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"How did they learn Achaean? You hardly ever see those reaver bastards west of Sicily-for which thanks be to Arucuttag of the Sea. Should we tell Daurthu
"Don't be more of a fool than the Womb Goddess made you," Isketerol said. "Of course not. It might be useful sometime. You know the saying: Give away your goods for nothing, rather than a secret."
His eyes glittered. "Look, they're laying out their gifts. Have you ever seen the like?" A rhetorical question. "The king himself back home doesn't have anything like that. The Crone take me, Ramses in Memphis doesn't have anything like that, and they're throwing it away on these savages as if it were a wad of grass they'd used to wipe their arse!"
Both the Tartessians looked over at the strangers with profound respect. Wealth like that deserved it.
"Well, that worked," Alston said to Arnstein. "So far," he said.
The gifts had been received with rapture, particularly the bolts of brightly colored synthetic cloth, the glass bowls and tumblers, and most of all the leaf-spring longsword in a sheath of wood bound with brass wire and glued-on polyester; Daurthu
Now they sat in a small circle between two fires; other circles were dotted around the open meadow. The rahax had a heavy wooden chair; it was ancient, made of blackened oak and bone, with eight-foot wooden pillars at its back in the shape of men-or perhaps of gods-with erect phalli; the carvings moved like something alive in the uncertain light of the bonfires. A smaller chair was placed across the circle from him for his guest of honor; everyone else sat or squatted on blankets or furs over straw. Women in long skirts, shawls, and what looked like primitive sweaters came through and handed everyone a horn; many of them wore copper or gold stomachers and jewelry. Arnstein sipped at his, and found it was some sort of mead, honey-beer. The savory scent of roasting meat filled the air.
Damn, he thought. You couldn't put a hollow cowhorn down while there was anything in it; that probably meant everyone was supposed to get thoroughly blasted.
Isketerol sat a little forward of the throne, then leaned forward and began to speak in deliberately slow Greek:
"You understand, now the wa
Arnstein heard the Tartessian through two or three times, wishing that the surviving Mycenaean texts weren't all inventories and taxation lists, in a script badly adapted to the sounds of Greek. With a wrenching mental effort he made himself think in Homeric Greek, and kept the Linear B word lists in the forefront of his mind. Doing that and talking at the same time made his forehead and scalp shine with sweat.
"They're going to give us gifts," he said to Alston. "It's a big symbolic thing. We'd better look pleased."
"That won't be hard, I imagine," she said.
Isketerol spoke again: "By the way, Ianarnstein, did you want our host to know that your leader is a woman?"
"You mean he doesn't!" Arnstein said, his voice half a squeak.
"By no means. He may listen well to his wives or even fear their tongues in private, but a man of the Iraiina does not sit at council or feast with a female. They make a great concession by allowing your woman to attend you."
Again, repetitions were needed to make meaning plain. Swallowing, Arnstein relayed the information to the commander.
She smiled thinly. "Don't deny it, but don't make an issue of it, either," she said. "I've run into the same thing abroad. If the people you're visiting have got really strong and rigid dress codes for the sexes, and you don't have the sort of figure that pushes itself on the eyes, it's not uncommon to be mistaken for a man. They don't see past the costume and the way you're acting."
Ian nodded and spoke in turn to the Tartessian, careful to shape his handling of the language to the merchant's.
"Very perceptive of your captain," the Tartessian said. "Ah, here are the gifts."
Weapons piled up at Alston's feet: spears, axes, a long leaf-shaped slashing sword with a broad bronze blade inlaid with swirling patterns and a beautifully worked hilt in gold wire. Jewelry, barbarically splendid and often skillfully made. Some of it didn't seem to be in the same sinuous, whirling style as the rest. Plunder, he thought. These people were obviously invaders here. Furs, glossy and well-ta
Well, now we know why there wasn't any Mediterranean pottery of this era for archaeologists to discover, he thought sourly. It wasn't because there was no trade in wine and oil this early; it was just that the Iberians transferred everything to skin containers before they left home, and those rotted away untraceably. He reached into his knapsack, took out the reference book, and flipped to the illustrations, ignoring Isketerol's fascinated glances as he held it to the firelight, comparing the images with the heap of gifts and muttering to himself:
"Flame-shaped spearhead with short socket… yup… round shield… sword with solid-cast flanged hilt… Celt-socketed ax… collared thin-walled pottery… yup, Penard-group stuff-very early Urnfield. Okay, that settles the question of how the Deverel-Rimbury period ended. These guys chopped it into dogmeat. Mid and later thirteenth century B.C., spot on." He closed the book and looked at the spine. The Age of Stonehenge, by Colin Burgess. Martha had dug it up out of a private library in a summer vacationer's house. "God bless you, Colin Burgess, wherever you are."
The food came in, heaping mounds of fresh bread, cheese, onions, steamed roots, stews in clay bowls, pigeons and ducks on skewers, sausages, and endless roasts of pork, beef, mutton, and what he learned was horsemeat. The old man in the long robe stood and blessed the food with a staff topped with looped holly branches, and everyone fell to.
It wasn't quite the Henry VIII scene of two-fisted gorging and swilling he'd expected. The women laid slabs of tough dark bread down on the basketwork platters, then piled on the meat and other dishes, or brought clay bowls marked with waving patterns. There seemed to be an elaborate etiquette about who got what, and Daurthu
He sipped again at the heavy wine. The glaze it put over things seemed familiar, like the glassy sense of unreality that had been plaguing him and most of the others for the past few weeks. It was one thing to study history, or to imagine it. This was something else entirely.