On the Oceans of Eternity

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

November, 10 A.E.-Western Anatolia

October, 10 A.E.-Straits of the Pillars, Tartessos

October, 10 A.E.-Long Island, Republic of Nantucket

October, 10 A.E.-Tartessos City, southwestern Iberia

The jolt of the colonel talking to her faded, and Johanna Gwenhaskieths's marching day dragged on; an hour of march, ten minutes of rest to swig water and gnaw a dog biscuit, another hour on the muddy road. Even in one day's march up the Seha valley, though, the landscape had begun to change; fewer trees and groves, more of them olives, a drier feel to the land. Mountains rose in the east, the edge of the high country. If it hadn't been for that change of landscape, she might have thought this the afterlife, and she condemned to a march without end.

The sun dropped behind them to the right, throwing long shadows. A bugle call sounded; Johanna found her feet stopping automatically, even before the fall out and stack arms sounded.

Good campground, she thought automatically. A nice little hill, a ruined farmstead for dry firewood… and she smiled beatifically at the little flock of sheep in a pen.

"Fresh meat tonight," she said happily; feast-day food.

And it wasn't her company's turn for night-watch, so there wouldn't be a four-hour chunk taken out of her sleep. That didn't mean the end of work, of course, but at least she could walk over to where her section would be in the battalion camp, add her rifle and helmet to one of the tripods, and drop her webbing harness and rucksack. Then she pulled out a bundle of stakes with a steel blade on either end-swine-feathers, to be driven into the trench outside the earthwork-and took her entrenching tool to the perimeter.

When she came back a fire was already crackling, and she caught the smell of mutton roasting on it, enough to make her forget aching muscles, mud, and sweat.

One of her squad was frying crumbled dog biscuit in the grease that dropped from the chunks of meat; from the look, the beast had been a yearling lamb. She took some of the biscuit in her mess tin and hacked off a couple of chops from the spit with her clasp knife, blowing on her fingers as she juggled the hot food. While she gnawed the savory meat and ate the fat-rich morsels of biscuit (for once not worrying about breaking a tooth on it) Vaukel came up with two buckets of water. She hid a smile; even after this long, it was still a little odd to have someone doing women's work for her. Not unpleasant, she'd come to like Eagle People ways and even Fiernan more than those she'd grown up with.

"The corpsmen say the water's safe," Vaukel said.

"Ah, good!" she said, dipping up a cup that didn't have the unpleasant mineral taste of the purifying powder.

The she tossed her uniform over a branch and made for her rucksack, to fetch out a scrap of soap and half a dozen pairs of underwear and socks. A chance to clean them and herself; if she propped them on sticks by the embers of the fire they'd probably dry overnight, and if they didn't they'd be close enough to pack, or wear. When she came back the tent was up, and her squadmates were unrolling their bedding inside, and her legs were starting to tell her their tale of cooling, stiffening muscle.

"Ah, I'm getting to be a crone," she said as she slumped down.

"Legs stiff?" Vaukel said beside her. "Should I loosen them?"

"Thanks, Vauk," she said; Fiernans had a knack for that, healing magic in their fingers.

She sighed as he kneaded the knots and tension out of one leg, then another, finishing by stretching her ankles, rubbing the soles of her feet and drumming the edges of his hands up and down from heel to buttocks. Ahh, that does feel better. When he'd finished she looked up and caught his hopeful unspoken question, not to mention the rampant evidence of it.

"Sure," she said, with a drowsy chuckle.

A glance sideways showed the camp settling down for the night, the sun only a faint rim of light in the west. "But none of that Fiernan fancy work this time," she said, rolling onto her back. The Earth Folk could turn something as simple as fucking into something as elaborate as one of their dancing ceremonies. "I need my sleep."

Later, yawning and on the verge of slumber, she listened to a sentry's boots going past at the perimeter not far away, a wolf howling somewhere, a rustle of chill wind through the tree whose branches spread over the tent. The squad's fire was banked with earth on its outer side, to throw the warmth of the fire into the open flap of the tent. The stars were many and bright, promising dry weather… and dry socks, tomorrow.

War's a fine trade, she thought happily.

Even in the field like this the living was no rougher than the damp chill huts of home, parents and siblings and cousins and the livestock all sleeping in the same straw. Nor was the work harder than a croft-born girl's endless round of butter-churning and grain-grinding, cooking and weaving, walking miles under a weight of water buckets or bundled firewood; in barracks it was a good deal softer all 'round, and the company was better either way. More freedom, too; and in the uniform of the Corps nobody dared or cared to scorn you.

Then her belly tightened a little as she remembered the hissing roar of the Ringapi surging against the barricade, or the moaning scream of a mortar round from out of the sky overhead. She moved a little closer to the broad warm strength of Vaukel's back, comforted by the snores and sighs and body heat of the rest of the squad beyond as well.

At least, when you don't have a battle to fight, war's a fine trade.

"This was as close as the ultralights could get," Marian Alston said, spreading the photographs on the table. The captains crowded around, balancing instinctively against the sway of a ship under way. "The enemy have taken considerable counter-measures against airborne reconnaissance. Particularly at low altitudes."

Light cannon on counterbalanced yoke mounts designed to shoot upward, balloons with heavy pivot-rifles mounted in their gondolas and platforms on top of the gasbags, rockets. All of them crude and inaccurate, but the little motorized hang gliders weren't all that sophisticated either.

Dammit, if only we had real aircraft! Of course, while she was at it she could wish for missile boats and a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier… She glanced out the stern gallery windows, at the frigates following the flagship in a line that extended for miles, one ruler-straight millrace wake white across the blue of the ocean. We'll make do.

Still, the shots of Tartessos the City from above were fairly clear; a digital videocamera in the ultralight, run through the PC in Chamberlain's radio shack and its inkjet printer.

They lay next to the maps compiled by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Both showed what would become the junction of the Odiel and Tinto Rivers in the twentieth century-would have become, she thought with a mental stutter so familiar she hardly noticed it now. This was considerably different from what the uptime maps recorded. The great bay was larger, the peninsula of land down its middle far narrower, and there was less in the way of swamp and marsh around its fringes. Three thousand years of human beings cutting trees in the mountains, freeing soil to erode away downstream and rivers to drop the silt on the ocean shore; three thousand years of plowed fields doing likewise. Those could change the very contours of the land.

The city itself stood roughly where Huelva would have, in a history that included a nation called Espana. Columbus had sailed from here, at the beginning of those fateful years when the folk of Europe broke out into the world ocean, armed with cannon and galleons, smallpox and the joint-stock company. Here it had been a glorified village barely a decade ago, mud-walled houses clinging to a few steep hills at the end of the peninsula.

Now it was a city, bigger than Nantucket. Someone whistled softly.

"Been a busy little bee, hasn't he?"

Alston nodded. "As you can see, the harbor mouth is narrow and nearly blocked by this island," she said. Her finger pointed to a long islet that divided the entrance in two. "Heavy fortifications here, here, and here-multiple cross fires. Earthwork forts with massive stone retaining walls and revetments, bombproof magazines, underground ways to the bastions. The landward defenses of the forts on both sides are formidable, and fronted by marsh."

"A nightmare," McClintock said. "Impossible to storm. I'm surprised Isketerol came up with it, even with the reference books."

Alston nodded again. "Heavy guns, at least forty-two pounders, with overhead protection. Rocket batteries as well. I suspect Walker or one of his people was consulting engineer-there's a Mycenaean look to some of that stonework. Ms. Kurlelo-Alston."

Swindapa leaned forward and pressed a control. The VCR below the TV set they'd mounted on the tabletop whirred, and images flickered across its screen, jerking and jinking as the ultralight dodged ground fire. They saw a dragon's spittle-spray of rockets rising in a sea of flame from multiple tubes mounted on wagons, soaring skyward in arches of smoke, and plunging downward toward the slender shape of a Guard scouting schooner. The white wake of the ship showed how it curved away from the coast, sailing reach at a good twelve knots.

The commander of that craft lifted her billed cap and shook her head. "They don't have as much range as the guns," she said. "Less than our rockets. More misfires, too." Some of the trails of smoke corkscrewed, or ended in ragged clouds of off-white vapor that drifted downwind to the south. "But they could swamp anyone who got close, tear a ship apart." On the screen, the rockets landed short of the ship and sent gouts of shattered water flying skyward, some close enough to throw spray on its decks. "It was… alarming, ma'am. I'd say seven-or eight-pound bursting charges," she finished, as Swindapa turned the machine off.

The faces stayed impassive, but Alston could feel their inner wince. So far, neither side had started using explosive shells in ship-to-ship actions. Both powers had the capacity, and some of those shells waited in the magazines of her fleet.

That presented a problem, though. The problem was…

… two wooden ships firing explosive shell into each other are like duelists… where both parties start by sticking their pistol barrels into each other's mouths and then fire together on the count of three.

She sincerely hoped the situation would result in the sort of de facto restraint that had kept both sides from using poison gas in World War II. For ship-to-ship actions, at least. Certainly nobody was going to show any restraint when an earth-and-stone fort shot at wooden hulls.

"So, running the harbor mouth's out," someone said in a dry tone. That brought a general chuckle.

"Ms. Kurlelo-Alston?" Marian said.

"Ma'am." Swindapa put an enlargement of a picture on an easel. "Gentlemen, ladies, as you can see the city is also strongly fortified."

And much bigger than it was, too, Alston thought. There must be around twenty thousand people in it now, a sevenfold increase since Isketerol came home. The old town on the rocky hills had been largely replaced by a fortified palace complex; landward of the new city's grid of streets a Vauban-style sunken wall with bastions and deep moat ran from river to river.

A disconcerting number of buildings showed tall brick chimneys or other evidence of being manufactories. Gardens, too. Looks like a good sanitation system… that's a waterworks there in the northeast corner… shipyards and drydocks on the northern side of the city…

Swindapa moved her pointer along that shore, out toward the end of the land. "Here's the naval docks. We count twelve warcraft of five hundred tons or more."

Lips tightened. Not as powerful as the Guard's frigates, but a lot more of them.

"They're comparable to the ones we fought off Nantucket in the spring… but see, the number of gunports is less on each. They're probably carrying fewer cannon than they did then, but heavier metal. Certainly large shore-based crews."

Nods; operating close to your harbor you could cram in far more men than you could if you had to feed them and find them room to sleep. That would make their broadsides come faster, and give them plenty of men for boarding.

"What's this?" Thomas Hiller said, peering close at one of the sheets on the table. "They're fitting them out with some sort of… are those shields?"

"We think they're wrought-iron plates," Swindapa said quietly. "Not enough to give much protection from cannon shot, but useful against small arms."

"Damn," Hiller said mildly; he was a gray-bearded man, once sailing master on the Eagle, come out of a teaching position at Fort Brandt OCS to command Sheridan, the newest of the frigates. "That'll be inconvenient… though it might make them top-heavy in a blow?"

Alston shook her head. "Home-team advantage," she said. "They only have to be able to carry it off right outside their own harbor, and in good weather. Next is something really new. We think the Tartessians got the design from Walker. The flier took a risk for a closer shot."

Swindapa put up another enlargement. It showed a long snake-slim ship walking like a centipede across the harbor. "A galley," she said. "Three-man oars, twenty-two to a side. No mast-it's probably dismountable-with this ramming beak and two heavy guns forward and two more guns aft. They're covered with tarpaulins to keep us from getting the details on the weapons. These galleys are lightly built, mostly from pine, so they can make a lot of them. And they are very fast. With those huge crews they can't operate far from shore, but from the look of it the rowers are also armed with cutlasses."

An additional hundred and sixty armed men, when the galley was fast to another ship's side. That could be very nasty in a boarding action.

"We estimate they have about thirty of them," Swindapa said. "Then there are another forty or so smaller vessels, no threat as gunships. but able to carry warriors out to a melee."

Alston leaned forward and rested her fingers on the table. "There are two options. First, they refuse to engage; then we proceed to Cadiz. Second, they come out and fight; we break their fleet, blockade the harbor mouth, and then proceed to Cadiz."

"What if they beat us?" the captain of the Lincoln said.

"Defeat is not an option, Victor," Alson said. She looked around the circle of faces. "We'll be coming up level with Tartessos's location early tomorrow," she said. "I doubt they'll try anything before sunrise-Isketerol knows we still have night-vision devices. It'll be then, or never."

Jared Cofflin woke in the darkness. He'd noticed himself sleeping more lightly, in recent years-had to visit the jakes more often, too, of course; and this was a strange bed. There was a pair of great horned owls here around the Hollard farmstead, probably nesting in the barn; their deep feathered basso: Whoo, whoo-oo, whoo, whoo… and the answering Whoo, whoo-oo-oo, whoo-oo, whoo-oo seemed to go on interminably.

Some folks found it soothing. It made his thoughts turn to shotguns. He could feel that it was very late; the night had the dead stillness of the hours before dawn, the air a slight chill.

It wasn't the owls this time, at least. For a long moment he wasn't quite sure what had woken him. Martha was just stirring beside him in the big feather bed in the Hollards' guest bedroom-it was a sign of their hosts' prosperity that they could afford one, with a household that included eight adults and all those children. He yawned; Jane had brought out a fiddle after dinner, Martha her guitar, and they'd all spent some time making the night hideous with attempts at song… well, that wasn't quite fair; Jane and Tanaswada were really good, and Saucarn knew a huge fund of hunting and drinking songs he'd mostly translated into English, and Tom had a collection of old-time tunes, real folk material, that his mother had passed on to him.

"Uncle Jared?" a small voice said in the darkness; he could just see the outline of the speaker against the faint starglow through the curtained window.

"Just a minute." He sighed, and reached out to flick on his lighter, touch it to the wick of the kerosene lantern, turn it up, and put the glass chimney back on. It opened up a circle of light, showing the simple beauty of polished wood, the intricate carving on the posts of the bed, the colorful throw rugs on the plank floor.

Heather Kurlelo-Alston was standing on his side of the bed; her sister was over by Martha's. They were both in their spotted pyjamas, clutching their companions-a goggle-eyed blue snake for Lucy, and a koala bear for the redhead-with a tightness that would have choked live pets. Probably they were getting past the stage where the beloved stuffed animals could offer enough comfort.

Lord, how quick they grow. Not as fast as before the Event, though, not inside. They get to stay kids while they're kids.

"I'm sorry to wake you up, Uncle Jared," Heather said in a small voice, very different from her usual brassy self-confidence.

"We were having bad dreams, Aunt Martha," Lucy said.

"We miss our moms," Heather continued.

"We're afraid they'll get hurt."

"We're afraid they won't come back, ever." A tear trickled down Heather's freckled face. "We didn't want to wake the other kids up so we came in here."

"Is that okay?"

"Of course it's all right," Jared Cofflin said; Martha seconded him in a sleepy murmur. "Come on, little'uns." He turned the lamp down to a low night-light glow.

Wish there was someone I could get to make me feel better about that, he thought dryly.

The children both jumped into the bed at slightly more than greased-lightning speed, cuddling close. Jared hugged a small flannel-clad form, feeling it relax into comfort with a little sigh. Heather nuzzled her head into the goose-down softness of the pillow, tucked a palm under her cheek, and went to sleep like a light going out. The man waited until her breathing had grown even and then gently moved her aside a bit, turning over and pulling up the covers. Lucy was snoring daintily on Martha's shoulder, and Heather curled up against his back.

Good night, he thought, and saw the answer in his wife's eyes; she touched him lightly once on the cheek. Well, guess I do have someone, come to that. But Marian, 'dapa, you'd better

come back. These two need you. His mind unclenched, spiraling downward into the waiting soft darkness. Hell, we all do.

"This, too, is part of kingship," Isketerol of Tartessos murmured aside.

His son Sarsental stopped fidgeting and sat straighter on the padded stool that rested beside the carved and gilded olive wood of his father's throne. It is not easy to sit still and listen to the drone of laws when you have only sixteen winters, his father knew. But it is needful.

The audience room was large, full of courtiers, officials, and soldiers, spectators near the great doors or in the second-story gallery that ran around it supported by pillars carved in the form of heroes and monsters. Light came from glass windows and skylights between the high rafters; it stabbed on the peacock dress of nobles, the green-and-brown of army uniforms, the plain linen and wool of commoners. The walls were murals on plaster, showing the deeds of the King and the forms of the Great Gods looming over all. A smell of stone, sea-salt through the windows, city smoke, clean sweat, and dust. Isketerol fought down his own impatience-

"My Lord King!" A courier, going to one knee and saluting with fist to breast. "The enemy fleet has been sighted!"

"Where?" Isketerol said calmly, commanding his fingers not to clench on the wood.

"Passing by Cape Claw; the heliograph has carried the signal."

Isketerol nodded. That was a day's sailing away. The heliograph stations could pass that message in less than an hour, flickering light from hilltop to tower to city.

"I will hear the report in detail later," he said.

The courier looked up in surprise. "But, Lord King-

"The Amurrukan must also wait on the King's pleasure," Isketerol said. "Hold yourself ready for conference with me. Now, let us continue with the case at hand."

There was silence at that, then a rising murmur of wonder. Isketerol caught the eye of a captain of the Royal Guards; that man barked an order. Uniformed men stood at parade rest about the throne, dividing the hall between those with business and those merely looking on. Now they raised their rifles an inch and slammed the steel-shod butts down on the stone pavement three times in perfect unison, bam… bam… bam, a gunshot sound. Silence fell, more profound than before.

Isketerol hid his smile, as he had his boredom. Such…

gestures, they are also part of kingship. It is by such things that the souls of men are governed.

He looked back at the two before him. One was a man he knew slightly, Warentekal son of Warentekal, a landowner of moderate wealth up north of Crossing; he'd conferred with him on business there, the spreading of the New Learning concerning crops and farm tools, road-tax matters, security against up-country raiders before those tribes were subdued. He was stout for a Tartessian, kettle-bellied and bush-bearded, wearing an old-style tunic that left one shoulder bare, and a studded belt; several of his sons and attendants stood behind him. The other was a woman. She was old, her gray head covered by a simple headdress, her gown faded and patched; her gimlet eyes stayed on the King's face, and her lips worked over a mostly toothless mouth. Nose and chin threatened to meet…

An avatar of the Crone, Isketerol thought, and made a small gesture of aversion. Only one attended her, a young man whose testicles had probably only just dropped; he was bandaged and leaned on a cane.

"Warentekal," Isketerol said. "It is ancient law that if a tame beast breaks down a fence and does damage to crops, then the beast shall be forfeit to the tiller of the field. This woman says that when your swine broke down the fence of her field, and her son killed and took you the hides in token as custom demands, you set your servants upon him, and drove him out with rocks and sticks. What do you say to this?"

Warentekal seemed to swell and flush. "Lord King, this woman Seurlnai and her family are the merest trash-worthless smallholders, too lazy to make a living. In former years they borrowed grain from me to live, then paid less than the debt was worth except in the eye of charity by working in my family's fields at harvest. Now they grow insolent and swollen with pride, claiming my swine when all they wish is to steal the food they are too idle to grow themselves-

The old woman screeched an oath and shook her fist. "We paid you all our debt, in the King's good silver, you bribe-squeezing sack of pigdung, and we harvest our own land now, or did before you-"

"Silence!" the majordomo of the court said, slamming his staff down as the soldiers had their rifles. "The King will question you."

A wiseman leaned close to the King, murmured, showed a paper. "Yes," Isketerol said. "The woman Seurlnai has an elder son, who serves in the King's ships, and from his wages-sent home in filial piety-the family's debts were paid."

Warentekal glowered again, silently. Isketerol recognized the look. Doubtless the landowner was richer than he had ever been, and doubtless he could afford to hire harvest help, or rent or buy slaves enough to do it; he'd been among the first in his district to use one of the mule-drawn reapers demonstrated on the royal estates. But he also doubtless missed his petty local lordship, the loss of clientage from those who now made the King himself their direct patron.

"And then when the bailiff from my estate nearby came to judge the situation, you would not let him onto your land. Nor did you heed the order he brought from one of my judges. This is contempt of the Crown."

Warentekal went down on one knee. "To your royal person I and mine give all respect," he grated. "But Lord King, the bailiff was a man of no account, a mere freedman. Should I let him walk lordly-wise on my land, land granted to my blood by the Lady Herself, the toplofty bastard of no father? May a man of rank not do as he pleases with his own?"

"Silence!" Isketerol roared suddenly, a lion's menace in the tone.

Warentekal went gray, remembering too late that this was not the old King's court, and dropping to his face. Isketerol need only give the command, and he would be taken out and thrown into Arucuttag's sea with a rock in his bound hands to speed the journey to the halls of the God.

Isketerol leaned forward, and the other man flinched from his pointing finger as from a spear.

"Your land? The King's Law runs and the King's Peace holds on all the land in this realm. You presumed to break it-the violence you offered to this man, the brother of one of my warriors, is violence against me. You are not a lesser King on your estate, Warentekal, ruling there as I do here. You are my subject just as the woman Seurlnai is, and like her you hold your land of me, who am the Lady's Bridegroom."

He leaned back again, calm and remote. "Hear the judgment of the King. The man Warentekal"-by leaving off the naming of his father, he was reduced for a moment to a commoner's level-"let his stock damage the fields of the woman Seurlnai. For this, the fine is one silver dollar."

Warentekal winced. That was a moderately severe fine; several times the worth of the pigs. You will bawl like a branded calf yourself before I am done, Isketerol thought grimly.

"The man Warentekal ordered slaves to set upon a free subject of the King," Isketerol went on. "For this the fine is the price of two slaves." Warentekal's mouth opened and closed silently. He owned twenty, far more than was common, but two were a substantial proportion of his wealth. "Let the King's bailiff of his estate in the district select the slaves in question, a manservant and a maidservant. Let the maidservant be given to the woman Seurlnai that her labors be lessened."

He turned and questioned the wiseman again, this time about the size of the widow's holding; twelve acres, six under cultivation. One daughter lived with her yet, the others were married, and her son in the fleet was widowed.

Then he continued: "Let the manservant be put to work on the land of the woman Seurlnai until her son returns from the Royal service or her second son regains his full health, and while he labors, let his food be provided from the King's purse." A smallholding like that couldn't support another mouth, but it did need a grown man's full labors.

He sat silent for a moment. "And for the refusal of an order from one of my judges, thus spurning the King's laws, the land-tax upon the fields and flocks of the man Warentekal shall be doubled for… mmm, four years."

The landowner's face had gone pale. Now it turned purple. Isketerol's finger stabbed out again: "And if you break the King's Peace again, Warentekal son of Warentekal, I will have your head. Hear me!"

He raised his voice slightly, using a sailor's trick to pitch it to carry.

"By Arucuttag of the Sea, by the Lady of Tartessos, by the Sun Lord whose likeness I wear, by the Grain Goddess by whose bounty we live, I swear this. That a naked virgin with a sack of gold in each hand shall be able to walk from the sea to the mountains unmolested, by the time my kingship descends to my son.

"Let him who would threaten the King's Peace, let him who would grind down the lowly, let him who would play the bully or the bandit, know this! And he who carries the King's writ, though he be but a shaven ape or a dog walking on its hind legs, him shall you heed and obey!"

The soldiers rapped the floor again, and the clerks bent to scribble the orders, their quill pens scratching on the paper.

"This court is concluded," Isketerol went on, amid the cheers.

The old woman looked at him and nodded firmly once, then turned and hobbled out with the rest, her hand on her injured son's arm. Isketerol snorted to himself; he knew his folk. Someone from the city might have been more effusive in their gratitude, but wouldn't have meant it as much, either.

Sarsental was glowing as they walked into an antechamber, and servants stripped the robe of state from Isketerol, bringing him the bright archaic regalia of war. And this too I will only wear until aboard ship, Isketerol thought wryly. What a thing of shows and masks this kingship is!

"You put a stick in the spokes of that one's chariot, my sire," Sarsental said.

"I showed him that the King's Law runs to his doorstep and within," Isketerol said. "To his very hearthstone and hearth-shrine and ancestral graves. And I showed the common folk that the King's hand extends over a poor smallholder as well as a rich noble. Fear is a strong support for a throne; but love makes a good yokemate for it. This land of ours is a wild chariot team, my son. I hope to have them used to the bit and harness by the time I turn the reins over to you. And speaking of which…"

He pulled a ring from his finger. That was another thing he had learned from the Amurrukan books, the signet ring and seal as a symbol of the Throne. Sarsental had seen it on his hand since his earliest memories. His face went slack with surprise as Isketerol put it in his hand and folded the youth's fingers about it.

"My sire?" he said, and his voice broke in a squeak. Anger at that drove out shock, red washing the white from his face.

"While I am with the fleets and armies, I will need one to stand for me here in the city," he said.

"But… sire!"

"You are young, yes, but you have learned well. And you will have wisemen and war-captains of my appointment to advise you."

"Oh," Sarsental said. "Then… this is for show's sake?"

"No," Isketerol said flatly. "The seal is the seal."

The boy thought again, eyes steady. "Then… if I override the advice of those you set to counsel me…"

"The glory of success will be yours. Or the blame of failure."

Isketerol was not too worried; the authority would be limited to civil matters within the city walls, and he knew his son. That knowledge was confirmed when the boy stood straighter.

"Yes, my sire," he said. "You will not regret your trust."

"Good. Now, I must go to war. You are old enough to go with me, but it would be a hard day for the kingdom if we both fell. For now, watch carefully. Think on what I do… and think on why."

"Sire!"

An hour later, Isketerol of Tartessos raised his hands in the chariot, acknowledging the cheers of his people. The horses paced slowly, prancing, their knees flashing high with every step.

"Long live the good King!" he heard. "Victory! Victory to our King! Arucuttag fight for the King! Death to the Eagle People! Death to the Amurrukan! Death to the Republic!"

The roar that followed was overwhelming, a passionate wall of sound that struck like cannonfire; the crowds pushed and heaved against the soldiers lining the roadway and holding them back. There must be nearly twenty thousand of them along the great processional way to the harbor, every free adult in the city and many from villages and farms and estates from the countryside around. Isketerol felt himself uplifted by the love and trust he saw on their faces, purified, as if his soul had been washed in a stream of mountain water. There might be reserve from the old families, and hate from foreigners, but the commons of his own people loved the King.

Had he not lifted them up, given them mastery and wealth and health, raised the burden of killing toil from their shoulders and preserved the lives of their children? Had he not written the laws down for all to see, so that a man need not accept the memory of a noble who might twist the words to his own gain? Had he not gone with gun and fire and sacrificial throat-knife against bandit and pirate and reaving mountain savage, so that every man might harvest his field and sleep easy knowing he would keep the fruits of it?

As a father they love me, he thought. And what is a true King if not a father to the land?

Rubber tires and steel springs made the journey down the smooth stone blocks of the road easy, which was well; he'd been too much at sea from his youth to ride easily in a chariot, and with the new stirrups and saddles it was a dying art save for ceremony. Fluttering cloak of Sidonian purple, helmet gilded and plumed, glittering gold on his chest, the snarling lion-heads on the hubs of the wheels, the silver and niello and jewels on the body of the car, all blazed like the harness of a God-made a brave show for the people, heartening them still further. He looked up; balloons were floating above the forts that guarded the entrances to the harbor, tethered by long cables. As he watched a heliograph flashed code from one to the ground, and he read it effortlessly.

Enemy ships standing off the southern coast.

Trained will kept his smile from turning into a snarl. No more than three ships had come back to Tartessos from the attack on Nantucket; if all went as he intended, not one of the Islander fleet would return from the Pillars of the Earth-House. The banners and pennants on the masts that crowded the harbor indicated the wind; a bit south of west, not the most favorable but not impossible either.

Should I make them come to me here? he mused again, for the thousandth time. Then: No, my first thought was best. If we beat them at sea, all is won. If we are defeated, we can retire here behind the guns of the forts-that is a nut they will break their teeth on. But we will not be defeated-

The other priests waited by the dockside, with the sacrifices for the Sun Lord and Arucuttag. For the Sky Master a fine horse, its coat yellow-gold by nature and sparkling with gold dust, like unto the horses which drew the chariot of the Sun daily across the sky. For Arucuttag a warrior in his prime; on this day of peril not a captive but a volunteer come willing to die for his people, standing proud with the ancient ax resting across his palms, its flint head crusted with old blood and deadly holiness.

"Victory shall be ours!" Isketerol cried as his charioteer reined in. "We will feast on the fish that devour the foe, and manure our fields with the bones of the invaders!"

A slow massive wave of sound rolled back, from the streets and rooftops, from the decks of the ships and from the battlemented walls of the city he had made great.

Mighty Ones, he prayed in the silence of his mind. Take what I give, and make safe my people and the seed of my House. If the King's death is what You demand, know that I am ever willing to make the given sacrifice.

For what was a King, if not he who stood for his folk before the Great Gods?