On the Oceans of Eternity Read online

  Much heavier and we'll have to come about into the wind and heave to. Can't run before it, or even scud. Christ, no, she thought, as a wave came across the forward third of the ship's starboard side, swirled across the waist deck and poured out of the scuppers. Not nearly as much sea room as she'd like.

  Another glance to starboard. Thirty ships, counting every transport. As many as Nantucket could spare, with a minimum to keep essential trade running and patrol the oceans near home-trying another invasion would be suicidal for the Tartessians, but you never knew what a desperate man would do.

  It was far more than the Republic could afford to lose, that was for certain.

  And then there was the Farragut. She thought again about the design of the steam ram's bows, a nagging concern. They'd had to mount the heavy steel plates before they left, with action in the offing on arrival at Tartessos. The steam ram was a bad enough seakeeper without them. With the added weight forward she sailed the way a whale swam-always rolling about and inclined to dive unexpectedly. Bad luck, to run into a storm with that bastard designer's compromise along…

  At least she can claw off to windward under power, if need be, she thought.

  In a sailing ship the only thing you could do with a lee shore was go aground on it, when you started to lose more in leeway than you made in headway won on each tack. And when a storm mounted past a certain force, even the most weatherly ship sagged more and more to leeward with each extra knot of wind speed. Her mind drew the parallelogram of forces for each ship in the fleet, varying with their depth of keel and their ability to point to windward, correlated it with their positions relative to the coast to the southeast and what she knew of the set of the oceans around here.

  Safe enough, so long as it doesn't get much worse. Or if it waits more than six or eight hours to get worse. Otherwise, we've got a marginal situation here.

  "Mr. Jenkins, I'm goin' below," she said. "Please have me woken if there's a substantial change in the wind, or any important messages from the fleet." At least every ship had a well-maintained pre-Event radio this time, and Guard or Marine techs to maintain it.

  "Aye, aye, ma'am!"

  She turned and rounded the low deckhouse, one hand lightly on the safety line strung beside it, water swirling calf high around her sea boots as the ship took a black wave edged in white froth. She waited until it had run free through the scuppers and then opened the hatch and went down the companion-way. The Chamberlain had forty-six feet of raised quarterdeck and this space beneath; the companionway ended in a bulkhead, with corridors to either side lined with the little cubicles of officers' quarters, the galley, and officers' mess. Right ahead was a tub made from a large barrel split lengthwise. It had a couple of inches of water sloshing around in it, and wet-weather gear hanging from pegs above. She added her own. In a gale, it mainly served to break the force of the wind; her uniform was sopping, and her skin crinkled beneath it.

  Someday I'll be too old for this shit, she thought. It's the only good thing I can think of about getting old. Of course, I intend to get as much fun as I can out of being a crotchety old lady, and if I can think of some way to shock the grandchildren, so much the better.

  Her own quarters were to the rear, the stern cabin of the ship-what would have been Jenkins's, if his frigate weren't also the flagship. She returned the salute of the Marine sentry, who looked sleepily alert, and went through into the darkness. The heavy plank deadlights were secured over the broad stretch of inward-sloping windows to the rear, and it was pitch-black. A heavy fluffy towel lay over the back of a chair whose legs were bolted to the deck at the central table; she smiled gratitude as she stripped and dried herself off. Her teeth were still nearly chattering in the raw chill of the cabin. Wooden ships and central heating didn't go together, nor could they ever be completely dry in heavy weather-oak beam and plank just weren't steel girders and welded plate.

  The Chamberlain was a dry ship by those standards; there weren't any drips or spurts of water, just a pervasive dampness.

  And I'm a tropical bird, she thought. Say what you like about South Carolina, it isn't usually like this.

  That made the bed's dry warmth doubly delicious as she slipped under the covers. She carefully stayed on her side of it, though. Normally Swindapa didn't wake if Alston came to bed late, just rolled over and grappled in her sleep like a semiconscious octopus, but contact from an expanse of sea-chilled flesh…

  Might as well drop ice cubes down her spine. Instead Alston pulled the covers to her chin and lay on her left side, with her knees braced against the padded six-inch board that rimmed the cabinward side of the bunk in rough weather.

  The Farragut should be all right, ran obsessively through her mind. So, she doesn't have as much reserve buoyancy as I'd like, particularly with the armor and ram reinforcement fitted. She's still tight, and she can still maneuver under power. She will be all right. Go to sleep, Goddammit!

  It wasn't only that there were a hundred-odd crewfolk aboard her, or that Trudeau was an officer she'd shaped and a friend besides. That all mattered, but Alston also had to fight when she got where she was going. Farragut was a boar-hog beside the deadly gracefulness of the clipper-frigates, and barely seaworthy in the deep oceans, but she was a good third of the fleet's fighting power. I need that ship, dammit. For Tartessos, and afterward. Of course, the Coast Guard fleet had superior guns, not to mention gunnery-the Tartessian vessels in the attack last spring had been carrying fairly crude stuff; cast-iron or bronze eighteen-pounders at most, the sort of thing Nantucket had been turning out in the Year 3, and it had cost them heavily against the poured-steel eight-inch Dahlgrens of the Islanders. Far heavier shot and greater range and accuracy, for about the same weight on the gun deck.

  Now, will it be better to engage at a distance, try to keep them off and pound them? Then again, if we close we have the-

  "You're freezing," a voice said in her ear. Warmth pressed against her, along back and legs, as her partner curled near spoon fashion. Arms wrapped around her, slender and strong, and she smelled the clean familiar scent of healthy skin and Nantucket Briar shampoo.

  "Didn't want to wake you, sugar," she murmured in the darkness.

  "I can feel your spirit," Swindapa said. "And the knots in your back. There's nothing you can do about the weather that you haven't done! Turn around so I can get at it, then let all the thoughts go, and sleep."

  She obeyed, sighing slightly as slender fingers kneaded her neck and shoulders and down along her spine, then up to massage her scalp through the inch-long cap of tight wiry curls. When they had finished she felt as if her head was floating on the pillow, instead of being tied to her shoulders with heated iron rods.

  "Sleep, bin'HOtse-khwon," her partner's voice murmured in the darkness. The lack of light was like black velvet pressing against her eyes now, and the other's breath went warm across her cheek. "Sleep now."

  Damn, Alston thought, on the soft creamy edge of unconsciousness. But it's nice to be… settled. Gives a center to your life. And you can feel really close snugglin'.

  Baaamm.

  Princess Raupasha of Mitanni swayed backward slightly as the shotgun punched at her shoulder. The sharp thudump of the second barrel's buckshot was nearly lost in the hammering of hooves, the crunching whir of the tires over sandy dirt, the creak of wood and leather and wicker.

  "Aika-wartanna!" she cried. One turn.

  Her driver pulled the horses into a turn so tight that the right wheel came off the ground. The whole crew leaned in that direction, to put their weight against the force trying to overturn the war-cart. The wheel thumped back down and she snatched out the next weapon from the leather bucket fastened to the chariot's side and turned to keep the target in view. It was straw lashed to a pole amid a forest of others, each shaped roughly like a man and each with clay jugs of water inside. That leaked out where the lead balls had scourged the straw, making a dramatic stain on the dried grain-stalks.

  Thudump.

>   "Tera-wartanna!" Three turns. Thudump.

  Straw and pottery and water flew out. She handed the shotgun off to her loader with a show of nonchalance. Inwardly she exulted as the driver pulled the team aside, slowing them from the pounding gallop to a trot and then to a walk, soothing them as he reined in.

  As I dreamed, Raupasha thought, looking behind her at the watching teams of her squadron. As I dreamed, but never hoped…

  Her foster father Tushratta had hoped the child beneath the heart of King Shuttarna's wife would be a son, to avenge his lord; that was why he'd smuggled her out, rather than dying by Shuttarna's side in battle with the Assyrians. Instead the royal woman had borne a daughter and died herself. In the lonely desert manor to which he'd fled he had raised Raupasha much as he would have that longed-for son, and her bedtime stories had been of Mitanni's ancient glories. How often in the chariot beside him, hunting gazelle or lion in the wastelands, had she dreamed herself as a great King like Shaushtar or Parsatatar in the epics! Bending the bow and scattering the enemies of her people like the lightning bolts of Indara Thunderer.

  I do not have the strength of arm to bend the bow of a mariyannu warrior, she thought. But I can pull the trigger of this gun as well as any. True lightning, as I dreamed.

  The other chariots gathered around at her gesture. She looked at them with pride. Such a little while ago her Mitannians had come to war in creaking chariots with warped wheels, relics hidden for a generation from the Assyrian overlords. The hand of Asshur had lain heavy on the Hurrian folk, and still heavier on their onetime lords. The artificers and silver of the Eagle People had given her two hundred sound chariots-with iron-rimmed wheels, and collar harnesses and iron shoes for the horses themselves. Each war-cart held three, Hittite-fashion; a driver, a warrior, and a loader for the firearms that replaced the horn-backed bows of old. The foot soldiers now had rifles, and drilled under the critical eye of Marine noncoms.

  "You see," she said, when they were gathered around. "The shotguns and the rifles hit further and harder than bow or javelin."

  Just then a young spotted hound leaped into her chariot; she ruffled its ears absently, and it put its paws on the railing, waiting eagerly for a run to drive the wind into its nose.

  "Down, Sabala," she said sharply.

  The dog let his ears droop and curled up out of sight on the wicker-and-lath floor of the chariot with a deep sigh.

  A warrior spoke; a lord named Tekhip-tilla who had much gray in his black beard, a man who had fought in the last wars of the old kingdom. "Princess, they do." He looked at the fire-weapons racked snugly in leather scabbards on the rail of his chariot. "But I have already seen that this means a man on foot with a rifle is a much smaller target than a chariot… and he can shoot more steadily. Can chariots go near such, and live?"

  Raupasha nodded. "But most of the enemy host will not have rifles," she said. "Only the…" She thought, searching for a Hurrian phrase that would match the English concept of a standing army. "Only the… household troops of the Wolf Lord. His barbarian allies, the Ringapi, they will fight mostly with spear and sword and bow, in chariots and afoot. Them we will strike. Also, there are other weapons that our allies the Eagle People will give us-stronger weapons."

  A murmur of awe at that; everyone here had seen the Nantukhtar ship of the air and their other wonders.

  "Here is a handfast man of the Nantukhtar lord Kenn'et. He will tell you of the mortars and rocket launchers…"

  When explanation was finished and the cheering had died down, Raupasha flung up her arms. "Yes, we shall have weapons of great power-like the Maruts of Indara Thunderer-or the sons of Teshub," she added, switching the metaphor to a God more familiar to ordinary folk. "But no weapon is mighty without the skill and courage of the warrior who wields it! Are your hands skilled to war, your hearts full of Agni's fire?"

  "Yes!" they roared.

  "Good, for this is not a war of a day, of a week, or a season. This is a war where only men fit to bestride the universe may hope to conquer. Our allies-those who freed us from the yoke of Asshur-fight across the wide world and call us to fight at their side. Shall they call in vain?"

  "No! No!"

  When they left the practice field for camp, it was as a proud column of twos, stretching back in a plume of dust and a proud glitter of arms. Sabala stood proudly, too, basking in her reflected glory, paws on the forward railing of the chariot and ears flapping as arrogantly as the banner above her.

  Now, if only you were Kenn'et, she thought a little desolately, resting her hand on the hound's skull and looking northward; it would be weeks before she could rejoin the Nantukhtar lord. His tail beat happily against her leg and the side of the chariot. Never would she forget the sight of Kenn'et, bending above her; when she'd lost consciousness dangling by her thumbs with her feet six inches over the Assyrian preparations for a hot low fire.

  I did not know, then, she thought. Then she had only thought him handsome, and brave, and a warrior-wizard. But now I know. Whatever King Kashtiliash thinks, you are my lord. And I will have you for my man as well, though I die for it.

  Something woke the commodore. Not the pendulum-bob way she and Swindapa were sliding back and forth in the bunk; they were thoroughly used to that. Perhaps a different note in the scream of the wind in the rigging, or in the endless groaning complaint of the ship's fabric. Her first thought was:

  Blowing harder. Goddammit, wish I'd been wrong.

  She disentangled herself from arms and legs and sat up. Swindapa could blink alert in a second, when she had to. When she didn't she preferred to come awake slowly, drifting up from the depths. Marian put one hand on a grip-loop bolted to the bulkhead and worked the sparker on the gimbaled lantern by the bunk with the other. The sparks cascaded like miniature lightning inside the thick wire-braced glass of the chimney, and then the cotton wick caught. She turned it up, and the yellow kerosene light ran off the polished curly maple and black walnut of the commander's cabin, and the gray steel of the two stern-chasers lashed down near either rear corner. Otherwise, it was austere enough, a couple of chests and cupboards, family pictures, a shelf of books secured with hinged straps above her desk and the rack for her sextant, the semicircle of seats below the shuttered stern windows and the big central table with the map still fastened down in its holder, and Swindapa's desk on the other side. That was flanked by filing cabinets; even a Kurlelo Grandmother's art of memory was stretched when it came to the logistics of a force this size, and Lieutenant Commander Swindapa Kurlelo-Alston handled most of those details.

  Thank you for Swindapa, Lord Jesus. Or Moon Woman, or fate, Alston thought, not for the first time. But usually it isn't her genius for paperwork that I'm thinkin' of.

  The cabin also had a chronometer and barometer set into the wall. She looked at those and raised her eyebrows. Three hours' sleep, and after all that time the glass was still falling. This was going to be a bad one. Then she looked up at the repeater-compass that showed as a dial above the bunk, slaved to the main instrument in the binnacle at the wheels. Uh-oh.

  Swindapa was yawning and stretching behind her as she pulled on wool longjohns and a fresh uniform. It was a cold-weather pattern, the wool unfulled. That made the dye a little patchy, but it also shed rain almost as well as oilcloth. She was nearly dressed when the knock came at the door.

  "Commodore! Message from the Farragut!

  "Thank you, yeoman," she said to the signals tech, opening the door and taking the transcript.

  Shipping heavy water, violent roll, engines stressing hull frames but pumps keeping pace. Alston winced. Boilers were heavy. She read the rest: Striking all sail and heaving to under paddles alone. Captain Trudeau.

  "A reply, ma'am?"

  "Acknowledge, luck be with you, and hourly updates," she said.

  "And ma'am, the captain sends his compliments, and he's bringing her around into the wind. The storm's strengthening."

  "Tell Commander Jenkins that I'll be on deck pre
sently."

  Swindapa clubbed her long yellow hair into a fighting braid at her nape and shrugged into her uniform. Alone, they gave a moment to a fierce hug and then put on their official faces, plus their oilskins and sou'westers, tying the cords under their chins as they went up the companionway to the fantail deck. Water crashed into their faces as they came on deck, flying in hard sheets over the port bow of the ship and tearing down the two hundred feet to the quarterdeck through pitch-dark chaos. Each of them put an elbow about the starboard safety line as they ran forward in bursts to the wheel and binnacle, struggling to keep their feet as the wind tried to fling them backward like scraps of paper in a storm. The gale from the north was cutting across the long Atlantic westward swell, creating a chaos of waves that had the bowsprit following a cork-screw pattern, heaving the ship in what seemed like three directions at once.

  Lower topsails, she noted, looking up into the rigging for what the ship's commander had set. And foretopsail staysail.

  Good. The Chamberlain's bows were pointing northwest now, up into the wind. Theoretically they were tacking, but there was no chance of making any real forward way in weather like this. You didn't want to; the object was to keep the ship moving as slowly as possible and still have steerageway, so that she rode the incoming waves rather than cutting into them. They were probably drifting a little to leeward, overall-the mass of ocean beneath her was too-but Chamberlain should come through all right if nothing important gave way.

  There was a group around the wheels; Commander Jenkins, his XO, and the officer of the deck as well, with a couple of ensigns and middies looking on anxiously.