On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  Now men were coming across those rolling downs to the westward, coming to kill him, so he must kill them. Very strange, he thought.

  "Good open country," Johanna said, as she looked westward.

  Then she laughed. "More open, now that we've burned down or run off everything on it."

  "That's a bad thing, wasting the land," Vaukel said mournfully. "Killing stock you can't eat, Moon Woman doesn't shine on it."

  For a moment the two Marines looked at each other in the mutual incomprehension of culture-clash, then shrugged and set to improving their quarters with ledges or little caves to store things, and rigging a shelter-half overhead. Snow started to whisk down from the north, small dry granular flakes. They were pounding the heaped dirt and rock ahead of them down with the flats of their entrenching tools-if you left it loose a bullet might punch through-when Captain Barnes came by with a squad leading pack mules.

  "Here," she said, and handed them extra ammunition and a bandolier of grenades.

  "Thank you, ma'am," Gwenhaskieths said. She hefted the segmented iron egg of a grenade, her thumb caressing the pin. "We could have used some of these at O'Rourke's Ford, ma'am."

  A swift grin. "Make these count. God bless."

  "And you, ma'am," they both said, comforted.

  Johanna jumped up to the firing step and craned her head around. "We've got backup-that's a Gatling they're digging in behind us."

  Vauk nodded solemnly and pulled a dog biscuit and stick of hard beef jerky out of his haversack where it rested behind him. The hard cracker challenged his teeth as he bit a corner off and began to chew. They huddled together for the animal comfort of the warmth, and waited. He could feel his companion shivering a little beside him.

  Well, that's the Sun People for you, he thought good-naturedly. Flighty they are, sort of. But fierce as you could want when the time comes for a fight.

  It was amazing how travel broadened your perspective. Here, dyaus arsi and Fiernan Bohulugi and Eagle People were like a litter from the same dam.

  Thunder rumbled in the west. He looked up for a moment, surprised; you almost never got thunder in a snowstorm like this.

  "Guns," Gwenhaskieths said. "It's started."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

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

  November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia

  December, 10 A.E.-West-central Anatolia

  November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia

  December, 10 A.E.-West-central Anatolia

  November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia

  "Peter Giernas felt himself begin to shake as the canoe came to shore and he vaulted out and splashed ashore, leaving the others to haul the dugout craft onto the bank.

  The campsite where he'd left Spring Indigo and Jared was empty… empty save for burned scraps and tattered leather flapping in the breeze. Heads remained as well, stuck on stakes; heads of local warriors, and of his dogs Saule and Ausra. No Spring Indigo. No Jared. A low bitter smell of smoke and shit wisped up from coals mostly dead with dawn dew. His eyes misted over, and he heard sounds coming from his throat as if from a great distance. The shaking grew worse. He turned in the direction of the distant Tartessian fort and took a step…

  "Snap out of it!" Sue said, grabbing his arm. The muscle was rigid under her fingers, like carved wood. "Going berserk won't help!"

  He shuddered again, like a horse twitching at the bite of flies, and shook his head. Eddie's arms gripped him from behind, and he heaved and twisted. Sue and Jaditwara joined in, wrestling him to a halt; he wasn't quite far enough gone to hurt any of them.

  "Blood brother!" Eddie Vergeraxsson shouted in his ear. "Call back your spirit! We'll get them, or get revenge, but we have to think."

  Step by step he won back to himself. At last he relaxed. "Thanks," he said, his voice harsh and unfamiliar in his own ears. "Now let's look around."

  They did, keeping the locals at the shoreline. Most of the ground around the Islander campsite was trampled too heavily for useful information, but some of it gave him a grim satisfaction that took a little of the shadow from the bright spring day.

  "I think at least one of them bled out here," he announced.

  "Pete!"

  Sue's voice called him to the line where the horses had been picketed. "Pete, I think there was a hell of a fight here."

  He came, bent low and shading his eyes with a hand. "Yup," he said. "Pawprints, lots of 'em… then most of the horses got led away, some of 'em broke free… Look, this is a blood trail."

  Not much of one, an occasional brown drop. It led to the narrow band of riverside swamp.

  "Cover me," he said, stripping off his buckskin tunic and taking knife and tomahawk in hand. He eeled through, the wind warm on his bare back as he followed the tiny clues-a broken tule reed, an impression in a patch of mud, tufts of brown and gray fur. A low uncertain whine greeted him.

  "Perks?" he said incredulously. "Perks, boy?"

  His left hand reached out through the reeds, his right ready with his tomahawk. The palm came down on a dead man's face, half-chewed away. He suppressed a startled curse and swept the tall tule rushes aside. Flies buzzed around the dead man's caked blood, and on more-his own and others'-that matted the wolf-dog's fur. Perks quivered, crawling forward on his belly, ears laid back, and licked his face and hands.

  "Here, Perks. Steady, fellah."

  A jet of fear went through him as the dog struggled to rise. He yelped gently as Giernas slid the tomahawk through the loop at the back of his belt and picked him up; the ranger moved carefully, but a hundred and twenty pounds was a considerable weight even for his strength.

  Sue came running at his call. She ran her hands over the wounded animal. "Nothing fundamental," she said. "Except… yes, there's a pistol ball under the skin here on his left shoulder, must have skipped around. And this slash, and a stab here. I'll have to probe for the bullet, the rest is antiseptic and some stitches. This is one tough dog."

  "He was tougher than one Tartessian, at least," Giernas said. "Do what you can."

  He and Eddie and Jaddi were better trackers. He joined them, casting about through tall grass, riverside mud, beneath stands of live oak.

  "Here's where the Tartessians left," Eddie said. "North-down the wagon track."

  That would lead the enemy a day's hard ride north, and then they'd find the missing patrol's wagon-the Indians with it had peeled off by ones and little groups, in places where they'd be hard to trace. The wagon would be alone, destroyed, with its load of charred Tartessian bodies. That would drive the enemy troops absolutely bugfuck, of course.

  "And they had most of our horses with them," Eddie went on, pointing. "Look."

  Giernas nodded. They'd gotten familiar enough with their tracks to identify individuals by their hoofprints. Those were as individual as a man's fingerprints, when you knew how to look.

  "They had a net of outriders all around," Giernas said. "Look, there and there."

  Eddie frowned and nodded. "If Indigo got away, I don't think she could avoid or outrun them," he said unhappily. "Not after sunrise. They were pressing it hard, by the looks of it."

  "Pete!" Jaditwara called, her voice faint with distance. "Eddie!"

  They trotted over, running easily at a steady wolf trot with their rifles pumping back and forth in their right hands and their moccasins rustling through the soft ground cover. Insects and a few birds burst out ahead of them. Jaditwara was lying on her belly, hands parting two clumps of the tall grass. They circled up behind her to avoid overtreading the trail and knelt, reaching out with their riflebarrels to part more of the grass. Hoofprints, unshod ones…

  "That's two horses… Shadowfax and Grimma, isn't it?" he asked.

  Jaditwara nodded; those were two of hers, a mare and a gelding named after characters from some old story she liked; she'd read big chunks of it aloud to them around the fire overwinter.

  "Shadowfax is carrying a rider," she
said. "But a light one. Grimma is on a lead rope."

  Hope blazed up in him. "Spring Indigo got away!" he said. "She must have cut west and then south, back along the Tar-ties' trail. That's the one way they wouldn't look."

  The three of them jumped up and ran down the trail for a quarter hour; even through thigh-high grass you could follow it, once you knew roughly what and where to look for. Peter brought himself to a halt and scratched his head.

  "She stopped and changed off here," he said.

  "Awe," Eddie said, and Jaditwara nodded.

  "And she's pushing the horses hard," the ex-Fiernan ranger said, tossing her head in puzzlement. "Trot and gallop."

  You could do that, if you had two mounts, especially if you sat light in the saddle. It was a good way to cover ground quickly, as well-better than a hundred miles in a day's journey.

  Uh-oh, Peter Giernas thought, looking south.

  "I think I know what she was doing," he said slowly. "She didn't know when we'd be back-everything went real quick, quicker than we thought-and she knew the Tartessians were out in force. Thirty or more, and with native trackers. Where would you go?"

  Eddie leaned on his rifle and frowned, turning his head in a wide sweep. The fringe on the sleeve of his buckskins wobbled as he scratched his head.

  "Over the river to the east?" he said tentatively. "Hide in the hills?"

  "Cross two big rivers with a baby?" Jaditwara said. "And no more gear than in her saddlebags? No. She has to get shelter and food, and quickly, for her child's sake."

  My son, Giernas thought, with a brief burst of fury, as quickly suppressed. You need a clear head now, goddammit.

  "No," he agreed. "And she can't hole up with any of the locals, too much danger they'd turn her in."

  "Well, she can't go west," Eddie said, waving. The land in that direction was even flatter and more open, millions of acres of grass to the foothills of the Coast Range. "So where would she go?"

  "South," Giernas said grimly. "To the only place around here with crowds of people coming and going, strangers, where one more Indian woman with a kid wouldn't be noticed."

  "Oh," Eddie said. Then: "Oh, shit"

  Silent, they turned and ran back along their own trail, back to the camp. The locals were setting up, looking around for evidence of what had happened to their kin, building fires. Sue had Perks beside one of the fires on a section of hide, with water boiling and gear set out beside her. She nodded at their news.

  "What do we do?" she said.

  Pete forced words out. "What we planned." He waved north. "There are about half the soldiers they've got left, out of touch. We've got to act before they get their act together."

  "Indigo?" Sue said gently.

  "The longer she's in there, the more likely she and Jared are to get caught." He took a deep breath. "We'll have to make a few changes, though."

  Sue nodded, then looked down. "I've given him a shot, but I had to short it-not sure of the dose," she said. "And this is going to hurt. A little further and that pistol ball would have lamed him for life. I think it's pressing on a nerve; he snapped at me when I touched it."

  Peter Giernas knelt beside Perks's head; since Sue still had both hands, the snap would have been a warning only. The dog's eyes were wandering with the drug, but the black nose wrinkled and a long pink tongue flapped feebly at his hands. He took the heavy-boned shaggy head in his arms, remembering the puppy that had looked so sheepish when it piddled at the foot of his bed…

  "It's okay, big fellah," he said quietly, taking the great scarred muzzle in one hand and clamping it closed, cradling the head against him firmly. "I know you did your best. You held them off while she got away. I'm sorry about your pups."

  "Eddie, Jaddi, hold his paws," Sue said, washing off her hands and taking up the probe. "God, I wish I had more training for this-Henry should be here… All right."

  She took a long breath and began. Perks whimpered, then gave a muffled howl and heaved against the hands confining him.

  "Quiet, Perks!" Giernas said. "Quiet!"

  The body in his arms went quivering-rigid. Sue's long-fingered hands moved; she swore, moved again…

  "Got it!" she said triumphantly. The slightly flattened lead sphere thumped on the ground; Perks gave a long muffled whimper as she cleansed the incision and began to sew.

  "He'll be all right in a couple of weeks, I think," she said, looking up and meeting Giernas's eyes.

  "Thanks, Sue," he said. "And everything's going to be okay in a couple of days, if I have anything to do with it."

  "Oh, now you sorry bastards are fucked!" Marine rifleman Otto Verger whispered in his birth-tongue. He grinned through the burned cork on his face; he had been born Ohteleraur son of Vargerax, far from this river in Tartessos. The inflatable craft waited where it had grounded among the reeds that swayed in the hissing rain, and he crouched on the slick wet fabric of it.

  In harshly accented English: "It's me who's here the now, and I've got my rocket launcher!"

  This little piece of Iberia was a bit like the east-country fens of Alba where he'd been born nineteen summers gone… except that here he had this fine piece of battlecraft in his hands, from the hands of the wizard-smith Leaton and his helpers. Verger loved the stubby weapon; his hands caressed it as he waited in the grounded rubber raft. A cammo-painted steel tube four inches around and four feet long, with flared padded ends, a shoulder stock and handgrips on the tube, a circular shield for the user's face on the left side and a simple optical sight. It was a lot heavier than a rifle, true. But with this you had the Fist of Tauntutonnarax the Horned Man itself at your command…

  I mean, the Fist of God the Father and Son and His Mother, he corrected himself, freeing a hand for a second to sketch a cross on his chest.

  Otto Verger intended to make the Republic his home; his last leave at his father's steading had settled that in his mind, watching his kin sit on a clay floor around an open hearth, cracking fleas while the stock grunted and squealed and baaaa'ed and mooed from the other end of the longhouse. So he must make his peace with Jesus and His sky-clan.

  It was always well to be in good with the particular Gods of the folk you dwelt among, even if they were so strange you couldn't understand a thing about them. They were strong; that was enough.

  Their sergeant had crawled off to find the others; then he raised his head over the edge of the boat from where he lay on the reeds.

  "Path's marked," he said softly. "Follow me."

  Verger rolled out of the boat and wiggled forward, stopping for an instant to make sure that his loader was following them; Private Sheila Rueteklo was Fiernan, and they'd stop to look at the pretty flowers in the middle of a death-duel. A slap on his boot told him she was there, and he snake-crawled forward. Mud and cold water soaked into his already saturated uniform. There were secrets to moving through swamp. If you went flat on your belly, spread your weight, you could move across quaking ground that would suck you down to your waist if you tried to go on two feet.

  The toboggans following with their gear used the same principle-the Eagle People…

  That's we Eagle People, fool, he corrected himself.

  … were marvelously clever about that, finding new ways to use old knowledge.

  If you pushed reeds flat to make a mat beneath you it was even better. The sharp green smell of bruised vegetation rose up around him, mingling with the yeasty scent of the mud, the occasional earth-fart of marsh gas, and the odors of gun oil and metal. He sniffed with a hunter's caution. Yes. There was the smoke of many banked hearths from the shore of the river to westward. The smell could come from a town, or large village, or war camp… but almost certainly from the fort the briefings had described. For a while he'd been convinced they were lost on this endless river.

  Dark as arm's length up a hog's ass, he thought cheerfully. But we got here. Hard Corps!

  The rocket teams and their protecting riflemen moved in across the darkened swamp with patient stealt
h; every once in a while an officer or noncom would pause to look at a compass and correct their passage. At last the swamp proper gave way to mere mud, liquid beneath his body with firm ground close enough below for him to crouch and duckwalk, then come half-erect. An officer came down and led them forward along a string the scouts-those picked ones like Clarkson-had put in. A lot of fen-men in this unit… Verger walked silently, despite the wet ground beneath his boots and the stumps of trees. At last he came to a tangle of fallen trunks that would make a good position, and the rain lifted a little. Light, yes, there was faint yellow light from ahead. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them wide again. A row of squares, in a line three times the height of his head-gunport covers made from slabs of iron, with light leaking around them.

  "Seventy-five yards," the officer whispered. "You start on the right gun position. Remember not to look at the flares."

  She moved off into the night. Yes, Mother, Verger thought. He didn't mind having a woman as platoon commander… much, anymore. They tended to take better care of their units, less likely to get you killed to prove how long their dongs were.

  He heard a series of soft grunts as Rueteklo unhitched the carrying frame from her webbing harness, and knew the feel of her hands as she lifted his free of his back. Together that was eight rockets; another eight came up from the rear, brought over the marsh on toboggans.

  "Feed me," he said; it would be a while, but best to be ready. "Incendiary."

  Metal touched the rear padding of the launcher, and the rocket slid home with a low clunk-click. The trigger on the first handgrip went taut as the tension came on the spring striker.

  He could imagine the round sliding in, the egg-shaped head, the narrower body, the circle of fins at the rear with a solid rim the same diameter as the warhead. Unseen in the darkness his teeth showed. Incendiary warheads were fun.

  Well, all of them were fun, but incendiaries most of all. The bursting charge scattered fire like the Christian Hell, and it burned inextinguishably, some wonderful art making it impossible to put out with water. He'd put one of those-maybe more-right through those ports.