Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

  “Rejoice, shield-brother,” he said to Walker, after a perfunctory bow to Agamemnon.

  Even now the Achaean monarch started to swell with indignation at the discourtesy and opened his mouth to reprove it, but another glance at the armed men around his throne dissuaded him.

  “The lower city is under control,” Odiweos went on. “There was a little fighting at the barracks, but not much.”

  Walker nodded. “Sometimes you can shoot men more effectively with gold and silver bullets than with lead,” he said. Particularly if you see to it that they lose more than they can afford to well-trained dice, he added to himself.

  The Ithakan went on: “I have field guns commanding all the open spaces and patrols bringing in all the men on the list.”

  A figure in a long robe waited a pace to the vassal king’s rear. “Enkhelyawon?” Walker prompted.

  His chief of correspondence cleared his throat. “My lord, the scribes of the palace are in order and the telegraph office has been secured.” He risked a glance at Agamemnon, but the high king was still staring in dazed horror at his wife and daughter. “The printed account of your crushing of the conspiracy and the list of proscribed families is already going out to Tiryns, Argos, Athens, Pylos, and the other citadels.”

  “Good. Carry on—see that normal message traffic continues until we have guard troops in place everywhere.”

  He turned back to the high king. “And we need some privacy, O King of Men, to decide how to safeguard you from future conspiracies.”

  Like, you marry me to your daughter and declare me lawagetas—general in chief—of all the Achaeans, for starters. And you don’t so much as piss against a wall without my permission from now on. You’ll probably die of natural causes before you stop being useful, though, so don’t sweat it too much, dude.

  “Treason,” Agamemnon whispered, when the onlookers were gone.

  “Not at all,” Walker said with a charming, boyish grin.

  “How not?” the Greek said with a certain haggard dignity. “Although at least you have not slain me who took you in when you were a fugitive and suppliant.”

  “Oh, I’d never have you killed. You’re far too useful alive,” Walker said. “As for the treason . . . well, among my birth-people we have an old saying: Why is it that treason never prospers?”

  Agamemnon’s head went back. “Because the curse of Zeus the Avenger of Right and the wrath of the Kindly Ones pursues the oath-breaking man who turns on his lord!” he said, his voice firm once more.

  Behind Walker, Odikweos winced slightly. The American went on cheerfully: “Not exactly, Oh High King,” he said. “We say that it never prospers, because if it prospers . . . why, none dare call it treason.”

  The Greeks stared in appalled silence as his laughter echoed through the great blood-spattered hall of the House of Atreus.

  Prince Kashtiliash lowered his binoculars. “Their walls are open,” he said eagerly. “As open as—” he coughed; speaking to Major Kathryn Hollard it might not be tactful to say a woman’s legs. “—as the door of an unguarded house.”

  Asshur lay on the west bank of the Tigris. That meant something more definite here in northern Mesopotamia, away from the alluvial plains of Kar-Duniash. Here the land was higher, rolling steppe with copses of scrub oak in the ravines. Dust smoked off stubble fields, and sunset was throwing Prussian blue on the outliers of the Zagros mountains over the river. Ahead, the high stone wall of the Assyrian capital was black against the first stars on that horizon, with the triangular crenellations of the wall cutting the sky like jagged teeth.

  More jagged than they were when we started, Kathryn Hollard thought.

  She looked over from the little hillock where she and the Babylonian commander stood. The two rifled siege guns were further forward, on a hill their local allies had fortified with earthworks under Islander direction; a couple of the field guns were emplaced there too, and a brace of mortars to command any dead ground where the Assyrians might mass for an attack. The position was two thousand yards from the wall, nearly ten times the range of any weapon the defenders had. As she watched, a long jet of reddish fire shot out from the muzzle of one of the big guns. In the gathering darkness the shell was a red dot arching through a long curve of night. Another vicious red snap marked the spot where it drove into a section of wall still standing.

  The deep boooom of the siege gun merged into the sharper sound the forged-steel projectile made when it struck stone. Half a second later fifteen pounds of gunpowder exploded within the mortared limestone of the wall, and a section of it collapsed outward with a roar like Niagara. A man came down too, falling outward in a trajectory that ended on hard, unforgiving ground. She was too far away to hear his scream, but the cheering from the battery came clearly, thin with distance.

  Asshur was a lopsided triangle, with a long, curved wall cutting across the base and a sharp bend of the Tigris around the other two sides. Three hundred yards of the middle of the wall were down now, making a rough ramp that filled the moat and stretched out from the wall like a fan. Assault troops wouldn’t need ladders to walk into Asshur now, only sandals and a good sense of balance. Fires were burning here and there within the walls, and a confused murmur of sound told of crowds in the streets.

  The walls themselves were dark; if the sentries were still there, they’d learned better than to highlight themselves for bored riflemen. Lamps and bronze baskets of lightwood burned on the two higher hills over toward the riverside edge of the city. The bulky outlines of ziggurat and palace showed there; probably where King Tukulti-Ninurta took counsel with his noblemen and priests, although Intelligence hadn’t been able to locate him since the Battle of the Diyala.

  As if to seek him, a red spark rose into sight from the river; the flat, distant thud came a second later, and then the crash of impact. That would be one of the shallow-draft steamers patrolling under the river walls.

  If Tukulti’s there, probably nobody has a good word to say to him, she thought happily. And I feel pretty good about that.

  In her opinion, Kenneth was a little soft on the enemy. Nobody who’d seen what Assyrians did to prisoners should waste much sympathy on them. From what she’d heard, they certainly didn’t when they were top dog.

  Kashtiliash’s thoughts seemed to be echoing hers, with a more personal note.

  “I don’t think Tukulti-Ninurta will press my neck beneath his foot like a galtappu-stool,” he said happily.

  Kathryn chuckled. “No, I think he has better uses for his feet right now,” she said.

  Kashtiliash’s smile grew into a laugh. “Yes—he runs with them, very quickly.”

  Glad he’s got a sense of humor, she thought, enjoying the prince’s wide white smile. They’d been working very closely since her brother took off after the western remnant of the Assyrian field army.

  “That was a good idea of yours, sending flying columns out to seize the royal granaries,” she went on. “A lot less strain on our supply lines.”

  He nodded. “A thing one can never remember too often: an army fights rarely but eats every day. Besides that, with more grain than we need we can give some out to those displaced by the fighting—thus they are less likely to turn bandit. Thus also, we have more troops for real fighting and need detach fewer to hold down the countryside.”

  Even more glad he’s smart, she thought. This divided command could have gotten extremely dicey if Kashtiliash hadn’t been both intelligent and flexible. Snaps up military tidbits like dry sand does water, too. He’d been agitating for a copy of Sun Tzu, after she read him a few passages.

  Besides, she mused, Kash here is just fun to campaign with. The filth, fatigue, and general disgustingness of life in the field were a lot easier if the company was good.

  She looked over her shoulder; the siege camp was lighting up there. Not as many campfires as there might have been, only about ten thousand of Kashtiliash’s Babylonians and four hundred Islanders—most of the rest were strung out
of garrison duty, or over west of the river with Ken making sure the Assyrians up the Euphrates toward Carchemish kept running long and hard.

  He noticed the direction of her gaze. “Without your guns, I would not lay siege with so few troops,” he said. “With them, the Assyrians dare not sortie—they must sit and be pounded.”

  She turned back, nodding.

  As she did, something went vvveeeewtp through the air her neck had occupied the instant before. Reflex sent her diving to the rocky ground, and a hand around an ankle brought the Babylonian prince down right after her; he didn’t have the instinct to hug the dirt as a soldier trained to firearms did.

  Nothing wrong with his reflexes, though. He hit the ground on his forearms and crouched for an instant. Another flight of arrows went through the spot where he’d been, and then a dozen shadowy forms were rushing up from the ravine below the hill. The last fading sunlight glittered on the bronze of their weapons.

  “Assur!” they cried.

  “Tukulti-Ninurta!” using the name of their king for a war shout.

  Kashtiliash bounced back to his feet with a springy grace despite forty pounds of armor, his sword flashing red in the firelight as he drew.

  “To me!” he shouted. “Marduk conquers! To me, men of Kar-Duniash!”

  The bodyguards on the rear slope of the hill had been squatting, or leaning on their spears. They wasted no time running up toward their charges, but the Assyrians were closer.

  Far too close. Kathryn stayed on one knee as she drew her pistol and cocked the hammers by pushing it against her belt. Dim light, but you could make out the center of mass. Pistol out with left hand under right in the regulation firing position—

  Crack. The recoil hammered at her wrists despite the leather bracers she wore. Crack. A man dropped abruptly; another spun and clutched at himself, screaming his agony to the night. Not bad shooting in this light, even at ten feet. The enemy weren’t wearing armor, had probably shed it for silence and speed.

  She came erect and drew the katana, turning to put her back to Kashtiliash’s. Must have been a souterrain exit, she thought—a tunnel under the wall, intended for sieges. Someone saw the figure in fancy armor, realized they could get within reach, and took the chance. Just the sort of initiative you wanted officers on your own side to show.

  A man came scrambling up the rocky hill, a narrow bronze sword in his hand, teeth gleaming in a face darkened by lampblack. He drew back to chop at her legs; she kicked him in the face, hard. The crunch ran back up her leg and clicked her own teeth together, and she felt the unpleasant sensation of crumbling bone. The Assyrian flipped backward and slid down into darkness. A spear probed at her. She beat it aside with the katana, let the shaft slide up along the sword’s circular guard, then slashed at the wielder’s hands. A scream, and something salt and wet hit her in the face, blinding her for a second.

  Kathryn tossed her head frantically to clear her eyes. There was a bang! of metal on metal, and when she could see again Kashtiliash had reached around with his shield to give her an instant’s cover, exposing himself in the process.

  “Thanks!” she gasped, heaving the suddenly heavy sword up into jodan, the overhand position.

  The prince’s guard arrived, finally. There was a brief, ugly scrimmage in the darkness, and then nobody was left but the Babylonians.

  “Are you well, Prince of the House of Succession?” the commander asked anxiously, falling to his knees and pressing his forehead to the ground. “Dismiss me, have me flogged or beheaded, son of Shagarakti-Shuriash! I have failed in my duty!”

  “Nonsense. I commanded you to stay at the bottom of the hill. Get up, get up—take torches, search about.”

  He turned to his companion. “Are you well, Lady Kat’rin-Hollard?” he said.

  “Blood’s not mine,” she said, wiping at her face; it was turning sticky. “Thanks, by the way.”

  The fear hit her then, as it always did—during the action you didn’t have time for it. The thought of sharp metal sliding into your belly, the feeling of a hamstring being cut, a sword blinding you with a stroke across the eyes . . . She swallowed and ignored the cold ripple that turned her skin to goose bumps.

  “Thank you,” he said in English, startling her a little. Then he dropped back into Akkadian. “Now we have fought side by side.”

  The words were innocent enough, but something crackled between them. Kathryn’s eyes narrowed slightly. Jesus . . . she thought, conscious of a tightening below her rib cage. Jesus . . . not the first time I’ve thought about . . . oh, hell and damnation, why not?

  “Yes. I’m for a bath, though. Fighting’s messy work . . . perhaps we could talk more later.”

  His smile was wide and white in the darkness. “That would be a good thing.”

  Am I being a fool? Kashtiliash asked himself.

  He wore a hooded cloak, and it had taken all his authority to make his guard stay behind while he walked thus in the darkened camp.

  Am I being a fool? Women I have in plenty. Even a couple along on this campaign, perfectly satisfactory ones. But none who put Ishtar’s fire in my belly and loins so that I cannot sleep even when sated. Or who tease at my mind even more than my groin.

  The Nantukhtar camp was a little apart from the much larger and more sprawling Babylonian one, set up with the obsessive neatness that the People of the Eagle brought to all they did. Approaching it in the darkness, he suddenly appreciated how exposed the cleared field of fire around its perimeter made him.

  “Halt!” called the guards there, bringing up their rifles. From somewhere out in the darkness he heard the sound of another being cocked, and his blood cooled a little.

  “Who goes?” came the challenge.

  “A friend,” he answered, conscious of the heavy accent that rode his few words of English.

  “Advance and be recognized.”

  Recognition wasn’t what he wanted, but he came close enough to speak quietly. “The countersign is Gettysburg,” he said.

  Even then, he looked around him as he walked through the camp; it was his first choice to see it without the pomp and attention that an official visit brought. Some things were the same as he had seen before, of course. The orderly layout of streets, always placed the same so that each camp was like a seal-cylinder stamping of the last, and the absence of stink and ordure—the Nantukhtar insisted that that caused disease, and certainly they suffered less from it than their allies, however much the priests and ashipu sputtered. There were smells of cooking fires, a whiff of livestock. Rows of small khaki-colored tents, some larger ones—officers’ quarters, on the other side of a small central square, the infirmary—the picket lines for their transport animals off to one wall. A little donkey-powered mill grinding grain; oh, that would save on effort—one reason why the Nantukhtar didn’t need camp-followers.

  None were allowed in the Nantukhtar camp, although he’d heard that some of their troops sought out harlets among the Babylonians—there were more men than women in their ranks. He’d heard that Nantukhtar women were utterly without shame, and glimpses through the tent flaps showed that to be true enough. So did his passage past the bathing-place; that also made him glad he’d scrubbed with extra care and anointed himself.

  Randy camp rumor also said that Nantukhtar women were as skilled as night-demons in the arts of the bedchamber, enough to drive a man to madness or death from sheer pleasure. He swallowed thickly. Rumor also said, with considerably more evidence, that a man who approached a Nantukhtar woman wrongly and gave offense was likely to be beaten within an inch of his life or beyond, by her and any of her countryfolk near to hand.

  That made him pause for half a step. Perhaps I mistook Kat’rin’s intent? he thought. That froze his blood entirely; he felt himself wilt. But . . . I am the prince! Surely nobody could beat—

  I am not sure of that. The Nantukhtar were insanely oblivious to rank sometimes.

  He nearly turned on his heel. No, he thought, gritting his teeth.
No. Kashtiliash son of Shagarakti-Shuriash does not scuttle in fear. If he had been wrong, it would become obvious soon enough. She had asked him to come and speak to her. At worst, they would simply speak.

  He passed more soldiers lying in front of their tents, some working on leather gear or sharpening blades, others throwing dice or drinking wine and talking. That was almost homelike; in some ways the Nantukhtar were indeed men like other men.

  Around another fire some sat in a circle, playing on flutes and stringed instruments while a woman danced with a motion like reeds in the wind, her face rapt. The music set the small hairs along his spine to rippling again. It was the slower, quieter type of Islander melody; some of their music was of a hard, snarly sort like the pounding of their fire-steam machines, but this was even more alien. He strained his limited English and caught words:Who’ll dance with the Moon through the shady groves

  To summon the Shadows there?

  And tie a ribbon on their sheltering arms. . . .

  Beautiful in its way, with a plangent sadness. It brought to mind what little he knew of the Nantukhtar homeland—a green land of chill rain, fugitive sun, great forests without end, islands set in icy seas, mystery within mystery.

  The commander’s tent was larger than any others, set in some open ground of its own. Lamplight glowed through the canvas, and two sentries stood before the entrance, which was shaded by an extended flap that ran to two poles and made an awning.

  “Gettysburg,” he said to their challenge. And “Bayonet Chamberlain.”

  The rifles lowered, and the guards looked at each other. A voice came from within.

  “That’s all right, Corporal. Dismissed.”

  Another exchanged look, a salute, and the slap of hands on metal as the two sentries brought their rifles to slope arms—Kashtiliash had learned the Nantukhtar words of command well, at least—and marched smartly off.