On the Oceans of Eternity

CHAPTER NINETEEN

October, 10 A.E.-Straits of the Pillars, Tartessos

November, 10 A.E.-Hattusas, Kingdom of Hatti-land

October, 10 A.E.-Straits of the Pillars, Tartessos

October, 10 A.E.-Long Island, Republic of Nantucket

"Dyce, keep her dyce," the young lieutenant by the wheels said, tapping his cane against the binnacle and pointing with it to remind the helm crew the heading they were keeping.

A platform put her head above the edge of the sheet-steel-and-timber barricade around the steering station; it wouldn't stop anything shot out of a cannon, but it would deflect grape-shot and rifle bullets.

"Thus, thus-very well, thus."

Marian Alston-Kurlelo clasped her hands behind her back, rising very slightly on the balls of her feet as the Chamberlain took the swell with a long smooth rocking-horse motion. She had spent ten years of her life building this fleet, made of wood and iron, hemp and canvas and human hearts. Now she was taking it to possible destruction, quite certain wounding and death and mutilation. Worse yet, the deeper, more atavistic fears; for Swindapa, for the children they'd left behind who might be orphaned again this day, fears of death and crippling wounds. Fear of failure worse than any, and a self-disgust at the cold exhilaration that was building beneath it all.

The flagship was leading the Guard warships in toward land, wind from the south on their starboard quarter, masts bare of all but fighting sail, with boarding nets along the sides and splinter netting overhead. The deck was nearly empty, except for the hands waiting at the lines and the Marine Gatling-gun crews crouching at the rail where their weapons snouted out from among the rolled hammocks; she looked up to the tops, where the rest of the Gatlings waited. Down again, through the deck gratings, and she could see the gun crews poised around the sleek blue-black shapes of their Dahlgrens. A. few of them looked up, showed teeth that gleamed in the dark, lifted thumbs, but most waited quiet and motionless in the dimness. There was little sound beside the creak and groan of the ship working, the occasional rutch of feet on the sanded decks- sand to keep the footing from growing slippery when the planks ran with blood and body fluids-and the song of the wind in the rigging.

The faces on the quarterdeck were equally grave and quiet, except for a few middies grinning with excitement. Alston turned and looked behind her. The five frigates followed in exact line, their wakes like a single ruled line across the purple-blue of the sea. The low coastline of southwestern Iberia was less than a hint ahead, more like a line of cloud than a firm sight of land-the heights of Gibraltar and the Sierra Nevada were far off to the southeast. Swindapa came up, saluted, and handed her a folder. It held pictures, digital video shots from pre-Event cameras borne by the scouts in the ultralights, dropped onto the Chamberlain's deck and run through the PC and printer in the radio shack.

"They're coming out," she said quietly; their eyes met, saying all that was needed.

Alston gave a small precise nod, looking at the picture. All the larger Tartessian ships, and twenty of the galleys. Fangs out and hair on fire. The enemy had fought hard during the abortive invasion of Nantucket, but they'd fight harder still here, on the doorsteps of their own homes.

What a waste.

She studied the picture. The Tartessians were forming up in a line, ragged but definitely a line, slanting down the wind to the southeast. The Islanders had the weather gauge, the wind blowing from them to the enemy, but that meant little when both sides obviously wanted a stand-up fight. The two fleets formed the acute angles of a triangle; her mind automatically extrapolated the lines. Where they met…

"Pass the information to the fleet, Ms. Kurlelo-Alston," Marian said.

She glanced to starboard. The transports were lying further southward, off the Moroccan coast, hull-down from her present position. Lying to the windward also meant they could move rapidly, if necessary…

"On deck, there! Sail ho!"

The enemy grew from a flash of white to sails to hulls painted dark blue-gray and checked by the opening maws of gunports, as swift as always when fleets were on converging courses. The hulls were long and low, derived from the form of Yare, the first modern ship they'd been able to study in detail. Six-to-one hull-beam ratio, she noted. There were differences, though; slightly more rake on the masts, an ingenious-looking Y-fork coming up from the stem and used to set the mizzen forestays. The Tartessian shipwrights were men who understood wood and stresses and the sea, with their hands and guts if not mathematically. They'd taken the uptime carpentry tools and techniques and run with them-run far and fast.

"Carry on," she said, walked to the rail, stepped up to the ratlines, and ran up the shrouds to the mizzen top.

"Good morning," she said to the occupants-the triangular platform was crowded, with the Gatling crew and several Marine sharpshooters with telescopic sights on their rifles.

"Morning, ma'am," a sergeant said cheerfully, in a thick Fiernan accent. "Beautiful it is a morning for fight, if fight has to become."

There was something to that; not too hot, blue sky with an occasional fleecy cloud, a Mediterranean autumn on the edge of winter. She nodded back and climbed further, up the shrouds that used the top as a spreader and to the topgallant crosstrees. That narrow spreader board had room only for one, and the sailor there ran nimbly out onto the yard to give her room. She leveled her binoculars. The galleys were coming up fast behind the twelve sailing ships…

Now, that's cunning, she thought. Just the thing to hit us when we're taking on the gunships.

Like the sailing ships they had fires going in braziers on their quarterdecks next to the wheel, where the three-legged idols of Arucuttag sat in their little shrines. Her lips tightened. Turning these buccaneers loose on the world with nineteenth-century technology and Bronze Age attitudes was the Nantucketers' fault… hers, in particular.

The decks of the enemy ships showed plenty of other glints, the edged metal of bayonets and boarding pikes, axes and swords; as she'd expected, they'd shipped heavy crews for this action. Crowding might slow them down if they overdid it. If they didn't overdo it, it might give them a little edge because they could rotate gun crews and replace casualties. It would certainly make them harder to take by boarding. She looked up their masts, and from one came a wink of reflected light, a spyglass peering back at her.

"And they've got a smart, hard, unmerciful man to lead them, one who's as able as any I've ever met, I think," she murmured to herself.

We gave Isketerol his chance, she mused. If the Eagle hadn't turned up there in Alba, he'd have lived and died an obscure adventurer, in a people so obscure the archaeologists weren't even sure they really existed. We gave him an opportunity, and woke the fire in his belly.

What was that phrase Doreen Arnstein had used once… a "mute inglorious Milton"?

Well, Isketerol was a mute inglorious Napoleon, or William the Conqueror.

He did have one weakness, or strength, that his friend William Walker lacked. To twentieth-century eyes he was ambitious to the point of madness and cruel as the sea, but he had his own standards. Walker was a solipsist, the one true love of his own life; the rest of the world was game-counters to him. By contrast, the Iberian warlord really cared about his own people; and he was a man of honor, in his way…

Alston leaned out, wrapped an arm and both legs around a backstay, and slid down, thinking hard as she did, as casual as running downstairs in Guard House back on Main Street. On the quarterdeck, she said:

"Ms. Kurlelo-Alston, order to the schooners. They're to move in east and west and engage the galleys. And to remember those damned things can go right into the eye of the wind."

More bitterly than ever she missed the Farragut, and pushed that out of her mind.

"Coming into range," Commander Jenkins said.

And we should take advantage of it, she thought. If they've reequipped with twenty-four-pounders, six a side, they've got a broadside of a hundred and forty-four pounds each. We've got over eight hundred pounds, and the range on them.

"Open fire as you bear on the lead ship, Mr. Jenkins," she said. "To the fleet; general engagement in line, maintain course."

A rattle of orders, from Jenkins through his subordinates, down to the gun crews. Out tompions! and run out your guns! The familiar drumming thunder as the portlids went up and the gleaming blue-black snouts came out, the grunting hnnn-huh!, each crew in unison as they heaved four thousand pounds of cast-steel cannon across the thick oak planking with rope and block and pulley and sheer hard sweat.

Just then the side of the first Tartessian ship vanished in a cloud of smoke; a perceptible fraction of a second later came the rolling sound of huge doors slamming echoing over the water. Marian's brows went up; wasting powder, with the guns they had available. Then she frowned. The sound wasn't quite right, too deep.

Everyone was looking northward with alert curiosity, a few faces pale and drawn. The first ball struck the water two hundred yards short of the Chamberlain's bow and skipped twice like a giant's flung stone. Alston felt her teeth clench. That's too far and too hard.

The next two went right into a wave and vanished; the fourth skipped and struck forward, hitting the flukes of the portside anchor with a discordant metallic clungggg that sent shivers into the back teeth of every jaw on board as it ran up from the deck through feet to head. Numbers five and six came aboard, one with a deep wet thunk into the hull timbers, the last after two skips into the hammock-netting not far from where she stood. It was nearly spent, its energy wasted on the water it had grazed, but it still sent splinters and ripped canvas flying, thudded into the mizzenmast and went trundling across the deck with crewfolk hopping and cursing to avoid it.

Clunng. It struck the barricade around the wheel and compass and finally came to a halt, rolling with the pitch of the deck rather than walking itself with the gyroscopic force of rapid spin. Alston looked down at it wide-eyed as it rolled not two feet from the toes of her boots.

An expert's eye judged size and weight effortlessly. Eight-inch diameter, sixty-eight pounder. Almost identical to those the Republic's frigates used for the main armament, save that the surface was slightly pebbled rather than machined smooth. No ship of the Tartessians' size could carry a conventional gun large enough to fire that shot; it had to come from something cold-core-cast and carefully shaped by a knowledge of internal pressures. Almost certainly cast in steel, not stiff brittle cast iron.

Like the Dahlgrens on the Chamberlain's gun deck, Civil War models improved by Leaton's superior steels.

Walker shipped them in, she realized. Recently enough that our agents didn't pick it up.

How and why didn't matter now. What did matter was that their range advantage was gone or mostly gone-that would depend on how well worked-up their crews were with their new weapons-and that their edge in weight of metal had just been cut in half. She could feel her brain working the numbers, as if she were watching some machine in Leaton's shops whirring and stretching, steel sliding on oiled steel.

"Belay firing," she said calmly. "Left to two-seven-zero. Fleet to conform. Inform all captains that the enemy mounts eight-inch Dahlgrens and repeat it. Advise schooners to employ caution."

Because at anything like close range those guns will throw a ball in one side of you and out the other, she thought, as Swindapa dashed to the radio shack.

Jenkins gave her a single startled glance, but he was already barking orders. Chamberlain had been sailing east on a reach, with the wind broad on the starboard quarter. Now she turned on her heel to run before the wind a little east of north, the sailors spinning the wheel and deck crews running to heave sails around from their port brace, putting the yards more nearly horizontal to the hull.

A chorus of heave-hoi ran across the deck, line teams bending to it with a will, sweat running down their naked backs or plastering T-shirts to skin. The change in course turned the bow toward the enemy, cutting off the gun crews' view; she could hear a muted chorus of groans from sailors who'd been ready for the crash of their first broadside. A glance behind showed the whole string of frigates turning as if they were attached to the flagship with invisible rods, heeling over to starboard as momentum pressed them down, then steadying on the new course.

The whole Tartessian line disappeared in smoke as the Islander fleet turned toward them-and therefore turned their own deadly broadsides away, cannon pointed impotently at each other or empty sea, while every gun on the enemy decks still bore right down their throats. Alston gripped her hands together behind her back; they'd have to take two broadsides without being able to reply, maybe three…

Iron lashed the water ahead of them; the enemy were firing at a narrower target now, perhaps a little slow to correct their aim. There was a rending crash forward, and the sound of screaming. Blocks and lines fell on the splinter netting overhead, and something came all along the deck and whirred past her close enough to whip her around like a top with the wind of its passage. That let her see Jenkins staring down incredulously at the stump where his left hand had been, and a body beyond him falling-one of the lieutenants, beheaded as neatly as a giant guillotine could have done.

She stepped forward, whipping off the lanyard from the breast pocket of her uniform jacket and throwing the loop around his arm just above the ragged stump, pulling it taut with a hard jerk. He was going gray with shock, eyes wandering.

"You, you, get him below," she said, and they lifted the captain of the Chamberlain between them and dashed for the companionway. " 'Dapa, pass the word for Mr. Oxton. Ensign, give me a hand."

She was standing in a spreading pool of blood; smashing the head off lets everything out very quickly, and there are many gallons of blood in a human body. This one was that of a fairly slight woman, and they heaved it over the rail with a single convulsive movement.

"Ma'am?" Oxton said, his face set, a little pale, lips compressed, green eyes steady and level.

Good, she thought. Aloud: "Mr. Oxton, you're in command of this ship; Captain Jenkins is disabled," she said. "Keep her so."

"One minute fifty seconds," Swindapa said at her side, looking at her watch. "Two minutes… and ten…"

"Keep her so… dyce, do you hear?" from Oxton near the helm.

A middy came panting up from the gun deck, looked for Jenkins, ran to Oxton's side, and reported in a slightly shrill voice that number-one starboard had been dismounted, was secured, two crew dead and four wounded. There was blood spattered across the chalk-white freckled face, clotted in the short dark-red hair, and a little running from a cut over one eye.

"Very well," Oxton said. "Steady there, Mr. Telukelo."

"Yessir." He visibly took a deep breath. "The master gunner says the gun can be remounted but it'll take twenty minutes. Have to mount new ringbolts."

"Leave it secured," Oxton said. "Carry on."

"Sir!"

"Two minutes twenty seconds…" Swindapa said.

This time the lead Tartessian ship's guns went off in a rippling volley rather than a simultaneous broadside, firing from forward to aft with the long jets of flame raking through the fogbank of powder smoke streaming back northward across her decks.

A sailor fell out of the rigging with a long scream, one of the bosun's crew crawling aloft repairing cut lines and stays. The shriek was cut short as the man bounced off a shroud and hit the deck hard and unevenly. The Chamberlain shuddered and started to fall away to port as the foretopsail yard sagged, smashed clean through near the partners. More crew swarmed aloft and others went to the lines; the ship steadied as the hands at the helm wrestled with the wheel.

"Sir," someone panted. "Sir, Chips says we're hulled three places on the port bow near the waterline. He's working to plug it, two feet in the hold."

"Acknowledge. Hands to the pumps, there."

"One minute thirty seconds…"

Alston nodded, feeling for the right moment, eyes slitted. "Fleet to conform," she said. "Message to the transports-execute contingency C. Mr. Oxton, bring her right to three-two-zero; guns to fire as they bear."

"Right fifty degrees rudder! Haul all port, lively port!"

She raised her binoculars again as the long bowsprit swung eastward, a part of her hearing the roaring cheer from the gun deck as the crews got the order, and the cry of silence fore and aft! that followed it.

They were much closer now; she could easily see the Tartessian deck crews heaving to clew up the foresail and lower fore-topsail to check their ship's way, taking some speed off her so their line wouldn't outrun hers and leave itself vulnerable to being broken in the middle. A hint of a bleak smile bent her full lips as the second Iberian ship was late about following suit and nearly ran its leader aboard at the stern; men were yelling at each other and waving their arms there.

Chamberlain was coming about, not to lie parallel with the enemy but to approach them at the sharpest angle that would allow her to use all her broadside guns. The Tartessians were taking the challenge, keeping their course rather than slacking off to the north to maintain their distance.

Mmtnm-hmmmm. Probably they intend to let us each get tangled up with one ship, then range up and take us on the other side with the unengaged vessels. That was the rational way to use their advantage in hulls and numbers; they had about the same number of guns but twice as many ships. That made their firepower more mobile, but also more diffuse at any one point.

BAAAAMMM. The first of the Chamberlain'?, big Dahlgrens cut loose in a spear of red fire and a cloud of smoke; the wind swept it northward like a young fogbank. BAAAAMMM. A steady rippling fire, each gun waiting until the turn of the ship brought the target into its sights, the gun captain shouting clear! and jerking the lanyard, curving his body aside like a matador to let the cannon slam backward with the recoil. Then the re-loading, the swabber pushing wet sponges down the barrel with a long sssshhhhhh of steam to quench sparks, the powder-bag and wad, two loaders tipping the heavy steel ball in like a giant ball bearing, the rammer pushing it down, the crew hauling on the tackle to run the gun forward again and the captain slamming in a new friction-fuse, glaring over the barrel, heaving on a handspike, spinning the elevation screw and making hand signals to the crew to push the breech around and bring the gun to bear. Then clear!-

Brutal manual labor of the hardest kind in the stifling smoke-filled gun deck, darkness and scorching-hot cannon recoiling like the pistons of a forging hammer and as able to crush a limb or skull if one step went wrong; yet skilled labor, too, a teamwork choreographed as precisely as any dance. Automatic, endless, ignoring the heat and fatigue and dry wooden tongues, the knowledge that enemy shot could smash through the oak timbers at any second.

"One minute fifteen seconds for our first gun to repeat," Swindapa said.

That was excellent time, far better than the enemy was managing; they had heavy crews but not the long practice that gave speed and accuracy.

A gun that fires twice as fast is as good as two, she thought.

The lines of ships were less than a thousand yards apart now, cannon a continuous bellowing roar, smoke choking-thick. A crackle came from the tops above her; she glanced up and saw a Marine sharpshooter leaning over the piled hammocks along the railings of the maintop, firing, slipping a new shell into the breech, picking a target, correcting her aim, firing again. The enemy were doing likewise. A young deckhand running with a bucket of sand to throw on a fire dropped and lay motionless, blood leaking from under him; another checked the body, shook her head, and helped drag it to the side and put it over. Something went crack overhead, hit the plates around the wheel, bounced and went off whirrt-whirrt-whirrt, a lethal lead Frisbee.

Only part of her attention was necessary for the business of the moment, the long waiting as the fleets ran together and hammered each other as they came. Part of her was spectator; part remembering-do Jesus, there are a lot of things I want to live to do again…

Watch an iceberg heel in the Roaring Forties, as the surf of a storm lashing around the planet broke on it in waves mountain-high, seething gray and white and green. Sea-turtles crawling up a Caribbean beach turned silver under the full moon, looking like an endless field of living boulders; or a sky-full of condors over the towering painted pyramid of Sechin Alto in Peru. Hear wolves howling in the Berkshire hills on a hunting trip, with night falling and the rich yeasty smell of damp autumn leaves. Smell the clean milky scent of a baby and watch its broad toothless idiot smile as it reached for her… Heather and Lucy's kids. Take the pan out of the oven and feel the earthy joy of knowing she'd made a really perfect beaten biscuit. Sit in front of a fire at home with Swindapa on a winter's night, hearing the snow beat feather-paws against the windows, their arms around each other's shoulders and a book of Flecker propped open on their knees.

Crack. There was a cold shock in the small of her back, cold fire scoring across her flank. She spun, staggered, put a hand to her right side below the last rib. Hot wetness and torn cloth. Breath hissed out between her teeth.

Swindapa grabbed her, pushed her into the shelter of the helm barricade, knelt. A rip of cloth and cold air hit the wound.

"It needs stitches," she said.

"Can't take the time," she said, and craned her head to look. A line of red… not too deep, mostly in the thin layer of subcutaneous fat, not clipping the fibers of the muscle much…

"Bandage it," she said. "That'll have to do. No time for anything else and stitches would just rip out if I have to move."

The pain had begun, and the fire turned hot as the antiseptic powder went into the wound. A lot easier than havin' a baby, she told herself. Her partner wound the bandage around her waist like a sash, tying it off tight to hold the pad over the torn flesh, then tugging the jacket down over it again. She walked out, testing herself-not much loss of function just yet.

Damn, I'm getting' to be held together by bandages. There were two priceless pre-Event elastic ones on her knees as a precaution against extension injuries.

"Flesh wound," she said to Oxton's worried glance.

A ball gouged a cut out of the mainmast, neat as a cookie cutter, except that a cookie cutter would not have left a dozen sailors down with splinters through thighs and bellies and chests. No more than a hundred yards now, an endless bellowing roar, smoke stinking of burned sulfur, the copper-iron metallic taint of blood, shot crashing home like the tattoo of hail on a roof magnified to Brobdingagian size.

The two lines of battle were at their death-grapple, ton-weights of iron flung back and forth to smash metal and wood and human flesh in a chaos of fallen spars and sails and cordage like the nets of giant spiders. Through the gunsmoke she could see the two foremost Tartessian vessels. The forward one was a shambles, several gunports beaten into one, her forward mast gone above the top, blood running in thin trickles from her scuppers. But still steering, and the one behind was far less hard-hit; it yawed its bows away for a moment and raked the Chamberlain on its port quarter, vanishing for a moment behind a cloud of their own smoke. She could feel the heavy shot strike home, steady deliberate fire and well aimed, smashing into the left rear of the frigate and carrying across the decks below; for a moment the screams of the wounded overrode the noise of battle and the ship's fire tailed off. Then it started up again, nearly as fast, and the rudder still answered the helm. Relief felt like weakness; she forced it down.

"Ready," she said. "Two broadsides with grape and then board the leader in the smoke. Ensign Glidden. The signal now, please."

The young officer loaded his flare pistol and raised it. Fu-dump. The shell arched skyward and burst with a pop, bright crimson against the blue sky. She turned her binoculars to starboard, saw the answering blossom of sail among the transports, nodded satisfaction.

That was also the signal to the rest of the fleet, and to their own gunners. There were still two Gatling guns functional along the rail, their crews lying flat on the deck, waiting until the enemy were fully committed. Now they bounced erect, tore the covers off their weapons and began to fire. Braaaaap. Braaaaap. Long bursts as the Marine corporals worked the cranks, traversing the six-barreled weapons along the enemy ship's rail, across the line of gunports. They added nearly as much smoke as the cannon, but the red blade of the firing was continuous. Each had a gun-shield that turned rifle bullets with trails of sparks, leaving smears of lead across the shields. More sparks ran in trails along the line of the enemy's hull, where the thin iron plates hadn't been hammered off by the cannonade; many more must be plunging through the ports and the gaps knocked by Chamberlain's guns, and she could see the scything fire hit the bulwarks and the men beyond.

Then the Gatlings in the tops opened up, two plunging fire right into the crowded deck below, another raking the enemy's tops and the riflemen and swivel guns there. A dying hand triggered one of the swivels, and some malignant chance put the one-pound shot into the barrels of the foretop Gatling and turned them into twisted wreckage.

"Ready at the helm-order will be to port the helm, hard a'port," Oxton said in a quarterdeck bellow, trained to cut through the roar of white noise. "Boarders to your stations, crews ready to follow. Starbolines to board at the peak, larbolines at the quarterdeck." In a more normal voice: "Perhaps I should lead the quarterdeck boarding party, ma'am?"

"By no means, Mr. Oxton," Alston said, grinning like a shark.

The companionways up from the gun deck grew crowded as the boarders ran from their stations by the guns. Swindapa came back, a pre-Event pump-action shotgun in either hand. She handed one to Alston, together with a bandolier of new Seahaven-made cartridges.

"The schooners report they're having trouble keeping the galleys back," she said soberly. "Douglass is badly damaged and the Tubman is sinking. They'll buy us all the time they can."

Alston nodded. Grief was a luxury she couldn't afford right now, any more than she could pay attention to physical pain. Closer, and the leading enemy ship's gunfire had fallen off, a slow halting drumroll now. The Chamberlain's crew fired two more broadsides, but these had a malignant multiple wasp-buzz under the thunder of discharge-thousands of marble-sized iron balls blasting through the ten yards left between the ships, aimed slightly upward to sweep the decks already savaged by the Gatlings. You could pack a lot of grapeshot into the maw of an eight-inch gun…

"Port your helm, hard a'port!"

A crunching and grating as the flanks of the ships kissed; grapnels flew, a lurch that made everyone clutch for something to steady themselves by, rope or rail or deck; hands ran out along the yards to lash them tight to those of the enemy. She glanced over her shoulder, and saw the next Tartessian ship turning to starboard, to come alongside the Chamberlain's unengaged side and flood her with men-or so they thought.

The Gatlings in the tops swiveled and began to rake the other Tartessian. Cable and line whipped free under the cutting stream of bullets; the topsail yard fell all the way to the deck, and the foretopmast toppled off to the side as the shrouds and stays were cut.

The two rail Gatlings went by Alston, each carried by six sweating, swearing Marines; they slapped their burdens down on undamaged sections of the rail and spun the clamps to seat it firmly. The gunner and assistant lowered a big five-hundred-round magazine onto its receiving rails, worked the crank a quarter turn backward, then opened fire again. The endless rippling roar merged with those from the maintop and mizzen, and bright brass shells cataracted down into the canvas bags slung beneath the mechanism as the six barrels spun.

That will keep them busy, Alston thought grimly. Aloud: "Mr. Oxton, that Tartessian will try to range up alongside and board. Have the remaining crew lie flat when she does, and give her the starboard broadside at point-blank range. I'll leave you enough personnel for that." A deep breath, and:

"Boarders away-follow me!"

A roaring cheer, bass male bellows and female hawk-shrieks, and the boarding parties swarmed forward. She racked the slide of the shotgun and leaped, first to the quarterdeck rail and then downward to the lower rail of the enemy ship. Landing, crouching to regain her balance, boot soles slipping a little before she recovered; a man came up with his face streaming with blood, drawing back for a cut with his cutlass. Rising, she lashed out with one foot, a sweeping straight-legged kick that ended with the steel-capped toe of her boot under the point of his chin. Bone crumbled and he flipped backward. Alston ignored the savage twinge of pain in her wounded side and jumped from the rail to the deck.

Her partner landed beside her. cat-steady; Swindapa meant Deer dancer in the Old Tongue, and it had been given her for good reason; ten years of training in karate and iajutsu helped, too.

Dead and wounded were piled thick all along the Tartessian's decks, slippery with blood and fluids and brains, piles that still heaved and screamed in places. There were still some on their feet, and more were pouring up out of the hatchways-they must have packed the holds with men, even down in the orlop and cargo spaces. With no need to carry provisions or water that was possible-

The thought took less than a second. She and her partner went to cover behind a shattered spar still tangled in its sail and raised their weapons, set their teeth and began to fire. The heavy buckshot slammed out at waist level, a rapid thump-thump-thump-thump-thump, twelve rounds in as many seconds. Men went down, their torsos and faces chewed to ruin, and the survivors wavered until the rush behind them pushed them on. By then Islanders by the dozen were dropping down around the leaders, firing double-barreled shotguns or Werder rifles, throwing grenades into the packed mass before them. Marian took an instant to thumb fat shotgun shells from her bandolier into the gate in front of the trigger guard and look back.

From here she could see the masts of the other Tartessian ship coming up on the starboard side of the Chamberlain. Then there was the roar of a broadside and the masts pitched and shivered. Alston nodded with grim satisfaction; the frigate's guns would be firing at point-blank range, their muzzles pitched up to maximum elevation-the heavy shot going through the sides and then blasting up through the decking under the feet of the enemy boarding parties in an eruption of splinters and iron. The masts pivoted away as the Tartessian paid off to get away from those gaping maws, with no way of knowing that they couldn't be reloaded.

The firing died down, almost completely from the enemy side-their weapons were slower to load. Aware of that, they rose up and charged once more instead, calling on their Gods. Behind them others were fighting the Islanders pouring onto the forecastle, and the locked ships turned into a single great sprawling brawl, blows given and received breast to breast, pistols fired with their muzzles jammed into flesh, blades short-gripped and stabbing upward.

"Up and at 'em!" she shouted.

"No, Brigadier Hollard," Doreen said, pouring the cocoa.

Kenneth Hollard looked up sharply as he reached for the cup; they were usually on first-name terms, in private, and this upper room of the Arnsteins' villa was as private as it got. The windows were closed, the lamplight soft on the vivid colors of the rugs and hangings, on books and chess set and the radio in the corner. Doreen Arnstein sat behind her desk, and her face was a polite implacable mask, her hands resting on the blotter.

"No, I don't think Ian is dead," she said judiciously. Then, before he could ask, "The Foreign Affairs department has its sources."

"Ah… ma'am, with Mr. Arnstein in enemy hands, they'd be compromised."

"Credit us with some intelligence, Brigadier," she said crisply. "Half the network was always my responsibility, and we had all summer to alert the others-there was always a risk that this might happen."

Her lips pressed together; Hollard nodded slightly. She'd been after Ian to get out of Troy since just before the siege began. Perhaps the Councilor for Foreign Affairs had discounted his assistant's advice as prejudiced. Perhaps it was some sort of survivor guilt, a need to stay at the sharp end of things and share the risks of the people he had to send into harm's way.

Keeping Troy fighting was real important, Hollard thought. If Ian hadn't pinned down the bulk of Walker's army-not to mention his shipping capacity-there, God knows where we'd be now. Was that worth risking one of our top leadership cadre?

"Any information of that sort that Ian had is thoroughly obsolete," Doreen went on. "Some valuable data on our strategy and capacity, yes, but not anything that would shut down our programs."

Hollard looked at her appraisingly. He'd always admired her brains; nobody could work with Doreen Arnstein and doubt that she had enough raw brainpower to melt titanium, and a •hell of a lot of information to process with it. He'd never doubted that she'd show guts at a pinch, either.

But I didn't expect her to be quite this… is tough the word? he thought.

"Ma'am… it might be better if the councilor were dead. All things considered."

Doreen shook her head. "The problem with death is that it's sort of permanent," she went on. "Don't waste that chocolate, by the way."

Hollard sipped obediently.

"If Hong were…" Doreen stopped for a few seconds, face absolutely still, before continuing: "If Hong were… torturing… Ian, she'd boast about it. She'd send us parts of him, or photographs. It would be an opportunity to inflict anguish on us, and she's incapable of acting otherwise."

Ken nodded. "I agree," he said gently. "But doesn't that argue that he is dead? Major Chong's report was pretty circumstantial."

She shook her head again. "No. Because then Walker would be boasting about it. He'd have Ian's… he'd have Ian's head on display. He's incapable of acting otherwise."

"Well, that's logical," Hollard said. Not that I have an infinite faith in logic to predict how people operate. "But Ms. Arnstein, if they haven't killed him and they're not… interrogating… him, what do you think they're doing, and why?"

"I don't know exactly," Doreen said. "I won't until I get reports-you'd be surprised at some of our agents-in-place. At a guess… I'd say Walker likes to keep his options open as long as he can."

"To hedge his bets," Hollard agreed. "I've studied the Alban War. He had a fallback strategy in place before the Battle of the Downs. Trouble is, he might have won the Battle of the Downs if he'd thrown everything into it."

Doreen gestured agreement. "And he's… a solipsist," she said. "Other people aren't really emotionally real to him; they're bundles of traits to be manipulated, which is one reason he can do it so well, be so objective about it. I think that's especially true of locals; they're toys he uses in his game-that may have been what pushed him over the edge into acting out his power fantasies after the Event, that and opportunity. I think-if he thinks he can get away with it-he'd keep Ian around so he'd have someone more, mmmm, more real to crow over and boast to.

"Now," she went on briskly. "I have a report from Commodore Alston and the Fleet…"

Damn, that is one tough broad, Hollard thought as he walked out into the corridor an hour later. He was lost enough in thought that he nearly ran into the Arnsteins' son.

"Hi, David!" he said a little awkwardly.

He'd met the boy often enough; the whole native-born Islander community in the Middle East was only a few hundred people, the top leaders far fewer. But this was the first time since the fall of Troy a few days ago…

Big dark eyes like his mother's looked up at the tall blond man. "Uncle Ken," he said. "Is my dad dead?"

Oh, shit. He went down on one knee to put his face more nearly level with the eight-year-old's. "Dave, I don't know. None of us know. But your mother doesn't think he is, and she's a very smart lady and she knows a lot."

The haunted eyes looked straight into his. "Have those bad people hurt him?"

Oh, shit. I know that's repetitive, but it's the only appropriate response.

"We just don't know that either, Dave," he went on. "We think they've got reasons of their own to keep him safe, for now."

On impulse he hugged the slight form to him. The boy gripped him fiercely around the neck, then stifled a sob and stood back.

"And we'll get him back if there's any way to do it," Kenneth Hollard said solemnly. "I promise you that."

"Thank you," the boy said. "I know you will-you and Aunt Kathryn and Princess Raupasha and the King." A scowl. "And kill those bad people. All of them!"

Hollard nodded. "I intend to."

"Disssaaa!"

Marian Alston caught the boarding ax on the guard of the wazikashi in her left hand, grunting at the heavy impact. The Tartessian sailor grabbed her right hand as she tried to ram the muzzle of her Python into his body, and the shot went astray into the melee on the deck of the second Tartessian ship. Despite that shattering broadside it still carried enough men to be dangerous, and some quick-thinking officer had brought the crippled vessel around to the port side of the other Iberian craft. Reinforcements poured up out of its holds and into the crush.

Do Jesus, he's strong, she thought as they swayed in a stamping circle; this sort of straight-out wrestling with men was something she always tried to avoid, and her opponent was a wiry bundle of gristle and bone. Twenty years younger to boot. His bare chest ran with sweat and the muscle there rippled as he pushed back her arms.

She couldn't retreat; Swindapa was lying at her feet, just beginning to pull herself up, shaking her head with her left hand pressed over cheek and eye.

So cheat, she told herself and whipped up a knee between his thighs.

It impacted painfully on a boiled-leather cup, but the blow was enough to loosen his grip. She tore the wrist that held the empty pistol loose and slammed it twice into the side of his head, even as he hooked a heel behind hers and lunged forward. They fell backward over Swindapa's body and rolled, snarling; blood was pouring down the side of his face as he surged on top and pinned her legs, grabbed the right wrist again, half rose and used his weight to push the edge of the ax toward her face. Its edge was nicked and red, with shreds of flesh caught in the notched steel. The wound in her side was bleeding again, there was no way to fight without using your back and gut muscles, and the strength flowed out of her. Beyond the Tartessian's back she saw another poised with a rifle held clubbed by the muzzle, the butt rising over Swindapa's back.

Baduff!

The shotgun blast smeared the flesh off the face of the enemy sailor who'd been about to smash her partner's spine. Alston whipped her head aside in the moment's distraction, letting her left arm go limp and the curved twenty-inch blade of the wazikashi snap backward. The ax slid down it with a tooth-grating squeal of steel on steel and thumped into the decking right next to her ear, the shaft impacting painfully against her collarbone. That left the smallsword free; her wrist traversed the point twenty degrees and a heave of shoulder and back rammed it up under the Tartessian's rib cage. He reared back, mouth open in a soundless O of shock, and more blood poured down to spatter with the rest that soaked the cloth over her torso and hips. A heavy booted foot kicked him the rest of the way clear, and a massive black hand reached down to help her up.

"Thanks," she wheezed, pressing a hand full of pistol over the wound in her side.

"Sho' 'nuff mah pleasure," Brigadier McClintock said, exaggerating his drawl.

He snapped open the double-barreled shotgun and dropped two more shells into the smoking breech, flicking the weapon closed with a quick upward jerk of his wrist. A red-running cutlass was thonged to his right wrist. Alston felt a brief irrational regret for the shotguns she and her partner had carried over the rail, one smashed parrying a boarding ax, another gone God-knew-where. Bit by bit, the pre-Event world vanished, gone down the well of entropy, and what replaced it might be better or worse but was never quite the same…

McClintock helped Swindapa to her feet as well; the left side of her face was swelling where the flat of a rifle butt had punched it, leaving only a slit in the puffy flesh for her eye, but she was conscious and nothing looked to be broken. The fight on the decks of the Tartessian craft was slowing as Marines poured across from the transport grappled to the starboard bow of the Chamberlain. Near her an ordered line of bayonets stretched from rail to rail, and from behind it the sea-soldiers poured in volley after volley of Werder bullets. A moment of inner balance she could almost taste, and then the surviving enemy began to throw down their weapons, going to their knees and holding up empty hands for quarter.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" McClintock bellowed. "Captain Thawekulo, get those people disarmed and under the hatches!"

Marian went to the rail, limping, supporting Swindapa until the younger woman was able to lean against it.

"God-damn," Alston whispered.

The four linked ships had turned under the undirected thrust of wind on masts and rigging and what sails remained, spinning slowly a hundred and eighty degrees. From here she could see right down the line of battle, now that the cannon smoke had mostly cleared. Two other frigates were in much the same state as hers, lashed to a pair of Tartessians each with transports grappled to them in turn. Khaki-uniformed Marines and blue-clad sailors and auxiliaries in everything from imitation uniforms to leather kilts to full nudity-a boastful pledge of divine favor-swarmed over them like driver ants. The third frigate, Lincoln, was taking its opponents under tow.

The fifth was on fire, flames licking mast high and the enemy ships frantically paying off to get away from her… God-damn, I'll miss Hiller… no, wait, one of those ships that was fast to Sheridan is flying the Stars and Stripes…

Some substratum of her mind made her throw up a hand and glance away. There was a lightning-bright red flash and a shattering roar; when the ball of smoke and fire and shattered water subsided, what was left of a thousand tons of frigate were slipping beneath the water, or flotsam on the surface or turning and flashing hundreds of feet in the air, falling again like some ghastly burning confetti mixed with parts of human beings.

"God-damn," she whispered again.

From the northward came a line of polished steel beaks and pairs of heavy guns like malevolent black eyes, flanked by the flashing unison of long sweeps; behind them was a pillar of smoke, doubtless a burning ship of hers.

They broke through the schooners, she thought with heavy finality. Just a little more time and we'd… if only… to hell with that. Let's save what we can.

She opened her mouth to give the order to retreat; running before the wind the sailing ships could probably escape, most of them at least. Then Ensign Glidden came up, half of an ear gone under a hasty bandage and his left arm strapped to his chest. He was carefully avoiding looking what he stepped on and over, but his voice was clear:

"Ma'am! Report from the ultralights-the Farragut, ma'am, that smudge is the Farraguts smokestack!"

For a moment all she could do was stare. Behind her, Brigadier McClintock began to laugh. After a moment, Swindapa joined in, wincing at the same time but not letting the pain stop her.

"Well, just another rasher," Jared Cofflin said, wiping his plate with a heel of bread.

Tansawada shook a moa egg the size of a small football, took out the plug that closed a hole in it and poured more into the big iron skillet to scramble a batch. Everyone else was digging in as well, from the younglings in high chairs to the adults shoveling down eggs and sausage and bacon, biscuits and bread and stacks of flapjacks and maple syrup. Farming at this level of technology meant you had to work like a horse, but it was efficient enough that you could eat that way too.

Talk about farmhouse breakfasts… well, I suppose when you're used to sitting down eighteen to a meal a few more are no hardship… "I can always fit-

Hooves pounded up the graveled way outside, amid shouts and a frantic barking of dogs. The sound was clear enough, but the Hollards' kitchen looked south, over fields and woodlots and the distant blue of water glimpsed through gaps between the trees. Cofflin laid down his spoon, conscious of the looks on him from around the big table, puzzled or anxious.

" '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.