On the Oceans of Eternity

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On the Oceans of Eternity Page 68

by S. M. Stirling


  Six-pounder, she estimated automatically-brass smoothbore. The light iron ball kicked up a plume of black dirt and dug a furrow through a cornfield not far to the left of the road.

  Top the gate," she said quietly. "Then rake the parapet."

  "Right, ma'am," the gunner said. "Ready-"

  She slitted her eyes. The violent flash still made her throw up a palm in reflex, and everyone coughed at the bitter burned-zinc fumes. The rocket took off with a sound like a cat the size of a mountain vomiting, and drew a spreading cone of gray smoke toward the gate. At its head was a red spark. That turned into a globe of fire as it struck the ironbound gates of the town, and a vast hollow whuddummmp echoed back. A second later the turret Gatling cut loose with a long braaaaaaapp.

  Motors whined, turning the turret and driving the machine gun; it blasted out ten rounds a second as the barrels vanished in a whirling blur, a continuous knife of red flame cutting through the fogbank that surrounded the war-car. Through it Marian could see the mud-brick parapets of the tower and wall disintegrating into powdered clay.

  As if the car firing had been a signal, which it was, the two siege guns fired. They had no need to approach the wall; from a mile behind her the heavy shells went overhead with a grumbling rumble that rose in pitch as they passed. They were aimed for the town's metalworks, and she caught a glimpse of columns of dark smoke and pulverized building rising like instant poplars.

  The crews leaped into action, running the muzzle-loading cannon forward again from the chocks behind the wheels, swabbing out the barrels, ramming down powder bags and shells. Before they were half-finished, the rocket-launcher operators spun the cranks of their field generators and pushed down the toggles that sent a brief pulse of current through the percussion caps.

  Backblast scorched the hillside behind them in a sudden huge cloud that left crackling, blackened grass and crops behind it in a great wedge spreading out from the emplacement. Sixty trails of smoke and fire lifted from the katyushas in a rippling chorus of demon-screams-except for two that blew up not far from the launch tubes, and one that corkscrewed and landed uncomfortably close to the armored car, spattering its side with bits of metal and rock and dirt. Something rapped her helmet unpleasantly hard.

  Memo to Leaton: "greatly improved reliability" doesn't mean "really reliable" yet, does it, now, Ron?

  The rest slammed down on the wall to the left of the gate. It disappeared, in a boiling wall of rubble and dust and smoke that seemed to bear down on her like an avalanche. Enough of it reached them to set them coughing anew; Marian drank from her canteen and passed it to Swindapa, as the gunner and loader shared theirs in the turret and hull below. When the dust and smoke lifted, she shaped a soundless whistle. The sharp definite outlines of wall and mound and ditch had vanished. What was left was a lumpy ramp, leading from the open ground outside the town to a height about half what the defenses had been.

  "Let's put up the parsley and see what happens," Marian said as a stunning silence fell leaving their ears ringing with the ceasing of the world-shattering noise.

  Swindapa bent one of the whip aerials down and fastened a wreath of olive to it, and a white pennant beneath-local and Islander symbolism combined. The car rolled forward with a whine and crunch, stopping about ten yards short of the bridge that spanned the moat before the gate. Marion took up the microphone of a powered megaphone mounted on the turret-more psychological warfare-and spoke the phrases she'd memorized:

  "SEND OUT YOUR LEADERS TO PARLEY! SEND OUT YOUR LEADERS OR BE DESTROYED!"

  The harsh amplified sound echoed back from the surviving sections of wall, giving a blurring edge to it.

  The gunner and loader worked the action of the rocket launcher-it opened inward, like a shotgun mounted sideways-and slipped home another of the heavy rounds. Then they waited; occasionally the turret tracked along the walls and the barrels of the Gatling whirled by way of warning and intimidation. Two ultralights buzzed overhead, circling the town and its vicinity.

  Twenty minutes later Marian sighed and reached for the microphone to order another round of bombardment. Then Swindapa pointed:

  "Look!"

  Four Tartessians came climbing over the rubble of the gate and wall, waving green branches of their own. They had a white shield and a white flag on a pole as well, taking no chances. Two were youngish men in the green tunic and trousers and brown leather jerkin of Tartessian uniform; one of those was limping, and the other had a bandaged arm. The civilians were older, in shoulder-baring tunics, and sweating with fear from the way they wiped at their brows.

  "Garrison commanders and mayor," she murmured. "All right, 'dapa, give them the word."

  A harsh gabble of ancient Iberian; the wounded soldier spat in the roadway.

  "He says King Isketerol will come with a great army and destroy your little band," Swindapa relayed.

  Marian met the man's eyes and lifted a slow brow. Then she pointed to the ultralights.

  "With those, we destroy your relay towers as we please. The highlanders and the bands of freed slaves are ambushing couriers on the roads. King Isketerol doesn't even know you've been attacked, and won't for days. By the time any force he sends could get here, we'll be gone… and your town will be destroyed."

  "You will destroy it anyway!" the mayor burst out.

  "But if you surrender, your people will live. Apart from your own lives, your King won't thank you for losing all those skilled men, as well as all the machinery and goods."

  Marian climbed down from the turret, jumping to the ground and drawing her katana. Hell of a way to treat good steel, she thought, as she scratched a circle around the feet of the enemy leaders. The Tartessians flinched back from her. A reputation was useful now and then.

  "Decide before you step out of that circle-life or death," she said, drawing her sword through a cleaning cloth and sheathing it over her shoulder in a single quick snapping movement.

  A habit of reading history was useful too…

  The Tartessians went into a huddle, waving arms and yelling at each other; Swindapa came to stand by her side, translating bits into her ear now and then. At last they faced her, drawing themselves up and then going to their knees with bitter dignity.

  "What are your terms?" they asked.

  She kept an expression of distaste off her face; it was just the local custom, but she still didn't like seeing people kneel.

  "All free citizens and their families to leave within two hours, taking only what they can carry. I'll allow carts for small children, nursing mothers, and the sick and old, but don't try my patience. Soldiers to be paroled on promise of staying out of the rest of this war."

  So far Isketerol was sticking strictly to that, although the slash of indelible ink the Islanders put on each surrendered soldier's forehead-with a promise to shoot them out of hand if taken in arms again-might have something to do with it. The arrangement rested on solid mutual interest. Tartessos got to keep the men, who could work for now and fight again later, and the Islanders were spared the trouble of guarding and feeding prisoners. Since the alternative in cases like this where they couldn't take them back was killing them or cutting off their trigger fingers, she was profoundly glad Isketerol had gone along with it.

  "Slaves to be freed, except those who wish to go with the rest of you."

  A surprising number always did. House niggers, she thought, and then chided herself. A lot of them wouldn't have many options, particularly women with young children.

  "Where are we to go? The highlanders are loose in the land; that is why so many have fled within our walls!" the mayor burst out. "If you drive us out defenseless, they will kill us all before tomorrow's sunset!"

  OK, that's a valid point… and we did arm the mountain men.

  "Twenty soldiers may keep their rifles, with ten rounds each," she said. "Men may keep a sword or spear, if they have it. You ought to be all right if you keep together and head straight for the Great River, that way." She pointed sou
thwest. "That's my final word, so don't try wheedling."

  She made herself watch as the citizens shuffled out of the gates, bent under bundles of their belongings-there would be a thick scatter of abandoned household goods all across the countryside, soon enough; the smart ones would have confined the loads to money, a change of clothing, and all the food they could carry. The curses thrown at her were easy enough to take; the sheer hopeless misery of sudden poverty wasn't, or the crying of the bewildered children trudging by holding on to their mothers' skirts.

  If I can order it done, I can watch, she thought, her face like something carved from ebony. Swindapa wiped away a tear.

  "And this bit isn't much more fun," Marian muttered, once the Tartessians were gone.

  Like all the towns they'd seen, this one had a broad central square; she wasn't sure if that was old Tartessian custom or something Isketerol had imposed. Right now it was crowded with about five hundred people, mostly men in rough clothing, with a scattering of women. Some of the slaves looked gaunt and terrified, or bore the marks of shackle and lash, or the scars of working with hot metal and inadequate protection. Others still were just the usual work-roughened Bronze Age locals. All of them hung back from the frightening novelty of the armored car, which gave a useful circle of free space. Marian took a long breath and looked down on the sea of expectant bearded faces turned toward her and shouted:

  "You are free!"

  Swindapa turned it into Tartessian, working in smooth unison with her partner. Marian relied on trained lungpower; no need to terrify them more with the megaphone. Stunned silence, then cheers; they'd probably been expecting a change of masters at best… or perhaps rumors about the Day of Jubilee had reached this far. Marian grimaced at an almost physical bad taste in her mouth.

  "We cannot take you with us," she went on; experience had shown that was one of the first questions asked.

  If we tried, we'd slow ourselves down and the Tartessians might be able to mousetrap us.

  "We will give everyone here a rifle and ammunition."

  From the town armory; stolen goods are never sold at a loss, as the saying goes.

  "You may take what you will from the houses and storehouses." More cheers at that; a lot of the poor bastards would get no further than the wine jars, and still be sobering up when the Tartessian army arrived. "But be quick, for we will destroy this town."

  She pointed northward. "You may run for the mountains and the forests, or try to make your way south to our bases. Either way, move fast, for the Tartessians will send soldiers here soon, and we are not staying. My advice is to take weapons, clothing, food, and tools only, and to run far and fast."

  The crowd cheered again and broke up, murmuring. Some were wandering around aimlessly, others heading for something long desired. A few thoughtful or timid ones were making for the gates, determined to catch up with their former masters.

  Sighing, she dropped back into the turret. "Let's get to work."

  "I'm thinkin' that ours was the first major battle in history where both sides retreated afterward," Patrick O'Rourke said quietly, warming his hands at the stove.

  Doreen Arnstein gave a slight sardonic snort and kept writing. Kenneth Hollard cast him a quelling look.

  "Not a funny joke, Pat," he said, hanging up his sheepskin parka and going over to look at the map wall.

  It was snowing again outside the shutters of the ex-Hittite villa. He could feel the force of the icy wind out of the northern mountains. It came sweeping down and onto the high plateau of central Anatolia and driving drafty fingers in here, despite tapestries and rugs.

  "Damn," he said softly. "But I wish he'd come on after the fight."

  "Well, it's a bit close to the ragged edge we were, at the time."

  "He was closer. All the intel says so, and I could taste it. And he wanted to, too, I could feel that as well. Every time he hit us-when he was personally in command, I mean-it was like getting whacked upside the head with a crowbar. Then he just turned around and walked away when he had us rocked back on our heels."

  "It was the smart move," O'Rourke said. "As you say, he was run ragged by then… not least thanks to Princess Rau-pasha and the others."

  "Yeah. You know what annoys me about Walker?"

  "The complete evil of the man, is it?"

  "No, Paddy. That's why I hate him. What irritates me is that if he wasn't such an armor-plated swine, he'd be a really valuable leader… and we need those, God knows we do."

  "If only the fellah hadn't had his conscience surgically removed, the pity and the black shame of it. But I can't see him taking out his own garbage for the compost wagon, like the chief or the commodore."

  "There is that," Hollard said, looking at the map again and trying to force his enemy's intentions out of it by sheer will. Where? When? How?

  "It's a map, not an oracle, Brigadier sir," O'Rourke said. His voice grew a little dreamy. "By the way, have you been givin' any thought to what you'll do after the war?"

  "Hmmmm," Hollard said. I suppose I should, he thought with surprise. The Corps will be cut back drastically once we've won. Be a bit dull, drilling and the occasional skull-thumping expedition against some Sun People chief.

  "You know, I haven't, not really."

  "Not thinking of settling down here, then? Or taking up the pioneering life back home?"

  Kenneth favored him with another glare at the gentle teasing. "No," he said shortly. "Live here? Not if I can avoid it." Not least because of the political complications. "And I helped my brother out at harvest time too often to have any illusions about farming." He grinned. "Why do you think I went into the Corps after the Alban War, Paddy, if it wasn't an easier way to make a living?"

  "If you two gentlemen don't mind, we do have to win the war first…"

  Doreen Arnstein was going over the papers at the head of the table, each pile arranged with her usual neatness and a cup of cocoa at hand; even near term her pregnancy didn't show much under the thick ankle-length wool robe. She spoke without looking up, her glasses on the end of her nose as she made a note in her small, precise hand.

  And why is she smiling more? The official reports were that Ian was alive and in Walkeropolis, no more. She must know more than I do. Which was exactly as it should be, of course.

  Ken stayed in front of the map drawn on the plaster of the wall, looking at the pins and wondering how many of them corresponded to something real.

  "God-damn, but I miss the Emancipator," he said. "We should never have risked her on a bombing run-far too useful shuffling high-priority stuff around."

  A stamp-clash of feet and hands on wood and metal came from the corridor outside as the sentries brought their rifles to present arms in salute. The other Allied leaders trooped in; Tudhaliyas, Tawatmannas Zuduhepa, Kashtiliash, and Kathryn… and Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna. He felt a chaotic mixture of anger, worry, and affection, and irritation at his own irrationality; fought them all down with an effort while everyone went through the necessary formalities.

  She's walking better, he thought. The-young woman, not "girl." Kathryn was right to ream me out about that-was in the dark wolfskin jacket that had become something of a trademark, beating snow off it with her knitted cap, looking slim and dark and dashing.

  Clemens said the left leg ought to recover full function, and the hand nearly so. Still a heavy limp, but less pain. But the scar tissue will always be more sensitive to heat and cold, or to drying out. It must have cost her considerably to come here through the weather outside.

  He could see most of her face; the molded black-leather mask only covered the affected areas, a triangle from brow over the left eye and down to the corner of her mouth. That mouth turned up in a smile as she saw him, the lines of endurance melting to unaffected pleasure. He forced the silly grin back…

  … and yeah, it's logical to have mood swings after a trauma like that. The problem was, how exactly did you convince someone you weren't just courting her out of a misplaced
sense of personal honor? Especially when you are a bit of a prig.

  Everyone sat, and also eagerly accepted the cups of hot cocoa an aide dealt out from the big pot warming over a spirit lamp in a corner of the big room.

  Big market there after the war, he thought, half-amused at the sharp-nosed Yankee profiteer buried somewhere in his subconscious.

  For that matter, Tudhaliyas and his queen were casting an occasional envious glance at the little tile stove. Even a Great King spent the winters here being miserably chilly when he was out of bed. Enough braziers to heat a fair-sized room also courted carbon monoxide poisoning, unless you left the windows wide open, which sort of defeated the purpose. Kenneth suspected that-presuming they beat Walker-Tudhaliyas would be moving heaven and earth to get an Islander engineer in to do a fixup on the palace. Which meant all his nobles would, too, and then…

  "Let's get going," Doreen said.

  Most of it was as boring as policy meetings always were; figures and estimates, troop dispositions and training, the endless question of how to keep the refugees fed; some of them had been moved all the way down to Carchemish to be within reach of grain barged up the Euphrates.

  "So in the end," Tudhaliyas said, "What we have gained is a chance to do everything over again this coming year, with both sides stronger and my country a battleground once more."

  "Better a battleground than spear-won land of the Achaeans," Zuduhepa said sharply.

  Kashtiliash blinked, not quite used to a woman showing such outspokenness before a King. Kathryn gets away with it, Hollard thought. But she's in a special category in his mind, I think. He felt a moment's envy at the solid bond that was almost physically perceptible between the Babylonian and his sister. But then, they were both solid people; and they'd put in time and effort enough to earn it.

  He wasn't looking forward to next year's campaign either. Raupasha didn't flinch when anyone looked at her any more, but God knew what another set of battles would do; he'd bribed her attendants to tell him about the nightmares and crying jags.

 

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