On the Oceans of Eternity

"How?" Kashtiliash asked. "I wouldn't have thought they would stay to face our new fire-weapons."

"It was the camels, King of the Four Quarters of the Universe. The beasts are possessed of devils, but they can travel like devils. We went three days from water-

"Here, show me," Kashtiliash said eagerly. There were times when he felt trapped here in the palace, but the King could not take the field for a minor punitive expedition, as a prince of the House of Succession might.

The small audience room had changed somewhat since the Nantukhtar came. The throne was the same, but one wall had been stripped of tapestries and murals and whitewashed. On it was drawn a map of the Land, as the Gods might see it. The officer took up an olive-wood pointer.

"We swung out into the deep desert-as Lord Ke

Kashtiliash nodded thoughtfully. The camels came from the desert peninsula to the southwest of the Land Between the Rivers, brought north by Nantukhtar ships. The southernmost nomads had begun to use them, these last few generations, but they knew little of saddling and harnessing them as yet, and the northerly Aramaean tribes didn't use them at all, traveling on foot with their possessions on donkey-back. A donkey had to be watered every day, and could carry barely more than a man, and no more quickly. A camel could travel up to a week without water, eat anything that grew, carry three times the weight of a grown man, and cover many times the ground men or horses could. Kat'ryn had told him of how that would change this part of the world, in the centuries to come. In her histories, it had benefited mostly the sand-thieves themselves, the ones who came after the Aramaeans-the Arabs, they were called, still hundreds upon hundreds of miles to the south, in this age.

That shall not be so, here, he thought.

He had grasped whence the Nantukhtar really came, their island adrift on the oceans of eternity. Few others in this age could, he thought, even shrewd men, learned men. The Nantukhtar hadn't made any particular secret of it, but most dismissed the thought with a shudder as merely more of the eldritch air of magic that surrounded the strangers.

But I am lucky in that my mind is supple. Perhaps because I am young yet. It is a mighty thing, a fate laid on us all by the great Gods, whether for good or ill.

Aloud: "You have done well, and I say unto you well done; the King's heart is pleased with you, Awil-Sin. Nor shall you and your men be without reward."

Awil-Sin prostrated himself again, then bowed backward out of the audience chamber past the motionless Royal Guards-standing to attention was another art which the Nantukhtar had brought. Kashtiliash glanced aside at Kidin-Ninurta, formerly his father's chief superintendent of matters dealing with Dilmun and Meluhha, now in charge of dealings with the Nantukhtar. And in their pay, of course, but his ultimate loyalty was to the kingdom. Beside him sal Bahdi-Lim, the wakil ol" the karum, the king's overseer of trade.

"You hear?" he said.

"I hear, O King who is without rival. Shall the prisoners be sold?"

"Mmmm, no," Kashtiliash said. For one thing, his allies would object, starting with his wife. "We shall settle them on the Elamite frontier-on the new lands watered by the canal cut by the steam-dredges. Well mixed with prisoners from the Assyrian war and with our own people. I have some men it is in my mind to favor with kudurru-grants; Awil-Sin, for one."

The two officials nodded. Land, even land next to an irrigation canal, was valueless without tenant-farmers to work it.

Kidin-Ninurta went on thoughtfully. "These camels could be of much use to us."

"Indeed. Bahdi-Lim, see that we acquire more-as many as the southern tribes will sell; inquire among the merchants who deal in Dilmun and send agents there. See that more men are trained in their handling, and see that a breeding program is put in hand." The King owned vast estates, many of them dedicated to the breeding of horses for the royal chariot corps; camels couldn't be impossibly different.

Kidin-Ninurta bowed over folded hands; he was a plump man in his middle years, beard shining with the oil of prosperity. "And when there are enough, our merchants will be greatly aided, thus bringing more wealth to the Throne. With strings of camels rather than donkeys, they could cross the wastes bearing greater loads at lower costs. Yet another thing from which we may draw wealth!"

"Yes… speak your thoughts, both of you."

The two bureaucrats were bubbling over with schemes to take the New Learning and make the Land rich, not to mention themselves. Kashtiliash didn't mind that; if you used oxen to tread out grain, they took an occasional mouthful. If he was to build a new standing army equipped with fire-weapons, with rifles and ca

"It is good, and more than good," he said at last. "You will prepare a list of these projects, from the least difficult to the most, with the costs and difficulties of each. This you will bring before me, and soon. You have the King's leave to go."

His next audience would be less pleasant. He looked at his watch, also a gift from his queen's people. The flying ship would be here late in the day. Perhaps tomorrow morning…

"I wish we were on higher ground," O'Rourke murmured, as the first of the enemy came into sight far down the road. They're not wasting time; twenty-four hours after I got here. "Or that things were more open here."

"If we were on higher ground, we wouldn't have water," Barnes replied.

The alarm had caught her washing off under the pump, and she'd come ru

"Bugler, sound stand to," Barnes said, buttoning her tunic and swinging on the Sam Browne harness that held pistol, sword, and belt pouches.

The clear sweet notes of the bugle sounded; few of the garrison had far to travel. Most of them had already taken up the rifles that had rested in neat tripods overnight and dashed to their posts on the walls. Others trotted out of the sunken bunker that held the explosives, each pair carrying an ammunition box by the rope handles on each end. They plumped the boxes down at intervals along the fighting platform, then used their bayonets to pry open the lids with a screech of nails.

Each lid had a label burned into its surface: Werder.40 1000 rounds. Within the ammunition lay in ten-round packets. The Marines on the fighting platform around the wall buckled back the covers of the bandoliers that hung from their webbing belts, revealing the neat brass rows of shells in the loops within. Barnes looked over at him, and he nodded with a slight jerk of his chin.