On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  Someday, she thought fiercely. For Heather's and Lucy's great-great-great-grandchildren.

  Walking past the tree she whistled softly, to let the unseen sentries know she was moving; there would be one up in the biggest cork oak, and the others were invisible even though she knew roughly where they were. Nobody in a force she trained was going to blunder around in plain sight of God, radar, and skulking bandits and call it sentry-go!

  As she walked back, the wind from the west blew stronger, and the first drops of rain struck her skin; hard luck on the ones pulling sentry duty… there was a faint rumble of thunder from that direction, too.

  And voices; first a low happy moan, then a sleepy, hissed grumble: "Shut the fuck up, or at least shut up while you fuck, will you? The rest of us are sleeping, god-damn-it."

  The language lessons were working well, if someone could pun in English half-awake. She slipped back into her tent, a two-person model if the two were friendly, and closed the flap. The rain beat harder, hissing on the oiled canvas above her, filling the darkness with a blur of white noise. Swindapa mumbled in her sleep as her partner sipped back under the blanket, throwing a thigh across Marian's and nuzzling into her shoulder. Alston let her mind drift; images of maps, reports, rivers, rain, marsh, swimming… an idle hope that the rain would be over by 0600, when they were due to break camp and get back to base. There was a thought teasing at the back of her consciousness, but forcing it would only make it recede faster.

  In the morning as she woke the thought was quite clear, and Marian Alston gave a slow, hard grin at the gray overcast sky.

  Ian Arnstein's throat felt sore. It had been an inspired idea to end the long night of talk with Homer; in this place, with this archaic Greek clangorous in his mouth, it was fitting. He soothed his vocal cords with more of the watered wine and went on:

  The more she spoke, the more a deep desire for tears

  Welled up inside his breast-he wept as he held the wife

  He loved, the soul of loyalty, in his arms at last.

  Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel

  When they catch sight of land… so joyous now to her

  The sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,

  That her white arms embracing his neck would never

  For a moment let him go…

  Odikweos was weeping, leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair and his head against the hand that covered his face.

  I should have expected that, Ian thought.

  More than wealth, more than power, sometimes more than life itself, an Achaean noble craved undying fame-the only real immortality their beliefs allowed; their afterlife was a bitter shadowy thing, where it was better to be a hired hand on a poor peasant's farm than King among the strengthless dead. Fame was what Achilles had chosen, though the price was an early end in battle far from home.

  Dawn with her rose-red fingers might have shone

  Upon their tears, if with her glinting eyes

  Athana had not thought of one more thing.

  She held back the night, and night lingered long

  At the western edge of the earth, while in the east

  She reined in Dawn of the golden throne at ocean's banks,

  Commanding her not to yoke the wind-swift team

  That brings men light, Blaze and Aurora,

  The young colts that race the Morning on…

  "So," Odikweos said when he had finished.

  He wiped his eyes with his hand unselfconsciously. An Achaean warrior felt no shame at tears before poetry that moved him.

  "So, it is given to me to know how the men of years to come will think of me… three thousand years, you say?"

  "Five hundred years from this night, until that poem is written down. Near three thousand more to my time."

  The Achaean shook his head. "That is a number the mouth can say, but the heart cannot grasp. And my deeds will still be known! Or at least a ghost of them will be known… or my deeds and name would have been known, if things had gone forward as they did in the past your age remembers."

  Brief murderous rage lit his craggy features: "And this Walker has robbed me of!"

  He sat silent, thinking, before he went on: "And much of what Walker knows is the fruit of my people's minds and hands?"

  "All the beginnings of it." He'd glossed over the Dark Age that had lain between this time and the glories of the Classical period. "The foundations of the house my people built. Every generation of ours finds fresh inspiration in it."

  "And all that Walker has taken from us," Odikweos said. "I followed him for wealth, and power-and because I thought he would make our land great with his outland knowledge."

  "You… might say he's done some of that," Arnstein said cautiously.

  Odikweos shook his head violently. The fire in the great round hearth had died down; the light of the embers ran blood-red over his features and brought out reddish highlights in his grizzled black hair.

  "Not so. He has made this a land of slaves-and slaves of us free Achaeans, even we nobles. What is slavery, if not to live in fear of another's wrath, obedient to his will? Do we, even we nobles, not live in fear of his anger, and that of his servants? Even the best among us, the men of breeding, the kalos k'agathos, each must guard his tongue in fear of punishment. Are we not now dependents, needing the King's favor for the very bread on our tables? At most, we are the stewards of his lands, not the lords of our own. As Zeus takes half a man's arete, his worth, away in the day of slavery, so have we fallen. The more so as it has happened inch by inch, day by day-the more so still as many do not yet realize what has been done."

  "Yes, he's… we say put one over on you."

  The Greek's fist closed and came down once on the arm of his chair. "That worst of all. He laughs at us. He stole my glory, and sat laughing behind his hand as he did, mocking me for an ignorant savage!"

  "I don't think you're really… real to him."

  "That does not make it better."

  Ian sat silent, tense. At last Odikweos went on:

  "Yet all this must be borne, if Walker is too strong for you of the Eagle People. The King will not be overthrown so long as he remains victorious."

  "And if he does not?"

  Odikweos smiled, slow and savage. "Then… perhaps. We will speak more of this."

  An alarm bell began to sound outside. Shrieks and screams rose under it. The Ithakan rose, cursing, and shouted for his officers and underlings.

  "Your ship of the air comes again to cast thunderbolts," he said to Arnstein. "Not as accurate as those of all-seeing Zeus, but powerful enough."

  The map of southern Iberia on the commodore's table and the duplicate on the map easel still looked a little strange to eyes brought up in the twentieth. The coastal plains were much less, the courses of the rivers differing in countless details, as did the roads; the towns were utterly strange. Only the broad outline of the land remained the same, a long trumpet-shaped lowland running from a narrow tip just past where Cordoba would have been to a broad wedge-shaped base at the sea, surrounded by mountains. Tartessos lay at the northwestern end of the trumpet's flared mouth, Cadiz Base at the southeastern. At the foot of the long chain of the Sierra Morenos flowed a great river, trending gently southwest until it reached the site of Seville-that-wasn't, then turning sharply southward into a large open bay. The map showed a major highway running from not-Seville to Tartessos City, along the line the river would have taken without its southward bend.

  Alston waited while the assembled officers settled themselves around the table; the flaps were open, and the air that drifted in was rain-washed, cool and fresh, even a little chill. From outside came a distant, constant crackle of small-arms fire from the ranges-the auxiliaries getting intensive training, the Marines, militia, and Guard crews maintaining their edge-the scream of a steam whistle, the sounds of marching feet, hooves, a farrier's hammer driving home nails in a hoof, shouts and orders, a distant screech of metal on metal, a work-shant
y from the piers where cargos were swung ashore.

  "Gentlemen, ladies," Swindapa said, nodding as the tented room grew quiet.

  "Ms. Kurlelo-Alston, the outline, if you please."

  "Ma'am." She moved the tip of the ebony rod from Cadiz to where the Guadalquivir ran into the great bay. "Here- where Seville would have been-is the Tartessian forward base, at the first really firm ground. It's a town called Kurutselcarya-duwara-biden, and it means… mmmm… Place Where They Cross the River."

  "We'll call it Crossing," Alston said.

  There were a few chuckles at that. Swindapa went on. "This area between Crossing and Tartessos is the heartland of their kingdom, and the most heavily populated area. Most of their mines, smelters and foundries are either here"-she tapped the mountains directly north of Tartessos City, at the sources of the Rio Tinto-"or scattered through here."

  The pointer swept east and slightly north, along the foothills of the Black Mountains, the Sierra Morena as they were called in the twentieth.

  "South of that is the Guadalquivir, the Tasweldan Errigu-abiden-the Great River. It's navigable for ships under two hundred tons all the way east to here; where Cordoba is on the pre-Event maps. They've driven roads north into the mountains, and bring the products down to the water, float them down the river to Crossing, and then either by road to Tartessos-this road between them is their main highway, and it's asphalt-surfaced-or by sailing barge along the coast, since that isn't far.

  "Right now, they're building up supplies at Crossing while their army masses just east of the river. We estimate their force at about seven thousand troops, a little less than double our number. The file you've been given has a breakdown on armaments."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant Commander," Marian said, and rose. Swindapa handed her the pointer.

  "At present, they're covering their main population and manufacturing centers, with this river to move supplies, and relying on their fortifications to protect their capital. They have more troops than we do, but they also have to garrison extensive territories. This area to the west, around their capital, is where the actual Tartessians live; around thirty-five thousand people. There's another seventy-five thousand living in the Guadalquivir Valley; closely related to the Tartessians, speaking the same language, much the same religion and customs. From our Intelligence reports, most of them are fairly happy with Isketerol’s rule, apart from some of the families of their former leaders. About as many people again live in the mountains and plateau areas to the north and east of the Guadalquivir; they farm a little but they're mainly herders and hunters, semi nomads, and they don't like the Tartessians. Neither do the people in those areas of northern Morocco they control.

  "Now," Marian went on, "King Isketerol is actually in a bit of a strategic dilemma, although he doesn't realize it. We're going to point it out to him; we're also going to make clear the advantages our superior reconnaissance, mobility, and means of communication give us." She smiled slightly. "Nice of him to build these wonderful roads for us."

  There was a wolfish chuckle at that, and she went on: "Our war aim here is to neutralize Tartessos, either by negotiation or by kicking them to bits and stomping on the bits; and we have to do that without damaging our own forces too much, because this is simply a prelude to the real war, against Walker and Great Achaea."

  She glanced over at McClintock, who sat with his regimental commanders and staff. "Brigadier, are the auxiliaries ready to take the field?"

  "Reasonably, ma'am," he said. "The more time we have to drill them, the better they'll be, of course. I've got Marine or Militia officers and noncoms in command of each group, 'advising' the locals who are nominally in charge. We're providin' all the communications and heavy weapons, of course, but they'll make pretty good riflemen. They'll hold a line."

  "Excellent. Lieutenant Commander Bidden, what about the airship?"

  "Five more days, ma'am. We're putting up the frames and inserting the gasbags now."

  "Mr. Raith?"

  The head of the Seahaven Engineering liaison spread his hands, a gesture that was a probably-unconscious imitation of Ron Leaton's. "We're setting up the slipways and rollers," he said. "Nearly done. And the machine shop will be up to speed in another day. That's all we can do until we get the Merrimac itself."

  The Coast Guard captains looked at him. "Herself, Mr. Raith, herself," Marian corrected him. "A suggestion; look into hauling out the Farragut on the slipway while we're waiting for Merrimac. It would be a lot easier to get her back into shape that way and it'll give your team some shakedown work."

  Then she tapped the end of the pointer into her palm, eyes raking the assembled officers. "What we're going to do now," she said, "is take the initiative. I intend to have the enemy reacting to what we do, and always a day late and a dollar short, with a new surprise every time he thinks he's adjusted. We're going to get inside his decision loop. Brigadier, you'll take the Third Marines and the auxiliaries north along this route…"

  "Row soft, there." The voice of the coxswain came from the tiller. "Row soft, all."

  Swindapa Kurlelo-Alston blinked under the overhang of helmet as rain came hissing down out of the night sky. That hid the Tartessian fort on the bluffs over there to the east, but she could feel its hulking menace in the part of her spirit that bore the Spear Mark of the hunter-eleven-inch guns there…

  The darkened oars rose and fell, a low creaking of thwarts their only sound, lost in the white noise of the rain. The water and the night hid everything, sight and sound and scent.

  Marian waited quietly beside her in the bows of the launch as the fort fell away behind them and the minutes passed. To anyone else there would have been nothing in her face, nothing in the way her body waited but a tiger's patience.

  Ah, you cannot fool me, bin 'HOtse-khwon, Swindapa thought. Not after all these years. I know when you worry. The dance of our souls is woven together in the moonlight.

  Inward, she counted off her heartbeats, the old technique for precise time-telling that the Grandmothers had taught before clocks; the effort of controlling your pulse helped you keep calm in danger as well, feedback the Eagle People called it. Worry was foolishness; Moon Woman had turned Time itself in a circle to bring them together…

  "Now," she said, her lips beside Marian's ear. "We should be there now."

  Marian signaled. The oars froze, waiting, and they coasted forward against the sluggish 'longshore flow. Reeds waved to their left, a moving blackness against the greater darkness of the land. Another boat came very close, saw the white wand in the stern of theirs, veered aside, and waited; unseen, more did behind. Then the prow of theirs grated on something heavy and hard. Her hands reached out with others, felt the links. A chain, massive, the iron links as thick as her thighs and grown with weeds and harsh barnacles. From report, it stretched from one bank of the river to the other, barring the way to anything heavier than a canoe.

  "Corporal," her partner's voice said, "get to it."

  Rafts of barrels towed astern of them. Figures in carefully preserved black wetsuits, flippers, masks, and snorkels rolled over the side of this and three other of the boats. Those rafts were brought forward and lashed to the chain ten yards apart; a small thick tarpaulin was draped over the middle between while divers anchored the barrels to the river-ooze. Thirty tense seconds, and a rising dragon's hiss beneath the waters. Light leaked around the tarpaulin, and a smell of scorched metal bubbled to the surface. Then all was as it had been, except that there was a gap where the chain had lain on the water. But nothing to show that at either end…

  Marian smiled in the darkness, teeth showing in a glint of white. Swindapa felt her own glee awaken.

  "Let's go!"

  * * *

  "And to think I thought I'd get away from digging when I joined up," Vaukel said.

  "Shut up and dig-it keeps you warm," Johanna said.

  Vaukel nodded and swung the pick, grunting as it came around and jarred into the tough, rocky earth. Afte
r half a dozen strokes he stepped back, panting, while his squadmate went at the loosened earth with her shovel. Most of their company was working in such pairs-you couldn't do both at once anyway. The rest of the army stretched off to the southward, across the broad undulating terrain, scoring it like an army of moles.

  "I think that's got it," she said.

  The two-person foxhole was a narrow slit a yard wide and two long, with a section running back like the stem of a T. Vaukel jumped down into it; one part was a little deeper, to give him protection equal to his shorter comrade's.

  "Throw down some rocks," he said; when they came he stamped them into the wet earth, to give better footing.

  Then he looked up at the sky, where the morning sun was a glow behind the gray. Back home in the valley of the River of Long Shadows he'd have said such a sky-low, wolf-colored, with wisps of fast-moving cloud-would mean rain, or snow since it was cold enough to see your breath. He took a deep breath through his nose, smelling the mealy scent. It felt a little dry for snow, but who knew so far from Alba?

  Who knew the world was so big? he thought, looking westward.

  While he was a boy, it had seemed that his mother's hamlet was the wide world, ringed by the forest. The sea, or the Great Wisdom, they were a marvelous far-off tale.

  When his uncles and elder brothers had marched off to the Battle of the Downs he'd been green with envy… less so, when not all returned, but he'd listened eagerly to their tales of journeying and war and the fabulous things of the Eagle People. Now he'd seen Irondale, sailed down the river to West-haven, and across the River Ocean on a great swan-winged ship, and walked the streets of Nantucket, which was more wonderful still. From there around the world, and past Ur and Babylon, marched from there to Hattusas and on and on, and everywhere there were different peoples and their Gods and ways.