the trigger with your finger…
Crack. The recoil punched back at him. One hundred and- The big local doubled over, clutching himself as if he'd been kicked in the groin. Hook laughed as his finger continued the pull. The trigger came all the way back and hit the little stud behind it. The block snapped down and the shell ejected, a sharp fireworks smell in his nose. He reached down without taking his eyes away, picked up a fresh round, pushed it home, then transferred his thumb to the cocking lever on the side of the breech. It slid back with a smooth resistant softness and a double click-clack; the breech came up and tension came on the trigger again.
Hook shifted his aim, chuckling softly. There weren't many things he liked about the Marine Corps. One of them was that they'd pay him to kill people.
The Republic's fleet had folded its wings and come to rest in the Groyne, off what another history would have called the city of La Coruna, in the far northwest of Iberia. A fishing village huddled at the end of a long peninsula, amid a few scattered fields. The inhabitants had fled in terror when the Islander ships appeared; this was an ancient stop on the trade routes to northern Europe, but they had seen nothing on this scale before. Coaxed back, they sold provisions and stored wood, very sensibly made no objection to working parties on shore, and for modest payments in coin and trade goods provided all the information they could through Tartessian-speakers who'd learned that tongue from the numerous south-Iberian traders who passed this way. In fact, the headman of the village bore a Tartessos-made musket with immense pride undiminished by the fact that it was missing a trigger and several other essential parts, and his tribesmen walked in awe of it.
From the quarterdeck of the Chamberlain Alston could see liberty parties moving around, working parties stacking firewood on rafts or towing it out to the ships, and the brown canvas of the field hospital they'd set up.
Her lips quirked almost invisibly. Some of the Sun People auxiliaries had gone on their knees and kissed the solid earth when they were set ashore, and then flung up their hands in the gesture of thankful prayer. They'd clubbed together to buy a cow and some sheep to sacrifice, and it would have been military horses-or men-without the Islanders watching. Mass seasickness on the transports had been no joke; several of them still had hatch covers off and ports open, water pouring over their sides from the pumps as the bilges were repeatedly flooded and pumped out. The smell was no longer perceptible at distance, thank God; just a clean scent of sea and damp forest from the mainland, tar and hemp, paint and wood, and cooking from the galley.
It was good to see the ships in order again; after a week of hard effort they looked nearly as trim as they had setting out from Portsmouth Base. And no word of the Farragut, or the Severna Park, either. Still, only two lost out of nearly forty…
The frigates lay in a line, their battleship-gray hulls with the red Guard slash rocking slightly at anchor beneath furled sails, a slim lethal elegance. Two of the schooners-Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman-were on patrol well out to the west, invisible against the setting sun, and an ultralight buzzed through the sky above, tiny against the fading blue and the few sparse white clouds. The rest of the fleet were closer in to shore, at last with the full complements of masts, spars, and sails.
It was just chilly enough to make the wool of her uniform jacket welcome, and the thought of dinner enticing. They deserved one day of rest before putting to sea again.
"Ma'am, the captains will be arriving soon," a middy murmured.
"Thank you, Mr. Rustadax," she said quietly.
She glanced over to the quarterdeck gangway, where the flagship's accommodation ladder led down to the water. The captain's gigs from the warships were standing in toward it, oars rising and falling. The first of them slid out of sight, and the bosun's pipe twittered. The immaculately uniformed side boys-and girls, her mind prompted wryly-came to attention. There were five of them, the number due to a commander. In the first age of sail senior officers had come aboard in a bosun's chair, and the number needed to haul on the line had been an indication of rank… and hence physical weight, which in those days tended to grow with age and importance.
There was a rattle of rifle butts on the deck as the Marine guard snapped to attention. The quarterdeck bell began to sound, a measured bronze bong-bong… bong-bong… four strokes in all as the visiting officer walked up the ladder.
"Lincoln arriving!" the bosun barked, saluting with his left hand and bringing the little silver pipe to his mouth with the other.
At the weird twittering sound the Marine guard near the rail moved in a beautifully choreographed stamp-clack-clash as they brought their rifles to present arms, the twenty-inch blades of their bayonets glittering like polished silver. Alston gave a slight nod. Although compulsively tidy herself she had no use for spit and polish, not when it was just for its own sake. But ceremony had a very definite, very necessary place in any military organization. It taught-at a level well below the conscious mind-that they weren't a collection of individuals, but a community with a common purpose more important than any single member. And that was as functional as a bayonet or eight-inch Dahlgren; so was the habit of obedience. Both were particularly needed in the Republic's military, where so many members were only a few years-months, sometimes-from a Bronze Age peasant's hut. Constitutional government was pretty abstract to them, but ceremony and ritual were the warp and weft of their lives.
Commander Victor Ortiz looked a little peaked still as he came to the top of the accommodation ladder, a bandage wound around his head where a falling block had laid it open during the storm, but he moved alertly as he answered the side boy's snapping salute and the Marines' present arms, then turned to salute the national ensign at the stern.
"Permission to come aboard," he said, his XO waiting behind him.
"Sir! Permission granted," the OOD said; she led him to Commander Jenkins, and the captain of the Chamberlain to the commodore; they exchanged salutes.
"Hello, Victor," Alston said. "All in order?"
"Ready for tomorrow's tide, Commodore," he said, smiling.
The ritual was repeated as the other captains came aboard; there was a slight variation for the last, a thickset, middle-aged black man in Marine khaki rather than Guard blue. Six bells, six side boys, and:
"Brigadier McClintock, Second Marine Expeditionary Force!"
McClintock was moving a little stiffly, legacy of helping put down a panic riot among the auxiliaries when they thought the ship they were on was going to sink in the storm-how they thought rioting would keep them from drowning was a mystery, but such was human psychology.
She estimated that the Marine officer's glum expression was probably due to McClintock's own personal problems, not the pain of a pulled muscle; his partner and he had split up rather messily over the summer, one reason he'd pushed hard for this position. He'd gotten it because he'd done so well during the Tartessian invasion last spring, of course. Alston felt a certain sympathy for him, but…
Well, fidelity is hard enough to maintain in a relationship with only one man in it. With two, do Jesus, you might as well expect ducks to tap-dance. One reason among many I'm damned glad to be female and gay.
No matter, he was a professional-he'd been a Marine DI before the Event-and did his job regardless. If she was any judge, he'd probably go right on doing the job if gut-shot, until the blood pressure dropped too low to keep his brain functioning.
"Brigadier," she said, shaking his hand. "Your people have been doing a crackerjack job ashore-and they probably saved several of the transports."
His ship hadn't been the only one with a riot aboard. A rioting mob composed of hysterical Sun People warriors could get… interesting. She was deeply glad there had been Marines aboard all of them.
"Ma'am, it was a welcome distraction," he said, in a soft North Carolina drawl. "That-theah blow was somethin'."
The sound gave her a pang of nostalgic pleasure. Not that it was identical with the Sea-Island Gullah that she'd grown up speaking, but it was a lot closer than the flat Yankee twang which had been coming out on top in Nantucket and the out-ports over the past decade. That was the prestige dialect these days, carefully copied by newcomers who wanted to fit in and shine in reflected social status, the way she'd striven to speak General American most of her life.
Assimilation, she thought.
The wardroom stewards circulated with glasses of sherry- or a fairly close analogue, ironically imported from Tartessos before the war-until the sun almost touched the horizon. There was a fair crowd; all the Guard's ship captains, their executive officers, McClintock and his chief of staff, the colonels of the Third Marines and First Militia. The conversation and circulating died down as the ship's bugler sounded first call, five minutes to sunset. Glasses went back on trays, and everyone turned to face the national flag. The Marine band struck up the "Star-Spangled Banner"-various proposals to replace that with "Hail To Nantucket" had been shot down by overwhelming votes of the Town Meeting, including her own-and the flag slowly descended, to be folded as the last note died; by then the sun had nearly disappeared, leaving only a band of crimson fading to deep purple across the western horizon. Bonfires blossomed on the beach, and after the band laid down their instruments she could hear retreat sounding on bugles from across the anchorage as the other ships of the fleet went through their less elaborate ritual.
"Gentlemen, ladies," she said, and led them down the companionway. Set up for a dining-in, the table filled most of the cabin; she made her way to the top of it, flanked by the stern-chasers on either side. Silver gleamed on crisp linen, reflecting the flames of the lanterns; the stern gallery windows were slightly open, bringing in the smell of salt water to mingle with the odors of roasted meat. Stewards wheeled in trays.
One of the minor benefits of being the first head of the Island's military-the equivalent of head of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense and a Founding Mother, all in one-was that she'd been able to set most of the traditions as she pleased while things were still fluid. Some of that had been very satisfying, in a petty sort of way; for instance getting rid of the old Coast Guard habit of handing out medals and ribbons for everything, starting with breathing and working up to really tough stuff like brushing your teeth regularly. Others had been more important. She'd been a mustang herself, and it had been a minor miracle that she'd ever ended up commanding the Eagle, otherwise known as the Guard's floating recruiting poster. After the Event, she'd made sure that everyone's career path started before the mast.
Some changes were more aesthetic, like the ones she'd established for military-social affairs such as this.
She raised her glass in the first toast. "Gentlemen, ladies- the Republic which we serve. A government of laws, not of men."
A murmur of "The Republic" as wine glistened in the firelight. That had been one custom founded with an eye to the future, when more officers were locals born. Got to get them used to the concept of loyalty to institutions, not just particular people.
Then she looked at the XO of the Tubman, the junior officer present.
"Fallen comrades," the young man said.
"Fallen comrades," everyone replied; perhaps a little more emotionally than usual, with their recent casualties.
There was a clatter of chairs and rustle of linen as the officers seated themselves. Alston looked down the table three places, to where Swindapa was in animated discussion with the XO of the Douglass; that young man was a Kurlelo, too… although there were thousands in that lineage. They were speaking English, of course; that was the compulsory service language. Swindapa's accent was noticeably lighter than her kinsman's. Hmmm, she thought. None of the captains was Alban-born yet, but three of the XO's were. Coming along there.
She'd have preferred to have her partner seated beside her, but there was a certain precedence involved. The food came in; boiled lobsters, salads of local greens and pickled vegetables out of barrels put up in Alba, roast suckling pig from the forests inland, fresh bread from field ovens set up ashore. Alston had long ago decided that the Republic's forces wouldn't follow the ancient military tradition of lousy food. There would be plenty of times when they'd all be living on salt cod and dog biscuit, but when the cooks had something better available they'd by-God know what to do with it.
If I have anything to say in the matter, and I do, she thought, and sipped at a Long Island merlot. Martha Cofflin, nee Stoddard, had given her and Swindapa a palate education over the last decade or so, as wine became available again. Educated Jared as far as she could, too, she thought. The chief had had blue-collar beer-and-whiskey tastes like hers before the Event, and was more set in them. Cooking had been her hobby since her teens, along with the martial arts, and that inevitably meant at least a little exposure to the grape. Leaning back a little she studied the faces of the commanders over the rim of her glass.
Victor Ortiz was telling a story about an expedition to the Far East, to Sumatra-one of those odd local cultures; in this one everything inland was holy and everything that came from the sea debased. One of his crew on a party sent into the interior swore they had spotted what sounded like an ape-man of some sort…
And the dawn came up like thunder out of China 'cross the bay, she quoted to herself. She'd never done more than touch on those islands, in the Eagle's early round-the-world survey. She'd read the logs and reports-
Good bunch, she thought, weighing faces and souls. Hard workers, smart, plenty of guts. This war's different from anything else we've done post-Event, though. We're not skirmishing, or giving some local chief a thrashing for getting nasty with a trader.
They'd already had a staff briefing, and conversation was more general than shop-everyone here knew the others well. The officer corps of the Republic's miniature military was too small for anything else.
"I'd like to leave a force here," she said after a while. They'd be leaving the Merrimac and her collier anyway; the big ship was too badly damaged to be allowed anywhere near a fleet action, and her cargo wouldn't be useful until they had a secure base near Tartessos. "Pass those peas, please… Say a platoon of your Marines, Jim." The brigadier nodded thoughtfully.
"I'd assumed you would, Commodore," he said. "Hmmm. Walking wounded, perhaps?"
"That would do. And some volunteers from the auxiliaries."
"I don't think there will be any lack of those who'd rather face solitude than salt water," he said, and the laugh spread around the table. "With a couple of heavy mortars on the tip of the peninsula, we can interdict the entrance to the harbor. For the landward side… yes, sixty or seventy riflemen, a Gatling, and a fieldpiece would do nicely. It won't weaken our land force 'nuff to speak of, ma'am."
The dessert brought a few exclamations; chocolate cake was a rarity even for the well-to-do these days, and she'd sprung for the ingredients out of her own pocket before the expedition left. Alston hid a smile at the look of unfeigned eager delight on Swindapa's face; that direct childlike openness was one of the things she'd fallen in love with, and it would stay with her partner all her life.
We American-born could do with a little more of it, she thought. She hoped a dash of that Fiernan trait would survive in the bubbling cultural stew that Nantucket had become.
"Gentlemen, ladies," she said after the stewards had cleared away plates and cutlery and set out coffee, cocoa, and brandy. She took a deep breath; no sense in trying to sugarcoat it. Everyone here knew the hungry sea in all its moods. "We'll be sailing tomorrow on the morning tide. I don't think there's any point in waiting for the Farragut or her collier any longer."
Plenty of grim looks at that. She nodded and went on: "We'll have to assume that the Farragut and the Severna Park are lost. With them, we've lost a good proportion of our fighting power."
"Y algunos hombres buenos," Ortiz murmured.
Alston inclined her head in acknowledgment.
"Yes," she said gently. "That too, Commander Ortiz."
The wounded man raised his bandaged head and his brandy glass. "Gary and I…"
Yes, she remembered. Trudeau was his protege. And their wives were sisters.
His mouth quirked, giving his darkly handsome face a raffish expression beneath the head-swathing linen wrappings. "There was that Javanese chief who decided he could hassle the wimpy foreign traders." A chuckle. "We strung up the hijo de puta by the ass-end of his own loincloth, from the gateway in the palisade 'round his village, left him yelling and screeching to the crowd, and then had quite a party…" The brandy swirled in the glass, glinting in the lamplight, and he brought it to his lips. "To fallen comrades."
"Fallen comrades," everyone murmured again, and there was a moment's silence.
"We'll miss the Farragut and her crew badly," Alston said when it ended. "However, we still have a number of advantages. This is the only chance we have this year to break the blockade of the Straits of Gibraltar; and we have to do that to support our forces in the Middle East."
"It's a risk, ma'am," one of the captains said soberly. "The Tartessians lost heavily this spring, but they're not short of timber or shipwrights, and for inshore work they don't need navigators. They'll have been building as fast as they can lay keels and cast guns. A big risk."
"Indeed it is, Commander Strudwick." She stood, and raised her glass. "Therefore, I give y'all a final toast for the evening. I give you Montrose's toast."
Silence fell, broken only by the slight creak of the ship moving at her anchors and feet on the deck overhead. Everyone who went through Brandt Point knew those words and their maker.
"He fears his fate too much-" she began softly.
Other voices joined her, ringing louder, triumphant:
"… and his desserts are small.
Who will not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all."
"Here they come again!" Private Vaukel shouted. Somewhere down the line a man raised another cry:
"Ten! This is the tenth time!"
Vaukel could feel the heat from the barrel of his Werder through the wood of the forestock, and his right thumb was scorched where it met the metal as he pushed home another round. The weapon was kicking a lot harder, too, as fouling clogged the barrel. None of that mattered, as the enemy rose up from behind a ledge of rock and the tumbled bodies of their own dead and charged, shrieking. It was as if the dead themselves arose at Barrow Woman's command, or the very earth came up in a wave to bury him. The sun was nearly down, but it lit the metal of their spears and axes blood-red, and gleamed on eyes and teeth.
"SsssssSSSSAA! SA! SA! SsssssSSSSAA!"
"Volley fire present, fire!"
The rifle kicked into the massive bruise that covered his right shoulder, but the pain seemed to be happening to someone else.
"Independent fire, rapid fire!"
His hand scrabbled at the barley sack beside him and came up empty; someone thrust a packet of shells under his hand, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that it was Chaplain Smith with a sack slung around his neck, traveling down the firing line.
He ripped it with his teeth, spilled the bright brass on the burlap, and thumbed a round home, fired, fired again, again, once every three seconds. Rifles were going off in a continuous rippling crash to either side of him, and along the south face too; ladders went up against the hospital roof and Islanders fought Ringapi along the edge. The ground ahead of him swarmed with dimly seen figures and bright edges, the air filled with yowling war cries and screams of pain. Slingstones and arrows went by overhead in a continuous stream, and flung spears; some of them had bundles of blazing oil-soaked wool wrapped around them. The air he sucked in through parched nose and throat seemed thin and insubstantial, stinking of burned sulfur and shit and blood and burning oil.
"Watch it!" someone bellowed.
The Ringapi charge struck the wall of barley sacks, and it rocked under Vaukel's feet. The attackers dropped down into the ditch-not so far this time, there was a three-deep layer of bodies there now-and leaped upward, driving spears into the sacks to stand on, clutching at the bayonets with their bare hands and striking upward with spear and ax and sword. Some stood with their hands braced against the wall and let their fellows climb onto their shoulders. Two places to Vaukel's right a Marine staggered backward with an arrow buried in his eye-socket, wailing loud enough to be overheard even through the enormous din. A Ringapi slid through the space the wounded man vacated, naked body slick with blood and a dagger in each hand, grappled a Marine, and they fell backward off the firing step together.
Vaukel fired one last round with the muzzle three feet from a man's face. Then he lunged downward with his bayonet; it went in over a collarbone and grated as he withdrew, the sensation traveling up the wood and metal and resonating gruesomely in his chest. A flicker of motion out of the corner of his left eye caught him; Gwenhaskieths was down, a Ringapi with a hand clamped around her throat and his other raising his shield to chop her in the face with the edge. Training brought Vaukel pivoting on his heel-fighting shield-armed warriors you struck at the one on your left, his unprotected spear-side. The twenty-inch blade of his bayonet caught the savage under his short rib and impaled him across the width of his torso, a soft meaty resistance and then things crunching and popping beneath the sharp point.
He twisted the blade, withdrew, slashed at another snarling face as he brought it around, punched the butt after it and felt bone break. Gwenhaskieths pulled herself erect, coughing and retching with the bruising of that iron grip on her throat, and grabbed up her rifle. The line of the north wall was surging and swaying…
The bugle sounded: fall back and rally. Long habit brought Vaukel around, as if the brassy notes were playing directly on his nervous system; he grabbed Gwenhaskieths under the arm and helped her along the first three paces, until she shook him free and ran herself. Ahead of them the Marines from the south wall had turned-behind them came the braaaaap… braaaaap of the Gatling firing out into the gathering darkness and the firefly sparkling of muzzle flashes from the Ringapi riflemen on the hillside above. Captain Barnes was there in the center of the line, steady, her face calm under the helmet as she waited with pistol outstretched and left wrist supporting right. Vaukel felt the sight hearten him as he dashed through the ordered khaki line, turned, knelt, brought his hand down to the bandolier for a round.
That let him see what was happening. The Ringapi surged over the suddenly empty wall, roaring exultation, expecting nothing but the helpless backs of their foes. Then they saw the line of rifles awaiting them and for one very human, very fatal instant they stopped. The wave pouring over the wall behind them crowded them forward, piling up in a mass of human flesh six bodies deep, jammed skin to skin and less than thirty feet from the line of Marines. Firelight and the last dying sun washed across their faces with a color like blood.
"First rank… volley fire, present-fire!"
The Ringapi packed along the inside face of the wall seemed to writhe in unison somehow as the volley slashed into them, those in front punched off their feet by the heavy bullets that slammed through to wound again in the press behind them.
"Reload! Second rank, advance!"
Vaukel took two paces forward through the Marines reloading and brought his Werder to his shoulder in unison with the rest of those who'd been holding the north wall.
"Second rank… volley fire, present-fire!
The noise inside the compound was so enormous that even the bark of forty rifles in unison was muffled. A scream went up from the Ringapi, and the front two ranks turned and scrabbled backward; some threw away their weapons, and some used them to clear a path through their fellows.
"Reload! First rank, advance! Second rank… volley fire, present-fire!"
Three more times, and the enemy broke backward in a mass. The Marines leveled their bayonets and charged with a long shout, back to the barley-sack parapet. Vaukel found himself standing there, trying to make sense of the last ten minutes. Not far down the wall a Ringapi turned at bay; Chaplain Smith swept him up with a grip at throat and crotch:
"Saint Michael is with us! For the Lord, and for Gideon!" he bellowed, hair and beard bristling, and pitched the man over the wall to crash down on two of his fleeing tribesfolk.
Vaukel felt his hands begin to shake. Gwenhaskieths staggered up, helmetless, snarling in a rasp through her damaged throat. A Ringapi came to his feet in the pile of dead and wounded barbarians ahead of her; she spitted him through the kidney from behind. At the barricade another was sitting up, until she whipped the butt of her rifle into his face, twice, and pushed the body away with a foot. A good many others were throwing aside Ringapi bodies as well, after making sure that they were bodies and not just temporarily out of commission; there were enough to hamper everyone's footing.
A moment later she was shaking the Earth Folk Marine by the shoulder. "C'mon… wake up… get down!"
At the touch he started and dropped down a little. Out beyond the wall it was hard to see what was happening, but voices were haranguing the enemy, the voices of their chiefs. Gwenhaskieths grinned, coughed as she drank from her canteen, spat, and offered it to him. He drank in his turn.
"Funny how close that sounds to my language," she said. "For things like coward and motherfucker and one more time and take their heads, at least. Watch it!"
Colonel O'Rourke came by, with a dried cut over one eyebrow and a bandage on his neck. "That's the way, Marines," he said, and slapped them both on the shoulder. "Keep it up, and we'll dance on their graves."
He passed on down the line. Vaukel hunched down; the Gatling fire from the hill behind was dying down at least. Then he heard a sharp loud crack, like a rifle but bigger. He turned, and saw the sergeant who'd been firing the Gatling on the south wall staggering back clutching at the ruin of a hand. Smoke poured from the machine gun where shells had hit the overheated chambers and exploded.
"Cook-off, gang-fire!" someone called.
"Oh, that's unfortunate," Vaukel said hoarsely. "Very."
"Could I have a drink?" Ian Arnstein asked, when he and his escorts had reached the Achaean encampment outside Troy.
The hour's trip between was a blur, and from things he remembered as half-seen glimpses he wanted it to stay that way. There were things you did not want to remember, or know that human beings could do to each other. They were too hard to forget.
The soldiers looked at their officer. "The King commanded that he be treated well," the Greek said.
The flask they handed him was pewter. The liquid inside was enough to take the lining off your throat, eighty proof at least; some sort of grappa, like the stuff Mediterranean peasants up in the twentieth distilled from the grape husks left after pressing the fruit for wine; another of Walker's innovations. He coughed, swallowed, took another long sip and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The cold fire burned down his gullet and hit his stomach, pushing back the chills and shaking of incipient shock. His head still hurt viciously, he'd heard that even a borderline concussion did that.
I would have been willing to believe that on hearsay, without the firsthand evidence.
"Thank you," he said, handing back the flask.
"Aye, it's not easy to face one with the god-force on him," Philowergos said with a certain rough sympathy. "Nor to see the claws of the Lady of Pain stretched out for you." His troops made gestures of aversion at the name. He offered the flask again, and Arnstein shook his head.
"Good," the guardsman said. "A little of this is strength, too much is weakness. Come."
The orderly layout of Walker's camp was disconcertingly like that of the Nantucket Marines, although the tents were leather rather than canvas. A high dirt wall enclosed a neat gridwork of graveled streets, ditches, artillery parks with rows of iron muzzles. The darkness was lit by the red glow of campfires where men cooked pots of boiling grain-mash, and by the brighter yellow of big kerosene lanterns on poles at intervals, or outside tents or rough wood-and-wattle structures larger than others. Horse-drawn ambulances clattered past them, the troops on foot giving way; here and there a mounted messenger or officers, then a mortar pulled by two mounts, the thick barrel swung up and clamped along the draught-pole. Soldiers were beginning to strike their tents as well, and they passed a broad open square where convoys of wagons were being loaded and ox-teams harnessed. There was a smell of animal dung, sweat, woodsmoke, turned earth, oil and leather, but none of the sewer reek you usually got when a large group of Bronze Agers stayed in one place for long. The prisoner and his guards halted in one corner of the square, the officer striding over to give orders and then returning to wait with them.
A mule-drawn vehicle came by, set up a bit like a Western chuck wagon, and halted to hand out small loaves of coarse dark bread, still warm from the oven, and dollops of bean soup with chunks of pork in it into the mess tins of the troops; strings of dried figs and a handful of salted olives came with it. Philowergos saw that the prisoner got some as well. Ian could feel his brain starting to work again, soaking up data like a sponge. Most likely he'd never get to use it-
To hell with that bullshit. I have a country and a family to go home to. The food helped. The body kept on functioning… until it didn't anymore.
The soldiers of his escort were talking among themselves. Arnstein cocked an ear at it. He was fluent in Achaean; he'd been studying the archaic Mycenaean Greek almost since the Event, and he'd been a Classical scholar before that. Captain Philowergos had been easy to understand, just some sort of regional dialect giving a roughness to the vowel sounds. What his soldiers spoke was different, almost a pidgin-Greek, stripped of many of the complex inflections, with a massive freight of English loan-words for things like rifle and cannon and combat engineer, and more vocabulary from languages he didn't recognize at all. They had wildly differing accents, as well.
He peered at faces. Some were olive-skinned and dark of hair and eye, like most southern Greeks here and in the twentieth; Captain Philowergos's swarthy, dense-bearded good looks reminded him of a waiter in a restaurant in Athens from his last pre-Event visit. Others looked like Albanians or Serbs or Central Europeans; one or two were like nothing he'd ever seen-where did the man with the white-blond hair, flat face, and slanted blue eyes come from? The rest of the army breaking camp were just as mixed; he even saw one or two blacks. They must be from far up the Nile, or West Africans brought in by Tartessian merchants.
The dozen men who'd been told off to guard him squatted to eat, or sat on piles of boxes. With a little effort he could make out the conversation. Talk about the fighting, and how relieved they were at the end of the siege, of families, of places back in Greece he mostly couldn't identify. One freckle-faced rifleman complained that they hadn't even gotten a chance at the city's women; his corporal jeered at him cheerfully and slapped him on the top of the head.
"Thin like stick by now, idiot boy. Stink, bugs. Break cock on bones. Good whores in Neayoruk, clean fat ones, all you want."
"If pay," the young soldier grumbled. "No loot I see, no; not cloth, scrap silver, not a slave to sell."
The officer cut in: "The good King will see that all get a share, recruit," he said. To Arnstein: "Wannax Walkheear is the best of lords for a fighting-man. Even if your deeds are not beneath his eye he hears of them, and the reward is swift and generous. Me, I'll save the pay and the bonus, and wait until home and my wife. I'll need it all for my farm, when my service ends."
"Walker- ' the Islander paused at the scowls. "Wannax Walker gives land to his soldiers?"
"When they grow too old to fight, or are wounded and can't serve," Philowergos said. "Or if he wants men to hold down a new conquest. Gold is good, horses, slaves, silver-but land, land for your sons and the sons of your sons, that is best of all."
"Truth, despotes," the older man with sergeant's chevrons said; he had a native Greek-speaker's way with the language. "My brother lost a hand fighting the northern tribes near the…"
Arnstein asked a question; from the answer he thought the location was somewhere in what would have been Serbia. Uh-oh. Leaton's people said there are zinc deposits there. Zinc made brass, which made cartridges.
"… and now he has land in Sicily-land like a lord, two hundred acres, good land, cropland and vines and meadow by the river, with man-thralls to till the fields, and slave girls to take the work off his wife and to warm his bed. He lives like a lord, too, drinking and hunting as he pleases; and us both born poor farmers, tenants on a telestai's estate!"
The corporal who'd slapped his recruit on the head spoke: "And if a warrior shows courage and whattitakes"-another English phrase there, though it took him a moment to puzzle it out-"he may be raised up to a commander, become a noble and great lord."
The soldiers nodded and murmured agreement, calling the blessings of the Gods-the Greek ones, and an assortment of Pelasgian and Balkan and Danubian deities-down on Walker's head. Ian Arnstein had been a scholar most of his life, and his post-Event job hadn't been too different; they both required insatiable curiosity. The coldest attitude toward Walker he could make out in his guards was deep respect combined with fear; from there it shaded up through doglike devotion to literal hero worship. More than one dropped hints about demi-godhood, or outright divinity. He suspected that only fear of hubris-bred bad luck kept that at the hint level.
Bad, he thought. This is bad. It looked like Walker had been taking some hints from Napoleon's bag of tricks, every soldier with a marshal's baton in his pack. Hmmmm. Unless that pissed off too many of the old elite of the Achaean kingdoms. But Walker's got a lot of goodies to hand out, maybe enough to keep them all happy. Or he would as long as he kept winning. How solid would his hold be if there were some bitter defeats to swallow?
A vehicle drew up. Arnstein blinked again. A stagecoach, by God, he thought, then: no, not quite, but Walker must have been watching Gunsmoke when he was a kid. His inexperienced eye could make out a few differences; steel springs and shock absorbers, for instance. The side doors bore a blazon of Walker's wolfshead logo, red outline on black. Handlers came behind, leading mounts for the escort.
"In, despotes," Philowergos said, and followed him.
The seats were leather-padded; the Achaean officer sat across from him, drawing his revolver and keeping it in his lap. Ian Arnstein fought not to groan with relief at the cushioned softness, and wished he was as dangerous as the escort thought him.
"Thank you for your courtesy," he said.
Teeth flashed white in the dimness, splitting the cropped black beard. "You are of the King's people," the Greek said.
Well, Rumanian Jewish via New York and California vs. Scots-Irish-German via Georgia and Montana, Arnstein thought. Still, you've got a point. Although personally he didn't even like to consider himself part of the same species as William Walker, much less of the same nationality.
"And if you take service with him, you will rise high," Philowergos said. "All you Wolf People do, with your wizard knowledge. Why should I anger one who may be a high lord, especially when the King has ordered me to treat him well?" He shrugged. "And if you won't serve the King… well, Zeus Pater sends luck to those who befriend the dying."