Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

  “ If this is evil spirits, then Teshub and the Sun Goddess Arinna and Hebat and the other gods and goddesses of the land will protect us,” the king said.

  “Unless our sin is too heavy, unless we have incurred pollution,” someone whimpered.

  “ If our sin is heavy, if we have incurred pollution, then running will not help us,” he said. “If this is a miracle of the gods, running may bring their anger. Stand fast!”

  Most did, his guards among them, even when the thing came closer and closer still amid a great hissing and buzzing. His sweat turned cold as the monster shape cut off the sun, and his eyes blurred with fear. Then they sharpened. Were those the shapes of men behind windows like those of a house? He’d assumed that whatever it was, it was alive—did anything else besides living things move with intelligent direction, of its own accord?

  Yes, he thought. A ship, a cart, a chariot—all these move. But . . .

  A voice bellowed out, making him take a step backward.

  “WE COME IN PEACE! HAVE NO FEAR! WE COME IN PEACE!”

  “ The gods have condemned us!” someone screamed, groveling and beating his head on the flagstones. The bronze-scale armor of the warriors rattled, eyes rolled, tongues moistened lips. Tudhaliyas raised his voice in cold command:

  “The gods do not speak our Nesite tongue with a Babylonian accent,” the king said. “ I am the One Sun, and I will answer.”

  He stepped forward, parting the ranks of his guards until he stood alone in an open stretch of rooftop; that would have been impossible, were they not so shaken. There he had to grab at his hat; a great wind was coming downward from the thing, as if a mighty storm blew. Closer, he could see that below the sleek gray shape was another, this shaped like a boat with windows cut into its hull . . . and it was made of wicker. That reassured him, despite the alienness of every detail.

  He cupped his hands and shouted upward: “If you come in peace, from whom do you come?” He spoke Akkadian, which all educated men learned.

  “WE SEND AN EMISSARY! GREET HIM IN PEACE, ACCORDING TO THE LAWS OF GODS AND MEN!”

  Another door opened in the boatlike structure, this one in the bottom, and he could see the shapes of men there. Suddenly the thing snapped into perspective. A man came out of the hole, dangling in a canvas chair at the end of a rope; another rope uncoiled beneath it, striking the pavement near the king.

  “PLEASE TAKE THE ROPE AND STEADY IT!”

  The bellowing made it hard to distinguish voices, but if that was a man’s voice, it was another man than the first. And it spoke Akkadian. He looked behind him and signaled two guardsmen forward. They laid down their spears and shields gingerly and came forward to take the rope. It was perfectly ordinary cord, thumb-thick, woven of fiber; perhaps that reassured them. They grasped it firmly and pulled in lengths hand over hand as the man in the canvas seat was lowered down.

  Ah, thought Tudhaliyas dazedly. That is to prevent him swaying back and forth like a plumb bob.

  The canvas seat came within a few feet of the rooftop, and Tudhaliyas saw a man like other men—he felt disconcerted and obscurely angry, a part of his fear flowing away. The man hopped out, and the two guardsmen released the rope with a yell as it burned through their fingers. Looking up, the king saw that the thing had bounced upward a little, bobbing in the air like a feather.

  The man was of medium height, dressed in a ceremonial robe and hat of the type men wore in Kar-Duniash or Assyria. His accent was of Babylon, though, as he advanced two steps and went down in a smooth prostration.

  “O King, My Sun, live forever!” he cried.

  Tudhaliyas’ eyebrows shot up of their own accord. That was the accent of the God-voice that had bellowed down over the city.

  “Who are you?” he blurted. “You may rise,” he added automatically.

  “O Great King, your slave is Ibi-Addad, son of Lakti-Marduk, a servant of your brother Great King Kashtiliash of Kar-Duniash, King of Sumer and Akkad, King of the Universe, to whom there is no rival.”

  This is madness, thought Tudhaliyas. Nothing so . . . so real could have come out of that thing. And . . .

  “King Kashtiliash?” he blurted. “What of his father, Shagarakti-Shuriash? ”

  “Alas, O King, the father of King Kashtiliash has been gathered to his fathers.”

  The sun fell across their faces. The thing was soaring upward once again, turning and droning away to the south. Tudhaliyas felt some self-possession return as it departed.

  “You will explain this to me, servant of the king my brother,” he said sharply.

  Ibi-Addad sighed. “O King, may the gods make your days many, that is going to be a difficult task.”

  The cannon still reeked a little of sulfur and death. Kathryn Hollard stood by it with one hand on a barrel, the metal still warm from discharge, watching as the long line of captives shuffled out of the area beyond the barricade. She felt sandy-eyed and exhausted after the night’s fighting, but still far too keyed up to think of food or sleep. Columns of smoke still rose, but they were under control now, and none were too near. The reek of burning lay across the city, mingling with the usual stench.

  She did take a swig from her canteen and handed it to Prince . . .

  No, she thought. He’s the king now.

  . . . King Kashtiliash where he stood at her side. A few of his entourage were shocked at the informality; she could hear them gasp.

  She would have laughed, if it hadn’t been for the endless chain of civilians shuffling forward to surrender. Each one passed through a corridor of spearmen, stopping at the end to bare an arm for the inoculation—this station was manned by one of Clemens’s retrained dancing girls—many moaning or sobbing as they did so, still convinced that it was a device of demons. Others came from the riot-torn districts on stretchers, the pox pustules clear on their faces.

  Kathryn swallowed slightly; she’d gotten used to the butcher-shop horrors of the battlefield, somewhat, but this was something completely different.

  Kashtiliash caught her look and walked a little aside, signaling her to follow with a slight movement of his head.

  “You did very good work last night,” he said. “If I had had to use only my own forces, many more would have died.”

  She shrugged, with a weary smile. “ The First Kar-Duniash is your own, Lord King,” she said.

  “ They are as you made them, and they did well,” Kashtiliash said, sighing and rubbing his fingers across his brow. “ Would that this had not been necessary.”

  “Amen,” she said.

  “ It is strange,” he said meditatively. “ If I thought of it at all, before you—your people—came to the Land, I thought of Kar-Duniash as the center of the world.”

  “Everyone does that,” Kathryn Hollard said.

  Kashtiliash shook his head. “ No, but we had reason. No realm we knew was more ancient than the land of Sumer and Akkad, or richer, or more learned, or more skilled in all the arts and knowledge. Oh, perhaps Egypt, yes . . . Mitanni was a thing of a day, the Hittites rude hillmen who learned from us, the Assyrians our onetime vassals. Of the world we knew, we were the center.”

  He sighed. “And now I must see us as you Nantukhtar see us—poor, ignorant, dirty, diseased. I have more of the English than you might think, and I have heard your brother and the asu Klemn’s speak, and heard reports of what your soldiers and wisemen say. Locals, is that not the word? As we might term a hill-tribe, or a band of the truffle-eating Aramaeans.”

  “ Lord Prince . . . Kash . . .”

  “ No, my Kat’ryn, I do not say you regard me so—although they say that Ishtar gives blindness along with love. But it is not only that you Nantukhtar think of us so, but that it is so, which karks me. I have listened; your physicians can cure so many illnesses that we suffer; in your land no man goes hungry, and even peasants live like nobles; you have arts that make ours look like some child’s fumbling, when he pinches out a little clay ox from the dirt of the fields; and you command a p
ower that can kick apart our proudest cities like a hut of reeds.”

  “Kash . . . we just have a longer history. If we see further, it’s because we stand on the shoulders of giants—your peoples’ not least among them.”

  The Babylonian was silent for a long moment, then he nodded. “I have thought this also; it keeps my heart from bitterness.”

  “And we grow and beget and suffer and die too,” she said.

  “ That also.” His hand clenched on the hilt of his sword. “ I swear by my father, and by the gods of the land, that I will not leave my kingdom and people poor and ignorant and powerless, not while there is strength in my hands.”

  Kathryn Hollard felt a sudden cold chill. It was only a little way from that oath to resentful hatred for the Republic and all its works . . .

  “ I’ll help,” she heard herself say. “All that I can.”

  He smiled. “That is very good. And now that I am king . . . many things may be arranged more as we desire them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  May-August, Year 10 A.E.

  “Yes, sir. We’re ready to move out from the bridgeheads on the upper Euphrates. Once Hangalibat is secured—it’s still pretty chaotic up here, Chief—we can get in direct contact with the Hittites. From what Councilor Arnstein’s saying, things are going pretty well there.”

  “ There’s nothing like having your back to the wall to make people reasonable, and they were pretty impressed with the Emancipator. Propaganda value alone is going to make that a cost-effective project. . . . now spit it out.”

  “Sir? ”

  “ Whatever it is that you’re reluctant to talk about, Colonel Hollard. Oh, by the way, for the duration of this war, you’re a brigadier general.”

  Jared Cofflin lowered the microphone of the shortwave set. It was a pleasant late-spring day on Nantucket, not long before Daffodil Weekend. From the second-story radio room he could see some, nodding in yellow glory like a promise of peace.

  But there is no peace, he thought to himself.

  Martha looked up from her knitting. “I suspect it’s about King Kashtiliash,” she said.

  “Ah . . .” Hollard’s voice came through again. “It’s King Kashtiliash, sir. He wants to marry my sis-, ah, Lieutenant Colonel Hollard.”

  Oh, Jared Cofflin thought. Oh, shit.

  “There’s no law against marrying noncitizens, dear,” Martha pointed out. “ In fact, it generally confers automatic resident alien status on the spouse—and there are hundreds of cases.”

  “ Yes, but usually the spouse moves here. And Kashtiliash is a head of state.”

  “Swindapa is a . . . well, a Kurlelo Grandmother.”

  “ That’s different. And there’s a law against citizens seizing power or aiding foreign governments.”

  “ Yes, but Kathryn Hollard isn’t proposing to do either. The legitimate government of an ally is proposing to give her a position, and she’s not proposing to use it in a way contrary to the interests of the Republic.”

  “ You caught that, Brigadier? ”

  “ Yessir. All right, I’ve got the text of a goddam proposed marriage contract the two of them drew up. You want me to read it? ”

  “Go ahead,” Cofflin said. After he’d listened, he whistled softly. “ Well, I’m surprised he agreed to all that.”

  There was a slight smile in Kenneth Hollard’s voice. “He’s got it bad, sir. And it’s mostly to his advantage, too—this bit about a Nantucket tutor for any kids they have, and sending them to the Island for schooling as well. That’s not unusual here—fostering, that is.”

  “Marian,” Cofflin said, “you’ve been listening? ”

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” another voice said. “ You getting this, Hollard? ”

  “ Yes, ma’am. A bit scratchy but clear.”

  Swindapa’s voice came in: “ I think it’s sweet.”

  Hollard chuckled. “ Lieutenant Commander, I don’t think either of the people concerned is what you could call ‘sweet.’ ”

  “ Ian? ” Cofflin said. “ You’re not saying anything? ”

  “ I wasn’t surprised, and the rest of you are just talking yourselves around to accepting it,” Arnstein replied, infuriatingly reasonable. “Could we do that, and get on to things that still aren’t settled? Tudhaliyas is dithering, and this barbarian invasion is looking more and more serious.”

  “And I’m just about ready to go,” Marian Alston cut in. “If what I’m planning comes off, the equations in the Middle East all change, too.”

  Jared Cofflin sighed. I wonder how people like Churchill and FDR kept all their balls in the air at the same time.

  “Alaksandrus of Wiulusiya is the key,” Tudhaliyas said.

  Ian Arnstein nodded, shivering slightly. His scholar’s ear looked past the Anatolian pronunciations and supplied Hellenic alternatives—or Achaean, the archaic Mycenaean Greek he’d learned after the Event. Alexandros of Wilios. Later Greek would drop the ‘w’ sound altogether; it would be Ilios—Troy, as it was also known. Inquiring, he’d learned that the kingdom in question was on the northwestern coast, just south of the Dardanelles. The people were closely related to the Ahhiyawa; and yes, that was a powerful kingdom west across the Aegean.

  Doreen leaned over and whispered in his ear, “This is getting too creepy for words.”

  Ian nodded. So far the Hittites had been vastly impressed—except for King Tudhaliyas, who Ian thought wasn’t impressed by much of anything. He’d supplied mooring for the Emancipator, comfortable quarters, lavish gifts . . . and an endless tale of woe. Tudhaliyas had brains and guts, but he was a complainer. In fact, it would be fair to say he whined.

  Still, I get to see the capital of the Hittite kings, he thought. The great stone walls, the pointed-arch gates with monoliths of frowning gods carved beside them . . . And then I get sucked into the Trojan War, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

  “Alaksandrus is your vassal, isn’t he? ”

  “He is supposed to be,” the king nodded.

  They were sitting in an audience room flooded with light; unlike Babylonian architecture, Hittite ran to big square external windows, although they didn’t have window-glass, of course. Nor did they have chairs, except for royalty.

  Why, O Lord, do so many countries back here have this ridiculous rule? They know how to make chairs, and chairs aren’t particularly difficult to make, so why don’t they? He was sitting on a stool, and his back wasn’t enjoying it.

  Otherwise it was quite pleasant, stuccoed inside and done in geometric designs in ocher and cinnabar, with carpets that looked astonishingly Turkish draped over built-in benches. Even more pleasant, nobody had made any objections to Doreen’s being present. The king’s wife was too. Zuduhepa was Tawannannas, a title in its own right; the next king’s wife wouldn’t inherit it until Zuduhepa died herself.

  Arnstein unrolled his map. “ Troy is here? ”

  After the exclamations and explanations, the royal couple nodded. “And that is where the . . . barbarians have invaded? ”

  “ To the north of it, but they come closer every day. As I said, Alaksandrus is the problem. For years he has been scanting his tribute and sending excuses when I summon his men and chariots for war—perhaps that was why the Assyrians beat me, three years ago.”

  “O King,” Doreen said, “you need not fear Asshur again. With my own eyes I saw their cities burn.”

  “Would that I had been there to see it!” Zuduhepa said, clenching a fist.

  She was a slight woman about ten years younger than the king, with huge, dark eyes and a towering headdress on her abundant black hair; the rest of her was invisible under layers of embroidered gown. The hand that clenched on the table bore rings set with turquoise and un-faceted emeralds.

  “Would that I could have seen Tukulti-Ninurta flayed, castrated, and impaled!” she went on. “Or brought bound before my lord, beaten with rods—”

  The king cleared his throat. “ We heard of his death and overthrow and questi
oned refugees, but the tales seemed . . . exaggerated.”

  He glanced out the window; the Emancipator had made more than one journey, ferrying personnel and supplies up from Babylon. It had also taken Tudhaliyas’s own envoys south and back. He nodded.

  Ian smiled, reading the Hittite monarch’s thoughts: Not only do I need these Nantukhtar to ward off the menace to the West, but if I do not learn some of their arts, Kashtiliash will overshadow me as an oak-tree does a radish. Tudhaliyas had been dropping broad hints as to whether Jared-Cofflin had a marriagable daughter he would care to wed to his son, Arunuwandas.

  It’s nice to be loved, but just about as pleasant to be needed.

  “And Alaksandrus’s faithlessness hurts the realm,” Tudhaliyas went on. “For the Wiulusiya are very skilled horse breeders and tamers.”

  Yes, Arnstein thought as he took a fig out of a bowl to hide his shiver. Homer had called them the “horse-taming Trojans.”

  The Tawannannas cut in: “Alaksandrus son of Pirusia is a hothead—no better than a pirate, carrying off plunder and women from foreign parts.”

  That fits the legends too, Ian thought. And three thousand years from now a younger Ian Arnstein would read Homer’s immortal words, and now—

  “Now the Man of Troy screams for help,” the king said. “But the question is, Will he obey? Will he cooperate? Has he even now begun to put out feelers to the enemy, as I suspect? And as I know my traitor cousin Lord Kurunta of Tarhuntassa has done? ”

  Ian looked at the map again. Besides controlling the Bosporus, the Trojan kingdom also controlled a couple of the best land routes up onto the Anatolian plateau.

  “That will be awkward,” he said. “These barbarians who’re invading—What are they like? Where do they come from? ”

  Tudhaliyas shrugged. “We’re not sure. None of them speak any language that we can comprehend; none of the ones we’ve captured, at least.”