Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  Everything seemed to move very slowly after that. He took two steps forward. The Zarthani turned toward him, lips peeled back from his teeth, the ax whirling. For an instant his ringer froze on the trigger. I’m not a killer. He never knew just what it was that released him; perhaps it was the crooked cross painted on the man’s shield. The barbarian wasn’t a Nazi, but he was near enough to an original-article Aryan as no matter.

  Thudump. He’d fired at less than four feet distance, with the butt of the shotgun clamped between elbow and ribs. Recoil spun him around and wrenched at his arm, nearly tearing the weapon away. He turned back with desperate speed, bringing it up to his shoulder. His finger tightened even as he saw the chewed red ruin the deershot had made of the man’s chest. Thudump. A bruising, hammering blow to his shoulder, and the muzzles twisted skyward. Momentum had put the barbarian’s contorted face less than a yard from the business end of the shotgun. He flipped backward, his face splashing away from the shattered bones of his skull. Bits of it struck, spattering on Ian’s face and chest, a lump of something gelatinous slapping into his open mouth. He dropped to his knees and vomited in uncontrollable reflex, shuddering and spitting to clear his mouth.

  Even then he clutched the shotgun to his chest, and tried to open the breech to reload it. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary. The retreating American had stopped when the odds against him dropped to even. The other Zarthani faltered, shocked by the thunderous sound and the sudden death beside him. While he goggled the American sheathed his short sword in the man’s belly, ripped it out, and bowled the dying barbarian over with a slamming blow from his shield. The petty officer levered herself back erect, and it was the last Zarthani’s turn to retreat helplessly before numbers. He was far more vulnerable, though. A moment’s clatter and boom, and he was down on his knees, coughing blood and clutching at his chest. A short hard chop put the edge of a gladius into the back of his neck with a tooth-grating wet chunk-crack sound, like an ax going into damp wood.

  “God bless the Ginsu,” the American wheezed, freeing his blade with a jerk. “Slices, dices, julienne-fries.”

  Ian wiped his mouth on his sleeve and dropped his weapon, fumbling at Doreen’s head with trembling fingers. “Oh, God, she can’t die,” he mumbled, knowing that he lied.

  The wound was bleeding freely, leaving his hands red to the wrist, but he couldn’t find any crack in the bone. That didn’t mean there wasn’t internal damage, pressure on the brain. He peeled back one eyelid and then the other; the left pupil was larger, and didn’t shrink as much.

  “Oh, God.”

  He put an arm under her shoulders and another behind her knees and straightened up, not feeling the strain, and walked over to the aid station.

  The doctor there had splashes of blood on his gown. “Head wound?” he said. Ian nodded, afraid to speak. The gloved fingers probed, washed, and probed again.

  “Not too bad,” the medic said. Ian felt an enormous shuddering sensation of relief, so strong that he had to grip the edge of the table as his knees loosened.

  “I think,” the medico added. “No fracture��� concussion��� probably be sick as a dog for a couple of days. This scalp wound is superficial, doesn’t even need a stitch.” He looked up to his assistant. “Bandage it. Next!”

  He followed while Doreen was laid out on a blanket, with another over her. People bumped into him. At last an orderly spoke:

  “Sir, you’re in the f��� goddam way. She’s going to be out for hours. Couldn’t you move?”

  He did, getting a drink of water and trying to force his mind back into action. He found the captain standing with her helmet under one arm, talking with a knot of her officers and a worshipful-looking pair of Fiernan Spear Chosen.

  “��� five dead, and twenty seriously wounded,” someone was saying.

  “Damn,” Alston said sadly. “Well, no worse than I expected-better, actually.” She looked around. “We’ll make camp over there. Ditch and obstacles, if you please; best we get into the habit. Let’s get on with it. As I understand it, we have to wait for permission to approach the Great Wisdom anyway. Ah, Ian.”

  Her gaze sharpened on him, taking in the spatters and the blood on his hands; there was some drying across the front of her breastplate as well, and up her right armguard. “Not hurt, I hope?”

  “No��� Doreen was.” He swallowed, “That is, she got a thump on the head. I had to, that is, use the shotgun. The doctor says she’ll be fine.”

  “Glad you’re both all right,” she said. “Come take a look at this.”

  He forced down an irrational spurt of anger. She’s got more than us to think about. At least the emotion served to break through the glassy, numb feeling he’d had since the ugly scrimmage among the wagons. They walked out into the ghastly remains. The dead were thickly scattered across three hundred yards of beaten ground, singly and in clumps. The ground was actually sticky with blood in places; the broad triple-edged heads of the heavy arrows cut gruesome channels through flesh and internal organs. Some of the barbarians were still moving, missed by the Fiernan pursuers. The ground smelled a little like an old-fashioned butcher’s shop where blood and meat had gone slightly off in the sun, and more like an outdoor toilet.

  Like a Marrakesh souk, only worse, Ian thought, gagging slightly. “One thing I can tell you,” he said. “You probably won’t have any trouble from this particular tribe anytime soon.”

  Alston looked at him, eyebrows raised. “They seemed remarkably stubborn to me,” she said. “Zarthani is what this here bunch’re called, by the way.”

  Ian shook his head. “From what we saw of the Iraiina and what Swindapa’s said, not many of these tribes are more than four, five thousand people,” he said. “You��� we��� probably killed something like every third male of military age in the Zarthani tribe’s entire population in less than an hour, plus a lot of their leaders. They can’t have battles like this very often. Couldn’t afford them.”

  “Good point,” she said, musing. “I think they were plenty surprised, all right.” A bleak smile: “Remember the night before the fight with the Indians, when I said what we lacked was experienced troops? We’re quickly makin’ that lack good.”

  Where the line of battle had stood, the Zarthani dead lay thicker, two deep where the hedge of spears had met them. The smell was riper; spearheads and swords had pierced the abdominal cavity more often than not. Ian tried to avoid looking at the faces. Alston bent and pulled the light frame of a chariot upright, tumbling a corpse off it.

  “Notice anythin’?” she said.

  Breathing through his mouth, Ian forced himself to look. After a moment he blinked.

  “Iron tires!” he said, and bent closer, adjusting his glasses.

  “Heat-shrunk on. Iron coulter pins, too, and those spokes were turned on a lathe.” His gaze went forward to the dead horses. “Collar harnesses, too, by God. And horseshoes.”

  “Walker,” Alston said, making the name a quiet curse. “That’ll increase their military potential quite drastically.”

  “That’s not the half of it, Mar-Captain. That yoke-and-strap harness these people were using chokes a horse when it pulls. With a collar, it’s four, five times more efficient-perhaps more. It revolutionized agriculture in the Middle Ages. I suppose he’s given them stirrups, too. Faster transportation. I wonder what else he’s come up with?”

  Working parties of Americans and Fiernans were stripping the bodies of anything useful and hauling them off, and cautiously taking the enemy wounded toward the aid station. A hundred or so were digging a long trench, six feet deep, spadefuls of the light chalky earth flying up. Ian winced a little again. Granted, it was necessary sanitation, but���

  Alston pointed out another body. “This for starters.”

  He bent, ignoring the flies walking across the fixed, dry eyes. “Chain mail,” he said, a little redundantly, and looked closer. “Machine-drawn wire, I’d say, but the rest looks like h
andwork.”

  He stood, eyes absent. “I wonder if he-Dr. Hong, actually, I suppose-has told them about antiseptic childbirth? That’d start a population explosion all by itself��� He’s already done enough to turn this society-this continent-upside down. God alone knows how it’ll evolve now.”

  “God may know, but I hope we’ll have some say in the matter,” Alston said grimly. “Well, back to work. I don’t think our absent friend is going to be wasting his time. I should look in on the wounded.”

  “Captain. Captain Alston.”

  She turned, a slightly different expression on her face. “Captain��� can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure, Ian,” she said. There was nobody within overhearing distance, if they kept their voices down. Nobody alive, anyway.

  “What���” He wet his lips, then nearly retched at the memory of what had flown into them. “What do you think about killing people?”

  The thin eyebrows went up, and her face changed-out of the commander’s mode, and into a friend’s face for a moment. She squeezed his arm, then looked around at the aftermath of the fight. “It’s disgusting,” she said quietly. “Afterward, that is. At the time��� at the time I’m concentrating too hard to feel much of anythin’, mostly.”

  He nodded. “That’s��� do you find yourself, ah, thinking about it a lot?”

  “Dreams, flashbacks, that sort of thing?” He nodded. She went on: “Not so far. Takes people different ways. My daddy, he was in Korea, it still hit him now and then; he’d take a bottle and go out and sit in the woods, but I don’t think that’s my way. Losing my own people, yes, that bothers me��� but if these men wanted to stay safe, they shouldn’t have attacked me. And if that says somethin’ unfavorable about me as a human being, I don’t give much of a damn.”

  After a moment she began to murmur. Somewhat to his astonishment, he realized she was reciting poetry:

  “I am afraid to think about my death,

  When it shall be, and whether in great pain

  I shall rise up and fight the air for breath,

  Or calmly wait the bursting of my brain.

  “I am no coward who could seek in fear

  A folklore solace or sweet Indian tales:

  I know dead men are deaf and cannot hear

  The singing of a thousand nightingales.

  “I know dead men are blind and cannot see

  The friend that shuts in horror their big eyes,

  And they are witless-O, I’d rather be

  A living mouse than dead as a man dies.”

  She looked around again. “Say what you like about killin’, it sure beats the alternative.”

  Ian remembered Doreen falling under the ax. Two Fiernans were picking up a dead Zarthani, lifting by the legs and under the arms, grunting as they swung the limp weight into the grave trench.

  “I see what you mean,” he said slowly. And I actually feel better. Unsuspected depths, the captain has.

  “Hooooly shit,” one of the Americans said. “Quiet,” Cuddy barked.

  He’d seen local war parties often enough, over the past eight months-never from the receiving end, though. The main difference with this lot was that there weren’t any chariots; probably too difficult to ship. He could identify the chiefs by their bronze helmets, grouped around a pole with an aurochs skull for a standard. The warriors milled about, a hundred or so of them, working themselves up for a rush, trampling the young grain. Even at two hundred yards or more he could sense their nervousness; this was the dwelling place of the sorcerer Hwalkarz and the Lady of Pain. On the other hand, they also held riches beyond the dreams of avarice, and what was even more important to the locals, a challenge and the prospect of glory.

  “Well, come on, there’s only eighteen of us,” Cuddy yelled. “What’re you waiting for, your mommies to tell you it’s okay?”

  It seemed like the sort of thing the boss would say in a situation like this. Some of the Iraiina at his back laughed, and one or two of the Americans. One of them spoke, licking his lips:

  “Hey, ain’t you going to see them off, Cuddy?”

  He had the butt of the Garand resting on one hip; he’d clicked a modified twenty-round magazine into it. He’d done a hitch in the Crotch, been in the Gulf, but they’d trained him on M-16s. For present purposes he preferred the old battle rifle. These.30-06 rounds had real authority.

  With luck, he wouldn’t have to use them. “Nah,” he said. “Ammo’s too expensive. Let’s use what we can make.”

  He turned to the Mule. The catapult lay ready, throwing arm back and a barrel resting in it, double-strapped with thick bands and wire. Within that barrel was another, and between them were scrap iron, rocks, and pieces of hard pottery. A long cord hung from the side. Cuddy stepped over to it and pulled out his lighter.

  “Flick of the Bic,” he said, grinning at the weapon’s crew.

  They were looking a little nervous as he touched the flame to the fuse. It sputtered and refused to take for a moment. Then the red dot and trailing blue smoke raced ahead, hung fire again, raced ahead.

  “Fire!” he yelled, skipping backward.

  The Mule kicked, its rear wheels lifting clear of the mud as the throwing bar slammed into the padded top. The barrel traced an arc across the lowering gray sky, trailing faint smoke. The men around the spot where the barrel was headed simply opened their ranks to let it land, then stopped in puzzlement when it didn’t break apart or burst into flame. One stepped forward curiously and prodded it with a spear. Others gathered around him, unwilling to be outdone in courage. Cuddy fought back a giggle as another rocked it with his foot. A stab of fear followed it. It was a damp day; not exactly rainy, but full of that particularly English raw misty chill. What if the fuse had gone KRRRAACK!

  A red snap in the heart of the Kayaltwar, and bodies flung backward like jointed rag dolls, a spurting pillar of gray-black smoke and pulverized dirt and body parts. His giggle became a full-throated laugh. Probably fifty or sixty of the eastern tribesmen lay dead or writhing around the small crater where ten pounds of gunpowder had gone off. Most of the rest were running, screaming and throwing away their weapons, running or hobbling or limping and crawling.

  Their Sky Father showed His wrath by throwing thunderbolts.

  A few were running toward the Walkerburg men. As the boss liked to say, the locals often made up for their lack of know-how by sheer balls. Cuddy studied them through the telescopic sight, murmuring bang��� bang��� to himself as he tracked from one to the other. The men with Nantucket-style crossbows were taking careful aim too, and firing. None of the Kayaltwar got closer than fifty yards.

  “Well, as the boss says, nobody said to stop working,” Cuddy said, when the whoops and back-slapping had died down a little. Some of the Iraiina were looking a little shaky; they were Sky Father’s children too. On the other hand, the Big Boss God had just shown his favor to their lord rather unmistakably. “Let’s get shackles on the survivors,” he finished. “And we’ll have to scout down to Daurthunnicar’s and get a message to the boss.”

  He thought Walker would be rather pleased.

  Marian Alston woke to the sound of a bugle. It was followed by the familiar bellow: “Reveille, reveille; heave out, trice up, lash and stow, lash and stow!”

  She blinked, drowsy with sleep and the warmth of Swindapa’s back against her chest. No help for it. It was still dark outside the tent, turning to the peculiar gray-black of predawn, cool and raw under scudding cloud. C’mon, woman, set an example for the crew��� the troops. It still felt damned odd, commanding a force ashore.

  And today’s the day. Crucial to the success or failure of her mission; on a personal note, she was going to meet Swindapa’s kindred. The Fiernan’s eyes danced as they exchanged a good-morning kiss.

  “Water, ma’am.”

  A bucket outside the door, waiting when they came back from the latrines. She and Swindapa knelt beside it, scrubbing in the cold river
water and then brushing their teeth; nudity taboos were going the way of computers and toilet paper, with a mixed force living in the field. She looked at her watch, a self-winding mechanical model, a minor privilege of rank: five in the morning exactly. The square marching camp stirred into a hive of orderly activity as she dressed in the working uniform they’d designed over the winter, tough olive-drab jacket and trousers. They weren’t intolerably smelly yet, but the quilted padding for the armor was, rank as a ferret and difficult to wash out here. Swindapa wrinkled her nose, and they switched to the alternate sets; they were going to have to make a good impression today. When they left the tent a squad had it struck down within minutes, well before they reached the head of their mess line. Breakfast was stale bread, butter and cheese, and slices of cold roast pork, with purified water or milk brought to a rolling boil for ten minutes-the doctors had insisted on that, after one look at the way dairy cattle were kept here. It was also one of the reasons she’d kept everyone at the base camp where they’d landed for some days, time for digestions to adapt as much as they were going to.

  Amazing how you get used to things, she thought, looking at the others breaking camp in the gradually increasing light. A year ago��� A year ago, TV and takeout Chinese, flush toilets and daily showers and a spray for the pits, riding in cars, taking a 747 and vacationing in the Rockies. A world where smells were flushed away, and everything was so damned easy. No homicidal savages with spears���

  “No, just homicidal savages with Tech-9s,” Alston muttered to herself. One of the few merits of low technology was that it was difficult to do a drive-by with an ax.

  She dusted crumbs off her gorget and then put on her helmet, clipping the cheekpieces together under her chin. Working parties had already packed the coils of barbed wire back on the wagons; others were shoveling the embankment down into the ditch. Little was left of the rest of the encampment, and less every second. Squads were filling their canteens at the water barrels-easier to purify in bulk-and falling in. Alston looked at her watch again and nodded in satisfaction. Quite an improvement since the first night on the march, much less what they’d done back on the island in practice. Cold raindrops began to tinkle on her helmet, not a steady drizzle but occasional bursts from the ragged clouds overhead. She ignored it, as the troops on foot did. The only people traveling dry would be the wounded under the canvas tilts on the wagons.