Against the Tide of Years

by S. M. Stirling

  Her mouth went drier, and she could feel her stomach trying to crawl up into her lungs for safety. There were an almighty lot of bullets coming her way; she sucked the stick back and reached up to push the throttles all the way to their not-very-powerful maximum.

  “Sir, they’ve got breechloaders. Awful damned good ones, too.”

  She banked sharply, jinked, threw the responsive little craft around the sky. She was standing it nearly on edge when the enemy pulled a tarpaulin off a wagon bed and swung a thick-barreled something on a yoke mount that let them point it rapidly to any portion of the sky. As she hung at the top of the curve, she was miserably certain that it was pointing directly at the part of the sky she occupied right then and there. It fired; she was expecting some sort of shell, but instead there was a muzzle flash like a rifle’s, only many times repeated, and a torrent of smoke, enough for a whole company volley.

  “ What is that—”

  Her speculation was cut short by the arrival of the malignant lead bee swarm. Rounds went ptunk! through the taut fabric of EEII’s wings, and cracked into the plywood of the fuselage like nails driven by a mad carpenter. Her skin went cold for a second; any one of those could hit her and go through her the long way. Then her heart stuttered as a bullet pinged off metal; let one of them hit the wrong part of the engine, and she’d have no choice but a gliding landing—and saving the last bullet in the Python at her waist for herself.

  “Automatic weapon, I say again, the enemy have—”

  The dead tone in her earphones when she pressed the switch alerted her. She joggled the switch, and nothing happened but a faint frying sound. Must have been hit. There went another of their precious pre-Event radios; more important, she’d have to deliver the news herself. That provided a perfect and honorable excuse to stop flying this very unfriendly patch of sky.

  The EEII was at extreme rifle range now; she turned the nose back to the southeast, aiming the point at the distant column of dust that meant home and the Republic’s protecting arm.

  Wizt-wizt-wizt-wizt . . .

  This time she felt the little craft shudder as it was hit. The engine coughed and stuttered, and then took up its buzzing with a ragged edge, like her heartbeat. Something struck like fire and ice in her lower back, and her foot fell off the rudder bar. She reached behind her and felt a warm wetness.

  And, she realized, sensation in her foot and toes as well. A wave of irrational thankfulness hit her. Not a spinal injury. And a lot of good that does me if I bleed to death!

  Marines were running past outside the aid tent as Justin Clemens reached behind his back to tie on his surgical gown. He glanced up; the ultralight was returning . . . but wobbling in the air and trailing smoke.

  “Business in the shop, people!” he said and felt hands touch his; Azzu-ena finishing the ties with neat bowknots.

  He turned to do hers as well, his mask still down around his neck. Everything looked ready, the doctors and assistants were running in and scrubbing down, and the little kerosene burners under the autoclaves were hissing. God damn this heat and all this grit, he thought. We’ll need plenty of gauze coverings to keep it out of the working areas.

  “ I should have stayed in Babylon,” he grumbled.

  “Why?” Azzu-ena said, checking instruments on a tray beside their table, her fingers flicking rapidly. “ The epidemic is over, and you are a figure of fear. King Kashtiliash is building the water towers you requested, but you would do him no favor by staying there. Let memories cool.”

  Clemens nodded. The system would purify even Euphrates water, and it would run to public fountains. And the next shipment from Nantucket was supposed to include a complete vaccination-preparation setup for Ur Base. Then, by God, he would vaccinate the whole of Kar-Duniash, if he had to chase them down and do a flying tackle on each and every one.

  The stretcher bearers came in, with the bloodied form of the pilot lying facedown. The back of her uniform tunic was sopping; Azzu-ena took a pair of scissors and cut it away as he leaned forward, pulling up his mask. His hands probed the area between pelvis and spine.

  “Bullet, no exit wound, internal bleeding too, we’ll have to open her up!” And hope it didn’t destroy her liver. “Saline, ether, stat, get someone her type in here, let’s get a move on here, people!” he snapped, then turned and saw Brigadier Hollard crouched by her head; she was still conscious, but her eyes were wandering.

  “What the hell are you doing here!” Clemens roared. “You’re not sterile, you’re endangering the patient, get the hell out!”

  “Shut up,” Hollard hissed, his voice flat and deadly enough to stop even Justin Clemens in midphrase.

  “. . . Auto, some sort of automatic, mounted on a wagon—”

  “I’ve got it, Kayle,” Hollard said gently. “Rest now. They’ll patch you up.”

  Then he was gone from the tent in four long strides.

  “Remember Lord Kenn’et’s words!” Raupasha shouted. “Against the Hittites, fight like lions—against the wizard’s men, chariots are to flee and footmen to fall flat.” There was an unhappy murmur, and she put metal into her voice. “ There is no honor in putting yourself in the way of a bullet.”

  The emergency demonstration with a couple of sick donkeys had been impressive; she just hoped it hadn’t killed the men’s spirit.

  “ Follow me, men of Mitanni!” she said. “Once again you are called to war, you descendants of men who bestrode the universe. Teshub and Indara Thunderer are with us!”

  She signaled to the driver and he pulled the heads of the horses around, clicking to them.

  “Not too fast,” she said, putting the thought of Sabala’s pleading eyes out of her mind; strange that it should strike her now. “ We have a better team and a better chariot; we are to lead, not lose them in our dust.”

  As she spoke she pulled the rifle from its scabbard that her friend Fusaro had made for her back at Ur Base. Strange, to have a leather-worker as a friend, but that is the Eagle People way. The weapon was balanced and deadly in her hands, and she’d always been a good shot—first with the bow and then with rifles. And with this rifle, all she needed was to be deft and have a keen eye, and to be as formidable as any. It was a heady feeling.

  The coat of light chain mail Kenn’et had insisted on—Mitara, Lord of Justice, preserve him!—was only enough weight to anchor her securely; the chariot bounced far less than the ones she had grown up with, making more of a sway than a blow against her feet. She squinted under the brim of her helmet and saw the Hittite host approaching.

  Rebel Hittite host, she reminded herself. Tudhaliyas was an ally of Nantucket, therefore of hers. Then: I am afraid, but I can master it. The conquering of fear was as heady as the soama of the ancient stories, the drink that made her ancestors as one with the gods.

  Now they were close enough that she could see men through the dust and flash of movement. Three-man Hittite carts, driver and warrior and shield bearer, heavier than hers, horses’ sides covered by leather blankets sewn with scales, the crews armored as well. All that weight might well slow them enough that her poor followers with their knackers-yard horses wouldn’t be at too much of a disadvantage. The footmen would be; those following the rebel lord’s chariots were fully equipped, nearly every man with helmet and good shield, long spear, sword, leather tunic boiled in vinegar or wax. When the infantry met, it would go hard for her folk. That grieved her, but the battle was to be won; so her foster father had taught her, and the Eagle People. She knew the price of defeat too well.

  She brought her rifle up, looked back at the wedge of chariots that followed her. Some were out of the fight already, tumbled with wheels off or axles broken. Most followed, and she waved them to her right. They swung after her, and she brought the weapon up and aimed, knees flexing.

  Crack. A miss, and an arrow went whirrrt through the chariot; they were within a hundred yards. But Hittites weren’t archers of note, they preferred the javelin and thrusting spear. She pulled a b
ullet from the bandolier looped around her body and thumbed it home.

  Crack. A man flung up his arms and fell backward out of his chariot, tumbling as the speed of the galloping horses threw his body against the ground. That would have broken bones even if his wound was slight.

  Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna shouted in exultation.

  “They’re behind the locals, all right, behind and to the right,” O’Rourke said. “ We stung ’em.”

  “What arms?” Kenneth Hollard asked, handing up his canteen. The camel-mounted commander of the Scout company leaned down and took it, drinking with appreciation. The day was growing hotter as the sun rose toward noon.

  “Breechloaders for certain. Most of them Westley-Richards like we were using last year,” he said. “But they’ve got something very nasty as well, not a Gatling but something of the sort. Several of them. Cost us.”

  He inclined his head. Wounded Marines were being lifted off camels and onto stretchers; some were being laid out with blankets over their faces.

  “And a battery of fieldpieces—twelve-pounder Napoleons would be my guess—and something else, further back, that they didn’t use.”

  “ Numbers? ”

  “Around a thousand, I’d say—not counting teamsters and such. They moved from column into line very fast indeed, Brigadier, sir. Fire and movement, extended order.”

  “Thanks, Paddy. Pull your people out, get them something to eat”—he’d had the field kitchens set up along with the hospital; you needed both—“and then dig in, and we’ll see what happens. With luck, they think this force is simply locals, an ultralight, and you.”

  “ With luck indeed.”

  Hollard looked along the line where his Marines were digging in, and the man-tall hillocks over to his left where the New Troops of Babylon waited. One good thing is that soil doesn’t show up very well here, he thought. Another is that khaki blends in very well indeed.

  He walked forward to the spot where part of the heavy-weapons company was setting up. He’d pushed the Gatlings well forward, giving them interlocking fields of fire along his front and open ones to the flanks. The sergeant in charge paused with a rock the size of a loaf of bread in her hands.

  “ Bit different from Babylon, nae, sir? ”

  He nodded, and she hesitated. “Sir, ask you a favor? Sir, it’s a letter. In case Skyfather calls me.”

  He took it: Delauntarax of the Thaurinii, in Alba was written in a shaky hand. Vague, but the Postal Service was used to that; things got through eventually.

  “Keep masked until the word comes down, and it’ll be the other side who go to feast in the sky,” he said, tucking it into a pocket.

  She nodded. The crew threw a khaki-colored groundsheet over the Gatling on its two-wheel mount and scattered handfuls of dirt over that. Having dug their own holes, the infantry were doing likewise.

  Hollard walked out in front of his own line and examined it carefully. The maskirovka was good—a useful Russian word much emphasized in the tactical manual put together by a committee of retired types with several centuries of combat experience between them. It was another advantage the Islanders had. He’d met plenty of Bronze Age hunters who were extremely good at hiding out, but few of the warrior types thought that way. Most of them had styles that deliberately drew the enemy’s attention, and by their codes trying to hide was shameful.

  Inconspicuous, he thought, looking at his own position. Looks exactly like about one company, hastily dug in.

  Besides the maskirovka, they’d used the irregularities of the ground well; the supplies and hospital tent were out of sight altogether, behind swellings that turned them into dead ground.

  He looked back and forth. Troops dug in, reserves at hand, weapons placed by the book . . . now all he could do was pray.

  “They come,” Raupasha said, jumping down from her chariot before the hillock that held the expeditionary force’s command personnel. That wasn’t much: Kenneth Hollard, his six-person staff, and a clump of communications technicians and runners.

  The horses were flaring their nostrils to draw breath, foam splattered their necks and shoulders, and several arrows stood in the frame of the vehicle. Kenneth Hollard saw with a sudden stab of alarm that she was holding one hand to her side, with blood on her fingers.

  “ You’re hit? ” he said.

  “It is nothing, Kenn’et,” she said. “A graze. One of the Hittite charioteers had a gun—the type with two barrels, that shoots many bullets . . .”

  “Shotgun,” he said automatically.

  “A shotgun. But he aimed badly, and I did not.” She pointed behind her. “ They come.”

  He nodded. The Hittites were whooping forward about half a mile away, and the Mitannians retreating fast and to the right. Thank God they’d kept enough wits to remember what he’d said; he didn’t want friendly forces masking his fire when the fecal matter hit the air-circulating device. And from the dust—bless the dust here, you couldn’t move troops without raising it, and it was a boon to the man standing still—Walker’s men were coming in on their right a mile further back, ready to support their local allies.

  “You should get back to the hospital tent and have that seen to,” Hollard said sternly, then smiled. “ I don’t want it festering.”

  “ No, it would spoil the coronation if I smelled like a corpse three days dead,” Raupasha laughed. “Teshub and Indara be with you, Kenn’et, and hold their hand over you.”

  “Amen,” Hollard muttered.

  She saluted and gave him an urchin grin as he returned the gesture—she had earned it, today and in Babylon. Then she walked away; the driver handed off his team and went after her, carrying the scabbarded Werder and the ammunition, and following the princess with an expression about as doglike as Sabala’s.

  Have to find her a husband, I suppose, Hollard thought. Though . . . most of the local aristocrats and princelings wouldn’t be very happy with a woman who had been contaminated with Islander ideas of independence. Not necessarily or all the time, he thought. Look at my new brother-in-law. So we should be able to dig someone up for her. The thought was obscurely irritating, and he pushed it aside. Business to attend to.

  Now to see if his plan worked. Usually they didn’t, in combat. The exceptions were where you’d completely suckered the other side, a successful ambush or flank attack. That was when you won big.

  The Hittites were coming full-tilt for his position. He leveled his binoculars; chariots in front at the trot, footmen running behind—standard formation, for the Near East in the thirteenth century B.C. The Hittites would be more prone to try and ram right in than most, using the chariot for shock. He caught one man with a sun disk on the top of his conical helmet, shouting orders and waving a sword; not Kurunta of Tarhuntassa himself, but probably a relative—the Hittite Empire was a family business, cemented by a stream of daughters from Hattusas sent out to marry vassal kings, and vice versa. The snipers had been briefed to look for that insignia.

  Closer, closer. Hollard’s lips skinned back as he scanned to his left. Walker’s men were coming on briskly, advancing in company columns at the double, with their rifles across their chests. Trotting along were what looked like fieldpieces, six-horse teams, and light gleaming off iron and brass.

  They’re using the Hittites to unmask and develop our position, he thought, plus using them to simply soak up bullets. Reasonably well-trained men and a commander with some grasp of tactics, then. Possibly one of Walker’s Islander renegades. He hoped so; it would be a positive pleasure to string one of them up. They’d all been sentenced to death for treason in absentia years ago, too.

  Hollard judged distances; you went by which features of a man’s body you could see easily, when legs became separate from the generalized antlike blob, when you could see arms swing or a face. The Hittites were closing rapidly, but the Walkerites were hanging back—over two thousand yards, extreme rifle range but well within that of heavy-weapons fire.

  He reache
d for the radio at his belt and clicked. “Captain O’Rourke.”

  “Here, sir.”

  “ Let them have it, Paddy.”

  “ With a will, Brigadier, sir, with a will.”

  BAAAAMMM!

  A hundred rifles volleyed from the Scouts’ deliberately badly camouflaged rifle pits. Maskirovka was more than just hiding; it was deception, disinformation. It wasn’t what you didn’t know that killed you, it was what you thought you knew that wasn’t so. A dozen Hittite chariots went down; a few of them flipped completely over, pitching forward and squashing the screaming crews like bugs beneath a frying pan.

  Schooonk . . . whonk!

  The Scouts’ mortar opened up as well. A shell landed in the middle of the dense-packed Hittite infantry, and men fell, opening out in a circle around the explosion like an evil flower with a crimson blossom. The riflemen were firing independent-rapid as well and at less than four hundred yards mostly hitting. Men and chariots were going down all across the Hittite front; he saw arrows fly out, few covering even half the distance, and there were puffs of smoke from some of the chariots—smoothbores firing shot, even more futile than the bows. The charge wavered, which was exactly the wrong thing to do, like most half measures. They should either run as fast as they could, take cover, or keep charging. A running man could cover four hundred yards in a disconcertingly short time, if you were on the receiving end.

  Horns and trumpets sounded. Hollard brought up his binoculars; the man with the sun disk on his helmet had survived and was going into a frenzy of signaling. In between he fired shotguns, handing them off to a loader as he did so—a new use for the three-man Hittite chariot crew, and quite ingenious. The chariots reversed themselves and galloped away, and the infantry flattened themselves to the ground.

  Schooonk . . . whonk! More mortar shells falling among the prostrate men. He sympathized, in a way; that was the most unpleasant part, having to wait helplessly and hope you were lucky. Mostly he felt detached. Down underneath he could feel fear, not so much fear of death as of certain mutilating wounds, and more fear for the lives that depended on his decisions.