On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  The pointer traced a line down through Damascus, over the heights, along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, then northwest from Bet Shean.

  "Of those, at least five thousand are infantry equipped with fire weapons, with thirty cannon, and four thousand chariots."

  None of the Egyptian commanders stirred; there was a low mutter of sound as the Sherdana mercenary leader translated for his monoglot subordinates, their odd-looking helmets with the circle of feathers all around bending together.

  "Favored of the Son of Ra," Djehuty said. "If we are here"-he pointed to a place half a day's march before the place where the coastal plain pinched out-"can they reach the sea and hold the passes over Carmel against us?"

  Mek-Andrus nodded; he no longer smiled with such boorish frequency as he had when he first came to Egypt. "That is the question. They were here"-he tapped the place where the Jordan emerged from Galilee-"yesterday at sunset.

  Another rustling. That left the enemy further from the plain of Jezreel than the Egyptians, but the path the northerners must cross was over flat land with supplies to hand; the Egyptian force must cross mountains.

  "Thutmose did it," Mek-Andrus said. "If we take this pass"- his finger tapped-"as the Great One's predecessor did, we can be here and deployed to meet them before they expect us."

  Thutmose… Djehuty thought. Then: Ah. One of the great Pharaohs of the previous dynasty, the one that had petered out when the Accursed of Amun, the Enemy, tried to throw down the worship of the Gods in favor of Atun.

  His eyes narrowed as he watched Mek-Andrus. How did the outland dog know so much of Khem? Djehuty knew the barbarian didn't read the Egyptian script, so he couldn't have simply read the story off a temple wall the way a literate, civilized man might. The fire-weapons themselves weren't sorcery, just a recipe, like cooking-plain saltpeter and sulfur and charcoal, whatever the peasants might think. But there was something not quite canny about Mek-Andrus himself.

  Yet the Gods have sent him to us. Without Mek-Andrus, the Hittites and Achaeans and other demon-begotten foreigners who knew not the Black Land or the Red would have had the new weapons all to their own. That would have been as bad as the time long ago when the Hyksos came with their chariots, before any Egyptian had seen a horse, and it had taken a long night of subjection and war to expel them.

  "Who should take the vanguard?" Pharaoh asked.

  Mek-Andrus bowed. "Let Pharaoh choose the commander who has both wisdom and bravery… and many cannon, so that they can hold off the enemy host until the whole army of Pharaoh is deployed."

  Remote as jackal-headed Anubis deciding the fate of a soul in the afterworld, Pharaoh's eyes scanned his generals.

  Djehuty fell on his face as the flail pointed to him. "Djehuty of the Brigade of Seth. The vanguard shall be yours. Prepare to move as soon as you may. You shall cross the pass and hold the ground for the rest of our armies. So let it be written! So let it be done!"

  It was a great honor-and possibly the death sentence for the Brigade of Seth.

  The courier threw back his head and drank, water running down his chin into the stubble and soaking into the filthy gray wool of his uniform tunic. The smithy was scorching, its thick adobe walls soaking up the heat of the two charcoal hearths, steam hissing as the hot shoe was plunged into the water. The man whose horse was being shod kept an eye on it even as he stuck the cup into the well bucket again; cooler out here… and even now, a certain magic clung to ironworking.

  It had been a long ride overland from his landfall in Athens, even with good roads. The almond trees in the field across from the smithy and relay station were in bloom, their scent a breath of freshness amid the dust and dung of the roadside smithy. Soon he would be in Walkeropolis, where he could rest.

  The saddlebags had the Wolf Lord's blazon on them. The death-fate laid on him if they were lost was gruesome.

  The smith bent and lifted the right rear hoof between his knees, nails ready in his mouth. A slave girl came by just then, looking over her shoulder at the uniformed courier and letting her thin tunic draw tight against her buttocks. He smiled and worked the pump for her to fill her bucket.

  Nevertheless, he was stern in his duty, shaking his head ruefully when she looked back at him from around the corner and rolled her eyes toward the stables. She made a face at him and walked off; he sighed and took the bridle of his horse as the smith's boy led it out. He swung back into the saddle and heeled his mount to the graveled verge of the road.

  "Good intelligence can be worth an extra regiment," Marian Alston-Kurlelo said, returning Kenneth Hollard's salute and then taking his hand.

  It was going on two years now since she'd ridden into Camp Grant and told him that he was going to Babylonia. Grown a good deal. Thirtysomething, but looking older and a bit thinner, and tired. Done a good job.

  "It had better be worth a regiment," he said bluntly. "Because these two battalions are all I can spare, with the local levies. If we take any more from the northern front, we're fucked. Ma'am."

  She chuckled, looking out over the vast sprawling chaos of the muster point where the hosts of the southern Hittite lands were gathered. Many of the assembled Hittites-and Syrians and Aramaeans and whatever-were still in hysterics from the Liberator's visit; she'd sent the airship right back for another load of heavy weapons anyway. The dust and heat were already fearsome; even in April, the Damascus area was well into what felt like summer. The green oasis helped some, and the sight of the cedar-forested mountains to the westward.

  Take me back to the River Jordan, she thought/quoted to herself. It's about seventy-five miles thataway, south by southwest.

  "Most of the Egyptians will be old-style troops," she said reassuringly. "Doreen may be in her seventh month, but her spies are very mobile. Their rifle units won't be as good as the Tartessians, and they weren't as good as Walker's men in Sicily… and he's got all his best facing you."

  Hollard nodded. "This is damned important, though, ma'am," he said. "A couple of crucial alliances depend on turning the Egyptians back."

  "Awkward. I'd been hoping to bring my people in from Sicily directly in your support-invading Greece directly just now is out of the question, I'm afraid; I don't have the firepower or troops. Well, needs must when the devil drives; I'll handle the Egyptians if you can hold Walker. Good luck. Brigadier Hollard. Good hunting."

  "And to you, Commodore," he said.

  "I do not like the thought of cowering in a hole," Djehuty said.

  The valley stretched out before him, land flat and marshy in spots, in others fertile enough even by an Egyptian's standards. Wheat and barley billowed in green waves with yellow streaks; the fallow plots between the fields were densely grown with weeds. Olive trees grew thick on the hills that rose on either side of the southeastward trend of the lowlands; orchards of fig and pomegranate and green leafy vineyards that would produce the famed Wine of the North stood around hamlets of dark mud brick. These lands were well peopled, a personal estate of Pharaoh and on a route that carried much trade from the north in times of peace.

  "All the courage in the world won't stop a bullet," Mek-Andrus said. "A man in a hole-a rifle pit-can load and fire more easily, and still be protected from the enemy's bullets. They must stand and walk forward to attack; and the Divine Son of Ra has ordered us to defend."

  Djehuty made a gesture of respect at the Pharaoh's name. "So he has," he said. You purple-arsed baboon, he thought to himself. Pharaoh was a living God, but a commander in the field was not always bound by his sovereign's orders-it was the objective that counted. And occasionally Egyptians had committed deicide. No. He thrust the thought from him. That was a counsel of desperation, and Ramses had been a good Pharaoh, strong and just.

  "How do you advise that we deploy, then?" Djehuty said.

  He looked back. Most of the Brigade of Seth were out, forming up in solid blocks.

  "Let us keep the pass to our backs," the foreigner said.

  "So-half of a circle?" Dj
ehuty said, making a curving gesture.

  "No, not today. That would disperse the fire of our guns. Instead-

  Mek-Andrus began to draw in the dirt with a bronze-tipped stick he carried. "Two redoubts, little square earth forts, on either end of a half circle whose side curves away from the enemy. That way they can give enfilading fire."

  "Please, O Favored of the Divine Horus, speak Egyptian; I plead my ignorance."

  Mek-Andrus looked up sharply. Djehuty gave him a bland smile; let him see how a civilized man controlled his emotions.

  The foreigner nodded. He held both hands out, fingers splayed, then crossed those fingers to make a checkerboard. "Enfilading fire means that the paths of the balls or grapeshot from the cannon cross each other, so," he said. "Instead of one path of destruction, they overlap and create a whole field where nothing can live."

  The Egyptian's eyes went wide. He struggled within his head, imagining… Those Nubians who tried to raid the fort, he thought. A great wedge had been cut through their mass, as if sliced by the knife of a God. Within that triangle only shattered bone and splattered flesh had remained. In his mind's eye he overlapped that broad path of death with thirty more, and put Hittite charioteers in place of naked blacks with horn-tipped spears. His hand went of itself to the outlander's shoulder.

  "I see your plan!" he exclaimed, smiling broadly. "It is a thing of beauty. And how shall we place the musketeers?"

  Djehuty's son listened closely, waiting in silence until Mek-Andrus strode away. "Father and lord," he said hesitantly. "Is it possible that… some among us have been mistaken concerning the outlander?"

  His father shook his head. "He knows much," he said. "But it is still a violation of ma'at, of the order of things, that an outlander should stand so close to the Great One. And to be granted a Royal woman as his wife! Not even the Great King of the Hittites was given such honor, when we were allied with them and at peace. No," he went on, dropping his voice. "The day will come when the foreign dog who knows not the Red Land or the Black will have taught us all he knows. On that day…"

  Father and son smiled, their expressions like wolves peering into a mirror. Then Djehuty raised his voice: "Officers of Five Hundred. Attend me!"

  Odd, Philowos thought, as he took the sealed folders from their leather casing. There are six. Five is the standard number.

  The Assistant Underscribe (Ministry of Communications of Great Achaea, on loan to Walkeropolis-central from the Mukenai branch office) shrugged. There wasn't any regulation about it; and these were personal Royal correspondence. The King did as he willed, not as other men did.

  "Come on, I haven't got all day," the courier said, standing there with an air of iron and horse sweat, letting in a little of the heat and white light of the street behind him. It was routine, but also somehow out of place in this world of quiet and rustling paper and well-bathed men.

  "Thumbprint here," Philowos said.

  The courier obeyed, and then slowly and laboriously wrote his name, tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth.

  Good, Philowos thought.

  A full literate might have noticed that the date partly concealed under the scribe's own thumb was that for tomorrow, not today. Not likely, but possible.

  Philowos waited while the swaggering courier threw his saddlebags over his shoulder with the arrogance of a sword-bearing man and clanked away. Then he walked on into the corridor that led toward his own cubicle, pausing at a large ceramic container of water. Casually he twisted the bungstopper and filled himself a cup, gossiping a little with acquaintances passing by and leaving the dispatches waiting on a ledge. When he turned around they were gone.

  His heart beat a little faster as he went on to his desk. Tomorrow the dispatches would be there, and a little chamois sack of sweet-sounding coins, the King's good dinars. No problem, no fuss… and the dating would be accurate.

  "They come," the Medjay scout wheezed, pointing behind himself with his spear. His body was naked save for a gourd penis sheath and his skin shone like polished onyx with sweat. "Their scouts chased me, but I lost them in rough ground."

  Djehuty nodded; the Nubian mercenaries in Pharaoh's host were recruited from desert nomads south of the great bend of the Nile-hunters, herders, and bandits. They could outrun horses, given time, loping along at their tireless long-legged trot. And they could track a ghost over naked rock, or hide in their own shadows. Djehuty knew it too well. His first command had been patrols against the Medjay along the southern frontier. You didn't forget waking up and finding a sentry with his throat cut and his genitals stuffed into his mouth, and nobody in camp any the wiser until the Ark of Ra lifted over the horizon. That was Medjay humor… but they were useful, no doubt of that, and true to their salt.

  "Many?" he said.

  "Many," the barbarian confirmed, opening and closing his hands rapidly. "As one of the True Folk runs"-that was their heathen name for themselves-"an hour's distance."

  "Fetch my war harness," he said to his son. To a runner: "A message to the captains that the enemy approaches."

  His chariot came up, the plumes on the team's heads nodding, and the Egyptian commander ducked into the leather shirt of iron scales. Sweat soaked the linen backing almost immediately; he lowered the helmet over his head and buckled the strap below his chin. The sunlight was painful on the bronze and gold that decked the light wicker and bentwood of the car, and the iron tires shrunk onto the wooden wheels. He climbed aboard, his son after him; the boy made a production of checking the priming on shotguns and pistols, but he was a good lad, conscientious. More eager than was sensible, but this would be his first real battle.

  "Keep your head," his father warned, his voice gruff. "It's the cool-blooded man lives long on the threshing ground of battle."

  "I'm not afraid, Father!" Sennedjem said. His voice started low but broke in a humiliating squeak halfway through. He, flushed angrily; his mother had been Djehuty's first woman, a fair-skinned Libyan captive, and the boy's olive tan was a little lighter than most men of Lower Egypt.

  "That's the problem, lad," Djehuty grinned. "You should be frightened." He turned his attention to the work of the day.

  The signal fire on top of the bare-sloped hill to the southeast went out. "Soon now," Djehuty said.

  Dust gave the chariots away. The Egyptian squinted; his vision had grown better for distant things in the last few years, worse for close work. Chariot screen, he thought. Thrown forward to keep the Egyptians from getting a close look at their enemy's force before they deployed for battle. Whoever commanded the enemy host was no fool. Now he must do the same. Without a close description of his position, the enemy commander would be handicapped.

  "Forward!" he barked.

  Well drilled, the squadrons fanned out before him. The driver clucked to his charges, touched their backs gently with the reins, and the willing beasts went forward. Walk, canter, trot; the dry hard ground hammered at his feet below the wicker floor of the war-cart. He compensated with an instinctive flexing of knees and balance, learned since childhood. The enemy grew closer swiftly with the combined speed of both chariot fleets, and he could feel his lips draw back in a grin of carnivore anticipation.

  Syrians, he thought, as details became plain-spiked bronze helmets, horsehair plumes, long coats of brass scales rippling like the skins of serpents, curled black beards, and harsh beak-nosed faces. Mariyannu warriors of the northern cities, some rebellious vassals of Pharaoh, some from the Hittite domains or the ungoverned borderlands.

  They came in straggling clumps and bands, by ones and twos, fighting as ever by town and by clan. He could.see the drivers leaning forward, shouting to the horses in their uncouth gutturals, the fighters reaching for arrows to set to their bows.

  "We'll show them our fire," he said.

  A feather fan mounted on a yard-long handle stood in a holder at his side. He snatched it out and waved to left and right. The Egyptian formation curled smoothly forward on either hand. Fast as
ever, he thought-the new harness let a team pull the heavier chariots without losing speed or agility. A drumming of hooves filled the air with thunder, a choking white dust curled up like the sandstorms of Sinai. The horses rocked into a gallop, nostrils flared and red, foam flecking their necks. The first arrows arched out, the bright sun winking off their points. Djehuty sneered: much too far for effective archery. Dust boiled up into the unmerciful sky, thick and acrid on his tongue.

  "Amun! Amun! The Divine Horus!" the Egyptians roared. Savage war cries echoed back from the enemy.

  "Gun!" he barked, holding out a hand. Check-patterned acacia wood slapped into it as Sennedjem put the weapon into his hand.

  Thumping sounds smashed through the roar of hooves and thunder of wheels. Syrian chariots went over, and the high womanish screaming of wounded horses was added to the up-roar. Djehuty crouched, raking back the hammers with his left palm and then leveling the weapon.

  Now. An enemy chariot dashing forward out of the dust in a dangerously tight curve, one wheel off the ground. Close enough to see the wild-eyed glare of the warrior poised with a javelin in one hand. Bring the wedge at the front of the paired barrels to the notch at the back. It wasn't so different from using a bow; the body adjusting like a machine of balanced springs, but easier, easier, no effort of holding the draw. Squeeze the trigger, nothing jerky about the motion…

  Whump. The metal-shod butt of the shotgun punished his shoulder. Flame and sulfur-stinking smoke vomited from the barrels, along with thirty lead balls. Those were invisible- strange to think of something moving too fast to see-but he shouted in exultation as he saw them strike home. The horses reared and screamed and tripped as the lead raked them, and the driver went over backward.

  "Gun!" Djehuty roared, and Sennedjem snatched away the empty one and slapped the next into his father's grasp, then went to work biting open cartridges, hands swift on ramrod and priming horn. Djehuty fired again. "Gun!"