"Major O'Donald's artillery might have done its part," Tobias sniffed, "but the
Ogunquit
laying
off their city finished it."
Andrew held up his hand to fend off any dispute. There was no love lost between the two and the voyage had only heightened it.
It was the glass makers who had started the voyage, when Fletcher had come back one day to report they were using scraps of lead to tint their product and also as a solder to join pieces of stain glassed work together.
The answer had been right in front of them during their meeting after the rebellion, for Rasnar's windows had all been soldered with lead but nobody had thought to look. From the glass makers the investigation had gone to a ship's captain whose family had jealously guarded the secret. Finally bribing the man with a substantial amount of gold it was revealed that the city Tobias had sailed past the last time was the source of the metal.
Tobias had been eager to go alone and was not at all pleased to be accompanied by O'Donald commanding two field pieces and twenty rifle men. Everyone knew it was insurance for Tobias's return but not a word had been spoken about that part of the plan.
"So there we stayed anchored for three days," O'Donald continued, "until finally
them
scoundrels came out to the ship."
"You was right, colonel darling, them were real tough merchant folk. The haggling went on for days, but finally we traded them a single rifle like you said, some powder and some clocks
Hawthorne made. We got all the lead they had, forty tons' worth."
"Not nearly enough," Andrew replied softly. "We need five hundred rounds per man, for up to twenty thousand muskets. That comes to well over three hundred tons of the stuff."
"Oh, but we got a regular trading scheme going. I promised them fifty muskets and one of them four-pound guns, along with five hundred clocks, if they can come up with two hundred and fifty tons more by the end of the summer."
"I don't like this at all," Tobias said coldly. "Arming those heathen could hurt us in the end."
"I know, I know," Andrew said, shaking his head. From what Tobias had already told him the people at the south end of the sea were Phoenicians or Carthaginians, the writing samples brought back confirmed that. Chances were they'd take the guns apart, experiment with the powder, and figure things out.
"And the Tugars and them."
"They call theirs the Merki. Claim they're still two years away."
"For their sake I hope so."
"You told them we were fighting?"
"They didn't believe it, said we were crazy."
"So there's no place to run south after all," Andrew said quietly, fixing Tobias with his gaze, but the captain remained silent.
"And the copper?"
O'Donald reached under the table and pulled up a copper urn.
"Got five hundred like this back on the ship, along with a couple of hundred ingots, weighing five pounds or so each."
Andrew beamed with delight. Now it was up to Mitchell to figure out his telegraph system and
Ferguson to set up a wire works.
"We promised to return in a month for the next load."
"Let's just hope those people don't figure out how to make a rifle in the meantime," Andrew said evenly, and though the others laughed he was silent. He could only hope that they weren't creating a new problem for their neighbors or if they could survive all this, for themselves as well.
But as he looked across the table and saw Kathleen sitting on the other side, for a moment at least, his fears washed away.
Again it was the same, Muzta thought grimly, walking down the main street of the city. The streets were empty, the scent of death in the air.
"Can you give me any estimates?" Muzta asked, looking to the chooser for the Maya city of
Tultac.
"My lord Qar Qarth, the fever was in full rampage here before we even approached. It is worse than anything we have seen before. With luck perhaps only two in ten will survive, and most of them will be scarred and thus unclean. The cattle claim it started two months back, before the last snows had cleared and we started to move."
"Then we will eat unclean meat," Muzta roared.
His staff was speechless at his outburst. Shouting a wild curse, Muzta pressed on down the street.
Muzta turned and looked back at Alem.
"How, dammit, how?
We ride faster—the entire clan is three days' march behind me. They started before the snows even ended. In three months we've made a journey of seven. I thought to rest here till early fall and then push on to Rus before winter. How, tell me?"
"It is a curse," Alem said, looking upward. "Perhaps the everlasting heavens have cursed us."
Muzta looked at Alem with pure hatred. All he needed was for this man to start calling down some heavenly displeasure as the answer to the pestilence on the cattle. In a short breath the horde would turn their wrath somewhere, and
Tula, he was sure, would point the finger.
"Our people will stay here," Muzta said grimly. "We eat unclean meat if need be, but we stay here for but two moons and then we push on. We must spare some of the healthy ones here, else when we come this way again the entire Maya people both eastern and western will be gone and there will be no wintering grounds for eight hundred leagues."
"But my lord,"
Tula said, stepping forward, "that is a circling away. I am more concerned with here and now."
"And I am concerned with the survival of the horde both here and for our next generation as well," Muzta roared.
"If you keep driving us there will not be a next generation,"
Tula said darkly.
All fell silent at
Tula's outburst. There was blood challenge in the air. More than one wanted it settled, even though they knew full well that if Muzta fell to
Tula's sword, civil war would most likely be the result.
Muzta stepped toward
Tula, who did not back away.
"Are you challenging me openly?" Muzta hissed.
The confrontation held for what seemed like an eternity, until with a growl
Tula turned away.
"Send riders back to the horde," Muzta snapped. "Tell them to come forward quickly."
He looked back at Alem.
"And find some religious excuse for eating unclean meat, or you'll be on the end of my sword," Muzta snarled, and turned and walked away.
The group broke away, leaving Muzta to his thoughts. Looking about the empty square, Muzta walked over to the steps of the pyramid and started to climb upward. Reaching the top, he peered into the small sacrificial chamber. The stench drove him out, mumbling darkly about the unclean practices of cattle.
Sitting down on the steps, he gazed eastward. Qubata, riding hard, should have covered the three hundred leagues to the land of the Rus. He could only hope that his nagging fears about the Yankees were unfounded and that the pox had not reached there as well.
"Just what the hell are they?" Andrew asked
,
field glasses focused on the strange-looking band making its way down the river road from the northwest.
"The first harbingers of doom," Casmar said. "The Wandering People, we call them."
"Wandering People?"
"They are the ones who choose to flee rather than submit to the horde. They start to appear several months or more before the Tugars arrive. The Tugars have laid down strict laws that if a person flees from their advance he may never return back to his home after they have gone. If they discover that we have harbored such a person, then a thousand extra die. Thus those unfortunate souls are doomed to wander forever, begging and stealing what they can."
"Gypsies," Emil said, borrowing Andrew's field glasses for a look.
"Then if they are here . . ." Andrew said, looking back at the prelate.
"The Tugars are not far behind."
"Get a detachment, Hans. We'll go out to meet them."
Climbing down from the battlements, Andrew mounted his horse while a mixed guard of Union soldiers and a detachment of Suzdalians, bearing the first muskets
tc
come out of the mill, formed up.
Setting an easy pace, Andrew started up the road, his men falling in behind him.
"Never heard mention before of these people," Emil said, bringing his mount up alongside Andrew.
"I guess they just don't like to talk about them. It's the next messenger after the Namer. I only hope we still have six more months, as we originally planned for."
He knew that no matter what happened they could never have enough time. The main problem he'd been wrestling with now was the simple fact that Suzdal could not hold the half million people they now estimated would seek refuge when the war started. A second city was now going up, between the city walls and the outer breastworks a quarter mile farther out. Emil had been fretting constantly about that, and with good reason; maintaining sanitation for so many people, living cheek to jowl, would be darn near impossible. He would have to turn these new people away— there wasn't enough to go around as it was, and the possibility of thousands more would threaten them all.
In the distance he saw the beginning of the approaching column. Reining in his horse, Andrew waited for their approach. There was no reason to expect trouble, but nevertheless the men were shaken out into a line across the path, and with fixed bayonets waited. He wanted them coming no closer to Suzdal, for it was possible that a spy of the Tugars could be among them.
The ragged column approached and finally stopped a dozen yards away.
Andrew felt as if he were looking at some history tale gone mad, with all the pages somehow jumbled up. Several in the group looked like Aztecs or some other such tribe, one of them wearing an ornamental headdress of feathers. Several others wore long pleated skirts frayed and tattered with age; others were in silken robes, one with a samurai sword belted about his waist.
Andrew could not help but point with amazement at a bent-over man wearing the tarnished and battered breastplate of a Roman soldier.
"My God in heaven," Andrew whispered, "are these the other people on this world?"
Weeping, one of the
group
stepped forward, bowed low in the manner of the Rus, and then, bending over, kissed the ground.
"For seventeen snows I have prayed to come back, to die in the land of my birth," the old man said, "for I have been all about the world and find that indeed my path returns me home."
The man came forward. Overcome with pity, Emil got off his mount and walked up to the man, who embraced him, sobbing.
The others started forward, but Andrew held up his hand, beckoning for them to stop.
"They're just a harmless band of beggars," Emil argued, looking up at Andrew.
"Tell those people to come no closer," Andrew said, looking at the old man. "They can camp out here, and we'll give them food for tonight, but I don't want them coming near the city."
"We won't stay," the old man whispered. "We know we're cursed, but rumor came to us that there were some humans who at last wished to fight, and we wanted to see this with our own eyes."
"How do you know that?" Andrew demanded.
"We are the Wanderers of the World—such word reaches us, and we carry it. But we will not stay, for already not a day's ride behind us
comes
an advance guard of the Tugar horde."
"What?"
Jumping from his mount, Andrew came up to the old man.
"That is why we came this way to warn you. We could have stayed north of here, but I persuaded my friends to do otherwise."
Andrew looked back at the group, feeling pity.
From out of the fields a knot of Suzdalians came down to the road to look at the forbidden Wanderers. Eagerly the old man scanned their faces.
"Do any of you know Helga Petrovna, from the street of wool merchants?" the old man croaked.
"I know of her," one of the workers cried. "She is married to my cousin!"
"Is she well?" the old man asked, tears streaking his face.
"Yes, alive and well, with three children, one of them near full-grown."
"Then I have lived to know I am a grandfather."
Sobbing, the old man collapsed on the ground, and despite Andrew's attempts to stop them the peasants gathered around the old man.
The rest of the Wanderers came forward, looking curiously at the drama before them.
More and more peasants came out of the fields to join the ever-increasing crowd, and soon there were cries of alarm when word of the old man's warning was passed.
"Goddammit, Emil, there's going to be a panic over this!"
Emil stood up and left the old man while others tended to him. Curious, he wandered through the crowd, amazed at this flotsam that had traveled around the world, sweeping up fragments from a score of civilizations across thousands of years of time.
Several litters were being dragged at the back of the column, tied to an old nag that seemed on its last legs. A number of Suzdalians stood about the litter, gazed upon it, and then drew back.
Coming up to the first litter, Emil saw several children resting upon it, covered with filthy blankets. His heart started to race, and nervously he pulled the blanket back.
A pistol shot cracked, and with a scream, all about Emil scattered.
"Andrew, stop them! Don't let anyone move!"
Andrew could hear the terror in Emil's voice.
Already some of the peasants were running away, looking back at Emil as if he had gone mad.
"Stop them, stop them!" Emil screamed.
Andrew pulled his pistol and pointed toward the fleeing Suzdalians. Most of them stopped, putting up their hands, or dropped to the ground. Panic-stricken, the others continued to run from the Yankees, who had apparently gone insane.
Emil came running up to Andrew's side just as he fired several warning shots, but already the terrified men and women were over the hill and gone.
Frightened, Andrew looked back at Emil.
"
It's
smallpox," Emil whispered, his eyes wide with terror.
"I tell you, it could kill half the people in this city," Emil said desperately.
"But this thing," Casmar said, obviously confused, "this thing you call innock . . ."
"Inoculation.
It'll make people sick for only a little while. I must warn you that maybe some will die from it, maybe even a couple of hundred, but if we don't do it, hundreds of thousands will die and the Tugars will finish off the rest."
"So you are asking me to tell the people that this inoculating is a good thing, even though it might kill them?"
"Yes," Emil said desperately.
"We have lived here for uncounted generations without this inoculating thing," the priest said quietly.
"And you've also lived under the Tugar yoke, and I daresay with regular rounds of plague, typhoid, and God knows what else. If I had more time I could guarantee the inoculation, but we'll have to take it from the dead scabs of those Wanderers who already have it."
"You are telling me that you wish to push these dead scabs into our people, and that will protect them?"
Casmar came to his feet as if the audience were at an end.
"Andrew, show him your arm," Emil said quickly.
Andrew stepped forward and with the doctor's help rolled up his sleeve.
"I had this inoculation," Andrew said. "The doctor gave it to me himself when I joined the army."
"And this made you better?" Casmar asked.
"I was sick for several days, but nothing more than when you get a slight fever. But he is telling the truth, your holiness. The Wanderers we have in quarantine beyond the city are carrying smallpox with them. Apparently they're spreading it ahead of the horde. Several people who were exposed to it ran away, and we don't know who they are.
"I'm telling you, your holiness, if you don't help us, within weeks this city will be a charnel house,
I
promise you that."
"But this thing—the people might say it is a devilish plot to make them sick."
"He is telling the truth, your holiness," Kathleen said, stepping forward to speak. "I am a healer the same as Dr. Weiss. You know that the two of us worked in the hospitals to save hundreds of your people after the fight to free the city. We could not lie about such a thing."