On the Oceans of Eternity Read online

  All hail the Demon King, Arnstein thought, surprised at the sardonic note his mind could still muster. Although I've seen something awfully like that… where… That was it; the black outfit Luke Skywalker wore when he walked into Jabba the Hull's palace in the third Star Wars flick, Return of the Jedi.

  Oh, Jesus, he thought. I've been captured by psychotic media fans.

  Walker took three quick strides, still smiling, and jerked the older man half-erect with a hand wound into his beard.

  "What, Professor? No witty repartee? No crushing pop-culture put-downs? I'm disappointed, Dr. Arnstein, I really am."

  Arnstein set his teeth against the pain in his face. Well, I did think about saying: I have no use for these two 'droids, but under the circumstances, that would probably be indiscreet.

  Alice Hong sauntered over, smiling. "I can take it from here, Will," she said. "Rest assured, he'll give you chapter and verse, very soon."

  The wall behind him made it impossible to shrink backward. He wanted to, though.

  "Alice, Alice," Walker said, giving a reproving click of his tongue. "You still haven't noticed something."

  "What, Will?"

  He released the older man and turned, holding up his index finger. "You can only torture a man to death once." He turned back to Arnstein and put the fingertip near his right eye. "But keep in mind, Professor, that you can always do it once. So strive to be useful."

  He turned to the gray-uniformed officer and switched to Achaean: "Captain Philowergos, this man is to be taken to the ships under close guard, and shipped to Walkeropolis at the first opportunity."

  "Yes, Your Majesty," the man said, saluting and inclining his head. "To Section One?"

  "No, no." Walker glanced at Arnstein and winked. "I don't think Operations Minister Mittler likes you, Professor. You've put sticks in the spokes of too many of his wheels-and he's prejudiced. He was a commie in this life, but I think he wore those flashy double-lightning-bolt runes in a previous existence. Hmmm."

  A snap of his fingers brought paper and pen. He scribbled quickly. "Category One confinement. You'll be quite comfortable, Professor… physically at least. And when I have the time, we'll have a nice long chat, hey?"

  "Oh, Will, really now-are you expecting to turn him to the Dark Side of the Force, or something? Let's interrogate him and kill him. Simpler, safer, more fun."

  "Not now, Alice!"

  The soldiers clamped hands that felt like iron in gloves of cured ham on Ian Arnstein's upper arms. As they hustled him out the door, he could hear Alice Hong's voice raised in mocking song:

  "Jedi get angry-oooo, Jedi get mad-

  Give him the biggest lickin' he's every had!

  Jedi you can be the Dark Looooord of the Sith…"

  Ohotolarix son of Telenthaur, born a warrior of the Irauna teuatha, frowned and dusted sand across the paper of his latest report. He shook his right hand, clasping and unclasping his fingers to rid them of a cramp that his clutch on the quill pen had brought. His hands had taken a while to learn the arts of pen and ink; his first twenty years had been taken up with the skills of a wirtowonnax, spear and axe, rope and rein, plow and spade and sickle. Life as the Wolf Lord's handfast man and chief henchman and Commander of the Royal Guard had taught him more, though. The use of letters was a weapon, and one as deadly as any sword-as any cannon, even. He shook the sand off the paper, folded it, and sealed the triangle with a blob of wax from the candle on his desk, then rose.

  A trick of the lamplight showed him his face in the thick wavy window glass. It looked younger than the thirty winters he bore, for he had taken up the King's habit of shaving his face. His yellow hair was cropped above his ears as well; beside his eyes and grooved between nose and mouth were the marks of life, of knowledge and power. He was no more the glad boy the Eagle People had rescued from a coracle swept out to sea during the Irauna teuatha's crossing from the mainland to Alba. Each dawn was not a wonder now, nor each battle a blaze of glory where he would win a hero's undying name, and he did not see in each woman the promise of a fresh garden of delights.

  He snorted softly to himself. Winter thoughts. He was in his prime, more skilled in a dozen ways, more deadly than that boy could have dreamed, wiser than he could have imagined.

  I have journeyed far by land and sea, gained much, lost much, seen and done things dark and terrible. These are the deeds and rewards of manhood.

  "Time to finish the work of the day," he muttered. He took up a folder, then walked out past the gray-uniformed guards, returning their salute; down the stairs and through the residence hall to the main exit.

  Days were short here in this season, shorter than they ever grew in Greece; it was not night just yet despite the overcast, but you could tell it would not be long. The air was cold, the sky dark-gray with cloud out of which a scatter of white flakes fell, and the lanternlights lay bright across the wet brick of the pavement. Beside the train of goods waiting to go southward guards stamped and swore and blew on their gloved hands. He grinned to himself as he pulled the cold air deep into his lungs; the Achaeans among Fort Lolo's garrison were like wet cats when the weather was like this, stalking around in affronted amazement. Ohotolarix found the cold charming, much like the winters he remembered from his tribe's first home, the lands along the Channel and the River Ocean in the far west. Wood-smoke blew pungent from brick chimneys, mixed with the smell of supper cooking and the damp mealy scent of the snow.

  "Hey, Otto," a voice said.

  "Henry," Ohotolarix said in reply; he'd long since ceased resenting how Walker's folk mispronounced his name.

  They meant it as a compliment, in any case; and Henry Bierman was high in Lord Cuddy's service. He handed the commander a sheaf of papers of his own, bound in leather and secured with tapelike ribbon. "Here's my latest for Bill Cuddy and the bossman."

  "All goes well?" Ohotolarix asked. "I'd have been happier to get them off earlier today."

  "Sorry; some things can't be rushed, and the King's Council wanted these figures complete. Things are going great, actually. That iron ore's even better than we thought, seventy-eight percent metal and no impurities; they didn't call these the 'Ore' mountains for nothing."

  Ohotolarix juggled languages in his head for a moment, and then smiled a little at the pun. Bierman was a fussy little sort, with thick lenses before his eyes. No shadow of a fighting-man, but able at his work. He went on:

  "The second charcoal blast furnace'll be functional before Christmas. Plus the silver-lead and zinc outputs're up, and we're getting useful quantities of gold from the sluice… well, you know."

  Ohotolarix nodded, glancing northward. The peaks of the Carpathians were already snow-covered, glimpses of white through the clouds. Mountains fascinated him; he'd been raised in flat country, along the ocean shore, where folk lived on hills to avoid the floods of the marshland. There was a power in those great masses of rock, beyond the wealth of metals in the stone, and the usefulness of them.

  And they are far from the sea, easy to fortify at uttermost need. "Let's get them moving, then," he said. "Light enough for a few hours travel, the channel's well marked."

  Fort Lolo proper-the place was named for a ruathauricaz in the King's homeland of Montana-had been built on the site of a native stockade; quite an impressive one, no mere line of tree trunks on a mound, but a cut-off hill topped with timber-framed ramparts of rubble and stamped earth. The folk had been much like the Ringapi to the west in speech and customs, but not part of that tribal confederation; long-standing enemies of theirs, rather. The Ringapi lords had been delighted to point his expedition in this direction, back last spring. Nowadays they were a little less pleased, but not in a position to object.

  Survivors of the valley's population had been put to work building a proper moat-and-earthwork fort under Achaean engineers, with cannon and quickshooters in well-sited bunkers, and a covered fighting platform for riflemen. Inside were barracks for the two companies of troops and their womenfolk
and children, the commandant's house, armories, outbuildings, emergency quarters where the townsfolk and rural colonists might flee in the unlikely event of a siege. The buildings were of squared timbers on brick foundations, with steep-pitched tiled roofs; brick paved the streets between them, and the central square. Many of the dwellers had gathered to watch the departure of the southern caravan.

  The guards moved down the long coffles, shoving and shouting at the slaves, who responded with a stunned, sheeplike obedience. Only a dozen of the men who'd oversee the slave drive were rifle-armed Achaean troops. Most were natives in check trousers and plaids or wolfskin cloaks, armed with steel-headed spears and swords that were part of price of their hire. There was no use wasting his elite on such work when most of the journey would be quiet river passage through allied lands, until handover at the White Fort, the northernmost border of Great Achaea on the Danube. The slaves were shaven-headed and linked neck to neck with chains between their collars, handcuffed and hobbled as well, with heavy packs of hardtack and jerked meat on their backs; three in four were males.

  Two wagons followed. One held bales of fine furs, and little casks of raw amber-traded from the forest tribes north of the mountains, like most of the slaves; the other boxes of silver and gold ingots. They passed through the dogleg entranceway with its squat guard towers, and then down the gentle slope to the river wharves. The river-natives called it the Growler- was broad but shallow here, running southward until it met a larger stream and that flowed into the Danau, the Great River.

  Lady Kylefra finished her inspection of the stock as they went by, yawning as she came to stand beside him. There was careful respect in Ohotolarix's nod; the young woman had been among the first taken as Alice Hong's pupils, back in Alba, before they had to flee to the Middle Sea; that meant she had been brought up to it since childhood. She was a full doctor now, and high in the cult of Hekate of the Night, as the badge at her shoulder showed-sun and moon, entwined by a darkly glittering niello serpent with two heads meeting at the top. Black sun, black moon.

  "They're ready to go," Kylefra said, brushing back a lock of ruddy-brown hair.

  She spoke in English, which Ohotolarix thought an irritating affectation, as if she were of the royal family or Hong herself.

  If she won't speak in the kingdom's language, why not the tongue of home? he thought. The dialect of her teuatha wasn't much different from his. You are no more of the Eagle People than I.

  "I've vaccinated them all and checked for anything communicable," she went on; he had to admit that sentence would have needed a couple of English words anyway. "And deloused them, and given the guard corporal instructions on keeping them healthy."

  "Good," he replied in official Achaean, although his English was better than hers. "As the King says, a dead slave is a dead loss."

  "If we'd waited a bit, I could have gelded the males in this lot, the way I did the ones we're keeping for the mines here," she said. Her tongue came out to touch her upper lip. "They're more docile that way… and the Dark Lady would appreciate so… tasty… an offering."

  He'd become quite good at concealing his thoughts and keeping the feelings of the heart away from his face-necessary for a man of position in Meizon Akhaia. He still thought she saw- and inwardly smiled at-his hidden shudder. He'd gone boar-hunting in the mountains all that day, and the endless moaning and sobbing from the pens had still given him a sleepless night. The Horned Man knew Ohotolarix son of Telenthaur was no milksop nor behindhand in manslaying and feeding the Crow Goddess, but…

  Bierman didn't bother to hide his disgust, with the insane excess of self-confidence Ohotolarix had noted among the Eagle People followers of Walker at times. Not so much heedless courage such as an Irauna or Ringapi might show… more an unconsciousness that saying what you felt could be dangerous. As if they had to deliberately remember the risk, like someone who'd grown up in a land without wolves absentmindly petting one he met in the woods. The man muttered bitch under his breath, too.

  "We need to get the coffles off south soon," the Guard commander replied hastily to the healer-priestess. "In full winter, too many would die on the road, or the rivers may freeze.

  Besides, not all of them are going to the mines-some may be selected for skilled work, or become freedmen eventually or even go into the army, and those need their stones."

  Kylefra shrugged and sighed. Attendants brought their horses, and they swung into the saddle. More of the curious were watching as they came down into Lolo Town. A group of schoolchildren halted to watch as well, until the collared slave woman shepherding them along gave a cluck and sent them crawling like unwilling snails toward their lessons. Presently hooves and wheels boomed hollow on the boards of the long pier that bridged the broad marshy edges of the Growler. Upstream of it were booms of logs floated down from the mountains; tied up or anchored were flat-bottomed barges. The smell of their cargoes came across the cold water, faint but pungent; beeswax, honey, sacks of potash, piles of leather or rawhides. Others bore the products of Fort Lolo's domains, ingots of copper or dull-shining lead or zinc.

  Ohotolarix oversaw the loading of the slaves, the most troublesome cargo, and the amber and precious metals-the riflemen would be sitting on those all the way to the White Fort, in case one of the Ringapi chieftains let greed overcome good sense.

  Ah, you're not that youth of nineteen summers anymore, and Sky Father's Mirutha witness it! he thought, chuckling a little. The Irauna had never been a forethoughtful folk. Even more than their distant Ringapi cousins they were headlong warriors, men with fire in their blood and little in their heads but bone. How I have changed, and how much my wehaxpothis has taught me! In his heart, the homely Irauna word for chief still carried more power than the Achaean terms.

  When the work was finished he hesitated where the road forked on the way back to the fort; the southward path lay down-valley toward the farms and manors the men of Great Achaea had set out when they took this land. The valley itself widened like a funnel from here, falling away to the vast flat plains southward. Most of it had been open when the Achaeans arrived, some farms and villages, more land left rippling in chest-high grassland, with copses of oak trees here and there, and marshes along the waterside. The snags of sacked native garths still stood in a few places, blackened timbers and crumbling wattle-and-daub, the lumpy remains of a sod roof. Squares of dark earth showed a fuzz of blue-green, winter wheat peeking up ready for its blanket of cold-season snow; dry maize-snooks rustled in others, or the stubbled remains of sunflowers and flax. In a few workers toiled to lift the last potatoes, or watched over the herds.

  His own hall was there, and despite its raw newness-only this spring past had they laid out their own fields, after reaping the natives' harvest the first year-it was already his favorite estate, even more than the Sicilian ranch. He had broad acres in many of Great Achaea's provinces, ably managed by stewards, but this one reminded him more of the old homeland; his youngest wife kept the house, with their new son by her. It would do his soul good to spend a day seeing to the fields and new-planted orchards, and most of all looking over his herds in the pens and pastures. Full-fleeced sheep and fat cattle and tall deep-chested horses, the only wealth that was really real, the delight of a man's heart, second only to strong sons. It was just a half hour's ride and the paperwork was mostly done…

  Thus he was looking southward and was among the first to see the party riding up toward Fort Lolo. For a moment he knew only angry astonishment that the sentries hadn't raised the alarm. Then he raised his binoculars; there wasn't any dust from the graveled roadway with the wet weather of the last few days, so he could see clearly. A column of horsemen in the gray uniforms and flared steel helmets of Meizon Akhaia, with the red wolfshead banner at their front. A coach behind it, and a train of light baggage wagons-horse-drawn, hence fast but expensive-with a herd of remounts. He had enough time to note that they were of unusual quality before he noticed one rider curving out ahead of the others and the
n spurring to gallop. A small figure in black on a big slim-legged horse, riding like a leopard, with long loose hair bright gold…

  "Princess Althea!" he cried, bowing in the saddle as she drew up.

  "Uncle Ohoto!" she replied, leaning over in the saddle to embrace him and kiss his cheek.

  "You've grown, daughter of my chief," he said happily, hands on her shoulders. Was it more than yesterday when I came growling across the nursery floor, playing bear for you? "You're almost a woman now-will be, in another few winters."

  She'd shot up, and no mistaking; she'd be as tall for a woman as her sire was for a man. The outfit-loose jacket, sash, full trousers in fine black cloth edged here and there with gold, polished boots, long dagger and pistol on a studded belt-didn't look quite so much like a child's dress-up in imitation of her father anymore. Her face had begun to lose puppy fat, and yes, there was something of her father in her eyes as well, for all they were blue rather than green. Something of her mother, too, who had been a chieftain's daughter Walker had captured in a raid.

  "But what are you doing here, Althea?"

  The girl drew herself up solemnly and waited until a crowd had gathered. "Rejoice!" she said, slightly louder. "The High King is victorious-Troy is fallen!"

  They all cheered; the soldiers first, and those from the Achaean lands who knew what it meant, and then the generality. Ohotolarix was as loud as any, although he fought down bitterness; obedient to his lord's orders, he was here in this backwater and not fighting by his side as a handfast man should. He obeyed, but it was hard, hard…

  Althea threw up her left hand and a ragged silence fell. "Hear the word of the wannax, the King of Men-sent by him through his own blood, the Princess Althea of the House of the Wolf."