On the Oceans of Eternity

CHAPTER THIRTY

April, 11 A.E.-Canaan, Kingdom of Egypt

April, 11 A.E.-Central Anatolia, Kingdom of Haiti-land

April, 11 A.E.-Canaan, Kingdom of Egypt

April, 11 A.E.-Eurotas Valley, Kingdom of Great Achaea

April. 11 A.E.-Damascus, Kingdom of Haiti-Land

April, 11 A.E.-Meggido, Kingdom of Egypt

April, 11 A.E.-Walkeropolis, Kingdom of Great Achaea

April, 11 A.E.-Meggido, Kingdom of Egypt

April, 11 A.E.-Achaean camp, western Anatolia

The cannon were keeping up well with the chariots; Pharaoh would be pleased.

Djehuty, Commander of the Brigade of Seth, was a little uncomfortable on horseback even after months of practice with the new saddle with stirrups; the son riding beside him had learned more quickly.

Still, there was no denying it was convenient. He turned his horse and rode back down along the track beside his units, with the standard-bearer, scribes, aides, and messengers behind him. The rutted track was deep in sand, like most of the coastal plain of Canaan… where it wasn't swamp mud or rocks. The infantry in their banded-linen corselets plodded along, their brown faces darker yet with dust and streaked with sweat under their striped headdresses of thick canvas. Round-topped rectangular shields were slung over their shoulders, bronze spear blades glinted in the bright sun. After them came a company of Nubians, Medjay mercenaries from far up the Nile. Djehuty frowned; the black men were slouching along in their usual style, in no order at all… although anyone who'd seen one of their screaming charges could forgive them that.

Then came one of the New Regiments; they wore only kilts and pleated loin-guards, but there were leather bandoliers of papyrus cartridges at their right hips and muskets over their shoulders. Djehuty scowled slightly at the sight of them, despite the brave show they made with their feet moving in unison and the golden-fan standard carried before them on a long pole.

Their weapons are good, he acknowledged. "But will they stand in battle?" he asked himself. They were peasants, not iw'yt, not real soldiers, raised from childhood in the barracks.

After them came the cannon themselves, wrought with endless difficulty and expense. Djehuty's thick-muscled chest swelled with pride under his iron-scale armor at the number Pharaoh entrusted to him-a full dozen of the twelve-pounders, as they were called in the barbaric tongue of their inventors. Each was a bronze tube of a length equal to a very tall man's height, with little bronze cylinders cast on either side so that the guns could ride in their chariotlike mounts. Very much like a chariot, save that the pole rested on another two-wheeled cart, the limber, and that was hauled by six horses with the new collar harness that bore on their shoulders rather than their necks.

Better for the horses, he admitted grudgingly, passing on to the chariots. Those had changed in the last few years as well. Besides a compound bow and quiver on one side, there was a scabbard on the other for two double-barreled shotguns, and the crew was now three, like a Hittite war-cart-one being a loader for the warrior who captained the vehicle.

He reined in and took a swig from the goatskin water bottle at his saddle. It cut gratefully through the dust and thick phlegm in his mouth, and he spat to the side and drank again, since there were good springs nearby and no need to conserve every drop. Years of work, to make the Brigade of Seth the finest in Pharaoh's service, and then to integrate the new weapons.

To be good commanders, his father had told him, we must love our army and our soldiers. But to win victories, we must be ready to kill the thing we love. When you attack, strike like a hammer and hold nothing back.

"Stationed in Damnationville with no supplies," he said, a soldier's saying as old as the wars against the Hyskos.

"But sir, there are plenty of supplies," his son said.

Djehuty nodded. "There are now, boy," he said. "But imagine being stuck here on garrison duty for ten years."

The young man looked around. To their left was the sea, brighter somehow than that off the Delta. The road ran just inland of the coastal sand dunes; off to the right a line of hills made the horizon rise up in heights of blue and purple. Thickets of oak dotted the plain, and stretches of tall grass, still green with summer rain. Grain turned yellow in a few patches of cultivation, here and there a vineyard or olive grove, but the land was thinly peopled-had been since the long wars Pharaoh had waged early in his reign, nearly forty Nile floods ago.

And those did not go well, he remembered uneasily-he'd been a stripling then, but nobody who'd been at Kadesh was going to believe in the great Egyptian victory that the temple walls proclaimed.

A village of dun-colored huts with flat roofs stood in the middle distance, dim through the greater dust plume of the Egyptian host passing north. The dwellers and their stock were long gone; sensible peasants ran when armies passed by.

By the standards of the vile Asiatics, the hairy dwellers in Amurru, this was flat and fertile land. To an Egyptian, it was hard to tell the difference between this and the sterile red desert that lay east of the Nile.

"War and glory are only found in foreign lands," the younger man said stoutly.

"Well spoken, son," the commander said. He looked left; the Ark of Ra was sinking toward the waters. "Time to camp soon. And Pharaoh will summon the commanders to conference in the morning."

"My Kat'ryn…" Kashtiliash of Babylon said.

"Yeah, Kash?" she said, looking up from the washstand. Beads of water ran down the smooth-muscled shoulders, over breasts like lathe-turned wine cups. The pink nipples stiffened to the touch of the chill water, in the predawn cold.

He seated sword and revolver more firmly on his hips and took a deep breath. Holding his spear firm for the charge of a lion or boar was easier than this. Kathryn took up a towel and began to dry herself; uniform and helmet and weapons waited on a stand in the corner of the rammed-earth commanders' quarters.

"Kat'ryn, I have been months gone from the land of Kar-Duniash."

She nodded, suddenly slightly wary. "Yes… has anyone made trouble back home?"

"No," he snorted. "Nor will any, so long as they know I would come down the Euphrates with the New Troops and the cannon should a usurper arise; also my half brothers are here with us-and you know that is not chance. But… the Egyptians are moving, and they threaten our line of communications."

"You're worried about rebellion?" she said.

"I have no son of my Great Wife as yet," he said quietly. "My others are children. If I were cut off here…"

"You're going to pull the army out, Kash?" she asked steadily. Lamplight glinted in the alien blue eyes.

"No," he shook his head. "My word is good. But if our line to Babylon is threatened, I must send part of these troops to secure it. I must; the safety of my House and the realm require it."

She threw down the towel and came to him. "I understand," she said. A sudden lynx grin. "So, let's finish Walker first, and then it'll be Pharaoh's turn, eh?"

Ramses stood as erect as a granite monolith, wearing the military kilt and the drum-shaped red crown of war with the golden cobra rearing at his brows, waiting as still as the statue of a God. The officers knelt and bowed their heads to the carpet before him in the shade of the great striped canvas pavilion. There was a silence broken only by the clank of armor scales and creak of leather. Then the eunuch herald's voice rang like silver in the cool air of dawn:

"He is The Horus, Strong Bull, Beloved of Ma'at; He of the Two Goddesses, Protector of Khem who Subdues the Foreign Lands; the Golden Horus, Rich in Years, Great in Victories; He is King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Strong in Right; He is User-Ma'at-Ra, Son of Ra; Ramses, Beloved of Amun."

The officers bowed again to the living God, and Pharaoh made a quick gesture with one hand. The officers bowed once more and rose.

Djehuty came to his feet with the rest. Servants pulled a cover off a long table. It was covered by a shallow-sided box, and within the box was a model made of sand mixed with Nubian gum, smelling like a temple on a festival day. Its maker stood waiting.

The outland dog, Djehuty thought. Mek-Andrus the foreigner, the one who'd risen so high in Pharaoh's service. He wore Egyptian headdress and military kilt but foreign armor-a long tunic of linked iron rings. Foreign dog. Disturber of custom.

"The servants of Pharaoh will listen to this man, now Chief of Chariots," Ramses said. "So let it be written. So let it be done."

Djehuty bowed his head again. If Pharaoh commands that I obey a baboon with a purple arse, I will obey, he thought. Mek-Andrus was obviously part Nubian, too, with skin the color of a barley loaf and a flat nose. The will of Pharaoh is as the decrees of fate.

The foreigner moved to the sand table and picked up a wooden pointer. "This is the ground on which we must fight," he said. His Egyptian was fluent, but it had a sharp nasal accent like nothing any of the Khemites had ever heard before. "As seen from far above."

All the officers had had the concept explained to them. Some were still looking blank-eyed: Djehuty nodded and looked down with keen interest. There was the straight north-south reach of the coast of Canaan, with the coastal plan narrowing to nothing where the inland hills ran almost to water's edge; a bay north of that, where a river into the sea. The river marked a long trough, between the hills and the mountains of Galilee to the north, and it was the easiest way from the sea inland to the big lake and the Jordan valley.

"The Hittites, the men of Kar-Duniash, the mariyannu of the Asiatic cities, the Armanaean tribes, and their allies are approaching from the northeast, thirty-five thousand strong not counting their auxiliaries and camp followers, according to the latest reports."

The pointer traced a line down through Damascus, over the heights, along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, then northwest from Bet Shean.

"Of those, at least five thousand are infantry equipped with fire weapons, with thirty cannon, and four thousand chariots."

None of the Egyptian commanders stirred; there was a low mutter of sound as the Sherdana mercenary leader translated for his monoglot subordinates, their odd-looking helmets with the circle of feathers all around bending together.

"Favored of the Son of Ra," Djehuty said. "If we are here"-he pointed to a place half a day's march before the place where the coastal plain pinched out-"can they reach the sea and hold the passes over Carmel against us?"

Mek-Andrus nodded; he no longer smiled with such boorish frequency as he had when he first came to Egypt. "That is the question. They were here"-he tapped the place where the Jordan emerged from Galilee-"yesterday at sunset.

Another rustling. That left the enemy further from the plain of Jezreel than the Egyptians, but the path the northerners must cross was over flat land with supplies to hand; the Egyptian force must cross mountains.

"Thutmose did it," Mek-Andrus said. "If we take this pass"- his finger tapped-"as the Great One's predecessor did, we can be here and deployed to meet them before they expect us."

Thutmose… Djehuty thought. Then: Ah. One of the great Pharaohs of the previous dynasty, the one that had petered out when the Accursed of Amun, the Enemy, tried to throw down the worship of the Gods in favor of Atun.

His eyes narrowed as he watched Mek-Andrus. How did the outland dog know so much of Khem? Djehuty knew the barbarian didn't read the Egyptian script, so he couldn't have simply read the story off a temple wall the way a literate, civilized man might. The fire-weapons themselves weren't sorcery, just a recipe, like cooking-plain saltpeter and sulfur and charcoal, whatever the peasants might think. But there was something not quite canny about Mek-Andrus himself.

Yet the Gods have sent him to us. Without Mek-Andrus, the Hittites and Achaeans and other demon-begotten foreigners who knew not the Black Land or the Red would have had the new weapons all to their own. That would have been as bad as the time long ago when the Hyksos came with their chariots, before any Egyptian had seen a horse, and it had taken a long night of subjection and war to expel them.

"Who should take the vanguard?" Pharaoh asked.

Mek-Andrus bowed. "Let Pharaoh choose the commander who has both wisdom and bravery… and many cannon, so that they can hold off the enemy host until the whole army of Pharaoh is deployed."

Remote as jackal-headed Anubis deciding the fate of a soul in the afterworld, Pharaoh's eyes scanned his generals.

Djehuty fell on his face as the flail pointed to him. "Djehuty of the Brigade of Seth. The vanguard shall be yours. Prepare to move as soon as you may. You shall cross the pass and hold the ground for the rest of our armies. So let it be written! So let it be done!"

It was a great honor-and possibly the death sentence for the Brigade of Seth.

The courier threw back his head and drank, water running down his chin into the stubble and soaking into the filthy gray wool of his uniform tunic. The smithy was scorching, its thick adobe walls soaking up the heat of the two charcoal hearths, steam hissing as the hot shoe was plunged into the water. The man whose horse was being shod kept an eye on it even as he stuck the cup into the well bucket again; cooler out here… and even now, a certain magic clung to ironworking.

It had been a long ride overland from his landfall in Athens, even with good roads. The almond trees in the field across from the smithy and relay station were in bloom, their scent a breath of freshness amid the dust and dung of the roadside smithy. Soon he would be in Walkeropolis, where he could rest.

The saddlebags had the Wolf Lord's blazon on them. The death-fate laid on him if they were lost was gruesome.

The smith bent and lifted the right rear hoof between his knees, nails ready in his mouth. A slave girl came by just then, looking over her shoulder at the uniformed courier and letting her thin tunic draw tight against her buttocks. He smiled and worked the pump for her to fill her bucket.

Nevertheless, he was stern in his duty, shaking his head ruefully when she looked back at him from around the corner and rolled her eyes toward the stables. She made a face at him and walked off; he sighed and took the bridle of his horse as the smith's boy led it out. He swung back into the saddle and heeled his mount to the graveled verge of the road.

"Good intelligence can be worth an extra regiment," Marian Alston-Kurlelo said, returning Kenneth Hollard's salute and then taking his hand.

It was going on two years now since she'd ridden into Camp Grant and told him that he was going to Babylonia. Grown a good deal. Thirtysomething, but looking older and a bit thinner, and tired. Done a good job.

"It had better be worth a regiment," he said bluntly. "Because these two battalions are all I can spare, with the local levies. If we take any more from the northern front, we're fucked. Ma'am."

She chuckled, looking out over the vast sprawling chaos of the muster point where the hosts of the southern Hittite lands were gathered. Many of the assembled Hittites-and Syrians and Aramaeans and whatever-were still in hysterics from the Liberator's visit; she'd sent the airship right back for another load of heavy weapons anyway. The dust and heat were already fearsome; even in April, the Damascus area was well into what felt like summer. The green oasis helped some, and the sight of the cedar-forested mountains to the westward.

Take me back to the River Jordan, she thought/quoted to herself. It's about seventy-five miles thataway, south by southwest.

"Most of the Egyptians will be old-style troops," she said reassuringly. "Doreen may be in her seventh month, but her spies are very mobile. Their rifle units won't be as good as the Tartessians, and they weren't as good as Walker's men in Sicily… and he's got all his best facing you."

Hollard nodded. "This is damned important, though, ma'am," he said. "A couple of crucial alliances depend on turning the Egyptians back."

"Awkward. I'd been hoping to bring my people in from Sicily directly in your support-invading Greece directly just now is out of the question, I'm afraid; I don't have the firepower or troops. Well, needs must when the devil drives; I'll handle the Egyptians if you can hold Walker. Good luck. Brigadier Hollard. Good hunting."

"And to you, Commodore," he said.

"I do not like the thought of cowering in a hole," Djehuty said.

The valley stretched out before him, land flat and marshy in spots, in others fertile enough even by an Egyptian's standards. Wheat and barley billowed in green waves with yellow streaks; the fallow plots between the fields were densely grown with weeds. Olive trees grew thick on the hills that rose on either side of the southeastward trend of the lowlands; orchards of fig and pomegranate and green leafy vineyards that would produce the famed Wine of the North stood around hamlets of dark mud brick. These lands were well peopled, a personal estate of Pharaoh and on a route that carried much trade from the north in times of peace.

"All the courage in the world won't stop a bullet," Mek-Andrus said. "A man in a hole-a rifle pit-can load and fire more easily, and still be protected from the enemy's bullets. They must stand and walk forward to attack; and the Divine Son of Ra has ordered us to defend."

Djehuty made a gesture of respect at the Pharaoh's name. "So he has," he said. You purple-arsed baboon, he thought to himself. Pharaoh was a living God, but a commander in the field was not always bound by his sovereign's orders-it was the objective that counted. And occasionally Egyptians had committed deicide. No. He thrust the thought from him. That was a counsel of desperation, and Ramses had been a good Pharaoh, strong and just.

"How do you advise that we deploy, then?" Djehuty said.

He looked back. Most of the Brigade of Seth were out, forming up in solid blocks.

"Let us keep the pass to our backs," the foreigner said.

"So-half of a circle?" Djehuty said, making a curving gesture.

"No, not today. That would disperse the fire of our guns. Instead-

Mek-Andrus began to draw in the dirt with a bronze-tipped stick he carried. "Two redoubts, little square earth forts, on either end of a half circle whose side curves away from the enemy. That way they can give enfilading fire."

"Please, O Favored of the Divine Horus, speak Egyptian; I plead my ignorance."

Mek-Andrus looked up sharply. Djehuty gave him a bland smile; let him see how a civilized man controlled his emotions.

The foreigner nodded. He held both hands out, fingers splayed, then crossed those fingers to make a checkerboard. "Enfilading fire means that the paths of the balls or grapeshot from the cannon cross each other, so," he said. "Instead of one path of destruction, they overlap and create a whole field where nothing can live."

The Egyptian's eyes went wide. He struggled within his head, imagining… Those Nubians who tried to raid the fort, he thought. A great wedge had been cut through their mass, as if sliced by the knife of a God. Within that triangle only shattered bone and splattered flesh had remained. In his mind's eye he overlapped that broad path of death with thirty more, and put Hittite charioteers in place of naked blacks with horn-tipped spears. His hand went of itself to the outlander's shoulder.

"I see your plan!" he exclaimed, smiling broadly. "It is a thing of beauty. And how shall we place the musketeers?"

Djehuty's son listened closely, waiting in silence until Mek-Andrus strode away. "Father and lord," he said hesitantly. "Is it possible that… some among us have been mistaken concerning the outlander?"

His father shook his head. "He knows much," he said. "But it is still a violation of ma'at, of the order of things, that an outlander should stand so close to the Great One. And to be granted a Royal woman as his wife! Not even the Great King of the Hittites was given such honor, when we were allied with them and at peace. No," he went on, dropping his voice. "The day will come when the foreign dog who knows not the Red Land or the Black will have taught us all he knows. On that day…"

Father and son smiled, their expressions like wolves peering into a mirror. Then Djehuty raised his voice: "Officers of Five Hundred. Attend me!"

Odd, Philowos thought, as he took the sealed folders from their leather casing. There are six. Five is the standard number.

The Assistant Underscribe (Ministry of Communications of Great Achaea, on loan to Walkeropolis-central from the Mukenai branch office) shrugged. There wasn't any regulation about it; and these were personal Royal correspondence. The King did as he willed, not as other men did.

"Come on, I haven't got all day," the courier said, standing there with an air of iron and horse sweat, letting in a little of the heat and white light of the street behind him. It was routine, but also somehow out of place in this world of quiet and rustling paper and well-bathed men.

"Thumbprint here," Philowos said.

The courier obeyed, and then slowly and laboriously wrote his name, tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth.

Good, Philowos thought.

A full literate might have noticed that the date partly concealed under the scribe's own thumb was that for tomorrow, not today. Not likely, but possible.

Philowos waited while the swaggering courier threw his saddlebags over his shoulder with the arrogance of a sword-bearing man and clanked away. Then he walked on into the corridor that led toward his own cubicle, pausing at a large ceramic container of water. Casually he twisted the bungstopper and filled himself a cup, gossiping a little with acquaintances passing by and leaving the dispatches waiting on a ledge. When he turned around they were gone.

His heart beat a little faster as he went on to his desk. Tomorrow the dispatches would be there, and a little chamois sack of sweet-sounding coins, the King's good dinars. No problem, no fuss… and the dating would be accurate.

"They come," the Medjay scout wheezed, pointing behind himself with his spear. His body was naked save for a gourd penis sheath and his skin shone like polished onyx with sweat. "Their scouts chased me, but I lost them in rough ground."

Djehuty nodded; the Nubian mercenaries in Pharaoh's host were recruited from desert nomads south of the great bend of the Nile-hunters, herders, and bandits. They could outrun horses, given time, loping along at their tireless long-legged trot. And they could track a ghost over naked rock, or hide in their own shadows. Djehuty knew it too well. His first command had been patrols against the Medjay along the southern frontier. You didn't forget waking up and finding a sentry with his throat cut and his genitals stuffed into his mouth, and nobody in camp any the wiser until the Ark of Ra lifted over the horizon. That was Medjay humor… but they were useful, no doubt of that, and true to their salt.

"Many?" he said.

"Many," the barbarian confirmed, opening and closing his hands rapidly. "As one of the True Folk runs"-that was their heathen name for themselves-"an hour's distance."

"Fetch my war harness," he said to his son. To a runner: "A message to the captains that the enemy approaches."

His chariot came up, the plumes on the team's heads nodding, and the Egyptian commander ducked into the leather shirt of iron scales. Sweat soaked the linen backing almost immediately; he lowered the helmet over his head and buckled the strap below his chin. The sunlight was painful on the bronze and gold that decked the light wicker and bentwood of the car, and the iron tires shrunk onto the wooden wheels. He climbed aboard, his son after him; the boy made a production of checking the priming on shotguns and pistols, but he was a good lad, conscientious. More eager than was sensible, but this would be his first real battle.

"Keep your head," his father warned, his voice gruff. "It's the cool-blooded man lives long on the threshing ground of battle."

"I'm not afraid, Father!" Sennedjem said. His voice started low but broke in a humiliating squeak halfway through. He, flushed angrily; his mother had been Djehuty's first woman, a fair-skinned Libyan captive, and the boy's olive tan was a little lighter than most men of Lower Egypt.

"That's the problem, lad," Djehuty grinned. "You should be frightened." He turned his attention to the work of the day.

The signal fire on top of the bare-sloped hill to the southeast went out. "Soon now," Djehuty said.

Dust gave the chariots away. The Egyptian squinted; his vision had grown better for distant things in the last few years, worse for close work. Chariot screen, he thought. Thrown forward to keep the Egyptians from getting a close look at their enemy's force before they deployed for battle. Whoever commanded the enemy host was no fool. Now he must do the same. Without a close description of his position, the enemy commander would be handicapped.

"Forward!" he barked.

Well drilled, the squadrons fanned out before him. The driver clucked to his charges, touched their backs gently with the reins, and the willing beasts went forward. Walk, canter, trot; the dry hard ground hammered at his feet below the wicker floor of the war-cart. He compensated with an instinctive flexing of knees and balance, learned since childhood. The enemy grew closer swiftly with the combined speed of both chariot fleets, and he could feel his lips draw back in a grin of carnivore anticipation.

Syrians, he thought, as details became plain-spiked bronze helmets, horsehair plumes, long coats of brass scales rippling like the skins of serpents, curled black beards, and harsh beak-nosed faces. Mariyannu warriors of the northern cities, some rebellious vassals of Pharaoh, some from the Hittite domains or the ungoverned borderlands.

They came in straggling clumps and bands, by ones and twos, fighting as ever by town and by clan. He could.see the drivers leaning forward, shouting to the horses in their uncouth gutturals, the fighters reaching for arrows to set to their bows.

"We'll show them our fire," he said.

A feather fan mounted on a yard-long handle stood in a holder at his side. He snatched it out and waved to left and right. The Egyptian formation curled smoothly forward on either hand. Fast as ever, he thought-the new harness let a team pull the heavier chariots without losing speed or agility. A drumming of hooves filled the air with thunder, a choking white dust curled up like the sandstorms of Sinai. The horses rocked into a gallop, nostrils flared and red, foam flecking their necks. The first arrows arched out, the bright sun winking off their points. Djehuty sneered: much too far for effective archery. Dust boiled up into the unmerciful sky, thick and acrid on his tongue.

"Amun! Amun! The Divine Horus!" the Egyptians roared. Savage war cries echoed back from the enemy.

"Gun!" he barked, holding out a hand. Check-patterned acacia wood slapped into it as Sennedjem put the weapon into his hand.

Thumping sounds smashed through the roar of hooves and thunder of wheels. Syrian chariots went over, and the high womanish screaming of wounded horses was added to the up-roar. Djehuty crouched, raking back the hammers with his left palm and then leveling the weapon.

Now. An enemy chariot dashing forward out of the dust in a dangerously tight curve, one wheel off the ground. Close enough to see the wild-eyed glare of the warrior poised with a javelin in one hand. Bring the wedge at the front of the paired barrels to the notch at the back. It wasn't so different from using a bow; the body adjusting like a machine of balanced springs, but easier, easier, no effort of holding the draw. Squeeze the trigger, nothing jerky about the motion…

Whump. The metal-shod butt of the shotgun punished his shoulder. Flame and sulfur-stinking smoke vomited from the barrels, along with thirty lead balls. Those were invisible- strange to think of something moving too fast to see-but he shouted in exultation as he saw them strike home. The horses reared and screamed and tripped as the lead raked them, and the driver went over backward.

"Gun!" Djehuty roared, and Sennedjem snatched away the empty one and slapped the next into his father's grasp, then went to work biting open cartridges, hands swift on ramrod and priming horn. Djehuty fired again. "Gun!"

They plunged through the dust cloud and out into the open; the surviving Syrian chariots were in full retreat. Others lay broken, some with upturned wheels still spinning. A wounded Syrian warrior stumbled forward with a long spear held in both hands; Djehuty shot him at ten paces distance, and the bearded face splashed away from its understructure of pink bone. Some of the shot carved grooves of brightness through the green-coated bronze of the man's helmet. Out of the corner of his eye he was conscious of Sennedjem reloading the spent shotgun, priming the pans, and waiting poised.

"Pull up," Djehuty rasped. "Sound rally."

The driver brought the team to a halt. Sennedjem sheathed the shotgun and brought out a slender brass horn. Its call sounded shrill and urgent through the dull diminishing roar of the skirmish. Man after man heard it; the Captains of a Hundred brought their commands back into formation. Djehuty took the signal fan from its holder and waved it.

Meanwhile he looked to the northeast. More dust there, a low sullen cloud of it that caught the bright sunlight. He waited, and a rippling sparkle came from it, filling vision from side to side of the world ahead of them like stars on a night-bound sea.

"Father, what's that!" Sennedjem blurted; he was looking pale, but his eyes and mouth were steady. Djehuty clipped him across the side of the head for speaking without leave, but lightly. "Light on spearheads, lad," he said grimly. "Now it begins."

The redoubt was a five-sided figure of earth berms; there were notches cut in the walls for the muzzles of the cannon, and obstacles made of wooden bars set with sharp iron blades in the ditches before it.

Djehuty waited atop the rampart for the enemy heralds, come for the usual parley, an attacker's inevitable demand for surrender after the first skirmish. They carried a green branch for peace, and a white cloth on a pole as well-evidently the same thing, by somebody else's customs. And flags, one with white stars on a blue ground, and red and white stripes. His eyes widened a little. He had heard of that flag. Another beside it had similar symbols, and cryptic glyphs, thus: R.O.N. COAST GUARD. He shivered a little, inwardly. What wizardry was woven into that cloth? A touch at his amulet stiffened him with knowledge of the favor of the Gods of Khem. Gilded eagles topped the staffs, not the double-headed version of the Hittites, but sculpted as if alive with their wings thrust behind them and their claws clutching arrows and olive branches. So that is why the strangers from the far west are called the Eagle People, he thought. It must be their protector-God.

"I am Djehuty, Commander of the Brigade of Seth in the army of Pharaoh, User-Ma'at-Ra, son of Ra, Ramses of the line of Ramses, the ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt," he barked. "Speak."

"Commodore Marian Alston-Kurlelo," the figure in the odd blue clothing said. He lifted off his helm. No, she, by the Gods-the rumors speak truth. Odd, but we had a woman as Pharaoh once, and she led armies. Djehuty's eyes went wider. The enemy commander was a Nubian; not part-blood like Mek-Andrus, but black as polished ebony. His eyes flicked to the others sitting their horses beside her. One was a woman, too, yellow-haired like some Achaeans; another was a man of no race he knew, with skin the color of amber and eyes slanted at the outer ends; the other two looked like Sherden from the north shore of the Middle Sea as far as their coloring went, although their hair was cropped close. A Sudunu stood uneasily by the foreign woman's stirrup; he stepped forward and bowed with one hand to his flowerpot hat to keep it from falling off.

"I shall interpret, noble Djehuty," he said uneasily; the Egyptian was fluent, but with the throaty accent of his people. Djehuty glared for a second. Byblos, Sidon, and the other coastal cities of Canaan south of Ugarit were vassals of Pharaoh; what was this treacherous dog doing aiding his enemies? Sudunu would do anything for wealth.

"Tell this woman that no foreigner goes armed in Pharaoh's dominions without his leave, on pain of death. If she and her rabble leave at once, I may be merciful."

The Sudunu began to speak in Akkadian, the Babylonian tongue. Djehuty could follow it a little; it was the tongue Kings used to write to each other, and not impossibly different from the language of the western Semites, which he did speak after a fashion. The interpreter was shading the meaning. That often happened, since such a man was eager to avoid offending anyone.

"Tell her exactly, as I told you-don't drip honey on it," he broke in.

The swarthy, scrawny man in the embroidered robe swallowed hard, and the black woman gave a slight, bleak smile.

"Lord Djehuty," the interpreter began. "Commodore-that is a rank, lord-Alston says that she is empowered by her… lord, the word she uses means ruler, I think-Ruler of an island across the River Ocean-and the Great King of the Hittites, and the Great King of Kar-Duniash, and their other allies, to demand the return of George McAndrews, a renegade of her people. If you will give us this man, the allied forces will return past the border of the Pharaoh Ramses's dominions, and peace may prevail."

Djehuty puzzled over the words for a moment before he realized that the name was Mek-Andrus.

"Barbarians make no demands of Pharaoh," he snapped. Although I would send him to you dragged by the ankles behind my chariot, if the choice were mine. "They beg for favors, or feel the flail of his wrath. Go, or die."

The coal-black face gave a slight nod. No, not a Medjay, Djehuty thought with an inner chill. They were fierce children, their ka plain on their faces. This one had discipline; doubly remarkable in a woman. And she showed no sign of fear, under the muzzles of his guns. She must know what they can do. Mek-Andrus is of her people.

If the stranger was a renegade from the service of his own King, much was explained. He schooled his own face.

"Pharaoh commands; as it is written, so shall it be done," he replied. "This parley is over. Depart his soil, at once, or the battle will commence."

BAAAAAAAMMMM.

The twelve-pounder leaped back, up the sloping ramp of dirt the gunners had shoveled behind it, then back down again into battery. Stripped to their loincloths, the crew threw themselves into action. Stinking smoke drifted about them, and the confused roaring noise of battle, but the men labored on, wet with sweat, their faces blackened by powder fumes until their eyes stared out like white flecks in black masks, burns on their limbs where they had brushed against the scorching bronze of the cannon.

These are men, Djehuty thought, slightly surprised. More than that, they are men worthy to be called iw'yt, real soldiers.

He wasn't sure about the warriors surging against his line, but whatever they were, they didn't discourage easily. He squinted through the thick smoke that stung his eyes, ignoring the dry-ness of his tongue-they were short of water, and he meant to make what he had last.

Here they came again, over ground covered with their dead. Swarms of them, sending a shower of javelins before them as they came closer.

BAAAAMMMM. BAAAAMMMM. The guns were firing more slowly now, conserving their ammunition. Grapeshot cut bloody swaths through the attackers, but they kept on. Dead men dropped improvised ladders of logs and sticks; others picked them up and came forward. Their cries grew into a deep bellowing; the first ranks dropped into the ditch around the redoubt, where the spiked barricades were covered with bodies. Others climbed up, standing on their shoulders to scramble up the sloping dirt or set up their scaling ladders. Only a few of them knew enough to cringe at the sound that came through shouts and cannonade-the sound of thumbs cocking back the hammers of their muskets.

"Now!" Djehuty shouted, swinging his fan downward.

All along the parapet, hundreds of musketeers stood up from their crouch and leveled their pieces downward into the press of attackers.

"Fire!"

A fresh fogbank of smoke drifted away, showing the ruin below-the muskets had been loaded with what Mek-Andrus called buck and ball, a musket ball and several smaller projectiles. The ditch was filled with shapes that heaved and moaned and screamed, and the smell was like a desecrated tomb. Djehuty winced; he was a hardy man and bred to war, but this… this was something else. Not even the actions in the south had prepared him for it; the barbarians there were too undisciplined to keep charging into certain death as these men had.

"They run away, they run away, Father!" Sennedjem said.

Then, away in the gathering dusk, lights blinked like angry red eyes. Everyone in the little earth fort took cover. A long whistling screech came from overhead, and then the first explosion. The enemy cannon were better than the ones Mek-Andrus had taught the men of Khem to make; instead of firing just solid roundshot or grape, they could throw shells that exploded themselves-and throw them further. Djehuty dug his fingers into the earth, conscious mainly of the humiliation of it. He, Commander of the Brigade of Seth, whose ancestors had been nobles since the years when the Theban Pharaohs expelled the Hyskos, cowering in the dirt like a peasant! But the fire-weapons were no respecters of rank or person.

And they will shred my Brigade of Seth like meat beneath the cook's cleaver.

So Pharaoh had ordered… and it might be worth it, if it turned the course of the battle to come.

Earth shuddered under his belly and loins. He had a moment to think, and it froze him with his fingers crooked into the shifting clay. Why only cannon? From the reports and rumors, the newcomers had taught their allies to make muskets, too, and better ones than the Egyptians had. Yet all the infantry and chariots his brigade had met here were armed with the old weapons; some of them fashioned of iron rather than bronze, but still spear, sword, bow, javelin.

The barrage let up. He turned his head, and felt his liver freeze with fear. Sennedjem was lying limp and pale, his back covered in blood. Djehuty scrambled to him, ran hands across the blood-wet skin. Breath of life and pulse of blood, faint but still there. He prayed to the Gods of healing and clamped down; there, something within the wound. A spike of metal, still hot to the touch. He took it between thumb and forefinger, heedless of the sharp pain in his own flesh, and pulled. His other hand pressed across the wound while he roared for healers, bandages, wine, and resin to wash out the hurt. When they came he rose, forcing himself to look away and think as his son was borne to the rear.

"I don't like the smell of this," he muttered, and called for a runner. "Go to the commander of the northernmost brigade of Pharaoh's army," he said. Who should be here and deploying behind us. "Find why they delay, and return quickly. Say that we are hard-pressed."

"Ahhhh, not bad," William Walker said. "Fundamentally, life is pretty good."

He looked up at the tender green of the branches moving overhead, little sun-gleams flickering through them. Spring was nice. For one thing, it meant shuttling back and forth across the Aegean would be easier, without the winter storms to worry about. For another, he could finally get his hands on the Nantucketer bastards and deal with them once and for all. His grin turned wry.

Of course, they'll be expecting to deal with me, won't they?

He pushed the thought away, and worried about Sicily. One thing at a time. We can take it back when we've made sure of the east. Time for one last hunt and picnic with the family, even though the long gray-clad columns were swinging up from the coast.

There was a quiet bustle around him; he sat up and ate another dried apricot, savoring the sweetness. The glade was half an acre or so, more than enough for the hunter's camp- a platoon of the Royal Guards, a tent and the horse lines, a few servants. Two of the soldiers went by with another boar slung on a pole between them, a slight whiff of rank scent amid the spring wildflowers and pine and thyme. He grinned. Once upon a time he'd taken up hunting boar with spears because it gave you mojo among the wogs, something that a warrior-class man was just expected to do.

He hadn't really expected to start enjoying it. The hunting was excellent in this part of northwest Anatolia; the locals called it Seha River Land, and it had been Green Bursa in his birth-century. There were plenty of oak trees on the hills here, and acorns made for big, prolific wild pigs.

"Nothing like a day's hunt to give you an appetite," he said.

His son Harold flashed a grin at him; he'd been sneaking looks at the butt of the servant-toy kneeling beside Alice's folding canvas chair.

Just starting to get interested, Walker thought indulgently. Have to get him a couple of experienced instructors in a while. No son of his was going to have to suffer the sort of adolescent-male hell he'd gone through.

Hong was in what Walker thought of as her Safari Dominatrix costume: glossy boots, flared jodhpurs, belted bush jacket carrying revolver and hunting knife, and broad-brimmed hat with a leopardskin band. She took a tall glass of lemonade and playfully tickled the nude servant with the tassel of her riding crop.

Nude except for those body-piercing rings and the silver chains, Walker thought. He'd always thought the look sort of grotesque, but Hong was entitled to her own aesthetics.

"You know, your dear regent is seeing an awful lot of Arnstein," she said, then turned the handle of the crop into one of the chains and jerked sharply, shivering a little at the low shriek that followed.

Blue smoke drifted up from a hardwood fire, and a groom led horses by on their way to a downstream site on the little brook that gurgled through the meadow. The cooks were working hard by the hearths, and the smell made his belly rumble. Others set up the trestle tables and flared out the linen tablecloths. All the comforts of home now, and then some…

"I expected him to," Walker said. "Odi just likes finding out about things. That's one reason he's so useful. Sometimes you hardly remember he's a wog."

"You don't think he'll find out too much about Nantucket?"

"Oh, right, a wannax is going to go all mooney over town-meeting democracy." Walker chuckled. "No, he's much more likely to pick up valuable stuff from Arnstein. He'll be more to the dear professor's taste than any of us. Sanctimonious bastard."

Knives flashed as the barbeque was carved. Walker shoulder-rolled to his feet and strolled over with the others, snagging a roll as the hunting party and his guests-the Irauna head of the Royal Guard, a couple of generals, some important local collaborators-gathered. There was the usual slight wait while the eagle-eyed kitchen steward checked nobody had made any unauthorized additions to the cuisine. Luckily the locals didn't know many good poisons-part of the reputation of Alice's cult was based on her uptime knowledge.

The first dish was a glazed loin of wild boar, stuffed with a filling of herbs, crumbs, and garlic.

"Hot," Hong said, fanning her mouth and reaching for her wine cup. Then she fed morsels to the toy with her fork.

"Ah, you easterners never could handle real barbeque," Walker said, taking another slice. "We've finally got the chilies coming from the Lakonian estates, and the latest cook has some idea how to handle them."

He drank some himself; he'd also gotten the winemakers to understand that sweeter was not necessarily better. Day after tomorrow it would be back to campaign living, but tonight he could enjoy himself. The sun was setting behind blue hills to the west, casting low shadows as the meal wound down.

God, what's the proof on this stuff? Walker thought, as he spilled a little. My nose is going numb already.

The glass slipped from his hands. A sharp cry from Hong drew his eye. She was recoiling, bewildered. The toy had gripped the chain which spanned the rings in her nipples and wrenched it out. Blood spattered down her pale stomach, but her face was expressionless; then it broke into a dawning smile. She stood and ran three steps and fell facedown, her arms and legs beating a tattoo on the turf, like the wings of a beetle thrown on its back.

"Dad!" Harold cried. "I can't feel my hands! I can't-" He slapped himself, tears leaking down his face. "I can't-

His words ended in a rush of vomit; Walker could smell how he fouled himself. His father tried to rise and go to him, but his hands slipped off the table despite the sudden and desperate fury that welled up and turned the world misty red. The generals and officers down the table were trying to rise as well, and falling, and moaning.

Walker looked at Hong. Her eyes were wide, and her hands clutched her stomach.

"Aconite," she whispered. "Chilies hid the taste-ow!"

The sun was falling… no, the light was falling, faster than the sun. Walker felt a pain in his gut, deep and strong, like a sword stab. He collapsed forward, all the huge strength of his body gone. Hong was shaking as she clutched at herself.

"It hurts, Will," she whimpered. "Make it stop, Will. Make it-

The words were lost in retching and convulsions. Men were shouting and running, far away. Walker fumbled at the butt of his pistol, but there was no sensation in his hand. He had to get it out, find the cook, and kill-Night fell, and he fell with it, endlessly.