On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  And one woman, she thought, slightly surprised; even more so when she saw it was Rosita Menendez… well, nee Menendez, she corrected herself.

  That identification took a little doing, when her hair was coiled around her ears in circles bound with silver and turquoise, topped by a flat-topped headdress of silk a little like a wimple. Square fringed earrings, rings, belt flashing with golden studs; otherwise, her clothing was a practical-enough affair of long split tunic and loose trousers.

  Isketerol rode beside her, in a polished gilded helmet with purple-dyed ostrich-feather plumes at the front, saffron tunic, gold disk across his chest supported by tooled-leather straps, silver-and-leather bracers on his wrists, jewel-hiked sword… and a very practical-looking revolver. He must be in his early forties now but looked ageless; still lithe and hard-muscled, but with deeper lines grooved into his face from nose to mouth. Menendez had put on some weight, in a solid matronly way.

  The Tartessian troops carried rifles… Yes, that's Walker's imitation of the Werder. They couldn't have all that many of them, either. Most of the weapons captured after the sea fight had been copies of the older Westley-Richards flintlock. If he had more of those, he'd have used them.

  Isketerol's standard-bearer and a herald rode ahead, drawing rein in the square a half dozen yards from her position. The herald had a curled trumpet over his shoulder, sunlight turning the polished metal to gold; he brought the mouthpiece to his lips and blew, a long harsh brass scream, and then shouted in Tartessian:

  "The King comes! King Isketerol, Bridegroom of the Lady of Tartessos and the Grain Goddess, Embodiment of the Sun Lord, Lord of the Cold Mountains and the Hot and all between, Sea-King by favor of Arucuttag Lord of Waves. Who comes to treat with the Great King, the King who admits no rival or equal within the boundaries of his power?"

  Alston listened to Swindapa's murmured translation, then nodded imperceptibly, sitting with her back straight, reins in her left hand and right on the butt of her Python. The younger woman heeled heir horse a few steps forward and called out in the local tongue, its harsh buzzing softened by her Fiernan accent-Tartessian and the language of the Fiernan Bohulugi were distantly related, but they sounded no more alike than, say, Swedish and Hindustani, which were similarly linked.

  "Commodore Marian Alston, Founding Councilor, Nantucket’s Councilor for War…" She paused and added the proudest title of all, with a slight deliberate emphasis. "Citizen of the Republic of Nantiacket, comes to treat with King Isketerol."

  Isketerol's hard hawklike olive-brown face showed a slight smile. When he spoke, his English was harshly accented but fluent, much morte fluent than it had been the last time she spoke to him in person-that was more than nine years ago, when he'd been on Nantucket, before he helped Walker hijack the Yare.

  Ah, she thought. He must speak it with Menendez, and there are a few other Islanders… ex-Islanders… here, too. Smart of him to work at achieving full fluency. Reading the books that had been part of Yare's cargo, and ones he'd bought openly since, had 'doubtless helped as well. He'd also acquired a very slight Puerto Rican-Hispanic accent from his American wife, which was am irony, if you thought about it. As far as looks went, he could have been a brother of Victor Ortiz…

  "Now that we have made the… you say… necessary gestures, shall we speak?" he asked.

  "Yes," Alston said, surprised to feel a wry respect. Well, he's a pirate… but hie wasn't raised to know better.

  The leaders and. their companions swung down from the saddle, handed the reins to attendants, walked a little aside. Isketerol looked up at the ultralight, westward to where the steam gunboat waited o›n the blue-and-cream waters of the gulf, pitching slightly with her head into the wind and paddles turning just enough to› keep her so. They sent a white froth down her sides as well, and coal smoke rose night-black against the crimson disk of the setting sun.

  "A not bad time to end the war, from your point of… perspective? View? To ah, quit while you are ahead," Isketerol said.

  "We're prepared to end it, on terms," Alston said. She nodded to the flag with the truce-banner below it, her face like a mask of obsidian. "Our terms. And once made, we'll keep them. The Republic's word is good."

  Isketerol nodded; the Islanders had a carefully maintained reputation of driving a hard bargain and then respecting it meticulously.

  "Yes," he said. "That simplifies negotiations." A white smile, and he took off the helmet, showing a few silver hairs in the bowl-cut blue-black mane. He tossed his hair to let air blow through the sweat-wet thickness. "Unless you are waiting for the time when it really pays to lie."

  Alston shrugged. "That's an argument without an answer," she said. "But think about this, King Isketerol of Tartessos, how far can you trust Walker's word? Did he give you every assistance he could? How hard would he fight for you, if he didn't stand to benefit by it?"

  The olive face stayed imperturbable, but she caught a slight flare of the nostrils. Isketerol would make a good poker player, though. His fingers did not clench on the gilded helmet they were turning idly.

  "He gave me enough help to become King and conquer an… empire, that's the term. And we have an alliance, and my word is good. You have won a battle, yes. You have not won a war, not against my kingdom. Still, you have won a battle. My word is this; if you will return home and trouble us no more, I will agree to the…" He turned and murmured in Rosita's ear and nodded at her reply. "To, you say, the status quo. Yes, things as they were before this war. Those are the terms of the King."

  Alston put her fists on her hips and slowly shook her head. "Return to your closing the Straits against our ships, skirmishing with us and then calling it overzealous private actions by your captains, to your helping Walker? After you invaded our country last spring for no better reason than you wanted to take it? I don't think so."

  "If you fight Walker in the east without passing through my waters, traveling around Africa and through the Gulf as your other expeditions have, I will not interfere," he said. "That much I can in honor say. No more. I will not turn on a guest-friend and blood brother who helped put me on my throne, simply because it would spare me effort and expense. And if you destroy King Walker, what check will there be on your power? How do I know you will not turn on me, next? Already you claim half the world and say we may trade and settle only in those scraps you deign to allow us."

  "Do you doubt that Walker would turn on you, without us to worry about? Does your honor require that you see all that you've built up"-she waved about-"cast down?"

  Isketerol's eyes narrowed. "You have not the strength to conquer Tartessos," he said. "I hold far more land than your Republic does in fact, claims of just nothing but words aside, and I have twenty times more people. I can afford to lose battles-you cannot. Great kingdoms are not overthrown in a single fight."

  Well, he's grasped that principle, Alston thought. Wordlessly she pointed to the ultralight, to the gunboat. Isketerol shrugged.

  "Yes, you have better weapons," he admitted. "But I have more weapons, many more. If they are not as fine as yours, still they are not spears and bows. We destroyed one of your great ships in the battle."

  "You lost a dozen."

  "I can spare a dozen, build anew, and find new crews; you cannot. If we fight and I hurt you one-tenth as much as you hurt me, I win. And you are few, and far from home, and cannot call fresh armies to you." Another shrug. "There are not enough of you to conquer Tartessos."

  "Perhaps not. But there are enough of us to destroy the Tartessos you have made, I think." She went on: "Tell me, King Isketerol, do the words command and control decision loop mean anything to you?"

  Narrow-eyed, Isketerol shook his head. Rosita Menendez frowned, as if something was tugging at her memory, then shrugged. Alston's face remained a basalt mask, but inwardly something bared its teeth. Walker would have known-would have understood the importance of forces being able to transmit information faster, and act on it more rapidly. He was a product of
Western civilization and its military-technic tradition.

  Isketerol wasn't.

  Yes, Isketerol's smart. He's a genius, I think. But he'd grown to adulthood in this world. Doubtless he'd learned a great deal from the books. It would still be filtered through the worldview built into the structure of his mind from childhood. Doubtless he'd learned a good deal from Walker, and Rosita, too, but the one would be careful not to teach too much and the other wasn't particularly intelligent or well educated…

  Snidely, to herself: And Rosita was a really close friend of Alice Hong, which says something about her standards of taste and judgment.

  "Why do I have a feeling," Isketerol said, an edge of whimsy in his voice, "that what you just asked me was like one of those oracles that only make sense after the disaster has happened?"

  Got to be careful not to underestimate him, though. Slowly and deliberately she smiled, spread her hands.

  He sighed. "Well, then, what are your terms for ending this war? I might pay…" He turned to the interpreters and fell into Tartessian. Swindapa supplied the word: she'd had ten years with Marian Alston and her tastes in reading matter.

  "… weregild for the invasion last spring, yes, blood price. Beyond that I cannot go, without violating my oaths to Walker or my duty to my folk. So, what does Cofflin offer me, in return for ending this struggle?"

  Alston began to tick off points. "First, you must pay, as you said, damages-partly in cash, and partly in supplies." She held up a hand. "Not guns or powder to be used against Walker, no."

  "No, food and cordage and timber that will free your shipping space for guns and powder," Isketerol said dryly.

  "Of course. Next, you must be neutral in this war-and to guarantee that, disarm your war fleet and give us hostages. You must give us bases-the island my fleet's on now, the Rock of Gibraltar, and another south across the Pillars. And you must swear that in future…" She pulled up a phrase Swindapa had suggested, as more like the Tartessian equivalent than noninterference in our sphere of influence "… that in future you will keep your spoon out of our stewpot."

  The Iberian's smile was unpleasant, and a dark flush had risen under his tan. "The world is to be yours, then; but of your gracious favor, you will allow us to keep our own homes… or most of them. What, do you not demand also that we free all our slaves and adopt… what's the word… an equal rights amendment and universal suffrage? As if we were naughty children who piddled on the floor, to be spanked and taught better."

  "I'd like to demand just that," she said frankly; and saw him blink and nod.

  This was a man who appreciated hearing what you thought, not soul-butter. Although how long will that last, Isketerol-me-lad, if this absolute monarchy you're setting up continues? She went on aloud:

  "But I don't set policy, I just carry it out. First, it's not within our power to force those reforms on you. We couldn't make you want those things-you in the plural, your people-and it would be pointless if you didn't. By offending your people's pride, we'd make them more likely to move in the opposite direction, in fact. Second, while we may use our power for that sort of thing where we have it, we don't go a-conquering just so we can spread enlightenment. We certainly couldn't hold down Tartessos tightly enough to redo your… customs… without an effort which would destroy us. No, what I listed is the whole of our terms. Our terms now."

  "Meaning they'll get worse, if you win," Isketerol said tightly. "So will mine, once you've broken your teeth on our defense." A pause, and he seemed to push away anger with an exhalation of breath. "The old King, the one I cast down and slew, he was my kinsman.

  "Yes," he went on frankly, "I wanted the Throne for the glory and power and wealth. Yes, also to hand that down to my own sons and bloodline. But also, I struck for my people- for their glory and power, for the heritage of their sons, and the sons of their sons, that our tongue and Gods and customs would not go down into dust and be less than dust as I read on Nantucket all those years ago. Your books could not say if we even existed at all! Then I wept and raged at the Gods; yet later I came to see that this was the gift that the Gods had given me, a glimpse of a different course to be steered through the oceans of eternity. And since then I have worked and planned and fought to turn the helm thus. It was not to make my folk clients of yours that I struck that good old man down, that for years I have labored and shed blood when I might have rested in wealth and ease."

  Alston nodded soberly. She understood that, well enough. Her thoughts went to ancestors of hers; and to the systems analysts of Bangalore, India, and the suit-wearing Parliamentary deputies of Taiwan, and here… Mmmm-hmmm, John Iraunanasson, for instance. You may find that you're destroying what you're trying to preserve, in the long run. King Isketerol. And that the only way you can fight us is to become us.

  Since the Event she'd come to appreciate just how weird and wide and wonderful this ancient Earth was; it wasn't altogether pleasant to think of it being remade on a single pattern, no matter how dear and much-loved that pattern was. On the other hand, I've also learned damned well that all customs and ways-of-doing and thinking are not equal. Some are just flat-out better than others. Freedom was better than slavery; the Town Meeting was better than a God-King.

  You couldn't expect Isketerol to look at it that way, of course. It was a dilemma without any easy solution; one for Heather and Lucy, and their children and great-grandchildren. And Isketerol's…

  "So this war must continue, until you see that we are not to be bent to your will," Isketerol said soberly.

  "You tried to bend us to yours," she pointed out.

  "Of course," he said, with another flash of teeth, genuinely amused. "And I would have ruled Nantucket well-I know that honey catches more flies than vinegar. But it didn't work-I underestimated you. And I can learn a lesson as well as the next man, when it's shot at me out of a cannon. Can you?"

  "Most of the lessons life teaches us are surprises," she replied. "Usually unpleasant ones."

  Isketerol nodded, and paused for a moment: "You took many prisoners this spring. What is their fate?"

  "Some asked us for sanctuary," she said.

  The Iberian made a gesture that Swindapa murmured was acceptance and acknowledgment. Many of the officers of that force had been from the old ruling families that Isketerol distrusted, a sentiment they shared.

  "The mercenaries took service with us, and we have sent them to our allies in Kar-Duniash and Hattusas. The rest are on Long Island; they live together, lightly guarded but working as they will to earn their keep. When the war is over, we will send them home; you'll find many of them have learned useful skills."

  Alston paused. "We have a number of your wounded from the latest battle; we'll return the badly hurt, if you wish. Men with limbs gone, or broken bones, deep hurts in their flesh. That would mean extending the truce, though… say to sundown, day after tomorrow."

  "Ah," Isketerol said shrewdly. "You do not expect this war to continue long, if you return men who will fight once more in a few months."

  "No, I don't," Alston said frankly.

  "But in any case, that is well-done," he said meditatively, and stood in thought for a moment. "We have some of yours, who washed ashore after the battle off Tartessos-we will return them to you when you hand over our hurt men. And for this war, I will fight according to your Eagle People laws of battle-prisoners to be treated gently." A grin. "I have found this makes opponents less likely to fight to the death, in any case."

  "Good." Alston cocked an eyebrow. "You'll find that many of our notions are more practical than you might think."

  A long pause, and he surprised her by offering his hand. "Sundown, day after tomorrow-fighting to start again when a black thread cannot be told from a white. The war must continue, it seems."

  She took it, dry and strong in hers. "It seems it must. Sundown, day after tomorrow. And may God defend the right."

  "You Amurrukan, you are… how do you say… weird."'

  "I've often thou
ght so," Alston agreed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  November, 10 A.E.-Walkeropolis, Kingdom of Great Achaea

  October, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia

  November, 10 A.E.-Walkeropolis, Kingdom of Great Achaea

  November, 10 A.E.-Cadiz Base, southern Iberia

  November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia

  November, 10 A.E.-West-central Anatolia

  Odikweos's mansion was a mixture of Mycenaean tradition and Walker's innovations. Ian Arnstein thoroughly approved of some of those. There was central heating, natural hot air from a basement stove via clay pipes in the walls and floor; the kerosene lamps with their mirrored reflectors were a lot brighter than the twist of linen in olive oil that the locals had been using. And the bath suite-sure 'nuff shower stall, hot and cold plunges-was a vast improvement over sitting in a ceramic hip-bath and having bucketsful poured over your head. In fact it was all about as good as a bathhouse in Nantucket Town, and far better than anything he'd had since he left Ur Base. Flush toilets, too, and soap, and even a frayed soft reed that made acceptable toilet paper…

  He turned down an offer of a massage with scented olive oil, accepted a clean Mycenaean tunic and kilt which he suspected a seamstress had just run up in his size. Then he sat down to a meal of garlicky grilled pork, salad, and french fried potatoes accompanied by watered wine in a room with big glass windows that overlooked the town. It was growing dark outside, sunset aggravated by thicker cloud cover.

  I wonder why Odikweos is doing this, he thought. Walker had ordered him given comfortable prison quarters, not the quasi-sacred status of a guest. Not that I'm objecting. Achaean mores had altered, and swiftly, here in Walker's kingdom, but he didn't think they'd altered so much that Walker could just chop him now without a major confrontation with one of his most important supporters. But I do wonder why. He was still trying to figure that out when the servants showed him into the megaron, the great central hall.