Island in the Sea of Time (78 page)

The mild spring air cuffed at his hair; Martha put a hand up to her broad hat, the baby neatly balanced in the crook of her other arm. Jared Cofflin looked out over the grainfield, still spotted with an occasional haggled brush stump. That might make it awkward for the reapers, come harvest.
So much to do
. . . and so few sets of hands to do it. Harder than ever with so many strong young backs over in Britain.
God damn Walker to hell.
The air smelled intensely fresh, with a tinge of salt and a hint of cooking from the openpit barbecue that was getting lunch ready.

Martha turned and smiled at him, a wry quirk of the corner of her mouth, and he felt a decision jell in his mind. “All right, people. I was supposed to sit up here and bray some stuff about the state of our economy, forsooth.” A rippling laugh went across the people sitting in folding chairs. Joseph Starbuck winced. “And these poor folks would have had to stand and listen while their party was on hold.”

The Kayles and their friends clapped enthusiastically. Cofflin went on: “I’ll sort of condense it. We’re going to be handing out more of these farms, a hundred and twenty or so. No room for more; it isn’t a big island, and we can’t take too much of the ground cover off or we’ll have all sorts of problems with erosion and so on. Angelica tells me we can build up the soil fertility and we’ll have more livestock soon. You all know we’ll have another four big schooners by the end of summer, and some more tugs. There’s more. Tom Ervine has his paper mill working—” another patter of applause; paper was so damned
useful
—“and the First Pacific Bank is reopening.”

Boos and hisses at that. “I know, I know. But it’s sure convenient to have money again, isn’t it?” He put a hand into his pants pocket and held up a crisp ten-dollar note, the island’s new issue. “Believe me, it’s a big load off
my
shoulders. It’s a lot easier to tell someone to go buy their own goddam dinner instead of figuring out rations!”

He threw his jacket across the chair behind him. Nobody, thank God, was wearing a necktie anymore, except a few fossils like Starbuck. “And I could go on and on. Ayup. What it amounts to is we’re getting on our feet again, pretty well—better than any of us expected. So I’ll move on to what we’re all anxious about, how things are going over in England.”

A stir and rustle of interest. “News just came through. That piece of . . .” Martha tugged at his leg. “. . . scum Walker has been making himself a kingdom over there. He’s already got an army and he’s making them iron weapons, and raiding and killing and taking slaves.” A growl of anger rose from before him. “What’s more, he and his Tartessian friend have built a ship, at least one, that Captain Alston says could easily carry a hundred men to Nantucket. There’s some evidence he’s made gunpowder; we’ve just now gotten our first small load of sulfur from the Caribbean, but there are sources in Britain, so he’s ahead of us there.”

Complete silence now, intent and focused. “If we’d left him another year, he’d have had cannon and a dozen ships ready to attack us. Captain Alston and the expeditionary force have already fought a battle with the savages he’s got working for him.” He paused, feeling the tension beating on him like heat. “The captain reports that the savages were completely defeated, with over a hundred dead, many more wounded, and the rest fleeing for their lives.”

The crowd rose. cheering madly; men thumped each other on the back, women hugged. Cofflin raised a hand. “It wasn’t cost-free. Six of our people were killed.” The families had received first notification, of course, but otherwise he was ahead of the rumors.

Silence again, broken by a low murmur. Cofflin nodded. “This is serious business. I think we should have a moment of silence.”

They waited with bowed heads. “And,” he went on when it was over, “Captain Alston asks that we all remember them in our prayers.”

 

Walker looked around the little natural amphitheater with disgust. It was dark now; attendants had lit torches on poles all around, and they still weren’t an inch closer to deciding what to do. The ten chiefs and their principal retainers were making enough noise for a Red Sox game all by themselves. The sound died down a little as he stood and stepped forward to stand beside Daurthunnicar’s chair—the others were on stools, to mark the Iraiina chiefs status as High
Rahax.
Noise sank further when he slammed the iron butt cap of his spear against a rock; the steel sparked on the flint-rich lump of hardened chalk. When he had full silence, he leaned on the spear and spoke:

“Are you chieftains?” he asked rhetorically. “Are you even warriors of Sky Father’s people?”

That brought their anger around on him.
Good enough,
he thought, meeting the glares. Most of these men had enough experience to control their tempers at least a little. If he could get them acting together, he could probably turn things around. Not if they went on quarreling with one another, though. Those hatreds were too old and well set.

“You promised us victory!” a chief shouted, the necklace of wolf teeth and gold bouncing on his barrel chest as he waved his fists in the air. “Instead the fighting men of a whole tribe are dead, and enemies raid our steadings!”

“I promised you victory if you followed my redes,” he said coldly. “The Zarthani chose to flout them, going off on their own to raid without my—without our High
Rahax’
s word.”

Daurthunnicar stirred slightly; Walker cursed the stumble. His father-in-law was no fool; pig-ignorant and superstitious as a horse, but no fool.

“The Zarthani fell on their own deeds. If in battle one of your warriors turned from the fight to lie with a woman or drive off a cow without your let, while the arrows still flew and axes beat on shields, how would you do with him?”

He could feel the anger checked, coiled back. Bearded faces nodded. They’d hang such a man up by the ankle in a sacred grove and run a spear through him, and their whole tribes would cheer.

“And then the Zarthani had no better sense than to charge at the first foe they met, like a bull at a gate—none of you would have been so foolish, I’m sure.”
I’m sure most of you would have done exactly the same thing,
he went on silently, watching their solemn nods. “So they let themselves be beaten by
women,”
he concluded.

More nods. Daurthunnicar had been magnificently angry when he was finally convinced that Alston
was
a woman, and the other chiefs were horror-struck at the thought of the shame they’d bear if they were thrashed by one.

“I came here because you of Sky Father’s tribes live as men should,” he went on.
They’ll believe that. Vanity springs eternal.
“But that doesn’t mean that the Eagle People don’t have strong knowledge of war. You’re wearing it right now.”

All the chiefs had mail hauberks and swords turned out in Walkerburg or brought as part of the
Yare’s
cargo. Hands tightened on those swords as he spoke.

“And they have strong magic—thunder—death. I have the knowledge and the magic, together with the battle-luck of my
rahax
, to throw these woman-ruled foreigners back into the sea, dead. But you must move in better order, and obedient to the High
Rahax’
s will, if we are to conquer now. As my handfast men threw back the Kayaltwar who raided us while our war host was away, so we will crush the Earth Folk and their allies—if you obey.”

“And if we don’t?” one chief said truculently, leaning forward. The firelight caught the ruddy bronze of the rings that held his braided hair and a black beard twisted into another braid that fell down his chest.

“Then the Iraiina will leave you to them,” Walker said.

Daurthunnicar’s hands clenched on the carved oak of his chair. It had taken a long day of argument, wheedling, and blunt threats of desertion to get him to go along with that.

“We came to the White Isle only last year,” Walker went on, stretching the “we.” “With the weapons and arts we have now, we can push back the Keruthinii on the mainland. Anywhere away from the ocean, the Eagle People can’t touch us.”
And I hope it doesn’t occur to you that they
could
intercept us crossing the Channel, so my threat is empty
. Aloud, he went on:

“But they can stamp
you
flat. You’ll be beaten by women, ruled by them . . . and you’ll lose your lands and cattle and homes.”

More uproar, gradually dying down. “You can beat these Eagle People?” one said at last.

“I believe we can—with Sky Father’s help, and by striking hard and fast and skillfully, before they have a chance to teach the Earth Folk how to fight. It isn’t courage the Earth Folk men lack; you know that.” A few unwilling nods. “It’s skill and leadership they want for. With it, and with their numbers . . .”

The tribal chiefs weren’t very foresighted men. By the standards of the twentieth, they were insanely impulsive. They were perfectly capable of grasping a fact thrust under their noses, though; many of them looked as if he’d not only thrust a horse turd of fact under their noses but down their throats.

“The Zarthani threw away our chance for a quick victory. We’ll have to keep some men here, skirmishing and raiding, until the harvest. Then we’ll muster the full levy again. Yes, it’s a delay, but that gives us a chance to . . .”

When the talking was finished, Daurthunnicar rose from his high seat beneath the stars. “Now we will make the Great Sacrifice,” he said. Horse, hound, and man, offered in the grove. “Tomorrow you will hearten the warriors. And we shall conquer.”

 

“Jesus,” someone said softly.

Doreen Arnstein whistled softly herself. A small part of her mind was glad to be able to do that, to do
anything,
without the top of her head feeling as if it were about to pop off. Getting whacked hard enough to knock you out meant headaches, blurred vision, nausea, dizziness, all serious business and lasting for days.

What she saw ahead of her was serious too. She’d seen pictures of Stonehenge, of course. Those sunken, shattered, diminished remnants had nothing to do with the Great Wisdom, whole and living in the bright spring sunshine. The circle of more than twoscore standing stones loomed complete, each fifty tons in weight and topped by their rectangular lintels, making a perfect unbroken circle. Within stood the taller horseshoe shape, five great double uprights with capstones, and the scores of smaller bluestones. Without were concentric rings of earthwork, ditch and bank, and three circles of tall wooden posts wrapped in cords like maypoles.

Not maypoles
, she thought. Although children were dancing around several, weaving in and out and chanting in high sweet voices—almost all of them girls. They were observation poles. They varied in height, from twelve feet to thirty; each one would mark the prime position of a star at a given time—or rather, dozens of stars, for each cord could be used at a different angle to give a tangent to . . .

“My God,” she murmured. “Keeping all that
straight
!
”

She felt an unfamiliar pain in her chest.
So much knowledge, so many centuries.
The Great Wisdom itself was eight hundred years old, in roughly its present form; as old as the Gothic cathedrals had been to her. More impressive still was the huge structure of knowledge, myth, song, ritual that surrounded it, a feat of memory and persistence almost beyond belief. She lost herself in it, forgetting the movement of the saddle betwen her thighs, the crowd around her, her very self. She’d been an astronomer-in-training all her adult life, and the passion that had raised these stones was close kin to hers.

“So Thorn and Hawkins were right after all,” Ian murmured beside her, jarring. “And I always thought they were cranks.”

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day,” Doreen said, equally quiet. “I did too, but they didn’t get the half of it. Swindapa’s mother, Dhinwarn, what really won her over was that list of lunar eclipses I ran off the computer back on the island. You know, they have a complete series for more than a
thousand
years back? And predictions for several centuries—that’s one thing they use that ring of fiftysix holes for, besides those sighting posts.”

Ian grinned. “Remember when you said how useless an astronomer in the Bronze Age was? You’re our damned passport to these people!”

“Let’s hope I’m as persuasive to all the Grandmothers as I was to Dhinwarn. She had a personal reason to like us. I get the impression that a lot of the others are pretty xenophobic.”

The horses turned away from the monument itself, toward one of the big half-timbered roundhouses. Another chorus of girls sang and danced an intricate measure around them. Waiting to meet them were a clump of older women, wrapped in cloaks and silent dignity.

“End-of-semester exams,” Doreen muttered, feeling her stomach clench.

 

“What’s that sound?” Miskelefol said, craning his neck.

There was a full moon tonight, but it was hidden by high scudding cloud. Nothing showed on the water, only an occasional gleam of white as an oar stroked the calm surface of the bay. They dared not show lights, and only the loom of the land to his right kept them from being completely lost, that and the instincts of a life spent at sea.

Isketerol cocked his head to one side, lifting the helmet. “Sort of a buzzing sound, isn’t it?” he said. “I don’t know, some sort of insect?” The life here was still fairly strange to him. “At least it isn’t raining much.”

“Hurrah, the first time in months,” Miskelefol said dolorously.

They shared a quiet chuckle, and then their craft swung apart. There were five of them in all, long low things like miniature galleys, each with ten oars to a side. The
Yare
and
Sea Wolf
had towed them here, but stayed well off to sea now. The night breeze was directly out of the west, and it would pin any ship at anchor into its port. Even with the
Yare’s
ability to beat to windward he wouldn’t like to have to claw off this coast right now, particularly with the shallow water and shifting sandbars common through here. He risked a brief flash of lamplight to check the compass strapped to his left wrist.
Marvelous things,
he thought again.