Tautorun was a son of the high chief of a considerable confederation of proto-demi-God-knew-what in the Danube valley, in what would have become Hungary in the original history. They reminded Walker of his first followers, among the Iraiina of Alba. The language was similar too, sort of like the difference between Spanish and Portuguese up in the twentieth. Most people from Russia to Alba spoke similar dialects in this period, from what he’d been able to gather.
“This is High Chief Tautorun son of Arimanu, lord among the Ringapi,” Walker said slowly in Iraiina, trying to make the sounds more like his guest’s language—dropping initial h before e was one, he’d noticed. “Lord Tautorun, my wife the wisewoman Alice Hong.”
Tautorun bowed, smiling and exchanging a few words with Alice before she sauntered off. If he thought her appearance strange—and he’d certainly never seen an Oriental woman before, much less one in pants—he gave no sign of it. No sign of being afraid of her reputation, either. They switched back to Achaean after that, which the visitor spoke quite fluently, albeit with a strong accent.
Smoother than the Iraiina ever were, Walker thought.
Rather advanced barbarians, in fact; they made his former father-in-law Daurthunnicar’s bunch in the White Isle look like hillbillies from the deep hollows. Tautorun didn’t wear a leather kilt, but instead trousers of well-woven cloth in a check pattern; his coat was wolfskin, but beautifully tanned and sewn, as were his bull-hide shoes. The long leaf-shaped bronze sword at his side was as good as anything Agamemnon’s smiths had turned out, the sheath tooled leather with chased-gold bands, and his jewelry was splendid in a lavish sort of way, arm-rings like coiled snakes and a necklace of gold, amber, and carnelian.
The visiting chief ran a thoughtful hand over his chin; the Ringapi even shaved there, although they were fond of long, sweeping mustaches. Tautorun’s hung halfway to his collar, tawny like the hair that spilled out from under his ceremonial helmet. It was a considerably closer shave than he’d had before he was introduced to steel razors and lathering soap, of course, about which he’d been wildly enthusiastic—those and a number of other things.
As far as Walker could tell, the Ringapi were interested in more than trade—sniffing for opportunities, and feeling him out for an alliance. There had been naked greed in the barbarian’s gray eyes for most of his tour through Mycenae and Walkeropolis, too.
Not least about the horses. “By the Lady Eponha,” he said, viewing Walker’s quarter horse stallion Bastard over the bar rails of the box. “I don’t know why you’ve been buying horses from us, if you have many like him.”
Bastard was getting a little long in the tooth, now—fifteen or so, and Walker had retired him from anything but stud duties years before. He was still a fine figure of a horse, though, a fast, sleek giant by the standards of 1242 B.C., and with luck he’d be siring colts for another decade.
I’m getting fond of horses again, he thought, taking a deep breath of the smells of a well-kept stable. It’s a lot more fun with some slaves to shovel the shit, of course. And maybe the local attitudes were rubbing off on him. Certainly his kids old enough to walk were all horse-mad.
“We don’t have all that many more like him,” Walker went on aloud. “Several hundred three-quarter, half, and quarter breeds from him, though. I could give you one of his sons, for your return.”
“That is a chief’s gift indeed!” Tautorun said, hiding his eagerness as best he could. “I shall tell all at home of the riches and generosity of the Achaean lands.”
Walker nodded. And I’m smelling horseshit from more than the stalls, dude, he thought.
Tautorun’s people had always traded a little with Mycenae, through a long chain of middlemen; Walker had set up a base at the mouth of the Danube to speed things up, although that still meant paying protection money to the Trojans on the way. The new flood of trade had brought more information as well, both ways. The Ringapi lived on the Middle Danube, their lords charioteers dwelling in fortress-towns and taking tribute from scores of villages. They themselves were horse breeders and herdsmen as much as farmers, their trade stretching from the Adriatic to the Baltic along the ancient amber routes; they had more-tenuous contacts further still, east and west among distant kin from the English Channel to Central Asia.
They were also warriors, who kept an ever-more-greedy eye on the wealth of the Aegean countries, and they were being pressed by their neighbors—the tribes were on the move across much of Europe, to a rumble of chariot wheels and crackle of torched hill forts. According to the references he had (and thank God he’d managed to get a copy of the Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe among the Yare’s cargo, when he hijacked her) a big volkerwanderung was due in another couple of generations. A bit like the fall of Rome with Attila the Theodoric and their horsey-set biker gangs of Vandals and Goths and Huns and whatnot.
Kingdoms would fall and cities burn all across these seas and far into Anatolia and the Canaanite country; from hints in the books and what he’d learned of the Ringapi and their neighbors, Walker suspected that that horde of Bronze Age Vikings that Ramses III fought would include a lot of Central and North Europeans as well as Achaeans, Sardinians, and odds-and-sods from everywhere. There was no reason why not; you could walk from Denmark to Greece in a month or two. An army or migrating horde could do it between spring and winter, provided they could threaten or muscle their way through and didn’t mind leaving famine-desert in their wake.
Or all that would have happened, without him. He certainly didn’t intend to have barbarian hordes wandering around territory he planned to conquer himself and pass on to his heirs.
But on the other hand, they could be useful. Walker sat on a bench that looked out over an exercise yard where handlers were leading two- and three-year-olds around, and Tautorun sat beside him. It was a little chill and damp, but the horses in the building gave warmth, and southern Greece never got really cold by his standards, or by those of the man beside him. A slave came up with wine in gold-rimmed glass goblets, and the northerner drank deep—they were wildly enthusiastic about wine too, an expensive luxury up in the woods. Walker sipped and schooled his face to charm.
“I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my hospitality,” he said mildly. “Keep the glassware, by the way; no, I insist . . . I hope you do tell of Mycenae’s wealth and generosity when you return.”
“To make trade grow faster?” Tautorun said shrewdly.
A little way from them, a brace of his retainers squatted on their hams, leaning their arms on their grounded spears. A squad of Walker’s Royal Guards stood at parade rest near them, in their gray uniforms and armor, with their new breechloaders slung at their shoulders—Cuddy finally had acceptable copies of the Nantucketer Westley-Richards coming out of the workshops in some numbers.
“Trade, yes,” Walker said. “We can use more horses.”
Best not to go into too much detail about what they were using them for—mostly to pull reaping machines, although artillery teams were also a major user. Agamemnon’s nobles, whose ancestors had been northern horse-barbarians, hadn’t been happy about it, either. All that breed felt that putting horses to farming work was some sort of obscure social demotion for themselves, too.
Walker went on: “And we need metals, tin particularly. Raw wool, too, and hides, more than we can raise ourselves. If we can pacify the river route well, possibly other goods.”
“And we your tools and weapons of steel,” Tautorun said. “Wine and oil, this fire-wine, glass, fine cloth . . . there is no end to what we need.”
No end to what you’d like to paddle your paws in, you mean, Walker thought and winced mentally at the thought of these goons rampaging through what he’d built up. They might be sophisticated barbarians, but they still had all that breed’s love of destruction for its own wild sake, and they would smash even more through sheer ignorance.
“Well, we always need more slaves as well,” Walker said. “You tell me you’re often at war with your enemies
—we’ll buy all you can catch.”
“That would be easier if we had better weapons.”
Oh, wouldn’t it just, Walker thought. They’d do anything to get their hands on guns. Though . . . hmmm . . .
“Of course. Yet we could scarcely hand over the secrets of our power, unless . . .”
He let his voice trail off.
“Unless—” Tautorun said eagerly, his voice a little slurred and his expression less guarded. It was amazing what spiking the wine with a little brandy did to those not used to it.
“We might be able to use fighting men soon,” he said. “We’ve always hired mercenaries, but we need more. Possibly . . . possibly we could use allies as well. In the lands to the east of here.”
The Ringapi chieftain’s eyes grew bright with interest. “Ah, Hatti-land,” he breathed.
If there’s a folk-migration building up, I might as well put it to use. Let ’em smash things up in the right places, keep the opposition distracted, and soak up bullets. We can always kill them all later. Maybe even civilize them, if they’re good little doobies and useful to the Walkerian Dynasty.
The talk went on for some hours, until a chill nightfall. Tautorun took off the raven-crested helmet that marked him as a feeder of the Crow Goddess—She whom the Iraiina called the Blood Hag of Battles—and ran a hand through his barley-colored mane.
“Strong talk,” he said. “Some would say wild—but this is a time of wolf and raven, of ax and spear, when new things walk the earth. Perhaps it’s the time of the great War of the Gods that the songs foretell! I’ll bear a word from you to the other chiefs of the Rangapi, and maybe a word from them to you in turn.”
“And then men might go from here to there—skilled men,” Walker said. “Men and goods, and oaths between us and the Ringapi lords.”
“Yes, yes . . .”
“We’ll talk further of this tomorrow,” Walker replied. “Now let’s feast.”
He nodded; across the fencing of the paddock rose terraced gardens, and above those the white marble and bright windows of Walker’s palace. Tautorun’s eyes rested on it with a mix of envy, awe, and greed. He nodded.
“You set a noble table, too,” he said, grinning. “My hand on it.”
They stood and grasped wrists, squeezing a little; they were both strong men. “You’ve guested with me; perhaps we’ll fight together someday,” Walker said.
“That would be a fight to feed Her ravens and make the long-speared Sun Lord smile,” Tautorun said, shaking his right hand a little. He hesitated slightly. “That must have been a fight to remember too, the one that took your eye.”
Walker’s smile turned chill. “It was,” he said. “I lost the battle, but got something better than one victory.”
“It must have been a mighty booty, that you think it was fair exchange for such a wound.”
Walker nodded. “I don’t miss the eye. You see, I sacrificed it for wisdom.”
Tautorun took a step back and shuddered slightly in his wolfskin jacket.
“Wave and smile, you son of a bitch, or I’ll spit you here and now.”
Marian Alston smiled, a somewhat grim expression, as she heard the bosun’s mate hissing to the Tartessian standing by the rail and saw the light jab of the bowie knife resting over the prisoner’s kidney. A thick scattering of the enemy prisoners stood there at the bulwark, and the officer who’d agreed to fink on his compatriots was standing on the rail with a hand on the ratlines. More Islanders were mixed in with them, in the clothes of the Tartessians, who sat in their loincloths under guard on the shore. They’d run the Tartessian flag up to the top too.
There was a slight hint of rose-pink over the jungled hills to the east and a layer of mist lying in the blue-green valleys. Already the air was warming, and sweat ran down her flanks under the uniform. Alston stood on the third rung of the rope ladder that lay along the starboard, landward side of the Chamberlain. That put her above the level of the deck and gave her a good view of the Tartessian vessels standing in through the narrow channel into Port Luthuli’s roadstead.
Nice-looking ships, she thought for a moment. She could see how the hull form was derived from the Yare, the Nova Scotia-built topsail schooner that Isketerol and Walker had stolen. ’bout a five-to-one hull ratio, she decided. Long and low and black with pitch, the sharpprowed hulls were throwing a chuckle of bow wave under the dying breeze. Fast ships, then, although they were doing no more than three knots in these sheltered waters. The masts were tall and raked well back; two on the schooner coming in first, the Sun Dancer, three on the Stormwind following—that was about half the size of the Chamberlain, and brig-rigged, square sails on the fore and main, fore and aft on the mizzen.
Wish I was as certain as Heather and Lucy are that this is going to work, she thought wryly. The girls had given them a rousing send-off, although they’d been shocked underneath at Swindapa’s wound. The Fiernan sat by the wheel on the quarterdeck, a kerchief hiding her bright hair and a cheese of gun wads supporting the injured leg. Alston felt naked, going into a fight without her partner by her side. It had been long years, since that first time down in the Olmec country.
The hyacinth eyes met hers, warm and fond. Alston nodded, and returned all her attention to the oncoming . . .
Targets, she told herself. Think of them as targets and nothing else. No boarding netting rigged, and their decks were crowded with men. Maybe Isketerol had them sniffing around Australia, she thought. He knows about the gold there from the books Walker took. That would explain stuffing men in that way.
The enemy ships were gliding closer. On each stern was a small platform with a statue on it, a grotesque juju with three legs, six arms, and a single staring eye—Arucuttag of the Sea, Lord of Waves, Master of the Storm, to whom the captains gave gold and man’s-blood.
Closer, closer. How close before they could see through the fiction? And even when the schooner was well within range, the brig would be further out—it was the harder target. Plus, I want to capture the ships, if I can. For one thing, they and the prisoners would be valuable counters in whatever diplomatic game the Republic ended up playing with Tartessos. And God alone knew how she’d get the men back without another couple of hulls. It was tempting just to maroon them here, but that was either a sentence of slow death or a trip back home if other Tartessian ships called, both unacceptable.
Swindapa looked over at her, a question on her face. Alston shook her head, waiting. She raised her binoculars and focused on the man by the schooner’s wheel, standing with his hands on his belt and a saffron-dyed cloak fluttering in the wind.
He had a spyglass; Isketerol’s artisans were beginning to turn them out. She ignored the eerie conviction that he was looking at her and waited yet again, until she saw him lower the glass and open his mouth to speak. It might be some harmless order, but . . . and the distance was about right.
“Now!” she shouted.
Deck crew snatched up a line and heaved. It ran to a spring on the anchor cable, and the long hull of the clipper-frigate pivoted smoothly under that leverage, presenting her full broadside to the Tartessian ships.
A rumbling thunder as the bosun’s pipe relayed the order and the waiting crews heaved on the gun tackle. She couldn’t see the port side, but she knew exactly what the Tartessians were seeing, and it justified the gaping horror on their faces. The frigate’s main battery was running out, the portlids swinging up to reveal the black maws of the eight-inch Dahlgrens. On deck, crewfolk were shoving and hustling the prisoners down the hatchways with savage enthusiasm. And—
BOOOOOOMMMMMM—
One long, rolling crash as the gun captains jerked their lanyards and the twelve heavy cannon fired within a second of each other, at point-blank range.
“All yours, ’dapa!” Marian shouted and dropped down the rope ladder with reckless speed.
“Stretch out!” the middie shouted at the tiller of the longboat she landed in, her voice crackling with stress.
&nb
sp; They heaved at their oars with panting, grunting effort that made the slender boats sweep forward, despite the weight of the Guard sailors who packed them to the gunwales, armed and cheering.
Four boats were pulling for the Stormwind, two for the smaller schooner. That looked to be out of action; she could see blood running in thin streaks through the ship’s scuppers. Christ, and I thought that was a figure of speech.
Stormwind had taken bad hits too. Alston was relying on speed and surprise and the stunning effect of those first broadsides to keep them away from their cannon. The next thirty seconds would tell if it was enough.
“Thus, thus!” Alston shouted. Suddenly it was there, looming huge from the low-riding longboat. “Up and at them!”
“UP AND AT ’EM!” roared the laden boats.
A Tartessian cannon did fire, but too late—the ball went overhead, close enough for her to feel the ugly wind and know that fifteen seconds earlier it might have decapitated her as cleanly as a guillotine. Then they were up against the forepeak of the Stormwind, wood grinding on wood. Marian leaped up and swarmed up one of the ropes with a shout of “Follow me!”
Her head came level with the rail, to see a Tartessian bleeding from half a dozen superficial wounds rushing at her with a boarding pike. She drew her pistol one-handed, raked the hammers back against her thigh and fired. The long steel head of the pike scored across her side like a line of cold fire.
A flip put the barrels of the pistol in her hand. She smashed it into the man’s face, and his nose went flat in a spurt of blood. He roared and reeled backward. That let her get her legs down on the Stormwind’s deck and take a full-armed swing. Bone crumpled; she threw the pistol in the next Tartessian’s face and swept out her katana. That draw turned into a cut, diagonally down from the left with her foot stamping forward. The ugly jar of steel in meat and bone hit her wrists, and she ripped the blade through its arc with a whipping twist of arms, shoulders, gut.
“Dissaaa!”
Something slapped her head around, stinging pain; the sensory data were distant, nothing to pay attention to unless it crippled her—she felt calm and utterly alive at the same time, information pouring in through ears and eyes and skin and out in the movements of her sword and orders. For a moment the two forces were locked together, blows given and received chest to chest. Her katana jammed in bone, and someone kicked her feet out from underneath her while it was stuck, by accident or design.
Against the Tide of Years Page 38