There were five riders from the Earthling base; he and Blair were supposed to be riding herd on the others. Marc had no qualms about Cynthia, but the husband-and-wife team of power-plant techs was disconcertingly touristlike…
They came in on the same ship as Cynthia and Blair, Marc thought. Why is it they seem a lot greener?
A perfectly nice young couple, excited to be finally traveling to the city and snapping pictures of everything that moved with a fancy digital camera from the latest cargo pod to arrive from Earth. Marc had to admit that the gadget was nifty; it had an interior memory and you could download the pictures to a computer for printing, which saved on shipping film out. Although the camera was also large and clumsy, about the size of an unabridged dictionary not counting the plug-in screen.
Sort of science-fictional, Marc thought. But then, we're exploring an alien planet, eh?
A lot of equipment Jamestown got was like that, things that wouldn't be on the general market back on Earth for years. It contrasted with the Great White Hunter look of the rest of their gear: high-laced boots of greenish-yellow 'saur hide, pants with cargo pockets, bush jackets, and floppy hats, and automatic pistols at their belts.
But…
"Hey, Tom, Mary," he said. "Careful where you point that camera, okay? The locals are already convinced we're sorcerers—and there aren't many good magicians in their view of the world. Plus they tend to think anything new is likely to be unlucky."
Blair nodded. "You don't know what 'conservative' means until you've experienced Kartahown," he said.
"Do they think, what, cameras steal the soul?" Tom Kowalski asked.
"They do think that pictures have power over the thing depicted, but they're not likely to realize that's what a camera does," Blair said cheerfully.
"Yeah, but they do know what guns do," Marc said, tapping the butt of the 10-mm Browning Hi Power he wore at his waist, as they all did—it was regulations. "And that thing looks a little like a gun, and a lot of these people aren't all that fond of us, might want to faire la misere."
Blair nodded; Marc felt a little disconcerted at how often they were agreeing.
Mais, we agree the planet is round, too.
The Englishman continued, "Kartahown doesn't have police or anything like them—well, London didn't until 1832, either. No courts, either, really, just prominent people who may settle a dispute if the parties agree to let them. The king's soldiers, noblemen's retainers, and temple guards kill bandits, and they may crucify a thief if someone brings one to them, but it's friends and neighbors who retaliate for murders and robberies."
Marc decided to hammer home the lesson. "And we don't have any relatives in Kartahown and not many friends."
The Kowalskis looked suitably alarmed, and Marc went on, "Now, don't get too spooked. The kings have 'put their hand' over us, which counts for a lot. And the locals are terrified of us, which counts for even more. Just be polite, cautious, unobtrusive, and if someone acts seriously threatening, shoot them down like a dog."
Tahyo chose that moment to try to scramble out of the saddlebag again, and the tension dissolved in laughter.
Twenty miles from Jamestown, a big square fortress of rock and adobe stood where a spur of higher land swung towards the ocean, the tail end of a ridge of hills stretching inland and shaggy with forest. Bronze gleamed ruddy on the spearheads of soldiers behind the pointed crenellations along the walls, and a thread of smoke rose in a column that bent towards the sea. Down by the roadway, three hundred yards or so from the fortress gate, waited a unit of thirty men. Ten wore cuirasses and helmets of 'saur hide shaped by boiling and nearly as strong as metal; the leather was polished and oiled and had an almost liquid-looking russet sheen. Their weapons were long, bronze-headed spears and short, leaf-shaped swords; they leaned on tall, oval shields that were made of the same thick leather set on wooden frames.
Nobody here had invented standing to attention yet, but they looked alert and tough, with scarred eagle-nosed faces, their legs and arms knotted with muscle. Another fifteen were slingers, lightly equipped in sandals and cloth tunics, with daggers and big pouches for the pebble ammunition of their craft. They carried two slings each, one the simple leather type tied around their brows like a headband, the other with a yard-long wooden handle to anchor the thong.
Marc eyed them with respect; a staff-sling could spatter a man's brains at well over a hundred yards, after cracking his helmet first, or give a Quetza all the trouble it wanted. The soldiers were used to Terrans pretty well, but they gawked at Tahyo's alertly curious head examining everything around. Marc took advantage of the moment to swing down from the saddle and lift the solid fifty-pound weight of the young greatwolf out of the leather carrying bag. The pup ran around his feet, sniffing frantically, looked at the strangers with frosty suspicion, then trotted off to a large rock to pee enthusiastically.
"Heel, boy! Heel, Tahyo!" Marc said sharply when the beast was finished.
The Kartahownians gawked even harder when Tahyo trotted obediently back to sit behind Marc's right heel. Some of the signs against wizardry got pulled out again, but a few grinned delightedly. Tahyo tended to have that effect on people.
It's the big head and big eyes, Marc thought. Hardwired. Although the teeth are something of a put-off, the way they come over the lips.
The officer in his two-churr chariot wore 'saur-hide armor as well, but his had gold clasps and studs, as did his sandals, and his helmet was of worked bronze, with a high crest of enormous feathers each two feet long or better, iridescent blue and green. He smiled broadly at the Terrans. So did several of his men. A few others had carefully blank faces that probably hid hostility. The rest showed varying degrees of fear and awe.
"The kings greet their friends," the officer said, which probably
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exhausted his English; he brought his clenched right hand to his forehead, an acknowledgment that the Friends of the King were of equal status or higher.
"'imiAmerican imiKartahownRis fiwas, fornas-hoon shoom'n," Marc said in return. "The Americans greet the kings of Kartahown with respect, and also its people and the gods within its walls."
He returned the gesture; Blair did, too, and the other three Terrans followed suit a heartbeat later. The nobleman's smile looked a little more genuine as he realized the Terran could speak his own language fluently, although accented with the nasal whistling tone of all the Sky People.
"Pass, then, in peace and friendship," he said. Less formally: "Enjoy yourselves. Visit the Temple of the Bride. A stranger brings double luck, and surely one of the Sky People will bring four times the good fortune from the goddess."
As the spearmen stepped aside, Cynthia raised a brow at Marc. "What's that about the Temple of the Bride? She's their local fertility-and-hearth goddess, isn't she?"
"Ah…" Marc paused, embarrassed.
Blair smiled. "As I understand it, women here have to sacrifice their virginity in the Bride's temple before they can marry, with whoever fortune sends along. A number of ancient peoples on Earth had similar customs," he said. "I've never been there myself, but perhaps Marc…"
Marc busied himself by lifting Tahyo back into his carrier, one hand on the loose scruff of his neck, one under the butt. The greatwolf laid his ears back but submitted with another loud sigh. The churr snorted, a sound that involved a fluppppttt of lips against blunt omnivore fangs; the riding-beast was willing to tolerate the smell of greatwolf, but only just. It was as unnatural as putting a tiger on an ox.
Then Marc laughed ruefully and shook his head as he swung back into the saddle. "It's far too public for my taste," he said. "Worthwhile from a tourist's point of view, though. Makes Bourbon Street look like a convent."
"I can imagine," Cynthia said dryly.
"Well, the locals get upset and insulted if everyone stays away." Marc cleared his throat and pointed southward. "And there you've got another fruit of our technical aid program," he said, with pardonable pride; he'd b
een involved in the negotiations.
The cluster of buildings was at the edge of sight; they could just see the white water of a millrace turning an overshot wheel, and three furnaces like squat pyramids with the tops lopped off. Two of them were being blown in, and trailed their own thick columns of sooty smoke into the blue-and-white sky.
"The new smelters," he went on. "Eighteenth-century-style charcoal-fired blast furnaces. Those hills have beds of hematite ore in them, sixty or seventy percent pure iron. We're already setting up an electric-arc furnace in Jamestown to turn the pig iron into steel; there's plenty of surplus power from the reactor. It'll be operational in a couple of weeks."
"I remember hearing about it," Cynthia said. "It'll certainly be massively helpful when we've got more basic tools. Right now it's a catastrophe to lose a rock hammer or a piton."
Blair scowled slightly. "I wonder what effect it will have on the local people," he said. "Dumping a new technology like that into an early Bronze Age culture… at best, there will be massive disruption."
"It certainly will change things, podna," Marc said. "What did that historian call iron? The democratic metal? You've been in town talking to the priests a lot, haven't you?"
"Yes," Blair said, seeming genuinely enthusiastic. "Trying to get into the archives, and making a fair bit of progress. Fascinating stuff there, absolutely fascinating. We know virtually nothing about the history of Kartahown yet… and even with this syllabic alphabet, some of the earliest records show how the language has changed."
Marc nodded. "Weh, I'm sure it's all real fascinating. But notice how the priests and the kings and nobles and their hired soldiers get all the metal here? The peasants cultivate with tools of wood and bone and stone, because bronze is so damned expensive."
"Tell it to your precious nomads when the Kartahownian kings get armies with steel armor and weapons," Blair said, then gestured at the northern sea. "And the islanders out there, when they find schooners full of Kartahownian slave raiders arriving."
Cynthia winced. They fell silent for a while, the loudest sounds the jingle of harness and the muffled thump of padded churr feet on the dirt, and an occasional startled wulf of interest from Tahyo when he saw or scented something new. The road dipped downward as they moved farther east, the rolling plain turning to flatlands where sluggish streams flowed seaward; sometimes they ponded back behind the coastal dunes and turned into vivid green marshes alive with birds that looked very much like duck and snipe and flamingo. Some of those were a deep crimson save for black and yellow heads; when they took off in mass flight the air seemed to turn to a moving sunset.
The land had patches of cultivation around dun mud-brick villages, but mostly it was rolling green pasture for the herds of king and noble and priest: tharg and churr and sheep, and pigs eating acorns under the oaks—or things enough like swine and sheep and oaks that they hadn't bothered taking up the Kartahownian names. The herds had guardians armed with long pikes and slings; the forts and fortified manors and temples had paddocks with stout walls and lattice roofs of thick oak beams. Fields grew more common and the road broader, with more traffic on foot and in chariots and little oxcarts and then…
"Shoodak w'zaa hotl" Blair said. "The Barrier That Guards the World. Impressive, isn't it?"
It was: a massive, sloped rammed-earth wall that stretched out of sight in either direction, bristling with sharpened tree trunks and studded with forts at intervals, guarding the inner lands of Kartahown from nomad incursions, and even more from the bigger and nastier forms of wildlife. When you considered some of the things humans here had to live with, it wasn't really surprising that they were just getting around to civilization.
What's really impressive is that this was all done by hand, wooden shovel, basket, and pickaxes made out of animal bones, with oxcarts for high tech, Marc thought. They didn't even have wheelbarrows until we showed them how to make 'em.
The gate was a V-shaped notch in the earthwork, one that could be quickly blocked with massive spiked balks of timber, with forts on either side. There was also a big canal that served the fields that stretched to the edge of sight in every direction, save where a few sloughs held livid-green reeds and stretches of water. In one of them, a pair of children in a small canoe dipped out a net full of wriggling things much like crawfish.
"Remind you of home?" Cynthia said, half-mocking.
Marc shook his head. "The swamps do; there's more of them further in towards the Mother River. This here is more like the delta country north of Baton Rouge, all the way up to Memphis. The air's a lot drier though."
The drained alluvial delta had black, waxy-looking soil that did remind him of the Mississippi; the road was the same material, but piled up like an embankment and reasonably dry. Ditches and canals divided the fields into long rectangles, misted with green where the nurr-grain was sprouting, or flax or shamboo, or orchards and palm-groves and garden-plots bearing various things leafy or rooty or bushy; peasants were out with wooden spades and mattock-like hoes made from sticks and large seashells, weeding and at the eternal task of digging out the canals. Women carried the muck away in straw baskets on their heads. Both sexes wore simple loincloths, but females sometimes added a calf-length tunic to show that their families ranked a little bit above the commonality.
There was an intense and almost meaty scent from the dark, moist richness of the soil but not much reek of livestock, except for the tharg-oxen who pulled carts with twin solid wheels or turned water-pumps, and the odd chariot pair of churr. Enough people, pigs, and gaudy domesticated birds the size of turkeys swarmed around the habitations to produce a gagging stink of garbage and ordure from the frequent mud-brick villages. This was a man-made landscape, swarming with a dense mass of peasant families, fertilized with their night soil, and it smelled like it.
"Let me guess," Cynthia said, gulping slightly as they rode through one of the teeming hamlets. "Don't drink the water."
"Not without using your water-purification pills," Marc replied soberly.
Blair nodded. "Not anywhere in the delta."
The stink was also the first thing you noticed about Kartahown, already bad when it was only a line on the horizon northward: sewage and middens and stagnant water mainly, and wood smoke and burning charcoal, with undertones of sweat and seldom-washed bodies. The road rose gradually, and the ground about grew even more thickly peopled. The crops were mostly vegetables for the city trade. Now and then they glimpsed buildings bigger and gaudier than the peasant huts, roofed in reddish tile and with brightly painted patterns on their whitewashed sides. Those were surrounded by mud-brick walls, and within those were gardens and trees; they could glimpse flower beds and ornamental pools laid out in geometric patterns.
"Country places for bigwigs," Marc said. "And that boxy thing with the columns is a temple. There's an interesting procession in spring, when they bring the image of the god out on a sort of giant sledge and haul it into the Temple of All Gods in the city center—the Temple of Koru, the big papere of the pantheon. The people line the way and strew flowers and herbs on the road and sing hymns."
Cynthia gagged again, for real this time. "I hope the herbs and flowers cut the stink."
Marc grinned unsympathetically. "After a while you don't notice it so much."
She shuddered. "What a thought! I'm going to check my toes for malignant blue fungus after I leave." She nodded towards the temple—Kartahownians considered pointing at the image of a god blasphemous. "That's certainly impressive, though."
The temple was a rectangular box, a brick platform twenty yards by thirty supporting a roof on six huge granite pillars floated down the Mother River on barges. The pillars tapered from base to plinth and were polished to a high gloss inlaid with silver and orilachrium and gold, mostly in the spiky, blocky-looking script this civilization used. Long banners woven from feathers in iridescent colors hung between the pillars. When one blew aside you could glimpse the brass idol within; it was in the form of a squ
at, muscular man twenty feet high, carrying a spiked mace and with the head of a carnosaur, all gape and red tongue and long white teeth, with a horn on its nose. Men in flounced robes were busy about the pronaos, and in the other buildings grouped around it. The smoke of sacrifice rose from an altar in front, where an apprehensive-looking pair of sheep lay struggling, legs bound.
Blair nodded in that direction, too. "That's Thunderfist, the god of war and kingship," he said. "Unfortunately, he's also one of the ones they sacrifice humans to on their high holy days."
Everyone fell silent for a moment. The Terrans had some influence with the monarchs of Kartahown, but not nearly enough to fiddle with the religious basis of their power, not yet at least. The more so as most of the priestly caste ranged from suspicious to hostile.
Tom Kowalski whistled. Cynthia and the others who hadn't been to the city before looked impressed. As usual, pictures couldn't really prepare you for what it felt like. A moat fifty feet wide surrounded the whole; most of the water was covered by floating plants with broad platelike leaves and big white-and-blue flowers. That was good, considering what else tended to be floating in the water. A long, sinuous shape glided up in an arch.
"Legless crocodiles," Blair said. "Twenty feet long and better, with teeth like steak knives; they swim in from the Mother River. Don't fall in."
A sloping earth berm fifteen feet high rose on the inner side of the moat; on top of that was a brick wall thirty feet high, five feet of baked brick on either side sheathing a twenty-foot core of adobe, with an octagonal tower half as high again every sixty yards. The outermost layer of brick was glazed, and it made patterns in blue and green and yellow and purple, geometric shapes interspersed with fantastic beasts and birds. Atop the wall were pointed crenellations, with guards pacing back and forth; the roadway ran over a bridge to the wall, then turned sharply left. That exposed an attacker's unshielded right side to stones and javelins from above. Then there was a section where the wall doubled, one stretch overlapping the other, with a gate at each end and a narrow tunnel-like stretch between walls studded with towers.
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