Beside the fountain in the center was a stone pillar with a bronze plaque attached, rather like the historical markers you saw by the roadside sometimes before the Event.
“It’s the King’s Laws, according to this,” Swindapa said, leaning down to read. “Mmmm ... all free children to attend the Place of the New Learning four days in eight except in harvest season, every family to contribute food and cloth for the teacher in rotation ...”
Alston looked around. Yes, one of the buildings had the look of a schoolhouse, long and rectangular; she heeled her mount over and sheltered her eyes with her hand to peer through thick wavy window glass. She saw rows of benches within, and a large slate blackboard; times-table in Arabic numerals on one wall, a big map of some sort on another, and a print of King Isketerol’s face hanging over a teacher’s table at the front.
Swindapa was still reading: “... then there’s the Great Taboo of Shit Avoidance—that’s what it says, I swear, and a good many others. Everyone to wash with
zapotikez
... soap? It looks like a sort of combination of public-hygiene notice and list of ... well, there’s stuff about farming—nobody to grow grain for more than two years in the same field before sowing it to fodder crops—money to be accepted for all debts, each household’s public work on the roads and irrigation canals—taxes, the King’s Fifth, what can be paid in kind and what in cash ... all the Laws to be read out to the assembled people once in every moon-turning.”
The Republic’s commander nodded.
Well, he can’t
explain
everything, I suppose.
The Nantucketers had used persuasion and example in Alba; with fewer teachers and more power, Isketerol seemed to be relying more on rote-learning.
One of the buildings off the square was a smithy, well equipped with a selection of cast-iron anvils, two hearths with piston bellows and a wailful of tools, from pincers to rasps. Even a grindstone and a simple lathe powered by foot-cranks ... Bins outside held coal-coke as well as charcoal.
And those rafters were cut in a sawmill—probably floated down the Guadalquivir ... machine-drawn nails, too. Mmmm-hmmmn
.
Next to it was a warehouselike affair; Swindapa read the sign over the doors: “Depot of Things for Households: Let Any Who Will Buy Tools From the King on Credit.”
The radio handset in Alston’s saddlebags hissed and popped. She took it out, looking up reflexively for the butterfly shape of the ultralight. “Commodore Alston heah.”
“Commodore, this is Scout Flight One Niner. The Tartessians under the flag of truce are approaching from the north. Thirty-one in the party as per agreement, all mounted.”
“Carry on, pilot,” Alston said.
She and Swindapa and the standard-bearer remained mounted, but the Marines put their bicycles on the kickstands and formed up in a rank; the Gatling crew unhitched their weapon and swung it ’round. Lieutenant Ritter reached over her shoulder and proudly drew her new officer’s
katana.
“Fix ...
bayonets.
”
Hands flashed down to the left hip and the twenty-inch blades flashed free, rattling as they were clipped onto the Werders.
“Shoulder ...
arms.”
The Marines stood like khaki statues, an image a little spoiled by the peeling sunburns many of them sported. That had been one reason she wanted a fall-winter campaign; with a force made up of people from cool misty northern islands, the relatively mild and cloudy season promised less in the way of heatstroke.
That’s an irony, if you like,
she thought, flexing a hand on the pommel of her saddle and looking at the natural UV protection of her eggplant-colored skin.
Still, this was the best season to fight here. Summer made water scarce in these hot lowlands and likely to be bad, and sharply cut into the fodder for draught animals. The Tartessian flintlocks were temperamental beasts that didn’t like the damp, too; that had worked powerfully in the Nantucketers’ favor during the spring invasion.
The clatter of hooves and a low cloud of dust came down the highway from the north. Alston soothed her mount with a hand on its neck and gathered the reins a bit as well. The colors of brightly dyed cloth and polished metal came into view next, westering sun winking blinding off edged metal; then figures became distinct, mounted men ...
And one woman,
she thought, slighlty surprised; even more so when she saw it was Rosita Menendez ...
well,
nee
Menen
dez, she corrected herself.
That identification took a little doing, when her hair was coiled around her ears in circles bound with silver and turquoise, topped by a flat-topped headdress of silk a little like a wimple. Square fringed earrings, rings, belt flashing with golden studs; otherwise, her clothing was a practical-enough affair of long split tunic and loose trousers.
Isketerol rode beside her, in a polished gilded helmet with purple-dyed ostrich-feather plumes at the front, saffron tunic, gold disk across his chest supported by tooled-leather straps, silver-and-leather bracers on his wrists, jewel-hilted sword ... and a very practical-looking revolver. He must be in his early forties now but looked ageless; still lithe and hard-muscled, but with deeper lines grooved into his face from nose to mouth. Menendez had put on some weight, in a solid matronly way.
The Tartessian troops carried rifles ...
Yes, that’s Walker’s imitation of the Werder.
They couldn’t have all that many of them, either. Most of the weapons captured after the sea fight had been copies of the older Westley-Richards flintlock.
If he had more of those, he’d have used them.
Isketerol’s standard-bearer and a herald rode ahead, drawing rein in the square a half dozen yards from her position. The herald had a curled trumpet over his shoulder, sunlight turning the polished metal to gold; he brought the mouthpiece to his lips and blew, a long harsh brass scream, and then shouted in Tartessian:
“The King comes! King Isketerol, Bridegroom of the Lady of Tartessos and the Grain Goddess, Embodiment of the Sun Lord, Lord of the Cold Mountains and the Hot and all between, Sea-King by favor of Arucuttag Lord of Waves. Who comes to treat with the Great King, the King who admits no rival or equal within the boundaries of his power?”
Alston listened to Swindapa’s murmured translation, then nodded imperceptibly, sitting with her back straight, reins in her left hand and right on the butt of her Python. The younger woman heeled her horse a few steps forward and called out in the local tongue, its harsh buzzing softened by her Fiernan accent—Tartessian and the language of the
Fiernan
Bohulugi were distantly related, but they sounded no more alike than, say, Swedish and Hindustani, which were similarly linked.
“Commodore Marian Alston, Founding Councilor, Nantucket’s Councilor for War...” She paused and added the proudest title of all, with a slight deliberate emphasis. “Citizen of the Republic of Nantucket, comes to treat with King Isketerol.”
Isketerol’s hard hawklike olive-brown face showed a slight smile. When he spoke, his English was harshly accented but fluent, much more fluent than it had been the last time she spoke to him in person—that was more than nine years ago, when he’d been on Nantucket, before he helped Walker hijack the
Yare.
Ah, she thought. He must speak it with Menendez, and there are a few other Islanders ... ex-Istanders ... here, too. Smart
of him to work at achieving full fluency. Reading the books that had been part of
Yare’s
cargo, and ones he’d bought openly since, had doubtless helped as well. He’d also acquired a very slight Puerto Rican-Hispanic accent from his American wife, which was an irony, if you thought about it. As far as looks went, he could have been a brother of Victor Ortiz ...
“Now that we have made the ... you say ... necessary gestures, shall we speak?” he asked.
“Yes,” Alston said, surprised to feel a wry respect.
Well, he’s a pirate
...
but he wasn’t raised to know better.
The leaders and their companions swung down from the saddle, handed the reins to attendants, walked a little aside. Isketerol looked up at the ultralight, westward to where the steam gunboat waited on the blue-and-cream waters of the gulf, pitching slightly with her head into the wind and paddles turning just enough to keep her so. They sent a white froth down her sides as well, and coal smoke rose night-black against the crimson disk of the setting sun.
“A not bad time to end the war, from your point of ... perspective? View? To ah, quit while you are ahead,” Isketerol said.
“We’re prepared to end it, on terms,” Alston said. She nodded to the flag with the truce-banner below it, her face like a mask of obsidian. “Our terms. And once made, we’ll keep them. The Republic’s word is good.”
Isketerol nodded; the Islanders had a carefully maintained reputation of driving a hard bargain and then respecting it meticulously.
“Yes,” he said. “That simplifies negotiations.” A white smile, and he took off the helmet, showing a few silver hairs in the bowl-cut blue-black mane. He tossed his hair to let air blow through the sweat-wet thickness. “Unless you are waiting for the time when it really pays to lie.”
Alston shrugged. “That’s an argument without an answer,” she said. “But think about this, King Isketerol of Tartessos, how far can you trust Walker’s word? Did he give you every assistance he could? How hard would he fight for you, if he didn’t stand to benefit by it?”
The olive face stayed imperturbable, but she caught a slight flare of the nostrils. Isketerol would make a good poker player, though. His fingers did not clench on the gilded helmet they were turning idly.
“He gave me enough help to become King and conquer an ... empire, that’s the term. And we have an alliance, and
my
word is good. You have won a battle, yes. You have not won a war, not against my kingdom. Still, you
have
won a battle. My word is this; if you will return home and trouble us no more, I will agree to the ...” He turned and murmured in Rosita’s ear and nodded at her reply. “To, you say, the
status quo.
Yes, things as they were before this war. Those are the terms of the King.”
Alston put her fists on her hips and slowly shook her head. “Return to your closing the Straits against our ships, skirmishing with us and then calling it overzealous private actions by your captains, to your helping Walker? After you invaded our country last spring for no better reason than you wanted to take it? I don’t think so.”
“If you fight Walker in the east without passing through my waters, traveling around Africa and through the Gulf as your other expeditions have, I will not interfere,” he said. “That much I can in honor say. No more. I will not turn on a guest-friend and blood brother who helped put me on my throne, simply because it would spare me effort and expense. And if you destroy King Walker, what check will there be on your power? How do I know you will not turn on me, next? Already you claim half the world and say we may trade and settle only in those scraps you deign to allow us.”
“Do you doubt that Walker would turn on
you,
without us to worry about? Does your honor require that you see all that you’ve built up”—she waved about—“cast down?”
Isketerol’s eyes narrowed. “You have not the strength to conquer Tartessos,” he said. “I hold far more land than your Republic does in fact, claims of just nothing but words aside, and I have twenty times more people. I can afford to lose battles—you cannot. Great kingdoms are not overthrown in a single fight.”
Well, he’s grasped that principle,
Alston thought. Wordlessly she pointed to the ultralight, to the gunboat. Isketerol shrugged.
“Yes, you have better weapons,” he admitted. “But I have
more
weapons, many more. If they are not as fine as yours, still they are not spears and bows. We destroyed one of your great ships in the battle.”
“You lost a dozen.”
“I can
spare
a dozen, build anew, and find new crews; you cannot. If we fight and I hurt you one-tenth as much as you hurt me, I win. And you are few, and far from home, and cannot call fresh armies to you.” Another shrug. “There are not enough of you to conquer Tartessos.”
“Perhaps not. But there are enough of us to
destroy
the Tartessos you have made, I think.” She went on: “Tell me, King Isketerol, do the words
command and control decision loop
mean anything to you?”
Narrow-eyed, Isketerol shook his head. Rosita Menendez frowed, as if something was tugging at her memory, then shrugged. Alston’s face remained a basalt mask, but inwardly something bared its teeth.
Walker
would have known—would have understood the importance of forces being able to transmit information faster, and act on it more rapidly. He was a product of Western civilization and its military-technic tradition.
Isketerol wasn’t.
Yes, lsketerol’s smart. He’s a
genius
, I think.
But he’d grown to adulthood in this world. Doubtless he’d learned a great deal from the books. It would still be filtered through the worldview built into the structure of his mind from childhood. Doubtless he’d learned a good deal from Walker, and Rosita, too, but the one would be careful not to teach too much and the other wasn’t particularly intelligent or well educated ...
Snidely, to herself:
And Rosita was a really close friend of Alice Hong, which says something about her standards of taste and judgment.
“Why do I have a feeling,” Isketerol said, an edge of whimsy in his voice, “that what you just asked me was like one of those oracles that only make sense after the disaster has happened?”
Got to be careful not to underestimate him, though.
Slowly and deliberately she smiled, spread her hands.
He sighed. “Well, then, what are your terms for ending this war? I
might
pay ...” He turned to the interpreters and fell into Tartessian. Swindapa supplied the word: she’d had ten years with Marian Alston and her tastes in reading matter.