“Shut up!” Hollard barked. “Captain O’Rourke, give me a squad; we’ll check the building.”
“Ah . . . wouldn’t it be better if I did that, sir?”
Hollard smiled for the first time in several hours. “No, it wouldn’t, Paddy.” Leading from the front went with the job in the Republic’s forces. “Keep an eye on the prisoners and have the medic patch those that need it. And be careful: smoke draws more than vultures, here.”
Hollard made sure that the katana slung over his back was loose in its sheath. Then he drew his pistol and used the weapon to wave the eight-bayonet section forward with him. The house wasn’t exactly burning, but wood was smoldering and sending up black smoke here and there. If there’s enough left for shelter, we can put it out, he thought. The shattered adobe was loose and treacherous beneath his feet as he climbed through.
The courtyard enclosed by the L shape of the main building and its own wall was substantial and had been handsome before it was shelled. A spring bubbled up in a stone-lined basin in the center; that would be priceless here. There were the remains of grapevines trained up trellises along the walls, and rows of fruit trees as well as banks of herbs, vegetables, and flowers. What attracted his attention was the six men and women impaled on tree trunks that had been cut down and sharpened in lieu of stakes. One of the privates behind him swore softly in Fiernan, another in English.
Well, he thought, swallowing hard himself and looking away from the contorted features of those who’d died in agony, at least it makes you feel better about the job. He was glad the heavy fog of dust and burnt powder was enough to cover most of the stink.
There weren’t any living Assyrians in the courtyard, although the iron scythe of shell fragments from the mortar had left plenty of dead ones; he forced down a chilly satisfaction at that and walked through toward the building. There were two big doors standing open, leading into a sort of hallway. It had been a handsome space once, with painted frescoes on the plastered wall, and stone benches around the all-around, but the paint was faded and patched with plain mud, and the tile floor was cracked and worn.
The Assyrians had made modifications of their own. A table was draped in an expensive-looking knotted rug, and on it was a very dead man in armor of gilded scales, a purple-crimson cloak spread over him. His eyes were wide, and someone had slashed diagonally across his neck, a deep, ugly wound. A young man, with the heavy hooked nose, dense curled beard, and full lips common in these lands; deep chested as well, and judging from the muscular forearms and legs, very strong in life. The tanned skin was pale with blood loss, but seamed white scars were still visible.
And at the foot of the improvised bier, a woman was hanging from the ceiling, dangling by a rope looped around her wrists and secured to a notch in one of the exposed rafters. Her ankles were bound as well, and below her feet was a neatly prepared tepee of kindling and sticks ready to light. She wore the diaperlike undergarment universal here, and dried blood marked a scattering of ship marks on her back.
“Catch her!” Hollard barked, tossing the pistol into his left hand and reaching over that shoulder with his right. “And then get the corpsman.”
The katana came out with a long shinnnng of steel on leather and wood. Two of the Marines slung their rifles and obeyed; the rope was plaited leather, and it took two strokes before the tough hide parted. The woman gave a hoarse grunt as she fell back into their arms and opened her eyes as they lowered her to the ground. Her arms stirred only slightly as Hollard went to one knee and held his canteen to her lips; she drank eagerly, water spilling down her face.
Young, he decided. Not more than her late teens. Not quite like the physical type usual here, either. Her long black hair was feathery-fine and straight; it had russet highlights, while the eyes were a dark gray rimmed with amber-green. Her skin was a clear olive, features straight-nosed and regular, and her build more slender than the rather stocky local norm. On Nantucket he’d have said she had Italian in her background, or maybe Spanish. A memory teased at him . . .
Back before the Event. Who was it . . . yeah, she looks a little like . . . that woman who was prime minister of Pakistan . . . Benazir Bhutto, yeah.
The medic came running in, her red-cross-marked satchel in hand. “Diawas Pithair!” she blurted, in the Keyaltwar dialect, calling on the sky father who was overgod of the Sun People tribes.
The young woman’s head came up, her eyes losing the glaze of pain. She looked at Hollard, then at the medic and a few others who were crowding around, and spoke.
“Dyaush Pitar?” she said, and then an eager string of sentences.
The medic looked baffled and replied in her own tongue as she began her work, which consisted mainly of ointment and bandages for wrists and ankles and whip marks. She shook her head and looked up at Hollard as she finished.
“Sir, it’s real funny—I sort of feel I should be able to understand what she’s saying, but I can’t. Uh, she’s okay—the shoulder joints are stressed, but they’ll do fine if she rests ’em for a few days.”
The woman spoke again in another language, throaty and agglutinative-sounding, and then in Akkadian; the Babylonian version of it, he noticed.
“Who are you?” she said.
Hollard sat back on his heel, resting his weight on an elbow across his thigh. “Colonel Kenneth Hollard, Republic of Nantucket Marine Corps,” he said and then translated: “Kenneth Hollard, commander of a thousand in the host of the Eagle People.”
“Ahhh! I heard the pigs of Asshur speak of you—an army of demons with weapons that spat fire and smashed walls like the fist of Teshub. I thought they lied, but I am glad that they spoke the truth.”
Yet another non-admirer of the Assyrians, Hollard thought. They have a positive gift for negative PR.
“And who are you, young gentlewoman?” Hollard said.
Someone with a lot of guts, anyway, he thought. From the looks of things she’d been about to be tortured to death, and now she was surrounded by weirdly armed strangers, yet she looked cool as a cucumber, working her shoulders without even a wince at what must be considerable pain. Probably near collapse underneath, though, he thought—he could sense the quivering intensity of her control.
“I am Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna.” The girl’s chin lifted. “Who would have been rightful king of Mitanni, if the gods had not thrown the realm down in the dust.”
Well, shit, Hollard thought. That may complicate things.
“Ah . . . if your father was here . . .”
A bleak expression; she turned her head aside for an instant and drew a deep breath. “No. He died while I was yet in the womb; the Assyrians killed him when they destroyed the last of the kingdom, and my mother died bearing me. I saw what they did out there; they made me watch. That was the lord Tushratta, the mariannu—the warrior-retainer—who bore me southward to this last estate of his and raised me as his own.”
“Er . . . what happened here?”
A shrug, and she turned her face away, blinking rapidly.
“The Assyrians came last night, fleeing defeat. My foster father greeted them as guests. What could he do, with twenty men only and they peasants, against more than a hundred in full armor? Then they demanded that I dance for their leader—meaning that he would rape me at his pleasure.”
Her smile grew even bleaker. “And dance I did, and when he seized me—breaking the law of hospitality that all the gods hold sacred—I opened his neck with the knife in my sleeve. Then they slaughtered all here, save me—they gave over thought of ravishing me and after much argument decided that to flog me to death would be too merciful. Instead they hung me up as you saw. Not long after, I heard the thunder of your weapons. So my life was spared—Teshub, and Hepat, and Shaushga, and Indara, and Mitra, and Auruna, and the other gods and goddesses must favor me greatly.”
Remind me not to get this chick mad at me, Hollard thought.
She struggled to her feet and made an imperious gesture; one of the Marines
hastily picked up a long shawl, and she wrapped it around herself. Then she walked stiffly to the side of the bier and spat in the dead man’s face.
“May dust be his food and salt his drink in the House of Arabu. My foster father and mother are avenged, at least.”
“Who was he, anyway?” Hollard asked. Time to get back to business.
The girl smiled. It looked as if it hurt her face. “You do not know, Lord Kenn’et? That is—was—Tukulti-Ninurta. King of the Universe of Swine, King of the Four Corners of the Pigpen, King of Assyria, last of the seed of Shulmanu-asharidu, who slew my father and my people. Thus are all my kin avenged.”
“Oh, shit.” It was time to call the Arnsteins and pass the buck. In the meantime . . .
“You will be safe with us, Lady Raupasha,” he said. In English: “Sergeant, see to the young lady’s needs.” He dropped back into Akkadian: “Your pardon. I must see to my troops.”
He turned and strode out, blinking in the bright sunlight. O’Rourke had taken down the impaled bodies, and working parties were hauling bucketfuls of water to splash and sizzle on charring timbers.
“So, Colonel, I hear it’s a princess we rescued,” he said. “A young, beautiful princess at that.”
“Paddy, for once rumor does not lie—and there’s all sorts of political implications involved.”
“Better you than me, sir. You’d best take a look at this, too, though.”
They went up a mud-brick staircase to a section of the house roof still strong enough to bear their weight. “Over there, southwest.”
The figures he pointed to were ant-tiny in the distance. Hollard raised his binoculars and turned the focusing screw; the ants became men, leaping close in the dry, clear air.
Uh-oh.
A gray-bearded man on a donkey, in a long striped robe with a fringe, a flowing headdress, and a sword belted at his waist. Several men talking to him, arguing with broad, quick gestures. More donkeys with packsaddles, and men on foot—fifty or sixty, scattered over the bare steppeland. He studied them; a few in plainer robes than the chief, many in simple goatskin kilts. None of them had swords—most of them didn’t even have sandals—but they all had long knives tucked through their belts. Bows, slings, and spears were in evidence too, and a few had hide and wicker shields.
They were lean men with vast black beards, their bodies looking as if they were made out of sun-dried rawhide. Leaning on their spears, or laying them across their shoulders and resting their arms on them, or squatting at their ease. He could see one spitting thoughtfully on a rock and honing a curved bronze dagger that would do quite well as a skinning knife.
Aramaeans, right enough, he thought. Aloud: “No sheep, no goats, and no women.”
“War party,” O’Rourke agreed.
“Well, that solves one problem,” Hollard replied and drew his pistol again as he trotted downstairs.
When he stood in front of the prisoners he gestured with it; they’d learned enough to know that it was one of the fire-weapons that had broken their kingdom, and they eyed it fearfully.
“All right, you’re free to go,” he said.
The spokesman who’d kissed his foot looked up from giving a dipper of water to a bandaged countryman. “Free, lord? No ransom?”
“Free and clear.” He pointed to the south. “Now get going.”
“Go?”
“What part of go don’t you understand, you son of a bitch?” he roared, the control that had kept his voice level suddenly cracking. The Assyrian flinched as if from a blow. “Go! Thataway! Or by God, I’ll shoot you down like a dog here and now. All of you—go!”
“But, lord! We have no food or water or weapons or—”
“Go!”
“But we will die!”
Hollard smiled; it felt a little like a smile, though the Assyrian flinched again. When he spoke, his voice was calm.
“We have an old saying—as a man sows, so shall he reap.”
He fired into the dirt next to the Assyrian’s foot. “March!”
Ibi-Addad came out and watched the departing Assyrians with a moment’s mild curiosity. Then he waved a leather sack.
“Look, Lord Hollard! Packed with salt, this will be perfect for keeping the head until you lay it before King Shuriash. That all men may know your victory!”
“Oh, shit.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
September-December, Year 9 A.E.
“My lord king Agamemnon!” William Walker said, his voice loud and full of concern. “I will offer a hectacomb of white oxen to Zeus the Father in thanks that you live!”
The throne room of Mycenae was less bright than usual, despite the mirrors and lamps that Walker had installed for his hegemon years ago. Many had been shattered by the same grenade fragments that had flecked the walls. Blasts had scaled off a lot of the painted plaster, and blood was splashed across much of what was left of the magnificent murals of lions and griffons and Minoan-style sea creatures that sprawled in multicolored splendor around the great room.
The smell of burnt pork came not from a feast but from the body of the guardsman who’d fallen backward into the great circular marble-rimmed hearth, half-drowning the fire with his blood. Parties of Walker’s guard regiment were at work carting out the bodies. He gestured to make sure one got the corpse in the hearth before the fire there went out—that would be extremely bad mojo, to the wogs’ way of thinking. The hearthfire was the luck of the house and kin.
Not that I have to pay as much attention to that now, he thought. Still, no reason not to when it didn’t cost anything.
“But the traitors around you have been found out and defeated,” Walker went on, still in a loud public voice. “What a loss for all the lands of the Achaeans if you had been killed in the fighting!”
What a monumental pain in the ass for me, he added to himself. Right now he could enforce a claim to being the power behind the throne and make it stick at gunpoint, but he couldn’t sit on the sacred seat himself. Not yet. Too many of the Achaean nobles would fight to the death if an outlander’s low-bred fundament actually touched it. He needed them.
For now.
Agamemnon’s face was still sagging with shock. A lot grayer than when I arrived here, Walker thought. Lot fatter, too. It made him pleasantly conscious of his own trim physique. The suit of articulated plate made for him back on Nantucket a few months after the Event still fit. So did the belt he’d won at eighteen in the Colorado state rodeo.
He looked up. Every Mycenaean palace—except his—had a four-pillar arrangement around the central hearth, with a gallery where the second story could look down into the great hall. Alice Hong was there, in Mycenaean robes but still looking as alien as the Beretta in her hand. She gave him the high sign and pulled a younger woman away, leading her by the hand.
“How . . .” Agamemnon began, then cleared his throat. His glance took in the ranks of musketeers along the walls, their bayonets bright—or in some cases, still sticky-red. “How did you know?”
“How did I know that evil councilors—surely men in the pay of the Hittites!—had attempted to turn your mind against me, King of Men? Had tried to persuade you to turn on me? Ah. Well, you see . . . you Achaeans are fine people, but you have your blind spots.”
“Blind spots?” the lord of Mycenae asked, bewildered.
“Sorry. Literal translations don’t always work.” And he didn’t always realize he was translating, since he thought in Achaean much of the time now. “Blind spot means things you don’t see even though they’re there. Like women. Just a second.”
Ohotolarix saluted and bowed his head. “Lord,” he said, dropping back into Iraiina for security’s sake, “we have the building in our fist. All the men you named are dead or in our hands.”
“Good,” Walker answered in the same tongue. “Now make sure none of their families get away either.” These people were blood-feudists, and nits made lice.
“Women?” Agamemnon said again.
Dude
’s beginning to sound like a broken record, Walker thought.
Hong came into the hall, still leading the girl by the hand. There was a strong family resemblance between her and the middle-aged woman who trailed behind, strong straight noses and snapping black eyes. The rich fabric of their layered dresses rustled as they walked, with a hissing like snakes.
“Yeah, women. You see, the women in a palace hear everything—but you nobles, you act like they were doorposts or something.”
Hong spoke: “And the Dark Sisterhood of Hekate is everywhere!”
Walker spared her a cold glance. “Yeah, well, secret societies, they’re sort of more useful when they’re secret, right, babe?”
“Well, sorry about that, Mr. Montana Maniac at King Agamemnon’s Court.”
His eyes flared like distant heat-lightning. “Not now, Alice!”
“Sorry, Will.”
She didn’t look sorry; she looked like she was lit up, a major glow on. Hell, I feel like I’ve just snorted half an ounce myself, Walker thought. As if he could fight lions bare-handed and ball the whole cheerleading squad into squealing ecstasy and still run the Ironman triathlon. But I keep it under control, and dear Alice had better do likewise.
“My wife?” the Greek croaked. “My daughter?”
“My lord king should remember that he was publicly considering sacrificing her for good luck in the coming war,” Walker said.
“But that was for the good of the realm!” he protested. “The priests—”
And my lord king should have known, but didn’t, that I was the one who bribed the augurs to say that we couldn’t win unless you did. Of course, the idea wasn’t completely mine; Alice sort of suggested it indirectly, when she got that hissy fit about fate. And she got it from Homer.
Now the augurs would explain that the king was “sacrificing” his daughter by marrying her to the new commander-in-chief. It was perfect, if he did say so himself.
There was an exchange of sign and countersign at the entrance to the hall. Odikweos of Ithaka came through with his hand on his sword hilt and a group of his officers behind him.
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