Instead she rode down the American line. “No different from the cannibals, boys and girls,” she said. More than half had been with her among the Olmecs, and the rest had been drilling with them for months, five days a week. “Hold steady, listen for the word, then shoot straight and hit hard. Remember, we fight as a unit. Anyone who gets carried away will have his or her ice cream ration reduced.” Laughter, a little nervous, and some grins.
She called the unit commanders together, sketched plans, shifted a squad over to provide backup in the wagon circle, checked that the handset radios were all working, then dismissed them to their troops. Very faint, the sound of combat came from over the rise ahead. Lieutenants and petty officers checked equipment, and quietly blistered ears over loose straps or clasps unbuckled for marching and not done up again. Then the Americans stood at parade rest, spears vertical with the butts resting on the ground and both hands clasped on them at chest height, or loaded crossbows carried at the port. No time for fancy tricks with caltrops this time, and no heavy equipment along. A straight stand-up fight. Good ground, at least. It looked like the enemy thought they were just going to stomp straight over everything in their way.
Christ, I run away to sea and here I am, in the goddam Army.
A thousand yards, mostly level, straight ahead; steeper ground to the left and right. Open, except for a few hurdle fences, not even much planted ground. Then a dip down to the creek, and the enemy would have to forge uphill from the water to reach this plateau.
A spatter of Fiernans came past first, the fastest ones, many wounded, many weaponless. The others murmured, milled about, then slowly settled down again. One of her scouts came trotting up over the rise, galloped across the open ground, then drew rein and saluted.
“Here they come, ma’am, just like you said they would,” he said, grinning from a painfully young face. “Three hundred and fifteen by my count, seven chariots, nothing fancy, just heading straight for us as fast as they can.”
“Very good.”
She glanced aside. Swindapa was watching the rise to the east, her face gone milk-pale under the light tan, hands quivering-tight on the reins. Christ, I forgot. These are the same sort of people who captured her. She brought her horse a little closer and rested a hand on the girl’s armored shoulder.
“Dapa, you’re not alone now. We’re going to kick their butts and send them off howling for their dead.” She paused. “Don’t let me down.”
A start, and a flush, then a tight smile. “I won’t, Marian.”
“By the Dagadevos, who are you?” Dekarchar son of Wirronax, high chief of the Keyaltwar, asked. “You look like a Tartessian to me.”
Lieutenant Commander Victor Ortiz, born in Havana, raised in Florida, commissioned by the United States, and currently serving in the Coast Guard of the Republic of Nantucket, smiled and spread his hands. They’d assigned him to slip around to the east coast of the island and raise some trouble in the enemy rear because he’d picked up the language faster than the other ship commanders.
“Some of my ancestors came from there,” he said. “I’m of the��� Eagle People.”
The chieftain scowled and looked through the door at the end of his hall at the schooner rocking at its moorings in a channel that wound through the marshes. “You mean you’re a friend of that turd of a wizard Hwalkarz and his Iraiina shit-eaters and Tartessian arse-lickers?” he rumbled menacingly.
The Keyaltwar chief had reddish-gold hair and the pale complexion that went with it, liberally starred with light brown freckles, and rather protuberant blue eyes in a narrow, beaky face. The way he clenched his hand on the handle of his ax was probably unconscious, rather than a direct threat to his guest. So was the red flush of rage that crept up his cheeks under beard and scars.
“Are all the children of Sky Father friends of the Iraiina?” Ortiz asked rhetorically, following the script the captain and the Arnsteins had mapped out for him.
“Well, no,” the chief grumbled, sinking back in the chair.
“So not all the Eagle People are friends of Hwalkarz. He is an outcast among us; oathbreaker, murderer by stealth, thief. A wolfs head, we call such a man-that’s why he uses it as his banner.”
The Americans’ visit had coincided with spring cleaning; women and slaves were raking out the old reeds from the dirt floor, and a winter’s accumulated bones and garbage with them, and replacing them with fresh. The fires were out-rekindling them would be one of the year’s most important ceremonies and the hall was rather fusty and disarranged.
Ortiz sank down on the stool before the chiefs seat and smiled, moving one hand in a spreading gesture. “You haven’t bent the knee to Daurthunnicar yet, I take it.”
“Never! Never!”
The chief did rise this time, waving his ax in the air. The other warriors hanging about his hall did likewise, stamping and screaming. Some of them dyed their hair with lime, which made it stand out in spikes. They looked like enraged daisies as they waved their weapons and shrieked; the noise grew so loud that other folk from the hamlet put their heads in to see what was going on, and they shouted too. Eventually even the animals got into it, loud enough to startle clouds of ducks and geese and storks out of the tidal marshes that stretched for mile after mile along the north bank of the Thames.
Ortiz waited out the spontaneous demonstration. So this is what they fake at political conventions, he thought.
“Our folk came here as conquerors!” the chief brayed.
Probably chased here by stronger tribes on the mainland, Ortiz thought, remembering his briefings. Like the Iraiina. Possibly by the Iraiina, generations ago. There seemed to be a billiard-ball effect to these migrations, with the end ball getting bumped out over the Channel. The original impetus might have started as far away as the Ukraine or even Central Asia.
“We live as free men! We sent Daurthunnicar’s dogs back with a boot under their tails, and he and his wizard haven’t done a thing but puff and stamp!”
Actually you’re just too difficult to get to; too much swamp and bog forest in the way, Ortiz thought.
“Why don’t you raid them, for such an insult?” he said. “Why don’t the Keyaltwar show the wizard and his dog what they think of him?”
“Well, now,” Dekachar said, sitting back. He signaled for more beer to be brought. “Well, now, we Keyaltwar are men of honor, but we aren’t fools. Daurthunnicar has too many allies now, curse him, and the wizard has given his men fine weapons-armor of this iron stuff. And they’re far away, many days’ journey.”
“Farther than that,” Ortiz said. “The Iraiina and their allies are moving west, against the Earth Folk. Their steadings lie stripped of fighting men. Stuffed with cattle, bronze, gold, women, cloth, the new iron tools and weapons.”
“What?” Dekarchar leaned forward eagerly. “You know this?”
“I know it. My��� high chief fights them even now, in the west.”
Dekarchar counted on his fingers, called for counsel from his advisers. “No, no,” he said regretfully. “It would take too long for a raiding party to strike at the Iraiina lands and return-they’d catch us in the open with numbers we couldn’t withstand. They move too fast these days, curse them, all this riding.” He shivered slightly. “And the wizard��� no, no.”
“That’s if you go by land,” Ortiz said helpfully. “My ship could carry three, four hundred warriors for a short journey��� say over to the south bank of the river, west of here. From there it’s less than a day’s march to the northernmost Iraiina steadings, or to tribes allied to them. Or we could carry you and your warriors to a point on the south coast near Daurthunnicar’s own ruathaurikaz. Stuffed with the plunder of a dozen tribes���”
Dekarchar began to breathe heavily. “Tell me more of this,” he said.
Here they come, black as hell and thick as grass, Marian Alston thought, with a slight ironic twist of her lips. That had been the cry of the British sentry at the battle of Rorke’s Drif
t, during the Zulu War. The Sun People war band coming over the rise wasn’t as numerous or as disciplined, but they had a good deal of the same ferocious impetus and will to combat. These buckra mean business. They fought to kill, and defined winning as being the only one left standing.
“So do I,” she muttered to herself. She also remembered something else from the Zulu War, and urged her horse over to the Fiernans.
“Maltonr,” she said, “have your men turn around, walk forty paces, and sit down with their backs to the enemy.”
“What?” he said.
“Swindapa, interpret for me. Explain it’s a magic. When I tell them to turn around and fight, they’ll each have the strength of two.” Because they won’t charge in when their feelings overflow. “And lay their spears flat, to gain strength from the earth.”
The Fiernan girl broke into enthusiastic speech. Interest dawned on the faces looking up at them, replacing sullen bewilderment. They turned and squatted on their heels, holding spear and shield before them, a buzz of excited conversation rising over their heads.
“Oh, and tell them if anyone looks behind him before they’re told, it’ll spoil the magic.”
Maltonr gave her a doubtful look, then smiled ruefully and sat with his followers and the spear-armed peasants. “How are you going to do that?” Swindapa asked, as they cantered back to their position. “Make each of them strong as two, that is.”
Alston shrugged. ” ‘Dapa, a properly timed flank attack does double the effect,” she said. “Now let’s get down to business.”
They halted by the standard-bearers. She looked down her own line as the chariot people milled on the lip of the rise a thousand yards to the east. The circle of wagons, with the Fiernan archers and slingers inside. More were trickling in every minute, to be shoved into the ring of the wagon-fort or called there by their friends. Others straggled over to join Maltonr and his crouching spearmen. Call it forty or so in the wagons, as many again or a little more with Maltonr, double that soon. Then her own force, a central block of fifty spears three deep and a double line of seventy-five crossbows on either side. She kicked her horse out again, a hundred yards in front, and looked over the line from the enemy’s perspective. Good. The Fiernans weren’t at all conspicuous; Maltonr’s bunch were nearly invisible, what with a slight dip in the ground.
This is going to be ugly, she thought, returning to her station.
The Zarthani had paused for a moment to work out what was waiting for them; then they spread out in a line, blowing their ox-horn trumpets and snouting. Even at this distance she could see bronze and gold and bright felt trappings gleaming on the horses, the heron-feather plumes nodding as they snorted and tossed their heads.
“Nyugen, Trudeau,” she said. The two senior lieutenants stood at her stirrup. “Remember, infantry usually breaks before a chariot charge here. When ours doesn’t, the chariots may wheel off and try and shoot us up while their infantry close with us, or they may just ram in close as they can. In either case, concentrate fire on the chariots-go for the teams-and then switch to those following. Any questions?”
Both shook their heads. “Good luck.”
The tribesmen had shaken themselves out, seven clumps behind the chariots of their chieftains. They started toward her at a walk, yelps and hoots and the odd high shriek coming as they worked themselves up. Wooden axles squealed like tortured pigs, wheels rumbled, hooves pounded the short dense turf, bare human feet slapped dirt. The chariots loomed larger and larger. Now she could see the men in them, the near-naked youths driving, and the leather-armored aristocrats standing behind, although one��� she focused the binoculars. Chain mail, by God. Walker had been a busy little bee; and wouldn’t one of these suits be a potent bribe here. The riders stood easily in the jouncing unsprung carts with their feet braced wide and knees bent, javelins and bows in their hands. Must train them from toddlers to do that, she thought. The horses trotted as the drivers slapped their backs with the reins, and behind them the hairy kilted warriors began to lope, keeping up effortlessly.
Four hundred yards. “Now,” she said.
“Spears��� down!” the officers barked. The Nantucket troops gave a single deep shout and raised their polearms high. Drums beat, and the cool English sunlight sparkled on the edges and points as the nine-foot shafts swung down into line.
“Prepare to receive cavalry!”
The first rank knelt, propping their oval shields on their shoulders and the ground ahead of them, slanting their spears out. The next two lines stood in staggered formation, points reaching out to make a bristling three-layered forest of knife-sharp heads poised to stab.
“Prepare to fire.” The front rank of crossbows knelt. Three hundred and fifty yards. A bugle call. “Fire!”
Alston swung down off her horse, and Swindapa followed. The standard-bearers and their guards and the twelve sword-and-buckler troops formed up behind them. The easterners were at a full run now, horses galloping, pulling the chariots ahead of the footmen. The long shadows of the spears seemed to reach out toward them.
WHUNNNG. Seventy-five crossbow bolts nickered across the space between the two forces, moving in long shallow arcs blurred by their speed. Men fell; the short heavy arrows would punch right through the light hide-and-wicker shields, through the arm holding the shield and then the breastbone, and crunch into the spine. A chariot went over in a tumbling, splintering whirl as both its horses were struck by several bolts apiece and collapsed in midstride.
WHUNNNG. The second volley brought another two chariots down, and a dozen men; the range was closing fast. A slight ripple through the spearpoints as the troops braced themselves. WHUNNNG. WHUNNNG. The ratcheting click of the mechanisms as the crossbows’ cocking levers were pumped. A chariot veering and going off on a wild tangent, a bolt standing in the rump of the off-lead horse and the animal plunging and bucking with its eyes bulged out, squealing piteously. WHUNNNG. More men down, but not as many as with the Olmecs-the easterners had a better formation than that, irregular but strung out so that men could support each other without crowding. So had their ancestors conquered, spreading out from the steppes of inner Asia, west to the Atlantic and east to the borderlands of China.
WHUNNNG. More chariots out of action, the man in chain mail dismounting and running forward, screaming hatred at those who’d wounded his precious horses. The remaining war-cars edged away from the sleeting death of the crossbows, heading toward the massed spearpoints at the bottom of the American formation. Then still farther to the right, as the Fiernan archers and slingers in the circled wagons opened up, ragged but enthusiastic. Arrows whistled, and slingstones cracked on shields, whunked into flesh. WHUNNNG. Very close now, a hundred yards, and the bowmen among the Zarthani were shooting as they ran. Shafts arched up into the sky, slammed down. Bronze and flint sparked and bent and shattered on steel armor and pattered on metal-faced shields. Here and there one slipped through to find vulnerable flesh, and a few Americans were dragged backward by the stretcher-bearers; their comrades closed the ranks.
Half the Zarthani were left on their feet, many of them wounded. One chariot came on, its horses streaming blood and foam, bolting, but bolting in the direction their driver wanted them to go. Alston could see snarling grins, shouting faces, axes whirling overhead in blurring circles.
“Bows down!” barked the officers. Trumpets reinforced the orders. A last spatter of bolts, and the crossbows went over their users’ shoulders. The round bucklers slung across their backs went forward, and hands slapped down to the hilts at their right hips. “Draw!”
Long months of practice made the motion a single flicker of light as the leaf-shaped stabbing swords came free of their wood-and-leather sheaths.
“Give ‘em the Ginsu!” someone shouted. Alston’s teeth showed in a not-quite-smile. Ian Arnstein had wanted the short sword called a gladius, after the Roman blades it was modeled on. Public opinion had proved stronger. Ginsu it was.
Alston reached o
ver her shoulder and drew her own sword, head moving back and forth as she kept the whole action in sight through the intervening ranks. A long rattle of thrown spears came from the Zarthani, in the moment before impact. An American not far ahead dropped on his back kicking; a spear had bounced off the rim of his shield and up into the unprotected underside of his jaw. The driver of the last chariot was leaning back, hauling on the reins to try to skim along the line while his warrior shot arrows. He almost made the quick turn, but the horses were too far gone in hysteria to respond as they’d been trained. Their too-tight curve put their legs into the thicket of spearpoints, and they collapsed. The chariot cartwheeled sideways; its crew were thrown out straight onto the waiting points, but the wood-and-wickerwork vehicle followed right behind.
“Oh, shit,” Alston said.
It was the worst possible thing that could have happened; the line of spears disintegrated just where it formed a junction with the right-wing crossbows as the chariot’s flying body bowled into them. You couldn’t have gotten any horses ever foaled to do that voluntarily, or most men, but the accident had sent a kamikaze into her formation.
” ‘Dapa, tell Maltonr to face about and bring his spearmen, now. The rest of you, follow me!”
She ran for the spot where the war-car had crashed into the American line just as the howling clansmen leaped to follow the chariot into the gap it had made.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
June, Year 2 A.E.
Bill Cuddy listened to the panting messenger. His Iraiina was pretty good now, more than enough for this.
“Keyaltwar for certain,” the messenger gasped. “Hundreds of them, maybe others of the northeast tribes-burning, killing, looting. They came from the coast.”
Somebody had to have given them a lift. Not hard to do-there was plenty of deserted beach along the south shore. “The Guard got smart,” he muttered to himself, looking around.
Island in the Sea of Time Page 55
