Island in the Sea of Time (86 page)

The discussion went on. So did the work in the fields; the Fiernans there were singing as they bound and stooked the sheaves of grain behind the reapers, happy as children on holiday. Alston remembered what her back had felt like after stooping over a sickle for a few days.
I know
exactly
how they feel.

 

“These Eagle People think of everything,” the Spear Chosen with the bronze rapier said, his hand on the bone-and-gold hilt.

Swindapa looked after Marian; she was over by the wagons, taking some message. One of the
radios
had come with them; she shivered a little. She could understand a lot of what Marian’s people did—even a steam engine made sense, once you made a picture in your head of the hot vapors pushing through pipes. No different from boiling water lifting the lid on a pot over the fire, not really. But radios were too much like talking to ghosts.

“They are . . . forethoughtful, careful, they work very hard to make every small thing happen as they desire,” she said.
How do you say
methodical
or
systematic? she wondered. That sort of thing happened all the time these days, and it made her head itch inside. You just couldn’t
say
some things she’d learned in her birth tongue.

Swindapa’s mother shifted her youngest sister around and began to nurse. The girl fought down a sharp stab of envy, followed by an all-consuming anger. Her own hand clenched on the hilt of her
katana.
The Iraiina would pay for robbing her of that, pay with
pain.
Yet if all of them died, it would not be enough.

“They have more things than these
machines
you’ve seen,” Swindapa’s mother went on. “Wonderful things . . . I’ve seen the hills of the Moon Itself with their
tel-e-sk-opes.”
Everyone touched brow and heart and genitals in awe.

“And the tools, the weapons and armor, and the cloth, and the ornaments,” the dark-haired Spear Chosen said eagerly. “We must
have
these things! We must find what they want in exchange.”

“No,” Swindapa said slowly. The others looked at her in surprise. “We must learn how to
make
these things, for ourselves. Or we would become as little children to the Eagle People forever, without their meaning us any harm.”

Slow nods went around the circle.

 

“Another raid so soonly?” Isketerol said, in English. “Soonish? Nowly?”

“So
soon,
” Walker said, correcting him absently.
Odd. He’s kept getting better at English . . . oh, he must speak it with what’
s-her-name, Rosita.

“Political necessity,” he went on in Tartessian, unshipping his binoculars. “Got to keep the tribes thinking about the war, if we’re to get the levy together again.”

Bastard quieted as he dropped the reins on the horn of his saddle. The shade of the trees overhead was welcome—it’d been getting pretty hot for an English summer, and they’d all been out in it as the war of ambush and border skirmish went on relentlessly. Sweat trickled out of the padding of his armor, and out of the helmet lining, stinging his eyes. It mixed with the heavier smell of Bastard’s sweat, the oiled-metal scent of armor, going naturally somehow with the creak of leather and the low chinking of war harness from man and horse alike.

Typical enough,
he thought, scanning back and forth across the enemy hamlet. They were up on the downs of what would have become Sussex, just on the edge where the open chalklands gave way to the forested clay soils lower down—New Barn Down, the Ordnance Survey maps called it. The Earth Folk settlement was five round thatched huts inside a rough rectangle of earthwork, two of the walls overlapping to make a sort of gate; a palisade of short poles topped it all around. Square fields and pastures of an acre or so each lay about the steading, fading off into forest on the hills to the north. A rutted track led off that way, through a shallow dry valley between two of the downs. There was something odd, though. . . .

Isketerol spotted it. “They’ve been beforehand with their harvest,” the Tartessian said. He looked up. “It’s been hot and dry for this sodden marsh of an island, but it’s still early for them to have it all in.”

Walker lowered the binoculars and nodded thoughtfully. The grainfields were all reaped stubble, not even any sheaves of grain standing in the fields. Usually the locals left those in little three-sheaf tipis in the fields, so the crop would dry better. He looked through the field glasses again.
Yup. Grain stacks inside the wall.
Even so . . . He did a quick mental calculation. Less than there should be, and the harvest had been good this year from all the scout’s reports. Maybe they’d rushed it because of the war.

“Yeah, something funny there,” he said slowly.

The creaking got a little louder. He looked around; his followers were grinning and sweating with single-minded eagerness. For them it was just another fight, and an easy one with sixty of them in full gear against one little farm hamlet. Plus there were cattle and sheep grazing around the Earth Folk settlement, and he’d found that the Iraiina and their relatives had a peculiar attitude about livestock. Sort of like a yuppie and his Lamborghini, or his car and his bank account put together. Their idea of status was to sit and watch endless herds of their very own cow-beasts driven by: Iraiina used the same word for
big herd of cattle
and wealth in general. Not entirely unlike the Bitterroot ranchers he’d been raised among.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Let’s do this by the numbers.”

Ohotolarix raised his aurochs-horn trumpet to his lips. It dunted
huu-huuu-huuuu
through the beeches and oaks, a harsh droning echo. With a crashing and ripping of branches and underbrush, two parties of a dozen men each spurred their horses out and around on either side, heading upslope to cut the Fiernans off from the north. The rest came out of hiding more carefully, forming into a line and trotting forward. Screams sounded from ahead; Fiernan herders tried to get their charges moving north, then saw they’d be cut off and abandoned the animals to run for the settlement. His followers whooped triumph as they rounded up the bawling, baaing livestock and edged it out of the way, back toward the woods.

No horses,
he thought. Not much of a surprise; the Earth Folk didn’t keep many of them. He swung down out of the saddle and the rest of the band followed, except for a few scouts; youths not ready for full warrior status came forward to hold reins.
Make more sense to have the men do that, taking turns.
Not possible, though.
Honor forbids.
He sneered a little. That attitude would have to go eventually, but for now it wasn’t worth the trouble of offending their superstitions.

“Let’s go,” he said, drawing his sword. “No male prisoners.” Too much trouble to take back; they were a fair way from home. “Forward!”

The men bayed answer:
“Forward with Sky Father! Horned Man with us!
”

Hard dusty ground and ankle-length stubble caught at his feet. Shieldmen formed up before and on either side of him, and his bannerman by his side. His head swiveled as he checked. Front rank with shields up—the Fiernans had some pretty good archers, much better than the eastern tribes—and spears bristling. Crossbowmen behind them, with their shields slung over their backs. He frowned as he looked ahead. Those L-shaped entrances could be tricky; you couldn’t just hit the wall on either side and storm the gate.
All right, we’ll hit the outer wall, cross the laneway, and
then
turn in.
He gave orders, and the pace picked up to a trot, his plate armor clattering among the musical
chink-chink
of the others’ chain hauberks.
Makes it easy to stay in shape, this does. No more steppercizer.

An arrow wobbled out from the palisade and stood in the dirt. Men barked laughter, and the taut
whung
of crossbows sounded. They were well within range, and the heavy quarrels would probably go right through the rickety stakes that made up the chest-high defenses; those were as much to keep livestock in as enemies out. Screams of pain confirmed the thought.

Walker paused a half-stride to pull the enemy arrow out of the ground. About thirty inches long, ashwood, fletched with gray goose feathers—fairly standard. The head was not—a narrow steel thing like a miniature cold chisel. His teeth skinned back from his lips. Nantucket-made, to an old pattern. Bodkin point, they’d been called in medieval England.

Arrowheads like that had flown in deadly storms at Crecy and Agincourt.

The first wave of Walkerburg men hit the embankment and scrambled up, chopping the edges of their shields into the turf as they toiled to mount the breast-high earthwork; the others stood close behind and shot over their heads—
his
men didn’t just bull in regardless, he’d gotten that well drilled into them, that winning was more important than showing how brave you were. He hung back himself, watching the action. Walker had proved himself often enough to make that possible, and besides, he was a wizard—halfway to a god, in fact, which exempted him from the usual standards.

“This is too easy,” he muttered.

Sections of the palisade were down, ripped aside. His men stood exchanging spearthrusts through the gaps, then began to push through—and none of them were down, that he could see. The second rank were slinging their crossbows, drawing swords, and setting shields on their arms. He signed abruptly to the men around him, and they trotted toward the gate, holding their shields up to protect him. Few arrows flew as they ran, although there was a sharp
crack
and yelp as a slingstone struck a man on the thigh. He stumbled and limped, but kept walking, which made him lucky—those things could break bone easily enough.

The gate was closed with wattle hurdles, woven stick barriers usually used to pen sheep, reinforced with a two-wheeled cart and some pieces of thorny bush. Walker’s eyes narrowed in interest as a thin column of black smoke rose from within the enclosure; that was probably a signal. He noticed something else as someone on the other side of the cart tried to hit him with a flail—a long stick with a short one fastened to it with a leather thong, usually used to beat grain out of the stalk.

Shunngg.
The thong parted against the razor-edged
katana,
and the shorter oak batten went pinwheeling off. His downstroke slashed the wielder across the upper arms as she goggled at him, and the Fiernan fell in a spray of blood that caught him across the face.

Too many women,
he thought, spitting out the warm saltcopper taste and wiping a hand across his mouth. Even Iraiina women would fight sometimes when their homes were attacked, and the Earth Folk were less hidebound about things like that. But there should still have been more men behind the barricade, a solid majority at least. Those that
were
there were too old, or too young, besides being too few.

Conical iron helmets came up behind the Earth Folk, and red-dripping blades. Combat turned into flight and massacre.

“Prisoners!” Walker shouted. “Get me some prisoners!”

He stalked through the chaos, keeping an eye out to make sure nobody got enthusiastic with torches. The black smoke was coming from a small hot fire that had been half doused with damp straw and old woolen rags; he kicked it apart with a boot and stamped on the embers. Isketerol was already busy with a girl, his buttocks pumping like a fiddler’s elbow as she screamed and sobbed and writhed—the Tartessian wasn’t as bad as Rodriguez, but he did have a severe case of Spanish Toothache nonetheless—while most of the rest were looting by the numbers, the way he’d taught them. He knocked aside one spearshaft poised to run through a screeching five-year-old.

“Nits make lice, lord,” the warrior growled.

“The young ones train easier,” Walker replied mildly; the man lowered his eyes and shuffled feet. “Get to work.”

Something’s wrong,
he thought again, standing by the big stack of unthreshed grain.

Ohotolarix and another of his Iraiina came up, pushing a woman ahead of them. “Here’s your prisoner, lord,” they said, grinning; one shoved her forward. She was naked, a big-breasted brunette staring around in near-hysteria. “We didn’t even mount her ourselves,” Ohotolarix added virtuously.

“You,” Walker said, putting the tip of his reddened sword under her chin. She froze at the touch of the sharp wet steel, eyes going even bigger. “Where men? Where
of-you
men?

She licked her lips and spoke, very carefully. He caught about one word in four; the Earth Folk language was just too damn difficult. The man with Ohotolarix frowned and translated:

“Toward the big . . . the Great Wisdom, she says, lord.” The warrior made a warding sign of the horns, with the index and little finger of his right hand. “The Moon-bitch’s place. Evil magic.”

A gust of fury filled Walker, like a blinding light behind the eyes. Thoughts strung themselves together, dropping into place. He was suddenly conscious of the woman flopping and gurgling on the ground before him with her throat gashed open, and the two Iraiina staring at him goggle-eyed.

“We don’t have much time,” he forced himself to say, running his sword through a rag and sheathing it. “Ohotolarix, see to the most portable loot, nothing else—no women, nothing bulky. We leave
now.
Nothing that can’t keep up with the horses. Go, go, go!”

They went, running; it was a big perk of having people think you were supernatural. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell them to turn the cattle loose too, but there were things even Hwalkarz the Wizard had to think twice about.

“What’s the matter, blood-brother?” Isketerol said, coming up smiling and adjusting his clothing.

“Look at that,” Walker grated in English, pulling a sheaf of wheat from the stack.

“It’s just . . .” The Tartessian’s eyes flicked from Walker’s face to the grain. “The straw is too long. Why would anyone bend that low to cut grain?”