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CHAPTER SEVEN
September, 10 A.E.-O'Rourke's Ford, east of Troy
September, 10 A.E.-Babylon, Kingdom of
Kar-Duniash October, 10 A.E.-Westhaven, Alba
Colonel O'Rourke had to admit that Barnes and her people didn't waste time. The frenzy of work around the little base had died down by the dawn, barely fourteen hours after his arrival.
O'Rourke joined the line of Marines waiting for their breakfasts; regulations were that officers ate the same food as the troops in the field. For that matter, they ate much the same food at a base, save for social occasions, but in a different mess, for discipline's sake.
He took a small loaf of fresh barley bread and a chunk of hard white cheese, and held out his mess tin. The cook scooped it full of barley porridge; they'd managed to find raisins for it, and some honey for sweetener. His nose twitched at the smells; it had been a long time since di
The smells went well with the fresh clarity of early morning, and he watched the purple shadows ru
Captain Barnes and Hantilis came to join him. The Hittite had joined in the work readily enough, which did him credit.
"I am puzzled," Hantilis said, between bites of porridge.
"You work side by side with common soldiers, yet they obey you more promptly than my own warriors would-my real warriors, I mean, not those Kaska dogs. How can soldiers obey you, if they do not fear you as one placed on high above them, a man favored of the Gods?"
Cecilie chuckled. "Oh, they're afraid of their officers, all right," she said. O'Rourke helped with the translation; Barnes had no Hittite and very little Akkadian. "And even more, their sergeants."
"We're Marines," O'Rourke amplified. "We're all a band of brothers…"
"And sisters," Barnes put in.
"And sisters. But some of us are elder brothers, as it were. Everyone works, everyone fights, and everyone does what their superiors tell them to do."
Hantilis shook his head in puzzlement. They finished and scoured their pa
"I'm off to sluice down while I have a chance," Barnes said.
O'Rourke nodded distantly. He was going to feel rather embarrassed if nothing happened… but it was better to be overprepared than under.
Hantilis's head came up. A moment later the Nantucketer heard it as well.
"That can't be a steam engine," O'Rourke said. It was too far away, and too big. His head turned toward the lookout post higher up the mountain slope to the south.
"I don't think much of the soil here," Private Vaukel Telukuo said. He dug his bayonet into the turf beside him and ripped up a handful, looking critically at the dry reddish dirt that clung to its roots. "Too dry-not much weight to it, if you know what I mean."
He was a tall sallow young man, dark of hair and eye, with a big nose and long bony jaw. His companion's name on the rolls was Joha
Unknown until the Eagle People came, he corrected himself.
Joha
"Nothing so far," she said, and then dug a heel into the ground to reply to his first remark. "Not much like the fat black earth where I was born either… but you don't have to farm it, Vauk."
"Ah, well, I thought I was tired of farming," he said mildly. "Boring I thought it was, you know? But this soldiering, it's boring too. And I miss my cattle."
"I can stand boring," she said; where his voice gave English a singsong burbling lilt, hers was choppy and hard. "They were going to bury me facedown in a peat bog, with a forked hazel branch over my neck to keep my ghost from walking. So walk I did, by night, to the Cross-God mission station. The priestess there got me into the Corps." She crossed herself. "Honor to Him of the Cross, and His Father and Mother."
"Now why would anyone do such a thing?" Vaukel said indignantly. "Drown you in a bog, that is."
Joha
They both frowned and looked westward. The sound was a deep rumbling beat, echoing off the hillsides and cliffs about them. "Sounds like…" Vaukel said slowly. "Sounds like a drum, doesn't it?"
"The drum of a God," Joha
"What's up?" one of the pickets called to them.
Vaukel pointed westward. "Here they come!" he yelled. "Spears like stars on water, and thicker than the grass!"
"I wish we could just elope," Justin Clemens said, dodging a rush of liquid garbage from a narrow second-story window.
The movement was a little jerky with nervousness. He consciously controlled his breathing; meeting prospective in-laws was bad enough, worse when they were foreign, worse still when you knew they and your fiancee had been feuding for years.
"Then we would not be married-not by the laws of the Land of Kar-Duniash," said Azzu-ena.
He knew that brisk tone fairly well, by now. It was eighteen months since she'd talked him into taking her on as an apprentice, and two since he'd convinced her to marry him.
And ten years going on eleven since the Event. Focus, you fool! he thought. She went on:
"I will not let my uncle and his she-demon grasp everything that was my father's in their claws; their children I would not grudge it to, the little ones who love their cousin, but f will settle what they receive. And those two would neglect the funerary offerings for my father. Bad enough that he had no sons to make them. Come, betrothed, come."
"Oh, all right," Clemens grumbled, wiping his face with his banda