On the Oceans of Eternity (71 page)

Perks gave the Tartessian’s face one last tear with his jaws and then rose, trying to walk toward her. He nearly fell, then hunched along with one foreleg drawn up to his chest; the blood was black in the night. She hesitated for a single second, torn ... but Jared gave a squall, and the dog weighed more than she did. Even if she could get him slung across one of the horses, it would take far too long. The crackle of shots around the encampment of the people of the land was already dying down, and she could see the ruddy light of flame there.

“Guard, Perks!” she said.

The saddle was already on the horse, loosely fastened. She quieted the eye-rolling nervousness of the animal, threw the saddlebags over its withers, and jerked the girths tight, then strapped her child into the carrying basket. Grim concentration got her into the saddle, and feet into stirrups already shortened for her. A quick slash left the lead line of the other horse free, and she wound it around her free hand.

“Hi, eeeeya
go
!” she shouted, then her heels thumped into the flanks of the horse, and it turned its head into the north and ran.

 

Alantethol took the pistol in his hands. It was of the type that his own folk had copied for some years, a twin-barreled flintlock, not the damnable six-shot repeaters the Eagle People had come to use lately. There were enough differences to show where it was made, though; the machining was smoother than any shop in Homeland could yet produce, the wood of the butt was one he didn’t recognize, and the stamp on the locks showed the rampant Eagle of the Republic, rather than the crowned mountain of Tartessoss.

“Curse them,” he whispered. “Curse them, is there nowhere in the world they will leave us in peace?”

He shook his head, looking around at the trampled remains of the camp. Two leather tents—six men, at most. Twelve horses, unshod ponies, some of them with colts at heel. Surprisingly little gear ... except that they would have hidden most of it before they left. From the reports, only one of the
Amur
rukan had been here when his band attacked.

A scream came from the ground a little eastward, toward the river. He walked over. The captive was proving surprisingly stubborn; the file leader questioning him gave another twist to the stick in the knotted cord twisted around the native’s brow. Blood ran down from the leather, and the black eyes bulged. The tame guide bent and shouted a question in the man’s ear, listened to his answer, then shrugged.

“He says the Eagle People made canoes and went downstream,” he said at last.

Alantethol felt the usual itch of discontent that came of working through badly trained interpreters; you might get the general sense of what someone said, but there was always a slippage of meaning—and you never got the little details that could be so crucial.

“How many? Where?” he grated.

The answers came, slow and unwilling and unsatisfactory, although they flowed a little better once the questioner had brushed burning liquid sulfur over the savage’s crotch. At last Alantethol turned away and paced back and forth, hand on the hilt of the sword whose scabbard slapped at his boot. Scowling, he kicked at a tuft of the long grass and thought. The problem was that the savages here didn’t
know
anything to speak of. The Eagle People had been even more handicapped by lack of the local tongues than he was. They hadn’t told their allies overmuch because they couldn’t.

Four of them downstream with some natives
, he thought. Best send a messenger to the ship, although there were far too few of the enemy to attack there. Still, with the Eagle People...

“They are not more than us!” he muttered to himself. “A man of Tartessos with a rifle is the equal of any of them.”

Yes, they were probably trying to make the great bay on the coast. Ships of theirs did put in there now and then. He grinned like a shark. Not for months, though, and the savages would hunt them down, given threats and rewards enough. Once they were located it would be easy enough to overfall them with numbers.

Hmmm, what of the woman they left here?
he thought. Only a woman... but it was well to be cautious where
Amurrukan
women were concerned; they were more like men, in many respects.
But this one is a savage, the description was clear.
The Eagle People mostly looked like Albans or other northerners; this one was short, black of hair and brown of skin and flat-faced, from the descriptions.
But she did escape, probably killed two of my men. Best to track her down, and see what she knows.
Even if she was nothing but some chance bedmate-servant picked up along the way, she might know more than the local idiots. He would leave good men on it, and return to the Hidden Fort to keep his hand on things.

“There will be revenge for you, Tarmendtal son of Zeurkenol. By the Hungry One, by the Lord of Waves, I swear it.”

R
aupasha daughter of Shuttarna tapped Iridmi on the shoulder. “Pull up here,” she said.

The allied forces had been moving to an intricate dance since Troy fell and Walker sent Great Achaea’s armies east into the Hittite lands. This
Nantukhtar
marching camp was on the edge of a small lake, set amid pinewoods. Mountains lay about, the broken northern edge of the Hittite lands, looming over the dry plains to the south. The cold air was full of a strong scent of pine and the smoke of fires; within was an orderly bustle, troops less clean and neat than they had been, but still showing that Islander air of purposefulness. And the weapons gleamed.

“Brigadier Hollard, ma‘am?” the aide in the headquarters tent said. “He and the visiting VIPs are up at the springs... the hot springs, ma’am; you’re the last. It’s the first time in a while anyone’s had a chance at a hot bath.”

Raupasha flushed, conscious despite the chilly air that an odor of woodsmoke and old sweat hung about her. The Nantucketers thought the peoples of these lands repulsively filthy in their persons, she knew—if you understood their tongue, you overheard things you were not meant to. And it was important that her people be represented in such meetings, through her. And Kenn’et would be there . . .

“I have a gift,” she said.

It was the the loin of a forest pig wrapped in cloth, and one of her people had even found some wild garlic and herbs to rub it with. These hills were thick with game, and there had been a little time to hunt since they’d pulled back from the valley lands to the south.

“They’ll be glad of it, ma’am,” the aide said cheerfully. “Sort of a picnic dinner up there. Right that way; past the
via principalis,
and just up from the edge of the lake.”

The Islanders had not been here long enough to fell much of the forest; it made the gridwork of streets and tents look a little odd, among the ancient pines. Wagons rolled and working parties marched, but most of the soldiers were sprawled by their tents, cooking, working on their gear, or just catching up on sleep after weeks of grinding forced marches.

The way was pointed by a series of rough-hewn arrows on trees. The springs turned out to be a set of pools, steaming in the cold air, with a strong mineral smell about them. Some had signs on pieces of split tree trunk posted next to them, with writing in red letters:
WATER TOO HOT DANGER DO NOT BATHE
with an odd symbol covering the last word, a circle with a slash across it. Some of those were full of uniforms, being stirred by workers with wooden poles. The safer pools were full of Islander troops, splashing about in horseplay, throwing handfuls of the hot mineral-rich water and ducking each other, or simply blissfully soaking away the grime and aches.

She found Kenneth Hollard where a hot spring welled up at the top of a tiny cliff and poured down a dozen feet into a rocky pool. The path of the miniature waterfall was marked by a slick white-gold coating on the rocks, where minerals in the water had dried and plated the native granite. Wisps of steam floated above the surface of the pool; a few feet away a fire crackled in a circle of rocks, giving off sharp pops and sparks, bright against the darkening sky in the east. He was there, looking relaxed despite the dark circles under his eyes; so were King Kashtiliash, Kathryn Hollard, Colonel O’Rourke with his unforgettable blazing red hair, freckled skin red, too, where the sun had struck it, milk-pale elsewhere: and one or two others. A small yellow model of a duck floated on the water.

Everyone smiled and called greetings. She hadn’t quite expected...

I know the Nantukhtar women are not shamefast,
she thought—you couldn’t walk through one of their camps and not know it
. And I know that any who presumes on it, regrets it.

According to the stories going around the allied armies, some men who
had
made incorrect assumptions would never be interested in women again, or at least not able to do anything about such an interest.

Her own men had gone to great lengths to preserve her modesty, which was possible because she was the only woman, camp followers aside, with the Mitannians.

All that went through her mind in an instant. The answer came as quickly:
Of course I can.
To do otherwise would be to fall from the status of comrade to that of
superstitious
local in an instant. They would still be polite to her, but...
And I will remind Kenn’et that I am no little girl.

She started to go to her knees before Kashtiliash as protocol demanded; the Babylonian monarch held up a hand. “No,” he said, in his deep rumbling voice. “There is ... how do you say, my brother?”

“No rank in the mess,” Kenneth Hollard said, smiling.

“Mess?”

“Where the officers eat,” Kathryn said. She stood and tossed something. “Careful, this end by the stream is hot, better to get in at the bottom.”

Raupasha caught it reflexively, and gulped; it was a bar of the Islander cleaning fat—soap—wrapped in a rough cloth.

“Thank you, Ka-th-ryn,” she said casually; that took a monumental effort of will. Then she bent to unlace her boots.

When her clothes steamed with the rest in a nearby superheated pool she slid in quickly, soaping and then wading to the head of the pool—just bearably short of boiling hot—to stand under the fall of water and scrub down with a sponge.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Kathryn asked.

“Yes,” Raupasha said, finding a convenient ledge of rock and sitting immersed to her neck.

Did I dream it, or did I see Kenn’et’s eyes widen as he looked
at
me? I am skinny and boyish, I know... but the Islanders think a woman beautiful if she does not look plump and soft—very strange. And look at Lady Kathryn, who entranced the Great King, even though her body is that of a she-leopard.

And it
did
feel good to be clean again. She sudsed her long black hair once more and submerged, scrubbing at her scalp with her fingers.

“The Mitannians have been doing very well,” Kenneth said, as she surfaced. “Especially the chariot raiding squadrons. Thank goodness the front’s too big here for solid lines of men; they can get in the enemy’s rear and work all sorts of lovely destruction.”

“I have heard,” Kashtiliash said; his English was strongly accented but fluent.

Kathryn moved behind him and began to work a comb through the sodden mass of wavy blue-black mane lying limp on his shoulders.

“Ai!”
he cried, as she tugged at a knot and then used the pick on the other end of the comb. “Are you trying to scalp me bald, woman?”

“I keep telling you to cut it short like mine,” she said, face intent on her work. Hers was at the regulation Marine field length, a quarter of an inch. “Then it wouldn’t tangle like this, and it’d be easier to keep clean in the field.”

“A King’s hair and beard are his strength—my people would fear disaster, did I crop it. It is hard enough to make them see why I must travel with so little state; they complain that I move about like a bandit chief of Aramaeans.”

“Well, next time you’ve got lice and I don’t, I’m going to boot you out of my bed again.”

Raupasha blinked as the King rumbled amusement, and everyone else joined in.

“Kat’ryn and I have been giving the Achaean’s southern column much grief,” Kashtiliash went on, with a wolfs grin. “There is only one way up the Meneander Valley.”

“And their commander on the southern wing, his name’s Guouwaxeus, has about as much imagination as an ox,” Kathryn said. “‘Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle’ is his style. Kash and I mousetrapped the better part of a battalion last week, and got away clear before his reserves came up.”

“It would have been better if my charioteers had the sense to see that they cannot mass against foot armed with the new weapons,” Kashtiliash grumbled. “If they had swung around wide and then dismounted, as I instructed... well, that officer is dead.”

He turned his leonine head to Raupasha and bowed it slightly. “You have instructed your followers better, I hear, Princess.”

“The King is kind,” Raupasha said, proud that her voice was steady.

This was more nerve-wracking than lying flat at the King’s feet while he talked of taking her head.
Of course, my breasts and thighs were not then bared for the world to see,
she thought wryly, forcing herself not to cross her arms on her chest, and went on aloud:

“I think it may be that my charioteers had to practice in concealment if at all, while the Assyrians ruled Mitanni; they did not wish the old
mariyannu
families who survived to keep up their skills. So they are less set in their ways. Also, while the Nantukhtar are the allies of the men of Kar-Duniash, to us they are saviors, so we are more ready to listen.”