"Against the Tide of Years" - читать интересную книгу автора (Стирлинг Стивен Майкл)

CHAPTER SIX

November, Year 8 A.E.

(November, Year 6 A.E.)

(June, Year 7 A.E.)

December, Year 8 A.E.

(June, Year 7 A.E.)

"Lordy, but I hate giving speeches," Alston muttered under her breath as she stepped down from the podium on the steps of the Pacific National Bank at the head of Main Street.

"Tell me about it," Jared said.

"Maybe that's why you always give the same one, Marian," Ian said out of the side of his mouth, grinning as he applauded with the crowd. "Thank you for your support. We'll get the job done. Good-bye."

"Oh, I don't know," Doreen said, "back in Alba, she threatened defaulters with having their ice cream ration reduced."

"To hell with the lot of you," Marian said, seating herself and looking suitably grave. She cocked an eye at the sky; it was a bright, chilly morning, but there was a hint of mare's tail cloud in the northwest, and the wind was about seven knots, brisk up from the harbor.

Prelate Gomez rose to conduct the blessing service. Hats went off among the dense crowd that packed Main Street Square and the streets leading off it; expeditionary regiment Marines and townsfolk mingled. Alston kept her hat on her knees and listened respectfully. Gomez bore the red robes with dignity, despite looking to be exactly what he was, the stocky middle-aged son of a Portuguese fisherman from New Bedford. The Sun People among the regiment and ships' crews had had their ritual yesterday, sacrificing a couple of sheep to Sky Father and the Horned Man and the Lady of the Horses… and at least you get to eat the sheep, she thought.

Swindapa had led the Fieman Bohulugi service last night, she being the senior of the Star Blood on the island at present. Which makes her, technically, a Grandmother. And wasn't that an odd thought. Alston had attended that, it being in the family and she being an adoptive Fiernan of sorts-nobody cared if she actually believed in it, they didn't think that way.

"War is an evil," Gomez was saying. "But in this fallen world, we are often forced to a choice between a lesser evil and a greater. Our citizens and their Meeting have determined that the interests of our Republic demand that Walker be brought down before his power grows too great, and that is a just decision. He has shown himself to be utterly without scruple.

"To protect our people, our children, our nation, from such a threat justifies this war. But there is another and greater reason for it. Walker is one of ours. When he spreads death, suffering, slavery, among the peoples here in our exile home, we bear part of the responsibility."

Alston winced inwardly. She'd suspected Walker had something up his sleeve, but there hadn't been any proof… and he'd struck without warning, taking the Yare and heading out. Cunningly, too, using Pamela Lisketter as a decoy to give himself time.

"And since Walker is at least partially our sin, so we must pay the price of his suppression. Let us pray to Almighty God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, that He does not require a payment more than we can bear. For whatever the price may be, bear it we must."

And on that cheerful note, she thought, bowing her head. Alston hadn't prayed since she was about fourteen, but whatever your opinion of his beliefs, Gomez was a man to respect. They weren't exactly friends-several reasons for that-but they worked together well enough.

The silent moment ended with a trumpet and bugle call. The crowds cleared the street, and the men and women of the Marines and the crews formed up to march down to the docks.

Alston picked up her cap and drew a deep breath. "Let's go," she said.

"Yeah, boss, this is more like it," Bill Cuddy said, holding out his wine cup for a refill.

A slave girl in a filmy kilt of Egyptian linen knelt gracefully and poured from a long-stemmed glass jar.

William Walker leaned back in the great terra-cotta hot tub set in the floor of the bathing suite and smiled at his machinist, enjoying the sensation of steaming water soaking the knots out of his muscles.

"What did I promise you back in Nantucket, Cuddy-my-main-man?" he chuckled. Master of Engineers, technically. "Gold, girls, all the comforts of home, within reason."

The new house-palace, in fact- was almost finished. He'd built it not far from the site of classical Sparta, on a rise overlooking the Eurotas valley. The basic materials were the ones the locals were used to working in, but he'd made some modifications. Pitched roofs of baked-clay tile, for instance; the local flattops leaked like a bastard in the winter. Floors of glazed tile, the way he had this area set up, or polished marble; he looked around with satisfaction at the mural frescoes, mostly battle scenes from the conquest of Sicily last year. Running water wasn't a completely unknown concept here, but the sort of full-suite setup he'd put in was, and that went double for the flush toilets with S-curve pipes. Central heating, too, with underfloor ducts, and furnaces and tanks for hot water on tap in the master's quarters.

"Yeah, you came through, all right, boss," Cuddy said. "Funny how much easier this was than Alba."

"Lot more organization to start with," Walker pointed out.

Although that has its drawbacks, he thought. His glance went to the tall French doors. He couldn't see much out of them, the best they could do for window glass still being sort of wavy and opaque, and it was raining outside on the terrace anyway. If it had been clear and he'd gone outside, he could have seen down the valley to the palace of the underking of Sparta, whose sons had all conveniently died in the Sicilian campaign.

He really shouldn't have tried to have me offed back in Mycenae, he thought. Of course, the guy was sick these days himself… courtesy of dear, dear Alice Hong. God, but it pays to have a doctor on your staff. And once Wannax Menelaos was gone, Walker knew exactly who the high king was going to appoint in his place. Odd. I expected them to be brothers. More like third cousins once removed.

But on the whole, operating in civilization of a sort was a hell of a lot easier than cobbling together a kingdom out of the tribes up in Alba. There was a lot the Achaeans didn't know, but at least he didn't have to teach them everything. He smiled at the vista beyond the windows; he'd left plenty of room for expansion later.

Something imposing, but not ostentatious, he thought. Something along the lines of San Simeon.

"Easy to get used to this sort of thing," Cuddy said, raising his cup in toast. He looked aside at the girl, who was kneeling, sitting back on her heels with eyes cast down. "Like, getting laid whenever you want, for example."

Walker nodded, although he wasn't the sort of three-ball man that some of his American followers were. Rodriguez, for instance, and even he'd slowed down a bit now that it was not longer a big deal.

"You deserve it," Walker said sincerely. "You've got the machine shops working fine now."

Cuddy shrugged and beckoned. The girl came over and knelt behind him, kneading his shoulders.

"The first part was the hardest," he said, tilting his head back against her breasts. "Like, one makes two, two makes four, you know? Lathes make lathes. Look though, boss-these guys I've trained, they don't really understand any of this stuff. Well, maybe one or two. It's all monkey-see, monkey-do for the rest."

"It's the results that matter."

"Surprised you sent Danny Rodriguez off to Sicily all on his lonesome," Cuddy went on.

"Oh, I put the fear of God into him well enough," Walker said. "Besides, Odikweos will keep him in line… and I can rely on Odikweos to see that our great good friend and liege-lord Agamemnon doesn't hear about exactly how many musketeers we're training over there. Christ, but these people don't have much idea of spook-work. Odikweos, he's the exception."

"Yeah, well, you got Odi the viceroy's job," Cuddy said. "He owes you-it's a fucking gold mine."

"Gratitude is strong; the bottom line's even stronger." Walker chuckled and finished his own wine. "He's raising a regiment of musketeers himself-most of these wog VIPs, you'd think getting out of their chariots was like cutting off their own balls. Odikweos doesn't think that way."

"He's keeping the sulfur and asphalt coming, too," Cuddy said with satisfaction. "And the other stuff."

Sulfur for gunpowder, of course. Sicily was rich in brimstone ores. The asphalt wells near Ragusa-that-wasn't were extremely handy too; you could distill something roughly like kerosene out of it without much trouble, and the residue had a dozen uses, like waterproofing these baths so the adobe brick didn't turn to mudpie. They were even paving some crucial stretches of road with it. Plus the slaves, timber, and grain that kept other projects going.

"Yeah, that's going pretty well," Walker said. "Pretty soon we'll be ready to start whipping on the neighbors again."

Cuddy looked at him. "Why bother, boss? Shit, we're practically running this place-will be, in a couple of years. Why bust our ass taking over more territory?"

"Two reasons, Cuddy. First, because I say so." He met the other man's eyes until they dropped. "Second," he went on more genially, "we've got to hit while the hitting's easy. We're not exactly building tanks and helicopter gunships here. Anything we're doing, the locals can learn, and we give them time, they will start picking up tricks- my buddy Isketerol already has, of course. So we've got to conquer as much as we can while we're ahead. That way, we'll have numbers on our side too. Quantity has a quality all its own."

Cuddy nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, when you put it that way…"

"Besides, it's fun. Booze and cooze are all right, but you can only party so long."

"Ah, try me on that one, boss!" They laughed. "Yeah, I see what you mean, though. Sort of a challenge."

Walker went on: "Anyway, I'm off. Alice has something really special planned for those two that came in with the last shipment, and I've got a starring role."

Cuddy made a slight face. "Whatever, boss."

Walker laughed again as he heaved himself out of the tub. Water hissed over the indigo and white of the tiles, and the girls hastened over to rub him down with linen towels and dress him in a long embroidered robe imported from the Hittite country.

"Oh, she's a complete nutcase, I know," Walker said. "But it can be sort of diverting, for a change. Hasta la vista."

And the screams and bodies keep the staff really on their toes, he thought, glancing back over his shoulder as he left. Two of the serving-maids were sliding into the tub, minus kilts, giggling and squealing.

Guards brought their muskets to present arms with a slap of hands on wood and crash of hobnailed heels on stone. Walker nodded back with lordly politeness.

"Philowergos, Eumenes," he said.

He'd seen a movie once, when he was young-Battleship Potemkin, that was it, about a mutiny in the Russian navy, sailors given rotten food and such. He still remembered his own reaction of contempt; what sort of doink shorted the hired muscle? He knew enough to spread around the vig generously, and that included knowing names. The thought warmed him as he walked past into the main body of the mansion.

Glass windows kept it reasonably bright even on an overcast winter's day, and fires boomed in proper fireplaces at either end; the floor was honeycomb yellow marble from a nearby quarry. He'd kept the traditional high seat on the southern wall, but added tables and chairs to make it more like a formal dining room. A curving staircase led to the second floor and Hong's quarters-Ekhnonpa and the children he'd had by her were over in the other wing, and glad to be there.

No mistaking Hong's door, dark oiled beechwood with silver bolts through it, and the mask of a skull in a golden setting above it with a candle burning behind the empty eyes. He walked through, past a sitting room with couches and a couple of beautiful locally woven rugs in front of the cheerful fireplace, and into the bedroom.

"You're late," Hong said. "But I haven't really started. Just sort of establishing the scenario."

Despotnia Algeos, the locals were calling her: the Lady of Pain, avatar of Hekate, with power over life and death. Some of the noble Achaean ladies were incorporating her suggestions in their rites. She was dressed in black gold-stamped sandals, a silver domino skull-mask, and an ivory-hilted riding crop thonged to one wrist, with a few straps and buckles elsewhere. He had to admit it all looked quite dramatic.

He didn't think the subjects today were concerned with niceties like that at the moment. One was a thirtysomething Sophia Loren type, spread eagled naked to the wall and bound with built-in ties at wrists, ankles, and waist. Her mouth was gagged with a leather ball tied with a strap around her head, and tears and spittle ran down her face and heavy breasts. There were thin silver needles through her earlobes, the webs between finger and thumb, and a few other parts of her body, and ivory alligator clips on her nipples. Thread-thin trickles of blood crept over her skin, disturbed by shuddering twitches.

The other, on the bed, was about fourteen, with small, pert breasts and a black fuzz of hair between her legs. He had a good view of that, because she was secured to the four-poster with a net of straps and buckles that held her arms stretched taut above her head and her legs spread wide and hauled back. There was a creaking and sobbing as she struggled.

Trays of polished instruments stood on wheeled trays above the gleaming tile of the floor; the rugs and tapestries were rolled up and safely elsewhere, leaving the half-done murals bare… and Hong had drawn those herself. She wasn't bad, sort of an Alphonse Mucha Art Nouveau style, but with subjects the Czech had never gone for. A bed of glowing coals burned in the fireplace, where other blades and spikes heated to cherry-red. Walker went to a sideboard and poured wine into an elegant shallow local cup, then sipped it. Too sweet, but not bad for all that.

Hong smiled at him sidelong, licked her lips and let the tip of the springy whip trail down from the bound girl's mouth, slowly drawing it across sweat-slick skin and down to her crotch, tickling with the tuft of feathers. Then her hand moved with blurring speed and thin red welts appeared on the inside of her victim's thighs.

Dr. Alice Hong gave a long shivering sigh at the squeal of helpless pain. "Just the right reception for visiting princesses, don't you think?" she said. The whip flicked again, a sharp, expert motion that brought a heaving convulsion. "Oh, does that smart, little princess? Shall I kiss it better?"

Actually they're the wife and daughter of an important rebel chief, Walker thought, watching her work and drinking again. An important dead chief; the rest of his relations were digging sulfur, hauling stone, and building roads in the new Achaean fiefs of Sicily-the ones who weren't hanging on crosses beside the roads. He pulled the robe over his head and tossed it aside. Alice would have been quite happy to include the chief himself in this little playlet, she was an equal-opportunity sadist, but he just didn't find that much of a turn-on.

Hong chuckled as she watched him. "Impatient as always, Will," she said, reaching out to tickle him strategically with the feathers. "But all right, let's start with the traditional defloration… or would you rather give momma there something to remember…?"

"Decisions, decisions," Walker laughed thickly. "I think… yes, youth should be served first."

He walked toward the bed.

"Reveille, reveille, heave out, trice up, lash and stow, lash and stow! Here I come, with a sharp knife and a clear conscience!"

Alston opened her eyes as the brass bell rang. The big stern cabin of the Joshua Chamberlain was filled with light from the windows that formed a curving wall along the rear of the ship. The clipper-frigate creaked and groaned around her, the endless speaking of a big wood-built ship; water slapped at the hull, and the stiff breeze hummed through the rigging. The sound and the long, rolling pitch of the ship beneath filled her with a quiet happiness.

Swindapa stirred. The first voyage together they'd kept to the old no-fraternization-on-board rule, but the new NCMJ (Nantucket Code of Military Justice) allowed married couples and registered domestic partners to bunk together at sea. Above them they could hear the crisp Sir! Crew turned out! of the master-at-arms reporting to the officer of the deck. The ship resounded to a thunder of feet as the crew and the hundred-odd Marine troopers aboard raced up the gangways to stow their tight-rolled hammocks along the gunwales of the ship. Then another thunder, this time as water gushed from the pumps onto the immaculate deck planking, and hollystones and "bears"-heavy blocks of sandstone-began to growl as they were pushed over the wood.

"Time to be up and doing," Alston said.

"You Eagle People-always in a hurry," Swindapa laughed, rolling out of bed and tossing Alston's uniform to her.

Alston paused for a second to admire the sleek, graceful nakedness that smiled at her. Eight years and I still get that catch in my throat, she thought happily, then sighed and began her morning stretches. Those got just a little more difficult every year. The captain's cabin on the Liberator class had room enough, at least. With an eye to impressing foreign potentates, it also had paneling of curly maple, polished and stained to bring out the swirling grain of the wood, and strips of carving along the edges of the yard-wide planks. Even more likely to impress were the two long cast-steel twelve-pounder rifles that served as stern-chasers, bowsed tight in place with double lashings.

Gunnery practice again today, Alston decided, as she buttoned her jacket and adjusted the billed cap with fouled anchor that was Guard regulation. Drill was a damned nuisance on a ship crowded with passengers, but you had to find some time to get the hands used to their lethal tools.

They walked along the central corridor of the poop to the officers' wardroom, the hollystones loud on the quarterdeck above.

"Good morning, gentlemen, ladies," she said.

The wardroom table was crowded, since the two Hollards and some of their Marine officers ate with them as a matter of course. Barely two weeks out of home port and two days from the Islander outpost on Barbados they still had abundant fresh provisions. And coffee…

She added a filleted flying fish to her plate, anticipating the smooth buttery taste; several dozen had landed on the deck and made a short trip to the cooks. The coffee was harsh-tasting to anyone who could remember the twentieth; it was the offspring of ornamental coffee plants, the only option the Islanders had had available after the Event. Better than no coffee at all, by a long shot. Which was what they'd had to put up with for long years afterward, as those first seedlings planted out on Caribbean islands struggled to maturity.

"Damn, but I missed this, the first few years after the Event," she said, sighing, after the first sip.

"It's like chewing nettles," Swindapa replied. "An acquired taste, but why bother to acquire it?"

"Could be worse," Alston said, looking through the night-watch reports presented to her-water consumption, miles traveled, positions, hourly records of speed, barometer readings-all routine. "Tobacco could have survived too." Doc Coleman had quietly squashed any attempt to bring that particular vice back to life.

"I drank decaf," Colonel Hollard said, lifting his cup of sassafras.

Alston's mouth quirked slightly, and she raised an eyebrow. She'd be handing over to Hollard's generation in time; it was nice to be reminded that they could remember America, the twentieth, as well. There were times she worried that they would disappear into this era like a drop of ink in a bucket of milk-not enough of them to season it.

A middie approached the table and saluted. "Good morning, Captain," she said. "The officer of the deck reports the approach of eight bells. Permission to strike eight bells on time."

"My compliments to Mr. Jenkins, and let him make it so," Alston said.

Swindapa stood with her, only a slight glance out of the corner of her eyes telling her partner what she thought of the Eagle People rituals of military courtesy. It's still a bit of a game to her, Alston mused. She performed it faultlessly, even acknowledged the reasons for it but…deep down, I don't think she takes it all that seriously. The Sun People recruits were a far more temperamental and willful bunch than the Fiernans, but when they finally grasped the concept of discipline they often embraced it with a convert's fanaticism.

There were times when she thought Swindapa's people were just too damned mentally healthy for their own good.

Up the companionway to the brightness of the deck, the sun now well clear of the horizon.

"Captain on deck!"

"As you were," she replied. She was acting as captain-aboard of the Chamberlain, as well as commodore of the flotilla; the Guard was still short of experienced ship commanders.

"Fair-weather sailin'," Alston went on.

She looked up; not a cloud in the sky. The deck of the Joshua Chamberlain tilted only a little, and she took the long blue swells with a smooth rocking-horse motion under all plain sail, three pyramids of white flax canvas reaching up her masts, a hundred and twenty feet on the main. The sails were braced to starboard, and the ship was moving at nearly right angles to the wind. We should catch the trades in another few days, she thought, reaching out to touch the rail. Then they could make better speed, with the wind abaft the beam.

The Chamberlain was lead ship in the Islander flotilla; behind her came the Lincoln; then the Eagle, the main transport, and the schooners Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. They were in line astern, each separated by a thousand yards like beads on an arrow-straight line ruled across the blue of the ocean in cream-white wakes, their fresh canvas snow-white against the dark gray-blue of the hulls.

As a training ship, Eagle had been built for carrying people, not cargo; there had even been proposals to break up the big eighteen-hundred-tonner for her metal, on the theory that she was inefficient compared to wooden craft with proper holds.

Efficient as a troop-transport, though, she thought, watching the long hull with the red diagonal slash of the Coast Guard.

"Signal," she said aloud.

Swindapa took out her pad; the ships all had radios salvaged from pleasure craft. Chamberlain's was in a low deckhouse forward of the wheels.

"To Eagle;-prepare to drop targets." Those would be rafts of empty barrels that had held salt provisions, lashed together with poles and flags standing up. "Ships will pass at four hundred yards and then come about," she said. To the first lieutenant: "Mr. Jenkins, sound to quarters. Fighting sail only."

"Yes, ma'am," he said crisply and turned.

Orders flowed out and a drum began to beat, a long, hoarse roll of sound. Marines crowded out of the way as parties dashed to rig boarding nets along the sides and splinter-netting overhead. Crewfolk ran up the ratlines, and the ship came more nearly upright as the topsails were clewed up and sea-furled. From below came the sound of partitions being knocked down and struck into the hold. Alston stood quietly, glancing at her watch.

Better, she thought, as the bosun reported to the quarterdeck, still panting a little. Ten minutes forty-seven seconds.

Eagle had been making more sail, pulling ahead of the other ships. Alston felt her lips quirking in a smile as she passed in a sunlit burst of spray, sharp bows slicing the swells. Objectively the new clipper-frigates were even prettier ships, without the clutter of deckhouses on the quarter and around the mainmast, but…

I commanded her so long, she thought. More than ten years now, if you counted the time before the Event. I've seen and done a lot on that deck. And it was where she'd used a pair of bolt cutters to take the collar off Swindapa.

"Mr. Jenkins, bring us two points to starboard, if you please. And trim, by all means."

"Yes, ma'am." A turn: "Helm, two points, thus, thus." The two hands standing on the benchlike platforms beside the double wheels heaved at the spokes with a precise, economical motion, their eyes on the compass binnacle before them.

Jenkins's speaking-trumpet went up. "Haul starboard, handsomely starboard, there!"

The rafts splashed free ahead of them, and Eagle ran forward a half a mile to be out of harm's way, heaving to broadside-on to the other ships. Alston and Swindapa walked forward on the quarterdeck, down the steep wooden steps to the main deck, and then down a level further. The main gun deck of the Chamberlain was a single great room now, an oval space six times longer than it was wide, tapering to the narrow shape of the bows, lit only by the crosshatched light of the grating-hatchcovers above. It smelled of fresh wood still, and underlying that, brimstone, salt water, sweat, and the cooking scents of breakfast. Twelve eight-inch Dahlgrens crouched on either side, shaped like soda bottles and enmeshed in their cradle of carriage, lines, pulleys, and tackle.

Pity we can't do many rifled guns yet, Alston thought. Leaton's Bessemer steel just didn't have the consistent quality needed for those pressures, though; and the thought of a burst gun on these crowded decks was enough to make her shudder. There were the chasers, and a few rifled siege cannon struck down in the holds for the expeditionary force to use on land, but most of the Republic's guns were smoothbores. Good ones, at least, modeled on those of the Civil War era.

The gun teams waited, crouching, hands ready; many were stripped to the waist and had kerchiefs tied around their heads as they prepared for the shattering physical effort of serving the guns.

Or stripped to the waist except for bras, Alston thought; it wasn't quite the same as down there as on the gun deck of the Constitution or Chesapeake in the War of 1812. One young woman grinned at her for a second, then turned back and spat on her hands as she braced ready.

"Target's coming on to bear, ma'am," a middie said from his position near one division of the guns.

"Very well. Out tompions!"

The red-painted wooden plugs at the muzzles of the guns were whipped out.

"Run out your guns!"

A long drumming, squealing thunder of carriages across decks as the crews threw themselves on the ropes and twelve sets of two-ton weight ground across the oaken planking; sunlight pierced the gloom of the gun deck in rectangular shafts as the gunports rose.

"Fire as you bear!"

Alston took two steps up the companionway ladder; that gave her a good view of the target four hundred-odd yards to starboard as well as the gun deck, with the heel of the ship pitching the rail down.

"Time this, 'dapa," she said, and Lieutenant Commander Swindapa Alston-Kurlelo put on a grave official face and took out her stopwatch.

The gun captain of Number One, Starboard, spun the elevating screw and heaved at the handspike that moved the rear of the gun as the crew hauled likewise on the tackle that moved the muzzle. He glared over the barrel of his charge a final instant, then:

"Clear!" he bellowed, giving the lanyard of the friction primer a swift, hard jerk.

BAAAAMMMM! A long jet of flame-shot smoke lanced out from the Chamberlain's side. Her eye caught the fall of shot exactly, a grooved splash in the surface of the water ten yards short of the target, and then another beyond it as the ball ricocheted like a flung stone.

Not bad, she thought, smiling a little behind the expressionless mask of her face. That would have gone aboard a ship, right enough.

The gun captain pivoted like a matador, arching his body over the massive steel bulk of the gun as it leaped backward up the inclined plane of its carriage with an angry squeal of wooden brake shoes. As it stopped, the rest of the crew went into a precisely choreographed dance around it, readying for the next round.

Meanwhile, the other cannon roared as the rippling broadside went down the gun deck, and the choking sulfur-tinted smoke coiled across the deck and turned it into a thing of fog and menacing shapes. More than eight hundred pounds of high-velocity iron lashed the sea around the target with stunning violence, as water gouted all around the target, and fragments of plank whipped skyward amid spray and froth as direct hits stove barrels.

The first gun fired again. "Two minutes ten seconds!" Swindapa shouted into her ear. A good many of the crew had wads of cloth stuffed into both of theirs; enough of this could damage your hearing.

Alston nodded. Seventy seconds to reload; not bad at all. Her eye sought the next target.

"Sail trimmers!" she called, standing back from the stairs.

The crews shrank as one from each gun ran up the ladders to the deck, taking their place in the sailing crew. Another period of shattering sound, the crews' bodies running with sweat at the physical exertion and the heat the guns were throwing off. The guns were jumping back harder as the steel soaked up heat, and she could hear grunts and harsh panting at the brutal labor of wearing them around. This time, only half the second broadside could bear on the target, and there was a concentrated move for the scuttlebutts-open-topped casks of water secured to the deck-in the short interval between the second and third targets.

Alston waited until the last second before she called: "Boarders! Boarders to their stations!"

The gun crews shrank again as another thirty left them, grabbing weapons out of the racks as they ran for the companionways. The result looked remarkably piratical, half-naked bodies bristling with flintlocks and edged steel.

And for a wonder, nobody's spearing anyone in the ass, she thought with satisfaction. That had happened once or twice, earlier. Middies oversaw four guns each, and they were running full tilt from one to the next, correcting aim and heaving on lines themselves. For a wonder, nobody got their foot run over, either. That could cause really nasty injuries, but the only way to learn to do this fast was to do it fast, exhaustion or no. You had to accept a certain percentage of training accidents if the training was realistic.

"One minute fifty-six seconds," Swindapa said.

Not so good, Alston thought; and the crews were collapsed around their weapons, panting like hound dogs on a hot day; she could hear someone retching dryly.

"Master gunner, house your guns and secure the deck," she said into a silence that seemed to echo in the aftermath of the cannon roar. She lifted her voice a little, waiting until the sail trimmers and boarders had returned to their stations. "Not bad, boys and girls. But it could be better."

The cheer that followed had an element of groan in it, but there were plenty of smiles as well. First Lieutenant Jenkins was grinning as he saluted her return to the quarterdeck, looking at his own watch.

"We beat Lincoln by a good ten seconds, ma'am," he said.

Alston nodded, smiling a little herself. Victor Ortiz had the other frigate, and he'd be fit to be tied; she knew he'd had the crew doing weight training at intervals, trying to beat her time.

"There's such a thing as overstraining," she said. The shriller bark of the eight-pounders and carronades the schooners carried ended the exercise, leaving only a fogbank of powder smoke drifting eastward as it dispersed.

Marian Alston took a deep breath of the clean air and looked at her watch again. "We'll heave to," she said. "Signal 'Captains repair to Eagle for a working lunch at thirteen hundred hours', Ms. Swindapa. Mr. Jenkins, we'll rig pumps, and have the masthead and a rowing lookout check for sharks."

Lines formed for the salt-water showers after the sails were struck; the gun crews' hands and faces were smut-dark with black powder residues. Luckily Fiernans didn't have a nudity taboo, and the Americans and even the rather prudish Sun People had gotten used to it. Body modesty simply didn't go with the sort of cramped quarters a mixed force in the field or at sea had to put up with; they'd learned that shortly after the Event. After a while it simply wasn't much of a deal.

In fact, she thought, by now I feel much more self-conscious about being the only darkie among the bukra.

By an odd quirk of fate she'd been stranded in the Bronze Age along with a piece of American real estate where blacks were rare- no more than a few hundred in all. Rare, and even more so proportionately with the influx of Alban immigrants; language and culture changed, but Sun People and Earth Folk alike looked very much like their Anglo-Saxon descendants.

The water felt cold on her bare skin as she turned under the pump; she took the bar of gritty ration-issue lye soap from Colonel Hollard with a polite nod, lathered herself thoroughly, and stepped up to the rail, handing the bar over to the next in line.

"All clear!" the lookout said; the ones in the longboat rowing around the ship carried barbed harpoons and rifle-muskets.

Alston poised, then leaped, taking the fifteen-foot drop in a knifing dive. That carried her deep into water that closed around her like a blue jewel; she turned and looked up, watching as Swindapa slid down toward her with her long yellow hair streaming out behind like a banner. They touched for a moment fifteen feet down, kissed in the discreet silence of the ocean, then kicked for the surface that hung over them like a rippling mirror. She tossed her head as she surfaced, watching as whooping crewfolk followed her off into the water.

Hollard scooped up his sister and threw her in, then followed in a clean dive. For moments it rained soapy Guard crews and Marines; many of them were cannonballing and landing with appalling splashes. She made a mental note to have more swimming classes.

Swindapa trailed her as she made for the stern at an easy crawl, matching her stroke for stroke. The warm Caribbean water caressed her, a feeling of tingling life buoying her. And if there were shark and barracuda in these waters, that was part of life too.

"On deck, there! Sail ho!"

Alston looked up sharply, catching the hail from the masthead at the second shout.

"Damn," she said mildly, spitting out salt water and stroking swiftly to the ship's side. Ropes hung over the railing; she swarmed up one hand over hand, then directly up the ratlines to the mainmast top.

"Where away?" she said to the lookout, dripping on the hot planks of the triangular platform.

"East by south, ma'am," the lookout said, in a faint but definite Sun People accent, harsh and choppy under the nasal twang of Islander English. "Ship-rigged or a bark, I'd guess."

Alston took his heavy binoculars and focused them. White shapes of sail, a three-master, bark-rigged like the Eagle but much smaller.

"On deck, there! Hands to stations, Mr. Jenkins, and notify the flotilla!" she called down. "And have my uniform sent up, if you please."

It came up, and Swindapa with it. They shared a towel and dressed, disregarding the slight stickiness of salt on their skins; that went with voyaging, since fresh water was never abundant enough to waste on washing. She put the sails in her binoculars again; the strange ship was flying the Stars and Stripes, but that meant little. Details of construction meant more, and she ran through a mental file of everything the Islanders had built in the past eight years, and what they knew of the Tartessian and Alban yards.

"One of ours, I think," she said after a moment. "Let's get down and ready to hail her."

You had to be wary, in a world with the likes of King Isketerol and William Walker loose in it.

"You haven't been letting the grass grow under your arse, by the gods," Odikweos said.

He held out his hand and looked around at stone-built wharves, streets, buildings, the ribs of ships on the slipways. Nothing here but a fishing village a few years ago, and now it was a city-Neayoruk, Walker had called it. "New" I know, Odikweos thought. I wonder what or where Yoruk was or is?

"A lazy man has no luck," Walker replied, taking the offered palm in the American gesture, which had become quite the fashion.

Hammers, hooves, wheels, and voices made a surflike roar of noise throughout the little town, full of pungent smells of sweat and dust and manure baking under the hot June sun. Foreign ships were tied up here too, looking tiny beside the craft Walker had built. Slaves carried elephant tusks ashore from an Egyptian merchantman, tapestries from one out of Byblos, purple-dyed cloth and clay jugs of wine from Ugarit, oxhide-shaped copper ingots from a Cypriot trader. So much wealth so close to the sea would have been an irresistible lure for raiders in the old days, but a fortress of earthwork and stone stood at the edge of the harbor, cannon snouting from embrasures along its thick, sloping walls. And armed schooners out on patrol had met the Ithakan's ship half a day's sailing away.

A groom brought a mount forward, one of the half-breed sons of the sixteen-hand quarter horse that Walker rode himself. The Achaean put a foot in a stirrup and swarmed aboard, competently, if not with the ease a lifetime's practice had given Walker. He wore trousers of fine kidskin as well as his tunic; those had become fashionable too, among younger nobles flexible enough to consider a saddle as dignified as a chariot.

The two vassal kings rode north up the valley of the Eurotas, with their escorts clattering behind and outriders ahead with a harsh, repeated cry of "Way, make way!" Odikweos stretched his eyes, taking everything in, including the way Walker kept an eye on his reactions.

The road itself was a novelty. Instead of graveled dirt it was a smoothly beveled curve of Sicilian asphalt mixed with crushed rock, twenty feet across, lavishly ditched, with young trees planted in rows on either side.

"How far north does this run?" Odikweos asked.

"All the way up the valley, and three-quarters of the way to Mycenae. We'll have it through to there by the fall rains."

"Through the mountains! In only three years?"

Walker nodded. "Gunpowder is a tool as well as a weapon," he said. "Blasting makes road building easier."

Not to mention unlimited slave labor. Chain gangs were moving up from the port, while down by the river more were at work on an irrigation canal, its stark geometric shape cutting across the softly patterned fields. Harvest was under way. Part of it was as always, men and some women cutting the yellow barley and wheat with sickles, others following behind to bind the sheaves. In other fields horses drew a machine that left a neat trail of reaped grain behind it. Odikweos nodded thoughtfully as he watched it, and he saw other fields that had been in grain in years before now planted with crops he didn't recognize.

"What are those?'' he asked.

"The bushes are cotton," Walker said. "They make a fabric like flax but easier to work and finer. The tall stalks are a grain called corn; it needs watering in your dry summers, but it yields more heavily than wheat or barley. The low vines, those are potatoes, the last of them. They grow over the winter here. My guest friend King Isketerol of Tartessos brought the seeds and shoots from… a land far away and passed some on to me. Wait until you taste your first tomato, my friend."

"I see why you've been taking so much of the wheat from Sicily," Odikweos said. "Thousands more mouths to feed, and fewer fields in grain."

He nodded at a train of huge four-wheeled wagons rumbling along ahead of them, too large to make way for the kings; they guided their horses onto the graveled verge of the road to pass them by. Sixteen span of oxen drew each four-ton load.

"What are those called?" Odikweos said, pointing to one wheel. "I've seen the ones in Sicily, but nobody knew the name or the why of them."

"Double-bow springs," Walker replied. "See how they flex? That way, a jolt from the wheels doesn't harm the wagon's frame as much as it might, and the body is built like a boat-it yields and bends and so doesn't break. We call them Conestogas."

They rode north for most of the morning, speaking of many things, then turning left onto a branch of the road that ran toward the mountains that towered in the west, dividing the vale of Sparta from Messina. The traffic was still heavy; they were riding toward Walkeropolis, Walker's stronghold. The American pointed out features-the stone-lined channel that brought water down from the mountains, the four furnaces built into the side of a hill so that carts could bring fuel and ore to their tops. Smoke belched out of them, trailing away to the south; there was a deep rumbling sound from the furnaces, and endless clangor from the forges and workshops, and a clatter and bustle of uncounted folk in the broad gridwork of paved streets.

Not such smell, Odikweos thought, surprised.

This town must be nearly as big as Pylos by now, yet there was little of the shit-and-garbage stink you expected in a city. There were even slaves sweeping up dung with broom and pan and wheelbarrow. Even now, it still seemed odd to see so many male slaves together. In Walkeropolis they were marked out by the iron collars, and they were everywhere-hauling and pushing and carrying; there were great low-set barracks for them nearer the manufacturies. Elsewhere there were no wells with lines of slave girls carrying jugs of water on their heads, but instead public fountains, fed by underground pipes. More pipes ran to the houses of the wealthy.

There were many other things even stranger-sometimes the little things were oddest of all, like wagons each keeping to the right side of the street. They rode through a great open-air market, past streets of shops and businesses, past chariots and wagons and carriages drawn by high-stepping Eastern horses.

Even shops for bread, the Achaean king thought with astonishment, watching a baker load loaves into the carrying-basket of a woman and take little copper disks in payment. Next door a leatherworker bowed low as a servant of one of Walker's Wolf People lords took delivery of a saddle; beyond that a treadle-powered lathe whirred, turning out the spokes of a wheel.

"One thing that does surprise me, my friend," Odikweos said as they turned uphill to the palace through elaborate gardens and the mansions of Walker's own ekwetai. "Is that you took no larger share of the credit for the war in the lands north of Olympus-and no larger share of the gold. You don't seem to me to be a man unconcerned with wealth."

Walker laughed.

The Dolphin was less graceful than her name; three hundred tons, three masts, but much tubbier than the Chamberlain or even the Guard schooners modeled on the Bluenose. She bobbed in the lee of the frigate, and her commander came up the rope ladder with a practical swarming motion.

"Permission to come aboard?" she called, with a wave of a salute.

"Permission granted," Alston said. "Captain McReady, isn't it?"

"Candice McReady at your service, Commodore," the merchant skipper said, holding out her hand.

Typical enough, Alston thought. No more than twenty-one, which would have made her all of thirteen at the Event, the twentieth century most likely a fading dream. A stocky, brown-haired young woman with a weather-red face and squint lines around her eyes that made her look older. She wore a floppy canvas hat and a sleeveless jacket of sealskin belted 'round with a cutlass, bowie, and flintlock pistol. The ironmongery looked as natural on her as the easy, straddled stance and the gold hoop in one earlobe. The hand she extended felt rough and dry and competent in Alston's.

The steward brought up coffee. "Thought I was sailing into a fight, ma'am," McReady said, sipping appreciatively. "Heard the cannon. Thought some damned Tartessian poacher needed his butt kicked."

And just came boiling in with all four of your six-pounder brass popguns, Alston thought, nodding. Fairly typical. The youngsters coming up since the Event were different; not necessarily braver than their parents but harder-grained. Entirely different attitude toward risk.

Less likely to complain about bad luck, too. Of course, the attitude had its downside as well; the new breed seemed to be a good deal less shockable, more case-hardened than Alston would have expected or altogether liked.

I must be getting old, she thought. I'm starting to complain about the upcoming generation.

"They do show up here occasionally," Alston agreed aloud.

The Town Meeting had proclaimed the whole of the Western Hemisphere under the Republic's jurisdiction-sort of a second-millennium-B.C. Monroe Doctrine-but the Kingdom of Tartessos didn't acknowledge it. Iberian ships slipped in now and then, bartering with the Olmec chiefdoms, which had their own reasons to resent the Islanders; besides that little war back in the Year 1, the Republic frowned on human sacrifice. A couple of punitive expeditions had made that very clear, via cannon and Marine landing parties.

"Not this time, though. What crew, where from, and what loading?" she went on.

"My third trip this year," McReady said, jerking a thumb backward at her ship. "My first mate's my mate, my brother and his wife are quartermaster and sailing master"-Not an uncommon sort of arrangement; they waved from the lower deck of the trading ship-"and we've a crew of twelve besides. We shipped out of Nantucket Town to San Lorenzo first, picked up cocoa and dyewoods and raw cotton; dropped it in Pentagon Base in Alba, got a cargo of grain, hides, cheese, and wool, plus some steerage passengers, back to Nantucket. Out to southwest Africa in ballast and trading trinkets."

Alston nodded. "What loading now?"

McReady grinned. "Commodore, right now my cargo is absolute shit." She grinned more widely still at the raised brows. "Bird shit. Fertilizer from the islands in Saldhana Bay. One hundred ninety tons, all of it under contract to Brand Farms." She held up a hand, clenched with the thumb and little finger out as if measuring. "And the price is just right. Ought to pay off the Town share of our ship. A little other stuff, hides, horn, ivory-ten tusks-traded for it with the locals."

"Ah, the Namib," Alston said. The coast of southwest Africa, not far from where she intended to make landfall. "Any rumors of Tartessian activity there?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact; the locals drew pictures of what looked like a topsail schooner."

Alston scowled slightly; Tartessos favored that design, copied from the ship Walker had pirated in the Year 1.

"Couldn't be sure, though. They are putting in pretty regular further north, from what I hear."

This time the black woman forced her teeth not to grind. Slave trading, among other things.

"Thank you, Captain McReady," she went on, calm and polite. "Perhaps you could join the flotilla's captains aboard the Eagle for lunch. We could use any observations you have on how the trades are this year."

"Glad to-we're down to salt horse and biscuit," McReady said. "Trades're pretty steady, and further north than usual; haven't been becalmed yet on this trip. I'll get my logs."

Alston clasped her hands behind her back and rose slightly on her toes as the merchant skipper climbed back down into her skiff and pulled for her ship. The expeditionary force was supposed to keep William Walker off-balance, but it was a long-term project. Isketerol was making her nervous in the here-and-now.

God damn William Walker to hell, she thought. If it weren't for him…

"There's always a man like Walker," Swindapa said quietly. Alston started a little. Her partner had learned her moods very well.

"Fortunately, there's always someone like us, too," she replied, her head turning northeastward. Right now the renegade was having things all his own way, off in the lands of Mycenae. Some day…

Her lips showed teeth in what was only notionally a smile.

"There is a lot of gold up there," William Walker agreed, looking up at the portico of his house. A row of pillars marched across it- fluted marble, rather than the painted wood the locals used. Greek columns, and the Greeks have never heard of them, he thought with a slight smile. Servants were coming out to greet their lord.

The Mycenaeans had already had an outpost up north in what he thought of as Macedonia, a fortified border station. The locals were still at the mud-hut stage, but spoke something related to Greek. More important, he'd remembered where Philip of Macedon, Alexander's father, had gotten his financing-the gold mines of Pangaion, not all that far from the coast. Well worth an expedition.

"About a thousand talents a year worth," he went on. "I'm satisfied with my tenth." A talent was sixty pounds, more or less; call it twenty tons for the total output. Nobody here had ever seen precious metals on that scale before. They were learning about inflation, too, and the benefits and drawbacks of coined money.

"Why?" Odikweos said bluntly. "You planned the war, you found the gold, you built the works that tear it daily from the womb of Gamater."

"One of the things I like about you, my friend," Walker said, "is that you come right at things."

The Ithakan shrugged. "Paiawon Apollo speaks in words like a serpent in a reedbed, coil upon countercoil," he said. "But I've always been a better friend of the Gray-Eyed Lady of Wisdom, Athana Potnia."

"Let's put it this way-has all that gold brought peace to Mycenae?"

"As much peace as a piece of fat pork brings to a pack of hounds," Odikweos said. "Mycenae was always a knot of vipers, but now…"

"Exactly. Also, taking only a tenth, I'm not expected to spend men and goods guarding the mines-and the natives there don't love us for taking their mountain."

"Or for making their men dig in the ground," Odikweos said.

"Exactly, again. What's more, gold can't buy more than the land produces. Real wealth comes from increasing the yield of men's hands and then gaining command of that yield-gold is simply a tool. And third and last… well, there's a poem among my birth-folk. In your language…" Walker closed his eyes in thought for a moment. "It would go something like this:

Gold for the merchant, silver for the maid;

Copper for the craftsman, cunning at his trade.

"Good!" laughed the king, sitting in his hall.

"But iron-cold iron-shall be master of them all."

They drew rein before the portico with its green-white stone stairs. A small form burst through the ranks of guards and servants, followed by another, and then by a woman in a gown. He recognized Eurykleia, the household's chief nursemaid.

"Dad!" the hurtling bundle cried, and leaped with a trailing mane of white-blond hair. The second just leaped.

"Whoops," Walker said mildly and caught each under an arm. "Run along, the rest of you, no need for ceremony."

"I'm sorry, lord, they got away-"

"No problem," Walker said to the nursemaid. "They're eight. You'd have to put them in a cage like Egyptian baboons to keep them quiet."

The boy and girl wiggled delightedly; they were much of an age, the girl his by an Alban slave, the boy by his wife Ekhnonpa.

"Plain to see they've got spirit," Odikweos said, grinning.

" Althea has been misbehaving again, lord," Eurykleia broke in nervously. "And…"

Walker upended the girl. "What is it this time? Bothering your Aunt Alice again? Not safe, little one."

"Sneaking away to watch the warriors practice, lord," the nursemaid said.

"If Harold can do it, why can't I?" the girl pouted. She pronounced it "Haaar-alt," like the locals.

"Why not, indeed?" Walker said. He looked up at the servant. "If she wants to train with her brother, we'll see to it."

"But, lord, it isn't seemly!" she burst out, as Althea crowed in delight.

Walker's face went cold, and the nursemaid looked down, her own face gone pale. "Seemly is what I say to be seemly, Eurykleia. I am the King."

"Yes, lord," she said quietly.

Walker hoisted his son over a shoulder and set the girl on her feet, delivering a swift spanking swat at the same time. "That's for not coming and asking me first," he said at her yelp, then gave her another. "And that's for disobeying Eurykleia. Now both of you run along and mind your manners."

He walked up the stairs. "My friend, we have a good deal to talk about," he said to Odikweos. "So that our children may inherit more than we hold today.

"Sicily grows dull," the Ithakan said. "Another man can chase bandits through the hills…" He paused. "Is that why you sent so many troublesome men to take up lands there?"

"Well," Walker grinned, "it does give them something to do, besides causing me problems."

"You are a man with a mind of many turns," Odikweos said admiringly, a little surprised when Walker laughed loud and long. "Troy next?"

"Troy, indeed," Walker said.

"That will bring in the Hittites."

"The worse for them, my friend. The worse for them."