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The sassafras tea woke her a little past midnight. She slipped on her boots-remembering that snake, and the reptiles' liking for warmth-and looped her pistol-belt over one shoulder be-fore heading out to the sanitary trench. The air was much colder outside, but despite that she spent a long instant looking at the play of lightning to the westward, lighting up castles and palaces of cloud… and beyond them were the stars…
Someday, she thought fiercely. For Heather's and Lucy's great-great-great-grandchildren.
Walking past the tree she whistled softly, to let the unseen sentries know she was moving; there would be one up in the biggest cork oak, and the others were invisible even though she knew roughly where they were. Nobody in a force she trained was going to blunder around in plain sight of God, radar, and skulking bandits and call it sentry-go!
As she walked back, the wind from the west blew stronger, and the first drops of rain struck her skin; hard luck on the ones pulling sentry duty… there was a faint rumble of thunder from that direction, too.
And voices; first a low happy moan, then a sleepy, hissed grumble: "Shut the fuck up, or at least shut up while you fuck, will you? The rest of us are sleeping, god-damn-it."
The language lessons were working well, if someone could pun in English half-awake. She slipped back into her tent, a two-person model if the two were friendly, and closed the flap. The rain beat harder, hissing on the oiled canvas above her, filling the darkness with a blur of white noise. Swindapa mumbled in her sleep as her partner sipped back under the blanket, throwing a thigh across Marian's and nuzzling into her shoulder. Alston let her mind drift; images of maps, reports, rivers, rain, marsh, swimming… an idle hope that the rain would be over by 0600, when they were due to break camp and get back to base. There was a thought teasing at the back of her consciousness, but forcing it would only make it recede faster.
In the morning as she woke the thought was quite clear, and Marian Alston gave a slow, hard grin at the gray overcast sky.
Ian Arnstein's throat felt sore. It had been an inspired idea to end the long night of talk with Homer; in this place, with this archaic Greek clangorous in his mouth, it was fitting. He soothed his vocal cords with more of the watered wine and went on:
The more she spoke, the more a deep desire for tears
Welled up inside his breast-he wept as he held the wife
He loved, the soul of loyalty, in his arms at last.
Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel
When they catch sight of land… so joyous now to her
The sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,
That her white arms embracing his neck would never
For a moment let him go…
Odikweos was weeping, leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair and his head against the hand that covered his face.
I should have expected that, Ian thought.
More than wealth, more than power, sometimes more than life itself, an Achaean noble craved undying fame-the only real immortality their beliefs allowed; their afterlife was a bitter shadowy thing, where it was better to be a hired hand on a poor peasant's farm than King among the strengthless dead. Fame was what Achilles had chosen, though the price was an early end in battle far from home.
Dawn with her rose-red fingers might have shone
Upon their tears, if with her glinting eyes
Athana had not thought of one more thing.
She held back the night, and night lingered long
At the western edge of the earth, while in the east
She reined in Dawn of the golden throne at ocean's banks,
Commanding her not to yoke the wind-swift team
That brings men light, Blaze and Aurora,
The young colts that race the Morning on…
"So," Odikweos said when he had finished.
He wiped his eyes with his hand unselfconsciously. An Achaean warrior felt no shame at tears before poetry that moved him.
"So, it is given to me to know how the men of years to come will think of me… three thousand years, you say?"
"Five hundred years from this night, until that poem is written down. Near three thousand more to my time."
The Achaean shook his head. "That is a number the mouth can say, but the heart ca
Brief murderous rage lit his craggy features: "And this Walker has robbed me of!"
He sat silent, thinking, before he went on: "And much of what Walker knows is the fruit of my people's minds and hands?"
"All the begi
"And all that Walker has taken from us," Odikweos said. "I followed him for wealth, and power-and because I thought he would make our land great with his outland knowledge."
"You… might say he's done some of that," Arnstein said cautiously.
Odikweos shook his head violently. The fire in the great round hearth had died down; the light of the embers ran blood-red over his features and brought out reddish highlights in his grizzled black hair.
"Not so. He has made this a land of slaves-and slaves of us free Achaeans, even we nobles. What is slavery, if not to live in fear of another's wrath, obedient to his will? Do we, even we nobles, not live in fear of his anger, and that of his servants? Even the best among us, the men of breeding, the kalos k'agathos, each must guard his tongue in fear of punishment. Are we not now dependents, needing the King's favor for the very bread on our tables? At most, we are the stewards of his lands, not the lords of our own. As Zeus takes half a man's arete, his worth, away in the day of slavery, so have we fallen. The more so as it has happened inch by inch, day by day-the more so still as many do not yet realize what has been done."
"Yes, he's… we say put one over on you."
The Greek's fist closed and came down once on the arm of his chair. "That worst of all. He laughs at us. He stole my glory, and sat laughing behind his hand as he did, mocking me for an ignorant savage!"
"I don't think you're really… real to him."
"That does not make it better."
Ian sat silent, tense. At last Odikweos went on:
"Yet all this must be borne, if Walker is too strong for you of the Eagle People. The King will not be overthrown so long as he remains victorious."
"And if he does not?"
Odikweos smiled, slow and savage. "Then… perhaps. We will speak more of this."
An alarm bell began to sound outside. Shrieks and screams rose under it. The Ithakan rose, cursing, and shouted for his officers and underlings.
"Your ship of the air comes again to cast thunderbolts," he said to Arnstein. "Not as accurate as those of all-seeing Zeus, but powerful enough."
The map of southern Iberia on the commodore's table and the duplicate on the map easel still looked a little strange to eyes brought up in the twentieth. The coastal plains were much less, the courses of the rivers differing in countless details, as did the roads; the towns were utterly strange. Only the broad outline of the land remained the same, a long trumpet-shaped lowland ru