Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

  He waited for the Babylonian liaison officer to come up. Ibi-Addad had learned to handle his camel fairly well, and like all his countrymen he’d gotten more and more cheerful as the campaign went on, which was understandable. He was even prepared to put up with traveling in the desert, among the wandering Aramaeans—truffle-eating savages, to a man from the settled lands between the rivers. And he could speak Hittite, which might be useful in a little while.

  “What do you make of that?” the Islander asked, pointing to what looked like a set of low adobe buildings at the foot of a rocky ridge.

  Ibi-Addad stroked his beard, which had gone from neat black curls to a tangled thicket over the past couple of weeks, and raised his own binoculars—that gift would have made him willing to come along even without King Shuriash’s orders.

  “I think it is the . . . ” he began, and trailed off into terms Hollard couldn’t follow.

  The Nantucketer sighed. Just when I thought my Akkadian was getting really fluent.

  “The manor of a Mitannian mariannu,” Ibi-Addad clarified. “They were the ruling folk of Mitanni, before the Assyrians and the Hittites broke that kingdom a hundred years ago. A fragment of it lived on as a vassal state until my father’s time, when they revolted and King Shulmanu-asharidu of Asshur destroyed them. I do not suppose many of that breed are left.”

  “Let’s go see,” Hollard said. “I think the Assyrians are paying a visit.” He grimaced; they’d seen the results of that, in villages and nomad camps. “I thought this was part of their kingdom? They’re acting like they were in enemy territory, though.”

  Ibi-Addad shrugged eloquently; he was in Marine khakis, but the gesture was purely Babylonian. “They are broken men fleeing defeat, and these are conquered provinces. The people here hate them. Except for the Assyrian colonists, and those are in the cities.”

  Hollard nodded and turned in the saddle. “Spread out and look alive!” he called.

  The complex of buildings came into view as the camels paced northward in a long double line; a hundred mounted riflemen, and a mortar team with the pack animals. Another thing the Assyrians were having trouble adjusting to was how far a camel-born outfit could swing into the desert and how fast it could move. The locals used donkeys for carrying cargo, and those had to be watered every day or so.

  Oooops. Assyrians, all right—a couple of hundred of them, with half a dozen chariots. That meant some fairly high-ranking officers, given the shape of what remained of their field army. The men were milling around the adobes; those looked like they’d seen better days, with more than half of what had been a substantial village in tumble-down ruins. One or two of the large buildings seemed to have been occupied until recently; they were shedding mud plaster but still largely intact. There must be a spring of good water here, then, and the stubble fields indicated a hundred acres or so of grain, enough to sustain a big household if not a town, together with the grazing.

  Hollard flung up a hand as the Assyrians broke into shouts and pointing, and the company came to a halt. Careless bastards—should have seen us long before now.

  “Captain O’Rourke!”

  The commander of the recon company whacked his camel on the rump and sped up to the commander’s side.

  “Business, sir? ”

  “Enemy up ahead. They’ve spotted us, and any minute now . . .”

  Oooops again. A racket of harsh trumpet sounds and cries came from the cluster of beige-colored mud-brick buildings half a mile away.

  “We’ll be seeing them off, then, sir?”

  “That we will, Paddy,” Hollard said. “Six hundred yards, and set up the mortar. Open order. Let’s not get sloppy.”

  The Assyrians were pouring out of the open ground, into the protection of the stout two-story building and its courtyard. The house was windowless on the ground floor, with narrow slits suitable for archers above, and from the looks of it the courtyard wall had a proper fighting platform on the inside. A short, thick tower rose from the rear of it, giving another story over the flat rooftop.

  “Looks like a fortress,” he said in Akkadian. Ibi-Addad had picked up a little functional English, but not enough for a real conversation.

  “How not, Lord Hollard?” he said. “This is the edge of cultivation—the Aramaeans would be all over anyone not ready to fight like flies on a fresh donkey turd.”

  Hollard nodded; they’d seen that, too—small bands of Assyrian stragglers overrun by nomads out for loot and payback. They seemed to have a knack for skinning a man alive, from the feet up. He put the image out of his mind with an effort; the Assyrian had still been alive when they found him, one huge scab with eyes staring out of it, and moving.

  “Looks like they’ve learned better than trying to rush us.” O’Rourke chuckled. “Damned alarmin’ it was, a few times.”

  Hollard nodded again. Whatever you could say about the Assyrians, they didn’t lack for guts.

  “Let’s do it by the numbers, then,” he said.

  A thousand yards from the settlement the Islanders came across the first bodies. Hollard’s brows rose; they looked like standard Mesopotamian peasants, men in loincloths or short tunics and women in long ones and shawlike headdresses. These had obviously been caught fleeing. One had a broken arrow stub in the back of his head, probably too tightly wedged to be worth recovering. Several others showed gaping wounds where shafts had been cut out for reuse, and the great pools of black blood were still a little tacky and swarming with flies.

  “This morning,” he said, not looking at a few very small bodies. Those had been tossed on spears.

  “Sunrise, or a little after, I’d say,” O’Rourke said, crossing himself.

  Hollard looked eastward. The chariots had probably come in first and caught the workers out in the fields. A good place to halt, about a thousand years from the big flat-roofed house, and barley straw could be sharp enough to hurt a camel’s footpads.

  The camels halted and knelt, chewing and spitting, glad enough of a rest; some lifted their long necks and flared the flaps over their nostrils in interest at the scent of water and green growing things from the courtyard ahead. Marines dismounted, unslinging their rifles and exchanging floppy canvas hats for the helmets strapped to their packs. Others hammered iron stakes into the ground and tethered the beasts to them. The mortar team lifted the four-foot barrel of their weapon off a pack camel’s back with a grunt, and there was a series of clicks and clunks as the weapon was clipped into its base and clamped onto the steel bipod that supported the business end. The sergeant in charge of the weapon was whistling tunelessly between her teeth as she unbuckled the leather strapping on the strong wicker boxes that held the finned bombs.

  “Three up, one back?” O’Rourke asked.

  Ken nodded; he wasn’t going to second-guess the man on the spot unless he needed it. Patrick Joseph O’Rourke was possibly a little too ready to lean on higher authority—one reason he didn’t have Hollard’s job. Nothing wrong with his aggressiveness at the company level, though, and he had the saving grace of a wicked sense of humor.

  The company commander turned and barked: “D Platoon in reserve, A through C in skirmish order. Prepare to advance on the word of command—and fix bayonets!”

  The long blades came out and clattered home, their edges throwing painfully bright reflections in the hot Asian sun. Kenneth Hollard hid a slight grimace of distaste at the sight. He knew what it felt like to run edged metal into a man, the soft, heavy resistance. And the look in his eyes as he realized he was going to die, and the sounds he made, and the smell . . .

  “Dirty job,” O’Rourke said, catching his thought without the irrelevance of words.

  “But somebody’s got to do it.”

  Some of the Sun People rankers were grinning at the prospect of a fight. But then, they’re all maniacs, anyway. Good soldiers but weird. Sometimes he worried a little about the impact they would have when they mustered out and got their citizenship. Up to now most of the immigra
nts had been Fiernan. Who were weird too, but less aggressive about it.

  He raised his binoculars again. Plenty of the distinctive ruddy glitter of bronze along the edges of walls . . .

  “Sir? ”

  That was Sergeant Winnifred Smith of the mortar team—Immigration Office name, she was obviously Alban by origin—Sun People, from the accent.

  No questions asked, Hollard reminded himself. Your record started the day you took the oath, in the Guard or the Corps.

  O’Rourke lowered his own glasses. “Let’s start by knocking down the big gateway into the courtyards,” he said. “With a little luck, they’ll rush us.”

  “Yessir,” the sergeant replied.

  A broad grin showed as she worked the elevation and traverse screws; the muzzle of the mortar moved up a bit, and to the right.

  “Nine hundred yards . . . one ring,” she called over her shoulder.

  “One ring, aye,” the man with the mortar bomb in his hands said.

  That was an elongated iron teardrop with fins at its base. A section above the fins was perforated, and around that his assistant clipped a linen donut of gunpowder. Then he slipped the friction primer into the base of the bomb, turned the wooden-ring safety and pulled it out. Now when the round was dropped down the muzzle it would drive the primer in on itself, striking a light in exactly the same way as a matchbox and match. Seahaven swore that they’d have percussion caps available in quantity soon, but in the meantime this worked and they could make more in the field at need. Leaton swore he’d have a brass-cartridge rifle available next year too, but Hollard would believe that when it arrived.

  “Fire in the hole!” the sergeant barked, and dropped the bomb into the waiting maw of the mortar. The team turned away, mouths open and ears plugged with their thumbs.

  Thuddump!

  A jet of dirty-gray smoke shot out of the muzzle. The bomb followed it, landing in the dirt about fifteen feet in front of the weathered wooden gates.

  Whuddump! The bursting-charge exploded, throwing up a black shape of dirt that stood erect for a moment before drifting westward and falling in a patter of dust and clods. A small crater gaped in the packed earth of the trackway. Shouts and screams could be heard from the men within; the Assyrians had some experience of being under fire from the Islander artillery by now, and they didn’t like it at all. A few stood up over the parapet, shaking fists or weapons.

  Not enough experience, though, Hollard thought coldly, remembering the dead peasants and their children.

  “Marksmen may fire on movement!” O’Rourke called out. “No need to let the insolence of them go unrequited.”

  Here and there along the line Marines with the sniper star began to fire, slow and deliberate. An Assyrian pitched forward off the parapet over the gates, landing with a limp thunp on the ground. Several others toppled backward, some screaming. The others ducked down, and ducked further when a bullet clipped the top of a bronze helmet barely showing over the crenelations of the defense. The helmet went spinning, ringing like a cracked bell. Fragments of the skull and brain beneath probably followed it.

  “Lost his head completely, poor fellow,” O’Rourke said.

  Sergeant Smith gave the elevating screw a three-quarter turn. “Fire in the hole!” she called again and dropped in the second bomb.

  Thuddump!

  Another malignant whistle overhead, dropping away . . . and this time it crashed precisely into the arch over the gateway. When the smoke cleared the arch had a bite taken out of its apex—more dropped away as Hollard watched—and the wood of the gates was splintered, torn and burning.

  “Lord Kenneth-Hollard,” Ibi-Addad said, a frown of worry on his sun-browned face. “What if some of them drop off the wall on the northern side and run?”

  “I hope they do,” Hollard said. At the Babylonian’s inquiring look: “All I can do is kill them.”

  “Ah,” Ibi-Addad chuckled. “But if the Aramaeans catch them . . .”

  “Exactly.”

  “And the tribes will be hanging about like vultures on a tamarisk above a sick sheep,” King Shuriash’s man said happily. Then he frowned. “More and more of the sand-thieves roam in these lands every year, though, and they press into the settled country whenever they get a chance.”

  Hollard nodded; according to the Arnsteins’ briefings the Aramaeans were slated to overrun most of the Middle East in the dark age that the pre-Event histories said was coming, and their tongue and ways would stamp themselves on the region for millennia. Aramaic would be the state language of the Persian Empire, and the native tongue of Jesus. Or would have been . . .

  Thuddump! Thuddump! Thuddump!

  Hollard blinked and coughed as the harsh sulfur-smelling black powder smoke blew past. The mortar was firing for effect now, and the thick, soft adobe walls of the manor house and courtyard wall went up in gouts of dust. Smoke began to trickle skyward as the timbers supporting the roof caught fire. One round landed with spectacular—if accidental—accuracy square on top of the tower, sending a shower of wood, mud brick, and bodies in every direction.

  “Roast, run into the wilderness, or come out and get shot,” Ibi-Addad laughed.

  Hollard nodded. True enough, although he still didn’t like to hear laughter as men died. None of the choices available to the Assyrians were good.

  “Heads up!” one of the snipers called. “Here they come!”

  The rest of the line thumbed back the hammers of their rifles, a long multiple-clicking sound, as the enemy swarmed forward over the rubble of courtyard wall and gate.

  So, they decided to die fighting, Hollard thought. Or trying to fight, anyway.

  “Independent fire!” O’Rourke called.

  The platoon commanders echoed it; Hollard heard “make it count” and “Aim low.” Spray-and-pray was bad enough with automatic weapons; with a single-shot like the Westley-Richards, you really needed to take some trouble.

  The rifles began to speak their sharp, spiteful cracks. Hollard estimated the Assyrians at a hundred and fifty or so, and they began dying as soon as they left cover, men falling limp or crawling, screams as faint with distance as the war cries. Other bullets kicked up puffs of dust around them; he saw one Assyrian stop and slam his spear at one, probably thinking it was some sort of invisible devil.

  More fell as they drew closer, but none of the enemy turned back toward the shattered, burning buildings. The last one to fall carried a standard with a sun disk in gold on the end of a long pole; his face was set and calm, and by some fluke of ballistics he came within fifty yards of the Islander line before three of the heavy bullets struck him simultaneously. Hollard saw his face go from a set, almost hieratic peace to brief agony and then blankness as he toppled forward. The standard fell in the dirt and lay with the steppe wind flapping the bright cloth against the ground and raising tiny puffs of dust as it struck.

  Silence fell, broken by a few moans and whimpers and men calling for their mothers—Holland had noted how that always happened on a battlefield, and he always hated it. Then there was a shout from the ruined buildings; another man emerged, this one waving a green branch torn from one of the trees within.

  “Cease fire!” Hollard called.

  He walked out in front of the Islander line and waited, one hand resting on the butt of his pistol. “That’s far enough,” he said, when the Assyrian was about six feet away. No sense taking chances with a possible berserker.

  The man was obviously not a soldier; he was dressed in the long gown and fringed, embroidered wraparound upper garment that was a mark of high rank, and his curled beard was more gray than black. His face was a pasty gray with recent hardship and with fear, although you could see that before that he’d been well fed.

  “Mercy!” he called. He went down on his knees and raised a clod of dirt to his lips; then down on his belly and crawled forward, kissing Hollard’s boot and trying to put it on his neck.

  “Mercy!” he bleated.

  Kenneth Holla
rd restrained an impulse to kick the Assyrian nobleman in the face. “Surrender, and live,” he said.

  Ibi-Addad sighed and rolled his eyes as the crawling man began to babble thanks and call down benedictions from his gods, his teeth bared in an unconsciously doglike grin of submission.

  “You Eagle People,” he said. “Fierce as lions one minute, then like lambs. It makes no sense.”

  “Get up, get up,” the Marine colonel said. “Go back there. Tell your countrymen that if they’re not all outside in five minutes, we’ll kill you all. We’ll also kill you all if we find anyone hiding within, or if there’s any resistance. Go! Now!”

  O’Rourke was frowning at the enemy dead. “Notice something, sir?” he said.

  Hollard did, and heard Ibi-Addad’s surprised grunt follow. “They’re all armed like a noble’s retainers,” he said.

  Corselets of bronze scales, or bronze studs in thick bull hide; good metal-bossed shields, and nearly every man had a sword as well. His eye picked out other details: embroidered rosettes along the edge of a tunic, gold and silver inlay on a belt buckle or hilt, silver buckles on a sandal, a tooled-leather baldric. Some of the Marines were eyeing the same things with interest. Albans weren’t squeamish about picking up valuables; he’d have to tell off a working party, when things were settled.

  “Bind not the mouths of the oxen that tread out the grain,” as the Bible said. Would say. Whatever.

  The remaining Assyrians were scrambling out of the wrecked building, a score or so of them, including some badly wounded enough to require carrying or dragging. They went to their knees as the Nantucketers approached, touching clods of earth to their lips or holding out their hands to touch feet or thighs in token of submission, babbling in their rough northern dialect of Akkadian.