Alaksandrus of Troy had been a surprise. He was a long-nosed, sandy-blond man who reminded Ian of Max von Sydow, as far as looks went. The language he spoke was close enough to Mycenaean Greek that he could understand it without much difficulty; and he spoke the Achaean dialect as well.
What was really surprising about him was his eagerness to cooperate, once he'd gotten over the terror of the dirigible. He cut an imposing figure in his polished bronze breastplate, boar's-tusk helmet with a tall horsehair plume nodding behind, and a metal-reinforced kilt. A few brushes with the invading host from the north-the Ringapi, they called themselves-and their thunder-weapons had knocked most of the swagger out of him. There was something slightly touching about the eagerness with which he'd greeted a chance at salvation.
And something guilt-inducing, as well, Ian thought. I hope I'm not giving him too many false hopes, just to get him to buy us time. The way the ordinary people of the city cheered him through the streets was even harder to take. Refugees from the north had described all too vividly what happened in towns and farms the Ringapi took. Even more feared was Walker the Wolf Lord.
The airship's oak landing rails touched the ground, and the rear ramp went down. Ian walked down it, thankful that he didn't have to wear the elaborate caftan that an ambassador's dignity required in Babylonia. A force of Marines directed the unloading of the cargo, with a host of Trojans working like…
Don't say it, don't say it, save it for your next chat with Doreen! Ian told himself, bowing to the king.
"When will your troops arrive?" Alaksandrus asked.
Ian sighed internally, keeping a bland smile on his face. "As soon as possible," he said. "We've brought in a good many by air."
It was a sign of how worried Alaksandrus was that he no longer marveled at that but simply accepted it-and railed against its limitations.
"Each trip brings so few," he fretted. The horses of his chariot team seemed to catch the infection and stamped and tossed their heads against the expert touch of the young driver.
"It brings powerful weapons," Arnstein soothed. And me, more often than I like, because we have to keep you sweet, you old lady in a brass breastplate, he thought, and pointed.
A heavy seven-foot tube was being lowered onto a waiting timber cradle with oxcart wheels mounted at either end. The dirigible creaked and groaned as it was relieved of the weight, straining upward against the mooring ropes. The cradle groaned as well, and the twelve yoke of oxen bellowed as they were goaded into the traces. The six-inch mortar began to creak its way across the plain of Ilion and toward the South Gate with its great square bastion. The walls of Troy didn't enclose as much ground as Hattusas or Babylon, but they were impressive in their own right, stone-built and better than four stories high, with towers higher. Unlike most he'd seen, they sloped inward slightly.
Captain Chong trotted over, gave the king a bob of the head and Ian a salute. "That's the second battery complete, sir," he said in English. "If these trained pigs of locals don't bog it down, in an hour or so we'll have it mounted."
Ian nodded; he was no expert, but he'd been impressed by the speed and competence of the Marine effort.
"Tell your captain of warriors that my own are worried about the earth ramp," Alaksandrus said. He pointed toward Troy. "They feel it is a scaling ladder that we are building for an enemy."
All around the city, thousands were laboring to build an earth berm up against the stones; thousands more piled earth and rubble from demolished homes against the interior wall, as well.
Chong shrugged when Ian interpreted. "Sir, tell him that without backing and something to absorb the shot, that curtain-wall will get converted into rubble if anyone brings some guns within range of it." He smiled, a savage expression. "Of course, that'll put them within range of my guns. Mortars, anyway."
I do wish Alaksandrus would make up his mind what he's more worried about, Ian thought several hours later when he sat down with the shortwave set in his quarters. The Marine operator looked at him and handed over the earpieces and microphone.
"Hard day with the king, sir?"
"Is it that obvious?" he asked-rhetorically.
"Hatussas, Hatussas, come in," he said. "Hatussas-"
"Hatussas here," his wife replied. "Hi, Ian. How's His Gibbering Majesty? I was expecting the Basil Rathbone of the Bronze Age, from Tudhaliyas's description."
"It's not really funny, Doreen," Ian said. "I think he was at least a self-confident pirate until he led his troops to try and stop the Ringapi crossing into Anatolia. He still can't give me a coherent explanation of what happened, except that it involved a lot of explosions and then the Ringapi chariot corps hunting his like hounds after foxes." He paused. "What happens when they win isn't funny at all."
"Yeah," Doreen said quietly. "Anyway, the latest from Colonel- pardon me, Brigadier-Hollard is that-"
"Sir!" A Marine burst into the room. "Sir, the enemy's in sight."
"Oh, shit," Arnstein muttered.
The horde that poured down the flat coastal plain from the north toward Troy was enormous-more people than the whole Republic of Nantucket, the Island, and outports put together.
I've seen as many people at a football game in L.A., Ian tried to tell himself.
That memory paled to nothing before this vision of warriors in gaudy armor in chariots, warriors on foot in plain gray undyed wool with their spears over their shoulders and shields slung at their backs, dusty women trudging beside big ox-drawn carts with their babies on their backs, chieftains' women riding in carts with leather awnings, children running about shouting or crying, herds of cattle and herds of sheep and herds of horses… and prisoners trudging behind the wagons, yoked neck to neck with Y-shaped wooden poles.
The noise was like distant surf mixed with a grumble of thunder. The smell of the horde came before it, dust and manure and massed sweat, with somehow a scent of burning. The sound changed but didn't diminish as they settled in, ringing the small hilltop city with a wall of campsites and brush corrals.
"They can't stay," Alaksandrus said, standing beside Arnstein. "They can't. There's no food out there! We brought almost everything in and burned what we didn't."
Ian nodded. Troy stank of the beasts driven inside it, and of the peasants who camped in every open space, including on some of the roads.
"I'm sorry, Lord King," he said, "but there comes their supply line."
He pointed at the ships that were sailing in out of the west, their sails gilded by the setting sun.
"The Wolf Lord's ships," Alaksandrus said desolately. Ian brought up his binoculars and looked. They were medium-size sailing vessels, not enormously different from the ones Nantucket or Tartessos turned out; a little lower in the freeboard, perhaps, and he saw differences in the sails that he couldn't name. What all of them had in common was the wolfshead banner at their mastheads, red on black.
A curious change came over the Trojan king; he sighed, and a weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. "A man without hope is a man without fear," he said. "Let's see what his herald has to say."
"You think they'll send a herald?"
"It's usually done." A small quirk of the melancholy lips. "I always did. Surrender is cheaper, if you can get it."
"What are your intentions, Lord King?" Arnstein asked.
Alaksandrus's lips quirked again. "Fight," he said. "Your men may get here before we have to give up-the city's well provisioned, and one can always hope for plague in the besieger's camp."