Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

  “I thought we were sunk, skipper!” he yelled in her ear.

  “So did I, Lieutenant!” Alston said, grinning in relief. “Keep her so—if we get any more big surges, it’ll be from that direction.”

  “Aye, aye!”

  Lightning flashed again and again, closer, closer. Then a crack, and a flash that blinded her through an upflung hand. The change in the Chamberlain’s movements beneath her feet and the crackling roar of white pine snapping told her their story in the second before sight returned.

  Her eyes confirmed it. The frigate’s hundred-and-twenty-foot foremast had been struck by lightning, had leaped in its socket like a living thing writhing in pain, and then snapped off three feet above the deck. It plunged to port, drowning its flaming tip in the wild water. Already it was swinging the ship’s nose away from the south, into the wind. Caught in a cradle of rigging, the great mass of timber pounded on the ship like the stick of a mad drummer as wind and wave swept it about.

  “Jenkins, take the helm!” Alston shouted. There was no time to think, only to do. “Everyone else, follow me. Axes! Axes!”

  She led the rush down the quarterdeck and into the waist. They snatched the tools from the ready-racks as they passed—axes, hatchets, prybars, cutlasses. Then forward, past crew down moaning or crawling with the heave of the ship, injured or stunned by the fall of the mast and yards, the furled sails, and the huge tangle of cordage that was rigging when whole and a demon’s spiderweb dragging them all to death now. Crossing the two hundred feet was as much swimming as walking, more like tumbling in heavy surf on a rocky shore than either. The wild water and tearing wind wrenched at them, flinging bodies into each other and the unyielding fabric of the ship with bruising force. Even over the banshee scream of the gale she heard the slamming drumbeat of the mast against deck and hull, booming up through her feet with the promise of wreck.

  She and the others dragged and pushed crew to the crucial lines, the remnants that held the ruined mast to the hull, as well as slashing themselves. Blades flashed, thumping into hemp rope and wood and more than once into flesh as desperation and the mad heaving of the hull sent them staggering.

  It’s going, it’s going! she thought, and brought her ax around in a two-handed swing. Thunk. The last of the six-inch-thick stayline parted. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the next monster wave running down with the cold inevitability of a glacier. The mast swept away, then back one last time like a battering ram in the hands of Poseidon. Oak shrieked under the impact, but that added its bit to the straining helm and shoved the bow away from the oncoming water. Alston threw down the ax.

  “Hang on!” she shouted. Some of the crewfolk were still hacking mechanically at dangling bits of wreckage, heedless of everything else. She staggered to the nearest, looping ends of line around their bodies, vaguely conscious of Swindapa doing likewise.

  There was a moment of almost-stillness. She rose from tying off a line under the armpits of a crewman and saw the wave strike her ship on the port quarter. Feet skidded out from beneath her as the Chamberlain ’s stern flung upward and the ship pitched on her beam-ends. Water poured toward her, driven by winds building over a thousand miles of ocean. She felt her body leave the deck, hurl toward the bow and the railing, then slam into something unyielding. Pain lanced through her chest, and the hands that scrambled at rail and rope were strengthless. Everything moved with the slow-motion inevitability of dream.

  Always expected to drown eventually, ran through a corner of her mind, even as her will doggedly forced her arms to lock in an effort she knew would be futile. The wave would take her overboard, and that would be the end.

  Swindapa fell down the canted deck toward her, hair like a banner of yellow silk, shocking in the lightning-shot darkness. The younger woman’s right arm clamped around her waist with desperate strength; the left was wound into a bight of line.

  “Don’t you leave me!” the Fiernan screamed in her ear. “Don’t you dare!”

  Wasn’t planning on it, she thought, sucking in a last deep breath and holding it despite the salt spray that rasped at her lungs. And Christ, ’dapa, you’ll get yourself killed too!

  The wave struck, lifted them, slashed them backward and then smashed them down again against the decking with casual brutality. Alston let the last of her consciousness drain into her arms, locked around Swindapa and the rope.

  Blackness.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  (May, Year 8 A.E.)

  March, Year 9 A.E.

  (May, Year 9 A.E.)

  “You know what your problem is, Alice?” William Walker said, leaning back on one elbow.

  Picnics had gone over big with the locals. It was funny that way. Sometimes they loved notions from the twentieth, sometimes they were horrified, and sometimes just bewildered. Snacking out in the open air they liked. Maybe because they’re so hot on hunting, he thought lazily.

  Alice looked at him sullenly. “My problem, O Enabler? Well, if you want to get technical, my problem is that I’m psychotic—a clinical sadist with paranoid tendencies, borderline sociopath, possible disassociative elements. So sue me.”

  “No, no, that’s your hobby. I asked you if you knew what your problem is.”

  The royal party were alone on a hilltop in the foothills of the mountains. Summer was a little cooler here, under tall oaks; the grass crushed under the blankets gave off spicy scents . . . very much like a spice rack crossed with a sachet, in fact—marjoram, thyme, lavender. There were a few bees buzzing around as well, and a lot of birds.

  Always birds around, since the Event, he thought idly.

  From here he could see downslope to the Eurotas valley, but a fold of the ground hid the restless growth of Walkeropolis. There was only the soft palette of the farmlands, green and dun-gold and reddish-brown, the low silver streak of the river itself broken with yellow sandbars, and the hills rising blue and dreaming on the other side.

  A little further back, Harold and Althea and a bunch of his retainer’s kids were throwing a Frisbee—boiled-leather variety—with a big, shaggy dog loping between them trying for a catch. Ekhnonpa and Eurykleia were standing under an umbrella pine, slowly fanning themselves and watching. Other parties were scattered around the hillside, and a little lower down was the business side of things—a company of his Guards, and the servants, slaves, and whatever with the horses and carriages.

  “Okay, Fearless World Conqueror, what is my problem?” Alice said, picking apart a piece of bread.

  “It’s simple,” he said, grinning widely, nibbling at a pastry and taking a sip of lemonade. “You need to stop and smell the flowers.”

  Unwillingly, Alice’s mouth turned up. There were slight lines beside it now. She’d aged well. Good bones to begin with; none of her vices were bad for you in the physical sense, and like many doctors she was a bit of a hypochondriac, so she watched her diet and exercise. But if we had tobacco she’d be chain-smoking.

  “Look, Alice, querida mia, you’ve gotten out of balance,” he said. “Your chi isn’t flowing properly.”

  “Hey, roundeye, you’re giving me the Buddhist shit?”

  He chuckled. “C’mon, Alice, we’ve been together a long time. Open up.”

  “Yeah.” She paused, sipped from a flask of wine, sighed. “You know, I never really did much like getting drunk. Buzzed a bit, yes; drunk, no—opens too many cupboards, like dope. So, okay. Yeah, I’ve had this feeling recently that I’m . . . drifting away, somehow. I mean, this is great here, it’s my dream setup, but there are times I feel . . . odd. Cold. Out of control.” She rubbed her hands over her upper arms, and her voice took on a slightly shrill overtone.

  Walker put a hand over and kneaded the stiff muscles of her neck. “All right, Lady of Pain. You feel like you’re drowning, right?”

  “Right.” She gave him a glance, half mocking and half relieved. “You know, Will, for a cast-iron bastard, you can be almost human at times.”

  “Hey, that’s the p
oint, my little Madama Butterfly. You gotta let it flow. Indeed, he who has achieved satori may without sin steal the peasant’s ox or take the last bowl of rice from a starving man; for he has become the eye that does not seek to see itself, the sword that does not seek to cut itself, the un-self-contemplating mind. Or to put it in American—chill, babe.”

  “You going moralistic on me, now that you’re a responsible family man?” she said, with a hint of danger in her voice. It dissolved into mere irritation as he shouted laughter.

  “Christ, Alice ! There’s something you haven’t grasped yet.”

  “What’s that, O guru?”

  “Look, Alice, when it comes to the atrocity division, you’re a piker compared to me. You’re a little artisan, a back-to-the-land one-off maker of small, handcrafted gems. I’m mass-production assembly-line industry. Fuck, woman, I killed every third human being in Sicily. We crucified two thousand slaves up in Macedonia after the revolt in the gold mines. And you know what? It didn’t mean shit to me. Just part of the job, part of the game. And you’re letting the edges of your personality fray because you flay one here or amputate a few organs there and it gets your rocks or female equivalent thereof off? Hell, and I thought you were tough, Alice.”

  “Why am I getting the feeling I’m missing something?”

  Walker stretched out a hand, prisoning the woman’s jaw. “You are, Alice. You see, we can do anything we fucking want to here.”

  “I know that!”

  “No, you don’t. We can torture and kill one day, and go roast marshmallows with the kiddies the next—just as we goddam well please. Relax, for Christ’s sake, Alice! You don’t have to look over your shoulder anymore, waiting for Big Daddy to come and take your toys away. You’re making the rules now—after me, of course. You can take it or leave it. Whatever.”

  He held her eyes, until she heaved a sigh and relaxed. “Yeah, Will, I think I see what you’re driving at. Yeah.”

  “Good. Wouldn’t want the Avatar of Hekate to go dysfunctional on me.”

  Alice hesitated, then went on: “You know, Will, there’s something . . . all these people, you know, the Agamemnon, that creepy daughter of his, Odikweos . . . you know, sometimes I feel a little weird being around them. You know, it’s like there’s this big mountain of fate hanging over them and I’m going to get caught in the avalanche.”

  Walker snorted. “Fate is what I arrange to happen to other people, babe,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed. “Hey, that gives me an idea, though . . . yeah . . . oh, that would be fun. I am fate.”

  She shivered a little. “You know, Will, sometimes I think you are badder than I’ll ever be.”

  His laughter lifted over the hillside, full-chested, and the children playing below looked up and waved, laughing themselves.

  I hate this, Marian Alston thought.

  Rousing from unconsciousness was not like getting up in the morning. You hurt. Pounding headache at least, litterbox taste in your mouth, nausea, and this time her entire body felt like one great bruise. I’m getting too old for this.

  She forced her eyes open, made herself breathe deeply and move. It was the stern cabin of the Chamberlain; she knew a moment’s relief that they hadn’t sunk, at least. Oh, start thinking, you useless cow. If we’d sunk, I wouldn’t be waking up at all.

  Two small faces peered solemnly at her. She smiled—that hurt, too, but it warmed her inside. “You all right, punkins?”

  “We’re okay, Mom.” An antiphonal chorus. Then Heather plunged on: “Momma Swindapa says to say she’s okay too. We weren’t even scared.”

  A knot of worry relaxed.

  “Yes we were so scared,” Lucy cut in, pedantic as always. “We were really scared.”

  “You were, I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, you were, Heather, you were crying and yelling.”

  “Was not!”

  “Were too!”

  “Girls,” Alston said, wincing at the rising volume. Her children stopped at once and brought her a glass of water. She sat up to take it, hiding her wince at the sight of their round, worried eyes, and hugged them to her. Lucy solemnly handed her a pair of pills in a twist of paper; two of their hoarded Tylenol tablets. Even after eight years in the bottle they should do some good.

  A crewman with his arm in a sling and a bandage around his head was sitting in one corner. He shot to his feet and winced himself.

  “At ease, sailor,” Alston growled, hiding sympathy. “You can tell them I’m awake. And apparently we survived.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The foremast going, that was the worst.”

  Alston sighed again; she always hated it when they got that heroworshiping look in their eyes, when all she’d done was her job. As he left she swung her feet out of the bunk; someone had put her in a long T-shirt. There was a bandage around her chest, but it didn’t feel—quite—bad enough to be cracked ribs.

  “Please get my clothes, would you, girls?”

  The Tylenol was taking effect, and she was beginning to feel more nearly human, when Swindapa came in with an ensign behind her. She hugged the children and scooted them on their way with the injured crewman.

  “Good morning, Commondore,” she said, saluting; it was a formal occasion, after all. “Shall I report?”

  “Good morning, Lieutenant Commander,” Alston replied. “Let’s have it. I’m functional. Mo’ or less.”

  “Lieutenant Jenkins is in sick bay—broken arm, dislocated hip,” Swindapa said. “We have nine missing and presumed dead, seventeen seriously injured, and contusions and sprains for nearly everyone.” She moved her right shoulder. “Dislocated, but it works.”

  Alston nodded. God damn, she though sadly. It could have been worse, but she always hated losing any of her people. Words ran through her: We have fed our sea for a thousand years—

  Yet she calls to us, unfed.

  Seafaring was dangerous, that was all there was to it; doubly so in these small sailing ships. I should visit sick bay as soon as I can. She’d have to visit the families of the dead when she got back—she hated that too, but it was duty. They’d earned it.

  “Ship status?” she said.

  “We lost the foremast, of course. The main’s cracked just below the lower top—we woolded it with capstan bars, but it’s not going to take much strain. What’s really worrying is the hole forward where the mast kept hitting us before we cut it clear. We just finished fothering it with a sail”—that meant sliding a sail over the hole as a canvas patch—“but a lot of the seams are sprung, and we’re still taking on water. And with this cargo . . .”

  Alston winced again, this time for her ship. Two hundred tons of dried barley in the bottom of the hold, with dates, wool, and sesame oil in big jugs on top of that. The rest didn’t matter, but the dried grain did; as it soaked up water it would swell, and if they were unlucky the soggy, swelling mass could push planks right off the frames, the way expanding ice did when a barrel froze.

  “What time is it?”

  “Fourteen hundred hours, Commodore.”

  “What news of the flotilla?”

  “Radio’s out—the deckhouse hatch caved in when the second wave came over the quarterdeck. Everything smashed up, and the operator’s one of the dead. The rest of the radio shack crew are in sick bay too.”

  “Damn!” Alston took a deep breath. “Let’s go take a look.”

  The feel of the ship under her feet was more alarming, down by the head and sluggish, with a counter jerk after each roll; that was water or loose cargo surging in the hold. Teams were working the pumps, sending solid jets of water overside.

  “What’s the depth?” she said, when the junior lieutenant and the chief warrant officers had gathered, together with a CPO or two.

  “Four feet in the hold, and we’re keeping just ahead of it, ma’am,” a warrant officer said—he was ship’s carpenter. “But God help us if the grain blocks the pumps; it’s chaos and Old Night down there, oil two inches thick on the water and bales and jars
floating around.”

  “Carry on, Chips,” Alston said, looking aloft and narrowing her eyes.

  The ship looked naked, ugly and lopsided without the foremast, of course. The mess on deck had been policed up, loose line secured and a jury-rigged forestay had been erected from the mainmast to the bowsprit. Her eyes traced the mainmast; a deep crack up at the fifty-foot mark, with a ring of twelve-foot capstan bars lashed around it. Even with the tight woolding of line around it she could see the crack flex. Plus we lost most of the boats, she realized.

  “We put the cords on wet when we woolded the mainmast and it’s getting a little tighter as they dry,” Swindapa said. “But it still looks ugly to me.”

  “Damn right,” Alston said, concealing a rush of pride. Couldn’t have done better myself, she thought.

  The mizzenmast looked all right, and the mizzen topsail was up as well, but with all the sail aft like that the ship would be a stone bitch to steer. “We have to get some sail for’ard,” she said.

  A couple of the faces grimaced. “Ma’am, if we put too much stress on that mast, it’s going overboard.”

  “And if we don’ make shore, we may founder,” Alston said. “If we get another blow before we’ve had a chance to repair her, we will founder.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “We’ll try rigging a jury staysail up near the bowsprit.”

  Nods all around.“Are we going to try and make Mauritius Base?” the junior lieutenant—Sherman was her name—asked. “It’s only six or seven hundred miles.”

  Alston shook her head. “Not with the wind out of the north, and at this time of year chances are it’ll stay that way. We’ll try for the mainland, and as far north as we can reach,” she said. Hopefully not too far south. An iron-bound shore, given to sudden storms and waves even more monstrous than the ones that had hit the flotilla yesterday. Back—or ahead—in the 1940s, one had gone right over a British heavy cruiser, putting the turrets all six feet under before the ship resurfaced. Plenty of other vessels before and after had just vanished there.