The Sea Peoples

by S. M. Stirling

“Impossible,” began the other, but was silenced by a sort of bark from Mr. Wilde.

  “Come tomorrow,” he repeated.

  “Very . . . very well.”

  He heard somebody move away from the door and turn the corner by the stairway.

  “Who is that?” Hildred asked.

  “Arnold Steylette, owner and Editor in Chief of the great New York Herald.”

  He drummed on the ledger with his fingerless hand adding: “I pay him very badly, but he thinks it a good bargain.”

  “Arnold Steylette!” Hildred repeated, amazed.

  Odd, John thought; and he could feel the second man linked to him, the Boisean, agree. He thinks of a scrivener as if he were a great man, someone of power, not just a hired servant.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wilde, with a self-satisfied cough.

  The cat, which had entered the room as he spoke, hesitated, looked up at Wilde and snarled, a deep rumble in its chest. He climbed down from the chair and squatting on the floor, took the creature into his arms and caressed her. The cat ceased snarling and presently began a loud purring which seemed to increase in timbre as he stroked her.

  “Where are the notes?” Hildred asked.

  His voice was calm, but longing and desire surged through him. The Boisean echoed it, but with an undertone of revulsion.

  Wilde pointed to the table, and Hildred picked up a manuscript, blazoned with a title that he whispered aloud with exultation and longing:

  The Imperial Dynasty of America.

  When Hildred had finished, Wilde nodded and coughed.

  “Speaking of your legitimate ambition,” he said, “how do Constance and Louis get along?”

  “She loves him,” he replied simply.

  The cat on Wilde’s knee suddenly turned and struck at his eyes, and he flung her off and climbed on to the chair opposite Hildred.

  “And Dr. Archer! But that’s a matter you can settle any time you wish,” he added.

  “Yes,” Castaigne replied.

  A sudden image flooded Hildred’s mind; John could feel the straight-jacket cramping his arms, strong hands holding him as he convulsed in rage, and the blood and spittle spraying from his mouth as someone—Dr. Archer—approached with a pad of ether-soaked fabric. Then something that was Hildred imagining: Imagining the stout middle-aged doctor burning, his skin bubbling and turning black and red cracks of flame bursting through it as his eyeballs ran molted down his cheeks and he screamed and screamed and did not die . . .

  “Dr. Archer can wait, but it is time I saw my cousin Louis,” Hildred said calmly.

  “It is time,” Wilde agreed.

  Then he took another ledger from the table and flipped through it.

  “We are now in communication with ten thousand men,” he said in an abstract tone. “We can count on one hundred thousand within the first twenty-four hours, and in forty-eight hours the state will rise en masse. The country follows the state, and the portion that will not, I mean California and the Northwest, might better never have been inhabited. I shall not send them the Yellow Sign.”

  A shrill laugh stayed locked behind Hildred Castaigne’s lips, though when he spoke it was abstractly:

  “A new broom sweeps clean,” he said.

  “The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts,” said Mr. Wilde.

  “You are speaking of the King in Yellow,” Hildred said, with a pleasure mingled with terror.

  A shadow moved through his mind; a figure in tattered yellow robes. John’s own memories suddenly grew clearer; the yellow figure on the ramparts of the fantastic coral castle in Baru Denpasar’s harbor.

  “He is a king whom emperors have served,” Wilde said.

  “I am content to serve him,” Hildred replied.

  Mr. Wilde sat rubbing his ears with his fingerless hand. “Perhaps Constance does not love your cousin,” he suggested.

  Hildred started to reply with a cold surge of venom, but a sudden burst of military music from the street below drowned his voice.

  The twentieth dragoon regiment, formerly in garrison at Mount St. Vincent, is returning from the manœuvers in Westchester County, to its new barracks on East Washington Square, he thought, as he moved to look down from the window. Louis’ regiment.

  John’s mind looked down as well, and whoever-it-was-from-Boise. They both saw a good-looking set of horse soldiers in pale blue, tight-fitting jackets, jaunty busbies and tight white riding breeches with a double yellow stripe. Every other squadron was armed with lances, from the metal points of which fluttered yellow and white pennons. The band passed, playing the regimental march; then came the colonel and staff, the horses crowding and trampling, while their heads bobbed in unison, and the pennons fluttered from their lance points.

  The troopers rode with what John knew as the English seat; which was odd, since in his experience it was only used for sport—polo. They looked brown as berries though, the way soldiers did after campaigning or at least time in the field, and the music of their sabers against the stirrups, and the jingle of spurs and carbines delighted Hildred.

  Castaigne saw his cousin Louis riding with his squadron, a handsome brown-haired young man with an excellent seat, on a mount that would have done for a knight’s courser if not a destrier.

  Mr. Wilde, who had mounted a chair by the window, saw him too from the way his pale eyes moved, but said nothing. Hildred’s cousin turned his head as he rode and looked straight at Hawberk’s shop, and Hildred knew the young woman called Constance must have been at the window. When the last troopers had clattered by, and the last pennons vanished into South Fifth Avenue, Wilde clambered out of his chair and dragged the chest away from the door.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is time that you saw your cousin Louis.”

  He unlocked the door and Hildred picked up his hat and stick and stepped into the corridor. The stairs were dark. John found he could see more than he sensed Hildred could, even though they were using the same eyes; so could the Boisean. Perhaps it was that they’d spent more time outside in the dark than this city man, in places where you had to pick up subtle clues or trip over a root and plant your face in the dirt. Or just that Hildred’s mind was dazzled with savage dreams of glory and power.

  Groping about, Hildred set his foot on something soft, which snarled and spat.

  Cat, John thought automatically, feeling a slight stab of distress even then—he’d stepped on paws and tails now and then, and hated it.

  And then he saw its eyes. Lambent amber, typical enough . . . but there was something else there. He remembered a song for an instant, before the memory fled.

  Hildred aimed a murderous blow at the cat with his cane, and John felt his own will adding to the strike. It hit the balustrade instead with a jarring impact that shuddered painfully through his wrist into his shoulder, and the beast scurried back into Wilde’s room.

  • • •

  Deor stepped back from the wall and lowered the wineglass. Pip did the same and looked at him; the scop had turned a little gray.

  “What was that about?” she said, when they’d compared notes on what they’d overheard. “It’s a conversation about a plot to seize a throne, and some sort of blackmailing scheme too, I think.”

  “That man . . . the man whose shadow we heard, speaking lines graven in the place whose shadow this is . . . was a . . . trollkjerring, they say in Norrheim. One who draws his power from death and fear. The other is his puppet.”

  Deor frowned, puzzled. “But the puppet . . . it is as if he was more men than one. And there was a shadow . . . a feeling of Prince John.”

  Thora turned her head sharply from where she waited by the door, and Toa gave a grunt from the window.

  “Is John here?” Pip said.

 
Deor smiled.

  Rather insufferably, Pip thought.

  “Where is here?” he said. “We follow a thread through dreams. Dreams that can kill.”

  “And he’s off the stairs,” Toa said, cracking the door open a little. “If we’re following him, let’s go.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  OFF PEARL HARBOR

  CAPITAL CITY, AUPUNI O HAWAIʻI

  (KINGDOM OF HAWAIʻI)

  NOVEMBER 29TH

  CHANGE YEAR 46/2044 AD

  “Fleet to wear in succession,” Admiral Naysmith said.

  Órlaith shrugged to settle her suit of plate, and as it rattled squinted against the glittering brightness; you generally did, on a sunny day at sea, even when the morning sun was on your left, as it was here. Sailors developed a lot of lines around their eyes; it was one of the marks of the craft, the way burn-scars on the hands were of a smith.

  The scent of violence seemed to blow down on a wind from the future, stronger than the offshore breeze, making her feel like a cat whose fur was sparking from a dry wind. She took deep breaths and let them out slowly to keep her mind clear. A hand on the pommel of the Sword helped; she could somehow sense the location of the other ships, and the direction of the wind and the possibilities of movement around and across it for both sides. Nothing that she couldn’t have done herself . . .

  With more time, training and facilities than she actually had.

  Enemy in sight had sounded half an hour ago, and now the slow stately dance of naval battle was in its opening steps, the part that could give way to cataclysmic destruction with shocking suddenness. The creaking song of a big wooden ship sounded as the Sea-Leopard came about in a volley of orders and deck crews hauling on the sheet-lines—she was wearing, turning about to come on a new tack rather than beating up, not being in a hurry. That economized on wear and tear at the expense of time.

  Sails thuttered and cracked taut, lines and cables hummed their song of power as they caught the force of the wind transmitted through canvas into the frames of the ship, and wood groaned at the stresses. The frigate’s deck came upright as her bow pointed downwind for a moment, then canted to starboard as she came about towards the eye of the wind again. The First Mate shouted and pointed with her cane, and the mast-captains relayed the order to their teams as the last adjustments were made to the sheets.

  “Thus, thus, very well, thus,” Captain Edwards said at the helm, reaching out a hand to touch the wheel. “Steady as she goes, helm.”

  Admiral Naysmith nodded and said:

  “They have the weather gauge on us, but it doesn’t look as if they’re going to refuse battle,” and leveled her telescope to sweep the horizon to the southward as the signals officer had the pennants run up to break out at the mizzen-top. “There must be forty of them.”

  Just then a message pod whirred down the line from the kite-borne observer currently a wedge-shaped dot a thousand feet up. A signalwoman opened it and handed the contents to the Sea-Leopard’s commander. Captain Edwards handed it on to Naysmith.

  “Forty-four, Admiral,” he said. “And yes, they’re coming out to meet us.”

  Naysmith grunted thoughtfully and looked up at the enemy’s observation balloon hanging over the ancient harbor; it was different in detail from what Montival used, but had the general similarity forced on human kind by the laws of nature even in the Changed world, and it would have seen them long ago.

  Órlaith looked discreetly over her naval commander’s shoulder at the message the observer in the flying wing had sketched. The drawing showed the enemy deploying outside the mouth of Pearl Harbor in a blunt wedge, with the larger ships on the outside and a less orderly gaggle of others within.

  “Best choice they have,” Naysmith said. “If we catch them where they can’t maneuver we’ll pound them to burning splinters. They’ll probably try to provoke a fleet action and then swarm individual ships in boarding actions.”

  She grinned like a shark as she snapped the telescope shut. “But we have heavy crews available, and two can play that game.”

  “Forty-four ships!” King Kalaˉkaua said. “By Kuˉ-keoloewa, Kuˉ the Supporter, that’s far more than our total naval strength!”

  Reiko nodded as they all stepped aside to give the admiral room; she and the Hawaiian monarch were both on the Montivallan flagship, much to the relief of their naval commanders. There was no safe place in a ship-to-ship action, where an admiral was in the front lines as much as the lowliest deckhand pumping at a catapult’s hydraulic cocking lines. But the big frigate was as close as you could get to safety as long as the respective rulers insisted on being present . . . which they all did.

  And having us all here keeps the lines of command clearer, Órlaith thought. Naysmith’s orders are coming from the same place as the Hawaiian and Nihonjin monarchs. There’s no question of their rulers taking orders from my commander. And anyone who wants to think we’re instructing Naysmith after a committee meeting is free to do so.

  “Number includes transport . . . transports,” Reiko said in her slow careful English. “And they have no shr . . . ships like this.”

  She tapped her foot on Sea-Leopard’s quarterdeck. The six frigates were leading the fleet; some of the smaller Montivallan ships were screening forward, but most—and the Hawaiian and Nihonjin vessels—were behind. This time she was in her own set of Japanese-style armor, the lacquer still showing marks from fights and hard travel—no longer scratched or dented or with frayed cords, in fact lovingly repaired, but the covering slightly brighter where they’d been applied. The crimson chrysanthemum mon of her House showed on the breastplate and the brow of the broad-tailed kabuto helmet.

  “This is more half . . . more than half . . . of their strength at sea, from our intelligence,” she said thoughtfully. “To put it where we can with our strength hit it, bad strategy. Very bad. Usually they are not so foolish. Perhaps their intelligence of Montival is poor. Or they are some reason desperate.”

  Egawa leaned close to her ear and murmured in Nihonjin; he could understand spoken English, but his own command of it was much worse than his Tennˉo’s.

  “That means Nihon is safe, Majesty, safer than it has been since the Change. That is more than half the total jinnikukaburi strength. What we have at home can handle the rest, even if they throw everything at us. Simply losing that fleet will cripple the enemy for many years. And if our allies win this battle, nearly all of our own strength will be intact for the final offensive while the enemy are critically weakened at little cost to us. The kami favor us with the prospect of a great victory.”

  She replied in a brusque tone: “The kami do favor us, General, for ours is the Land of the Gods. Yet many will die this day, many will be widowed, many children will be orphans, much work of human hands be wasted and leave hunger and want in their wake. It is necessary, but do not exult. We must fulfill our giri—”

  Which meant roughly the burden of duty in her tongue.

  “—but do not therefore forget ninjˉo.”

  Which was human feeling, the counterpoint to the merciless demands of duty and obligation. From what Órlaith had been able to gather and what the structure of the language the Sword had taught her in an instant implied, modern Nihonjin thought and much of their poetry turned on the tension between those two. Reiko went on:

  “Victory is a means to secure a victorious peace for our people—”

  Which was a play on the regnal name she had chosen: Shˉohei Tennˉo, Empress of Victorious Peace.

  “—so that they may harvest their rice and rear their children in peace free from fear and attack. Success in battle is not an end in itself. The sword must serve, even if those who bear the steel rule. It is for this reason that duty is heavier than mountains, and the warrior’s death lighter than a feather; they are tools to a greater end.”

  “I bow to your wisdom, Heika,” Egawa said, and d
id so.

  Well, it’s not an accident I like Reiko, Órlaith thought. And past Tennˉo may have been puppets of their warlords, but that is most certainly not going to happen while Reiko sits the Chrysanthemum Throne.

  “This is a desperation move,” Órlaith said thoughtfully—in Reiko’s language, and then in her own. “They are throwing the dice to keep us from entering their home waters, yet they could fight more effectively close to their bases and farther from ours. Something in Korea . . . or near it on the Asian mainland . . . is pushing them to recklessness, I would say.”

  Reiko made a small exasperated sound. “We in Dai-Nippon have been on the defensive too long, parrying their attacks, or at most retaliating for their raids. Perhaps we overestimate our importance to them, assuming we fill their thoughts as they do ours. We must know more!”

  Just then Heuradys came up. She had her shield over her back, and held out Órlaith’s.

  “Now,” she said, in a voice that brooked no argument, and added: “Your Highness,” because it was a formal occasion in a way.

  The four-foot teardrop shape of plywood and bison-hide and sheet metal bore the arms of Montival with a baton of cadency—only the High King or High Queen could wear them undifferenced. She supposed that she could have had Raven as a quartering, for the Morrigú was the patron of her House, or the Golden Eagle that was her personal totem, but this would do. She took it and slung it over her back too with the guige-strap loose; that way you could slide it onto your left arm with a single shrug and movement.

  The twenty pounds of weight was utterly familiar, though the shield was new. Even ordinary mortal swords might last lifetimes, but a shield was fortunate to go through a single afternoon of strong arms and hard blows without being beaten to tatters.

  Not that she was probably going to need it. This was formal war, unlike their self-help, deeply-unofficial breakaway Quest to help Reiko find the Grasscutter. Her Household was around her—or rather, down in the break between the quarterdeck and main deck, waiting to rush up to surround her.

  Faramir and Morfind had been standing with their hands on their hearts—over their mail-lined jerkins—and heads bowed to the westward as they contemplated Númenor that was, and Elvenhome that is, and that which is beyond Elvenhome and ever will be, and a possible trip to the Halls of Mandos.