On the Oceans of Eternity Read online

  Unfortunately, if they went much faster the weapon or the ammunition cart was likely to overturn. He had a sudden, vivid memory of a childhood nightmare in which he'd been menaced by monsters and yet couldn't run, moving in slow motion like someone trapped in honey. Another sling-bullet went through the air close behind his horse's rump, striking a stone near its left rear. The animal bounded forward and then went crabwise, trying to crane its head around to see what had stung it.

  "Watch where you're goin', Fancy," he warned it, with a taut grin.

  The leap had put him close behind the Gatling; some of the crew had their personal weapons out, but you might as well spit at someone as try to hit him with a rifle from a jouncing gun carriage. He took a moment to let the reins fall on his saddlebow, opening his pistol and letting the spent brass spill. Two crescent-shaped speedloaders and the cylinder snapped back in.

  "Keep going. Sergeant," he called to the head of the Gatling crew. What he had to do was quite clear. Quite insane as well, but that was war for you. He turned his horse back toward the enemy and clapped heels lo its flanks with a yell.

  Not really suicidal, he thought. There wouldn't be more than a dozen or so scattered foemen he'd have lo knock back on their heels-given a good horse, momentum, a revolver, and luck it was just possible.

  Brave and obedient, Fancy bounded forward with jackrabbit acceleration. The clump of Ringapi pelting up right behind the Islanders gaped for a second; they'd been focused on pursuing someone who ran. Their war howls turned to yells of surprise as he bore down on them, their heads swelling from dots to the faces of men with rushing speed. Chariots didn't leach you how nimble a single horseman could be, with a well-trained mount-and he'd spent some time leaching Fancy a few gymkhana tricks.

  The first two warriors pivoted on their left heels, shields swinging out to balance the javelins they threw with their right. O'Rourke judged the trajectory, then ducked and brought his face against Fancy's mane. The sweet musky smell of horse filled his nostrils, and the whetted bronze heads of the spears whipped through the space he'd occupied a second before. As he'd guessed-to these men horses were a mighty prize, one of the things war was fought for, and it would never have occurred to them to aim at his mount. Then they sprang aside with yells of fear as the horse thrust between them, knocking one arse-over-teakettle with its shoulder. O'Rourke leaned far over, and for an instant the muzzle of his Python was inches from a face screaming hatred.

  Kerack. The Ringapi's head snapped back as if he'd been kicked in the face by a horse. A round blue hole appeared over the bridge of his nose, and the back of his head flew off in a spatter of bone fragments and pink-gray brain. The horse staggered beneath O'Rourke. Something had landed on its rump, and an arm went around his throat, jerking him back upright in the saddle. He could sense the laurel-leaf dagger rising. His right hand moved, pointing the heavy pistol back under his own left armpit, jamming the muzzle into the other man's torso before he jerked the trigger twice. The hot flare scorched him through the linsey-woolsey of his uniform jacket, and the weight fell away behind. Something had hurt Fancy as well, and the stallion bugled out his own battle cry, rearing and milling with his forehooves. They came down on the face and shoulder of a Ringapi who was trying to aim a bow, and he fell with an ugly crunching sound. Fancy danced over him, stamping, then lashed out at another with his hind hooves. They hit a shield; O'Rourke could hear the wooden frame break, and probably the arm behind it.

  "Quiet, ye git!" he snarled-hitting anything from atop a horse was difficult; a bucking horse made it impossible… but it wasn't at all impossible for someone on the ground to spear him out of that saddle. Some remote corner of his mind was surprised at his tone, that of a man mildly annoyed in the middle of a difficult task.

  Fancy quieted somewhat, less at his voice than at the familiar feel of thighs and the hand on the reins, and spun nimbly about. A barbarian was getting up, a scrape raw and bleeding across one cheek, blood dripping from his nose and his long droopy mustaches and his stubbly-shaven chin. The spear he drew back to throw didn't look to be made for javelin work; it was six feet long and had a broad flame-shaped bronze head. It didn't have to be a purpose-made throwing spear, with the thick-muscled arm of the northern savage behind it and only ten feet between them. O'Rourke fired the last three rounds in the revolver as fast as he could squeeze the trigger and bring the muzzle back down. The hammer clicked at last on an empty chamber, but the Ringapi did not throw. Instead he sank down to his knees, looking puzzled, blood welling from nose and mouth. Then he pitched forward on his face, spear dropping in the dust.

  O'Rourke was already wheeling his horse, slapping the pistol back into its holster and his heels into Fancy's flanks. No time to reload, he thought, as the stallion sprang forward again, glad to be allowed to gallop at last. He was familiar with the rubber duration of combat-it felt like twenty minutes or so since the Ringapi sprang their ambush, but it was probably less than five by the clock. And if they'd waited just a bit and hit us all together I'd have been dead the first minute, he thought, leaning forward into the speed of the horse's rush.

  He'd moved fast enough to distract the barbarians. The Gatling crew were safely past them, bouncing back up the dusty, rutted track toward the Nantucketer outpost. Most of the enemy were behind him, too, but there was one standing in the roadway between him and safety-or at least between him and such safety as the improvised base-cum-field-hospital promised. A quick glance right and left showed that all that solitary Ringapi had to do was delay him a few moments and he'd be swarmed under.

  The man ahead looked a little out of the ordinary run of savage. He wore a bowl-shaped rimmed helmet of polished bronze with a tall scarlet-dyed horsehair plume and hinged cheek-guards; there were crossed gilt thunderbolts on the face of his black round-cornered rectangular shield, and gold rings around his arms and his neck. The chain-mail shirt above his flapping checked trousers was from a workshop in Meizon Akhaia, and so was the bright silver-glittering steel of the long spearhead. He held the shield up and slammed the butt of his spear into the ground, bracing his right foot against it for further strength and slanting the point forward-probably his folk's way for a man on foot to face a chariot.

  "Damn," O'Rourke muttered. This lad's been to school, he has. A slinger and archer were running flat out to join him, too, and they'd be there far too soon.

  The Nantucketer reached back over his left shoulder and drew the katana as the rocking speed of the gallop increased.

  The sharkskin wrapping of the hilt was rough against his hand as he raised the sword; he'd likely get one and only one chance at this, and the enemy was also likely to be far more experienced with cold steel-well, with edged metal-than he was. Suddenly he didn't much care.

  "Lamh Laidir Abu!" he shrieked, and braced his feet in the stirrups, rising slightly.

  He could see the Ringapi chiefs bared teeth now, and the spearpoint pivoted to follow him-it would be in his side, or Fancy's, if he turned wide; or if he turned further than that, it would put him in range of the men running through the fields on either side, clambering over fieldstone walls-it wasn't the ones yelling he was worried about, it was the grimly intent, running as hard as they could. A few premature slingstones and arrows came his way, and the odd bullet.

  Everything fell away, except the spearpoint and the fearless blue eyes behind the helmet brim. Now, he's used to chariots, which can't shift all that fast, so-

  A press of his right leg, and Fancy crawfished at the last instant. The steel head of the spear flashed by, close enough to strike the stirrup-iron that held O'Rourke's right boot with a tooth-grating skrrrunng. The katana came down, and he felt the edge jar into meat. He ripped it upward with a banshee shriek, upward like a polo mallet and into the jaw of the slinger taking aim five yards behind the fallen chief. The man beyond him was drawing a long yew bow, but wasn't quite fast enough. He threw himself down with a yell, and Fancy gathered himself and took to the air in a soaring leap th
at would have cleared a six-bar fence.

  O'Rourke whooped as he came up the slight slope to the base, drops of blood flinging back from the sword as he pulled the horse back to a canter and then to a walk. The Marines stationed on the wall cheered and waved their rifles in the air, the ones who weren't taking long-range shots at any Ringapi unwise enough to show himself. He was still grinning as Captain Barnes came up and snapped a salute.

  "Sir, that was the most amazing thing I've ever seen!"

  "Ah, wasn't it, though?" O'Rourke said with a laugh, returning the gesture.

  "And it was about the dumbest thing I've ever seen, too- sir."

  "No, no, just Irish," he chuckled, then nodded to the man beside her as he cleaned and sheathed the sword.

  Hantilis son of Tiwataparas was a Hittite; his title translated roughly as Overseer of One Thousand, or Colonel, in English; a short heavy-boned muscular man, big-nosed and hairy and stocky and swarthy, with dark eyes under heavy eyebrows. The short sword at his side was steel, a diplomatic gift, as was the razor that kept the blue-black stubble on his chin closer than bronze had ever done; most Hittites of the upper classes were clean-shaven, in vivid contrast to Babylonia. He wore a bronze helmet with a crest that trailed down his back like a pigtail, a belted tunic, and a kilt, with calf-boots that had upturned toes, standard military dress for his people.

  "Bravely done," he said, in slow accented English; King Tudhaliyas had set a number of his officer-nobility to learning the Nantucketer language, as well as a corps of scribes. "Like… how say, old stories."

  He mimed plucking a stringed instrument, the sort of thing a bard would accompany an epic with. O'Rourke nodded a little smugly; it had been a little like something out of the Cattle Raid of Cooley. He smiled to himself: as far as Nantucket's little band of scholars could tell, the Ringapi were some sort of proto-Celt themselves, or else close cousins to the earliest Celts, if distinctions like that had any meaning this far back. They came from what would have become Hungary and Austria in the original history, lured by Walker's promises of southland loot and help against predatory neighbors; warriors and women and children and household goods in wagons and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. Volkerwanderung like that were common enough, and getting more so; this was an age of chaos and wars and wanderings, even before the Event.

  "What is… Irish?" the Hittite went on

  "Ah…" Christ, how to answer that in words of one syllable. "A different… tribe," he said. "Not important."

  The Hittite scowled and glanced eastward, where the mercenaries he'd been commanding had gone.

  "Kaska dogs-they run like coward sheep," he said.

  He dropped into Akkadian to do it, which he spoke far better than he did English; O'Rourke had a fair grasp on that ancient Semitic language as well, from the year he'd spent in Babylonia. It was the universal second language of the educated here and of diplomacy as well, like Latin in medieval Europe, and so doubly useful.

  "I bow in apology," the Hittite went on, and did so.

  O'Rourke shrugged; they'd have fought well enough, against the weapons they understood.

  He looked around the enclosure. Walls were being built up to six feet with sacks and baskets of barley, with a lighting platform on the inside for the troops to stand on.

  "How many effectives?" he asked.

  "Sir," Brand said. "Lieutenant Hussey and eighty-seven enlisted personnel in my engineering company; another ten from the clinic personnel. About thirty-five sick and wounded from various units that've been operating around here; mostly they're down with the squirts of one sort or another. Plus the sixteen rifles you brought."

  He nodded; dysentery happened, no matter how careful you were about clean water and food. Then he dictated a message for reinforcements-and as a wish rather than a hope, a request for air support-to Hattusas HQ. The ultralights were overstretched as it was.

  "Sir, should you be staying here?" Barnes asked. "We may be cut off."

  "It's where the action is," O'Rourke said absently, looking around again. "Hmmm… Captain, how are we fixed for these barley sacks?"

  "Tons of it, sir. This was a forward supply collection center. The storehouse is full of boxed dog biscuit, too."

  He looked around, scowling. The hospital's got to be inside the perimeter. That leaves us with this goddamned east-west rectangle of wall to hold-inefficient. The walls were very long relative to the area within.

  "Then run another breastwork, here"-he drew a line in the dirt with the tip of his boot, extending it across the last, eastward third of the rectangle, the one that included the storehouse. "We'll need a fallback position. And a last-stand redoubt in the center of the space it encloses, using all the barley sacks you have left over-nine feet high, with a firing step."

  "And the Gatling, sir? There?"

  "No, plunging fire isn't effective against a massed attack," O'Rourke said, shaking his head. "We'll use it to cover the largest field in front of the gate here and shift the rifles to…"

  After he'd finished, he noted Hantilis staring at what the Marines had accomplished, working on the field entrenchments. It was fairly impressive; they'd turned an enclosure that might have done a good job of keeping goats out into something resembling a miniature fort.

  "How they work!" the Hittite said, in a mixture of English and Babylonian, amazement clear in his tone. "I have never seen even slaves beneath the overseer's lash toil so!"

  "And you won't," O'Rourke said dryly. "A slave-his tools are his enemies and he delights in idleness; to destroy your goods is his pleasure. On the Island, a free man's pride is in the work of his hands, and all honest work is counted honorable-to employ such a one is to profit, even if the wage be high. A slave just eats your food and dies."

  Hantilis frowned, something his heavy-boned face made easy; the Islander could see him turning the thought over in his head. Then he shook it aside for now.

  "Can we stop the enemy here?" he asked. "My King prepares for war, but he must have time."

  "We're buying time," O'Rourke said. "That's what expendable means, boyo."

  "Sam, we needed that ship," Jared Cofflin said. "Sorry, but there is a war on."

  Emma Carson stayed quiet. Quiet as a snake, Jared thought. Heard a snake bit her once. The snake died. A little off-balance here in the Chief's House, though; she wasn't a frequent guest.

  Sam Macy nodded unwillingly. "Wish you could have taken something besides the Merrimac, Jared," he said. "Or given me some warning. The Republic's paying fair compensation, but I had a buyer lined up"-who was confidential information, of course-"and it isn't going to do my reputation any good having to back out. Reputation's my stock-in-trade, as much as plank and beam."

  Macy was a short thick-bodied man of Jared's age, most of it muscle despite an incipient pot. His gray-shot black hair was still abundant, though, and he'd added a short spade-shaped beard back when shaving got difficult, and kept it after hot water, soap, and straight-edge razors became available again. Before the Event he'd been a house-building contractor; since then he'd become something of a timber baron in the limitless forests over on the mainland, that leading his firm naturally to interests in shipyards and ships, and occasionally to operating ships until the right price was offered.

  "It was there, and the less warning, the less likely word is to get to the enemy," Jared said. "The Arnsteins are pretty sure they've still got some eyes here. We can move information more quickly, Tartessos doesn't have radios, thank God. Yet. But there are ways for them to communicate."

  Macy nodded. "Well, if you let the Inquirer amp; Mirror have the story eventually, so everyone knows it was… what's the word…"

  "Force majeure," Martha supplied helpfully.

  "Right."

  "Mmmmn-hmm," Cofflin said, nodding an affirmative.

  "What the hell did you want her for, anyway?" Macy said. "She's a good ship, weatherly and fast-but I thought there were ample transports? The buyer was looking into opening a regular private tr
ade with Anyang."

  "State secret," Cofflin said. "We need her; leave it at that."

  It made him a little uneasy to use phrases like that, but it worked. The abortive Tartessian invasion this spring past had frightened and enraged the entire population. It was also a pity he had to put a spoke in the wheel of those plans for trade. Policy was to encourage private enterprise, wherever possible. He'd detested the period of absolute emergency right after the Event when he and the Council had to run everything, handing out rations and assigning work. Each step toward normalacy since had been a relief, and his greatest ambition as head of government had been to become as irrelevant as he could to as many people as possible. He didn't like the way the war was making them lose ground.

  "Filthy war," Macy said, as if echoing his thought, and everyone nodded.

  Emma Carson cleared her throat. "Now, Chief, I'm on the board of Chapman, Charnes amp; Co.," she said.

  Jared nodded noncommittally. The Carsons were Chapman and Charnes nowadays; they'd bought in with profits made in the mainland trade and managed the firm shrewdly. Those initial profits hadn't been too scrupulously made, and there had been trouble with the Indians over their habit of including free firewater as a bargaining tool; the mainlanders were fully capable of realizing they'd been diddled when they sobered up. The Carsons had loudly demanded that the Republic's military enforce those debts; he'd refused and got the Meeting to back him. Neither of them had enjoyed the clashes over that.

  Carson went on carefully: "We were the buyers for Sam's ship-wanted to see how she'd do on a shakedown cruise across the pond to Alba, before we sent her really far foreign."

  Macy snorted. "Emma, you wanted to take possession in Westhaven because you could sign up a crew cheaper there than you could here in Nantucket Town or the outports," he said. He looked back at Jared. "Chief, I still say we should have a law saying that the crews of Nantucket-flagged vessels have to be citizens. Registered immigrants, at least."

  "Sam Macy," Carson said, exasperation showing in her tone-they had this argument every time they met in public- "I don't think we should be copying… what were they called? The Navigation Acts, the ones the British had before the Revolution."