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She looked at her watch. "Now I've got to get on to those maroons."
"Maroons, ma'am?" Trudeau asked curiously.
She smiled, a slight baring of teeth. "Common phenomenon in slave societies, Mr. Trudeau. People who run away and form communities in swamps and forests and mountains, usually striking back at their former masters in raids."
"Ah," Trudeau said, his blue eyes lighting up in the long face, the Huron tinge in his ancestry showing in swarthy skin and high cheekbones. "Sort of instant, ready-mix, prefabricated guerillas, from our point of view."
"Exactly. And they can be very useful. Our good friend King Isketerol has been making himself a lot of enemies in his haste to build. An illustration of why slow and careful is better, sometimes."
Hetkdar, Zaumin's son, crouched behind a rock. It was cold, and he wore only a tunic of goatskin and rough hide shoes of the same material. He ignored the chill, as he ignored the lice in his bush of stiff black hair and the hunger that gnawed at his middle. If what the returned captive said was true-it sounded wild, but so many impossible things had happened in the years since he was a youngling. All of them had been bad, that was the problem…
The open grassy valley below was on the northern side of the Dark Mountains, near the fringe of his tribe's traditional ranges, though not those of his own Ridge Ru
I will eat the heart and testicles of their chief, the Bull hear me, he swore to himself.
Hetkdar looked around. Even he could see few of his men, which meant that no outlander could see any of them. Twenty-two, from the Ridge Ru
He shifted his grip on the Taratuz rifle that was his proudest possession-only three other men in the clan had one-and turned to glare at the ex-captive. The man was still dressed in a ragged Taratuz tunic of cloth, although he no longer had the fine curved steel sword he'd carried, of course; that rested safely at Hetktdar's side. He looked indecently well fed, too.
"Soon, my chief," the man said. "By the Bull I swear it."
Man? Hetkdar thought. Eunuch. Woman. No real man would let the Taratuz lead him away captive, to work in their fields and mines.
Then the captive pointed. "There! There! Did I not swear it?"
A buzzing drone came from the south, over the snowcapped tops of the mountains, echoing down the great slopes. The sun flashed on something there, bird-tiny. But it grew, and grew, until it was a fish-shape floating through the air, like a log in water. Hetkdar bared his teeth in hatred. So many new things, and all of them hurt the Real Men.
The great fish-shape came to a halt, hovering still. No wings beat about it. His eyes went wide as he saw men moving behind openings below the long hull; it was longer than long spearcast! The balloons of the Taratuz were nothing compared to this, for it moved like a boat in water, obedient to command. As he watched, ropes fell from its belly and men slid down those ropes. They knelt, in a posture he recognized from Taratuz war bands, their rifles ready. Hetkdar's eyes narrowed as he saw something protruding from the long house that ran beneath the belly of the airboat.
A ca
He stood and walked toward the foreigners on the ground, the captive dogging his heels. The thing in the airboat moved a little. A weapon, he thought again. The strangers were properly wary; that was good. And if they had powers greater than the Taratuz…
He smiled broadly as the foreign chief squatted and held out a piece of smoked meat-proper ma
The stranger spoke. "He asks, do you fight the Taratuz?" the captive translated.
Hetkdar squatted in his turn, leaning on his grounded rifle as he would have on a spear.
"We fight the Taratuz?" he said scornfully. "As a hunter fights deer. They are blind; they are clumsy; they are deaf and fat and slow. Before they got the rifles we took their sheep, their cattle, their grain-food and bronze, their women, raiding almost to the walls of Tartessos City."
The foreigner nodded. "We have heard of this," he said. "We fight the Taratuz also. We have a gift for the Real Men."
Hetkdar leaned forward, quiveringly eager. The stranger smelled odd-almost like flowers. But…
"Rifles?" he said.
"Rifles," the stranger replied; Hetkdar needed no interpreter for that, since the word was much like the Taratuz one. "Rifles for all the warriors of your tribe. Plenty of ammunition, too."
"And in payment?" Hetkdar said, holding himself in.
"We want you to kill Taratuz."
A net came down from the airboat this time. In it were many long narrow boxes, and many small square ones. The chief of the Real Men leaped to his feet and howled, dancing and brandishing his rifle aloft. On the hillside his warriors stood likewise; the stranger blinked, and Hetkdar smiled at his astonishment.
The Real Men, with rifles, would kill many Taratuz.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California
December, 10 A.E.-Black Mountains, southern Iberia
January, 11 A.E.-Hattusas, Kingdom of Hatti-land
December, 10 A.E.-Cadiz Base, southern Iberia
December, 10 A.E.-Great River, southern Iberia
December, 10 A.E.-Off Tartessos City, southern Iberia
April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California
Cheers were coming from the riverside wall of the Hidden Fort. Dermentol son of Allakenal craned his neck to see what the fuss was about, over on the other side of town. He was bored with watch on the wall, and wished the regulars were back to do it.
All the men of the Hidden Fort were supposed to be fighting-men as well, but his work was with the engine of steam. He loved the machine, loved the smooth power of it, and the way it was predictable. With the eyes of his mind he could see the steam traveling through the pipes and pushing. None of the others understood it the way he did, and he was anxious for it. It was so powerful, but so vulnerable if the wrong thing was done.
Sometimes his wife complained that he loved it more than his children of flesh.
"I wonder what that is?" he said, and leaned over the parapet of the tower on which he stood.
"It's the ship from Homeland," someone shouted up from below. "It's come up the river, right up to us!"
Dermentol's eyes went wide. That would be tricky navigation for a keel so deep. He shook his head and peered eastward again.
An arm went around his throat, reaching from behind and to the right. For a moment he was too shocked to do anything, and in that moment the arm clamped his larynx in the crook of an elbow and squeezed it shut with brutal, unbearable force. Another hand came from the left and gripped his skull.