“This metal, what is it?” Daurthunnicar said, turning the strange ax in his hands.
“Iron,” Isketerol said. “I think, for I’ve never seen more than a small piece shaped as a ring before. The Great King’s artisans know the secret of it, in Haiti at the eastern end of the Middle Sea. But it’s rare and very precious. Harder than bronze, I hear, and it takes a better edge, if you know how to work it.”
The rahax took up the ax. The head shone like silver, and it shaved bare a patch of hair from his forearm when he tested the edge. He swung it tentatively; about the heft of his own war ax, or a little heavier-the strangers must be men of strong arms, since he swung more weight than most. Not badly balanced, either. He swung it down at a stump; the blade sank deep, and when he wrenched it out it was still sharp. The sword was an even greater wonder, finer by far than the goodly weapon the Tartessian captain carried. And no one had ever seen anything like the ornaments, smooth and shining and of colors brighter than the sun. Daurthunnicar felt his greed itch. If he had gifts like this to give out, warriors would flock to him from every tribe of Sky Father’s people.
More than goods. What powers may these strangers have? His people were in need of strong allies.
“Say again how they treated you,” he commanded.
“Lord,” Ohotolarix said. “I woke a little as they hauled me to their great ship. The next I knew, their ruler bent over me. Their ruler is black, lord. With skin the color of charcoal.”
A sigh that held fear rustled through the Iraiina chiefs. The robed Wise Man raised his staff to hold back evil magic, and talismans of bronze and bone clinked along its length. The Night Ones were black��� although they did not walk in the light of day.
Isketerol leaned forward. “Was their chief flat of nose, with thick lips, and hair curled tightly, thus?” he asked.
Daurthunnicar frowned at the interruption, but felt new respect when Ohotolarix nodded.
“Strange,” the Tartessian muttered. “A Medjay, here?”
“You know of them?” the rahax asked.
“At Pharaoh’s court. He has warriors from far south up the Nile, in Nubia, the Medjay folk. Very fierce. And voyagers of my people who sailed far south of the Pillars say the folk there are black of skin, too, with features like that.”
“Eka,” Daurthunnicar nodded.
From what he’d heard the sun shone brighter the farther south you went. The Tartessians were shorter and darker of skin and hair than most folk in these parts. Perhaps the sun baked the skin dark, as fire did clay, darker still as you went farther south. Pleased with his thought, the rahax signaled the young warrior to go on.
“Were all of them dark?” he asked.
“No, only a few, my chief. Others were like us, though their clothes and ways are strange. And some were brown, and some had skin the color of amber, and eyes aslant, so.” He put his index fingers to the corners of his eyes and pushed them up. “But only a few. They treated me well, lord, like a son or oath-brother. They healed my hurts with strange medicines, and gave me a soft bed and food-strange, and not enough meat for my liking, but plenty of it. And these gifts, as you see.”
Daurthunnicar looked at Isketerol, and the Tartessian shook his head. Strange to him, then, too.
“The men among them mostly shave their chins,” Ohotolarix continued. “And they dress strangely, both men and women, in garments sewn to fit their limbs, as a quiver fits arrows. Richly, richly, even the commoners are clothed from head to foot in fine woven things. Every one carries a knife and tools of metal.”
The chief grunted. Women along��� did that mean the strangers had come to settle? His gut hurt at the thought of another foe, but perhaps an accommodation could be reached. “Did you see cattle, wagons, children?” he asked.
“None, my chief.” Ohotolarix hesitated. “It seemed as if all were one warband and its wives or concubines. Perhaps they hold them in common, for there were far fewer than the men��� I think. When the black-faced high chief spoke, all others obeyed. The chiefs under him spoke, and his word was carried out, the others obeying like the fingers of a man’s hand.”
This time the chiefs grunt carried envy. He’d always wished his underchiefs obeyed like that. They did better than the Earth Folk, who went each his own way, but���
“And what powers did they have?” the Wise Man asked, leaning forward. His seamed face was calm, but his eyes glittered with interest.
“Wise One,” Ohotolarix said, looking more nervous than he had facing the rahax, “they had many. Light they could make appear in darkness, light as bright as the sun. They could make water appear in their bowls at will, and when they voided themselves into vessels of fine clay, the water came and took away their filth.”
“Knossos,” Isketerol muttered, then shook his head when the rahax looked his way.
“I don’t think they showed me all their powers,” the young man went on. “I learned a few of their words, they a few of mine-there was a man, an old man, very tall, and his woman, who tried to learn our tongue. And they had a curious magic they worked, one that I couldn’t see the purpose of. They made marks on thin-scraped skins, so-” he picked up a short stick and mimed tracing on a square held in front of him-“and they would look at the marks, even hours later, and repeat my words.”
The Tartessian started again, narrow dark eyes going wide. Daurthunnicar bared his teeth in the silence of his head. His ally knew something he did not, and wasn’t telling.
“But I think,” Ohotolarix said, “that I know why they come. They showed me pictures of grain, of bread, of cattle. They want these things, and they will give rich gifts for them.”
“Ahhhh,” Daurthunnicar sighed.
He looked at the ax, at the wonderful sword, at the shining jewelry. A chieftain who could open his hands and give such things to his followers would have power beyond power. A thought nickered through his mind: canoes, coracles, a night raid. Then he looked out again at the ship, its masts towering to pierce the sky, bulwarks like cliffs, the blood-red slash across its side and the cryptic symbols down the hull, the great golden eagle-god figure at its prow. No, no, he wouldn’t raise blade against that power unless he must, for the lives of his folk. Better to deal in peace with such strength, if it could be done without offending the tribe’s guardian gods. He would make parlay with these People of the Eagle.
“Wise Man?” he said.
The priest leaned on his staff. “I sense no great evil here,” he said. “The Powers are at work, yes, but as likely to bless as to curse. Best I go to my tent, and ask of��� others.”
A few of the chiefs made signs as the old man stalked off. Daurthunnicar rapped the blunt end of his ax against the thin bronze panels that sheathed his chariot. “Hear the word of your rahax,” he said. “We will send an envoy to these strangers, with a green branch and a white shield. You”-he pointed at Ohotolarix-“will go with him. We will bid them guest with us; they will share bread and meat and blood, and they will be peaceholy in all the camps of the Iraiina folk, unless I unsay the word of peace or they break it. Hear me! Any who raises hand against them, who insults them, will answer to me and to Sky Father and the Horned Man.”
The chiefs bowed their heads. That was good, that meant they thought his word was wise. If they hadn’t, he’d be hearing objections by now, loud and frequent. Most of the chiefs were his kin, and he was rahax as long as the most of them wished it, just as they were chiefs as long as the warriors respected and feared them.
“We will bid them to feast with us,” Daurthunnicar went on. “We will speak of alliance and the giving of gifts. Sky Father is with us, and the Horned Man; they send us strong aid, much magic, much luck.”
Swindapa lay motionless on her side, her knees drawn up to her chest, trying to ignore the aches and the itching and burning between her legs, and the cold feeling in her chest that never went away. The bonds that held her hands behind her back chafed, and so did the thick collar on her neck. That had a leash w
hose other end was braided around a wooden stake pounded into the ground. Even with her hands free she couldn’t have removed collar or leash, not without a knife; they were twisted cowhide many strands thick. Everyone had gone away; she could hear the Sun People screaming and crying out down by the water. Her head lifted from the ground in a tangle of dirt-crusted hair. Nobody, not a dog, not the children who’d prodded her with sticks and thrown clods of earth, not the pack of older boys who sometimes hung around waiting for a chance to rush in and force her while her keepers’ attention was elsewhere���
She shivered and ground her teeth, feeling herself starting to shake again. No. Instead she started working her bound hands down her back. If she could get her feet between them she could start gnawing on the hide that bound her wrists. With a grunt of pain she fell back on her side, panting. She was too stiff from lack of stretching and the binding was too broad. Tears of frustration ran down her cheeks. A tethered goat on the other side of a dead fire cropped at a bush and looked at her with unblinking eyes as it chewed.
Swindapa tried to whisper a Cursing Song, but it didn’t feel right, as if the Moon Woman couldn’t hear her in this place. She started again as footsteps moved toward her, from the other side of the two-wheeled oxcart. Please. It wasn’t time for the woman who brought her food and water. Brought most days; sometimes they forgot. The big leather tent twenty paces away in that direction was Daurthunnicar’s. Sometimes men came over from there and forced her or hurt her in other ways. That hadn’t happened for twice seven of days; she’d tried to make herself too filthy, by voiding in the dirt instead of the trench they’d made her dig, and rolling in the mud. If they were drunk enough on mead or hemp they might not care-It was the woman, and a few others with her, and behind them the whole crowd was returning to camp, chattering. There was a high note to their voices, excitement or fear.
The women paused around her. “She stinks,” one said. “The guests will be insulted.”
Swindapa stayed huddled on the ground, legs drawn up under her and ready to scrabble away. Sometimes the women were kind, but other times they kicked her, or dropped the food in the dirt.
“She did that to keep the men off,” another voice said. This one was younger, and there was colored work in the shoes beneath the dyed woolen skirt. “They haven’t been at her for two seven-days now. She’ll look all right when she’s cleaned up. The bruises are mostly gone.”
Another voice chuckled. “It’d take more than a whiff to keep that boar-stallion away when he’s had a few horns.” The tone changed. “Diasas. Get up.” The toe prodded her in the ribs.
“Yes, Iraiina,” Swindapa said.
The tribe-name meant “free” or “noble” in the Sun People tongue. She came to her feet, gritting her teeth and stretching. The Iraiina women averted their eyes a little; it was shameful to go without clothes among the Sun People. That was why they’d kept her stripped, to shame her. Among her people, clothes were for warmth or comfort or show, but now she knew what their word naked meant. It meant helplessness.
A kinder voice spoke: “Come. The rahax says you are to be washed clean.” That one made a tsk sound between her teeth. “He should have bestowed you long before this. He wouldn’t treat a dog so, why a woman?”
“Wirronnaur’s arm festered where she cut him,” the younger woman explained. “And her kin wouldn’t pay enough for her, they don’t, you know-they say that if they pay for one, we’ll take others, so it’s against their law. The rahax was angry.”
“Well, he still shouldn’t have let them treat her like this, as if this were a raiders’ camp. Come on, Earth girl, we have to clean you and see you’re sound.”
“Why?” Swindapa asked.
The woman sawing the leash tugged on it painfully. “The rahax says it.”
“Careful,” the older women said. To Swindapa: “Foreigners came today, in a great ship.”
“Wizards,” the younger woman said, spitting in the dirt and making the sign of the horns. “Night Ones, maybe.”
“No, these Eagle People are men. Maybe wizards, and very strange, but men,” the older woman said. She had a plump face, with four braids of graying black hair secured by bronze rings. Her voice was not unkind as she spoke to Swindapa. “Don’t worry, you’ll be treated better when you have one master to protect you. The rahax is to give you as a feasting-gift tomorrow. You’ll be the stranger chief’s. If you please him, you might be free soon, even become a second or third wife. You’ll live well then-the strangers are rich and powerful. Come, we’ve got soaproot and sweet herbs, and then we’re to feed you. That will feel better, won’t it?”
“Why do we have to carry these pigstickers, sir?” one of the cadets asked, looking dubiously at the spear he’d been handed.
“Because the natives don’t know what guns are, and we aren’t going to let them know unless we need to surprise them, and we don’t want them to think we’re unarmed except for funny-looking clubs, either,” Lieutenant Walker said. He looked around with a bright-eyed interest that was somehow also cool. “Now shut up.”
Alston noted the byplay and forced herself to stop fiddling with her gloves. She was in dress uniform-well, mostly, damned if she was going to wear a skirt-and a lot was riding on the impression she made. The medal ribbons were ridiculous, but that was one of the Coast Guard’s little foibles. You could get four or five of them just for getting out of boot camp or the Academy.
There were twenty in the shore party: herself, Arnstein, Rosenthal, Walker, and an escort of cadets, picked largely because they still remembered how to march smartly in step, not something the Coast Guard generally put much emphasis on. The cadets all had Army Kevlar helmets from Nantucket, a little incongruous but better than anything available locally. They carried spears and shields made up in the island machine shop, for show, and likewise short swords. The pistols at their waists and the rifles and shotguns across their backs were for emergency use. If it came to that she supposed they could shoot their way out without much problem; people who’d never been exposed to firearms of any sort would scatter at the first blast and not stop running for a while.
And it had better not come to that. They needed the grain back on the island. Badly. Besides, she didn’t relish the thought of gunning down men virtually unarmed.
She was wearing a sword herself, one she’d saved several years to buy, back in her early twenties in San Francisco, and a shorter companion on the other side of her belt. She wondered for a moment what Sensei Hishiba would think of where the set of katana and wakizashi had ended up���
“Let’s go,” she said. “Ms. Rapczewicz, you have the deck.”
The boatswain’s pipes squealed. “Eagle departing!” rang out as she stepped into the boat and the davits swung out to lower it. The ship’s bell rang three times, then again a single time.
Oars bit the water; the boats threw long shadows ahead of themselves as the sun sank behind. Bonfires blossomed ahead, up and down the shoreline, but the forest inland was a rustling sea of darkness. When full dark came, the sky overhead would be a frosted blaze of stars, as it never was ashore in her own time. A low chanting was running through the crowds ahead, backlit against their fires, deep men’s voices and a keening female oversong weaving among trumpets that sounded like nothing so much as Tibetan radongs. Drumbeat thudded under it��� no, she realized, that was the sound of feet, pounding the earth in unison. A crawling went up her spine, less fear than sheer lonesomeness. The oars caught slightly.
“Steady there,” she said.
The boats’ keels grounded on sand and shingle. Oars nipped up in unison, and the landing party disembarked. The sailor crews pushed the boats off again, to wait ready just in case.
Marian Alston stepped ashore onto dry land that crunched under her boots. The chanting and stamping cut off. A bristle of trumpets sounded again, upright shapes six feet long with gaping mouths shaped like the heads of wolves and boars. The cadets formed around her and the other off
icer, except for those who were lugging the bundles of gifts. She blinked aside strangeness and the failing light to see what awaited her.
More of the green boughs, for starters-evidently a peace signal, like the Biblical olive branch. A group of men waited, in the leather kilts she’d come to expect but with brightly dyed tunics and leggings as well, bracelets and neck rings of chased gold, pendant necklaces of amber and gold, silver pectorals set with colored stones. Behind them their chariots were drawn up. The horses wore headdresses of nodding plumes, and hangings of felt covered with writhing colored applique shapes of animals and monsters along their flanks.
“Captain,” Arnstein murmured into her ear. “Look at the ones standing off to the left.”
Her eyes moved that way. Several men. Shorter than the ones about them, black-haired and olive-skinned, cleanshaven, dressed in linen tunics, their ornaments more restrained and subtly��� different. She gave an imperceptible nod and kept up her steady pace. A man was moving out to meet her, flanked by warriors of his own. Big, easily six feet, three inches taller than she and towering by the standards of this age, she guessed, and massively built. His chest strained at his sheet-bronze breastplate, decorated with raised hammered spirals over the nipples and gold studs along the neck and waist. The impression of height was increased by the bronze helmet he wore, rounded at the front and back, flat sides rising to a peak embellished by a fore-and-aft crest running from brow to nape of neck.
Talk about your dickheads, she thought irreverently; it helped break the hieratic mood.
A gold disk engraved with the sun hung on his chest; the haft of the war ax sloped over his shoulder was set with rings of bronze and gold, the falcon-bill head inlaid in silver, and he bore a long bronze sword at his waist. His beard was glossy brown streaked with gray, forked and held by more rings of gold where it trailed down on his barrel chest. The beginnings of a potbelly added to his impression of thick-armed strength. He raised the ax in a curious gesture and rested it on the ground, spoke in a rumbling bass.
Island in the Sea of Time Page 14