On the Oceans of Eternity

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California

December, 10 A.E.-Black Mountains, southern Iberia

January, 11 A.E.-Hattusas, Kingdom of Hatti-land

December, 10 A.E.-Cadiz Base, southern Iberia

December, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia

December, 10 A.E.-Off Tartessos City, southern Iberia

April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California

Cheers were coming from the riverside wall of the Hidden Fort. Dermentol son of Allakenal craned his neck to see what the fuss was about, over on the other side of town. He was bored with watch on the wall, and wished the regulars were back to do it.

All the men of the Hidden Fort were supposed to be fighting-men as well, but his work was with the engine of steam. He loved the machine, loved the smooth power of it, and the way it was predictable. With the eyes of his mind he could see the steam traveling through the pipes and pushing. None of the others understood it the way he did, and he was anxious for it. It was so powerful, but so vulnerable if the wrong thing was done.

Sometimes his wife complained that he loved it more than his children of flesh.

"I wonder what that is?" he said, and leaned over the parapet of the tower on which he stood.

"It's the ship from Homeland," someone shouted up from below. "It's come up the river, right up to us!"

Dermentol's eyes went wide. That would be tricky navigation for a keel so deep. He shook his head and peered eastward again.

An arm went around his throat, reaching from behind and to the right. For a moment he was too shocked to do anything, and in that moment the arm clamped his larynx in the crook of an elbow and squeezed it shut with brutal, unbearable force. Another hand came from the left and gripped his skull.

A voice hissed in his ear, in the Eagle People tongue: "You shouldn't have hurt my dog, motherfucker."

The arms scissored across. He heard a crackling sound like a green stick breaking, and then heard nothing, ever again.

Peter Giernas lowered the body to the ground, ignoring the death stink, and looked casually behind him as a bored sentry might. Eddie Vergeraxsson climbed over the wall, then pulled up the long rope and unhitched the lariat-loop from the point of the palisade log. He was also in Tartessian military garb, and made a marginally more convincing Iberian than Giernas. Peter had shaved off his bright orange-yellow beard, but he couldn't do anything about his height, or the color of his eyes, or the short straight nose and general Baltic cast of his features.

They both went to the doorway on the top of the gate-tower. The sentry on the other side of the gateway had noticed them; he shouted something and waved. Giernas shouted something back and waved himself; it was just a little too far to see a man's face clearly if you looked down a bit.

"By the Blood Hag, I hope this works," Eddie said. "We'd never get away with it if their real fighting-men weren't mostly away chasing moonbeams."

Peter picked up the cloth satchel his fellow ranger handed him, and reached inside until he felt the toggle of the friction-primer. "I just hope Sue and Jaddi are okay."

The green winter landscape of the Guadalquivir Valley rolled by at twenty-five miles an hour; north and ahead lay the forested slopes of the Sierra Morena, the Black Mountains-white with snow on the summits, looking like shaggy white fur where it rested on the trees. Down here in the rolling plains it was much like a spring day back on Nantucket. just cold enough to make their sweaters-military pullovers with leather patches at the shoulders and elbows-comfortable.

It had been nearly a year since Marian Alston-Kurlelo had ridden in a motor-driven vehicle; more than ten years since she'd done so very often. She'd remembered how convenient and fast they were. The scent of burned hydrocarbons wasn't too bad when you'd grown accustomed to bilgewater at sea and streets that smelled of horse piss and dung by land, no matter how often they were swept and cleaned.

What she found she'd subliminally forgotten was how loud internal combustion engines could be, in a way that even iron horseshoes on granite cobbles didn't quite match.

This one was louder than a car, of course. Most of it had started out as a gravel-hauling truck working for a Nantucket contractor. Leaton and his people had been working on it off and on as time allowed ever since; often as not adding wonderful gadgets and ingenious weapons that Marian then told them to strip off.

It had been like whacking puppies… but she'd yet to meet a Seahaven R amp;D type who really understood down in his gut why KISS, Keep It Simple, Stupid, was a governing principle.

Marian rode with her head and shoulders out of a hatch. The inch or so of camouflage-painted steel armor around the machine didn't make her feel invulnerable. It would stop rifle bullets or shrapnel. Cannonballs maybe; rocket warheads probably not. And if it went up, it would burn.

Swindapa's head came out of a nearby hatch, long hair blowing between the straps of a radio headset. "The ultralight reports-

The little craft buzzed overhead, a plywood teardrop below a Rogallo fabric wing, with a tricycle of wire-spoked wheels beneath and a pusher-prop behind. Stub wings on either side held six-tube pods for light rockets; they were empty, and had a scorched look. The pilot waved, sunlight glinting on his goggles and crash helmet, scarf fluttering in the wind.

"-that they took out four more heliograph towers. The line's definitely broken in half a dozen places between here and Crossing, and between there and Tartessos."

Marian nodded. The chain of wooden towers flashing Morse-code light signals were almost as fast as telegraphs. Luckily, they were about as easy to cut, too.

"My congratulations, and then orders to refuel and keep company," she said.

The pilot didn't need to come here to report; that was reflex of a life where the only way to talk to someone was to get within shouting distance. And it was a valuable reminder that giving someone a uniform and a haircut, or even a lot of training, didn't make them over into a twentieth-century American.

Not that I should need a reminder, seeing as I sleep with the evidence every night. God knows I love her, but even after all these years, she's still weird sometimes.

"Halt," she said aloud.

The armored car slowed and came to a stop by the side of the road, engine ticking. The popping whine of heavy tires on the crushed rock of the roadway died out and left a silence loud by comparison. The two smaller Jeep Cherokees that'd been ranging ahead rolled to a stop as well, each to an opposite side of the road; they had armor panels, and Gatlings mounted on pintles. The gunners scanned outward, across rolling fields of grass and young wheat and dry corn stalks and occasional orchards or olive groves or copses of holm oak. Ahead-northward-there was a hamlet and a scatter of isolated houses with farm compounds around them.

The houses and village ahead had the dead quiet air of abandonment. Behind them, columns of smoke stained the sky, and scores of the huge black-winged Iberian vultures made circles that marked herds of slaughtered livestock. Swindapa winced slightly as her eyes followed Marian's.

Yeah, I know, sugar, the black woman thought. Doing scorched-earth hurts, especially in country as pretty as this. But Isketerol can stop it anytime he wants. We're not here to conquer his country. We couldn't if we wanted to. All we want is for him to get out of our way.

The crew of the car popped various hatches and came out, enjoying the fresh air and space; someone produced one of the foraged local hams and cut slabs of it to hand 'round. Marian took one and put it on a piece of dog biscuit, gnawing and taking an occasional swig from her canteen as she studied the map and waited. The earthy, salty taste of the acorn-fed and smoke-cured ham was so good that you forgot how vile hardtack was.

The rest of the Mechanized Battalion came up behind at last. The name was only partly ironic. After all, bicycles were mechanical transport… and about four times faster than foot infantry, on these fine roads the Tartessians had been kind enough to build. Watching seven hundred helmets bobbing along with rifles over their shoulders still brought a narrowing of the eyes that someone familiar with Marian knew for a smile. Another scatter of Cherokees and Hondas drew a brace of rifled siege cannon, heavy mortars, and trailers of fuel and supplies.

She fought down fierce envy for the two genuine Humvees she'd attached to Brigadier McClintock's HQ. Fair is fair. There were only three of those left in all the world.

"Major Stavrand," she said to the officer in charge.

"Commodore," he replied. "This is it, eh?"

He grinned enthusiastically. His white-blond hair, long narrow face and elongated build made him look like something out of one of the gloomier Ingmar Bergman films. The Nordic Death effect was spoiled only by his glasses, and the elastic cord he wore to keep them on.

"Right over that ridge, and I think we've outpaced the news of ouah arrival," Alston said. "Ride with me."

The troops put their bicycles on the kickstands and fanned out, skirmishers moving forward until the thick bar of human figures became a scattering across the rolling land. Stavrand fastened his ten-speed to the rear deck of the car with a bungee cord and perched on the turret, holding on to one of the welded brackets and looking like a Stockholm-gargoyle rendering of Alfred Nobel, or possibly the patron saint of demolitions.

The ultralights went by overhead with an insectile drone, keeping an eye on the target and the countryside round about. Marian waited until a signal flare went up before waving the armored car forward. They crested the rise and halted.

Mmmm-hmmmm, she thought, as they halted in a vineyard whose gnarled branches rose up from the earth like arthritic black fingers. Yellow mustard flowers starred the grass between the vines.

Now for another bit of legal vandalism. Christ, but I hate this business.

The town lay in a valley that ran back up into the low mountains beyond; patches of woods thickened into outright forest not far north of it. An earth-fill dam held back a considerable lake north of the town, glinting blue with dead trees sticking out of the water in spots. There were about three or four thousand people living inside the walls, she thought. It was all rawly new, a gridwork of dusty streets and whitewashed adobe, save where tall brick smokestacks marked smelters and forges. This was a major center by Tartessian standards, their equivalent of Irondale, working the minerals of the mountains behind and forwarding the products to their capital.

"Major, I don't suppose…?"

"I'm afraid not, Commodore," Stavrand said regretfully. "See how the river runs? The flood'll go right past the town when we blow it. Of course, that'll cut off their water… mostly for waterpower, see how they ran the canal along the contour to preserve the head? Quite well done."

An ultralight went by overhead, then turned into the wind that blew out of the north and came in to land on the roadway. Offhand skill flared the wing up to shed speed, and it came to a rolling halt only ten yards from touchdown. The pilot vaulted out and came running over, pushing back the goggles that kept eyes from freezing or drying out and pulling off her helmet. She was small and slight-there was a 120-pound weight limit for pilots-and brown-skinned, with a broad face and a dense cap of raven hair so dark it had blue highlights.

Mmmmm-hmmmm, Alston remembered. Lekkansu-born. From one of the bands virtually annihilated by some uptime virus back in the Year 1; a few children had been bereft of even distant relatives to take them in, and ended up adopted on-Island.

"Ma'am, sir," she said, vaulting lightly up despite the heavy sheepskin flying suit and joining them on the deck of the turret. A glance at the map, and:

"Yeah, they've got fallback earthworks going up inside the gates, and they've just started putting up a berm to back the wall. Looks real crowded in there-lots of refugees, tents, and brushwood shelters in the streets and open spaces, ma'am."

"Thank you, Ensign Walters," Marian said.

"Ah, youth," Swindapa observed as the flyer bounded back to her little craft and vaulted one-handed into her seat; a couple of Marines swung it 'round into the wind.

Marian snorted. This from someone who occasionally turns cartwheels in the street just for the fun of it?

"Wait 'till you hit forty, 'dapa." She scanned the defenses. "Let's see…"

Curtain-wall of mud brick on a mound, wet moat, field of lilies.

Those were metal-tipped punji-sticks, a nasty low-tech version of barbed wire. It would be expensive to assault, but it was designed to keep out hillbilly raiders with clubs and bronze-headed spears. Nothing like the massive works around Tartessos City or some of their forts elsewhere; Isketerol had had too much to do to put that sort of thing around every town. Absurdly, there were still ducks swimming about the ring-ditch, occasionally dipping their heads and leaving twitching tails in the air as they fed.

"Right, let's give them a demonstration," Marian said.

The siege guns and mortars were ready within minutes, crews swarming antlike around them. The rocket launchers took a little longer, but the two-wheeled mounts were light enough to be towed by bicycle and manhandled around. The operators loaded six long, finned cylinders in each launcher's bundle of tubes and backed away, unreeling wire behind them.

"Driver, take us in to a thousand yards," she said.

The diesel pig-grunted in a cloud of black coal-oil fumes, and

I the car rolled forward again. The works that had been easy to dismiss through the binoculars grew larger as they neared. A cannon fired from the low square tower next to the gates, visible only by the flash and smoke.

Six-pounder, she estimated automatically-brass smoothbore. The light iron ball kicked up a plume of black dirt and dug a furrow through a cornfield not far to the left of the road.

Top the gate," she said quietly. "Then rake the parapet."

"Right, ma'am," the gunner said. "Ready-"

She slitted her eyes. The violent flash still made her throw up a palm in reflex, and everyone coughed at the bitter burned-zinc fumes. The rocket took off with a sound like a cat the size of a mountain vomiting, and drew a spreading cone of gray smoke toward the gate. At its head was a red spark. That turned into a globe of fire as it struck the ironbound gates of the town, and a vast hollow whuddummmp echoed back. A second later the turret Gatling cut loose with a long braaaaaaapp.

Motors whined, turning the turret and driving the machine gun; it blasted out ten rounds a second as the barrels vanished in a whirling blur, a continuous knife of red flame cutting through the fogbank that surrounded the war-car. Through it Marian could see the mud-brick parapets of the tower and wall disintegrating into powdered clay.

As if the car firing had been a signal, which it was, the two siege guns fired. They had no need to approach the wall; from a mile behind her the heavy shells went overhead with a grumbling rumble that rose in pitch as they passed. They were aimed for the town's metalworks, and she caught a glimpse of columns of dark smoke and pulverized building rising like instant poplars.

The crews leaped into action, running the muzzle-loading cannon forward again from the chocks behind the wheels, swabbing out the barrels, ramming down powder bags and shells. Before they were half-finished, the rocket-launcher operators spun the cranks of their field generators and pushed down the toggles that sent a brief pulse of current through the percussion caps.

Backblast scorched the hillside behind them in a sudden huge cloud that left crackling, blackened grass and crops behind it in a great wedge spreading out from the emplacement. Sixty trails of smoke and fire lifted from the katyushas in a rippling chorus of demon-screams-except for two that blew up not far from the launch tubes, and one that corkscrewed and landed uncomfortably close to the armored car, spattering its side with bits of metal and rock and dirt. Something rapped her helmet unpleasantly hard.

Memo to Leaton: "greatly improved reliability" doesn't mean "really reliable" yet, does it, now, Ron?

The rest slammed down on the wall to the left of the gate. It disappeared, in a boiling wall of rubble and dust and smoke that seemed to bear down on her like an avalanche. Enough of it reached them to set them coughing anew; Marian drank from her canteen and passed it to Swindapa, as the gunner and loader shared theirs in the turret and hull below. When the dust and smoke lifted, she shaped a soundless whistle. The sharp definite outlines of wall and mound and ditch had vanished. What was left was a lumpy ramp, leading from the open ground outside the town to a height about half what the defenses had been.

"Let's put up the parsley and see what happens," Marian said as a stunning silence fell leaving their ears ringing with the ceasing of the world-shattering noise.

Swindapa bent one of the whip aerials down and fastened a wreath of olive to it, and a white pennant beneath-local and Islander symbolism combined. The car rolled forward with a whine and crunch, stopping about ten yards short of the bridge that spanned the moat before the gate. Marion took up the microphone of a powered megaphone mounted on the turret-more psychological warfare-and spoke the phrases she'd memorized:

"SEND OUT YOUR LEADERS TO PARLEY! SEND OUT YOUR LEADERS OR BE DESTROYED!"

The harsh amplified sound echoed back from the surviving sections of wall, giving a blurring edge to it.

The gunner and loader worked the action of the rocket launcher-it opened inward, like a shotgun mounted sideways-and slipped home another of the heavy rounds. Then they waited; occasionally the turret tracked along the walls and the barrels of the Gatling whirled by way of warning and intimidation. Two ultralights buzzed overhead, circling the town and its vicinity.

Twenty minutes later Marian sighed and reached for the microphone to order another round of bombardment. Then Swindapa pointed:

"Look!"

Four Tartessians came climbing over the rubble of the gate and wall, waving green branches of their own. They had a white shield and a white flag on a pole as well, taking no chances. Two were youngish men in the green tunic and trousers and brown leather jerkin of Tartessian uniform; one of those was limping, and the other had a bandaged arm. The civilians were older, in shoulder-baring tunics, and sweating with fear from the way they wiped at their brows.

"Garrison commanders and mayor," she murmured. "All right, 'dapa, give them the word."

A harsh gabble of ancient Iberian; the wounded soldier spat in the roadway.

"He says King Isketerol will come with a great army and destroy your little band," Swindapa relayed.

Marian met the man's eyes and lifted a slow brow. Then she pointed to the ultralights.

"With those, we destroy your relay towers as we please. The highlanders and the bands of freed slaves are ambushing couriers on the roads. King Isketerol doesn't even know you've been attacked, and won't for days. By the time any force he sends could get here, we'll be gone… and your town will be destroyed."

"You will destroy it anyway!" the mayor burst out.

"But if you surrender, your people will live. Apart from your own lives, your King won't thank you for losing all those skilled men, as well as all the machinery and goods."

Marian climbed down from the turret, jumping to the ground and drawing her katana. Hell of a way to treat good steel, she thought, as she scratched a circle around the feet of the enemy leaders. The Tartessians flinched back from her. A reputation was useful now and then.

"Decide before you step out of that circle-life or death," she said, drawing her sword through a cleaning cloth and sheathing it over her shoulder in a single quick snapping movement.

A habit of reading history was useful too…

The Tartessians went into a huddle, waving arms and yelling at each other; Swindapa came to stand by her side, translating bits into her ear now and then. At last they faced her, drawing themselves up and then going to their knees with bitter dignity.

"What are your terms?" they asked.

She kept an expression of distaste off her face; it was just the local custom, but she still didn't like seeing people kneel.

"All free citizens and their families to leave within two hours, taking only what they can carry. I'll allow carts for small children, nursing mothers, and the sick and old, but don't try my patience. Soldiers to be paroled on promise of staying out of the rest of this war."

So far Isketerol was sticking strictly to that, although the slash of indelible ink the Islanders put on each surrendered soldier's forehead-with a promise to shoot them out of hand if taken in arms again-might have something to do with it. The arrangement rested on solid mutual interest. Tartessos got to keep the men, who could work for now and fight again later, and the Islanders were spared the trouble of guarding and feeding prisoners. Since the alternative in cases like this where they couldn't take them back was killing them or cutting off their trigger fingers, she was profoundly glad Isketerol had gone along with it.

"Slaves to be freed, except those who wish to go with the rest of you."

A surprising number always did. House niggers, she thought, and then chided herself. A lot of them wouldn't have many options, particularly women with young children.

"Where are we to go? The highlanders are loose in the land; that is why so many have fled within our walls!" the mayor burst out. "If you drive us out defenseless, they will kill us all before tomorrow's sunset!"

OK, that's a valid point… and we did arm the mountain men.

"Twenty soldiers may keep their rifles, with ten rounds each," she said. "Men may keep a sword or spear, if they have it. You ought to be all right if you keep together and head straight for the Great River, that way." She pointed southwest. "That's my final word, so don't try wheedling."

She made herself watch as the citizens shuffled out of the gates, bent under bundles of their belongings-there would be a thick scatter of abandoned household goods all across the countryside, soon enough; the smart ones would have confined the loads to money, a change of clothing, and all the food they could carry. The curses thrown at her were easy enough to take; the sheer hopeless misery of sudden poverty wasn't, or the crying of the bewildered children trudging by holding on to their mothers' skirts.

If I can order it done, I can watch, she thought, her face like something carved from ebony. Swindapa wiped away a tear.

"And this bit isn't much more fun," Marian muttered, once the Tartessians were gone.

Like all the towns they'd seen, this one had a broad central square; she wasn't sure if that was old Tartessian custom or something Isketerol had imposed. Right now it was crowded with about five hundred people, mostly men in rough clothing, with a scattering of women. Some of the slaves looked gaunt and terrified, or bore the marks of shackle and lash, or the scars of working with hot metal and inadequate protection. Others still were just the usual work-roughened Bronze Age locals. All of them hung back from the frightening novelty of the armored car, which gave a useful circle of free space. Marian took a long breath and looked down on the sea of expectant bearded faces turned toward her and shouted:

"You are free!"

Swindapa turned it into Tartessian, working in smooth unison with her partner. Marian relied on trained lungpower; no need to terrify them more with the megaphone. Stunned silence, then cheers; they'd probably been expecting a change of masters at best… or perhaps rumors about the Day of Jubilee had reached this far. Marian grimaced at an almost physical bad taste in her mouth.

"We cannot take you with us," she went on; experience had shown that was one of the first questions asked.

If we tried, we'd slow ourselves down and the Tartessians might be able to mousetrap us.

"We will give everyone here a rifle and ammunition."

From the town armory; stolen goods are never sold at a loss, as the saying goes.

"You may take what you will from the houses and storehouses." More cheers at that; a lot of the poor bastards would get no further than the wine jars, and still be sobering up when the Tartessian army arrived. "But be quick, for we will destroy this town."

She pointed northward. "You may run for the mountains and the forests, or try to make your way south to our bases. Either way, move fast, for the Tartessians will send soldiers here soon, and we are not staying. My advice is to take weapons, clothing, food, and tools only, and to run far and fast."

The crowd cheered again and broke up, murmuring. Some were wandering around aimlessly, others heading for something long desired. A few thoughtful or timid ones were making for the gates, determined to catch up with their former masters.

Sighing, she dropped back into the turret. "Let's get to work."

"I'm thinkin' that ours was the first major battle in history where both sides retreated afterward," Patrick O'Rourke said quietly, warming his hands at the stove.

Doreen Arnstein gave a slight sardonic snort and kept writing. Kenneth Hollard cast him a quelling look.

"Not a funny joke, Pat," he said, hanging up his sheepskin parka and going over to look at the map wall.

It was snowing again outside the shutters of the ex-Hittite villa. He could feel the force of the icy wind out of the northern mountains. It came sweeping down and onto the high plateau of central Anatolia and driving drafty fingers in here, despite tapestries and rugs.

"Damn," he said softly. "But I wish he'd come on after the fight."

"Well, it's a bit close to the ragged edge we were, at the time."

"He was closer. All the intel says so, and I could taste it. And he wanted to, too, I could feel that as well. Every time he hit us-when he was personally in command, I mean-it was like getting whacked upside the head with a crowbar. Then he just turned around and walked away when he had us rocked back on our heels."

"It was the smart move," O'Rourke said. "As you say, he was run ragged by then… not least thanks to Princess Rau-pasha and the others."

"Yeah. You know what annoys me about Walker?"

"The complete evil of the man, is it?"

"No, Paddy. That's why I hate him. What irritates me is that if he wasn't such an armor-plated swine, he'd be a really valuable leader… and we need those, God knows we do."

"If only the fellah hadn't had his conscience surgically removed, the pity and the black shame of it. But I can't see him taking out his own garbage for the compost wagon, like the chief or the commodore."

"There is that," Hollard said, looking at the map again and trying to force his enemy's intentions out of it by sheer will. Where? When? How?

"It's a map, not an oracle, Brigadier sir," O'Rourke said. His voice grew a little dreamy. "By the way, have you been givin' any thought to what you'll do after the war?"

"Hmmmm," Hollard said. I suppose I should, he thought with surprise. The Corps will be cut back drastically once we've won. Be a bit dull, drilling and the occasional skull-thumping expedition against some Sun People chief.

"You know, I haven't, not really."

"Not thinking of settling down here, then? Or taking up the pioneering life back home?"

Kenneth favored him with another glare at the gentle teasing. "No," he said shortly. "Live here? Not if I can avoid it." Not least because of the political complications. "And I helped my brother out at harvest time too often to have any illusions about farming." He grinned. "Why do you think I went into the Corps after the Alban War, Paddy, if it wasn't an easier way to make a living?"

"If you two gentlemen don't mind, we do have to win the war first…"

Doreen Arnstein was going over the papers at the head of the table, each pile arranged with her usual neatness and a cup of cocoa at hand; even near term her pregnancy didn't show much under the thick ankle-length wool robe. She spoke without looking up, her glasses on the end of her nose as she made a note in her small, precise hand.

And why is she smiling more? The official reports were that Ian was alive and in Walkeropolis, no more. She must know more than I do. Which was exactly as it should be, of course.

Ken stayed in front of the map drawn on the plaster of the wall, looking at the pins and wondering how many of them corresponded to something real.

"God-damn, but I miss the Emancipator," he said. "We should never have risked her on a bombing run-far too useful shuffling high-priority stuff around."

A stamp-clash of feet and hands on wood and metal came from the corridor outside as the sentries brought their rifles to present arms in salute. The other Allied leaders trooped in; Tudhaliyas, Tawatmannas Zuduhepa, Kashtiliash, and Kathryn… and Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna. He felt a chaotic mixture of anger, worry, and affection, and irritation at his own irrationality; fought them all down with an effort while everyone went through the necessary formalities.

She's walking better, he thought. The-young woman, not "girl." Kathryn was right to ream me out about that-was in the dark wolfskin jacket that had become something of a trademark, beating snow off it with her knitted cap, looking slim and dark and dashing.

Clemens said the left leg ought to recover full function, and the hand nearly so. Still a heavy limp, but less pain. But the scar tissue will always be more sensitive to heat and cold, or to drying out. It must have cost her considerably to come here through the weather outside.

He could see most of her face; the molded black-leather mask only covered the affected areas, a triangle from brow over the left eye and down to the corner of her mouth. That mouth turned up in a smile as she saw him, the lines of endurance melting to unaffected pleasure. He forced the silly grin back…

… and yeah, it's logical to have mood swings after a trauma like that. The problem was, how exactly did you convince someone you weren't just courting her out of a misplaced sense of personal honor? Especially when you are a bit of a prig.

Everyone sat, and also eagerly accepted the cups of hot cocoa an aide dealt out from the big pot warming over a spirit lamp in a corner of the big room.

Big market there after the war, he thought, half-amused at the sharp-nosed Yankee profiteer buried somewhere in his subconscious.

For that matter, Tudhaliyas and his queen were casting an occasional envious glance at the little tile stove. Even a Great King spent the winters here being miserably chilly when he was out of bed. Enough braziers to heat a fair-sized room also courted carbon monoxide poisoning, unless you left the windows wide open, which sort of defeated the purpose. Kenneth suspected that-presuming they beat Walker-Tudhaliyas would be moving heaven and earth to get an Islander engineer in to do a fixup on the palace. Which meant all his nobles would, too, and then…

"Let's get going," Doreen said.

Most of it was as boring as policy meetings always were; figures and estimates, troop dispositions and training, the endless question of how to keep the refugees fed; some of them had been moved all the way down to Carchemish to be within reach of grain barged up the Euphrates.

"So in the end," Tudhaliyas said, "What we have gained is a chance to do everything over again this coming year, with both sides stronger and my country a battleground once more."

"Better a battleground than spear-won land of the Achaeans," Zuduhepa said sharply.

Kashtiliash blinked, not quite used to a woman showing such outspokenness before a King. Kathryn gets away with it, Hollard thought. But she's in a special category in his mind, I think. He felt a moment's envy at the solid bond that was almost physically perceptible between the Babylonian and his sister. But then, they were both solid people; and they'd put in time and effort enough to earn it.

He wasn't looking forward to next year's campaign either. Raupasha didn't flinch when anyone looked at her any more, but God knew what another set of battles would do; he'd bribed her attendants to tell him about the nightmares and crying jags.

Doreen tapped the wooden handle of her steel-nib pen against the surface of a report. "We have gained time, which is the most precious thing of all," she said. "Remember, the war here in Haiti-land is only one front…"

The usual translation difficulties stopped them for a while, searching for a word for "sector."

"… sector, division, part, then, of a larger struggle."

"So you say," Tudhaliyas said. "We fight Great Achaea, not Tartessos."

"As a matter of fact," Doreen said, smiling…

Smugly, Hollard decided. But a nice smug, if you're on her side.

"… I've got something more concrete to tell you about the news from Tartessos."

"That was quick work," Marian Alston-Kurlelo said, looking at what was left of the Merrimac.

It was one of those mild, brilliant Andulusian winter days that gave her occasional daydreams of wangling a posting here after the war. Wind like spun silk caressed her face, and everything from the ship before her to the flamingos cruising like giant pink butterflies in the marshes had a fine-cut clarity.

"Four weeks and four days from the time we hauled her up on the slipway," the Seahaven supervisor said, wiping her hands on a greasy rag.

The gesture was one of Ron Leaton's trademarks, and engineers all over the Republic copied it, along with his air of abstracted competence. There were worse role models, and most of the mechanics and engineers had come up through Seahaven or its spin-offs.

An entirely forgivable foible, Marian Alston-Kurlelo decided, walking through the construction-yard litter of timber, tools, and grinning workers slapping each other on the shoulders to view the craft from all sides.

The big merchantman had been cut down to the waterline. A sloping three-foot glacis surrounded the hull above that, solid oak beams a yard on a side covered by a bolted carapace of big interlocking steel plates three and a half inches thick. More steel covered the low deck, and a slope-sided central casement at midsection. That had three gunports a side, and a row of them in the cone-sectioned front and rear where a pivot-mounted gun could swivel around. A single thick smokestack rising from an armored collar, a couple of air-scoops and a low octagonal pilothouse with vision slits completed the picture topside, with a big bronze propeller at the stern.

It didn't give her the stab of pure pleasure a good sailing craft did; in fact, she still felt guilty at murdering something beautiful to make this. But it was… solid workmanship, she thought, taking a deep breath and inhaling the scents of drying paint, varnish, tar, timber, brass, iron, and whale-oil lubricating grease. Satisfying. It'll do the job it's designed for.

"Well," Gary Trudeau said. "At last I've seen something less seaworthy than my poor Farragut."

Alston snorted slightly. "Farragut was supposedly designed to handle anything on salt water. This one was not intended for deep-ocean work, Mr. Trudeau," she said.

Victor Ortiz chuckled. "At least we know she can carry the weight; it came out from Alba in her hold."

A deep breath. "All right, let's get on with it."

Bosuns' pipes twittered, the Marine band played, and Swindapa stepped up to hand her a point-bottomed, jug-eared amphora of requisitioned Tartessian wine.

"I christen thee Eades" she said, and threw the amphora.

It shattered on the reinforced ram that projected out just beyond the bows of the ironclad. Wine ran down armorplate and oak, red as blood. Everyone cheered; Marian smiled broadly, in a public display of emotion rather rare for her.

In fact, she was thinking of the original Merrimac, transformed into the ironclad Virginia by the Confederates for its meeting with the Monitor off Hampton Roads. How they'd have hated the thought of black-as-tar Marian Alston commanding something so like her; and how they'd have hated naming her after the engineer who'd designed the Federal gunboat fleets that stormed down the Mississippi and cut the Confederacy in half. Her father would have loved it.

I hope, somewhere, those bukra ghosts can see this. While they roast in hell.

Sledgehammers struck at the wedges and chocks. The timbers holding the Eades against the force of gravity gave way, and the steel rollers of the cradle rumbled and squealed as she began to move. The huge weight started slowly, then accelerated with terrifying speed. Waves of muddy water surged up in twin plumes on either side as the stern slid into the bay, then subsided as the ironclad shot out. A dozen thick cables secured to deep-driven tree trunks paid out and then came twanging-taut; the ship rocked and then settled.

Have to rearrange her ballast a bit, Marian thought, studying her trim with a critical eye.

"All right, let's get her boilers hot and see how she works," she said aloud.

"No," Isketerol of Tartessos said.

"Lord King-

"Yes, they are destroying us bit by bit," Isketerol said.

He looked around at the war-captains and wisemen, their faces shocked or blank or calculating, mottled by the light filtering through the canvas of his tent. They were mostly men who'd come to power under him… and hence men he'd rewarded with grants of land and mines. Men with lands and mines in the provinces now being stripped and sacked by the Amurrukan. The tent stank of acrid sweat loaded with anger and fear; his guards were more than ceremonial, and their tension told it.

He grabbed patience with both hands and ran his finger across the map. "By the time news of their raids comes to us, they are already done," he said. "We used our light-signalers to react faster than the highlanders could. Now the Amurrukan do the same to us."

"Then we must meet their raiding forces with our own- forces larger than theirs."

Isketerol nodded. "Tell me how, Lord Miskelefol," he said. "They see us move by night or day, from the air. From the air their scouts report to their commander. And their forces move more quickly than ours." His fist hit the table. "On our own roads! By the time we react to what they are doing, they have finished it and are doing something else in another place. They lead us by the nose, and we take our marching orders from them! If we send out a column, they can avoid it… or bring together enough of their troops to smash it…'

Everyone winced; that had happened twice. He pointed out through the flap of the tent, to the long ranks of brushwood-and-earth shelters within the earthwork fortifications.

"We are too many for them to attack us here, and by our presence we guard the lands around Tartessos City. They cannot pass by without fighting this army."

"Then we should march out and crush them in one great battle!"

"Arucuttag… give me strength!" he snarled, making himself stop short of asking the Hungry One to eat his supporter. "Their weapons are too much better than ours. If we attack them, they will slaughter us; that's why our invasion failed last year!"

He sighed. "We can only stand on the defensive; they cannot afford even a costly victory, much less a defeat, and if they attack us, we have the advantage. As long as the forts and cannon and rockets hold them away from this side of the Great River and Tartessos City, we are not defeated, because we have the core of the kingdom. From there, we can slip ships in and out. Time presses them in ways it does not do us. If we hold long enough, we may force them to accept our terms."

After so long on sailing ships, the little bridge of the Fades was a stifling closeness; stiflingly hot, too, with the boiler heat captured by thick oak timbers and steel-plate sheathing, and a throat-catching reek of sulfur from coal smoke. Engine throb shivered up through her feet with a slow heavy beat, tolling the movements of the big steam cylinders and the massive crankshaft driving the propeller-quieter than a diesel, beating like a great slow heart. The bridge sat like an octagonal lump at the forward edge of the casement; an eight-sided enclosure from her shoulders up, with vision slits at eye level, and an openwork basket where it protruded into the fighting compartment below. That stretched a hundred feet back, a single great slope-sided room, with only the armored sheath of the funnel in the middle and the crouching shapes of the guns to break it.

Hate to think what all this cost, she thought, peering out through the narrow horizontal opening ahead. The sea was a deep living blue, with an occasional whitecap impossibly pure against it. Sweat wasted, acres of land not cleared, plows and harrows not made, factories not built, kids who didn't get an extra pair of shoes. With any luck they wouldn't have to build anything like this again for a generation or two.

"Not exactly like old times, eh, Skipper?" Thomas Hiller said.

"Not exactly," she replied.

The Eagle's old sailing master had lost his frigate in the Battle of the Pillars, as they were calling it now; that had given him a leg up over the other contestants for the XO's position. And it's some compensation, I suppose, she thought. Hiller had loved the brand-new clipper-frigate, almost as much as Eagle. He'd missed seagoing command, too, enough to leave his family on Nantucket. Scratch crew all 'round… or picked, depending.

Even the Black Gang were mostly volunteers under the direction of petty officers from Farragut, and she'd had to talk Victor Ortiz out of volunteering for that, with his burns barely healed.

Men, she thought. Then from a little ironic devil who lurked at the back of her consciousness: Well, you're here, aren't you?

"You should have delegated this, ma'am," Miller said.

"You certainly should have," Swindapa said, looking up from the navigator's table.

"If I'm indispensable, I haven't been doing my job these ten years past," she said dryly. So much for the awestruck obedience due the high commander. "Helm-rudder amidships."

Swindapa gave an involuntary yawn. And I'd forgotten how much trouble midnight feedings can be, she thought. Her partner caught her eye and winked.

"She's still answering nicely," Hiller said.

They both made the instinctive beginnings of a gesture with their left hands-reaching out to touch a backstay and feel the forces channeled down from the rigging.

Hiller grinned: "Not enough experience in powercraft lately, Commodore. Either of us."

"How does she steer?" Marian asked the two sailors at the helm.

"Still just a touch heavy, ma'am," the CPO said. "Got to be careful to remember the lag and not overcorrect. This lady's heavyset."

Marian took a deep breath. "All right," she said. "Three days' shakedown and nothing new to fix is enough. This campaign has gone on far too long as it is. Let's go."

Ranger Sue Chau waited tensely; the smell of her own sweat came acrid as it soaked into the leather of her hunting shirt, mixed with the sour scent of old burned things on the gun deck of the ship whose crew had died. Jaditwara came rattling down the companionway, swearing in Fiernan, English, the Sun People language, and bits of the Cloud Shadow tongue picked up over the past year.

"They're all looking dead. The sails are still drawing and will if the wind doesn't change. Moon Woman receive our souls!"

"I sympathize," Sue said.

Jaditwara had some sailing experience; the Indians didn't know a bowline from a buttonhook. They'd towed the ship most of the way with the canoes, but the last approach had to look more natural. Sue squinted out through the gunport at the approaching dock and the enemy fort-town standing on its mound.

The jetty wasn't meant for seagoing ships; this river wasn't meant for seagoing ships. There were two of the flat-bottomed barges already at it, no place for the captured Tartessian vessel.

Oh, Jesus, Pete, don't get yourself killed, will you? Or you either, Eddie, even if you are a prick a lot of the time. Spring Indigo, where the hell are you hiding, and can we get you out without anything hurting you or little Jared?

Bright spring sunlight outside, incongruously cheerful and full of birdsong. The gates swinging open, people pouring down- brightly clad civilians, children…

"Kakwa," Jaditwara murmured.

Their eyes met, and they went down the line of cannon, turning the elevating screws up two turns. The near-naked locals at the lanyards looked at them hopefully; once over their initial terror, they'd all immensely enjoyed firing the cannon off into the swamp. One lifted the lanyard enthusiastically and made to pull, to be met with frantic calls of no! no! in five languages; Sue remembered to toss her head instead of shaking it.

They backed off again; at least they knew enough not to stand behind the guns now. Sue swallowed something acid at the back of her throat. No way to tell now what would happen; she had to play it by ear with entirely too much that could go wrong at any moment. Was Pete's crazy plan too complicated, did it depend on too many things going right?

The crowd got near enough to notice the bodies in Tartessian uniform or sailor's slops draped about the deck or hanging limp over the rails. The ship drifted in…

Oh, thank You, Lord Jesus, Sue thought. The captured vessel was nudging in on the north side of the pier, its bow catching and stern swing 'round to ground hard on the mud-broadside still mostly trained on the fort. There was another frantic scramble as the two women ran down the line of guns, heaving at handspikes together; the locals were strong and willing, but they couldn't even talk to the Islanders, much less take directions.

The cries of alarm grew stronger; several Tartessians went pelting back up to the fort-town. And…

"Yes!" The gates swung open, and troops appeared there.

"Now, how long before they twig?" Sue muttered.

The civilians were milling around-scared of whatever had "killed" the crew, terrified by memories of the brief smallpox outbreak, a few of the bolder ones coming out onto the boards of the wharf. Troops forming up in the gates-

"Now!" Jaditwara cried and pulled the lanyard on her own gun; the hammer came down, flint sparked, and the twelve-pounder bellowed and leaped backward. At the other end of the line Sue repeated the action. Within a few seconds the Indians on the other four guns had done the same.

The crowd of civilians screamed and recoiled as the side of the ship shot out its long blades of flame and smoke. Many sensibly threw themselves flat as half a dozen cannonballs screamed by just above head height. Nearly all of them turned and fled pell-mell back up the gently sloping road toward the gates as the "dead" men on deck came alive, leaping over the ship's side with screeching war whoops. More tribesmen poured out of the hatchways, up from where they'd hidden uneasily in the darkness of the hold and orlop decks; an endless flood of stocky brown men in loincloths, waving captured rifles or swords or axes, their own obsidian-headed spears and darts, carved hardwood clubs.

The two Islander women waited an instant, as the south wind blew the gun smoke upriver. The broadside had struck on or around the gate, smashing lethal clouds of splinters out of the timbers of gate and towers, some of them falling short and going bounding and skipping up the roadway like monstrous lethal bowling balls, a couple whirring right through the packed soldiers at knee height. Sue swore softly at the results, then grabbed up her rifle as the other ranger dashed past.

The road up to the fort gates was a solid mass of people; surviving soldiers, fleeing farmers and artisans and their families, and the crowd of howling tribesfolk who outnumbered both. Sue hurdled a Tartessian woman curled protectively around a screaming toddler, shoved, cursed, and pushed; she and her companion were about halfway between the vanguard of their Indian allies and the last of them.

About the safest place to be, she thought, feeling her skin roughen at the thought of the cannon and rockets on the wall ahead. Me, I don't have to prove a damned thing, I just want to win and live.

The Indians pushed a screen of the townsfolk before them; more a matter of necessity than intent, but the effect was the same. Most of the Tartessians on the wall were civilian militiamen; the professionals among them mostly had family here as well. Reluctance to fire on their own, or to shut the gate in their faces, cost them crucial moments. By the time they tried, it was too late, and the gateway was full of a heaving mass of men who shot and stabbed, clubbed and slashed and throttled each other, trampling the dead and wounded beneath their feet. Those on the gate-towers couldn't shoot into the melee beneath; brave and foolish, most of them ran down to join it, where an alderwood club was as effective as a single-shot rifle.

Sue and her fellow ranger went in along the wall of the gate-tunnel, trying to force their way through the packed mass without getting caught up in it, kicking and shoving and using their rifle butts. A Tartessian saw her out of the corner of his eye and whipped his short broad chopping blade around in a reflex cut at someone obviously not of his people. Sue caught it on the stock of her rifle, grunting as the thick-shouldered power of the cut drove her into a half crouch; Jaditwara shot him in the face through the space Sue had vacated.

The report was deafening in the confined space, even over the snarling brabble of voices, screams of pain, clatter of metal and stone on each other and on wood. Sue dropped the damaged firearm and snatched out her blades, shouldering aside the falling body as she rose; stabbed another Iberian in the groin, and whipped the hammer end of her tomahawk down on a man's arm and felt the bones crack. The muzzle of Jaditwara’s rifle came past her cheek again, and she ducked in reflex.

The Tartessian soldiers still on their feet held the whole struggling mass of humanity in the gateway like a cork in a bottle. But they were too mixed with their enemies and friends to keep it plugged for long. Like a champagne cork when thumbs have weakened it just enough, this one popped out all of a sudden. It spilled out into the open space that ran just inside the walls-and the Tartessians were suddenly in even more trouble than they had been a minute before. There were four or five Indians for each Iberian, and in the open they could take advantage of it.

Good, Sue thought, as the tribesmen poured into the fort-town and spread howling through the streets.

The more trouble they've got, the less attention they'll pay to two Islanders in buckskin. She stooped, picked up a dead man's rifle, and knelt in a corner between two buildings to load it while Jaditwara covered her.

"Let's go," she said. "Market square."

They moved out, trotting along the streets pressed as close to one side as they could, where the roofs-hopefully-hid them from the sight of anyone on the walls or defensive towers.