"Like a sling bullet," Shuriash said. "Only too swift to see. It can pierce armor? How far?"
"A thousand long paces, O king. Shall I demonstrate?"
The king nodded, a tightly controlled gesture. This is a brave man, Ian thought. Several of the courtiers were still trembling; it spoke volumes of their fear of their monarch that none had run. Many of the crowd had, streaming back toward the city to spread Ghu-knew-what rumors.
Hollard pointed southward along the riverbank. The Islanders had planted stakes there, at fifty-yard intervals. Atop each was a local clay pot.
"Those are full of water," Hollard said. "But the bullets would strike through any armor a man could carry, and send his spirit to the realm of Nergal." He switched to English: "Squad, independent fire. Make it count."
Corporal Oshinsky snapped: "You heard the colonel. Llaundaur, you first, then to the right."
The Sun People trooper licked his thumb, wet the foresight of his weapon, and brought it up to his shoulder in a smooth movement that ended with another crack; the nearest clay jar shattered in a spectacular leaping jet of water. Colonel Hollard took out his binoculars and showed Shuriash how to adjust them; by the time the last pot broke, the king was looking more at them than at the firearms. Ian could see wheels spinning in the Babylonian's mind and gave himself a mental kick.
Hollard rescued the situation. "Let these tubes of far-seeing-these binoculars-be my humble gift to the king's majesty," he said.
"Out! Out!" King Shuriash bellowed.
The priests bent over the sheep's liver, the baru-diviners, the mahhu-priests who foretold in frenzies of madness, backed out of the council room where the king of Kar-Duniash had met with the ambassadors, taking with them the smell of blood and incense. Their lord resumed his pacing.
"Fools, dolts, wit-rotted tablet-chewers!" he roared, with a lion's guttural menace in his voice. "They can interpret comets and tell me to wear the same shirt for a month, but I ask them a question-I ask for an answer-it should be there in the liver of the sheep, and I receive nothing. Nothing of use!"
His son nodded. Sincerely, he thought. The generals and bureaucrats nodded agreement with their lord, too. With them, who knew what their real thoughts were? Over the years he had come to suspect that the priests, too, shaded their omens according to what he wished to hear, as well; or worse, according to how their temples wished to bend his policy.
" 'Great opportunity, but great danger,' "Shuriash quoted, "I could have told them that and saved the waste of a good sheep."
"The priests will eat the sheep," Kashtiliash pointed out.
"As I said, wasted," Shuriash replied.
There were smiles and a few shocked looks at the delicious blasphemy; only his son dared to laugh aloud.
"There are two questions here, O King," Kidin-Ninurta said. "First, what can the Nan-tu 'kht-ar do for us? And second, what do they wish? What will be the price of their aid?"
The king nodded. "We know they are rich," he said.
Emphatic nods; the gifts they' d given the king amounted to about a year's taxes from Ur and its district.
"We know they are powerful, with their fire-weapons." Even more emphatic agreement; the rifles were bad enough, but the strangers had also demonstrated what their cannon could do.
"O King, they are more powerful than that," Kidin-Ninurta said thoughtfully. "Consider their ships. Consider those." He pointed to the binoculars on the table. "Consider the arts they must have to make all these things."
"O King my father," Kashtiliash said. "Consider also the most excellent order of their warriors. In their every movement they anticipate commands; like the fingers of a man's hand, they obey." He paused. "Consider also that each one was equipped and dressed exactly like the others-even to the shade of the cloth they wore."
Shuriash felt his heart glow with pride. I have bred me a lion that can think as well as fight, he thought. It was a good thought. The Nan-tu'kht-ar soldiers were like the marks of a cylinder-seal rolled many times on wet clay. The implications of that were… interesting.
"This Yhared-Koff'in must be a ruler of great power; his people must fear him more than the demons," Shuriash said. "They must obey as if he were a god among them."
"Women," Kashtiliash said thoughtfully. "All other things to one side, how can they be useful as warriors when half the time their bellies bulge with children? And if they can stop soldiers from fornicating, they are not sorcerers, but rather gods."
"Prince of the House of Succession," Kidin-Ninurta said. "Of that I asked the merchant Shamash-nasir-kudduru; for a brief time I was able to speak with him. The Nan-tu'kht-ar have a way of preventing conception. One that actually works without fail."
"Strange, even so," the prince said, tugging at his beard and disarranging the careful curls that hot bronze rods and oil had put in it. "How can a people grow strong if their women do not bear many children?"
"That also I asked, O my lord; diligently I inquired. Their medicines ensure that few children die-less than one in ten, if what the merchant said can be believed. They can bind Lamashtu, the demoness of cradle fever!"
That brought more exclamations, some skeptical, some wondering. "This merchant," Shuriash said. "He knows their language; he knows their ways. Such a man would be very valuable to us."
Kidin-Ninurta spread his hands. "O King, your servant thought of this. But the Nan-tu'kht-ar guard him like a lioness with a single cub."
"Yet this Shamash-nasir-kudduru does not wish to dwell among them all his days?" Kashtiliash murmured.
"No, Prince of the House of Succession. That is not his wish; it is not the yearning of his liver. He wishes to dwell in the land of Kar-Duniash as a great man, as a man of wealth and power."
"For which he needs the favor of the king, as well as the silver of the Nan-tu'kut-ar," Shuriash said. "Something might be made of that."
He paused and leaned two palms on the table, looking at the strange maps the Nan-tu'kut-ar had given him on their even stranger papyrus. His own scribes made maps, but this was fantastically detailed, and with the round glass on a metal holder-the magnifying glass-he could read the small legends printed out in Akkadian writing. What a tool of power! he thought, looking at his land laid out as a god might see it… and the neighboring lands as well. It wasn't perfect; the Euphrates was shown too far to the west. But that could be corrected, they said.
His son went on: "With all their strengths, why do the Nantukhtar come here to speak of treaties, of agreements? Why do they not break down the walls of the cities, seize the wealth of the land for themselves?"
"Ah, my lord prince," Kidin-Ninurta said. "I have thought on this; I have pondered it. I think that the Nantukhtar are few in numbers, very few. From what Shamash-nasir-kudduru let fall, their city of Nantukhtar is smaller than Ur, far smaller than Kar-Duniash-rich and strong but not large. Thither to that city and its lands they bring many of their subject-allies every year to bolster their own strength, to work and farm and fight."
"Perhaps that is why they use their women for many tasks," Kashtiliash said slowly. "Perhaps they have too few men."
"Perhaps we build a great ziggurat from a single brick," Shuriash said dryly. "Also we circle the heart of the matter like vultures around a dying donkey. These Nantukhtar have great powers, yes, but can they foretell the future so much better than our students of the stars, of birds, of entrails?"