Island in the Sea of Time

CHAPTER SEVEN

April, Year 1 A.E.

Someone was screaming. It was not until after she had opened her eyes that Swindapa realized it was her own voice. Her hands flailed about, until a painful knock on hard wood brought her shuddering to full consciousness. She sat bolt upright in the small soft bed, heart beating as if it were a bird trying to escape the basketwork cage of her chest. Sweat ran down her forehead, neck, flanks, turning clammy and chill. She put a hand to her neck. The collar was gone, was gone… nothing there but the ointment the Eagle People healer had put on it and her other scrapes.

The Burning Snake had me, she knew. The Dream Eater. It had taken her back, made her feel again the crushing weight and the tearing, splitting pain. As if she were being wedged apart like a log for planks.

She looked around, breath slowing. It was the Red Swallowstar time, just before Moon Woman led the Sun into the sky. Light came through the round window by her side, a window covered in crystal and rimmed with metal like an amber button, but huge. The bed was soft, made with very thin cloth like a fine tunic and thick warm cloaks, but a frightening distance from the floor. Walls surrounded her, straight on two sides, sloping on the other that bore the windows. Enigmatic objects filled the little chamber about her, things whose shapes shed her eyes, making them slip aside. She could hear footsteps and voices above, and the room itself was moving. The great thing she was on was floating, then; her memory did not twist but flew on a true curve. Out the round hole she could see the shore, and the Iraiina camp. She was away from it.

That gave her enough of herself back to swing her feet out of the bed and stand, stretching gingerly. She was thirsty, a little hungry, and had an urgent need to empty her bladder. The door swung open under her hand, after she'd fumbled with the handle for a while.

Wait, she thought. The black chieftain had given her clothes, the same sort of clothes the Eagle ship-people wore. The chieftain who'd taken the collar from her neck, who'd led her back from living death to the Shining World. I had better wear them, to show that I honor her.

The worst things in the world had happened to her, and then something from beyond the world had lifted her out of it. There must be a meaning in this, a track among the stars making a path for her feet.

The… head, was the word… was just across the passage. Swindapa forced herself to walk erect and calm toward it; the narrow walls and the ceiling above her were terrifyingly like a barrow grave, the places where the Old Ones laid their dead. Inside was a mirror, something else both frightening and wonderful beyond words. In it she could see herself, really see, not just catch a blurred glimpse as in a pond or polished bronze.

The face that looked out was strange to her. Not the face of the reckless youngster who had gone into battle to avenge her man's ruined leg and life. Not the student who watched the stars with the Grandmothers. Not the beaten slave of the Sun People, either. Three times have I died-to-myself and been reborn. Moon Woman has drawn me through the earth and Her light has changed me like a tree.

Whose face was it, then? She would have to learn who it was, and how to be that one.

"Don't offer too much," Isketerol said.

Alston looked over at him. Why does he give a damn if we're overcharged? she thought.

Daurthunnicar and some of his chiefs were standing before big wicker baskets of grain-emmer wheat, club wheat, barley, rye-and several types of beans. The representatives from the Eagle had their own samples on display, the same sort of thing they'd given as gifts the night before. The eyes of the Iraiina chieftains kept straying back to the glass tumblers, cloth, plastic, steel tools, and weapons. Some of them licked their lips as they stood leaning a hip or buttock on the hafts of their axes, using them as their remote British descendants would a shooting stick. Today they were less flamboyantly dressed, though still sporting the odd gold arm ring; the rahax had a square silver plate on his belt. He also wore his new steel long sword on a baldric over one shoulder, rarely taking his hand from its hilt.

Arnstein spoke with the Iberian for several minutes. "He says he's a merchant here too, and if we pay too much we'll ruin the market," the Californian said.

"Ask him what he buys here," Alston said.

"Ah… copper and tin in the ingot, and gold dust and nuggets, mostly. Also raw wool, honey, beeswax, flax, tallow, hides and leather, and, ah, slaves. Among other things."

Alston nodded coolly. In a world this thinly populated, with these crude ships, she hadn't expected long-range trade in bulk commodities like grain to be of much importance. Isketerol had his own priorities, and keeping the price of wheat down wasn't one of them.

"Don't worry, Professor. I realize we're in another era with other mores." Damned if I'll put up with this sort of thing forever, she thought. But for now, no alternative. "And what does he sell?"

"All sorts of handicrafts, fine cloth, dyes, drugs, olive oil, wine." Another moment's consultation. "And Isketerol says he hopes to establish friendly relations with us, if we're coming here again. So he gives you his knowledge of local conditions as a gift of friendship. He also says that the locals-the word he uses probably means something like 'savages' or 'natives'-don't have much conception of bargaining. To them, this is sort of an exchange of gifts, and the rahax gets status by giving as well as getting. Our goods are very high-status. Daurthunnicar maintains his position partly by what he can give away. If he takes your gifts and doesn't gift you lavishly in return, he'll lose face."

"Does that sound plausible, Professor?"

"Very. In pre-urban economies with no money, gift exchange is nearly as efficient a way to conceptualize handing stuff around as trade. Wealth is a means to power through prestige, face. Warlike tribal cultures like the Iraiina often think that way."

"And I suspect that losing face among this bunch has very unpleasant consequences. That's probably a hint from Isketerol, by the way, as well. Assure him he'll get his share, tactfully. Now, those baskets seem to hold about a couple of bushels each. Let him know that we need…"

The slow, cumbersome business of dickering through two sets of interpreters went on. After a while Iraiina women brought stools for the leaders to sit on, and the tribal idea of breakfast: more of the coarse bread and cheese, leftover meat, and clay pots of the thin, flat sour beer. At least it's weak, too, praise the Lord. A possum couldn't get high on this stuff. Alston noticed one younger subchief staring at her, more and more intently. A baffled look grew on his face; after a half hour he leaned over and tried to speak quietly in his lord's ear. Daurthunnicar brushed him aside with one thick arm, then barked him into silence.

"Past noon," Alston said at last. "Tactfully suggest that we break for lunch."

Daurthunnicar rumbled agreement; there was more mutual confusion, as three different ideas of reckoning time met and clashed. At last they settled on what Arnstein thought was probably two in the afternoon.

Alston turned. There was a sound of scuffling behind her, footfalls, a quick warning shout of Captain-

A hand fell on her shoulder; she could feel the strength of the grip even through the cloth of her uniform jacket. Daurthunnicar bellowed in anger in the background, but there was no time for talk. She let herself fall backward in the direction of the pull that would otherwise have spun her around, swaying her hips aside and snapping the hammer end of her clenched fist back and down.

There was a choked-off screech of pain as she turned, a quick pivot in place. The young subchief was bending over convulsively, hands cupping his groin in uncontrollable reflex. Her own left hand flashed up to meet his descending and unguarded throat; the Iraiina warrior had neck muscles like braided iron cable, but that didn't matter a damn if you sank your thumb and fingers in precisely… so. There wasn't any muscle protecting the trachea or carotids, no matter how strong you were. The Iraiina choked again, this time as his windpipe closed and blood stopped flowing to his brain. Her right hand had gone into her pocket and closed on a short lead bar; she pulled that out, poised the fist, and struck with a snapping twist to the side of the head as she released his throat. The Iraiina dropped bonelessly to the ground, breathing with a rasping whistle. She restrained the automatic follow-through which would have brought her heel stamp-kicking down on the back of his neck.

Captain Alston looked up, meeting Daurthunnicar's eyes. "Ask him if this is the way his people treat guests," she said.

A bristle of leveled spears surrounded her as the cadets closed up. In back, a few more were unobtrusively bringing their shotguns and rifles around. Most of the Iraiina seemed shocked, bewildered; she saw naked horror on some of their faces. Daurthunnicar looked nearly as purple as his subchief had when her chokehold clamped on his throat. He drew his own dagger and brought it up to his face. Slowly, deliberately, he cut two lines there-shallow, but enough to bring a trickle of blood. Then he stepped forward, sheathed the dagger, and kicked the fallen form of his subordinate hard enough to do far more damage than she'd inflicted.

"Daurthunnicar, rahax, begs forgiveness for this shame," he rumbled; or at least that was how Isketerol relayed it through Arnstein. The rahax kicked the fallen warrior again. "How may he wipe out this shame, this attack on a guest, to avert the anger of his gods?"

Alston looked down at the figure of the Iraiina, recovering just enough to writhe. She remembered the screams that had echoed through her ship that morning, and what the ship's doctor had told her.

"Tell him that his oath is between him and his gods," she said curtly, making a chopping gesture. "Then tell him to treat this one as his people deal with oathbreakers."

Daurthunnicar grunted as if he'd been belly-punched; she turned and strode away, her people falling into position around her, back to the waiting longboat with none of the locals but the Iberian trader with them.

The chief's voice rose in bellowing protest behind her as the tribesfolk milled and shouted into each other's faces, waving their arms. A few women started to keen. The rahax stopped shouting and began to groan and sob; from the thudding sounds he was literally beating his breast as well.

"I didn't realize that the Coast Guard taught that sort of unarmed combat," Arnstein said, wiping his forehead.

"They don't," Alston said bleakly. "Only a little of the basics. The Way is a hobby of mine."

Isketerol spoke: "A very shrewd move, honored captain," he said. "That fool saw that you were a woman. Now none will dare think so-even if they suspect, they will keep silence. To admit that a woman beat one of their own hand to hand would be unbearable shame, so they cannot admit it even to themselves. Also Daurthunnicar will have to give you a better bargain, for his honor's sake."

"Tell Mr. Isketerol," Alston said, without looking around, "that I thank him for his assistance. Also that I have nothing to hide."

"Damn," Cofflin said softly, with a touch of awe. "I just don't by God believe it."

He looked out over Sesachacha Pond and suppressed an impulse to take off his cap as if he were in church, instead of out in the country at the eastern end of the island. His mind groped for a description of what he was seeing. "Flock of birds" was completely inadequate, the way "large building" would be for the World Trade Center. He was looking north to Quidnet across the ash-black remains of the arrowroot and scrub oak thickets Angelica Brand's people had cleared, over the water to the low barrier beach that separated the pond from the ocean. And I can't see a damned thing but birds. Birds so thick ashore that the ground moved with them, like a rippling carpet of feathers and beaks. Their sound was a gobbling, honking thunder, a continuous rustling background loud enough to make speech difficult at less than a shout. The explosions of wings were louder still.

"The smell's awesome, too," he added aloud, to hear himself talk and bring things back to a human scale. "Like the Mother of all Henhouses."

He raised his binoculars, peering through the vision slit of the plank-and-brush hide and suppressing the slight quiver in his hands. Big brownish birds with white-banded necks, Canada geese right enough. Ducks… mallards and canvasbacks and big black ducks, ducks beyond all reason, more varieties than he could name. On land… Some sort of pigeon, he thought; enough of them to outnumber the waterfowl, which he wouldn't have believed possible if he wasn't seeing it with his own eyes.

"Martha," he said, "what sort of pigeon is that? Foot long, sort of a pinkish body, blue… no, a blue-gray head, long pointed tail."

"What?" she shouted, and snatched the glasses out of his hands.

Cofflin stared at her; it was about the most un-Martha-ish behavior he'd ever seen from her. Martha Stoddard did not lose her composure.

"Passenger pigeons," she said, after a long moment's study. "Passenger pigeons, as I live and breathe, passenger pigeons."

Hairs stood up along Cofflin's forearms, and he felt them struggling to rise down his spine. I'm seeing something no human being has seen in over a century, he thought with slow wonder. Then: No. I'm seeing something common as dirt.

"I almost hate to do this," Cofflin said softly.

Part of him did. The rest of him, particularly his stomach and mouth, was downright eager. Roast duck, crackling skin, dark flavorful meat with a touch of fat that fish just didn't have… Jared Cofflin swallowed and gave the lanyard lying by his right hand a good hard yank.

Bunnnf. Bunnnf. Bunnnf. Bunnnf.

The modified harpoon guns had been dug into the fields at a slant. Now the finned darts shot into the air, dragging coils of line behind them… and then a rising arc of net soaring up into the sky, catching the birds as they flung themselves aloft in terror. All across the fields around the pond other nets were rising. From the edge of the water itself came a deeper sound as giant catapults made from whole sets of leaf springs flung weighted nets out over the waterfowl.

If the sound of the birds at rest had been loud, the tumult that followed was enough to stun. Cofflin dove out of the hide, waving his arms and yelling. The shouts were lost in the cannonade thunder of the rising flocks, but hundreds of islanders saw his signal. They ran forward, waving lengths of plank, golf clubs, baseball bats, leaping and striking at birds-the vast majority-that had escaped the nets. The air was thick with feathers and noise, thick with birds in numbers that literally hid the sun, casting a shadow like dense cloud. It drifted through the sky like smoke; bird dung fell from the air and spattered his hat and the shoulders of his coat, falling as thick as light snow. He ignored it, looking at the carpet of feathered wealth that lay around him… and there would be others waiting to take a similar harvest at Gibbs Pond and Folger's Marsh.

"I hope they don't take off elsewhere for good," he said. A broken-winged pigeon fluttered across his feet; he struck at it automatically, to put it out of its pain.

Martha came up beside him, brushing at her sleeve. "I don't think so," she said. "Bless their hard-wired little brains, they migrate pretty automatically. Unless we did this every day… and for that matter, it's not the same flocks every time-we're seeing a segment, like a moving rope touching down once a day. At that, this is just the edge of the main flight path down the coast."

Cofflin nodded, looking at the islanders standing and panting. "Now we've got to collect all this up," he said. "Hope we can store it all-didn't expect this much."

"Who could?" Martha said, shaking her head. "I still don't believe it, and I'm looking at it… Well, we can make more ice, I suppose. There's plenty of salt, they can be packed down in oil, pickled in brine, smoked, the offal will go on the fields…"

He sighed and shook his head in turn, feeling a little of the wonder of it leaving him.

"Let's get to work," he said, pulling up his sleeves. "Big job today."

"It's stolen, isn't it?" Doreen said quietly. "All the things we're… buying."

Arnstein nodded, not taking his eyes away from the scene he was watching, a historian's secret dream made flesh. Every once in a while he would snap another picture.

An Iraiina chief was wheeling his chariot about in the open space before his gathered warriors, its wooden wheels cutting tracks dark green and soil-black through the silvery dew on the grass. The dyed heron plumes on the horses' heads bobbed and fluttered, the bronze and gold of the trappings glittered, and the chief's cloak blew back from his shoulders like the wings of a raven. The chief sprang up, his feet on the rim between the holders for bow, quiver, javelins, and long thrusting spear with its own collar of feathers.

Arnstein had read once-and now seen, these past few days-that chariot riders could run out along the pole that linked the horses' yokes at a full gallop.

Studded shield and leaf-shaped bronze long sword shaped the air as he harangued them. At first they cheered and waved arms and spears and axes. After a few moments they screamed, hammering their weapons on their bright-painted shields, roaring into the hollows of the shields until the sound boomed across the camp. When the chief leaped back into the body of his chariot and the driver slapped the reins to spur the horses forward, they poured after him in a leaping, shrieking mass. Before they passed out of sight among fields and scattered copses of oak they had settled down into a loping trot behind the war-cars, silent and all the more frightening for that.

Doreen went on: "They're going out to kill people and take everything they have and sell it to us! Why don't you do something, or tell the captain-"

Arnstein rounded on her: "Because there isn't anything I can do, because we need the food or we'll starve, and because Captain Alston knows both those things perfectly well!

"Sorry," he added after a moment, as they turned and trudged through the tumbled, rutted confusion of the Iraiina camp. They were getting used to the smell, a thought that made his skin itch-although to do them justice, it probably wasn't so bad when they spread out in their normal fashion. In fact, some of the subchiefs had already moved out, up or down the coast, or inland.

A naked brown boychild ran up to them, a four-year-old with a roach of startling tow-white hair. Daring, he reached out and touched the stranger's leg and then ran away, shrieking his glee. An Iraiina woman scooped him up and paddled him across the bare bottom, then tucked him under her arm and walked away, casting an apologetic smile over her shoulder as she headed back to her tent.

"Sorry myself," Doreen sighed, and tucked her hand through his arm. "I…" She shrugged. "I don't want to quarrel. There are too few of us for that sort of thing."

"Agreed," Arnstein said, and patted the hand. And so few of us who can hold an intelligent conversation. Captain Alston, of course, but her interests were rather specialized, and in any case she was… intimidating, that was the word he was looking for.

Doreen gave his arm a squeeze and changed the subject. "I'm surprised they've gotten so… casual about us so soon," she went on.

"We're marvels," Arnstein said, relieved. "But they live in a world of marvels, magic, ghosts, demons, gods who talk to men in dreams or father children on mortals-they don't just tell folk tales, they believe them, more so than any Holy Roller back home. Like a dancing Hasid drunk on God. We're friendly marvels."

For now, he thought uneasily to himself.

From what he'd seen of them, the Iraiina had their virtues, all of them more comfortably observed from a distance. They were brave, of course. Unflinchingly stoic, loyal to their tribe and chiefs, usually kind to their children and positively affectionate to their horses. Surprisingly clean, for barbarians. They were also callous as cats to anyone outside their bonds of blood and oath, cruel when they were crossed, and they had tempers like well-aged dynamite sweating beads of nitroglycerine. Not just the warriors either; he'd seen two women lighting into each other with distaffs, and then rolling around trying to bite off ears and succeeding in pulling out hanks of hair. The laughing spectators had thought that great sport.

Let them feel insulted, or let some incident make their superstitious fears boil over, and…

"Sooner we leave the better," he said.

"Yes, it's sort of like being on safari… only, you have to make camp with the lions," Doreen agreed.

They wound their way through the early-morning bustle of the camp, between the huts and tents of households large and small. Women fetched water, cooked over fires or in crude clay ovens, kneaded bread dough in wooden troughs, tended the swarming children, gossiped as they spun thread on their distaffs or sat to weave on broad looms with stone-weighted warps set under leather awnings. Children had chores of their own, starting with minding younger siblings while their mothers worked. A slave could be told by her collar and the non-Iraiina way she braided her hair; she was silent as she knelt to grind grain on an arrangement of two stones much like a Mexican metate, but she didn't look spectacularly ill-treated. A woman went by with twin buckets of milk on the ends of a yoke over her shoulders. Three more in colorful checked skirts chanted a song as they swung a sloshing bag made from a whole sheepskin suspended under a tripod of staves; making butter, he supposed.

A brawny redbeard poured molten bronze from a crucible into a mold with exquisite care, while his apprentices blew through hollowed rods to keep the charcoal in his clay hearth hot. Other men cut leather shapes from hides stretched on the ground, braided thongs into ropes, worked with bronze chisel and adze and stone scraper on the growing frame of a chariot, knapped stone into everyday tools for tasks too mundane to rate the precious bronze. The ungreased wooden axles of oxcarts squealed like dying pigs.

Only a few of the men were slaves. He'd learned that free men were all warriors at need, but except for the chiefs' few household guards they mainly herded, farmed, and practiced crafts; the chiefs themselves were not above turning their hands to a man's work. No real leisure class, he decided. This economy's not productive enough to support one.

Many more of the menfolk here would be out with the cattle; herding large beasts was male work, while milking and making cheese and butter were for women. When they'd settled into their new land they'd build houses and start plowing and reaping as well, although he got the impression that farming was secondary to livestock with the Iraiina. Sights, smells, sounds reminded him of what he'd seen on vacations in the backlands of Mexico or in Africa or Asia, but always with differences. He finished one roll of film and snapped another into his camera; they were used to that, now, too.

They came down near the water, where a broad stretch was kept clear around the Tartessian ships. That section was cleaner and less cluttered, if only because the Iberians didn't have women, children, or domestic livestock along. They also looked more disciplined than the Iraiina. Not having much to do, the crews were lolling about in loincloths or less-they lacked the Iraiina nudity taboo-sunning themselves in the mild spring warmth. A few stood leaning on their spears in front of their leader's tent of striped canvas, standing to attention not having been invented yet. Some of the idlers made signs with their fingers and spat aside as the strangers walked past; others called invitations which Doreen needed no Tartessian to understand. They fell silent when Isketerol ducked out from under the canvas, walking over to the Americans with a broad smile.

That didn't reassure Arnstein. It reminded him too much of a man who'd sold him a car once, in San Diego. That car had cost more than its purchase price in repairs the first six months he drove it.

"Hello," the Tartessian said. "Ianarnstein. Msdoreen-rosenthal."

Arnstein started to reply, then checked when he realized that the Tartessian had spoken in English… sort of. "Hello yourself," he replied.

White teeth showed broader in the lean olive-skinned face. "Rejoice, as well," he added in his archaic, gutturally accented Greek. If Arnstein ever met a real Mycenaean, he was probably going to sound extremely Tartessian himself, but comprehension came easily to both of them after a week of practice. He wasn't doing as well with Iraiina, but Doreen had made some progress there and was beginning to pick up a little of this Greek.

"I seek to honor you with your own people's greeting," Isketerol added.

"Rejoice," Arnstein said dryly. "My captain wished to speak with you this morning."

"Ah, she does me honor!" Isketerol said. He looked out toward the Eagle. "The loading must be nearly complete," he went on. "I and my cousin will come."

They came to the shore reserved for the Americans' use. There were disused rafts scattered up and down the beaches where the Iraiina camped, not yet disassembled for timber or firewood. The Eagle's crew was using them to tow basket after basket of grain and beans out to the ship. Another cast off as they came to the water's edge, the crew of the longboat towing it bending their backs to the oars. Today the shore also held pens full of pigs-not the pink sluggish creatures Arnstein knew, but lean bristly vicious things like piney-wood razorbacks, three-quarters wild. All of them were young females in farrow except for a brace of boars penned separately; those watched with cunning beady eyes, their long curved tusks ready for anyone who came near. They'd already loaded calves, colts and ewes, for breeding with their stock back on the island.

"Those pigs're going to be a joy to get on board," Doreen remarked. Arnstein felt his mouth watering at the potential bacon, hams, and chops. There were advantages to being selective about the traditions of your ancestors. He was also acutely conscious of the woman by his side. Different generations, but they had a lot in common. There was nothing like being among aliens to make you realize that.

She ignored the days-old head that looked down on the beach from a pole, drastic reparation for an insult to a guest. The body was buried, with the head of a sacrificial horse in place of its own, an offering to appease the anger of the gods. Doreen blanched slightly at the memory; the young oath-breaking warrior had danced to the sword with a spring in his step and a face as composed as if he were strolling home to dinner. Probably he thought he was going to his gods…

"Ah, Professor, Ms. Rosenthal," Alston said, handing a clipboard to a cadet. "And Isketerol of Tartessos."

The Iberian bowed, hand to breast. Alston nodded her head with its cap of close-cut wiry hair. "Translate, please, Professor. Tell Mr. Isketerol that I have a proposition for him."

There was a tray nearby, with one of the wardroom attendants standing behind it. Arnstein poured small glasses of wine, despite the early hour, diluting it half and half with soda water. You had to serve refreshments, at least symbolically, or you weren't trusted. He didn't think Isketerol trusted them much anyway, but there was no sense in open insult.

"First," the captain of the Eagle said, "thank him for the help he gave us."

Isketerol made a purely Mediterranean gesture with hands and shoulders; Arnstein had seen its like in Sicily and Greece in his own era. "Of course, you were still cheated, if not so badly as you might have been. In Tartessos, or any of the civilized lands around the Middle Sea, your great ship would have been stuffed to bursting three times over with grain and cloth for half-for one part in ten-of what you lavished on these barbarians."

Alston nodded, expressionless. "We may make other arrangements later. Right now, we're planning one more voyage here this season, after the harvest."

"Alas, by then I will have departed. My own ships are nearly ready."

Alston turned to Arnstein. "Phrase this very carefully, Professor. Tell him that we want to hire him for the summer, and we'll pay well. We want him to return with us to the island, teach some of our people the languages he knows, and then come back here in September when the local harvest is in. In return, we'll give him a fair sampling of our trade goods."

Arnstein sputtered. "Captain Alston! Would you buy a used car from-"

"You told me who he reminded you of, Professor, but we need him. Learning languages without one both sides can understand is just too slow, and he speaks how many?"

"Iraiina, several related dialects, the thing the Earth Folk speak, Greek, Tartessian, Egyptian, and some Semitic language I'm pretty sure is ancestral to Hebrew and probably to Phoenician as well. Plus a smattering of others." Part of the cost of doing business for a Tartessian merchant, evidently. "But Captain, impressions aside, I'm certain he's a slave trader and pretty sure he's a part-time pirate."

She shrugged slightly. "It's a calculated risk. I'm afraid I must insist."

The words were polite, and so was the tone. Behind it was a will ready to grind like millstones. He sighed and spread his hands.

The shouting crowd fell silent as the American approached. William Walker craned his head a little, looking over the tops of theirs; he was a tall man even by twentieth-century standards and he'd seen only one or two men bigger here. Two Iraiina warriors had been wrestling in a circle of yelling, cheering onlookers. They were stripped to their kilts, chests heaving and eyes glaring as they backed off warily, looking at him out of the corners of their eyes, panting amid a strong smell of sweat and dust.

Well, not exactly wrestling, Walker thought. One of them-it was the wog they'd picked up at sea, Ohotolarix- was bleeding slightly where a handful of his sparse young beard had been pulled out. The other man looked roughly handled, too. More like catch-as-catch-can.

Everyone was looking at him, one of the mysterious, magical strangers from across the sea. A little fear in the eyes of the men, in the women fear and… Well, well, he thought, smiling at one bold-eyed girl. She was probably not very respectable by local standards; the collar and short dress that showed her ankles indicated that, he thought. But he'd never let that bother him.

"Go ahead," he said, backing up with an urging gesture. "Don't let me stop the fun."

Tentative smiles met his. He nodded and looked at the two contestants. The other warrior was black-haired, more densely bearded than Ohotolarix, and more heavily built, a few years older and sporting a couple of missing teeth. He spat something at the young blond and lunged with hairy arms spread.

Ohotolarix met him chest to chest. Catch-as-catch-can, all right, Walker thought. Butting, biting and… yup, attempted gouging allowed. Pathetic.

They were fast and strong, but neither man seemed to have any idea what to do with his fists and feet-wild haymakers like something out of a 1930s movie, and they didn't even attempt to kick. At last they closed again, and grappled at each other's heavy padded belts, straining and grunting. The older man lifted Ohotolarix bodily into the air and slammed him down again on the hard-packed ground. Blood was running from his mouth and nose now too, but he doggedly began to get up. The victor waited panting until he was on his hands and knees, then delivered a solid moccasined foot to the ribs-evidently kicking wasn't against the rules, they just didn't know how to do it effectively.

Ohotolarix collapsed, wheezing. His opponent dropped on him and grabbed him by the braid, pounding his head on the clay. When the younger man went limp he rose, dusted himself off, and walked toward the girl who'd smiled at Walker. He collected some trinkets from the bystanders, grabbed her wrist, and began to jerk her away; all around him men were laughing or scowling as they exchanged small items, knives or ornaments.

Bets, Walker realized. Girlie there's the main stake. Ohotolarix was hauling himself up, wheezing and snarling as he clutched at his ribs. Tsk. Not fair; he must still be weak. On the other hand, life isn't fair. On the other hand…

"Wait," Walker said easily, putting out a hand. "Hold it, Mr. Macho. Why don't we discuss this?"

The Iraiina flinched a little, then visibly gathered himself and began to brush past.

Maybe that was a mistake, Walker thought. On the third hand, the guy just dissed me.

He put a hand on the man's face and pushed, moving his foot in a simple heel hook. The Iraiina landed on his backside in a puff of dust. There was an amazed buzz from the crowd, then a rising note of excitement as Walker stripped off his jacket and shirt, holding them out with one hand. The girl took them, moving back to the edge of the reforming circle.

"No sense in prolonging this," Walker said easily, suddenly feeling alive. Feeling like I'm really here, not watching it.

He made a gesture that he'd seen among the locals, one that evidently hadn't changed its meaning in three thousand years.

"Mithair," he said. It was a pity he didn't know the word for "your" as well as "mother" yet, but the motion of arm and finger was unmistakable. The victorious warrior screamed at him and leaped.

"Well, maybe they take motherhood more seriously here," Walker said.

He swayed aside, grabbed arm and belt, set his feet in stance, and turned with a snapping flex of his waist and shoulders. Momentum turned into velocity, and the leap turned into a windmilling arc that ended in a crowd of laughing spectators. They broke his fall, and he came up shaking his head. Eyes fixed and pupils wide to swallow the color, lips curled back from teeth, a trail of mixed drool and blood coming from one corner of his mouth.

"Uh-oh," Walker said. I don't think this is a sporting contest anymore.

The Iraiina snatched a long bronze dagger from the belt of a man next to him and charged, shrieking something high-pitched. Walker's reaction was automatic: one hand slashed upward and cracked the edge of his palm into the knifeman's wrist. The blade flew free, twinkling in the evening sun as it spun end over end. A continuation of the same motion sent the American's hand around the Iraiina's arm, locking it under his armpit and torquing it up with the elbow locked against its natural bend. Walker's other arm slammed forward, fingers curled back to present the heel of his right hand as the striking hammer on the anvil of his opponent's breastbone.

"Disssaaa!" he shouted, deep and loud, the focusing kia.

He had just enough control left to pull the blow as it rammed into the Iraiina's chest over the heart. Bone bounced it back at him, and the other man dropped, limp, rasping for breath, and clawing at his chest while his face turned purple.

Walker wheeled, crouching and dropping into stance before he realized that the crowd weren't attacking. Instead they were cheering; men pressed forward to slap him on the shoulders and back, pressing things on him-gold bracelets, worked bronze rings, even the knife the fallen man had used to attack him. The girl handed him back his clothes and made shooing motions at the others as he dressed. He straightened, wary, then grinned and held his hands over his head.

"I've got to control these chivalrous impulses," he muttered to himself.

Ohotolarix was on his feet, smiling wryly-either that or his mouth was too sore to do more. He limped over to the American and started to speak. Then he sighed, shook his head, and took the girl's hand, laying it in Walker's. She looked at him with another smile, this one broader and more appraising, before she cast her eyes down modestly.

"Oh, God damn the captain and her fucking floating Sunday school," Walker groaned.

He took the hand and put it back in Ohotolarix's. The Iraiina looked puzzled, then the beginnings of anger showed on his puffy, dust-and-blood smeared face.

"Uh-oh again," Walker muttered. Think, dude.

He mimed fighting, then stood by Ohotolarix and held a protecting arm above him. Then he stepped behind the Iraiina, taking his arm and raising it in fighting position as if to shield Walker; last of all he pulled the bronze knife he'd tucked through his belt and held it out to the warrior, hilt first.

"Listen, you dumb wog," he said, in slow solemn tones. "I don't have your spear-chucker's script handy, but this is some sort of heap big medicine. You're going to like it and not make trouble, because while I could talk my way out of this I'd rather not. You savvy, blondie?"

Something seemed to have gotten through to the young Iraiina. He took a step back, peering at Walker's face, then slowly went to one knee and took the knife. He grasped the American's hands and put his between them, touching them to his forehead and heart.

"Pothis," the Iraiina said. A string of machine-gun-rapid syllables followed.

"Uh-oh again," Walker muttered. What did I just get myself into?

Ohotolarix seemed to want him to follow. He did, through the dusty tangle of the Iraiina camp, to a small hollow. Two fair-sized leather tents stood there, with a fire between them and bundles and baggage in leather sacks all around; a tripod of spears, a shield, and a long-hafted bronze tomahawk completed the picture. A swaddled infant was propped up against a heap of baskets, and a woman bent over the fire doing something with a big clay pot. She gave a small shriek at the sight of Ohotolarix, rushing forward and then halting in alarm at the sight of Walker beside him.

Wifey, Walker decided, nodding to her as she drew her shawl over her head. The young woman was about Ohotolarix's age, five months pregnant, and quite pretty, with dark-blond hair done up on her head with long bronze-headed bone pins and a round, cheerful face. No collar, longer dress, more jewelry.

The young warrior spoke, and the woman went back to the fire; the other one went into the smaller horsehide tent. Walker sat at his host's urging, and the pregnant girl brought them both bowls from the pot; it turned out to be mutton stew with barley, and hunks of rather dry bread to go with it, along with mead.

"This would be a lot more interesting if I could understand you, or knew what the hell was going on," Walker said. "You know," he went on, finishing his stew, "I sort of like it here. You guys have a lot to learn, and I could-"

The smaller tent's flap came half open and a voice called. Walker looked over; the girl with the collar had shed all her other clothing, and was kneeling on a heap of sheepskins, beckoning. He let a slow grin creep over his face, looking back at Ohotolarix. The young Iraiina gave him the same expression back, with a wink, and made the same gesture Walker had used on his opponent before waving at the tent.

"But oh, context is everything," Walker laughed, nodding and moving toward the tent, where a bare arm wiggled fingers at him. He picked up the cup of mead as he went.

"And the captain did say we should be careful not to offend. Quickest way to offend wogs is to turn down their hospitality."

He ducked inside and closed the flap behind him. The girl leaned back on her elbows, tossing a mane of rust-colored hair behind her; it wasn't very clean, and she smelled fairly strongly of sweat and woodsmoke.

But I don't give a damn, he thought. I like this place. It's more… straightforward.

And God, but there was an opening for someone with his talents here. Heading back to Nantucket with a cargo of pigs and the prospect of a year spent fishing suddenly looked rather dull.

Hold on, boy, he said, stripping and looking down at the girl. You don't know the languages or the customs, and you certainly don't want to get marooned here by your lonesome.

"I'll have to think," he said, taking a breast in each hand. The woman shivered and arched her back. "Later, that is."

"You can't be serious!" Miskelefol shouted. "Has the Jester stolen your wits?"

"Quiet!" Isketerol hissed. The tent's walls were thin, and too many ears listened outside. They were alone within save for a single native slave he'd bought from the Iraiina, crouched in the corner, but he suspected several members of the crews spied for rivals.

The senior Tartessian leaned forward on his stool and caught the neck of his cousin's tunic, hauling him close. Firelight stole through the slit of the tent's flap, underlighting the younger man's face. The smells of dinner cooking came through with the reflected flame, and the voices of men preparing for the night, doing chores about the camp, or playing at stones-and-squares. A woman giggled in the hull of the ship whose horse figurehead reared above them.

"Of course I'm serious," Isketerol went on. "All the gods and goddesses have given me this opportunity, I'd be mad not to take it!"

He sprang to his feet and paced in the slight room the tent allowed, his step lithe and springy as a youth's although he'd seen nearly thirty winters.

"They need me, cousin. They haven't anyone who can speak anything but Achaean, and that badly; and more than that, they know nothing about the lands on this side of the ocean. Forget what they've promised me for a summer's stay-even though it's ten times ten times the profit we expected on this voyage. Think of what could come of being their adviser and go-between when they come to negotiate with the king, or with Pharaoh, even! You know how our house has fallen from the wealth we once had. Why else are we here, risking our hides dickering with savages? This is our gods-given chance to do more than restore it."

He returned to the stool, forcing calm upon himself. He leaned close, hissing in his kinsman's ear. "Think of learning their secrets, and how to wield them!"

"Their magic?" Miskelefol whispered back, spitting aside and making the sign of the horns.

"Perhaps. A spell is a tool. But not all their secrets are magic. The Great King's men in Haiti get iron out of the rocks and know how to work it; that's a mystery, but not one you need to be a mage to understand. These Eagle People, these Amurrukan, they have arts that we don't, just as we have knowledge the barbarians don't. And they're not good at keeping secrets, most of them. With what I can learn…"

"You think you can build a ship of iron?" his cousin said. It had taken them both days to grasp that, but two visits to the Eagle had made them sure.

"No, fool!" Isketerol grabbed patience. "Your pardon, cousin. I misspoke. No, but it isn't magic that pushes her, it's sails-better sails than we know how to make, better arranged. It's smithcraft that forges those swords and spears. Weavers and dyers to make that cloth, artisans to make glass… glass shaped into pitchers, glass clear as spring water, common enough to give away when one beaker would buy riches at court! Listen, cousin…"

His voice sank, tempting, promising. At the last, Miskelefol nodded dubiously. "You're a bolder man than I, kinsman, to risk your life and soul so."

"I'm bold enough to risk the Crone's knife for a small profit among the Iraiina-why not with the Amurrukan for riches beyond dreams?"

"What do you wish?"

"You take the Foam Treader and the Wave Hunter home; my helmsman's well able to handle the Hunter on a safe run. Report to the king… but play down everything.

Say we saw a big ship from an unknown realm, whose crew said little but who had wonderful trade goods to offer. Give him some, but not of the best; the Corn Goddess knows the dregs are enough to satisfy even a king's greed. Our men will gossip, but everyone discounts sailors' lies, and by the time they reach home no two versions will be the same, and the truth is too strange to believe anyway. Summon my father, yours, our uncles, and meet in family conclave… hmmm, and my eldest wife, she's a shrewd one and has friends in the palace. You'll tell them everything you've seen and heard, and all I tell you this night. You'll make plans. They'll have to be tentative, since so much will depend on what I learn. And our elders will have their own ideas. Here's…"

The talk went far into the night, with just enough wine, to sharpen wits. When his cousin left, Isketerol was still too taken with dreams to sleep, even though the strangers would be leaving on the morning tide. He snapped his fingers and signed, and the slave went over to the pallet, stripping and lying down. As he seeded her, it seemed that visions of glory burst before his eyes, a road of gold and fire stretching to the west.

"No, she definitely doesn't want to return home," Arnstein said, his voice sounding harassed.

They were all feeling harassed, not to mention sleep-deprived; loading seven hundred tons of cargo on a ship not designed for it, and without any equipment save block and tackle and sweat, had been a nightmare. Not to mention that most of them had come down with at least a mild case of Montezuma's Revenge-they were calling it British, Belly-at one time or another. Now this.

Alston frowned. "You're sure?"

"Unless Isketerol is lying to me, and I doubt it," the academic said, running a hand over his balding scalp in a gesture of angry helplessness. "Doreen's got enough Iraiina now to confirm it, too."

Swindapa spoke unexpectedly in English. "No home. Go." She pointed west. "Stay, am me Eagle. Go."

The captain blinked in astonishment. "You've been teaching her English already?" she said.

"No," Arnstein said, shaking his head. "She's just got the most amazing goddam memory I've ever run across- so does Isketerol, by the way, not as good as hers but still very impressive. Neither of them forgets a word once they've heard it twice. He's much faster at picking up syntax, but then, he's already learned six languages to her two. If you don't care about fine points of grammar, you can communicate pretty fast that way. Incidentally, Isketerol can also do some formidable arithmetic in his head, especially considering the clumsy numeral system he uses."

Alston looked at the Earth Folk girl. In sneakers and blue overalls, with blond locks escaping from a ponytail and blowing in the sea breeze on the deck of the Eagle, she looked like a corn-fed cheerleader type. Except that everything else was different, the way she moved and stood and the way the language she spoke had shaped her face. Now she folded her arms and looked stubborn in a way that crossed cultures and millennia, saying something in her own language and then repeating it in another.

"The… ah, the stars put her feet on the ship and she's not going to disobey them," Arnstein interpreted. "It's a religious thing, Captain."

Alston clenched her hands behind her back and rose slightly on her toes, thinking. Stubborn, she decided, and shuddered mentally at the thought of trying to force her into a boat. She's got guts, too, to come through what happened to her with her will still strong. She nodded approval.

"Very well," she said. "But make it plain she has to keep out of the way and follow instructions." Swindapa beamed; she seized Alston's hand and pressed it to her forehead, then kissed it. Alston disengaged it, firmly.

"And teach them both English."

The girl would probably be a much more reliable translator than the Tartessian… and besides, Alston could scarcely throw her over the side, all things considered.

As guests, the locals were allowed on the quarterdeck; Isketerol seemed to have enough sense to keep out of the way, and he'd taken a hint from a gift of soap and abandoned his habit of cleaning himself by rubbing down with olive oil and scraping it off, a massive sacrifice on his part. His eyes scanned about like video cameras, missing nothing. Swindapa tended to hover, until Alston gently motioned her back.

The captain looked about. Crew standing by, hands at the wheel, the smooth machinery of the Eagle ready to swing into motion. Wind from the northeast, which was just right, and not too strong, ten knots' worth-also good, in these narrow uncharted waters. If there had been any hope of refueling-in the immediate future… but instead she'd do it the old-fashioned way, sail the anchors out of the main.

"Tide's on the ebb, ma'am," the sailing master said. "Four knots."

"Very well, Mr. Hiller. Prepare to weigh anchor," she said. "Make ready."

"Ready, aye." He turned to face his subordinates. "Sail stations, sail stations, on the fore, on the main, all hands to stations!"

The crew poured up the ratlines and out along the yards, their dark-blue clothing almost disappearing against the morning sky. Deck teams poised ready to haul.

"Put the royals in gear, fore and main. Jibs as well. The minute the anchors come free."

"Royals, fore and main, jibs, ma'am."

"Make it so, Mr. Hiller."

"Up and down!" The anchor chain was vertical.

"Anchors aweigh."

"Anchors aweigh, aye!"

White canvas-Dacron, really-blossomed a hundred and fifty feet above their heads. More sail spread down the stays to the bowsprit, the triangular swatches of the flying jib, the outer jib, the jib and the foremast staysail. Teams heaved them up the stay lines that reached to the foremast.

The quartermaster's whistle rang out again.

"Shift colors!" Jack and ensign came down, and the steaming ensign went up the gaff over their heads.

"House the anchor."

"Thus, thus," Alston said, giving the course to the helmsmen. They strained at the triple wheels as the great square-rigger came about and settled her prow to the south. "Mr. Hiller, the mizzen, if you please."

Alston kept one ear on the smooth sequence of orders, the rest of her mind sketching the ship's course. The fore-and-aft sails on the rearmost mast went up in a series of long surges as the deck crew heaved at the ropes and raised the gaff.

A boatswain's mate bellowed: "Now lower your butts, flangeheads, and haul away, haul away!"

"Heave!"

"Ho!"

"Haul away and sheet her home!"

"Heave!"

"Ho!"

The wind jerked the boom over their heads, swinging it out until it caught against the tackle that controlled its lunge. The green line of the shore wheeled and began to slide past, the cheering throng on the beach dwindling and falling astern. On the port, marshes slid by, ducks and geese and snipe rising thunderous. The air was heavy with the smell of silt and brackish water, a tang that blew away the odors of the Iraiina camp. Marian Alston smiled slightly and looked at the clinometer. Only a few degrees off vertical as yet.

"She trims well, Mr. Hiller."

"She does, Skipper."

A bit of a surprise; the Eagle had never been designed to carry cargo as a regular thing, and it had taken days of sweating-hard labor to arrange it so that it didn't throw the ship grossly off-balance. That could be crucial to her sailing performance, and as it was she rode four feet deeper. And the pigs were squealing and stinking in their improvised pens forward; she'd helped raise pigs as a girl, they were too smart by half, and could be downright dangerous. Her younger brother had toddled right into a pen once, and if her father hadn't been nearby…

Eating well is the best revenge, when it comes to pig.

"Ms. Rapczewicz, what's our status on fresh water?"

"Fifty-one thousand gallons," she replied.

Also good; they didn't want to waste fuel producing drinking water, either.

"Five knots, ma'am. Ten feet under the keel."

"Five knots, ten feet, aye," Alston said. "Mr. Hiller, we'll keep her so for now."

She'd decided to be conservative and take what the old-timers had called the String, down south to just north of the Azores and then across the Atlantic on the edge of the trades. Longer, but you got consistent easterlies that way most of the year. You could work across on the Viking route way north, up around Greenland, there were intermittent easterlies and the East Greenland and Irminger currents… she shuddered at the thought. There would be berg ice, this time of year- any time, actually, but worse just now.

She waited, expressionless, as the land fell away astern and on either side. The ship's motion changed as they came out of the estuary, a longer plunging roll as they came into waves that ran uninterrupted across three thousand miles of ocean; that always made her feel more alive, more free. The breeze stiffened out of the north, and a quiet order brought the yards braced around. She looked west. Odd. And in all that space, nothing but fish, birds, and whales. No other ship, until you got to within dugout-canoe range of the Americas… would they be called the Americas here? Probably, if we live to do the naming. Not a submarine beneath the waves, not an aircraft over it, no lights to pass in the night or float by overhead.

"Helm, south by southwest."

"South by southwest, aye."

"Mr. Hiller, make all plain sail."

"All plain sail, aye."

He turned and began to shout orders. White sail blossomed upward toward the tops of the Eagle's masts, as if a huge sheet were being shaken out in the wind. As each sail came taut she could feel the ship lift and heel, moving more quickly as the vast horsepower of moving air was caught and channeled through the standing rigging into the hull. The yards were braced around at not quite right angles to the keel and the crew crept down off the yards and out of the rigging; others hauled and set lines across the deck. Slowly, slowly, the big ship leaned to port. The bow wave turned from a gentle swelling to white water, and that foamed higher and higher.

In twenty minutes it was spouting out the hawser holes and along the forecastle decking, to drain out the lee scuppers around the feet of the inevitable seasickness cases. Isketerol of Tartessos looked well enough, holding on to a line and staring incredulously overside as he mentally estimated the speed. Swindapa had turned green, and blundered helplessly until a couple of cadets snapped a safety line to her belt and draped her over the leeside bulwarks just in time.

The port rail was nearly under; Alston looked at the clinometer. Twenty degrees. "Speed," she said.

"Twelve knots and rising, ma'am."

"Twelve knots, aye. Ms. Rapczewicz, you have the deck; keep her thus, but reef if the wind freshens. I'll be in my cabin."

And she should give Cofflin a call, let him know things had gone well. They probably needed some morale-boosting back home. She checked in midstride for an instant. Home? Well, our trip here was instructive, at least. Compared to anywhere else in the world of 1250 B.C., Nantucket was very homelike indeed.

"Whazzit?"

Ian Arnstein came awake with a violent start. The little cabin was dark except for a trickle of light through the closed porthole, and for a moment he was lost, torn from a dream of freeways and shopping malls and teenagers on Rollerblades. Fear made his heart race.

Someone's here, he thought. There shouldn't be; he had the tiny room to himself. Captain Alston had left a fair number of her officers back on the island to oversee fishing and matters maritime, the ones who'd been there mainly as instructors for the cadets.

"Who's that?" he whispered.

There was a rustling at the edge of the bunk, and a vague shape in the darkness. "Me," Doreen's voice said.

"Oh." His heart still beat faster, but it wasn't quite the same sort of fear. "Why… oh."

A hand took his and guided it to close on a full breast. "You're an intelligent man, Ian. Don't be silly. Why do you think I'm here?"

I should be thinking, he knew through the hammering in his temples. We've only known each other for a few weeks… I'm too old for her… all this stress has got us acting in ways we wouldn't… His hands held the blankets up and slid down her back as she slid into the narrow bunk beside him, warm and smelling of clean woman and soap. Her first kiss landed on his nose in the dark, but the second was on target.

"Oh, yeah," she murmured. "The beard tickles nice."

"Yeah," he echoed in the same breathy whisper.

To hell with thinking. Before he'd expected it she had rolled underneath him and her legs were clamped along his flanks. He moved convulsively and bumped his head against the overhead.

"Damn these bunks!" he hissed.

Doreen chuckled and wrapped her legs around his waist instead, then gave a sigh that was half groan as he slipped into her. "Come on then," she whispered into his ear as they began to rock together. "God, come on, then."

Some immeasurable time afterward they lay in a tangle of arms and legs and stray bits of sheet caught between and under them, amid a pleasant smell of sweat and sex.

"It is cramped," he said, and sighed. "For the first time since this whole thing started, I feel as if I'm really here."

"Why, thank you, sir," Doreen purred into his ear. "The feeling's mutual."

A thought jarred him. "Wait a minute-you're protected, aren't you?"

"It's a bit late to ask, but yes."

Ian sighed relief. "It'd be a shame to waste this waist." He ran a hand down the damp smooth skin of her back. "Many happy returns of the night," he said, then checked himself.

"Mmmm-hmm," Doreen said affirmatively, nuzzling into the curve of his neck. "Hoped you'd say that."

Silence ticked away. "I'm a bit, well, old, middle-aged really, and-"

"I'm not a teenager either, I'm nearly thirty," she said. "Well into spinsterhood, by Bronze Age standards, I suppose." A chuckle fluttered across his skin, cool on the dampness. "Besides, you're certainly the most eligible Jewish man around. Even if you're not a medical doctor. Unless I sail east and put the make on Moses."

"We'll see how it goes, then," he said drowsily, feeling an enormous peace. A minute later he tugged his eyelids open. "God, we can't go to sleep, or she'll tow us at the end of a rope at dawn!" Captain Alston had impressed him as the type who enforced regulations with an old-fashioned absolutism.

"Mmmm, no. I asked. She said as civilians all we had to be was discreet."

They rearranged themselves with some effort, smoothing the sheets a little and drawing up the blanket, then settling down spoon fashion. It was a long while since he'd slept- in the go-to-sleep sense of the term-with a woman, and never in a bed so narrow. After a half hour his drowsiness faded.

"My, for a middle-aged man…"