Страница 47 из 186
She took them silently, sweat ru
Giernas stared in the same direction, although without the glasses his target was simply a dark blur in the distance, north beyond the river in the middle distance. It was the only break in the dead-flat plain ahead, until the abrupt volcanic pimple of Sutler's Buttes ten miles nortwestward, and unlike those it was man-made. Every detail was burned into his memory.
The Tartessian settlement sat north of the point where the Yuba River flowed down from the mountains and joined the Feather. Everything looked normal on this side of the river. The alie
All in all not very formidable, if there were any way for the Republic's armed forces to get at it, which at present there wasn't. Even in peacetime getting an expedition here would be a stone bitch, assuming you could get the Meeting to put up the money.
Against locals, this fortlet would be as invulnerable as steel and concrete, and it looked formidably permanent. As if to emphasize the fact, cultivated fields surrounded it, wheat and barley waist high in the warm sun, only a month from harvest; corn coming along well, alfalfa, vegetable plots, flax, a low scrubby bush that he thought might be cotton. And small orchards, vineyards showing long green shoots; they looked a little odd, goblet-trained rather than on T-stakes in the Islander ma
Hmmm. The biggest of those fruit trees, I'd say they were seven, eight years along. But could the Tartessians have done this in the Year 3? Maybe, if they used the Yare and started right after Isketerol's takeover, but that would tie everything up for them… no, wait a minute. This is a lot warmer climate than back home; trees grow faster if you water them. Cut that estimate in half… yeah, they could managed it then, sure.
Unlike the Republic, Tartessos wasn't short of people, just people with the more complex of the new skills. The major cost for this would be tying up ships and navigators.
Hmmm. Lessee… The herds hadn't been very numerous, except for the pigs, which bred like flies; the sheep were in-between. So, ship in young pregnant mares and cows and ewes, a few sows, with only a bull and a stallion and ram or two-
Ayup. Say eighty in the first batch, a medium-sized square-rigger craft could do that, allowing for wastage. Two round-trips in the first year, drop down to the Canaries and across, then down the trades, and allowing for a hard time around the Horn-three trips if you had good luck ru
So let's see, two hundred, mebbe three hundred acres under cultivation all up. Enough to support three hundred people say, with hunting and fishing as well.
Or to produce a surplus if there were less, but the Tartessians most certainly hadn't come this far for food or farmland, no matter how wonderful. Apart from sticking a thumb in the eye of the much-resented Cofflin Doctrine, which ba
Fact is, I don't know yet, he thought ruefully. Decision: We'll have to do some scouting and sneaking and keyhole listening to find out. Gathering information was a ranger's job.
"Jaditwara," he called softly. "I don't see any real buildings outside the wall-do you?"
"Nothing but some sheds, haystacks, windmill pumps, that sort of thing," she replied. "And the boatyard by the water."
That meant everyone came back inside the walls at night. There was a jetty on the river, a mill with an undershot wheel and a boat shed, with smaller craft and a big two-masted flat-bottomed sailing barge that looked to be about eighty, maybe a hundred tons burden. Supplies must come in through San Francisco Bay, or more likely the barge took stuff out there, after a ship's boat had come upriver to let them know, and came back with the return load. A minimum inbound cargo, metals and manufactures, the base as self-sufficient as possible. That was crafty. Even if a ship was caught out, there would be no evidence of anything but a casual visit.
"How many-
"Two hundred sixty-three horses, with one hundred seven two years old or older. Four hundred sixty-two cattle. I couldn't get all the sheep or swine, they're too small at this range. Lots of them, though."
"Ah."
Jaditwara hadn't had the full Grandmother training, but she'd done enough that her ability instantly to count things at a distance never failed to startle him. For that matter, she'd memorized his journal and Sue's, sort of a living backup system, and she had a couple of reference books stored in that long shapely skull.
"Pete," the Pieman's soft singsong voice went on. "You notice the flagpole?"
"Hard to miss," Giernas said. "Two hundred feet if it's an inch."
"One hundred ninety-eight," Jaditwara said absently, touching her fingers together briefly in the Counting Chant. "Why so large?"
" 'Mine's bigger than yours,' " he guessed.
Tartessians thought that way, from what he'd heard of them and the few he'd met. The flagpole was made out of a whole old-growth Ponderosa pine, and the flag with the Tartessian mountain in silver on green looked absurdly small at its top. He didn't envy anyone who had to climb up the ladder of crosspieces to fix a jammed pulley. There was a platform around the top just below the flag, too. Hmmmm. It would make a crackerjack lookout post.
They dropped down the sloping trunk. Perks rose from concealment and came over, serious with the emotions he smelled on the humans. Peter Giernas took his rifle in his right hand and began to trot, careful to keep tree trunks between him and the river, although his buckskins would fade into the vegetation and all the metal on him was carefully browned. Once there was a swell of ground between him and the enemy he picked up the pace-lope a hundred yards, walk a hundred. The horses and the rest of their party were with the locals they'd met ten miles away; two hours' travel, without pushing it harder than was sensible.