Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

  She stood, drawing a deep breath and releasing it, the rifle hanging in her hand, ignoring the loaded weapon thrust at her. The elephant’s charge continued, its head down, then lower, the tusks plowing into the packed sandy dirt, sliding forward, throwing a cloud of dust and leaves and a fine spray of blood before. Stillness, the elephant’s body slumping sideways with its head held upright by the tusks, a huge release of steaming dung as the muscles relaxed in death. Marian stared into the beast’s dark eye as it went blank, feeling an obscure communion that could never be described.

  Another breath, and the world returned to its everyday self. “Woof,” she said quietly.

  “My uncles aren’t going to believe me,” Swindapa said, with a slight catch in her voice; her hand came over to grip her partner’s shoulder.

  Marian touched it with her own, then looked down. The San was slowly lifting his hands from his head and looking up, then even more slowly looking backward. The ridge of earth plowed up by the elephant’s last slide touched his injured foot; he jerked it away sharply and hissed with pain. The he grinned, a wide, white, triumphant smile, looking up at her.

  The American smiled back and went to one knee beside him, propping the rifle against the roadside brush. “Here,” she said, uncorking her canteen, sipping from it and then offering it to the local.

  He turned over, wincing, and sat up to accept it. Swindapa slung her rifle and went to examine his ankle, washing it with water from her own canteen and then manipulating it with strong, skilled fingers.

  “Miller, Llancraxsson,” she said. “We’ll cut some poles for stretchers.” For the first time she took in their white, shocked faces. “Miller?”

  The noncom shook himself and lowered the loaded rifle he still held outstretched. “Ah. . .”

  “Very well done, Miller, you and Llancraxsson,” she said gently. “It was one of the rifles you two loaded that got him.”

  The man nodded, licking his lips and straightening. “Right, ma’am—thanks. A stretcher, we’ll get right to it.”

  There were two red holes precisely .40 in diameter within a finger’s breadth of the third corrugation of the elephant’s trunk, each weeping a slow red trickle. Another was six inches higher and to the right, just in from one eye. God knew where the fourth shot had gone; still, not bad shooting at all. No telling whose shot had drilled the beast’s brain, of course.

  Swindapa was standing by the head; it was nearly as tall as she was, and she wasn’t a short woman. Tentatively, awed, she reached out and touched it.

  “I feel as if we’ve killed a mountain,” she said softly.

  “I know what you mean, sugar,” Alston answered. “I surely do.”

  First big battle, Clemens thought, swallowing his nervousness. It can’t be too different from skirmishes, except for the scale. I hope. He restrained an impulse to wipe his hands—they were already clean—and looked over at his Babylonian assistant.

  Azzu-ena was big-nosed and scrawny, and there was the faintest suggestion of a mustache on her upper lip. When focused in total concentration, her face was still beautiful. She bent over the bilingual text, lips moving slightly as she read down the list. It was the same technique the Babylonians used themselves to teach Sumerian, the sacred language of learning and religion that was long dead as a spoken tongue.

  “Izi-iz: stand!” she murmured. “Luzi-iz: let me stand. Lizi-iz: let him stand. Iza-az: he will stand. Aza-az: I shall stand.”

  She looked up to where Clemens and Smith were setting out surgical instruments from the portable autoclave on the trays, then covering them with sheets of sterile gauze. Reluctantly she set the folder of reed-pulp paper aside and rose, folding back the sleeves of her gown and beginning to scrub down in the sheet-copper basin of boiled water diluted with carbolic acid. They all had roughed, reddened hands from it; she seemed to regard it as a mark of honor. Word had come back that the allied forces were going to force the crossing of the Diyala River against opposition, and that meant business for the Corps.

  Justin gave a quick glance around the forward medical tent. It had been set up on a slight rise, far enough back that the dust wasn’t too bad, far enough forward that the wounded wouldn’t have to be carried too far—timely treatment was the great secret of keeping mortality low. The tent had three poles down the center and one at each corner of the long rectangle; the canvas of the sides had been rolled up and tied, leaving only gauze along the walls. He checked over the contents: three operating tables, ether, oxygen cylinders, instruments, the medical cabinets, rows of cots, tubs of plaster of Paris and bandaging for splints. The personnel—himself and the three other doctor-surgeons from Ur Base, their assistants, a dozen of Shuriash’s palace women who’d proved to have some appetite for nursing, corpsmen waiting with stretchers.

  The light was good, bright but not blinding. The big tent smelled of hot canvas, steam from the autoclave, and kerosene from the burner underneath it; big vats of water were boiling not far away outside. Must remember to have anyone brought in checked for lice, he thought. Lice were a wonderful thing, from the point of view of bacteria that wanted to spread.

  “Heads up!”

  Off to the northeast there was a distant thudding, and then a long brabbling, crackling sound.

  At Azzu-ena’s enquiring look, he spoke: “Guns. Rifles, cannon—our weapons.”

  She nodded, thoughtful and without the edge of fear that most locals showed when gunpowder came up. “What are the characteristic wounds?”

  Clemens heard a chuckle from one of the other doctors. Nevins—she spoke pretty good Akkadian too. He felt a big grin spreading himself. She knows the right questions, at least!

  “Tissue trauma, of course,” he answered. “Long tracks of damaged tissue, with foreign matter carried deep into the body. Treatment is to remove all matter and debride the damaged tissue.” You cut out everything that had been torn, and you eliminated the necrosis that was the greatest danger for gangrene. “Broken bone—shattered, splintered as well as broken.”

  A two-horse ambulance trotted up outside, swaying on its springs. Corpsmen sprang out and brought in the stretchers. Clemens ran over, swallowing. I hate doing triage, he thought, and then pushed the emotion away. He’d pay for that later, but later it wouldn’t hurt his patients.

  There were five figures on the stretchers, one thrashing and moaning. “Morphia here!” he snapped, continuing his quick examination.

  All arrow wounds; two in the extremities, no immediate danger. “Sedate and stabilize,” he said. “I’ll take the sucking chest wound. Nevins, you’re on the gut. Thurtontan, you’re on the one in the face—I think you can save that eye. Let’s go, people!”

  Some distant corner of his mind wondered how the fighting was going, but that wasn’t his proper concern. Everyone who came to him had already lost their battle.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  June-July, Year 9 A.E.

  “Hey, hup!” Kenneth Hollard said, tapping his camel on the joint of its foreleg.

  At the second tap the beast folded itself like an organic leggo set and knelt, front legs first. He stepped off, whacked it on the nose with his riding crop as it considered biting him—it was a skill you acquired quickly if you wanted to keep a whole hide—and looked right and left at the belt of reeds. They were ten feet high and about the thickness of a man’s thumb, their tops feathery and swaying in a breeze that couldn’t be felt here on the mosquito-buzzing edge of the damp ground. The air was heavy with their green, papery smell and the mealy odor of mud. A few paces forward, and the ground began to squish slightly under his boots. Bubbles of decay rose and popped in it, like porridge boiling very slowly.

  “Reed marsh, then cultivated land, then the river, and the Assyrians on the other side, the scouts report,” Prince Kashtiliash said from his chariot. His silvered chain mail rippled in the harsh sunlight, almost too bright to look at, but he’d sensibly left the helmet off for now. “It is likely that they have crossed the river themselv
es, to hinder our passage through the marsh.”

  “Kat?” Hollard said.

  Kat wore the combat engineer hat in this outfit, as well as commanding Second Battalion; the Corps wasn’t big enough for much specialization. She and half a dozen assistants had been working with theodolites and laser range finders. Marvelous little gadgets, but eventually they’ll go bust, he thought.

  “There’s a natural levee along the river,” she said. “The land drops off a bit to this belt of swamp, then there’s another slight rise, and then it’s all downhill out into the desert.”

  Ken lifted his hat and used it as a sunshade as he looked around, relishing the tiny moment of coolness as moving air struck his saturated scalp. Thank God for brush cuts, he thought abstractedly—everyone had one now, the medicos had made it regulation here.

  “Drain, fascines, then a pontoon bridge?” he said.

  She nodded. “We could use some hands for this, though.” A glance upward. “We could use some air reconnaissance, too.”

  “If wishes were horses, we wouldn’t have to use sewage for fertilizer,” he replied.

  The Kassite prince had been waiting patiently . . . although Hollard suspected he’d picked up more English than he let on. Certainly the hundred young scribes the king had assigned to learn it had made remarkable progress; but then, just learning to read in this country required a good memory, and the literate all learned Sumerian as well—though nobody had spoken it in a thousand years.

  Kashtiliash was also sneaking an occasional fascinated look at Major Hollard, Kenneth Hollard noticed. Well, I can’t fault his taste, he thought. The problem was, he had a horrible suspicion that Kat was returning the glances. Christ, the complications! I like this guy; he’s a fighter, and smart, and pretty decent for a local . . . but Christ, Sin-ina-mati would raise a lot less in the way of problems!

  “We’ll cut through this section of ground in two parallel trenches,” Kathryn said in English. “That will drain some of the swamp. We’ll push the trenches through to the drier ground by the river. Then when we get to the river, we’ll build a bridge of boats.”

  Kashtiliash tugged at his beard. “The Diyala is wider than bowshot here,” he said. “That means . . . oh, I see.”

  His grin wouldn’t have looked out of place on the lions he hunted, and the Nantucketers answered with an identical baring of teeth. They were all contemplating what would happen if the Assyrians tried to block passage of a river too wide for bows to shoot across . . . but well within range for rifles and cannon.

  “Do cross river. How would you do, Prince?” Kathryn asked. Her Akkadian was much less fluent than Ken’s, but it had improved considerably.

  “Goatskins,” the prince answered. “Men swimming with inflated goatskins, or rafts of them. A bridge of riverboats, if they can be brought up by water in time. A bridge of bricks, if we had much time and no opposition. Round boats of hides over saplings, such as can be carried in the baggage train.”

  The Nantucketers nodded.

  “If some soldiers to work, we could have?” Kathryn asked. “And carts—tools, and three, four tens of carts. Dry soil is needful.”

  The prince nodded and turned to give orders. Many of the messengers who ran to deliver them were on horseback now, with saddles made at Ur Base. Before long a swarm of peasant levies came up, men in linen kilts and tunics—some stripped to their loincloths in the heat, as they would have been when working their fields at home. The better-equipped among them had bronze-headed spears and wicker shields; many carried bows or slings, and most had knives. Gear ranged on down to hoes and clubs, but the men looked strong and willing. The chariot-born noble who commanded them, and probably owned the land they worked, looked hot—anyone would, in a leather tunic sewn with brass scales and a metal helmet, in this heat—and decidedly less cooperative as he went to one knee and bowed his head.

  “Command me, Prince of the House of Succession,” he said.

  Kashtiliash nodded regally. “Your men will work under the direction of this officer of our allies to force a passage to the river.”

  The nobleman did a quick double take. “Under a woman, Lord Prince?” he said.

  Thunderclouds began to gather on the prince’s hawk-nosed face. “You will obey a purple-arsed Egyptian ape if I command it!” he snapped.

  Kathryn cleared her throat. “Prince?” she said. He looked over at her. “With granting leave, will handle this.”

  Kenneth Hollard nodded. Kashtiliash caught the gesture, shrugged, and signed assent.

  “Settle this quickly,” he said, and to the nobleman: “The war will not wait on your vanity.”

  Kathryn tapped the Babylonian nobleman on one shoulder. “You have problem, working under me?” she said mildly.

  The Babylonian sneered. “Women work under me,” he said, accompanying it with a gesture.

  She smiled, shrugged, and kicked him in the crotch. Her brother recognized the technique—sekka no atari, to strike without warning.

  Well, thank you, Master Musashi, as the commodore would say, he thought. Aloud, he continued to Kashtiliash, “Doesn’t pay to underestimate an opponent.”

  The prince was grinning openly, and the injured noble’s personal retainers—the bronze-armored spearmen who grouped around his chariot—saw it and checked their instinctive rush. The file of Marines behind Kathryn kept their rifles at port arms, ready for instant action.

  “Harlot!” the Babylonian nobleman wheezed, straightening.

  From the sharp sound of the blow, he’d been wearing some sort of cup protector, probably of boiled leather, but the impact of the Nantucketer’s steel-capped boot must have been painful nonetheless.

  Slow learner, Hollard thought, as the man reached out for the woman with a grasping hand.

  She stepped forward and to one side with a gliding lunge, grabbed the wrist with her right hand, and twisted it to lock the arm. Then she turned with a whipping flex of the waist and torso, smashing the Babylonian’s muscular forearm across her left. There was an audible crack of breaking bone, like a green stick snapping, and the man’s face went gray. He gave a small choking grunt of pain and stood motionless—understandably so, for the point of Kathryn’s bowie knife was resting on his upper lip, just under the base of his nose. Hollard jabbed with delicate precision, just enough to raise a bead of blood, then stepped back and bent to clean the blade by stabbing it in the earth before wiping it on the seat of her shorts and sheathing it.

  Kat’s feeling good-natured today, her brother thought. Just broke his arm. With a little luck, that would heal. She could have broken his elbow—that strike was usually aimed there. That would have crippled him for life.

  Kashtiliash’s grin had turned into a laugh; the generals, aides, and courtiers around him took it up. “You have displeased me, Warad-Kubi son of Utul-Istar. You may withdraw to your lands until your wound is healed and the anger of my heart abated. Do not show your face in the city until you receive word.”

  He looked down at Kathryn Hollard.

  “That is an interesting art of fighting you have,” he said. “I would like to learn it sometime. A wise man never passes up a chance at knowledge.”

  To the elder Hollard he went on: “I will array the host. If we can pass the chariots and infantry through on your bridge, we will deploy on the riverbank. I go; send word when all is ready.”

  And there goes our prestige if we screw up, Hollard thought, watching the prince’s chariot trot away in a cloud of dust and a flash of plumes and bronze. That was the problem with being the magical strangers from Beyond the Land. You had to keep delivering.

  “Smart cookie,” Kathryn said pensively, hands on her Sam Browne and fingers tapping the buff leather. “Seems a lot more open-minded than most here.”

  “I think he’s more concerned with results than process,” Colonel Hollard said. “Of which I heartily approve. Okay, let’s get moving. Scouts!”

  That was Captain O’Rourke. “Sir?” he asked, in a voi
ce with a slight trace of a brogue in it; he’d been an Irish student working on-Island when the Event came. About Hollard’s age now, and his broad snub-nosed face was the color of a well-done lobster sprinkled with freckles. It clashed horribly with bright-blue eyes and carroty hair.

  “I want the other side of this marsh under observation,” Hollard said.

  “Well, that’s what we’re for, Colonel,” O’Rourke said cheerfully.

  The recon company spread out and waded into the muck, testing the footing and holding their rifles, priming horns, and cartridge boxes high over their heads. Hollard lifted the handset to his ear.

  “Testing. Hollard here. Over.”

  “O’Rourke here,” came the reply. A few of the Babylonians made covert gestures or clasped the talismans at their waists at the voice that came from a box.

  “Sir, the reed belt’s about six hundred yards broad.” A pause. “I’m on the edge, Colonel. It’s about a quarter mile to the riverbank, stubble fields and fallow, and a big irrigation canal about halfway there.” Another pause. “Definitely movement by the river, on the south bank as well as the north. I can see small parties of what looks like bowmen retreating toward the river—probably we flushed them out. Shall I investigate?”

  “That’s negative, Captain. Remain in place and prepare to bug out. What’s the footing like?”

  “Bad, sir, but it’s not impassable if you’re careful. Try running and you’ll sink to your waist in no time. Definitely not suitable for vehicles, horses or troops in heavy gear, or in any numbers. You can sort of walk on the roots, but if you trample this muck it turns into glue.”

  “Do you think the enemy still has scouts in there?”

  “Impossible to tell, if they’re quiet, sir. You can’t see more than three or four feet through these reeds.”

  “Good work, Paddy. Let me know if there’s any movement. Over.”

  Wonderful things, handheld radios. Another pre-Event convenience they might as well use while they could; the batteries were already dying one by one. Hmmmm. Now, I could just shell and mortar anyone who comes close—but that wouldn’t hit their morale the way a stand-up fight would. Let’s see . . .