“Excellent, Kenneth-Hollard,” he said. The scribes sent to the Nantukhtar schools were sending good reports, but there was so much to learn here . . .
The roadway was thick with traffic; Nantukhtar wagons, one of them pulled by yet another steam engine, and men of Kar-Duniash as well. He looked keenly about at the land itself. New canals had been cut, and plants were growing whose like he did not know. Many peasants were at work, weeding and digging. None were occupied in lifting water with bucket and shadoof, though. Instead, skeletal structures of wood, with whirling vanes at their tops, stood at intervals, and from their bases water gushed as if by sorcery, running out into the furrows that laced the fields.
“Those are some new crops we thought would be useful here,” Hollard said smoothly. “Sugarcane, cotton, citrus, rice, others. We can supply your farmers with seeds and slips from here.”
Kashtiliash rolled the foreign names over in his mind. Well enough. In the end, all wealth came from the land.
They passed under the frowning gates, and under the muzzles of cannon. The Kassite prince looked at those with what he knew was an expression of pure lust. With cannon, a king need fear no rebel. They could pound down city walls like the bull-horn of Marduk—sieges would last only days instead of army-destroying months in camps where plague walked.
After a few hours’ tour, his mind reeled.
Everything was alien, and much was so strange that he could stare at it and not see. Sometimes when he could see, the disorientation became worse—as when Hollard explained the lathes as being like a potter’s wheel for the shaping of metal. When he heard those words there was a click somewhere behind his eyes, and suddenly he could see through the bristling foreignness of the machine to the principle behind it. Some things familiar were even more disturbing; to learn that pipes underlay the new streets and took away waste. . . . It was not that he didn’t know of sewers and baths. Such things were common enough in the greathouses of kings and city governors.
It is that such things may be given to common soldiers, to servants, and laborers, he thought. That awed him, in a way that even outright sorcery like the fire-boats did not.
And the Nantukhtar have come not for a day, or a year, but for a lifetime, he thought a little uneasily. Nobody would go to this much trouble otherwise. My father knew I would be dealing with the Eagle People all my days, he remembered. A wise man.
At last he seized on something his mind could grasp. “This is a school?” he said.
The two-story building had a bronze disk over its entrance, with a bas-relief of an eagle clutching a sheaf of arrows and a wreath of olive branches; he’d noticed that symbol before among the Nantukhtar, as the gilded figureheads of their ships and the smaller figures that topped their battle standards. The eagle must be their guardian god, then. The corridors within rang with chants. He smiled, remembering his own long tutelage in the House of Succession, with the sons of nobles and priests for company. How the rod had fallen on their backs! How they had hated the scribes and scholars who beat a little wisdom into their hard heads!
“Yes, lord,” Hollard said. “Many among us brought their families with them, and it is our law that all children receive such teaching.”
Kashtiliash nodded, walking down the corridor that divided the building. Then he stopped. “Those are the women my father sent!” he said.
They were dressed in Nantukhtar clothing, mostly, but they recognized him and sprang up from the benches facing the chalkboard to prostrate themselves.
He signaled them up and turned to glance at Hollard. “My father was not well pleased to learn that you had spurned his gift, sending away the servants he bestowed,” he said. “Now I see them here. What is this?”
The Nantukhtar inclined his head. “Lord Prince,” he said, “there has been a misunderstanding—such is inevitable when tongues and customs are so different. No offense was meant, and we did not spurn your father’s gift. We did manumit the slaves, for such is our law, but they labor here for us nonetheless, as you see. And we thank the king your father greatly.”
“You teach servant women to read?” said Kashtiliash.
Anger awoke—he was not accustomed to spend his time gaping at a new wonder around every corner, like some Aramaean sheep-diddler seeing his first city. He fought it down. Look and learn, he thought. The Nantukhtar were men, whatever the peasants might believe, and what some men could do, others could as well. If we learn how.
“Why not?” Hollard said. “Good for them, more . . . how you say . . . more useful for us.”
Kashtiliash nodded grudgingly. The scribes his father had sent were being trained as interpreters . . . but the Nantukhtar would not want all such to be in the service of the king of Kar-Duniash.
“I understand,” he said after a moment.
Only a fool whose alliance was worthless trusted an ally completely.
CHAPTER TWELVE
March-May, Year 9 A.E.
“Duck up!” Marian Alston said crisply, leveling her binoculars. The clewlines hauled up the mainsail. Through the space cleared she could see one of the ship’s whaleboats beating up toward the Chamberlain, its small triangular sail bellied taut and the six sailors of the crew sitting on the windward rail as she heeled sharp over.
They’ll be alongside in one more tack, she thought, and even as she did the boat came about. Neatly done, by God. The tiller over, the boom across, and the crew paid out, tied off, and switched gunwales in a single motion, neat as dancers.
As she watched, the factors were running through her head. Fine weather, a six-knot breeze out of the northeast, and a moderate swell under a blue sky scattered with small, fluffy clouds. The pumps were keeping pace . . . just. A steady hose-stream of water was pouring over the leeward rail.
I could clear the land and run down along the Wild Coast, she thought.
The problem was that this was the Southern Hemisphere’s fall season—weather season, and as soon as anything but a moderate swell came up, the pumps started losing ground. Badly. And she was so damned slow under this jury-rig, not to mention steering like an ox. All along that ironbound coast, rocks, and reefs, with sudden squalls down off the mountains and freak waves rolling up out of the Roaring Forties—
The deck crew were going about their work in dogged silence, exhausted with the pumps and the endless sail trimming needed to keep the Chamberlain slanting across the wind. Meanwhile, the whaleboat skidded into the lee of the frigate, throwing a fine plume of spray off her bow. The sail and mast came down, the oars unshipped, and she came in under the anchor chains, fending off as the middie in command came up a line, as matter-of-factly as climbing the stairs in her own home.
“Permission to come aboard?”
“Granted,” the OOD said; the middie saluted the quarterdeck and came up to salute again and remove her billed cap from short sun-streaked brown hair.
“Ma’am, it’s a bay, all right. Narrow entrance, headland to the south and a sandspit to the north.”
“A bar, Ms. Harnish?”
“Yes, ma’am, but deep—twelve feet at low tide, something like twenty-two, twenty-three at high. I think it’s been scouring lately. Here’s the drawing, ma’am.”
She handed it over, and at Marian’s gesture Swindapa, Jenkins, and a few others came to peer over her shoulder as she spread it against the compass binnacle. The bay within was liver-shaped, with two streams running into its southern portion. The middie had marked broad areas of marsh and tidal mud; beyond that, brush and dense forest of tropical hardwoods came down almost to the shore.
“Durban,” Marian said. Not very much like what the twentieth-century charts showed, but they were used to that.
“No lack of timber, ma’am,” the officer-candidate said. “A lot of them a hundred, hundred and twenty feet to the first branch. But we wouldn’t be the first there.”
“Locals?”
“No, ma’am. Found some marks of big fires on the beach, piled wood, and this.”
“Hammer-stipples on the bolthead,” she said grimly. “Not Nantucket Shipyard work, or any of the contractors.”
They machined their bolts; the only thing formed by lathe on this was the actual screw thread. King Isketerol’s artificers were still short of machine tools, although from the reports of Ian’s agents they were making up the lack with shocking speed. Well, scratch that thought of a signal fire, she decided. The cannon and gear on the Chamberlain would be a prize beyond price in Isketerol’s kingdom; no sense in putting temptation in their way.
“Tartessian,” Lieutenant Jenkins said, wincing slightly as someone jostled his slung and splintered left arm. “Well, they’ve got the ships and the maps—I suppose we should expect they’d be snooping around the Indian Ocean too.”
Marian made a noncommittal sound and closed her eyes in pure concentration for a moment. “We’ll do it.”
“Ah . . . ma’am, twenty-two feet’s chancy, with the ship this heavy.”
“We’ll have to lighten outside the bar, of course,” she said and cocked an eye at the sky. And pray for good weather while we do it, went unspoken. Not to mention that our Tartessian friends don’t show up while we’re hauled down. The Republic and the Kingdom of Tartessos were formally at peace; that didn’t mean that the Iberians wouldn’t do their best to stick a thumb in the Islanders’ eye if they thought it could be done quietly.
“Dispatch,” the messenger wheezed, obviously having run all the way from the communications ready room. “Sir.”
“Stand easy, Marine,” Colonel Hollard said, looking up from his desk and putting down the cup of coffee.
The evening was cool and dark outside the slit window, an hour before the rise of the moon, the stars a thick frosting across the desert sky. From outside there was a low murmur of voices, the neigh of a horse in the distance, the burbling moan of a camel—they were finally getting some of them in from the southern deserts. He took the transcript of the radio message and read quickly, whistling silently under his breath.
“Thank you, corporal—and this had better not leak,” he said. “Dismissed.”
He swept aside the duty rosters and stores reports and opened a folder of maps that Intelligence had put together in the two months since their arrival. Hmmm.
I need to talk to Kat about this, he thought. His second-in-command would probably be in her quarters; she’d been out on a field problem for the last two days—forced marches, among other things, getting the troops used to moving in this heat.
He left his office, returning the salute of the sentries, and walked briskly across the lane behind the praetorium headquarters—Officer Country was a row of cottages behind the central square where the routes from the main gates met; the design was based on a Roman legionary marching camp.
“Kat!” he said, walking into the sitting room. “News from—ooops.”
Major Hollard couldn’t actually shoot to her feet; not with the Babylonian woman on her lap clinging so hard and facing away from the door. She did manage to disengage, rise, and brace to attention, flushing visibly even in the light of the single dim lamp and making an abortive effort to button her shirt. There was a flask of the local wine on the low table beside them, and two cups.
Hollard’s eyebrows shot up; the local woman was one of the ex-slaves King Shuriash had sent as part of his gift to the Islanders. Then further. You know, I could have sworn to God Kat was straight as a yardstick, he thought, shaken. Not that I mind, but it’s a bit of a shock. And . . .
“I presume this isn’t a violation of Article Seven, Major,” he said coldly.
A blow to his chest startled him. It was the Babylonian; she’d slugged him at eye level to her, she being about five nothing and wearing neither shoes nor anything else except sweat and a few hickies. This close, he was suddenly aware of her scent, a musky smell that made him momentarily but acutely conscious of how long he’d been celibate. She had probably hurt her fist a lot more than she had hurt him, but she was winding up to try again; a plumply pretty young woman, round-faced and olive-skinned, her blue-black hair falling to the small of her back.
“Whoa!” he said, holding up his hands. This time she punched him in the stomach; her small, hard knuckles rebounded off the muscle.
“Stop that,” he went on, remembering to use Akkadian. Kat cleared her throat and seconded him, and the woman . . .
“What’s your name?” he asked. That seemed to surprise her, at least enough to stop her hitting him.
“Sin-ina-mati, lord,” she said automatically.
“Sin-ina-mati, do not strike me,” he said. “Instead, explain why you are here with this officer. You do understand that you need not lie with anyone you would not?”
Sin-ina-mati looked as if she was going to hit him again. “I am here because the good Kat’ryn praised my beauty and my singing, and gave me sweet wine to drink, and talked to me! All my life lords have said, ‘Woman, come here!’ or ‘Slave, bring me this!’ You looked upon her with the eyes of wrath; you will not harm her. I say it, Sin-ina-mati!”
Well, I guess the self-esteem classes paid off, Hollard thought.
“Ah, assuredly, I shall not harm her,” he went on aloud. “Yet we have business of war to attend to. Perhaps you should leave.”
The Babylonian seemed to shrink a little as her eyes lost the brilliance of exaltation and she realized what she’d done. She gave a quick bow, scooped up her robe, and left—into the other room, he noted, not into the street.
“Sorry, Kat,” Hollard said. “I just lost my temper—too many goddam Article Sevens. And . . . ah, I was a bit surprised.”
“Well, so was I,” she said frankly, buttoning her shirt and tucking it in. “I just got so damned horny, and there isn’t anyone else here of my rank, and . . . Mati’s a sweetie, though. This is business, I presume?”
“Yup.” He handed over the note. “From Councilor Arnstein’s office in Dur-Kurigalzu. The Assyrians have attacked, and according to King Shuriash’s spies the Elamites are mobilizing. There are rumors of strangers from the far north at both courts.”
A grin. “Well, we are going to be busy bees tomorrow.”
“No, sir,” Vicki Cofflin said. “Ten days minimum. I won’t swear to anything under fourteen. It’s a big job, and we don’t have the facilities we did back on the Island.”
“Damn,” Kenneth Hollard said, looking up at the cone-shaped forward section of the Emancipator’s frame. They’d shipped it in from the Island knocked down, since it was far too large for a ship’s hull, and putting it back together was a long job. Particularly since building a landing shed here at Ur Base would take even longer.
Most of the rest of it lay scattered in carefully calculated pieces over the vast level field; the engines were up on frameworks, with the maintenance crews going over them. Bundles of oil-soaked reeds burned in metal cups on poles, giving light for round-the-clock labor. It was cool, almost cool enough to be chilly, and despite the lamplight of the Nantucketer camp, the stars were many and very bright. Two dozen laborers heaved on ropes under the ungentle direction of a pair of Marine noncoms, and the bow section swayed upright.
“Do the best you can, then,” he said. “I think we’re going to need it soonest.”
“Belay! ’vast heaving!”
A hundred and fifty of the Chamberlain’s crew collapsed into the sand and scrub grass of the beach or around the capstan on deck. The spiderwork of cable that connected the ship to half a dozen of the bigger trees that grew nearly to the high-tide mark went slack. Stripped to shorts and singlet, Marian Alston waded through the thick mud around her ship; it squelched up to her knees, smelling of dead fish, mangrove, and seaweed.
She’s steady. Thank you, Lord
Jesus, she thought, reflex of a Baptist childhood.
The ship creaked, groaned a little, and settled into the improvised cradle; her gunports were all open and the deck covers off, letting the sun and air in and a waft that smelled strongly of spoiled barley out—rather like a brewery gone wrong, with heavy overtones of badly kept Chinese restaurant kitchen from the sesame oil.
That ought to hold her, Marian said to herself. And we can use the raw wool for caulking, better than oakum.
Hmmmm . . . if we find a tree of something like the right size, we could use it for a jury-foremast. Then they wouldn’t have to stop long at Mandela Base, just head for Nantucket and the dry dock for full repairs.
“All hands,” she said to the second lieutenant. The crew gathered, exhausted but cheerful, and the commodore stood on a barrelhead to look out over them.
“Well, gentlemen, ladies,” she went on, “you’ve done it. Now we can get her ready and go home.”
“Three cheers for the skipper!” someone shouted.
Marian ducked her head and endured it. She expected discipline and precise obedience; it always surprised her when she turned out to be popular.
“We’ll spend the rest of today and tomorrow getting the camp shipshape,” she went on doggedly. “Right now, I suggest we call it eight bells—and splice the mainbrace with lunch. Dismissed!”
There was another cheer. She looked at the sun; about noon. Swindapa came up as she jumped down from the barrel, herding their children.
“Marian,” she said—in informal, family mode then. “Could we take a minute?”
“I think so,” Marian said. Her quarters weren’t far away, a tent made of sailcloth over spars and oars, and another smaller one for the children. They ducked into the hot beige canvas-smelling gloom.
Swindapa went on, “Heather and Lucy want to apologize.”
I very much doubt it, Marian thought, forcing her face to sternness.
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