On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  "Up," Rueteklo said when her work was through.

  "Ready," he replied, bringing his eye to the sight.

  With that, he could see the clear pattern of light leaking out around the portlid of the gun emplacement; the careless bastards there didn't have any fitting to keep it light-tight. He shook his head in contempt. With a soft snort of equal scorn he remembered older men back home, saying that you had to obey like a dog to serve the Eagle People in war… Fools. Let them sit in their moldering dung-floored huts, wagging their gray beards and picking lice from each other's hair.

  Hard Corps! he thought.

  In the Corps you learned how to do things right. With the Empty Hand art alone he'd paid off many an old score, going back to his father's steading on leave-he was not a big man, though broad-shouldered and strong for his size. And as a Marine you could rely on the people beside you to do things the right way, the Corps way, not go off in a sulk, or rush away to grab a cow or grandstand and leave your arse swinging in the wind.

  Oath-brothers like that gave you the strength of a God. More, they had the Midnight Mare and Golden Roan to lead them-keuthes enough to make victory sure. Just this evening before they all set off upriver he'd watched her doing some rite or other, laying a black thread and a white side by side on her sleeve and waiting until you couldn't tell one from the other. Powerful rites to put keuthes on your side, in the Corps.

  Plus the Corps gave you weapons, finer than the miruthas used in the halls of Sky Father, and gold-fourteen dollars on the drumhead when you enlisted, the price of a good ox, and a dollar a day thereafter-and there was fine food like an endless feast in a chieftain's hall, healing magic like something from a tale of wizards for your hurts, the splendid uniform that all men feared, the promise of land after your hitch, the travel, the women to sport with…

  He grinned at the memory of night before last, stealing away behind a pile of ammunition boxes with a frisky sailor-wench off one of the Guard frigates-sleep well lost. At home in the Alban lands of Sky Father's children, if you didn't have bride-wealth to offer… well, a girl's brothers might kick your bollocks off if you so much as caught her by the braids and asked for a kiss. And what young man his age had bridewealth, with the price of a wife going up all the time and no cattle raids to make a poor young warrior rich?

  No wife for one born like him to a common wirtowonnax, that he knew, not for many years. No slave women any more either for a youth to ease himself with, or captives taken on raids, not like the days before the Battle of the Downs that his uncles spoke of.

  The old men got all the girls now-unless the girls ran off themselves. A young man who stayed home had nothing to look forward to except another day walking behind the arse-end of a plow ox. Watching the turnips grow and banging sheep, while the great wild world swept by on the Islanders' tall white ships.

  Yes, it's good to be in the Corps, he thought, working himself into the damp earth and keeping his eyes on the target with lynx patience, ignoring the cold rain that trickled down his helmet and fell into his sopping clothes. Good for his warrior years, and then one day he would have hall and land and herds of his own. Unless he died in battle first, of course, but all men were born doomed to meet their fate at the hour appointed. A sluggard sleeping in the straw and a hero on a bloody field reaping foemen, each died just as dead, and nobody remembered the sluggard's name after he was burned on his pyre.

  Occasionally he stretched muscle against muscle in silent contest, to keep limber despite the damp chill, supple for when the moment of action arrived. Rueteklo settled in beside him and to one side, a little to the rear but out of the backblast, her rifle across one of the carrying racks.

  "Got a rat-bar, Sheila?" he whispered.

  She handed him one and he tore off the wrapper with his teeth. He was more cautious about biting into the field ration. The slab of rock-hard biscuit inside was laced with nuggets of nut and dried fruit; it challenged his teeth, then softened as he chewed bits. Not bad. He'd heard the Islander-born moan about dog biscuit and even rat-bars, as if you could have fresh loaves and roast pig every day.

  Some folk would complain if they were beheaded with a golden ax!

  * * *

  Thunder rumbled faintly to the south and east. Raupasha blinked and brushed snow from her knitted hood-what the Eagle People called a ski mask-and looked in that direction. High rocky hills that were almost mountains blocked her view, bare trees and fir heavy with snow and naked rock. The sound boomed on, original and echo mingling in confusion. More snow flicked into her eyes, or fell from the rear flare of her helmet down her neck.

  "It has begun," she said quietly.

  "Well enough," Tekhip-tilla said, from the next chariot. "Another month of campaigning and we'd all have frozen solid, so the war would be delayed until spring when we thawed."

  Raupasha nodded ruefully; the old noble liked to grumble, but this was true. She was wearing a coat of wolfskin that the Seg Kalui of Babylon had given her, over a good tunic of the fine soft goat hair of this region, and tight drawers of the same under trousers cut down from a pair that a Ringapi chief would never need again, and Nantucketer boots. She was still cold; she and her men came from a land where snow was a rarity, and never lay long on the ground.

  The land ahead barely qualified as a valley-it was lower than the rough hills to the south, and much lower than the frowning heights northward. No road ran through it, or stream, only paths made by sheep and goats. Their herdsmen had left a few square rock shelters and pens, but those were abandoned. The whole landscape looked forsaken even by the Gods, dark rocks standing up out of sparse pasture already turning white. The snow flickered down out of the north, piling up against the exposed rocks, melting a little around the stamping feet of the horses and for a little while around the steaming piles of their dung.

  Raupasha tapped Iridmi on the shoulder through his double cloak, and he drew the chariot out in front of the others. She pulled up the ski mask; her followers must see her face.

  "Warriors of Mitanni!" she said.

  They cheered, tired and cold and hungry as they were. For a moment tears of pride blinded her; she blinked, glad of the snow that gave her an excuse to drag a mitten across her eyes. The massed chariots crowded together as closely as they could to hear her, horses tossing their heads as the snow clustered on their manes.

  "Warriors of Mitanni," she called again. "You have fought this man who calls himself the Wolf Lord-you have fought as the true wolf fights, and he has felt the sting of your fangs!"

  This time the cheer had more of a snarl in it, and a few men broke into yips and howls. They'd given the Achaeans all the trouble they could with their raids, and it had been a goodly measure. Most of these men had grown up under the feet of the Assyrians, having to eat dirt before the conquerors, with only old tales to feed their pride. Now they had real victories to boast of, if small ones. They liked the taste of it, and they valued it-the more for having lacked so long, she thought.

  Certainly I do. And I value what I have seen in Lord Kenn'et's eyes when we reported to him.

  "Now the final battle comes," she said, and pointed westward. "The war-host of Achaea comes, slowed and lessened by our raids, hungry and cold. We must hold them here, hold them out of the Halys Gates, and the war is ours for this year. Are you ready to fight? Will you follow your princess and your flag?"

  Another roaring cheer; the horses neighed at the sound, stamping their feet as if to join in. Sabala bayed, from where a groom held his collar-this was too solemn an occasion to allow the spotted clown free run, much as it grieved him. The silver chariot wheel on green that she had selected as the new banner-the national flag, to use the English word-of her people flapped above her head.

  "Then follow!" she said.

  Gunnery Sergeant Connor had picked the hill; not too high, with nothing overlooking it and a good field of fire from one side of the rocky cleft to the other. Nobody was going to bypass them, not with a brace of mortars d
ropping bombs on their heads. Raupasha's chariot rattled and bumped its way to the summit.

  "Dig in!" Connor said.

  Her men obeyed; the haughtiest noble had learned the wisdom of that, or had died and been replaced with picked men promoted from the Mitannian regiment of foot. Picks and shovels rang, and stones were piled up. Raupasha hopped down from her chariot and called the other leaders over to confer.

  "We will send the chariots there," she said, pointing back eastward to a long cleft in the hills.

  "That's far, if we need to retreat quickly," one squadron commander said.

  Raupasha shook her head. "We do not retreat from this spot," she said. "We hold the flank until reinforcements come."

  Her head turned southeast. Five mounted messengers had gone to Lord Kenn'et… But there are still the hillmen of these part, wild with fury against us for sweeping the valleys clear, she thought uneasily. And in this snow, the ultralights cannot fly.

  Men unloaded crates of ammunition and other stores, and the vehicles clattered off again; it was an advantage of chariotry, that you did not have to carry all your gear yourself. She went about, encouraging and directing, returning the smiles of her followers. Occasionally her eyes would flick westward; an army could not come this way, it was too rough for many wagons, but a force strong enough to turn the allied army's right flank could. That was why Kenn'et had sent mobile scouting parties to secure any possible path through the northern hills, and hers had been the one which found the enemy's force. Four hundred men, to hold this place…

  "They come," a scout gasped at last, galloping his horse up the slope.

  Raupasha settled into her own slit trench, squinting through her binoculars. The short winter's day was half-gone, but the snow was heavier, and the long columns of enemy troops appeared out of it like a genie in a storyteller's tale.

  "Let them get close," Connor said quietly, and she nodded.

  "And ma'am?" Connor said.

  Raupasha looked around, surprised. Usually Connor was all business, at least in the field. In camp he acted like an uncle, sometimes.

  "Ma'am, it's been an honor to serve with you," he said.

  Raupasha shook the offered hand, honored and a little chilled. He does not think much of our chances either, she knew, and then folded the knowledge away. It was not… what was the word? Relevant.

  Instead she waited, waited until the first clumps of mounted scouts were almost at the foot of the hill. They cannot see well either, she thought. And the snow is in their eyes.

  "Fire!" she said, standing.

  Marian Alston pulled down the night-sight goggles. The world turned brighter, but flat and greenish, and still silver-streaked by the cold rain blowing out of the north; probably cold enough to keep natives of this southern land indoors.

  And why don't I ever get to fight in decent weather? It was a minor miracle that nobody seemed to have gotten lost, doing everything by compass and dead reckoning; night attacks were notoriously chancy.

  She scanned the shores. No changes from the last overflight by the air corps. Most of the buildings were on the higher eastern bank, in the bend of an elbow of the river where Seville would have been in the other history. Most of Isketerol's new town was blocky adobe buildings, built quickly for utility. Down by the river were quays, most of the retaining walls made of vertical logs, a few of stone, the surfaces paved. Huge pyramid-shaped heaps of goods there under tarpaulins, or barrels standing in the rain. There were also big sailing barges, chains of them tied up three-deep by the wharves or anchored out in the river-normal commerce, supplies Isketerol had brought up for his army, possibly both. Probably both.

  Streets were empty of all but the occasional hand lantern, hurrying through the dismal murk. One larger building near the water was the commandatura, or equivalent; it had high blank walls and a three-story square tower at one corner to make it a minor fort. A few dim lights glowed, probably someone on watch, and another at the larger windows that ringed the top of the tower below the sloped tile roof.

  All the same, there were Tartessians out on the water in this broadened stretch of river. A stretch of linked pontoons spanned across from verge to verge a little further north; past it were the stone foundation-piers of a long-arch bridge, halted with the work half-done. Isketerol doesn't think small, that's for sure. One set of hands trains four, four train sixteen… but it took a driving ruthless will to keep the process going this fast. Lanterns glowed at the bows of small galleys, patrolling with a slow pace of oars-crews probably cursing the doctrine that kept them away from dry bunks, but they mounted a couple of light cannon and swivels, and all she had were ship's boats.

  Wordless, she extended a hand backward. The sailor assigned to the duty unfastened the casing and pulled out a rifle, and another for her partner. They were hunting weapons, something she and Swindapa had given each other for Christmas; each a double-barreled side-by-side.480 express ordered from Nantucket Town's best private gunsmith. Last year they'd been trapped on a game path near the African coast with nothing but service-issue to use when a bull elephant tried to convert them into toe-jam, and come out of it whole only through very good shooting combined with more than their share of luck.

  The rifle was built like a break-open shotgun, the stock Mauritius ebony and the steel of the barrels blued, with a telescopic sight over the bridge. It was twice the weight of an issue Werder but so well balanced in her hands you didn't notice it for a while. She snapped the action open and dropped in two of the heavy cartridges, felt and heard more than saw Swindapa doing likewise. The breech closed with a thick oiled snick.

  Then she pulled the handset out from cover and pressed the speaker button. "On the count of three," she said, taking off the goggles. Sight clamped down again, no more than ten yards. Trickles of cold water slid off her sou'wester and down her neck. Somewhere out there…

  "One. Two. Thr…"

  Fumpff. A spot of light wobbling up into the dim sky, distorted and streaked by the rain in the way. Then it swelled and burned with a harsh magnesium brilliance in the night, jerking and jinking on its parachute. The river lit up like the inside of a swimming pool. Fumpff. Fumpff. More of the parachute flares went up.

  "Go for it!" the Marine noncom at the tiller yelled.

  Alston bent her knee to compensate for the sudden heavy thrust, the crew rising and falling to the timing of their grunts, the ashwood shafts of the oars bending as they threw legs and back into the motion. The Tartessian patrol boats seemed to freeze for a moment; she could imagine them gaping slack-jawed at the boats swarming silently across their secure riverport, so tightly guarded by downstream fort and strong chain…

  SSSSSRAAAAWACK!

  The first of the rocket launchers cut loose, like a giant cat retching. The Tartessian patrol galley to-ok the round right over its beak, just under the muzzle of the single forward-pointing cannon. Probably some hand there was; reaching for the firing lanyard of a tube stuffed to the trunnioms with grapeshot. That became completely irrelevant as the warhead struck metal, burst in a blossom of fire, and scattered white-hot iron razors across the foredeck. One of those must have plunged into a cartridge or powder barrel, because the whole forward third of the little ship disappeared in a globe of fire that cast reflections off the dark water and shot out a thousand red sparks in the rain. Planks and thankfully unidentifiable bits and pieces rained down as the rear part of the hull ran (forward and sank with hardly a trace, leaving only a few men 'clinging to oars.

  SSSSSRAAAAWACK! SSSSSRAAAAWACKl

  Rocket-bombs lanced across the water- of the river; those that missed their targets, which most did, plunged into the buildings and streets on either side. Isketerol was going to deeply regret proving that a useful bazooka could be fashioned with a technology considerably lower than Nantucket's. Once you gave Leaton's people an idea, they tended to run with it.

  The barrage had only taken twenty seconds. The launch reached shore in about the same time; Marian gripped the
thwart with one hand as the prow grated on gravel and the oars dropped, left to dangle in the thwarts as the Marines snatched up their weapons and vaulted over the sides. Marian leaped as well, came down in water barely deep enough to cover the soles of her boots, dashed forward to the dry verge of the riverside road with Swindapa at her side. The Marines pelted past her; all over the river boats were pulling for their assigned objectives. Guard sailors poured in a roaring wave over the gunwales of the moored barges, cut or clubbed down the scratch night-watch crews and set to work; others lay alongside the pontoon bridge. Marines landed all along the wharves.

  There was a specific task for her and Swindapa. Two flicks of her finger, and the protective lids were off the ends of the telescopic sight mounted on the heavy game rifle; the forward one up like a cap, to keep rain off the lens, the rear fully back. She brought it to her shoulder and scanned up the commandatura's tower. Intelligence said that Tartessians always put the commander's quarters in the highest possible place…

  Make kan primary and ken secondary; Musashi's words. Ignore the irrelevant; the noise all around her, the growing chorus of screams, shouts, shots, explosions, flashes lurid through the downpour. Muscles relaxed but not loose, only the effort necessary to bring the weapon up. Clear lambent yellow flame light in the scope sight, the circle bisected by the fine hairs of the granule. Two hundred yards, a clout shot with this weapon, if it weren't dark and raining…

  Now to see if the commandant of this base did the instinctive thing. Yes. A shape backlit by the lantern, against the glass. Finger forward to set the hair trigger. Curling back to stroke it as her breath went out in a single long smooth exhalation.

  CRACK. The recoil a surprise as it always was when you were on-target, but this gun really punished your shoulder; she swayed backward, taking the impact rather than trying to stop it. CRACK. Swindapa's a second after hers. A shape falling limp forward through the broken glass, another behind clutching at it, trying to drag it back. CRACK. CRACK. The second figure fell on the first. They lay limp and motionless, arms dangling, locked together.