November, 10 A.E.-Walkeropolis, Kingdom of Great Achaea
October, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
November, 10 A.E.-Walkeropolis, Kingdom of Great Achaea
November, 10 A.E.-Cadiz Base, southern Iberia
November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
November, 10 A.E.-West-central Anatolia
Odikweos's mansion was a mixture of Mycenaean tradition and Walker's innovations. Ian Arnstein thoroughly approved of some of those. There was central heating, natural hot air from a basement stove via clay pipes in the walls and floor; the kerosene lamps with their mirrored reflectors were a lot brighter than the twist of linen in olive oil that the locals had been using. And the bath suite-sure 'nuff shower stall, hot and cold plunges-was a vast improvement over sitting in a ceramic hip-bath and having bucketsful poured over your head. In fact it was all about as good as a bathhouse in Nantucket Town, and far better than anything he'd had since he left Ur Base. Flush toilets, too, and soap, and even a frayed soft reed that made acceptable toilet paper…
He turned down an offer of a massage with scented olive oil, accepted a clean Mycenaean tunic and kilt which he suspected a seamstress had just run up in his size. Then he sat down to a meal of garlicky grilled pork, salad, and french fried potatoes accompanied by watered wine in a room with big glass windows that overlooked the town. It was growing dark outside, sunset aggravated by thicker cloud cover.
I wonder why Odikweos is doing this, he thought. Walker had ordered him given comfortable prison quarters, not the quasi-sacred status of a guest. Not that I'm objecting. Achaean mores had altered, and swiftly, here in Walker's kingdom, but he didn't think they'd altered so much that Walker could just chop him now without a major confrontation with one of his most important supporters. But I do wonder why. He was still trying to figure that out when the servants showed him into the megaron, the great central hall.
The old traditions of the Achaean barons remained strong here. A log fire boomed and flickered in a big central hearth rimmed with blue limestone blocks, scenting the air with pine; but a copper smoke-hood stood over it. Four massive wooden pillars supported a second-story gallery and ran up to the roof, painted red and surrounded by racked bronze-headed spears. Huge figure-eight shields were clamped to the wall at intervals. Between them ran vivid native murals; one of a man in a plumed boar's-tusk helmet shaking a spear aloft as his chariot galloped into battle; another of a boar hunt; the third of a city under siege… but the siege included stylized cannon, and a balloon floating at the end of a tether.
The high seat against the southern wall was empty and shadowed as he crossed the geometric pebble-mosaic of the floor. The Achaean underking was seated in a chair not far from the hearth, his cloak thrown over the chairback; a table and another seat waited, splendid with ivory and gold inlay of lions and griffins in a fashion that was centuries old.
Odikweos leaned his chin on one fist and watched as a housekeeper in a long gown showed Arnstein to his seat, set out jugs of water and wine and spun-glass goblets, a tray of bread with olive oil and honey for dipping, and departed.
Then he leaned forward, hairy muscular forearm braced on one knee, and spoke:
"You are from the days that are yet to come. You and all your people."
Ian hid his startlement by reaching for a jug and pouring wine. Unwatered, it lay sweet and thick on his tongue. Well, here's a bright boy. Isketerol had gone into hysterics for a day or two when he got the idea back on-Island in the Year 1; a lot of people just couldn't grasp the concept.
"How did you find out?" he asked.
"I… what is your word… deduced it," Odikweos went on. "Not long after the King-to-be came here to the Achaean lands. From a few things he let drop; and my guest-friend Isketerol of Tartessos is not quite as good at keeping secrets as he thinks. Now and then one or the other would say, in the time of the Eagle People, or 'in my time,'' instead of 'my land.''
"Pretty slim clues," Arnstein said.
A shrug. "And it was sensible. Legends tell of a time before men knew of bronze or tilled the earth, and of a time before Zeus let slip the secret of fire. Our bards sing of the days when the Achaeans were new in these lands, coming down from the north to rule the Shore Folk and mix their blood with them; and in those days we knew not the arts of writing, or of dwelling in towns or building in stone. Those we learned from Crete, before we overran it."
For a moment sheer scholar's greed overwhelmed Ian Arnstein. Those poems I've got to hear! Then he wrenched his mind back to present matters.
"How did you know that Walker didn't just come from a land with more arts than yours?"
Odikweos nodded. "That was my first thought, and it is what most here believe. But the King and his Wolf People lords, they knew too much of what was here. The mines of iron not a day's travel from this city; I saw the maps they had-wonders themselves-made of these same lands. They even seemed to know somewhat of the men of Mycenae and the other Achaean kingdoms.
"So," he went on, turning his hand palm-up, moving his fingers as if counting off points and then clenching it into a fist. "Either these men were Gods in disguise, or demigods, or seers-or they must know these things because they were from years yet unborn."
He poured wine, watered it, and spilled a few drops in libation. "And I swiftly saw that these were men as other men- weak and stupid men, many of them. Some of them were wicked men-and a wicked woman-in ways cursed by the Gods. Even Walkheear… yes, a great fighting-man,- and of a cunning that might seem divine. But still a man, as men are."
"Perhaps not as clever as you think," Arnstein said. At Odikweos’s raised brows: "Men gather more than arts." He turned his beard toward the copper smoke-hood for a moment. "They also gather the memory of tricks and stratagems of war and kingcraft. Especially in lands where everything is preserved in writing."
"Ahh," Odikweos said, nodding. "That puts in words a thought long stirring in my mind."
"So… what do you wish to know?" Arnstein asked.
"This," the Achaean said, his callused hand sculpting a graceful gesture through the air. "What manner of men are you? That you have many arts, that you are wise in the ways of war, this I know.
"I also know," he went on, "that we Achaeans have mounted the lion and however much danger there is in riding, we cannot let go-too much of the knowledge from the years to come is abroad in these lands ever to return to the ways that were. Men will grow back into children and then crawl into the womb before they will sacrifice wealth or advantage in war. What I would know is what manner of men you are-are you all as Walker is, differing only in faction, or is he truly an outlaw among you for his wicked deeds?"
His hazel eyes bored into Arnstein's. "For if you are all such as Walker, then we must cherish Walker as our rightful lord, for at least he rules from the Achaean lands, and his followers of the Wolf Folk are too few to govern without many of our men at their sides in positions of honor. But if not…"
Ian felt his spine prickle. "You speak boldly," he said.
"I speak as I must." A grim smile. "For one thing, your mouth can be stopped. For another, you would not be believed if you accused me-a condemned man seeking safety. For a third, time snaps at my heels like a wolf indeed. In another ten years-especially with victory in this war-the King of Men will be strong beyond assailing. He will rule so many lands that we Achaeans will be but a minor part of his domains, of his followers."
His expression grew altogether harsh. Arnstein felt a trickle of fear, more immediate than the low-grade dread that had been with him constantly since Troy. This was not a man you could anger safely…
"I have spoken. Now you will speak. And you are not my only spring of knowledge in this matter. I will know if you lie; Athana Potnia is my patron Goddess, and she has given me the gift of plumbing the truth in men's words."
All right, Ian, Arnstein thought, licking his lips and running a hand over his balding head. Now's the time to talk for your life.
War was beginning to look like something simple and straightforward.
"You liked him," Swindapa said quietly, as the Islander truce party rode south once more.
"I'll still kill him if I can," Alston said meditatively, looking up.
The ultralight had turned southward to base, after checking that the Tartessians were headed back northwest. The first stars were out, bright light against racing scuds of cloud, clouds white-outlined by the waning moon; the wind had cooled notably.
"That's not what I meant," her partner said, cocking her head to one side slightly. "I'm surprised."
"So am I," Alston said.
One of the good things about riding a horse was that it wouldn't fall over or run into a tree if you lost yourself in thought for a few moments.
"I think he's changed," she said at last. "He's still pretty loathsome to our way of thinking-" which would apply from a Fiernan's point of view as well, although not for exactly the same reasons "… but being a King, I'd say it's changed him. Responsibility can do that."
"To some, maybe," Swindapa said. "I don't think so, for Walker."
Marian's face went hard. "No. Not him."
Ritter's bicycle came rapidly up from behind them. "Ma'am!" she said. "The scouts confirm the enemy delegation are withdrawing as agreed."
For an instant a flicker of regret went through Alston's mind; someone with a telescope-sighted rifle, or a long burst from the Gatling, and the enemy would be headless… No. Victories won that way were poisoned fruit. If nothing else, they didn't convince the other side they were beaten the way a real fight did, and getting the other side to admit defeat was the whole reason you made war in the first place. There was no point in winning one war at the cost of laying the seeds of defeat in the next; that way lay destruction.
"We'll camp on the site we picked out on the way up here, then, Lieutenant," Alston said.
"Aye, aye, ma'am!"
Swindapa chuckled softly as the young Marine officer pedaled industriously off and spoke even more quietly: "How she jumps to please you," she teased-in Fiernan, which the standard-bearer did not speak, which gave them complete privacy.
At least she's learned some discretion, Marian thought with affectionate exasperation; she understood the Earth Folk language, although she couldn't speak it beyond the pass-the-salt level.
"She'd jump even more eagerly if you took a pheasant feather and tickled her on her-" Swindapa went on.
" 'Dapa!" Alston snorted, as her partner went into imaginative details, with gestures. One of the few drawbacks of having a Fiernan for a partner was her idea of a bawdy joke…
"… then imagine her bursting like a ripe berry on your lips when you threw your arms about her arse and ran your-
" 'Dapa! Stop /r/"
… because in a perfectly good-natured way the Fiernan idea of bawdy tended to be luridly, awesomely explicit, even by late-twentieth-century-American standards. The Earth Folk had plenty of taboos and aversions, but few about that.
"But that would be against regulations," she finished, with a sly grin, rolling her eyes piously skyward, and making a brief steepling of fingers in the Christian manner.
That was another thing that could be annoying. The Sun People either rebelled against discipline or embraced it; Fiernans were likely to think of it as faintly silly. It was like trying to pull on a rope made of water, sometimes.
Scholarly types like the Arnsteins said it was because of their diffuse family setup, where paternity was often anyone's guess and kids were raised catch-as-catch-can, like a litter of puppies by mothers, aunts, uncles, and a score of other relatives.
Whatever, Marian thought, laughing unwillingly along with Swindapa's wholehearted mirth.
The spot the embassy had picked for its encampment was on a slight hill, where the chalky subsoil came nearer the surface as the land rose out of the alluvial lowlands to the north. It reminded her of pictures she'd seen of the Serengeti, weirdly combined with California. A scattering of cork-oak trees gave shelter, their thick, gnarled bark with its deep scorch marks showing why it had evolved in the first place; the grass fires in a dry summer here must be something to see.
The Marines set to efficiently; bicycles resting in a row, clearing the long grass-the green undergrowth was unlikely to burn but you didn't want to take chances-cutting circles of sod to make space for campfires, pitching tents, both their own eight-person squad models and smaller types for the officers. A stamping, bayonet-prodding inspection of the undergrowth produced a yelling, dodging chaos when a six-foot Montpelier snake rose and fanged the forestock of a rifle only inches from a Marine's left hand, then thrashed about hissing and striking in warning before it whipped off downhill; that set the little group of tailless Barbary apes in the trees shrieking and bolting as well.
Marian's katana had leaped into her hand without the intervention of her conscious mind. She ran it back into the scabbard behind her left shoulder with a hiss of steel on leather greased with neatsfoot oil.
"Damn, but I hate snakes," she muttered. "Especially poisonous ones you can't see in the grass." Her partner snorted, and Alston went on: " 'Dapa, do I mention you and spiders?"
They led their horses to the little stream at the base of the hill, watered and unsaddled and rubbed them down, checking their feet and hobbling them before setting them to graze. That would keep them happier than being tethered with a feedbag, and they wouldn't go far from the campfires with the predators about. While she tended the horses the black woman watched the Marines at work, saw Swindapa doing the same.
The officer and her noncoms paced the area around the camp carefully; she saw Ritter take a sight on a bush twenty yards off, walk a few paces, do the same, note it to the sergeant and corporals and repeat the process all around. The black woman nodded; it was a trick the Marines had gotten from the Fiernan Spear Chosen, through her-a way to identify what should and shouldn't be there. After it got dark, a creeping enemy could look far too much like a bush. They put equal care into picking a good spot for the Gatling, and a detail was already at work digging a sanitary slit trench off behind a tree. An ax rang counterpoint to the shunk of spade and pick, breaking fallen wood into convenient sizes.
"Squads to wash in rotation," Ritter said, when the basic work was done and deadwood fires crackled in the fire pits. "Clarkson, what do you say? Can we get some 'variety tonight?"
"Piece of cake, or duck, ma'am," the young Marine answered, grinning. He'd been looking over the stream that ran by the hill and into the marshes to their west.
The accent was Fiernan, Marion thought-from the west-coast area. At her slightly lifted brows Ritter went on: "You might want to see this. Commodore. He's from the Level Fens, south of Westhaven."
Swindapa nodded, then smiled and shook her head silently at Marian's inquiring look. Clarkson's section of the platoon trooped down to the river. They all stripped-soap and towels were along-but the brown-haired young man with the Immigration Office name also quickly plaited himself a headdress of grasses and reeds before slipping into the water. Even looking at him Marian had trouble following his passage down the darkened surface of the river. A minute later came a sharp gooselike squak- abruptly cut off. Another followed it, a minute of silence, then two more, and a thunder of wings in the darkness. Geese went by overhead, dandy-dog close, like whizzing projectiles with thrashing wings and outstretched panic-taut necks, honking in alarm. Clarkson came wading back holding four of the big birds high; Alston realized he must have swum close enough unnoticed to grab them by the feet and yank them under, one after another.
"Impressive," she said. And possibly useful, the filing system in her mind noted.
"Now, let me take a look at that bullet wound," Swindapa said.
Her own bruises and nicks had faded, but there was still a red healing weal where the slug had gouged Marian's flank. This platoon of Marines hadn't been involved in the boarding fight; in fact, most of its members hadn't seen combat yet- Ritter and the sergeant and one of the corporals being the exceptions.
In fact, Sergeant Daudrax has more scars than I do, Alston thought, looking over at him.
Although mine show more. Scar tissue came in dusty-white, standing out against the black of her skin. She looked down; spearthrust in the shoulder, boarding pike along the ribs, sword scar on the left forearm, and this would be the second bullet mark, after the one that took off most of the lobe of her left ear. Nothing too disfiguring yet; in fact, the Marines were casting occasional awed glances as the two senior officers soaped up and rinsed off.
And they all hurt like hell, infants. It mystified her sometimes why you got prestige from evidence of failure, and if letting someone cut you wasn't failing, what was?
By the time the squad had finished washing in the river- with much whooping and horseplay among the troops; at times like this you remembered that many of them would be considered kids up in the twentieth-the geese had been plucked, gutted, washed, rubbed with salt and some of the unit's precious, hoarded joint ration of Nantucket Secret Spice, and slapped on green-stick grills over the fires. By the time the other squads had taken their turn with the soap, the goose was about ready, enough to give everyone a mouthful or two of the flavorful fat-rich meat. Water was boiling for sassafras tea; that had the added advantage that you didn't have to add the purification powder with its unpleasant metallic tang.
Two big kettles were simmering with Jesus Stew-cubes of bouillon for stock, dried beans and peas, parched barley, chopped-up lengths of desiccated sausage and similarly "desecrated" vegetables, garlic powder, and sage, that service legend claimed not only proved the doctrine of the Resurrection, but was the Life. Together with bread baked that morning at the base camp and hard crumbly Alban cheese it made a pleasant enough dinner; the Marines tore into it with the thoughtless, wolfish enthusiasm of hardworking youngsters who'd mostly been raised on Bronze Age farms where this would be feast-day food.
Despite the day's work a flute came out; the song that set them swaying and clapping was half-new, a mutation of something dug out of a book during the dark, hungry winter of the Year 1, and crossbred since with things native to this era:
"I'll sing the base and you sing the solo-
Hob y derri dando!
All about the clipper ship the Marco Polo-
Ganni, ganni yato!
See her rollin', though the water…"
Marian Alston watched them with amused affection as she gnawed a goose drumstick, back a little around a separate fire as befitted senior officers. There's a big part of our future, she thought with satisfaction.
Some would go back to their birth-countries after their hitch. Most would settle down in the Republic as new-minted citizens, already English-speaking and literate, used to brushing their teeth and keeping clock-time and not attributing anything unusual to black magic, not to mention the males having something approaching civilized attitudes toward women beaten into their thick skulls. Then they'd become farmers or factory workers, clerks or sailors or shopkeepers, and their children…
After an hour the fires had burned low, only a few sparks drifting upward to the darkened, overcast sky; Ritter looked at her watch, nodded slightly to the platoon sergeant, and he called lights-out in a fine seagoing bellow:
"And this isn't a hunting trip, either. You useless bastards have work to do tomorrow, and I'm going to see that you do it! Clarkson, bank the fires. Standard watches, and keep your eyes open and your ears, too. If any of you get y›our throats cut I'll find a wizard to raise you from the mound and kill you again myself. Jump, you slackers!"
The sassafras tea woke her a little past midnight. She slipped on her boots-remembering that snake, and the reptiles' liking for warmth-and looped her pistol-belt over one shoulder be-fore heading out to the sanitary trench. The air was much colder outside, but despite that she spent a long instant looking at the play of lightning to the westward, lighting up castles and palaces of cloud… and beyond them were the stars…
Someday, she thought fiercely. For Heather's and Lucy's great-great-great-grandchildren.
Walking past the tree she whistled softly, to let the unseen sentries know she was moving; there would be one up in the biggest cork oak, and the others were invisible even though she knew roughly where they were. Nobody in a force she trained was going to blunder around in plain sight of God, radar, and skulking bandits and call it sentry-go!
As she walked back, the wind from the west blew stronger, and the first drops of rain struck her skin; hard luck on the ones pulling sentry duty… there was a faint rumble of thunder from that direction, too.
And voices; first a low happy moan, then a sleepy, hissed grumble: "Shut the fuck up, or at least shut up while you fuck, will you? The rest of us are sleeping, god-damn-it."
The language lessons were working well, if someone could pun in English half-awake. She slipped back into her tent, a two-person model if the two were friendly, and closed the flap. The rain beat harder, hissing on the oiled canvas above her, filling the darkness with a blur of white noise. Swindapa mumbled in her sleep as her partner sipped back under the blanket, throwing a thigh across Marian's and nuzzling into her shoulder. Alston let her mind drift; images of maps, reports, rivers, rain, marsh, swimming… an idle hope that the rain would be over by 0600, when they were due to break camp and get back to base. There was a thought teasing at the back of her consciousness, but forcing it would only make it recede faster.
In the morning as she woke the thought was quite clear, and Marian Alston gave a slow, hard grin at the gray overcast sky.
Ian Arnstein's throat felt sore. It had been an inspired idea to end the long night of talk with Homer; in this place, with this archaic Greek clangorous in his mouth, it was fitting. He soothed his vocal cords with more of the watered wine and went on:
The more she spoke, the more a deep desire for tears
Welled up inside his breast-he wept as he held the wife
He loved, the soul of loyalty, in his arms at last.
Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel
When they catch sight of land… so joyous now to her
The sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,
That her white arms embracing his neck would never
For a moment let him go…
Odikweos was weeping, leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair and his head against the hand that covered his face.
I should have expected that, Ian thought.
More than wealth, more than power, sometimes more than life itself, an Achaean noble craved undying fame-the only real immortality their beliefs allowed; their afterlife was a bitter shadowy thing, where it was better to be a hired hand on a poor peasant's farm than King among the strengthless dead. Fame was what Achilles had chosen, though the price was an early end in battle far from home.
Dawn with her rose-red fingers might have shone
Upon their tears, if with her glinting eyes
Athana had not thought of one more thing.
She held back the night, and night lingered long
At the western edge of the earth, while in the east
She reined in Dawn of the golden throne at ocean's banks,
Commanding her not to yoke the wind-swift team
That brings men light, Blaze and Aurora,
The young colts that race the Morning on…
"So," Odikweos said when he had finished.
He wiped his eyes with his hand unselfconsciously. An Achaean warrior felt no shame at tears before poetry that moved him.
"So, it is given to me to know how the men of years to come will think of me… three thousand years, you say?"
"Five hundred years from this night, until that poem is written down. Near three thousand more to my time."
The Achaean shook his head. "That is a number the mouth can say, but the heart cannot grasp. And my deeds will still be known! Or at least a ghost of them will be known… or my deeds and name would have been known, if things had gone forward as they did in the past your age remembers."
Brief murderous rage lit his craggy features: "And this Walker has robbed me of!"
He sat silent, thinking, before he went on: "And much of what Walker knows is the fruit of my people's minds and hands?"
"All the beginnings of it." He'd glossed over the Dark Age that had lain between this time and the glories of the Classical period. "The foundations of the house my people built. Every generation of ours finds fresh inspiration in it."
"And all that Walker has taken from us," Odikweos said. "I followed him for wealth, and power-and because I thought he would make our land great with his outland knowledge."
"You… might say he's done some of that," Arnstein said cautiously.
Odikweos shook his head violently. The fire in the great round hearth had died down; the light of the embers ran blood-red over his features and brought out reddish highlights in his grizzled black hair.
"Not so. He has made this a land of slaves-and slaves of us free Achaeans, even we nobles. What is slavery, if not to live in fear of another's wrath, obedient to his will? Do we, even we nobles, not live in fear of his anger, and that of his servants? Even the best among us, the men of breeding, the kalos k'agathos, each must guard his tongue in fear of punishment. Are we not now dependents, needing the King's favor for the very bread on our tables? At most, we are the stewards of his lands, not the lords of our own. As Zeus takes half a man's arete, his worth, away in the day of slavery, so have we fallen. The more so as it has happened inch by inch, day by day-the more so still as many do not yet realize what has been done."
"Yes, he's… we say put one over on you."
The Greek's fist closed and came down once on the arm of his chair. "That worst of all. He laughs at us. He stole my glory, and sat laughing behind his hand as he did, mocking me for an ignorant savage!"
"I don't think you're really… real to him."
"That does not make it better."
Ian sat silent, tense. At last Odikweos went on:
"Yet all this must be borne, if Walker is too strong for you of the Eagle People. The King will not be overthrown so long as he remains victorious."
"And if he does not?"
Odikweos smiled, slow and savage. "Then… perhaps. We will speak more of this."
An alarm bell began to sound outside. Shrieks and screams rose under it. The Ithakan rose, cursing, and shouted for his officers and underlings.
"Your ship of the air comes again to cast thunderbolts," he said to Arnstein. "Not as accurate as those of all-seeing Zeus, but powerful enough."
The map of southern Iberia on the commodore's table and the duplicate on the map easel still looked a little strange to eyes brought up in the twentieth. The coastal plains were much less, the courses of the rivers differing in countless details, as did the roads; the towns were utterly strange. Only the broad outline of the land remained the same, a long trumpet-shaped lowland running from a narrow tip just past where Cordoba would have been to a broad wedge-shaped base at the sea, surrounded by mountains. Tartessos lay at the northwestern end of the trumpet's flared mouth, Cadiz Base at the southeastern. At the foot of the long chain of the Sierra Morenos flowed a great river, trending gently southwest until it reached the site of Seville-that-wasn't, then turning sharply southward into a large open bay. The map showed a major highway running from not-Seville to Tartessos City, along the line the river would have taken without its southward bend.
Alston waited while the assembled officers settled themselves around the table; the flaps were open, and the air that drifted in was rain-washed, cool and fresh, even a little chill. From outside came a distant, constant crackle of small-arms fire from the ranges-the auxiliaries getting intensive training, the Marines, militia, and Guard crews maintaining their edge-the scream of a steam whistle, the sounds of marching feet, hooves, a farrier's hammer driving home nails in a hoof, shouts and orders, a distant screech of metal on metal, a work-shanty from the piers where cargos were swung ashore.
"Gentlemen, ladies," Swindapa said, nodding as the tented room grew quiet.
"Ms. Kurlelo-Alston, the outline, if you please."
"Ma'am." She moved the tip of the ebony rod from Cadiz to where the Guadalquivir ran into the great bay. "Here- where Seville would have been-is the Tartessian forward base, at the first really firm ground. It's a town called Kurutselcarya-duwara-biden, and it means… mmmm… Place Where They Cross the River."
"We'll call it Crossing," Alston said.
There were a few chuckles at that. Swindapa went on. "This area between Crossing and Tartessos is the heartland of their kingdom, and the most heavily populated area. Most of their mines, smelters and foundries are either here"-she tapped the mountains directly north of Tartessos City, at the sources of the Rio Tinto-"or scattered through here."
The pointer swept east and slightly north, along the foothills of the Black Mountains, the Sierra Morena as they were called in the twentieth.
"South of that is the Guadalquivir, the Tasweldan Errigu-abiden-the Great River. It's navigable for ships under two hundred tons all the way east to here; where Cordoba is on the pre-Event maps. They've driven roads north into the mountains, and bring the products down to the water, float them down the river to Crossing, and then either by road to Tartessos-this road between them is their main highway, and it's asphalt-surfaced-or by sailing barge along the coast, since that isn't far.
"Right now, they're building up supplies at Crossing while their army masses just east of the river. We estimate their force at about seven thousand troops, a little less than double our number. The file you've been given has a breakdown on armaments."
"Thank you, Lieutenant Commander," Marian said, and rose. Swindapa handed her the pointer.
"At present, they're covering their main population and manufacturing centers, with this river to move supplies, and relying on their fortifications to protect their capital. They have more troops than we do, but they also have to garrison extensive territories. This area to the west, around their capital, is where the actual Tartessians live; around thirty-five thousand people. There's another seventy-five thousand living in the Guadalquivir Valley; closely related to the Tartessians, speaking the same language, much the same religion and customs. From our Intelligence reports, most of them are fairly happy with Isketerol’s rule, apart from some of the families of their former leaders. About as many people again live in the mountains and plateau areas to the north and east of the Guadalquivir; they farm a little but they're mainly herders and hunters, semi nomads, and they don't like the Tartessians. Neither do the people in those areas of northern Morocco they control.
"Now," Marian went on, "King Isketerol is actually in a bit of a strategic dilemma, although he doesn't realize it. We're going to point it out to him; we're also going to make clear the advantages our superior reconnaissance, mobility, and means of communication give us." She smiled slightly. "Nice of him to build these wonderful roads for us."
There was a wolfish chuckle at that, and she went on: "Our war aim here is to neutralize Tartessos, either by negotiation or by kicking them to bits and stomping on the bits; and we have to do that without damaging our own forces too much, because this is simply a prelude to the real war, against Walker and Great Achaea."
She glanced over at McClintock, who sat with his regimental commanders and staff. "Brigadier, are the auxiliaries ready to take the field?"
"Reasonably, ma'am," he said. "The more time we have to drill them, the better they'll be, of course. I've got Marine or Militia officers and noncoms in command of each group, 'advising' the locals who are nominally in charge. We're providin' all the communications and heavy weapons, of course, but they'll make pretty good riflemen. They'll hold a line."
"Excellent. Lieutenant Commander Bidden, what about the airship?"
"Five more days, ma'am. We're putting up the frames and inserting the gasbags now."
"Mr. Raith?"
The head of the Seahaven Engineering liaison spread his hands, a gesture that was a probably-unconscious imitation of Ron Leaton's. "We're setting up the slipways and rollers," he said. "Nearly done. And the machine shop will be up to speed in another day. That's all we can do until we get the Merrimac itself."
The Coast Guard captains looked at him. "Herself, Mr. Raith, herself," Marian corrected him. "A suggestion; look into hauling out the Farragut on the slipway while we're waiting for Merrimac. It would be a lot easier to get her back into shape that way and it'll give your team some shakedown work."
Then she tapped the end of the pointer into her palm, eyes raking the assembled officers. "What we're going to do now," she said, "is take the initiative. I intend to have the enemy reacting to what we do, and always a day late and a dollar short, with a new surprise every time he thinks he's adjusted. We're going to get inside his decision loop. Brigadier, you'll take the Third Marines and the auxiliaries north along this route…"
"Row soft, there." The voice of the coxswain came from the tiller. "Row soft, all."
Swindapa Kurlelo-Alston blinked under the overhang of helmet as rain came hissing down out of the night sky. That hid the Tartessian fort on the bluffs over there to the east, but she could feel its hulking menace in the part of her spirit that bore the Spear Mark of the hunter-eleven-inch guns there…
The darkened oars rose and fell, a low creaking of thwarts their only sound, lost in the white noise of the rain. The water and the night hid everything, sight and sound and scent.
Marian waited quietly beside her in the bows of the launch as the fort fell away behind them and the minutes passed. To anyone else there would have been nothing in her face, nothing in the way her body waited but a tiger's patience.
Ah, you cannot fool me, bin 'HOtse-khwon, Swindapa thought. Not after all these years. I know when you worry. The dance of our souls is woven together in the moonlight.
Inward, she counted off her heartbeats, the old technique for precise time-telling that the Grandmothers had taught before clocks; the effort of controlling your pulse helped you keep calm in danger as well, feedback the Eagle People called it. Worry was foolishness; Moon Woman had turned Time itself in a circle to bring them together…
"Now," she said, her lips beside Marian's ear. "We should be there now."
Marian signaled. The oars froze, waiting, and they coasted forward against the sluggish 'longshore flow. Reeds waved to their left, a moving blackness against the greater darkness of the land. Another boat came very close, saw the white wand in the stern of theirs, veered aside, and waited; unseen, more did behind. Then the prow of theirs grated on something heavy and hard. Her hands reached out with others, felt the links. A chain, massive, the iron links as thick as her thighs and grown with weeds and harsh barnacles. From report, it stretched from one bank of the river to the other, barring the way to anything heavier than a canoe.
"Corporal," her partner's voice said, "get to it."
Rafts of barrels towed astern of them. Figures in carefully preserved black wetsuits, flippers, masks, and snorkels rolled over the side of this and three other of the boats. Those rafts were brought forward and lashed to the chain ten yards apart; a small thick tarpaulin was draped over the middle between while divers anchored the barrels to the river-ooze. Thirty tense seconds, and a rising dragon's hiss beneath the waters. Light leaked around the tarpaulin, and a smell of scorched metal bubbled to the surface. Then all was as it had been, except that there was a gap where the chain had lain on the water. But nothing to show that at either end…
Marian smiled in the darkness, teeth showing in a glint of white. Swindapa felt her own glee awaken.
"Let's go!"
"And to think I thought I'd get away from digging when I joined up," Vaukel said.
"Shut up and dig-it keeps you warm," Johanna said.
Vaukel nodded and swung the pick, grunting as it came around and jarred into the tough, rocky earth. After half a dozen strokes he stepped back, panting, while his squadmate went at the loosened earth with her shovel. Most of their company was working in such pairs-you couldn't do both at once anyway. The rest of the army stretched off to the southward, across the broad undulating terrain, scoring it like an army of moles.
"I think that's got it," she said.
The two-person foxhole was a narrow slit a yard wide and two long, with a section running back like the stem of a T. Vaukel jumped down into it; one part was a little deeper, to give him protection equal to his shorter comrade's.
"Throw down some rocks," he said; when they came he stamped them into the wet earth, to give better footing.
Then he looked up at the sky, where the morning sun was a glow behind the gray. Back home in the valley of the River of Long Shadows he'd have said such a sky-low, wolf-colored, with wisps of fast-moving cloud-would mean rain, or snow since it was cold enough to see your breath. He took a deep breath through his nose, smelling the mealy scent. It felt a little dry for snow, but who knew so far from Alba?
Who knew the world was so big? he thought, looking westward.
While he was a boy, it had seemed that his mother's hamlet was the wide world, ringed by the forest. The sea, or the Great Wisdom, they were a marvelous far-off tale.
When his uncles and elder brothers had marched off to the Battle of the Downs he'd been green with envy… less so, when not all returned, but he'd listened eagerly to their tales of journeying and war and the fabulous things of the Eagle People. Now he'd seen Irondale, sailed down the river to West-haven, and across the River Ocean on a great swan-winged ship, and walked the streets of Nantucket, which was more wonderful still. From there around the world, and past Ur and Babylon, marched from there to Hattusas and on and on, and everywhere there were different peoples and their Gods and ways.
Now men were coming across those rolling downs to the westward, coming to kill him, so he must kill them. Very strange, he thought.
"Good open country," Johanna said, as she looked westward.
Then she laughed. "More open, now that we've burned down or run off everything on it."
"That's a bad thing, wasting the land," Vaukel said mournfully. "Killing stock you can't eat, Moon Woman doesn't shine on it."
For a moment the two Marines looked at each other in the mutual incomprehension of culture-clash, then shrugged and set to improving their quarters with ledges or little caves to store things, and rigging a shelter-half overhead. Snow started to whisk down from the north, small dry granular flakes. They were pounding the heaped dirt and rock ahead of them down with the flats of their entrenching tools-if you left it loose a bullet might punch through-when Captain Barnes came by with a squad leading pack mules.
"Here," she said, and handed them extra ammunition and a bandolier of grenades.
"Thank you, ma'am," Gwenhaskieths said. She hefted the segmented iron egg of a grenade, her thumb caressing the pin. "We could have used some of these at O'Rourke's Ford, ma'am."
A swift grin. "Make these count. God bless."
"And you, ma'am," they both said, comforted.
Johanna jumped up to the firing step and craned her head around. "We've got backup-that's a Gatling they're digging in behind us."
Vauk nodded solemnly and pulled a dog biscuit and stick of hard beef jerky out of his haversack where it rested behind him. The hard cracker challenged his teeth as he bit a corner off and began to chew. They huddled together for the animal comfort of the warmth, and waited. He could feel his companion shivering a little beside him.
Well, that's the Sun People for you, he thought good-naturedly. Flighty they are, sort of. But fierce as you could want when the time comes for a fight.
It was amazing how travel broadened your perspective. Here, dyaus arsi and Fiernan Bohulugi and Eagle People were like a litter from the same dam.
Thunder rumbled in the west. He looked up for a moment, surprised; you almost never got thunder in a snowstorm like this.
"Guns," Gwenhaskieths said. "It's started."