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"Corporal," her partner's voice said, "get to it."
Rafts of barrels towed astern of them. Figures in carefully preserved black wetsuits, flippers, masks, and snorkels rolled over the side of this and three other of the boats. Those rafts were brought forward and lashed to the chain ten yards apart; a small thick tarpaulin was draped over the middle between while divers anchored the barrels to the river-ooze. Thirty tense seconds, and a rising dragon's hiss beneath the waters. Light leaked around the tarpaulin, and a smell of scorched metal bubbled to the surface. Then all was as it had been, except that there was a gap where the chain had lain on the water. But nothing to show that at either end…
Marian smiled in the darkness, teeth showing in a glint of white. Swindapa felt her own glee awaken.
"Let's go!"
"And to think I thought I'd get away from digging when I joined up," Vaukel said.
"Shut up and dig-it keeps you warm," Joha
Vaukel nodded and swung the pick, grunting as it came around and jarred into the tough, rocky earth. After half a dozen strokes he stepped back, panting, while his squadmate went at the loosened earth with her shovel. Most of their company was working in such pairs-you couldn't do both at once anyway. The rest of the army stretched off to the southward, across the broad undulating terrain, scoring it like an army of moles.
"I think that's got it," she said.
The two-person foxhole was a narrow slit a yard wide and two long, with a section ru
"Throw down some rocks," he said; when they came he stamped them into the wet earth, to give better footing.
Then he looked up at the sky, where the morning sun was a glow behind the gray. Back home in the valley of the River of Long Shadows he'd have said such a sky-low, wolf-colored, with wisps of fast-moving cloud-would mean rain, or snow since it was cold enough to see your breath. He took a deep breath through his nose, smelling the mealy scent. It felt a little dry for snow, but who knew so far from Alba?
Who knew the world was so big? he thought, looking westward.
While he was a boy, it had seemed that his mother's hamlet was the wide world, ringed by the forest. The sea, or the Great Wisdom, they were a marvelous far-off tale.
When his uncles and elder brothers had marched off to the Battle of the Downs he'd been green with envy… less so, when not all returned, but he'd listened eagerly to their tales of journeying and war and the fabulous things of the Eagle People. Now he'd seen Irondale, sailed down the river to West-haven, and across the River Ocean on a great swan-winged ship, and walked the streets of Nantucket, which was more wonderful still. From there around the world, and past Ur and Babylon, marched from there to Hattusas and on and on, and everywhere there were different peoples and their Gods and ways.
Now men were coming across those rolling downs to the westward, coming to kill him, so he must kill them. Very strange, he thought.
"Good open country," Joha
Then she laughed. "More open, now that we've burned down or run off everything on it."
"That's a bad thing, wasting the land," Vaukel said mournfully. "Killing stock you can't eat, Moon Woman doesn't shine on it."
For a moment the two Marines looked at each other in the mutual incomprehension of culture-clash, then shrugged and set to improving their quarters with ledges or little caves to store things, and rigging a shelter-half overhead. Snow started to whisk down from the north, small dry granular flakes. They were pounding the heaped dirt and rock ahead of them down with the flats of their entrenching tools-if you left it loose a bullet might punch through-when Captain Barnes came by with a squad leading pack mules.
"Here," she said, and handed them extra ammunition and a bandolier of grenades.
"Thank you, ma'am," Gwenhaskieths said. She hefted the segmented iron egg of a grenade, her thumb caressing the pin. "We could have used some of these at O'Rourke's Ford, ma'am."
A swift grin. "Make these count. God bless."
"And you, ma'am," they both said, comforted.
Joha
Vauk nodded solemnly and pulled a dog biscuit and stick of hard beef jerky out of his haversack where it rested behind him. The hard cracker challenged his teeth as he bit a corner off and began to chew. They huddled together for the animal comfort of the warmth, and waited. He could feel his companion shivering a little beside him.
Well, that's the Sun People for you, he thought good-naturedly. Flighty they are, sort of. But fierce as you could want when the time comes for a fight.
It was amazing how travel broadened your perspective. Here, dyaus arsi and Fiernan Bohulugi and Eagle People were like a litter from the same dam.
Thunder rumbled in the west. He looked up for a moment, surprised; you almost never got thunder in a snowstorm like this.
"Guns," Gwenhaskieths said. "It's started."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California
November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
December, 10 A.E.-West-central Anatolia
November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
December, 10 A.E.-West-central Anatolia
November, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
"Peter Giernas felt himself begin to shake as the canoe came to shore and he vaulted out and splashed ashore, leaving the others to haul the dugout craft onto the bank.
The campsite where he'd left Spring Indigo and Jared was empty… empty save for burned scraps and tattered leather flapping in the breeze. Heads remained as well, stuck on stakes; heads of local warriors, and of his dogs Saule and Ausra. No Spring Indigo. No Jared. A low bitter smell of smoke and shit wisped up from coals mostly dead with dawn dew. His eyes misted over, and he heard sounds coming from his throat as if from a great distance. The shaking grew worse. He turned in the direction of the distant Tartessian fort and took a step…
"Snap out of it!" Sue said, grabbing his arm. The muscle was rigid under her fingers, like carved wood. "Going berserk won't help!"
He shuddered again, like a horse twitching at the bite of flies, and shook his head. Eddie's arms gripped him from behind, and he heaved and twisted. Sue and Jaditwara joined in, wrestling him to a halt; he wasn't quite far enough gone to hurt any of them.
"Blood brother!" Eddie Vergeraxsson shouted in his ear. "Call back your spirit! We'll get them, or get revenge, but we have to think."
Step by step he won back to himself. At last he relaxed. "Thanks," he said, his voice harsh and unfamiliar in his own ears. "Now let's look around."
They did, keeping the locals at the shoreline. Most of the ground around the Islander campsite was trampled too heavily for useful information, but some of it gave him a grim satisfaction that took a little of the shadow from the bright spring day.
"I think at least one of them bled out here," he a
"Pete!"
Sue's voice called him to the line where the horses had been picketed. "Pete, I think there was a hell of a fight here."
He came, bent low and shading his eyes with a hand. "Yup," he said. "Pawprints, lots of 'em… then most of the horses got led away, some of 'em broke free… Look, this is a blood trail."