Island in the Sea of Time (59 page)

“Sounds good,” Cofflin said. Alston was always conscientious about recognizing the supremacy of the civil authorities, and he didn’t interfere in her bailiwick. “I assume your second-in-command agrees?”

“Certainly. I’d like to move Sandy up to commander as well, for symmetry’s sake. For that matter I’m going to be leaving her in command of
Eagle
a good deal of the time, when we get to Britain.”

Cofflin nodded. “Again, no problem. We can put together some sort of ceremony, I suppose. I wish everything went as easily.”

“Don’t tell me—y’all’ve just come from another Constitutional Committee meeting?”

“Almost as bad,” Cofflin said, shuddering slightly for effect. “Finance.” He dug in one pocket of his parka. “Here. Three bucks.”

He flipped the coin to Alston. She caught it; it was gold, about the size of a dime, with LIBERTY on one side beneath an eagle’s wings, and
Republic of Nantucket: 1 A.E.
on the other. The picture inside that was a lighthouse—specifically, Brant Point lighthouse at the northwestern entrance to the harbor.

“I thought you were going to use the Unitarian Church tower?” she said. “Don’t tell me . . .”

“All the other denominations objected. One-tenth of an ounce fine gold, though, eighteen-karat—smelted down from jewelry. Starbuck
swears
gold-based money’ll work. God knows we need a currency. Swapping is so damned awkward.”

“Useful for trade, once the locals get the idea.” She looked down at the coin. “Can’t say ‘queer as a three-dollar bill’ anymore, can we?”

“Ah . . . hadn’t thought of that.” He gave a dry chuckle; it was funny, when you thought about it. “Starbuck’s bad enough on Finance, but everyone on the Constitutional Committee has a bee in their bonnet.”

“We need a constitution, and that’s more important than this.” She jerked her head at the schooner. “Much as I hate to admit it.”

They both sat on stacks of boards, and began to massage their injured legs with an identical gesture. “The Twin Gimps,” Alston said.

Cofflin snorted. “You could spend more time on the Constitutional Committee, then,” he said. “Since it’s so damn important.”

“A cobbler should stick to her last and a sailor to her ship. I just don’t have your capacity to endure fools,” she said, with a slight momentary smile he’d learned was her equivalent of a grin. “Didn’t I get the Arnsteins to enroll? Aren’t they a help?”

“Too
much
. Every time I turn around they’re telling us how the Republic of Venice or the Hanseatic League or ancient Athens did it—Ian’s always trying to pin some unpronounceable Greek name on everything we do, at that. It’s as intimidating as hell. Then Sam Macy loses his temper with them, and I have to smooth it over.”

“Thus getting your own way,” Martha pointed out. “Politics may not be your trade, dear, but you’re learning it.”

Damn, but it’s . . . energizing . . . being married to someone smarter than you are,
he thought.

“How’s it look, basically?” Alston asked, leaning forward to get out of the way of someone carrying two buckets of hot tar on the ends of a shoulder yoke. The strong scent made Martha hold her breath for a moment.

“Oh, a republic with a chief executive—everyone seems to like the name—and a Council, reporting to the Town Meeting and with appointments subject to confirmation, and the Meeting to pass laws and review and vote on all the major decisions,” Cofflin said. “That’s the bare bones. Right now we’re thrashing out whether the militia should be separate from the Coast Guard, and whether the commander of that should be called an admiral or not. Want to be an admiral?”

“Only if I can wear one of those fancy fore-and-aft hats and gold braid,” Alston said dryly.

“Talk of calling you people the Republic of Nantucket Navy, too.”

That brought her upright and indignant, as he expected. “Look, Cofflin—” She saw his grin, and relaxed. “Sorry, but tell them Guard people would rather barbecue their mothers. No offense—I know you were a squid.”

“None taken,” he said. “
And
they’re debating whether the Town Meeting can amend the constitution with a simple majority or not; Arnstein’s strong for a two-thirds vote two years running. Goes on about something the Athenian Assembly did.” He lifted a brow. “Hung some admirals for losing a battle, it was.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Alston said. “Christ, you know how a crowd can get, ’specially when someone tells them what they all want to hear.”

“You could come and tell the committee . . .” he said.

“You’ve got a fund of low cunning, Jared, you know that?” she said. “Maybe. If I’ve got time. After Christmas.”

 

“So at this point, you just pack up and go home,” William Walker said.

Shaumsrix scowled; he was an experienced war chief by Iraiina standards. “Of course. We can’t take the fort, we don’t have enough men, and if we wait here too long many will get sick in this cold and wet. Or nearby chiefs will come and overfall us with numbers we can’t match, even though this chief is at feud with all his neighbors. We’ve taken many cattle and sheep, and horses, yes—I admit that your riders let us surprise them that way. Now we should go home and guard against their revenge.”

Walker leaned his hands on the pommel of his saddle and looked around at his own followers. Most of them were mounted; chariot ponies broke to the saddle easily enough, and at thirteen hands were big enough to carry a man if he changed off every so often. They stamped and fretted a little, their newly shod hooves squelching in the damp earth, breath blowing white from their flaring nostrils into the chilly air of late fall.

“Time for our next surprise, boys,” he said. “Break out the axes.”

An ox-wagon creaked up behind them. Not the local kind, two solid wheels and two beasts; this was as close as he could get to a Boer trek wagon or a Conestoga, with eight yoke pulling it via a stout iron chain. It wasn’t fast, but it could carry a couple of tons of weight pretty well anywhere.

“More magic?” the Iraiina said fearfully.

“Just a little applied mechanics,” Walker said. Shaumsrix made a sign with his fingers.

It took all that day and most of the next to set the engine up. At last Walker stepped forward and took the lanyard. A swift tug . . .

Thack
-WHUMP. The long arm of the trebuchet whipped upward.

It was nothing but an application of the lever: the short arm carried a timber box full of rocks, the long a sling at its end to throw rocks or other projectiles. The bigger medieval examples had been able to throw a ton of weight half a mile. This was a bit smaller, but ample for his needs.

“Devil’s in the details,” Walker snorted to himself, watching the barrel of lard wrapped in burning rags arching up into the blue November sky.
At least we’ve got some decent weather for a change.
Most of the time he’d been wading in mud while he worked on the damn thing back at base.

He leveled the binoculars and watched. The target was a round earthwork
dunthaurikaz,
a little fortlet with perhaps a dozen big huts inside, and a stockade surrounding it made of upright logs rammed into the top of the earthwork. Pathetic even compared to the Western forts he’d seen on TV when he was a kid, but nearly invulnerable by here-and-now standards. The defenders had been standing on the platform behind the ramparts, shooting an occasional arrow and yelling insults. He could understand them, more or less; their language and the Iraiina tongue weren’t far apart—about like the difference between BBC English and what a small-town Texan spoke. The screams of fear as the barrel flew toward them were understandable anywhere. It struck near the sharpened points of the logs and snapped two off as it shattered. Burning tallow flung in all directions, spattering. Wood began to catch.

“Haul away, boys!” he called.

Four horses were waiting. They were local chariot ponies, but he’d had proper horse-collar harnesses made up, not the choking throat-strap yoke these people used. A strong rope ran back from them to the pulleys, and the longer throwing arm began to swing downward with a creaking of its raw timbers, hauling up the great box of rocks on the other end.
John did a good job on the ironwork
, he thought. But then, the blacksmith always did a good job, it was a habit with him . . . and Walker had done enough work with him back on the island to know exactly what he was capable of, and how fast.

The crew snapped the iron hook into the loop bolted into the arm. Ohotolarix came up beside him.

“Lord, that thing is a marvel—but we don’t want to burn all the loot, do we?”

The young Iraiina swaggered, hand on his new steel sword, but there was plenty of deference in the way he spoke to his new chief.

“Good point,” Walker said. To the crew at the trebuchet: “Give ’em a stone this time, men.”

Four of them lifted a three-hundred-pounder into the heavy leather sling. McAndrews adjusted the stop ropes, frowning in concentration.

“That ought to do it, sir.”

“Go for it.”

The tall black jerked at the cord that tripped the release.
Thack-
WHUMP
.
The rounded boulder spun through the air. For a wonder—aiming this thing was by guess and by God—it struck not far away from where the barrel had. Four logs snapped across, raw white splinters showing in their heartwood, and a man arched out to land crumpled in the wet pastureland between the fort and the invaders. The chiefs and warriors who’d agreed to come along on this raid shrieked and beat their axes on their shields in glee.

“Reload.”

“We’ll batter them to sausage meat, lord!” Ohotolarix said with wild enthusiasm.

These people are like kids,
Walker thought, not for the first time. One minute they were all agog over a novelty, then next sulking in the corner or stamping and waving their fists in quick anger . . . not what you’d call dependable.
On the other hand, they can learn. At least the younger ones.

“No we won’t,” Walker said. “Because they can figure that out themselves, and any minute now . . .”

The narrow gate of the fort was hauled open. Hands thrust a gangway through, over the muddy ditch that surrounded the settlement, and two chariots thundered across. Behind them ran forty or so men, all the adult free males in this chief’s following, bellowing their war cries. The Iraiina whooped themselves, and ran to meet their foes.

“Remember what I told you!” Walker barked. “Shoulder to shoulder!
March!
”

His own little band tramped forward, spears lowered and crossbows ready, swinging around the clot of combat where chieftains hurled javelins and taunts from their war-cars and footmen met in milling, deadly chaos. Grossly outnumbered to begin with, none of the enemy fought long. Walker met one of the last, an axman bleeding but still wolf-swift. The tomahawk chopped at him, trailing red drops. He brought his
katana
up in a looping curve to meet it, and the ash-wood slid off steel. The American planted his feet and swung, drawing the cut across the native’s neck. The contorted fork-bearded face went slack and dribbled blood, then collapsed. A few others, perhaps seven or eight, threw down their weapons.

“Don’t kill them!” Walker yelled, pointing his blade to the warriors who’d surrendered. “I want prisoners.”

“Well struck, lord!” Ohotolarix said. His own short sword was red. “Now we plunder!”

The flanking move had done more than end the fight quickly; it had also put Walker’s band nearest the gate. “Double-time!” he shouted.
First plunder,
then
burn.

The inside of the fortress was stink and chaos; the locals had driven much of their stock inside, and brought themselves from steadings all around, packing it far beyond its usual capacity. Hairy little cattle bawled and surged in panic; sheep milled in clots; women and children ran likewise. One or two of the mothers had already cut their children’s throats and plunged daggers into their own chests, or hung themselves from the carved rafter ends of their houses.

“You, you, you, get those fires out!” Walker barked. “The rest of you, round these people up! They’re no use to us dead. Get their stuff over there.”

He pointed to the . . . porch, he decided . . . of the biggest building in the fort. Almost certainly the fallen chief’s dwelling; the roof ran out a dozen feet or so beyond the wall, supported on wooden pillars, and there was a raised floor a bit out of the mud, covered with the same cut reeds used inside.

The other Iraiina were surging into the fort in his wake, but even their chiefs were a little overawed by the foreigner who’d won the favor of the
rahax
and shown such command of war-magic. Instead of flinging themselves on the plunder and women they shouted commands to their own followers, enforcing them with an occasional cuff or shove. The burning sections of the palisade were put out or dragged away, the livestock herded out to await division, the survivors kicked and pushed and spear-prodded into a mass.

“Chief Hwalkarz,” one of the charioteer lords said. “As you wished, we have done.”

Men were shouting in glee as they dragged out their booty. Bolts of woolen cloth, clothing, furs, bronze tools; some gold and silver ornaments, more of bronze and stone and shell. Pottery jugs and skins of mead and beer were added; they called out reports of stored food, grain, cheeses, smoked and pickled meat.

Happy as kids at Christmas,
Walker thought, smiling and wiping his sword.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” he said to the two Iraiina chiefs. “You can have all the bronze and cloth, and half the gold and silver.”

They whooped and pounded him on the back; Ohotolarix looked a little startled, then relaxed. The bronze tools and weapons weren’t much use to them, and they could trade for cloth.

“We divide the food and livestock equally—half for me, half for you two to split. Half the prisoners are mine, and I get first pick. Is that just?”