On the Oceans of Eternity

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 stealth; 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.

"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 dropping 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.

No time to do more. No time to wonder if the human being she'd just killed was a good man or bad, or if someone would weep for him, or whether children would keep asking when their father would return…

She thrust the rifle behind her; a sailor took it, and Swindapa's-the weapons would be useless in a close-quarter scrimmage. They drew their Pythons and dashed forward toward the tall gates. Seconds, less than two minutes since the flares went up. No little winking firefly lights from the parapet, not yet. Move, move, their only chance was speed and impact and purpose, cutting through the enemy's bewilderment.

"Clear!" from a bazooka team ahead of them.

The two women dived to either side with balletic grace, slapping down in controlled diving falls despite night and muddy ground. SSSSSRAAAAWACKf The rocket lanced out, the backblast a wave of heat across the skin of her hands and neck. It ended against the gateway a half second later, with a hollow echoing booooom. Bits of hot metal flew through the air; the leaves must have been heavily reinforced with iron strapping or even plates. When she looked up and blinked the gates were leaning drunkenly, one on a single hinge and a gaping hole where they met, but they were still there. Reinforced indeed. Two more Marines ran forward, bundles in their hands-satchel charges. Neat as dancers they threw their burdens through the hole and then threw themselves aside, against the thick mud-brick wall and away from the gate. Another explosion, much louder this time-twenty pounds of gunpowder in each bag- and the gates disintegrated in a flurry of flying metal and splinters. The Marine platoon with them were on their feet and charging before the last wreckage pattered down; some of it struck their helmets as they pounded through.

Marian shoulder-rolled back to her feet, looked to her right, and felt a sharp stab of alarm; Swindapa was still on one knee.

"The stars put a rock where my stomach was going to be" she wheezed, then took a whooping breath. "Let's go!"

A brief, nasty little firefight was spilling around the courtyard of the commandatura as they came through the wreckage of the gates. A two-story gallery upheld by tree-trunk pillars lined the inside of the fort's square shape. The barracks were on the other side where the tower had its base, the angry red eyes of muzzle flashes winking out from under the overhang that made its roof. A Tartessian on the fighting platform that topped the second story aimed a rifle at her; she fired, three quick shots with the pistol. It wasn't her choice of weapon-she'd been good enough to requalify as necessary, before the Event, no more-but since then she'd practiced rigorously. The third shot hit him, and Swindapa took down the man behind, and they both emptied their pistols to drive the ones remaining to cover. The enemy in the barracks were shooting, too, and the Marines were returning fire from behind the wooden posts. Marian put her shoulder behind one, felt the wood give a solid quiver as a bullet hammered into the other side, risked a look behind. Swindapa coiled ready without a trace of tension, the Coast Guard Intelligence specialist who accompanied them clutching his pistol in both hands. He was a weedy little man with glasses who'd been a clerk in a house trading with Tartessos before the war and a designer of computer war games before the Event.

Hope he doesn't manage to shoot me in the back by accident, she thought.

At the next pillar a Marine fired his Werder, then ducked back, thumbed a fresh round from his bandolier down the grooved ramp of the block and into the breech, thumbed back the cocking lever in its semicircular groove, leaned around the pillar, and fired again. There was less black-powder smoke than in an ordinary firefight, with the fine drizzle washing it out of the air.

"Covering fire!" Alston called to the Marine officer. "We've got to get to that tower room before someone destroys their files."

"Hell with that!" he called back. "You need the barracks suppressed to get across the courtyard, ma'am." Louder: "Everyone, load a tit." That meant filling the strip of six loops on the left breast of the uniforms. Hands transferred shells. "Everyone ready… rapid fire, independent… fire!"

The Werders cracked faster, mad-minute speed; trained shooters could manage a round every three seconds this way, and aim them, too. Spurts of damp adobe pocked out all around the windows in the barracks opposite as the bullets struck. More shots were going through the windows, and the enemy fire died down as Tartessians ducked. A pair of Marines dashed around the perimeter of the courtyard as their squadmates fired, threw themselves flat, leopard-crawled the last few yards. Grenades flew out of their hands, through the windows. Seconds later fire and shattered sun-dried brick gouted back out and the Marines all charged forward. All but the squad assigned to her.

"This way!" she shouted, drew the katana, and went out across the courtyard's wet stone pavement, cutting diagonally toward the rear.

Granite rutched under her boots, flickering liquidly in the flashes of light; her sword gleamed as well. A quick glance aside showed her Swindapa's face; the same high-cheeked oval as always, but unrecongnizable with the blue eyes in a wide fixed glare and teeth bared.

Nearly to the stairs, a spiral of wooden planks around a post inside the ten-foot square of the tower's base. Men bursting out of a side door, out into the wet, probably trying to get away out the front gate. No time, and two had leveled their rifles at her from only five yards distance.

A shot cracked, the bullet whining dangerously off stone near her feet. The other ended in a damp fizzle as the hammer cracked the frizzen back and sparks showered into damp priming powder. The man came on without missing a beat, lunging behind the bayonet. Half a lifetime of relentless drill and the experience of far too many real post-Event encounters snapped Marian's katana from jodan up into a sweeping parry. Steel banged on wood, and the bayonet went up over her right shoulder; her left punched into the Tartessian's chest, knocking him back on his heels. Her wrists turned, hands sliding on the long hilt in small, swift, precise movements. The superb shihozume-forged blade swung back until the point nearly touched her left buttock, then forward with the falling stamp of her right foot. The sword flashed through an arc, all the whipping strength of arms and shoulders and gut, hips and thighs behind it.

Tense the wrists just before impact, thumping strike of sharp metal into meat and bone, rip the cut through and across, and follow through until the blade is parallel to the ground.

"Disssaaaaa!" she shrieked.

What had been a man flopped at her feet, neck half-severed and a great diagonal slash opening the front of his body, letting the pink-purple intestines fall free in a sharp stink of acid stomach juices and half-digested food. The Tartessian behind saw her face clearly through some freak of sight, screamed, and threw away his weapon, turned and ran facefirst into the wall and then cowered, dazed, with his arms wrapped around his head.

Well, I guess there is some use to this "living legend" shit, then, she thought bleakly, vaulting over the prostrate form of the one she'd killed. Four more enemy soldiers tumbled backward through the entranceway of the tower and slammed the door behind them.

Marian and Swindapa plastered themselves to either side of the tower entrance for a brief second. Marian looked across the doorway into her partner's face; they were both panting with the exertion of close combat.

She gasped air back into her lungs, forced the quivering out of hands and arms and shoulders, then caught the eye of the Marine squad's noncom, jerked a thumb at the door to the stairwell, and raised three fingers for an instant.

Aloud, to Swindapa: "If I'm the supreme commander, why do I always end up drawing point duty in an assault commando?"

"Maybe you're punishing yourself," Swindapa replied, her teeth showing in a brief grin. "What's the word, guilt? Next time, remember you're punishing me, too, and I wasn't raised to do this guilt thing. It's even stupider than monogamy and a lot less fun!"

"One…"

"Two…"

"Three!" they shouted together.

Baaaamm. Six rifles blasted holes through the pine planks, knocking splintered holes. Two rounds came back through the boards… probably all the reloading the enemy had had time to do. The two women hit the door with their shoulders and burst into the room. Marian ducked and flicked her blade to the left as a rifle butt went by. It brushed across the inch-long wool on the back of her head; she pivoted and cut horizontally, uncoiling like a twisted spring. A spray of blood followed the steel as it ripped across the soldier's belly, swept upward into chodan, snapped down in the pear-splitter. There was a thump of steel in wood as the next man blocked the cut with the stock of his rifle. Marian snap-kicked him in the groin, rammed her knee up to meet his descending face, jerked the sword free, and lunged over his back in a two-handed thrust as he crawled away…

It was too dark, cramped, chaotic for the Marines behind them to fire. For the space of twenty seconds the room was full of the deadly whirling flicker of their swords, clash and clang and clatter of metal on metal and on wood, the shrieking of amp;/a-calls and the shocked screams of pain beyond what human flesh could imagine. Parry and strike by instinct and reflex with nothing clearly seen and wounded men writhing on the ground beneath…

Then the last Tartessians were backing up the stairs; Marian and Swindapa pressed them hard, lest they have time to reload or think up some other devilment. Bayonets stabbed down, swords licked out as the enemy climbed backward. Crash and clang… At last the stair came to a landing.

"Down!" someone shouted behind them.

They dropped forward, driving their opponents that last step back with thrusts at their feet. A wobbling cast-iron egg flew over their heads, rebounded off the outer wall, dropped behind the green-clad soldiers. Marian could distinctly hear the ckkkk-ching! as the spoon flew free of the grenade and clattered away. Badammpp, and a wash of heat in the damp still air of the stairwell. Up again, over the bodies-ignore them, the sight will come back too soon whether you want to remember or not, the way blood spattered in fans and arcs across the whitewashed earth-brick walls, the reflex quivering of a heel beating a tattoo on the floor-and through the door. The top of the tower was a suite, a bedroom below and an office above. The bedroom was empty, but they went up the stairs cautiously. The office above was still brightly lit by a kerosene lamp.

"Oh, hell," Marian said.

They'd killed the Tartessian commandant with their game-rifle barrage, all right; the massive bullet had taken the top right off his head and he lay with a sprinkle of glittering shattered glass dusted over the wetness. The woman draped over him didn't look much better; the exit wound in her back was big enough to hold paired fists.

Well, the gun was designed for elephant and buffalo, she thought with angry resignation, as automatic reflex drew a cloth out of her belt and ran the sword through it.

It wasn't that Marian Alston-Kurlelo objected to killing -» women, specifically. I scarcely could, being one myself. What she hated was noncombatants getting injured, and the Tartessian woman obviously was no warrior. Not least because of the baby lying on the floor by the desk, still swaddled in cloth as was the custom here, screaming angrily, its face and wrappings spattered with its parents' blood and bits of their lung and brain and bone.

Cost of doing business, she thought. Which is why I hate this business. Leave out the waste, filth, misery, wounds, pain, and death, and war would be a glorious thing.

Swindapa snapped her sword aside with a wrist movement that flicked off excess blood, cleaned and sheathed the steel over her shoulder in a single fluid motion, and went to one knee beside the child.

"A boy," she said after an instant, an infinite tenderness in her tone. "Not hurt, just needs changing."

That's a relief, Alston thought, her shoulders relaxing. Do Jesus, I've got enough on my conscience.

The Intelligence specialist had fallen on the desk and filing cabinets, eyes gleaming behind his spectacles; he looked like a rabbit on pure crystal meths, giving little mewing cries of astonishment as he worked. First he stuffed his satchel full, and then he dragged Marines over by their webbing harness, cramming more files into their knapsacks.

He was literally wringing his hands when they were full; this time he reminded her of a big dog she'd seen at a barbeque once, its stomach distended like a ball and a pile of bones under its front paws. It had looked at them mournfully, moaning, longing to eat and unable to find space for another bite…

She went to the window. The firing in the streets was picking up; a glance at her watch… Do Jesus, only fifteen minutes? But at some point the Tartessians were going to get organized, even with their commander dead.

"Ortiz!" she said into the handset, and looking down toward the dockside. There were buildings burning now, and the light grew by the minute. "Report."

"Ma'am, the barges're moored with a thick chain running around the outermost train and linked to iron bollards but-

Crack! A flash of red fire and a cheer she could hear clearly even hundreds of yards away.

"-but that's got it!" She could hear him turn his head, the voice fading a bit as he yelled: "Lay aloft there, get those sails sheeted home-Johnstone to the tiller!"

"Carry on." A switch of frequencies; Lord Jesus, but they were going to miss these things when they wore out! The post-Event equivalents were barely man-transportable, and ludicrously unreliable. "Major Stavrand."

"On schedule, ma'am! Target-rich environment here. I feel like a kid in Sweet Inspirations with a sack of gold!"

"Get it done, Mr. Stavrand," she said. "Soon."

The artillery officer liked blowing things up, which was why he doubled as a demolitions expert. He was also very good at it. And he grew up after the Event-otherwise he'd have said "a credit card." So the twentieth century vanished, bit by bit.

She began to turn, then staggered and threw up her hand as the tower quaked beneath her and adobe dust smoked out of the walls. One of the squat mud-brick warehouses vanished in a gout of flame and pillar of smoke, and wreckage came pattering out of the sky for a thousand yards in every direction. Much of it was burning, and no doubt it would set more fires despite the rain.

Well, Stavrand took me at my word, she thought, blinking and shaking her head. Just then the pontoon bridge lit up, a poca-poca-poca-poca of small explosions sending sheets of poor man's napalm-benzene and kerosene with soap flakes-in every direction; the wood was damp and green but it caught at once, and sent a wall of flame and black smoke up across the river. Squads were moving among the piles of cargo on the wharves, sloshing kerosene about and setting yet more fires; once they danced back yelling from a pile of barrels that turned out to be full olive oil. That poured like a sluggish river of red lava down the streets as it burned…

"Go, go, go!" Marian said to the others. The Marines went, and the Intelligence officer stumbled in their wake.

Swindapa had the baby on the desk, efficiently rewrapping it in a shawl and a section of tapestry. Without looking up she spoke:

"Before you ask what I'm doing, I'm saving the baby."

' 'Dapa… we just killed his parents…"

"Yes, and we're going to blow this place up in a minute," she said. "That just means he needs someone to look after him, doesn't he?" She jerked her tight-braided blond head at the window, and the Walpurgisnacht of explosions and fire and cold rain outside. "And we can't leave him in that, either, can we?"

"When you put it that way…" Marian sighed. She flicked the cylinder of her Python open, spilled the spent brass and reloaded. "Let's go."

Down the stairs, past the combat engineers setting the demolition charges and backing away, unreeling fuse from a spool they held between them. Out into the rain, Swindapa loping beside her with the squalling infant in the crook of her left arm I and her pistol in her right hand. Chaos on the docks, towering pyramids of flame with scraps of tarpaulin floating up into the rainy smoke cutting the visibility even beyond what nature occluded. The bitter stink of things not meant to burn choked her until she coughed. She blinked watering eyes, wiped the back of her hand across them; the barge-trains were pulling away from the dock, the wind was light but in the proper direction, and they were operating with the current, thank God. Troops were pouring back to the wharf and over the retaining wall into boats and barges; some came laughing, smoke smut on their faces, alight with the thoughtless pleasures of destruction. Others limped, or staggered with comrades' arms over their shoulders, or were carried on folding stretchers. Another came grinning with a butchered lamb carcass from some Tartessian pantry under one arm and a field dressing across the side of his face.

She felt her face go grimmer, thinking of the labor that had gone into making all this, pushing plows and swinging hammers and working the heddles of looms.

Not many Islanders hurt-surprisingly few, with an operation this size. She looked at her watch again. The glowing dials of the self-winding radium face showed 0230 hours. Less than half an hour, by God. The Tartessians were recovering, though: pretty soon they'd…

Schooonk. Dozens of heads whipped up at the all-too-familiar sound.

"Medium mortar," she said quietly.

There were thousands of things the Islanders knew how to do but couldn't because the materials were too hard to find, or the tools too complicated to build. On the other end of the curve were smoothbore mortars firing finned bombs; one of those simple ideas like the stirrup or the rudder that weren't thought of until long after the technology to produce them was available. The eighteenth-century level Tartessos had achieved was more than ample…

Shuddump!

Dimly, half-seen, a fountain of water leaped up out of the river, hung, fell in shattered spray. "All right, people, let's get out of here before they start hitting things."

They trotted on, taking reports from the officers of various units as they went; and from the noncoms who counted off the individuals-in a few cases the dog tags of bodies-as they returned, then waiting by the boat for the final word. Once again she blessed Swindapa's faultless memory; keeping exact count of everything and everybody in a battalion-sized night raid was trivial to someone who'd been through the Grandmothers' course. They made a good team… although she doubted the Fiernan system would last more than another generation. When you could write things down, it was just too much damned trouble to spend a decade learning to retrieve all the data yourself.

Very damned useful right now, though. Too God-damned easy for someone to get missed in this confusion and darkness.

Marian stood with her hands behind her back on the edge of the dock; Swindapa beside her, looking out over the river because that put her body between the baby and the most likely source of high-velocity metal. There was enough light from burning supply dumps and buildings to make Alston feel horribly exposed; she relaxed stomach muscles that were drawing themselves up in anticipation of a bullet or mortar shell, forced her breath to come slow and deep and shoulders to ease. One of her elbows was aching a little, fruit of overextension past…

She remembered a joke current in a dojo she'd attended, long before the Event-back in her late 'teens, when she was first getting seriously interested in the Way of the Empty Hand, the real jujutsu variety and not the de-rated sport schools that were mostly safe:

"By the time I'm forty, I'll be the most dangerous cripple in the whole wide world," she quoted softly to herself.

But I'm a little nearer fifty than forty now, and all those years of pushing the body to ten-tenths of capacity begin to take their toll. I hurt when I've got to do things like this, and experience only compensates to a certain point.

"Uh… ma'am?" the head of the Marine detail said.

She looked over at him; rain-streaked soot and speckled blood ran down his face with trails of sweat. Painfully young; there was something of a gap in the age profile on the Island, a good many young adults had been on the mainland at college when the Event occurred.

He did very well indeed, there at the commandatura, she thought. Wasn't afraid to backtalk me, either. Aggressive, but not crazy.

"Ma'am, the brigadier will keelhaul me if I don't bring you back in one piece. As a matter of fact, he told me that if I stuck him with your job, he'd be really, really upset. Would you mind stepping into the boat now, ma'am? Lieutenant^ Commander?"

And let me do my job, she finished for him.

"When we're through," she said aloud. "Remember Frozen Chosin. We're taking everyone back, Lieutenant."

"Yes ma'am," he said.

A few murmurs came from the darkened figures at the oars;

"Hard Corps."

"fuckin' A."

Did I do the right thing, to let the Marine Corps vets who started our ground-troop training program put so much emphasis on their own traditions? Probably. Almost certainly. Fighting was an emotional thing. They'd used what they knew would work because it had worked on their own younger selves. "A rational army would run away," and Montinesque was right about that. Do Jesus, I surely do feel like running away. Could have been worse, though I could have had to work with Foreign Legion types. "You have joined the Legion to die, and now I will send you where men die." There's a certain bracing honesty to it, but in the long run, this is better.

A runner came panting up. "We found them, ma'am-they got pinned when a door collapsed," he said.

"That's the last," Swindapa said crisply. "All accounted for."

"Lieutenant, you get your wish," Alston said, hopping down into the boat. Swindapa handed her down the child, and she cuddled it to her as her partner swung expertly in beside her at the prow of the launch. The formless baby face looked up at Alston dubiously, still alarmed but tired of crying for his mother, and then stuck his hand in his mouth and began to gum it in a worried fashion.

"Hell of a way to come back from a raid," she grumbled to herself. "You do need to be changed, little'un."

Then she looked at the river as the crew began to pull away into the central current, bright-lit through the rain by the wavery blurs of huge fires on both banks. The barge-trains were ahead of her, with the raiding force's boats around them like sculling centipedes. Safer to have burned the barges in place, she thought. But better for morale to take them; the troops were mostly from cultures that thought "victory" and "plunder" were the same thing. It wouldn't hurt the whole expedition's logistics if there was useful stuff in them, too.

Alston put the handset to her face with her free hand: "Commander Ortiz."

"Here, ma'am. No trouble so far."

"None on this end either," Alston said. A warbling went through the sky, and a muffled whuddump raised a plume of shocked white water a hundred yards behind. Spray fell across her, and the baby began to cry again, a thin reedy wailing.

"Ah… ma'am?" Ortiz said, bewilderment in his tone at the sound. Not at all the sort of cry you expected with a rear guard on a fire-lashed shore.

"Don't ask, Commander." She cleared her throat. "They're lobbing mortar shells into the river, but they're firing blind. I doubt they'll get any observers forward before we're out of range."

"Now all we have to do is run the guns of the fort, ma'am," Ortiz said, cheerfully deadpan.

Kenneth Hollard listened and swore. God-damn fighting in a snowstorm. Hell of a way to spend the week before Christmas.

Something was going wrong out here on the northern flank of the allied host. The firing was still heavy, but it was dying down, which meant that the Achaeans were pushing through the narrow defile and around the edge of his command.

The snow, however, wasn't dying down, and he strained his eyes through it and cursed, and cursed the falling light.

But I shouldn't, he thought. We've held them most of the day. If we can hold them until night, they'll feel it more, out in the open.

The horse beneath him stumbled again, on a rock that turned beneath its hoof under the concealing white. He reined in and swung out of the saddle. The thunder ahead was louder than that to the south now; fewer cannon, but closer, and echoing back from the sharp cliff faces and steep rocky slopes.

"O'Rourke!" he shouted.

"Sir?"

"Officers on foot, except for couriers," he said. "Chargers to the gun carriages as spares. And the troops to the double-quick."

"Sir," the other man said, looking back at the column.

It was only thirty feet away, but still a dark indistinct mass through snow and shadow, stumbling forward into the wind with helmets bent to take the bite. The thudding clatter of boots and hooves on stone and wet earth came muffled, as if they watched an army of ghosts condemned to march forever.

"Sir," O'Rourke went on. "They're tired. We pulled them right out of the line for this. Another mile and at the double, and they won't have much left."

Robbing Peter to pay Paul and calling it a reserve, Ken agreed, behind the mask of his face.

"If we don't get there in time, there won't be anything-at all left," he said. "That's the choke point. Anywhere else and they can flank us and get by."

"Sir," O'Rourke said, grinning despite the crusted snow on his eyebrows. Individual hairs peeked out, like fire through cloud. "Since you put it that way-

Hollard walked over to the head of the column; it wound back into the rocky hills, broken here and there by the higher shape of a gun team pulling cannon or Gatlings.

"All right," he roared, and the front ten rows looked up. Hollard drew his sword; they were good for dramatic gestures, at least. "Up ahead, the Mitannians are dying to block this pass. Back there, the rest of the Corps is going to get buggered good and fair if the enemy get through. At the double-follow me!"

He turned with the standard-bearer beside him and strode forward. Behind him the whole force stumbled into a trot.

Whole force, he thought. Four hundred rifles and half a dozen heavy weapons. About all we've got left that isn't hanging on by its teeth.

He recognized most of the sounds ahead; the crackle of rifles, the sound of the multibarrel quick-firers the Achaeans used because Walker couldn't duplicate Gatlings yet, and the bark of cannon. Rifled three-and-a-half-inch jobs by the sound of it, standard enemy weapons. What he couldn't hear anymore was the thump of mortars, or the braaaaap of the Gatlings. Damn, damn… Closer… Dense snow was certainly the thing if you wanted to surprise somebody; it hid sounds as well as blinding sight.

"Deploy into line," he said. "Heavy weapons forward as best they can-and be goddamned careful, I don't want any friendly-fire accidents here."

"Sir!"

O'Rourke gave orders; the thick column of marching Islanders dissolved, Marines running out to either side. Steel glinted bright gray through the soft dove-gray-white of the snow as bayonets rattled home, and multiple click-clacks sounded as the rifles were loaded. The heavy weapons deployed as well, as best they could, scattered among the infantry wherever the ground looked level enough for hooves and wheels to go forward. He had more confidence in the rocket launchers; this terrain was scattered with little gullies and washes that would stop a cannon cold.

He drew a deep breath of air cold and damp and full of the scent of wet wool and unwashed soldier and gun oil and powder. Light flickered through the snow ahead… muzzle flashes.

"Charge!" he shouted, and ran forward.

Otto Verger came to full alertness when the sounds began to the northward, upriver. Very faint at first, a crackling of small arms. Then several huge soft thuds, like very large doors slamming shut. He turned his head, raised it slightly, strained his eyes to see through the murky dimness.

Was that a hint of fire, the red war-hawks of the mirutha beating their wings on a Tartessian foeman's thatch? He could hear a whispered chant from his left; it raised his hackles a little, for Rueteklo was invoking Moon Woman-or Her sister of the Barrow, who he suspected was the same as the Blood Hag of Battles. You didn't want to attract Her attention, and the Moon goddess was an unchancy thing… though to be sure, she'd be on his side this time, and wasn't that an odd happenstance? The noise from the north grew louder, and there was definitely a hint of light there…

"Oh, you sorry bastards are fucked the now," he chuckled again. "The Midnight Mare will leave hoofprints on your grave-mounds-not that you'll get graves, you'll rot unresting, your ghosts wailing in the wind…"

"Why don't I report you for using something else but English on duty?" Rueteklo said, equally soft, a chuckle in her voice as well.

"Oh, shut up and get ready," Verger said, switching to that language with a trace of resentment. She spoke it with less accent than he, for all his studying until he thought his head would crack.

"I wasn't talking, I was cursing the foe," he went on. It was a breach of regulations to talk anything but the Islander tongue when you were working-a fine of four days' pay and four days' KP. Most of the time he even thought in English, but it just wasn't as satisfying for some things, like threatening or cursing. "I'll want, mmmm, one more incendiary after the first. Then HE and frag."

"You ask, I deliver."

Gathering tension, silence save for an occasional buzz of insects-thank the Gods it wasn't summer, or they'd be eaten alive. He could feel the spirits of his fathers and their fathers gathering around him, to witness his honor or his shame; his oath-brothers were here, too, and they would see.

His training whispered at the back of his mind, cooling him. It had a voice very much like Gunnery Sergeant Timothy Welder's savage rasp: Any dumb shit can get dead in a hurry! You're not waving a fucking brass tomahawk now, horse-boy. Vie don't go off half-cocked in the Corps. By the numbers, on the bounce…

The light around the gunports of the fort had faded Jte the night grew old. The briefings had warned that Tartessians sometimes slept in the afternoon and worked late, but even these had gone to bed by now. Then a bugle blew; not any notes he recognized, but from the voices and shouts the foemen had gotten the word about their camp upstream. Their burning, devastated, plundered camp. Now the whole force would be passing back this way, and they'd need him and his brothers of the war band to shield them against a blow that could kill- him and A Company, the finest unit in the Third Marines, who were the finest warriors in the Corps-nobody outside the

Corps even counted for comparison's sake, as these Tartessian swine would find out soon enough.

He forced the quivering eagerness out of his muscles and lay in the muck, eyes pinned to the gunport. Light flared brighter around it, then faded-they were getting ready to open the port, screens rigged behind it to preserve the gunner's night sight and to stop stray sparks that might fall among ammunition.

"Just about-

Whistles sounded in the swamp to his rear at the same instant as the rumbling squeal of iron and timber on stone. The gun-ports flipped up, and the long muzzles of the cannon came out.

"… now!"

Behind him poles had been fitted together and supporting stakes driven deep into the muck. Now strong hands pushed and pulled the poles upright and lashed them swiftly to the frames that would hold them so. Atop each was a magnesium flare ready to burn, and a hemisphere of focusing mirror right behind it. Cords pulled, primers went pop, and the light speared out hell-bright across the row of gunports in the low squat bulk of the fortress wall ahead of them, painting every detail in stark relief and blinding the gunners as if they stared into the naked sun. Eyes slitted, squinting at the ground for a second to let them adjust, Otto Verger laughed aloud.

Then he pushed himself up to his knees, wide-spraddled to keep him stable. "Clear!" he shouted. The crosshairs in the sight dropped over the dark square where the cannon's muzzle showed. He squeezed the trigger, heard and felt the catch release and the striker drive down on the percussion cap. Flame spurted into the hollow core of the rocket's propellant rod, and flame spurted to the rear out the venturi…

"Eat this!" he screamed, under the SSSSSRAAAAWACK!

For some things, English was satisfying.

A dozen rockets vomited out of the wrack of brush and felled timber at the edge of the swamp. Despite the damp, reeds caught and burned behind him. He ignored them, and the harsher stink of rocket smoke. His rocket lanced out, rose, descended in a graceful arc. There! It struck the corner of the gunport and exploded, fire belching back out into the night, paled by the light of the flares. And doubtless belching in, washing in a cataract of fire over the wedge-shaped gun position and the men serving the cannon, leaving them wailing and dancing in the agony of burning hair and flesh. Rushing back to spread chaos and terror in the gallery behind the guns…

"Feed me!" he screamed, exultant.

"Up, up!"

"Clear!"

SSSSSRAAAA WA CK!

The second rocket followed the first to his target. He ignored the others that were lancing through the air, some through the gunports, others slamming into the wall and blasting craters or dribbling fire down it. Several of the massive guns fired, but they were unaimed, mere bellows of agony like a stricken aurochs when it plunged into a deadfall or met a line of sharp spears. Behind him came a rapid schoonk… schoonk… schoonk as mortars lofted shells into the courtyards of the fortress, keeping heads down there, keeping the Tartessians away from their own high-angle weapons. It was an attack that could never have succeeded in daylight, or if the enemy had had any inkling of what was being prepared for them…

Another explosion, this one racking back around the barrel of the cannon. The ammunition stacked ready behind it gang-fired, throwing it forward to crash against the stone and iron of the embrasure and point harmlessly down. Like a limp dick, Verger thought triumphantly.

"Feed me!"

"Up!"

"Clear!"

One more cat-scream of victory from the rocket launcher, and he smashed at another gunport that might threaten his sworn brothers and chief.

"Frag round! Feed me!"

"Up!"

"Clear!"

Higher this time, at the crenellations atop the wall, where the enemy were getting riflemen into position. Their fire was wild, but it was a threat. He worked his way down it, smashing stone and men with fire and splinters of iron and granite. Body and mind and skill worked together, taking him out of himself as nothing had before, a sweetness of will and intent and action, knowing that he did better than his instructors could ever have dreamed.

"Feed me!"

"We're dry-let's get out of here, Otto. Otto, there's the recall-let's go."

He stood, ignoring the waves of heat from the tube of the launcher scorching his hands where they rested on the grips. He would bear it with him, and someday he would put this rocket launcher in a niche and pour out sacrifice before it as the patron spirit of the kindred he would found! He howled, ignoring everything but the wave of exultation that ran through him at the burning, blasting destruction ahead. Wonderful, wonderful destruction. This was what it felt like to be a God!

Sound burst from his lips, the old war yell: " Ukasha-sa-sa-hau-hau-hau-hau!"

"You crazy ax-kisser, there's the recall! They'll have your guts for garters!"

That cut through the red mist before his eyes. He shuddered all over as he might in the embrace of a woman and turned, heading back toward the rubber boats.

Then he was lying on his side, spitting out swampwater. He shook his head-where had his helmet gone? He tried to stand and fell over with a grunt, clamping his teeth on the scream that tried to force its way out of his mouth. The blaze of pain was hard to locate at first; one hand went reflexively to his crotch, found everything in order, traveled down his right thigh and hesitated at the ripped wetness. Light faded as the flares burned out. He made himself look. No bone ends, but something grated with near-unendurable agony as he clamped hands around the wound; the bone must be broken. Blood was flow-

Sing, but not spurting or pumping; he fumbled out a field dressing, hissed again as the antiseptic powder struck the savaged flesh, then fastened it on and tied the ends. The effort of that had him panting again.

Verger shook his head again and looked around. A crater filling with water not far away, light mortar shell probably. Rueteklo had gotten up; she still had her helmet on, but there was blood on the side of her face, and her right arm hung limp.

"C'mon," she muttered, pulling at him.

He climbed up her by the webbing, ignoring a small shriek as he jostled the limp arm. She dragged his arm across her shoulders with her good one, and they began to hobble forward. The way was muddy and dark, water rising around their calves, continually jostling his injured limb. Bullets went through the air around them with whickering cracks. His face was jammed next to Rueteklo's, her teeth showing in a huge grin of effort, tears running down through the burned cork on her face. At last the reeds stopped them, and they toppled. He blacked out again for an instant then, came to lying on his back with her fingers trying to get the carrying strap of the rocket launcher out from under the epaulet strap of his jacket.

"No," he grunted. "Comes along. Air

That as she turned on her back and wound her good hand in the back loop of his webbing harness, pushing them both along with her heels. Verger forced himself to push as well with his sound leg, hoping that they weren't going around in circles as the marsh grew more liquid under his back, and his heel started to slip on the slick mud-coated surface of the crushed reeds.

"Your belt… buckle's cutting my ear," he rasped after a moment. Something went overhead with a flat whack sound.

"Shut… unnnh… up," Rueteklo said, hitching him forward with her arm, digging in her heels and arching herself to push them further toward the river. "You've been… unnnh… trying to get… unnnh… between my legs… unnnh… since Camp Grant… unnnh… now you're there… unnnh… and you're still bitching."

Verger felt a bubble of laughter grunt out through his throat. It wasn't quite a warrior's laughing scorn for death… but it was close enough to be satisfying, despite the nausea that was twisting at his gut. Then he sensed the presence of someone else and grabbed for the bayonet on his belt; there were three dark figures-

"Calm down, Marine," a voice said-Ritter's voice. "Time for extraction."

Hard hands gripped his harness and lifted; something pricked him in one buttock, and a flood of relief went over him as the pain receded like a wave of fire rolling back from a beach. The last of the flares was burning down, but he could see Ritter stooping, taking Rueteklo over her shoulders in a fireman's lift. The man carrying him turned, and he got a twisting panoramic view of the marsh, a few fires lit by backblast still smoking-red among the reeds. Then the fortress, flames licking upward from gunports and slit windows, with a crackle of small-arms fire from the parapet despite it all. Then lines of red stabbed out from the river-the Gatlings mounted on pivots above the paddle boxes of a gunboat, the thudump of the light cannon on its forward deck, a red spark soaring skyward from the mortar on its stern.

Into the inflated boat again, his rocket launcher on one side, Rueteklo on the other; the rest of their squad pushing hard until they reached the few inches of water necessary to float it, then piling in and wielding their paddles.

"Thanks… oath-sister," he said slowly, feeling himself floating away.

"Semper Fi."