On the Oceans of Eternity (78 page)

“... weregild for the invasion last spring, yes, blood price. Beyond that I cannot go, without violating my oaths to Walker or my duty to my folk. So, what does Cofflin offer me, in return for ending this struggle?”

Alston began to tick off points. “First, you must pay, as you said, damages—partly in cash, and partly in supplies.” She held up a hand. “Not guns or powder to be used against Walker, no.”

“No, food and cordage and timber that will free your shipping space for guns and powder,” Isketerol said dryly.

“Of course. Next, you must be neutral in this war—and to guarantee that, disarm your war fleet and give us hostages. You must give us bases—the island my fleet’s on now, the Rock of Gibraltar, and another south across the Pillars. And you must swear that in future ...” She pulled up a phrase Swindapa had suggested, as more like the Tartessian equivalent than
noninterference in our sphere of influence “...
that in future you will keep your spoon out of our stewpot.”

The Iberian’s smile was unpleasant, and a dark flush had risen under his tan. “The world is to be yours, then; but of your gracious favor, you will allow us to keep our own homes ... or most of them. What, do you not demand also that we free all our slaves and adopt ... what’s the word ... an equal rights amendment and universal suffrage? As if we were naughty children who piddled on the floor, to be spanked and taught better.”

“I’d like to demand just that,” she said frankly; and saw him blink and nod.

This was a man who appreciated hearing what you thought, not soul-butter.
Although how long will that last, Isketerol-me-lad, if this absolute monarchy you’re setting up continues?
She went on aloud:

“But I don’t set policy, I just carry it out. First, it’s not within our power to force those reforms on you. We couldn’t make you
want
those things—you in the plural, your people—and it would be pointless if you didn’t. By offending your people’s pride, we’d make them more likely to move in the opposite direction, in fact. Second, while we may
use
our power for that sort of thing where we have it, we don’t go a-conquering just so we can spread enlightenment. We certainly couldn’t hold down Tartessos tightly enough to redo your ... customs ... without an effort which would destroy us. No, what I listed is the whole of our terms. Our terms
now.”

“Meaning they’ll get worse, if you win,” Isketerol said tightly. “So will mine, once you’ve broken your teeth on our defense.” A pause, and he seemed to push away anger with an exhalation of breath. “The old King, the one I cast down and slew, he was my kinsman.

“Yes,” he went on frankly, “I wanted the Throne for the glory and power and wealth. Yes, also to hand that down to my own sons and bloodline. But also, I struck for my people—for
their
glory and power, for the heritage of
their
sons, and the sons of their sons, that our tongue and Gods and customs would not go down into dust and be less than dust as I read on Nantucket all those years ago. Your books could not say if we even existed at all! Then I wept and raged at the Gods; yet later I came to see that this was the gift that the Gods had given me, a glimpse of a different course to be steered through the oceans of eternity. And since then I have worked and planned and fought to turn the helm thus. It was not to make my folk clients of yours that I struck that good old man down, that for years I have labored and shed blood when I might have rested in wealth and ease.”

Alston nodded soberly. She understood that, well enough. Her thoughts went to ancestors of hers; and to the systems analysts of Bangalore, India, and the suit-wearing Parliamentary deputies of Taiwan, and here ...
Mmmm-hmmm, John Iraiinanasson, for instance. You may find that you’re destroying what you’re trying to preserve, in the long run, King Isketerol. And that the only way you can fight us is to become us.

Since the Event she’d come to appreciate just how weird and wide and wonderful this ancient Earth was; it wasn’t altogether pleasant to think of it being remade on a single pattern, no matter how dear and much-loved that pattern was.
On the other hand, I’ve also learned damned well that all customs and ways-of-doing and thinking are not equal. Some are just flal-out better than others.
Freedom was better than slavery; the Town Meeting was better than a God-King.

You couldn’t expect Isketerol to look at it that way, of course. It was a dilemma without any easy solution; one for Heather and Lucy, and their children and great-grandchildren. And Isketerol’s ...

“So this war must continue, until you see that we are not to be bent to your will,” Isketerol said soberly.

“You tried to bend us to yours,” she pointed out.

“Of course,” he said, with another flash of teeth, genuinely amused. “And I would have ruled Nantucket well—I know that honey catches more flies than vinegar. But it didn’t work—I underestimated you. And I can learn a lesson as well as the next man, when it’s shot at me out of a cannon. Can you?”

“Most of the lessons life teaches us are surprises,” she replied. “Usually unpleasant ones.”

Isketerol nodded, and paused for a moment: “You took many prisoners this spring. What is their fate?”

“Some asked us for sanctuary,” she said.

The Iberian made a gesture that Swindapa murmured was acceptance and acknowledgment. Many of the officers of that force had been from the old ruling families that Isketerol distrusted, a sentiment they shared.

“The mercenaries took service with us, and we have sent them to our allies in Kar-Duniash and Hattusas. The rest are on Long Island; they live together, lightly guarded but working as they will to earn their keep. When the war is over, we will send them home; you’ll find many of them have learned useful skills.”

Alston paused. “We have a number of your wounded from the latest battle: we’ll return the badly hurt, if you wish. Men with limbs gone, or broken bones, deep hurts in their flesh. That would mean extending the truce, though ... say to sundown, day after tomorrow.”

“Ah,” Isketerol said shrewdly. “You do not expect this war to continue long, if you return men who will fight once more in a few months.”

“No, I don’t,” Alston said frankly.

“But in any case, that is well-done,” he said meditatively, and stood in thought for a moment. “We have some of yours, who washed ashore after the battle off Tartessos—we will return them to you when you hand over our hurt men. And for this war, I will fight according to your Eagle People laws of battle—prisoners to be treated gently.” A grin. “I have found this makes opponents less likely to fight to the death, in any case.”

“Good.” Alston cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll find that many of our notions are more practical than you might think.”

A long pause, and he surprised her by offering his hand. “Sundown, day after tomorrow—fighting to start again when a black thread cannot be told from a white. The war must continue, it seems.”

She took it, dry and strong in hers. “It seems it must. Sundown, day after tomorrow. And may God defend the right.”

“You
Amurrukan,
you are ... how do you say ...
weird.”

“I’ve often thought so,” Alston agreed.

O
dikweos’s mansion was a mixture of Mycenaean tradition and Walker’s innovations. Ian Arnstein thoroughly approved of some of those. There was central heating, natural hot air from a basement stove via clay pipes in the walls and floor; the kerosene lamps with their mirrored reflectors were a lot brighter than the twist of linen in olive oil that the locals had been using. And the bath suite—sure ’nuff shower stall, hot and cold plunges—was a vast improvement over sitting in a ceramic hip-bath and having bucketsful poured over your head. In fact it was all about as good as a bathhouse in Nantucket Town, and far better than anything he’d had since he left Ur Base. Flush toilets, too, and soap, and even a frayed soft reed that made acceptable toilet paper....

He turned down an offer of a massage with scented olive oil, accepted a clean Mycenaean tunic and kilt which he suspected a seamstress had just run up in his size. Then he sat down to a meal of garlicky grilled pork, salad, and french fried potatoes accompanied by watered wine in a room with big glass windows that overlooked the town. It was growing dark outside, sunset aggravated by thicker cloud cover.

I wonder why Odikweos is doing this,
he thought. Walker had ordered him given comfortable prison quarters, not the quasi-sacred status of a guest.
Not that I’m objecting.
Achaean mores had altered, and swiftly, here in Walker’s kingdom, but he didn’t think they’d altered so much that Walker could just chop him now without a major confrontation with one of his most important supporters.
But I do wonder why.
He was still trying to figure that out when the servants showed him into the
megaron,
the great central hall.

The old traditions of the Achaean barons remained strong here. A log fire boomed and flickered in a big central hearth rimmed with blue limestone blocks, scenting the air with pine; but a copper smoke-hood stood over it. Four massive wooden pillars supported a second-story gallery and ran up to the roof, painted red and surrounded by racked bronze-headed spears. Huge figure-eight shields were clamped to the wall at intervals. Between them ran vivid native murals; one of a man in a plumed boar’s-tusk helmet shaking a spear aloft as his chariot galloped into battle; another of a boar hunt; the third of a city under siege ... but the siege included stylized cannon, and a balloon floating at the end of a tether.

The high seat against the southern wall was empty and shadowed as he crossed the geometric pebble-mosaic of the floor. The Achaean underking was seated in a chair not far from the hearth, his cloak thrown over the chairback; a table and another seat waited, splendid with ivory and gold inlay of lions and griffins in a fashion that was centuries old.

Odikweos leaned his chin on one fist and watched as a housekeeper in a long gown showed Arnstein to his seat, set out jugs of water and wine and spun-glass goblets, a tray of bread with olive oil and honey for dipping, and departed.

Then he leaned forward, hairy muscular forearm braced on one knee, and spoke:

“You are from the days that are yet to come. You and all your people.”

Ian hid his startlement by reaching for a jug and pouring wine. Unwatered, it lay sweet and thick on his tongue.
Well, here’s a bright boy.
Isketerol had gone into hysterics for a day or two when he got the idea back on-Island in the Year 1; a lot of people just couldn’t grasp the concept.

“How did you find out?” he asked.

“I ... what is your word ...
deduced
it,” Odikweos went on. “Not long after the King-to-be came here to the Achaean lands. From a few things he let drop; and my guest-friend Isketerol of Tartessos is not quite as good at keeping secrets as he thinks. Now and then one or the other would say, in the
time
of the Eagle People, or ‘in my
time,’
instead of ‘my
land.’
”

“Pretty slim clues,” Arnstein said.

A shrug. “And it was sensible. Legends tell of a time before men knew of bronze or tilled the earth, and of a time before Zeus let slip the secret of fire. Our bards sing of the days when the Achaeans were new in these lands, coming down from the north to rule the Shore Folk and mix their blood with them; and in those days we knew not the arts of writing, or of dwelling in towns or building in stone. Those we learned from Crete, before we overran it.”

For a moment sheer scholar’s greed overwhelmed Ian Arnstein.
Those poems I’ve got to hear!
Then he wrenched his mind back to present matters.

“How did you know that Walker didn’t just come from a land with more arts than yours?”

Odikweos nodded. “That was my first thought, and it is what most here believe. But the King and his Wolf People lords, they knew too much of what was
here.
The mines of iron not a day’s travel from this city; I saw the maps they had—wonders themselves—made of these same lands. They even seemed to know somewhat of the men of Mycenae and the other Achaean kingdoms.

“So,” he went on, turning his hand palm-up, moving his fingers as if counting off points and then clenching it into a fist. “Either these men were Gods in disguise, or demigods, or seers—or they must know these things because they were from years yet unborn.”

He poured wine, watered it, and spilled a few drops in libation. “And I swiftly saw that these were men as other men-weak and stupid men, many of them. Some of them were wicked men—and a wicked woman—in ways cursed by the Gods. Even Walkheear ... yes, a great fighting-man, and of a cunning that might seem divine. But still a man, as men are.”

“Perhaps not as clever as you think,” Arnstein said. At Odikweos’s raised brows: “Men gather more than arts.” He turned his beard toward the copper smoke-hood for a moment. “They also gather the memory of tricks and strategems of war and kingcraft. Especially in lands where everything is preserved in writing.”

“Ahh,” Odikweos said, nodding. “That puts in words a thought long stirring in my mind.”

“So ... what do you wish to know?” Arnstein asked.

“This,” the Achaean said, his callused hand sculpting a graceful gesture through the air. “What manner of men are you? That you have many arts, that you are wise in the ways of war, this I know.

“I also know,” he went on, “that we Achaeans have mounted the lion and however much danger there is in riding, we cannot let go—too much of the knowledge from the years to come is abroad in these lands ever to return to the ways that were. Men will grow back into children and then crawl into the womb before they will sacrifice wealth or advantage in war. What I would know is what manner of men you are—are you all as Walker is, differing only in faction, or is he truly an outlaw among you for his wicked deeds?”