On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  " 'Scuse me," he said quickly. "That's probably a courier."

  He walked out into the hallway; the front door let in on another, sort of an airlock arrangement to keep warm air in in wintertime. Only when he reached for the front door's carved wooden knob did he realize he still had his checked napkin in hand, and that Martinelli was beside him, pistol inconspicuously drawn and held down by his side.

  The young woman on the other side of the wood almost stumbled in as he pulled the door open; she already had the screen door propped open, and she was reaching into the leather satchel slung over one shoulder. Her horse was hitched to the rail out in the graveled driveway, blowing with wide-flared nostrils, streaks of foam on its sweat-wet neck, trying to reach the water trough. The courier might have been in too much of a hurry to walk it cool, but at least it wasn't let free to drink and founder itself.

  "Chief!" the post office courier said in a thick Fiernan accent, dancing from one foot to another with excitement. "Courier message from Fort Brandt… they flew it over, Chief! Right over to Fogarty's Cove!"

  The brown paper envelope was crinkly-fresh, the flap sealed with a blob of red wax. He recognized Captain Sandy Rapczewicz's seal, CO at Brandt Point station and the Republic's military commander with Marian abroad. She was a levelheaded type, so this must be important.

  "Ms…"

  "Mary Burns, Chief," the messenger said.

  "Ms. Burns, you'd better walk that horse, then water it."

  He broke the seal as she blushed, dithered, and then hurried off to obey. The summary was always right at the top…

  He turned, to find he had an audience, some of them still clutching forks or rolls. Heather and Lucy were staring wide-eyed. As they saw his face they began to jump, their squeals an ear-piercing joy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  April, 11 A.E.-Sacramento Delta, California

  April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California

  April, 11 A.E.-Sacramento Delta, California

  April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California

  The tule-reed boat felt… squishy, that's the word. Peter Giernas thought. It was more like being on a living thing than a boat, or… a memory nagged at him, from his childhood. Yes, just after the family had moved to America, three years before the Event, when his father got a job doing plumber's work with a Nantucket construction company. He'd taken the family to the beach, and the eight-year-old Peter Giernas had gone swimming on a half-inflated rubber mattress. This felt a lot like that, except that the mattress had been smooth rather than prickly.

  That was the problem with not speaking the local language; you had to do most of your own scouting, or chance some lethal surprise at the last minute… like the one they'd nearly had when he saw the masts of the enemy ship rising above the heads of the reeds, and couldn't make the local behind him understand what masthead lookout meant. He'd gotten them under the shadow of the sloughside reeds, at least.

  The little craft was inconspicuous, a lot more so than a thirty-foot dugout, and just the thing for eeling through the marshes, sloughs, swamps, and shallows where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers met to form a huge delta before funneling into the Pacific. Despite his compass and map, Giernas had been thoroughly lost within an hour.

  There must be millions of acres of this tule swamp here, he thought. Plus riverbank forest even thicker and more junglelike than upstream on the Sacramento, and islands beyond counting, a demented spiderweb of channels. There was swamp, and islands of grassy prairie covered with stems twelve feet high, and swamp shading into prairie and back into swamp and into forest, dry or with standing water around the trunks of the alders.

  Mountains and features like Lake Tahoe didn't pick up and move in periods as short as three thousand years, but this soft muck-soiled landscape subject to annual flood was another matter. Only the broadest outlines had any resemblance to the maps copied from a back-issue National Geographic for the expedition.

  The smell was rank in his nostrils, full of life and death and green growing things; just ahead of them was the mouth of a little slough between two small islands. The lupines growing there were four feet high and stretched along the banks on both sides for hundreds of yards, with a band of white popcorn flowers beyond and then masses of sky-blue Dowingia to the water's edge.

  He made a stay-here gesture to the local Indian in the canoe, stepping ashore onto peat that yielded under his feet like wet sponge. Going to his belly, he eeled forward until he could part the flowers just enough for the lenses of the binoculars. The vegetation closed over his head as well, making him invisible to observers looking down from a masthead.

  There, westward across a hundred yards of open water, was what he sought. He'd seen the bare tips of her masts for better than an hour, but the ship itself was still a bit of a shock. Moored bow and stern to live oaks, on the shore of what another history would have called Sherman Island.

  'Bout five hundred tons, he estimated, quickly taking in things like the gunports to give him an accurate estimate of length. Hundred and forty feet, he decided. Beam, say, twenty-five, twenty-eight feet midships.

  Schooner-rigged on three masts, big gaff mainsails, a main topsail on the mizzen, square topsails on both the forward masts. A rig like that would make things like beating around the Horn into the teeth of the westerlies easier than something square-rigged throughout, and wouldn't need as heavy a crew. A topsail schooner, with a leering demon-mask figurehead under the long bowsprit.

  The name was picked out in gilt letters before the forward anchor; Hortzakadan Kaultzagurrunta, whatever that meant.

  A fish jumped just beyond his observation point, plopping back down after its jaws closed on a dragonfly, and splashing water on the lenses. He cursed softly, cleaned them and continued his scan. Six guns a side, bronze twelve-pounders from the size of their muzzles; swivel guns on the quarterdeck rails- what they called murdering pieces. Two stern-chasers, from the ports. Lighter guns, but not something you could disregard.

  There were barish patches on the shore where they'd felled trees for fuel or construction, but nothing more. Giernas snorted slightly; if he'd been in charge, he'd have dismounted the ship's starboard guns and put them behind earthworks, to sweep the river north and south of the ship… oh, well, they thought they were safe enough here.

  They'd certainly been hard at work. A big raft made of three layers of lashed-together logs had been secured to the ship's side, and an accommodation ladder run up the side of the hull to give easy access to the deck. The main spars had been re-rigged to act as crane-booms, swinging back and forth with loads of cargo from her holds. Giernas peered sharply at the load in a net swinging down. Bales and boxes and barrels, indistinct at this range. One of the big sailing barges was tied up to the raft, and more workers were going antlike up and down the gangplanks, stowing yet more containers in her open hold.

  Okay, now, how many… Some of the teams hauling at the ropes looked like Tartessian sailors, although it was hard to tell-they tanned up pretty dark and worked stripped to their loincloths when the weather was good. Twenty or thirty were definitely locals, and not volunteers from the way they were touched up with the lash now and then. He saw a half a dozen leather-jerkined soldiers, but there might be more below. Slaves would mostly just get in the Tartessians' way in a fight, possibly turn on them when things got hairy.

  The sailors though-they'd all know how to handle themselves come a brawl, and they could be murderously effective if they got to the ship's guns. And if the guns were kept loaded. That was standard practice at sea, but-

  Hmmm, he thought. Gunports open, but the guns aren't run out-they could have the ports open just for air 'tweendecks, it's pretty hot and humid here in the daytime already, in this damned swamp. Of course, that's assuming an awful /of…

  He watched with hunter's patience, occasionally shifting a little to keep muscles from going stiff. When the sun was halfway down to the line of forest on the west, the barge cast loose. Cre
wmen oar-walked it out into midstream, hoisted sails to the two stubby masts and slid north as the sails bellied out in the gentle easterly breeze.

  Okay, subtract six for the barge crew. Lessee…

  ***

  Alantethol looked at what the soldier brought. It was a spur, of the type made to strap on to a mounted man's bootheel. This was no common bit of gear from the King's workshops, though. It was bronze, inlaid with silver, the rondel larger and the blunt spikes tipped with little balls of gold. Blood drained from the Tartessian commander's face as he recognized where he'd seen it last; Tarmendtal son of Zeurkenol had been showing it off, proud of what his father sent him. He'd been so proud of it that he wore them constantly, especially when he rode off on patrol.

  "It could have dropped off," one of the others gathered outside the Hidden Fort's gates said.

  Alantethol restrained an impulse to lash his fist into the man's face. That would be bad for discipline… although right now, it would soothe his soul. "I don't think so," he said.

  Decision firmed his mouth into a straight line. "Turn out a patrol," he said. "Two files-with remounts. I will take command." Twelve men should be enough. "Supplies for a week's travel, extra ammunition. And our two best trackers from the tame natives."

  "Lord," the subordinate said. "That will leave few men here- there is the file at the ship, and three at the cinnabar mine."

  "Little girls throwing flowers could hold these walls," he said. "Call up some of the civilians for wall duty-tell them that the King's treasury will make good any loss to them. I must find out what has happened! Doesn't this brainless savage know anything?"

  There was a brief exchange between the interpreter and the native who squatted in the dust, looking up from under a tangle of black hair. At last the interpreter shook his head. "Lord Alantethol, he says that he took it from a man upriver in payment of a debt. He saw it must be ours, and that we would not trade such a thing, and ran here-he asks if his family may be forgiven their overdue tribute and his son and daughter returned to him."

  Alantethol nodded. "Tell him if we find he tells the truth, his children will be returned, and rich gifts besides." And if he lies, I will have him hung by the testicles and build a slow fire under his head.

  Meanwhile bugles had sounded within the fortress. Shouts resounded, demanding that traffic make way, and the sounds of boots striking flesh and yelps of pain. The troops he'd summoned cantered out and drew up, the sergeant who led them saluting with clenched fist. Alantethol looked over the men and ran an eye over the horses on leading-reins behind them, some carrying packs, but enough others to give every man a spare mount. If he had to make speed…

  A cold feeling gripped his lower belly, as if the Crone were caressing him like a lover. There were another two weeks before the tribute patrol had to report in. This might be the Jester's laughter at a small mischief, making him look foolish for very little cause. On the other hand, he was a New Man of the King, and he had listened carefully to the King's talks about the quality called methodical by the Eagle People. More than once since then it had served him well. He swung into the saddle of the horse his orderly offered.

  "Redouble the watch," he said. "I'll be back in three days, no more; if I'm not, button yourself in here tight, don't throw good money after bad. This may be nothing, but I've a tight scrotum over it."

  By the Sun Lord, I'll be a eunuch if it gets any tighter, he added to himself.

  The native trackers were stocky dark muscular men, much like any hunters of the local barbarian tribes. Their service showed only in their steel knives and hatchets, cotton tunics and bandannas tying back their hair, and the metal tips of their darts. He'd come to respect their abilities, though.

  For the first day's hard riding there was little for them to do, besides interpret when they came to the initial miserable encampment that Tarmendtal son of Zeurkenol would have visited.

  "Of course they're telling the truth," Alantethol snarled when the sergeant doubted it. "Look at their arms-they've received the vaccination. And no new cases of smallpox, either. The tracks are plain, besides. You men, leave off with those women-what do you think this is, a harvest festival? Mount up!"

  The party with him had covered the distance in a third the time the tribute patrol would have made, unencumbered with a wagon and eating jerky and biscuit in the saddle rather than stopping to hunt. By then Alantethol remembered a joke that the King had told him, one Isketerol had heard from the Islander who taught him to ride horseback while he was in Nantucket. It was in the title of a book by a cavalry commander, Forty Years in the Saddle, by Major Assburns. It didn't seem so funny now.

  He stood in the stirrups to survey a stretch of tall grass that looked much like all the others they'd seen on their ride north from the Hidden Fort. The native trackers saw something else, though. They dismounted and cast about, then came trotting back to his stirrup.

  "Wagon tracks, stop here," one said, pointing about with his spear. "Whole bunch, stop there-ride about-stop there." He pointed off to the westward, toward another section of the flat plain. "Then wagon go there-" He pointed northward. "Most horses, they there."

  Alantethol considered himself a fair man of the chase; his father had helped feed his family by joining hunts for wild pig in the marshes in winter. He still couldn't make hide nor hoof of the signs the trackers showed him, except for the wheel marks of the wagon.

  "Wagon go slow, slow," the tracker said. After a while he pursed his lips and spat. "Not so many ox-beasts after here. And heavy, much heavy."

  The Tartessian knotted a fist on the pommel of his saddle and looked around, listening to the sough and hiss of wind in grass that was drying toward summer's yellow. One of the great vultures was circling not too far up, more huge than a beast had a right to be. In the Hidden Fort you could forget how far Homeland was, how few civilized men were in this land, the sheer size of it. That was all too painfully apparent, out here where his soldiers were less than an ant crawling along a plank. He shivered, and promised a horse to the Sun Lord; right then he didn't feel confident enough to call the Hungry One's attention to him. Victory came from Him, yes… but never forever.

  The other tracker came over and held up something. Alantethol took it up, smelled it, rolled it between his fingers. A ragged circle of scorched felt about the size of this thumb, greasy with beeswax, still scented with burned gunpowder. It was one of the wads that lay at the base of every cartridge, to seal the breech against the hot gas.

  "Many of these?" he asked the tracker.

  "Many, many," the tame savage said. "There-" He pointed to the little slough that ran down to the river ahead of them. "There-" His hand swung westward. "Many, many, many."

  The Tartessian commander snarled. There had obviously been a battle here… but there were no signs of it, no rotting bodies and squabbling buzzards and condors. Not a scrap of gear, either. "We'll follow the wagon," he said at last. Tarmendtal might have sent the wagon on ahead and taken mounted men on a sweep westward into little-known regions, for some reason. Or.. not.

  * * *

  "We'll go with the original plan," Peter Giernas said.

  The four log canoes were gathered stern to stern so that the Islanders could confer. All of them were looking serious, except for Eddie, who was sharpening the blade of his tomahawk and whistling cheerfully. He tested the edge by shaving off one of the fringes on his hunting shirt, flipped the war-hatchet into the air in a blurring circle and caught it by the end of the two-foot handle, and slipped it onto the loop at the back of his belt.

  "Sounded good to me the first time," he said. "They aren't expecting us-just go in and knock on the front door. You should let me go first, though-I'd be less of a loss to the expedition."

  Giernas shook his head, slapped a mosquito and continued:

  "It's not a sure thing, but it's the best chance we'll have, I think. They're not looking all that alert, from what I saw- just dull duty in a goddamn swamp. Question is, do the loc
als understand what we're trying to do?"

  The Nantucketers exchanged looks. "I think they understand they're not supposed to fight until we tell them to," Sue said doubtfully. "Think that'll do?"

  "It'll have to." Giernas sighed. "All right, let's go. If we push it a little, we should get there for what the locals tell us is their dinnertime."

  It was cooling in the branch where the canoes had lain up, as the sun set westward over an expanse like the sea. That was welcome; the swarms of mosquitoes that thickened as the sun went down were not. I hope to hell the Tartessians haven't exposed anyone with malaria to these bloodsuckers, Giernas thought, as his paddlers bent to their work. Birds flitted by overhead, half-visible streaks in the growing darkness, vanishing into the reeds and rank tree growth on either side. A lantern on a pole stood behind him, with the Rock-of-Gibraltar enemy flag flying beneath it. More insects bumped up against the thick pebbled glass that shielded a dim kerosene flame.

  The crew of the Mother of Invention looked quite different now, dressed in the uniforms of the slain Tartessian soldiers, heads helmeted or wrapped in bandannas, rifles propped beside them, each with a band of hide to protect the lock from stray splashes. God, I hope this fools them long enough, Giernas thought, surprised by the strength of the emotion. It's always the worst part, before the fight starts.

  The enemy would probably be deceived. The enemy just didn't have any reason to be wary. Not after six years of successful concealment. It was easy to hide things in the world of the Year 11. There was just so much space and communications were so slow.

  They turned out into the main stream and southwest; he pushed on the tiller, keeping them close to the northeastern bank of the channel and dipping his head to let the broad-brimmed hat shade his eyes. The rest of him was partly concealed by a poncholike enemy blanket-cloak. It wasn't impossible to find a six-foot-two blond Tartessian with gray eyes and a reddish beard, he supposed; it was just so unlikely that he'd stand out like a seven-foot Chinese in America before the Event. Just long enough, God, just for long enough. They wouldn't recognize the canoes, either. But they obviously weren't local Indian craft, and the assumption would be they were something the enemy base had run up, especially with Tartessian soldiers crewing the first one.