Island in the Sea of Time (93 page)

“Neat,” Cuddy said. “He’ll get over it, especially when we’re going toward his Egyptians. Dumb bastard.”

“Now, now,” Hong said. “What about the slaves?”

“The ones we’re leaving? Got ’em locked in the
ergastula,
like we have since last week,” Cuddy said, beginning to turn away.

Behind him Ekhnonpa was handing her swaddled baby up into the two-wheeled light carriage, and climbing in after it. Martins and his wife were in the one behind; that one was closed, and securely locked. He’d been under guard since the day of the battle, also part of Walker’s contingency plan.

“Why not set the
ergastula
on fire as we leave?” Hong said brightly. “It would be sort of . . . appropriate, wouldn’t it?”

Cuddy looked at her with wondering distaste; “You just never stop, do you?” he said softly.

“Well, why should I? Live for the moment and enjoy every day, that’s my motto, Billy-boy,” she said, fluttering her lashes.

“No,” he said curtly, and walked toward his horse. Louder, he called: “Let’s get going! Now!”

“I . . .” Ian Arnstein swallowed. “Most of them are still alive. Some of them ate . . . well . . .” He spat into the muddy cobblestones of the street.

Oh, God
, he thought. He’d been a classical historian, and he’d thought he knew what
latifundium
and
ergastula
meant.
I didn’t
. There was no mind left behind their eyes, most of them, as they yammered and cowered away from the light. He met the captain’s eyes, and she nodded quietly in perfect understanding.

Marian Alston stood by the neck of her horse, stroking it absently as she looked about the remains of Walkerburg. There was a giant crucifix of whole logs standing in the middle of the square, with iron shackles dangling from the arms.

“You can see the sort of kingdom Walker would have built,” she said quietly. “Two days?”

“Two days,” Arnstein said. “Nobody knew which way they were going.”

“I can guess,” she said. “We may be able to catch them at sea.”
But
Eagle’
s still halfway across the Atlantic, dammit,
she thought with cold self-reproach. With Isketerol’s ships gone, she’d assumed the Tartessian had bugged out for Iberia.
Instead he waited for Walker. He’s probably lying up in a marsh somewhere, or the fenland, or the Thames—could be anywhere. Not many places in Britain more than two days’ wagon-travel from the sea. Certainly not this one.
Granted she’d been laid up right after the battle, but . . .

Swindapa came out of a hut. There was a squalling bundle in her arms.
Oh, God, not another one . . . why couldn’t it be puppies?

Her smile changed as the Fiernan lifted the baby up close enough to see. That milk-chocolate color was
not
something she’d expected to see in the White Isle. McAndrews’s child.

“The mother is dead, in the birthing.”

“Well,” Alston said after a moment. “There’s room on Main Street for the four of us, I suppose.”

A chill colder than the rain ran down her spine as Swindapa lowered her eyes silently.

 

“We’ve won,” Alston rasped into the microphone; her throat still hurt. “The question is, what the hell do I do now?”

“You’ve done a damn fine job,” the chief said, his voice clear under the crackle of static—very clear, for a transatlantic broadcast with this equipment. “What you should do now is wait a little. From the sound of it, you’re not up for much diplomacy.”

She leaned back in the canvas chair, conscious mainly of an overwhelming weariness. Fort Pentagon’s HQ hut was chilly and drafty in the aftermath of the week’s rains, despite the brazier glowing in one corner.
And Swindapa’s hardly spoken to me in a week. She turned pale as a ghost when I mentioned going home . . . home, Christ, where
is
her home. Enough. There’s work to do.

“I got a third of my command killed.” She sat silent for a moment. “Christ, Jared, those were kids. They should have been back in the Academy, cramming for exams, with nothing more serious to worry about than zits and their social lives.”

“We’re none of us where we would have been,” the slow Yankee twang said. “Anyway, we’ve sent some people over on Eagle this trip. . . . That conference you arranged still on?”

Well, I
said
I was an ass-kicker,
she thought wryly, suppressing a tinge of hurt.
Jared’s taking me at my word and sending someone to handle the problems that aren’t nails. Put the hammer back on the shelf. . . .

“Right. We’ve got a lot of
mana
with the Earth Folk now, and the Sun People tribes are too scared not to do what we tell them. They lost a
lot
of their fighting men, especially in the pursuit.” She’d tried to keep the Fiernans from slaughtering those who surrendered, but it had cost her a lot of grief and chunks of political prestige.

“All the better,” Jared said, a hint of iron in his voice. “If they wanted to stay safe, they shouldn’t have started a war. Over.”

“Over and out.”

She clicked the microphone back onto the radio and sat, silent. It was with a start she saw how much time had gone by, and hauled herself erect.
Eagle
would be arriving with the flood tide; and for appearance’s sake, she had to be on hand. Alone. Swindapa was off visiting her relatives again.

“Oh, Christ,” she murmured, squeezing her eyes shut for an instant, gripping the edge of the table to the brink of pain. “Get a grip. Now
go
.”

Jared Cofflin shook Alston’s hand at the bottom of the gangplank.

“Martha and the daughter are along, too,” he said, grinning. “Why miss the chance?” He looked around, searching the faces. “Where’s Swindapa?”

“Visiting her mother,” Alston said neutrally.

Cofflin started to speak and visibly switched gears. “Hope the voice is getting better,” he said.

“The medics say it will. Inconvenient as
hell,
let me tell you. If I talk above a whisper for more than a few minutes I’m dumb as a fish. If you’ll pardon me, Chief, I have some organizational work. . . .”

He looked after her, then turned to the Arnsteins with raised brows.

Doreen coughed. “Swindapa’s people . . . her family . . . they’ve been after her to stay. She won’t talk about it. Marian . . .”

“Damn,” he said quietly. “Well, let’s get on with it,” he said wearily.

 

He swallowed. The noise from the crowd outside was growing louder, almost a roar until a steady clanging cut through it. He puzzled over that for a second, then realized it was the sound of short swords being slapped against the sheet-steel facings of Nantucketer shields—the American troops reminding the audience of decorum.

“No sense in waiting,” he muttered, squaring his shoulders. At least it wasn’t raining anymore.

The crowd were standing—some had been sitting, but they stood for him—all around the slopes of the natural bowl. No more than a hundred all told; Spear Chosen of the Fiernans and a clump of Grandmothers to the left, and the Sun Folk chieftains to the right. Most of those were very young or very old, survivors because they’d been noncombatants. They looked at him with sullen, hangdog anger, seeming half naked without their weapons, bright with defiant finery. Along the circular ridge stood the Nantucketer troops, with another two squads on either side of him.

He raised his hand. “Please, sit down,” he said. “We have to talk.”

The translations echoed him; he forced the distraction from his consciousness, and the feeling of sweat trickling down under his collar.
Christ, the fate of nations, and
I
have to decide.

“The war is over,” he went on. “Too many have died in it, us”—the translators rendered that as
Eagle People;
he supposed the Americans were stuck with that moniker—“Fiernan Bohulugi, and the eastern tribes. No more.”

That got him nods, even from the Sun People. Nobody here had ever experienced war on this scale before.

“We must take council to see that it never happens again, here in the White Isle.”

A Spear Chosen shot to his feet, wincing and staggering a little as a bandaged wound on one leg caught him with a spike of pain. “Throw the Sun People back into the sea! They brought nothing but trouble with them. Their tread on the land disturbs its spirits. Let them go, or die if they refuse!”

That brought nods from the left side of the circle, and a sound halfway between a groan and a rising growl from the right. The American pointed to a white-bearded chief.

“My people came here in my father’s father’s time—” he began.

“Your tribe? One hundred twenty-six years this spring,” one of the Grandmothers said dryly. “That is yesterday. Nothing.”

The easterner glared at her. “—time out of mind, we have lived here. Here are the graves of our fathers and the holy shaws of our gods, here we plow and sow and herd, here our children are born. This is our home. We will not leave it.”

Cofflin nodded. “We
could
expel you all—or kill you all, we and our Earth Folk friends. Do you doubt it?”

The charioteer lords fell silent again, a shuddering stillness. Jared turned to the Americans’ allies. “But we will not, unless they force us to it. If you drive these out, others will come—or these again. You can’t take away their knowledge of what Walker taught them . . . and Walker himself is still out there, over on the mainland.”

Great, now I’ve got them both mad at me
, he thought, through the uproar that followed.
And Martha was right.
The Fiernan Bohulugi were lovely people, but they needed what the charioteers had, or some of it.

Eventually the clamor found a voice: “Would you leave them free to attack us again?”

“No,” he said. “Not that.” He turned to the defeated, raising his hand. “If you are to live in this land, it’s by our say-so—our leave,” he added, as the translators looked puzzled. “On our terms.”

“What terms?”

“First, you must swear by your own gods that you will make no more war on the Earth Folk or on us.”

Slow nods; they’d expected that.

“Next, you will make no war on each other, either. Every
teuatha
of Sky Father’s children must swear to aid us in punishing any tribe that breaks this pledge. In return, we—the Eagle People—will swear to let nobody”—that was directed at the Fiernan, but tactfully—“attack you, either. You’ll be guaranteed safety in the lands you now hold, but no more.”

That stunned them. “No war?” one young chief with a peach-fuzz beard said, blinking. There were actual tears in his eyes. “How . . . how will we blood our spears, where will we find honor and bridewealth? Are we to sit in our fathers’ houses and never do anything of our own?”

“There are other ways to wealth besides taking it from someone else,” Cofflin said. “We’ll show you some—new ways of farming, new crafts, and trade. We’ll be trading with all of you. And besides that, we’re going to be sending more ships out, all over the world. The world is bigger than you can imagine, and a lot of it’s dangerous. We’ll need marines—guards—more than we can supply. I imagine some of your adventurous young men would find that an acceptable way to gain honor. And wealth.”

There were frowns, but the young chief looked interested. So did many of the other younger tribesmen.
No grudges,
Cofflin thought. From what the specialists had gathered, a straight-up fight didn’t breed lasting resentment among the Sun People; they considered it the way of nature.

“You ask no tribute?” the older man asked skeptically.

“For ourselves? No,” Cofflin said. “But you can’t expect to start a fight, lose it, and go scot-free . . . I mean, get away without loss. You attacked the Fiernan Bohulugi without cause. You’ll give back any lands you took in the last few years, you’ll release all slaves and captives of their people you hold—
with
gifts in compensation—and you’ll pay the Earth Folk an indemnity for the harm you caused. We’ll set it; it’ll be heavy, but not beyond what you can pay. Consider it a . . . a fee for learning a valuable lesson. Oh, and some of our holy men would like to travel among you and tell you about our beliefs. You don’t have to listen, but you won’t hinder them, either.”