“Good. That was a fast passage you made.”
Ortiz preened a little, which was pardonable. “Sixty-three days, two of those stranded on the goddam mudbanks in this miserable river. We did over four hundred miles a day three days in a row, down in the forties, running our easting down.”
“ What news from home? ”
“Not much. The fall harvest was good; the Girenas expedition is still alive, wonder of wonders. King Isketerol made a fulsome apology and paid a heavy fine to get his people back after that incident in South Africa—less thirty who applied for asylum, and got it—but he was a lot less happy when we kept the ships. That’s it so far, but God knows how long it will last. Oh, and on a personal note, I’m the father of twin boys.”
“Congratulations!” Kenneth Hollard said, pumping his hand. There was a trace of wistfulness in his voice; he’d been thinking that it might be nice to have a family of his own. Not until this war is settled, I guess, he thought. “How long do you think it will last? ”
“God alone knows, amigo. Until that hijo Isketerol thinks he has a chance of jumping us—I’m anxious to get my ships loaded and back home, I can tell you.”
“Me too,” Hollard said, looking through the letters Ortiz had hand-delivered—some for security’s sake, and two fat ones from his brother.
He looked forward to reading those. It was . . . tranquil, that’s the word . . . listening to him tell of the goings-on around the farm. Not that farm life was any bed of roses; he’d helped out on his brother’s grant often enough to know that. His mind’s eye saw him, writing in the big log kitchen with a cup of sassafras tea by his elbow, snow falling outside the window, Tanaswada nursing the baby . . . and homesickness stabbed him with a moment’s bitter pain.
“ Well, I don’t envy you sailing back into winter,” Hollard said. He walked a few steps back toward Raupasha. “ Princess! If you’re going to shoot that many rounds, wear the earplugs.”
She pouted, then obeyed. “Sergeant, see that the weapon is returned to stores when the princess is finished with it.” To Ortiz: “ We’ve actually got the locals producing a halfway decent beer. Care for a glass, Victor? ”
“ Lead on!”
“ Wait a minute!” Raupasha called.
The Islander officers turned back. “ Watch,” she said.
Raupasha had a round of rifle ammunition pushed through the buttonhole of the left breast pocket of her khaki jacket. She fired, then slipped the bullet out of the hole and into the breech of her Werder in a single quick grab and push.
“ That . . . how do you say . . . slices up? The loading time.”
“ That’s cuts down,” Hollard said.
“Cuts down, okay.” She dropped back into Akkadian. “Wouldn’t that be useful? ”
“Mmmmm—sort of risky, leaving a bullet through a buttonhole like that.”
“ No, no,” she said impatiently, giving him an exasperated look. “ If you put a . . . a row of, not holes, but—what are these things in the bandolier called, that hold the bullets? ”
“Loops,” Hollard said automatically. Then his eyes went wide. “ Loops—a strip of leather, say.”
“Yes! Like this.” The girl’s finger traced a line from near her left shoulder nearly to her breastbone.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Hollard said slowly. “Yes, say six—that would speed loading up considerably . . . no trouble to have the strip attached to the troops’ jackets . . .”
Ortiz made an interrogative sound, having no Akkadian. Hollard explained, and the Guard officer’s eyebrows went up in turn.
“ You know, Ken, that’s actually a pretty damn good idea,” he said. “Smart girl.”
They looked up at the Mitannian, who was cleaning the rifle under the noncom’s direction with an air of total concentration spoiled by an occasional glance up under her brows.
“Ms. Raupasha,” Ortiz said, bowing. “ Would you care to join us in that beer? ”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
May, Year 10 A.E.
Bab-ilim; Gate of the Gods; Babylon the Great. Kathryn Hollard still felt a prickle of awe as she rode toward the northern gate. Turning in the saddle, she called out: “All right, let’s show them what real soldiers look like!”
After four months, the Babylonians that she and the training cadre had been working with could march, at least. Rifles over their shoulders, arms swinging, booted feet striking the earth of the roadway in unison, the six hundred troops marched like a single organism toward the Ishtar Gate. A banner went at their head, blazoned with the gold sun disk of Shamash and the spade of Marduk. Outriders traveled before them, crying for the crowds to make way—and enforcing the order with their whips when necessary, through the hoard pouring into the city for the springtime New Year festival.
The city she approached was not yet the Babylon of the Bible, the city rebuilt by Nebuchadrezzar and the site of the captivity of the Jews, that would not be—would not have been—for another six centuries. The current Babylon was mostly the city of Hammurabi the Lawgiver, sacked by the Hittites and refurbished by King Shuriash’s ancestors. The Kassite kings dwelt more in their citadel of Dur-Kurigalzu a little to the west, but Babylon remained the greatest of their cities and the symbol of holiness and kingship in the land.
On this March morning it was warm but not hot, and for once the countryside of the Lane between the Rivers looked halfway appealing with its leafy orchards and green-gold barley. Her command had been on a route march and field exercise for the last week; her body itched with dried salt and crusted alkaline dust.
Now and then she saw figures standing on the flat, flower-planted roofs of a nobleman’s mansion looking toward the road and the novel sight of the First Infantry. Travelers crowded to the side of the road to let them pass, staring and gawking, and peasants stopped their work to look. Children ran alongside shouting. Kathryn smiled at them, and now and then threw a few copper pennies when the press grew too great. Even if they’d never heard of coined money, metal was valuable here—her action generally resulted in a squirming heap of naked youngsters, yelling and grabbing for the coins at the bottom of the pile.
A mile out from the real defenses of Bab-ilim was the wall that enclosed the suburbs proper. It was impressive enough, twenty feet high, studded with towers twice that. Within were clustered gardens, groves, here and there the colorful, blocky form of a temple, once an enormous walled enclosure around the Akitu shrine, where much of the New Year ceremony would take place. What she principally noticed were the trades considered too noisome to allow in the city proper: huge tanneries, rows of dye-vats, and the city’s execution ground. It was small compensation that the roadway turned from packed clay to a broad avenue of baked brick.
And there was the growing stink of the city itself, probably the greatest in the world in this age, two hundred thousand souls or more—and all their livestock.
I’ll get used to the stench again, Kathryn told herself. Of course, in a way that made it worse. And it was so big. Yes, any of the mainland cities she’d visited up in the twentieth dwarfed it, but those were fading memories. This was here, now, real. The continual clamor of wheels, feet, hooves, voices, was like a vibration in her flesh.
Then the city itself appeared, raised above the floodplain over centuries by the decay and rebuilding of the mud-brick buildings of which it was made—the living city raised on the bones of its ancestors, since time out of mind. The city wall proper rose like a mountain range that ran from right to left beyond sight, baked-brick ramparts sixty feet high and thirty feet thick and studded with towers every hundred yards or so. Another wall of equal proportions stood thirty feet within, and the gap between them was filled to the very top with pounded rubble and then paved with a roadway broad enough for three chariots to pass abreast. A moat drawn from the Euphrates ran at the foot of those man-made cliffs, a hundred feet across and twenty deep, the water green and foul.
Kathryn Hollard gave a silent whistle at the sight, impress
ed despite herself. Oh, we could knock it down, she thought. Given enough shells and enough time, of course. Trying to take or hold the city beyond. . .
The road itself rose on an embankment toward the city; crenellated fortress walls rose to flank it on either side, until they were marching through an artificial canyon. Great winged man-headed bulls marched in high relief along those walls, twice her height and made of molded brick, their bodies painted red, wings blue, stern hook-nosed faces with blue-black beards and golden crowns.
A lot like Kash’s father, she thought, suppressing a grin. She shivered slightly and gripped the horse more tightly with her knees. God, I miss Kash.
The gate itself was a massive fortress with the road running over the moat on piers and then through it; a hundred-foot tower of reddish brick at each of the four corners, with an arched passageway sixty feet high between, sky-blue rosettes in molded brick covered by polished sheet copper, flanked by bronze lions twelve feet tall. The gate doors were made of huge cedar trunks thicker than her body and taller than a four-story house, brought from Lebanon in centuries past with incredible labor and trouble. They were sheathed in bronze, and the bronze was worked in low relief with gods, demons, dragonlike creatures, heroes slaying lions.
The Marine officer looked up. There in the dim heights of the gate tunnel were bronze grilles, and she could hear the crackling of flames. If anyone smashed those gates and tried to rush through this enormous tunnellike passageway they’d get a very warm welcome—boiling oil, boiling water, red-hot sand.
Royal guardsmen in crested helmets and bronze scale armor or Nantucket-made chain mail stood to either side—mostly with their backs to her, holding back the crowd with their round shields and spear held horizontally like a fence with living posts. Three more sets of gates divided the passageway before the travelers came out blinking into the brightness beyond.
More guards cleared a way through the street, named Aibur-Shabu, No Enemy Shall Pass, the broad processional street that ran north and south parallel to the Euphrates.
The crowds behind the leveled spears gaped and shouted and pointed, or rested with aloof patience and pretended detachment; she saw a noble standing in his chariot while his leather-clad driver wrestled the team into obedience; a priest robed and spangled with silver astrological symbols waited with folded hands, surrounded by his acolytes; a scribe pridefully held his jointed, wax-covered boards and stylus; what was probably an expensive courtesan glittering with jewels lolled voluptuously in her slave-borne litter, robes filmy and colorful, eyes painted into huge dark circles, peering with interest over an ostrich-plume fan.
One thing I regret, Kathryn thought, as she saluted the guardsmen’s bowing captain, is that I can’t go incognito here. It would be interesting to see the city when everyone wasn’t gaping at her. Not possible—her height and features would mark her out. Pity.
The iron horseshoes of her mount rang on stone, hard white limestone thirty feet wide, flanked by ten-foot strips of red breccia veined with white on either side—unimaginable extravagance in this stone-less land. More soldiers were holding a passageway open through a tall gate in the wall, with inset brick pillars candy-cane-striped in red and blue. That was the entrance to the North Palace, where the Islanders would be quartered and the First Kar-Duniash would have their barracks.
“By the right . . . right wheel,” Sergeant Kinney shouted behind her.
The battalion turned like a snake, men on the inside of the turn checking their pace and those on the outside striding longer with the smoothness of endless practice. They passed through another fortress gate and into the outer courtyard of the House That Was the Marvel of Mankind, the Center of the Land, the Shining Residence—in other words, the palace of King Shagarakti-Shuriash. There were times when Akkadian grandiloquence got on her nerves.
But you’re thinking of living here permanently, she reminded herself. And it does have its points.
This was the outermost of five successive courtyards, paved with the same white limestone as the processional way and surrounded by three-story buildings on all sides.
“Halt!” Five hundred boots crashed down.
“ By the right . . . right . . . face!”
Another crash, and she rode her horse out in front of the assembled ranks, reining in and turning to face them.
“ Present . . . arms!”
The rifles came down off the shoulders with a slap and rattle of hands on wood and iron. Kathryn returned the salute crisply; they’d worked hard and earned it.
“Order . . . arms!”
Steel-shod butt plates rang on the stone paving. Her horse pawed the paving as well, curious at the unfamiliar surface. Kathryn controlled it with knees and her left hand on the reins, her right resting on her hip.
“Stand easy!” A rustle of relaxation. “Soldiers of the First Kar-Duniash, you’ve made a good beginning,” she said, pitching her voice to carry. “ You’ve also worked very hard. Dismiss to quarters!”
They gave a brief cheer and the formation dissolved as men slung their weapons, turned, chattered, hailed friends. Sergeant Kinney came up and took the bridle of her horse.
“ I’ll settle them in and see to the baggage train, ma’am,” she said. “Good to have a rest.”
“God’s truth. I’ve got to go check in with the king.”
She and her officers, including the provisional promotions from among the locals. She swung down, looking around as they fell in behind her and an usher led them on. Molded-brick shapes covered the walls up to the second story, all painted in yellow, white, red, and blue; after the predominant dun-mud-brick color of the land, it was a pleasant change. Above and on either side of the gates that linked the courtyards were huge terra-cotta faces, leering or smiling—protective spirits to frighten away demons.
A crowd of people were about, courtiers and smooth-cheeked eunuchs, soldiers swinging by with a clank and clatter, messengers, servants, scribes with their wax-covered boards and palm-size damp clay tablets for taking notes, officials, a flutter of girls from the king’s harem—they weren’t shut in there, although they were supervised fairly closely. All of them drew aside and murmured; she caught curiosity, awe, fear, the odd flat hostile glare.
The last gateway was flanked by granite lions tearing at recumbent enemies. On their backs were artificial palm trees of bronze and gold. Tall carved doors opened into the main throne room, a huge vaulted chamber fifty yards by fifteen. Here the bright light was muted to a glow through the high clerestory windows. Beams stabbed down through a mist of incense, a strong hieratic smell. The walls were hung with softly vivid tapestry rugs of kings past at war or sacrifice or the hunt, interspersed with heroes battling monsters, protective genies, flowered mountains.
Guardsmen stood at a parade rest copied from the Islanders, making a laneway down the center of the hall. The heads of their spears were steel now, reflecting more brightly than bronze would have; when sunlight caught one of the motionless blades it seemed to blaze with light. So too did the figure of the king on his throne, inlaid with lapis and gold; his crown was gold as well, shaped like a city wall. Kathryn’s party came to a halt; the Babylonian officers prostrated themselves, the Nantucketers clicked heels, saluted, and bowed their heads slightly—citizens of the Republic groveled before no man.
Shuriash smiled. “Greetings, my valiant ones, and officers of my allies,” he said. He looked at Kathryn. “My son, the prince of the House of Succession, declares that you have done well; that my soldiers learn the art of the fire-weapons.”
“Oh King, your men have labored long and hard and have learned very well,” she said. True enough. Not up to Corps standards by a long shot, but they’d started from a lower base.
“Know that you have the favor of the king,” Shuriash said, beaming.
He signaled, and an official glided forward to put a chain around her neck. It was fairly heavy, solid-gold links and a beautifully worked pectoral in the shape of the Bull of Marduk, with eyes
of lapis lazuli and chinbeard of onyx.
“My thanks to the king,” Kathryn said, flushing in embarrassment.
“Many of your countrymen are here for the celebration of the New Year festival,” Shuriash said. “ You will feast with the King’s Majesty; may the celebrations make your heart glad. Now you have traveled far and will wish to refresh yourselves.”
The Babylonians went on their bellies again, and the Nantucketers bowed and walked backward until it was possible to turn without lèsemajesté.
“Christ, I could use a bath,” Kathryn muttered.
And Kash would be here. Tied up in ceremonial to the armpits, but they had to find some time.
“ Trachoma,” Justin Clemens said, holding back the child’s eyelids. “See, the redness and swelling, and it looks like grains of sand are stuck in the soft tissue? ”
“I am familiar with this disease,” Azzu-ena said, nodding. “Very common—usually the clear part of the eye is distorted and opaque, at the end, bringing blindness with no cure. Is it contagious? ”
She repeated the whole phrase in English, for the sake of practice. The sounds were hard for someone brought up to the Semitic gutturals of Akkadian, but she was slowly overcoming it.
“Very,” Clemens said. “Spread by touching, by contact with cloth that has touched the eyes, and by flies. A disease of crowding and not enough washing.”
The Babylonian’s mouth quirked. “ Like most? ”
“Like most,” Clemens said. It had become a bit of a running joke between them.
He was handling this clinic in an out-of-the-way chamber of the palace; an autoclave and water purifier were running in the next room, and an outer chamber was crowded with those waiting. He wrinkled his nose a bit at the rank smell of old sweat soaked into wool. No way around it, they hadn’t invented soap here, and the palace bathing facilities were luxuries for the elite; so were enough clothes to change and do laundry frequently. And what water these people could get would be dangerous anyway.
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