Against the Tide of Years (43 page)

“May dust be his food and salt his drink in the House of Arabu. My foster father and mother are avenged, at least.”

“Who was he, anyway?” Hollard asked.
Time to get back to business.

The girl smiled. It looked as if it hurt her face. “You do not know, Lord Kenn’et? That is—was—Tukulti-Ninurta. King of the Universe of Swine, King of the Four Corners of the Pigpen, King of Assyria, last of the seed of Shulmanu-asharidu, who slew my father and my people. Thus are
all
my kin avenged.”

“Oh,
shit.
” It was time to call the Arnsteins and pass the buck. In the meantime . . .

“You will be safe with us, Lady Raupasha,” he said. In English: “Sergeant, see to the young lady’s needs.” He dropped back into Akkadian: “Your pardon. I must see to my troops.”

He turned and strode out, blinking in the bright sunlight. O’Rourke had taken down the impaled bodies, and working parties were hauling bucketfuls of water to splash and sizzle on charring timbers.

“So, Colonel, I hear it’s a princess we rescued,” he said. “A young, beautiful princess at that.”

“Paddy, for once rumor does not lie—and there’s all sorts of political implications involved.”

“Better you than me, sir. You’d best take a look at this, too, though.”

They went up a mud-brick staircase to a section of the house roof still strong enough to bear their weight. “Over there, southwest.”

The figures he pointed to were ant-tiny in the distance. Hollard raised his binoculars and turned the focusing screw; the ants became men, leaping close in the dry, clear air.

A gray-bearded man on a donkey, in a long striped robe with a fringe, a flowing headdress, and a sword belted at his waist. Several men talking to him, arguing with broad, quick gestures. More donkeys with packsaddles, and men on foot—fifty or sixty, scattered over the bare steppeland. He studied them; a few in plainer robes than the chief, many in simple goatskin kilts. None of them had swords—most of them didn’t even have sandals—but they all had long knives tucked through their belts. Bows, slings, and spears were in evidence too, and a few had hide and wicker shields.

They were lean men with vast black beards, their bodies looking as if they were made out of sun-dried rawhide. Leaning on their spears, or laying them across their shoulders and resting their arms on them, or squatting at their ease. He could see one spitting thoughtfully on a rock and honing a curved bronze dagger that would do quite well as a skinning knife.

Aramaeans, right enough,
he thought. Aloud: “No sheep, no goats, and no women.”

“War party,” O’Rourke agreed.

“Well, that solves one problem,” Hollard replied and drew his pistol again as he trotted downstairs.

When he stood in front of the prisoners he gestured with it; they’d learned enough to know that it was one of the fire-weapons that had broken their kingdom, and they eyed it fearfully.

“All right, you’re free to go,” he said.

The spokesman who’d kissed his foot looked up from giving a dipper of water to a bandaged countryman. “Free, lord? No ransom?”

“Free and clear.” He pointed to the south. “Now get going.”

“Go?”

“What part of
go
don’t you understand, you son of a bitch?” he roared, the control that had kept his voice level suddenly cracking. The Assyrian flinched as if from a blow. “Go! Thataway! Or by God, I’ll shoot you down like a dog here and now. All of you—go!”

“But, lord! We have no food or water or weapons or—”

“
Go!
”

“But we will die!”

Hollard smiled; it felt a little like a smile, though the Assyrian flinched again. When he spoke, his voice was calm.

“We have an old saying—as a man sows, so shall he reap.”

He fired into the dirt next to the Assyrian’s foot. “March!”

Ibi-Addad came out and watched the departing Assyrians with a moment’s mild curiosity. Then he waved a leather sack.

“Look, Lord Hollard! Packed with salt, this will be perfect for keeping the head until you lay it before King Shuriash. That all men may know your victory!”

“Oh,
shit.
”

 

 

“M
y lord king Agamemnon!” William Walker said, his voice loud and full of concern. “I will offer a hectacomb of white oxen to Zeus the Father in thanks that you live!”

The throne room of Mycenae was less bright than usual, despite the mirrors and lamps that Walker had installed for his hegemon years ago. Many had been shattered by the same grenade fragments that had flecked the walls. Blasts had scaled off a lot of the painted plaster, and blood was splashed across much of what was left of the magnificent murals of lions and griffons and Minoan-style sea creatures that sprawled in multicolored splendor around the great room.

The smell of burnt pork came not from a feast but from the body of the guardsman who’d fallen backward into the great circular marble-rimmed hearth, half-drowning the fire with his blood. Parties of Walker’s guard regiment were at work carting out the bodies. He gestured to make sure one got the corpse in the hearth before the fire there went out—that would be extremely bad mojo, to the wogs’ way of thinking. The hearthfire was the luck of the house and kin.

Not that I have to pay as much attention to that now,
he thought. Still, no reason not to when it didn’t cost anything.

“But the traitors around you have been found out and defeated,” Walker went on, still in a loud public voice. “What a loss for all the lands of the Achaeans if you had been killed in the fighting!”

What a monumental pain in the ass for me,
he added to himself. Right now he could enforce a claim to being the power behind the throne and make it stick at gunpoint, but he couldn’t sit on the sacred seat himself. Not yet. Too many of the Achaean nobles would fight to the death if an outlander’s low-bred fundament actually touched it. He needed them.

For now.

Agamemnon’s face was still sagging with shock.
A lot grayer than when I arrived here,
Walker thought.
Lot fatter, too.
It made him pleasantly conscious of his own trim physique. The suit of articulated plate made for him back on Nantucket a few months after the Event still fit. So did the belt he’d won at eighteen in the Colorado state rodeo.

He looked up. Every Mycenaean palace—except his—had a four-pillar arrangement around the central hearth, with a gallery where the second story could look down into the great hall. Alice Hong was there, in Mycenaean robes but still looking as alien as the Beretta in her hand. She gave him the high sign and pulled a younger woman away, leading her by the hand.

“How . . .” Agamemnon began, then cleared his throat. His glance took in the ranks of musketeers along the walls, their bayonets bright—or in some cases, still sticky-red. “How did you know?”

“How did I know that evil councilors—surely men in the pay of the Hittites!—had attempted to turn your mind against me, King of Men? Had tried to persuade you to turn on me? Ah. Well, you see . . . you Achaeans are fine people, but you have your blind spots.”

“Blind spots?” the lord of Mycenae asked, bewildered.

“Sorry. Literal translations don’t always work.” And he didn’t always realize he was translating, since he thought in Achaean much of the time now. “
Blind spot
means things you don’t see even though they’re there. Like women. Just a second.”

Ohotolarix saluted and bowed his head.
“Lord,”
he said, dropping back into Iraiina for security’s sake, “we have the building in our fist. All the men you named are dead or in our hands.”

“Good,” Walker answered in the same tongue. “Now make sure none of their families get away either.” These people were blood-feudists, and nits made lice.

“Women?” Agamemnon said again.

Dude’s beginning to sound like a broken record,
Walker thought.

Hong came into the hall, still leading the girl by the hand. There was a strong family resemblance between her and the middle-aged woman who trailed behind, strong straight noses and snapping black eyes. The rich fabric of their layered dresses rustled as they walked, with a hissing like snakes.

“Yeah, women. You see, the women in a palace hear everything—but you nobles, you act like they were doorposts or something.”

Hong spoke: “And the Dark Sisterhood of Hekate is everywhere!”

Walker spared her a cold glance. “Yeah, well, secret societies, they’re sort of more useful when they’re
secret,
right, babe?”

“Well, sorry about that, Mr. Montana Maniac at King Agamemnon’s Court.”

His eyes flared like distant heat-lightning. “Not now, Alice!”

“Sorry, Will.”

She didn’t look sorry; she looked like she was lit up, a major glow on.
Hell, I feel like I’ve just snorted half an ounce myself,
Walker thought. As if he could fight lions bare-handed and ball the whole cheerleading squad into squealing ecstasy and still run the Ironman triathlon.
But I keep it under control, and dear Alice had better do likewise.

“My wife?” the Greek croaked. “My
daughter
?”

“My lord king should remember that he was publicly considering sacrificing her for good luck in the coming war,” Walker said.

“But that was for the good of the realm!” he protested. “The priests—”

And my lord king should have known, but didn’t, that I was the one who bribed the augurs to say that we couldn’t win unless you did. Of course, the idea wasn’t
completely
mine; Alice sort of suggested it indirectly, when she got that hissy fit about fate. And
she
got it from Homer.

Now the augurs would explain that the king was “sacrificing” his daughter by marrying her to the new commander-in-chief. It was perfect, if he did say so himself.

There was an exchange of sign and countersign at the entrance to the hall. Odikweos of Ithaka came through with his hand on his sword hilt and a group of his officers behind him.

“Rejoice, shield-brother,” he said to Walker, after a perfunctory bow to Agamemnon.

Even now the Achaean monarch started to swell with indignation at the discourtesy and opened his mouth to reprove it, but another glance at the armed men around his throne dissuaded him.

“The lower city is under control,” Odiweos went on. “There was a little fighting at the barracks, but not much.”

Walker nodded. “Sometimes you can shoot men more effectively with gold and silver bullets than with lead,” he said.
Particularly if you see to it that they lose more than they can afford to well-trained dice,
he added to himself.

The Ithakan went on: “I have field guns commanding all the open spaces and patrols bringing in all the men on the list.”

A figure in a long robe waited a pace to the vassal king’s rear. “Enkhelyawon?” Walker prompted.

His chief of correspondence cleared his throat. “My lord, the scribes of the palace are in order and the telegraph office has been secured.” He risked a glance at Agamemnon, but the high king was still staring in dazed horror at his wife and daughter. “The printed account of your crushing of the conspiracy and the list of proscribed families is already going out to Tiryns, Argos, Athens, Pylos, and the other citadels.”

“Good. Carry on—see that normal message traffic continues until we have guard troops in place everywhere.”

He turned back to the high king. “And we need some privacy, O King of Men, to decide how to safeguard you from future conspiracies.”

Like, you marry me to your daughter and declare me
lawagetas
—general in chief—of all the Achaeans, for starters. And you don’t so much as piss against a wall without my permission from now on. You’ll probably die of natural causes before you stop being useful, though, so don’t sweat it
too
much, dude.

“Treason,” Agamemnon whispered, when the onlookers were gone.

“Not at all,” Walker said with a charming, boyish grin.

“How not?” the Greek said with a certain haggard dignity. “Although at least you have not slain me who took you in when you were a fugitive and suppliant.”

“Oh, I’d never have you killed. You’re far too useful alive,” Walker said. “As for the treason . . . well, among my birth-people we have an old saying: Why is it that treason never prospers?”

Agamemnon’s head went back. “Because the curse of Zeus the Avenger of Right and the wrath of the Kindly Ones pursues the oath-breaking man who turns on his lord!” he said, his voice firm once more.

Behind Walker, Odikweos winced slightly. The American went on cheerfully: “Not exactly, Oh High King,” he said. “We say that it never prospers, because if it prospers . . . why, none dare
call
it treason.”

The Greeks stared in appalled silence as his laughter echoed through the great blood-spattered hall of the House of Atreus.

 

Prince Kashtiliash lowered his binoculars. “Their walls are open,” he said eagerly. “As open as—” he coughed; speaking to Major Kathryn Hollard it might not be tactful to say
a woman’s legs.
“—as the door of an unguarded house.”

Asshur lay on the west bank of the Tigris. That meant something more definite here in northern Mesopotamia, away from the alluvial plains of Kar-Duniash. Here the land was higher, rolling steppe with copses of scrub oak in the ravines. Dust smoked off stubble fields, and sunset was throwing Prussian blue on the outliers of the Zagros mountains over the river. Ahead, the high stone wall of the Assyrian capital was black against the first stars on that horizon, with the triangular crenellations of the wall cutting the sky like jagged teeth.

More jagged than they were when we started,
Kathryn Hollard thought.