Kashtiliash swallowed again; his mouth was dry, and the pulse beat in his neck until he could feel it against the edge of his tunic. He pushed through and let the flap of the tent fall closed behind him.
Kathryn was standing by a table that bore papers and documents in the strange flowing foreign script. From the rest of the lamplit gloom his eyes picked out a pallet on the groundsheet of the tent, hooks on the central pole of the tent for clothing and weapons, a chest with her name and rank stenciled on it in the blockier form of Nantukhtar writing. That was all in an instant, before his eyes fixed on her. She was standing grinning at him, dressed in what the Nantukhtar called a bath-robe of white fabric, her short, sun-faded hair still damp from washing. Her hands went to the cloth tie and unfastened it, letting the robe fall to the floor.
Ishtar, he thought. In Her aspect as the warrior who harried hell to fetch back Tammuz from the realm of the dead. Her skin was pale as new milk where the sun had not touched it, her breasts full and pinknippled, and the hair of her body had been shaved—only a dusting of yellow fuzz across her mound. And in her eyes, something he’d never seen in a woman’s before—a combination of friendship, a lust to match his own, and a total lack of fear.
She set hands on her hips and spoke:
“Well, what are you waiting for, Kash? Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Enkhelyawon looked around his office with satisfaction. He had a swivel chair behind a desk, almost like a king’s throne, and glass windows behind him gave light; a trio of coal-oil lamps hung from the ceiling to cast their glow in the dark days of winter. Filing cabinets around the walls held summaries and reports. There were trays and slots for correspondence on the desk and an abacus set up for the new decimal arithmetic, although he seldom needed to touch it himself these days—he could hear the clicking of many more from the central hall where clerks sat in rows.
The Achaean ex-scribe nodded to himself. Here was recorded every estate, its fields and workers, how much it yielded, what its taxes were, who held it, and on what tenure of service. Here were marked and listed the roads and bridges and ports—those built and those building and those planned—the mines and mills and factories, the forests and the flocks and the herds. A census told of how many men and women and children dwelt in every province of the Great Realm, of what class they were and what property they held, from the Wolf People lords in their mansions to the rawest barbarian slave.
“Let any lord or commoner try to evade his duty to the Lawagetas now,” he said softly, with a deep satisfaction. All his earlier life he had scurried to the commands of telestai and ekwetai; now they moved to his, and his kin’s.
A knock at the door, and his cousin’s niece came in with a stack of files, each bound with a colored ribbon. She bent the knee and put them on the polished olive wood of his desk, standing to await his commands.
Enkhelyawon frowned slightly. He wasn’t altogether sure that a woman working so was seemly . . . but what the king says is seemly is so, he reminded himself.
There was another saying abroad in the land, that Walker had a captive Titan in his dungeons, a being with a thousand eyes that could see all things and tell its master their secrets. Enkhelyawon’s thin lips quirked, twitching the pointed salt-and-pepper beard beneath his chin.
I am the Titan, he thought. It was as well that the ignorant believed so, though. It made his work easier.
The top file was bound with a red ribbon. He opened that first—death sentences, sent to the palace for approval by Walker himself and returned. Those would be for men of some consequence. Twoscore names, and mostly stamped with a C for “crucify him.” A few marked R for “hold for review.” A lesser number still marked P for “pardon.”
“These to the Ministry of Order, Section One,” he said, and she curtsied again and hurried away.
The next was a report on the explosion at the new gunpowder mill in Pylos. He frowned and dipped his goosefeather pen in the inkwell, making a marginal note. The manager had a thousand excuses for failure, but the smell of incompetence wafted up from the page like stale onions from a slave’s dinner pot.
The Achaean drew a fresh sheet of paper. To the King’s Eye Hippalos, he began. You are directed to investigate . . .
There would be another C stamped by a name soon enough, he decided as he sealed the document with a blob of wax and a brisk thump from his personal sigil. Or if His Majesty was angry enough—and he might be, given the loss of skilled workers and machines—perhaps the manager would be turned over to the witch-girls in the black-leather masks, the Sisters in whose hands were the gifts of life and of death—of healing and of agony beyond all mortal knowledge. Then at least his blood and pain would serve some purpose, appeasing the Dark Goddess and Her servant, the Lady of Pain.
Enkhelyawon shuddered slightly, paused until his hand was steady again, and wrote.
“Why do you like the woods so much, Pete?” Sue Chau asked.
“Why?” Peter Girenas said. “Hmmm . . . sort of hard to say, Sue.”
Choonk. Choonk. The gasping breath of the little steamer echoed back from the forest that walled the river, with a multiply receding slapping sound. It was a cool, bright day, with a fresh breeze out of the north that made his skin tingle, like fingers caressing his face through the short, dense new beard. Waterfowl lifted thunderously as the steamer’s whistle tooted, and an eagle darted down to take one in a thunderclap cloud of feathers.
They were a fair ways up the Hudson, Long Island and its farms and Fogarty’s Cove long behind them. Even the little fueling station on Manahattan was a fading memory. The floodplain of the river here was fairly narrow, swamp reeds were clamorous with ducks and geese. A passenger pigeon flock was flying by, just the tail end of it, like black clouds drifting past against the sun. The trees along the river were a blush of new green, the leaves looking sharp-cut against the twisted black and brown and gray of the bark. They were also huge, bigger than any he’d seen around Providence Base, or even on Long Island, some near two hundred feet. Beyond them hills rose, dark and silent—silent save for the bellow of an elk or the call of a wolf pack. A bear stood with its legs in the water; it raised its head as the sound of the boat grew louder, lips wrinkling around a huge flopping fish in its jaws.
Girenas looked forward. The side-wheeler was pushing its load of two barges, making a single articulated craft with the steamer at the rear. On the one ahead, Eddie was working with their horses, checking feet, joking with Henry Miller as he crafted a new bow. In the front barge the rest of their party were napping, or working on their equipment, or just sitting and watching the trees go by.
“Why do I like the forest?” he said at last. “Because . . . because it’s clean.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
July, Year 9 A.E.-April Year 10 A.E.
“Well, thank you. You really know how to complicate my work—both of you,” Ian Arnstein muttered as Hollard and Hollard finished their reports. “Has your family got a tropism for picking up royalty, or what?”
The Islander officers looked slightly guilty. And I feel like I’m back in San Diego, raking some hapless student over the coals, he thought. Well, not really.
Doreen wrinkled her nose and looked at the odorous leather bag lying out by the entrance of the big tent. It no longer held the head of the Assyrian king; that was on a spear in front of King Shuriash’s tent. The Islander mission had settled in, with something large enough to be called a pavilion for the leaders and their office staff; it had started life as a feature of high school sports days, and the locals found the bright-yellow nylon impressive as all get-out.
“That’s not really fair, Ian,” she said. “Ken didn’t ask to find this Lost Princess, or Tukulti-Ninurta’s head either. They just sort of . . . turned up.”
“Yeah.” Kenneth Hollard ran his hand over his sandy hair, sun-streaked now after his pursuit up the Euphrates valley. “Look, I don’t think she’s just going to fade away, either, one way or another. Raupasha’
s that sort of girl, if you know what I mean.”
Arnstein sighed his exasperation. “She’s another complicating factor, is what she is—particularly now that the news has gotten out that there’s a surviving member of the Mitannian royal family around. And believe me, we did not want another complicating factor at this point. It’s put some fire in the belly of the Hurrians and what’s left of their old aristocracy. More fire is not what that area needs. Everyone and his uncle has declared independence.”
“Bad?”
“Bad. And the Aramaeans are burning, looting, running off stock, and generally having a grand old time. If something isn’t done about it, the whole area will be trashed and the nomads will take it over by default, and . . . oh, sit down, for God’s sake. And the Babylonians are stretched thin as it is.”
“The Assyrian field armies aren’t a problem anymore, and we’ve got all the cities,” Kathryn Hollard pointed out.
Doreen gave her a baleful look. “The flies have conquered the fly-paper,” she quoted.
Ian amplified: “King Shuriash is enjoying himself, but he’s also worried about getting overextended, and rightly so. He can’t keep his levies under arms past fall; they’re needed in the fields, and we can’t do much about that for a couple of years. If his standing army and his nobles’ retainers are tied up holding down Assyria, that leaves nothing for anything else. And the whole point of this exercise was to build up Babylon as a base for supporting the Hittites against Walker, you may remember. I said sit down, Colonel Hollard.”
Hollard did; he still looked rumpled and stained from his long desert trek. “Yeah, well, talking of complicating factors, at least I’m not sleeping with Raupasha,” he pointed out. “Christ, Kat. First it’s whatshername—”
“Sin-ina-mati.”
“Sin-ina-mati, and then this.”
Kathryn’s tanned face flushed. “Look, Colonel Hollard, sir, it isn’t an Article Seven, so what the hell business is it of anyone but me and Kash?”
Doreen’s eyebrows went up further. “Kash, Kat? Kash?”
“Hell, Doreen, it’d be sort of weird if I was still calling him Lord Prince of the House of Succession, wouldn’t it?”
“Getting involved with a local, and the fucking crown prince, for Chrissake—” Hollard began.
Kathryn’s voice rose. “I suppose beautiful-local-princess syndrome is supposed to be limited to men, Colonel, sir?”
Hollard opened his mouth, visibly reconsidered what he had been about to say, and went on, “Look, Kat, I’m not looking for a fight, okay?” After a moment she nodded. “It’s just . . . well, hell, his expectations are going to be different. This isn’t the Island, you know. And yeah, there is a difference, in a . . . what’s the word . . .”
“Patriarchal,” Doreen supplied.
“. . . patriarchal setup like this.”
“I’ve noticed,” Kathryn Hollard said dryly. “I’ve already turned down an offer to be the leading light of his harem.”
Doreen stifled a chuckle. “How did he take it?”
“Offered to make me queen,” she said. “Lady of the Land, if you want a literal translation.”
Hollard shaped a silent whistle. Ian put an elbow on his desk and dropped his face into his hand. “Oh, and won’t that put the cat among the pigeons—don’t you realize that involves the succession to the throne, here?”
Kathryn snorted. “I turned that down, too, of course,” she said briskly. Her face softened for a moment. “Though I must admit, I hated to do it, he was trying really hard . . . I did come back with a counteroffer.”
“What?” Ian asked.
“Well, I said that if he’d make me queen, co-ruler, and general of his armies, and guarantee the succession to any children we had, and have them educated Islander-style, and a bunch of other stuff, I’d seriously consider it. That floored him.”
Ian cleared his throat. “So you’re breaking it off?”
Kathryn looked up, her blue eyes narrowing. “No, I am not, Councilor.” She gestured helplessly. “I really like the guy, you see. It’s not just that he’s gorgeous and has enough animal magnetism to power a steamboat. He’s also smart, and has a sense of humor, and . . . and it’s mutual. We’ve agreed to see how things turn out.”
Jesus, Ian whimpered to himself. Heavily: “Major Hollard, you’re a free citizen of Nantucket.”
She winced at that; she was also an officer of the Republic’s armed forces, and a highly placed one at that. Rights came balanced with obligations.
Ian looked out the turned-back flaps of the tent, past the sentries and the ordered buff-colored tent town of the Marine camp. The Emancipator was circling over the city of Asshur, looking fairly large even at this distance. As he watched, a string of black dots tumbled away beneath it and the dirigible bounced upward as the weight left it. The bombs fell on their long, arching trajectories, and columns of black gouted upward. He could smell the smoke of burning from here; the gunboats on the Tigris were keeping the defenders limited to what water they could draw from wells and cisterns inside the battered walls, leaving little for fighting the blazes.
“King Shuriash has a whole bunch of delegations from the principal cities and tribes and whatnot of Assyria here under safe conduct,” he said, changing the subject slightly. “We’re running a bluff. If we can convince them that they have to give up, they will . . . and that’ll get us out of a very deep hole. If anyone can pull it off here, Shuriash can.”
“If,” Doreen said. “The Assyrians are pigs, but they’re stubborn, too.”
“Speak of the devil,” Hollard said, as trumpets sounded from the direction of the camp gate.
“Oh, he’s not a bad sort . . . of cunning old devil,” Doreen said. “I’m going to go interview our Flower of the Desert, okay?”
“Bless you, Doreen,” Ian said. “Get me as complete a report as you can, soonest.”
The huge-voiced herald began bellowing Shagarakti-Shuriash’s titles as the chariots approached. The king sprang to the ground, waved a fly whisk in answer to the sentries’ present-arms, and came grinning into the main chamber in a blaze of embroidery, civet-cat musk, and glittering gold appliqué. Prince Kashtiliash followed him, looking as subdued as his eagle features were capable of, and a trail of generals, priests, and officials followed. A brace of Assyrians came after them, richly dressed in long gowns and tasseled wraparound upper garments, but with rope halters around their necks in symbol of submission.
The Islander officers rose and saluted smartly; Ian came to his feet and bowed.
“Marduk and Ninurta and the great gods my masters have blessed our arms,” Shuriash said, grinning like a wolf. “The great men of Asshur—the turtanu, the rab shaqe, the nagir ekalli, even the sukallu dannu—have come to see that the gods have given victory to the men of Kar-Duniash.”
Commander in chief, chief cupbearer, palace herald, and great chancellor, Ian thought, impressed behind an impassive face.
“I have brought them here that you, our ally, may take their surrender as well—”
“Your pardon, O King,” Ian said. “Your city of Asshur is getting damaged unnecessarily, then.” He ducked through to the communications room. “Call off the bombing!”
“Strange,” Raupasha said.
She put the cup of date wine before Doreen before she went to stand in the doorway of her tent and look down on the smoldering city of Asshur. The Mitannian’s eyes were red, as if she had wept privately, but she kept an iron calm before the stranger.
“What is strange?” Doreen replied slowly; they were speaking Akkadian—not the native language of either—and having a little mutual trouble with each other’s accents.
“That all my life I have dreamed of seeing Asshur laid waste . . . and now that I see it, it brings me less joy than I had awaited.”
Growing up, Doreen thought.
From what she’d been able to gather, Raupasha had been raised in a little out-of-the-way hamlet, on tales of vanished glory
from her foster parents. Well educated, by local standards; she could read and write in the cuneiform system, and spoke four languages—her native Hurrian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic—and a bit of what seemed to be a very archaic form of Sanskrit. Ian’s scholarly ears had pricked up at that. He was working on a history of the Indo-European languages in his spare time. He would be working even harder on it if there were some way of publishing in the vanished world uptime. Not many people on the Island were interested.
“Of course, I never dreamed that wizard-folk from beyond the world would bring Asshur to its knees,” Raupasha said. “I am forever grateful to you People of the Eagle, and to the hero-warrior Kenneth-Hollard—until I saw his face, I expected to die for killing the Assyrian pig. I was willing, yes; I had made my peace with it. But it is hard to die and know that your family’s blood dies with you.”
“I hope you’ve been treated well,” Doreen said cautiously. Golly, you’ve got to be careful with locals. Especially an unfamiliar breed. Got to remember they’re as different from each other as they are from us.
Raupasha crossed to a canvas folding chair, walking with a dancer’s stride as the hem of the long embroidered robe someone had dug up for her flared around her ankles. She sat, cat-graceful, and curled her feet up beneath her.
“Very well, thank you,” she replied. “Lord Kenn’et treated me as his own kinswoman—not what I expected, traveling alone among foreign soldiers. They brought as much as possible from my home, so I have some little store of goods here.”
She gestured toward a bowl on a table, an elegant burnished shape of black ceramic, and her full red lips moved in a wry grimace.
Good thing Ken’s a gentleman, Doreen thought. That’s quite a mantrap. Reminds me of Madonna, after she got the personal trainer.
Raupasha went on: “So I have a dowry, of sorts. I may marry some tradesman of Kar-Duniash, I suppose, since I am still virgin . . . although I have no living kin.”
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