Anger awoke-he was not accustomed to spend his time gaping at a new wonder around every corner, like some Aramaean sheep-diddler seeing his first city. He fought it down. Look and learn, he thought. The Nantukhtar were men, whatever the peasants might believe, and what some men could do, others could as well. If we learn how.
"Why not?" Hollard said. "Good for them, more… how you say… more useful for us."
Kashtiliash nodded grudgingly. The scribes his father had sent were being trained as interpreters… but the Nantukhtar would not want all such to be in the service of the king of Kar-Duniash.
"I understand," he said after a moment.
Only a fool whose alliance was worthless trusted an ally completely.
CHAPTER TWELVE
March-May, Year 9 A.E.
"Duck up!" Marian Alston said crisply, leveling her binoculars. The clewlines hauled up the mainsail. Through the space cleared she could see one of the ship's whaleboats beating up toward the Chamberlain, its small triangular sail bellied taut and the six sailors of the crew sitting on the windward rail as she heeled sharp over.
They'll be alongside in one more tack, she thought, and even as she did the boat came about. Neatly done, by God. The tiller over, the boom across, and the crew paid out, tied off, and switched gunwales in a single motion, neat as dancers.
As she watched, the factors were running through her head. Fine weather, a six-knot breeze out of the northeast, and a moderate swell under a blue sky scattered with small, fluffy clouds. The pumps were keeping pace… just. A steady hose-stream of water was pouring over the leeward rail.
I could clear the land and run down along the Wild Coast, she thought.
The problem was that this was the Southern Hemisphere's fall season-weather season, and as soon as anything but a moderate swell came up, the pumps started losing ground. Badly. And she was so damned slow under this jury-rig, not to mention steering like an ox. All along that ironbound coast, rocks, and reefs, with sudden squalls down off the mountains and freak waves rolling up out of the Roaring Forties-
The deck crew were going about their work in dogged silence, exhausted with the pumps and the endless sail trimming needed to keep the Chamberlain slanting across the wind. Meanwhile, the whaleboat skidded into the lee of the frigate, throwing a fine plume of spray off her bow. The sail and mast came down, the oars unshipped, and she came in under the anchor chains, fending off as the middie in command came up a line, as matter-of-factly as climbing the stairs in her own home.
"Permission to come aboard?"
"Granted," the OOD said; the middie saluted the quarterdeck and came up to salute again and remove her billed cap from short sun-streaked brown hair.
"Ma'am, it's a bay, all right. Narrow entrance, headland to the south and a sandspit to the north."
"A bar, Ms. Harnish?"
"Yes, ma'am, but deep-twelve feet at low tide, something like twenty-two, twenty-three at high. I think it's been scouring lately. Here's the drawing, ma'am."
She handed it over, and at Marian's gesture Swindapa, Jenkins, and a few others came to peer over her shoulder as she spread it against the compass binnacle. The bay within was liver-shaped, with two streams running into its southern portion. The middie had marked broad areas of marsh and tidal mud; beyond that, brush and dense forest of tropical hardwoods came down almost to the shore.
"Durban," Marian said. Not very much like what the twentieth-century charts showed, but they were used to that.
"No lack of timber, ma'am," the officer-candidate said. "A lot of them a hundred, hundred and twenty feet to the first branch. But we wouldn't be the first there."
"Locals?"
"No, ma'am. Found some marks of big fires on the beach, piled wood, and this."
The chunk of square-sawn wood was about a foot long, obviously broken off from a larger timber. Through it was a short piece of iron bolt. That brought whistles from the spectators. Alston brought it close and tilted it to catch the sun, brushing off a crust of rust with her thumb.
"Hammer-stipples on the bolthead," she said grimly. "Not Nantucket Shipyard work, or any of the contractors."
They machined their bolts; the only thing formed by lathe on this was the actual screw thread. King Isketerol's artificers were still short of machine tools, although from the reports of Ian's agents they were making up the lack with shocking speed; Well, scratch that thought of a signal fire, she decided. The cannon and gear on the Chamberlain would be a prize beyond price in Isketerol's kingdom; no sense in putting temptation in their way.
"Tartessian," Lieutenant Jenkins said, wincing slightly as someone jostled his slung and splintered left arm. "Well, they've got the ships and the maps-I suppose we should expect they'd be snooping around the Indian Ocean too."
Marian made a noncommittal sound and closed her eyes in pure concentration for a moment. "We'll do it."
"Ah… ma'am, twenty-two feet's chancy, with the ship this heavy."
"We'll have to lighten outside the bar, of course," she said and cocked an eye at the sky. And pray for good weather while we do it, went unspoken. Not to mention that our Tartessian friends don't show up while we're hauled down. The Republic and the Kingdom of Tartessos were formally at peace; that didn't mean that the Iberians wouldn't do their best to stick a thumb in the Islanders' eye if they thought it could be done quietly.
"Dispatch," the messenger wheezed, obviously having run all the way from the communications ready room. "Sir."
"Stand easy, Marine," Colonel Hollard said, looking up from his desk and putting down the cup of coffee.
The evening was cool and dark outside the slit window, an hour before the rise of the moon, the stars a thick frosting across the desert sky. From outside there was a low murmur of voices, the neigh of a horse in the distance, the burbling moan of a camel-they were finally getting some of them in from the southern deserts. He took the transcript of the radio message and read quickly, whistling silently under his breath.
"Thank you, corporal-and this had better not leak," he said. "Dismissed."
He swept aside the duty rosters and stores reports and opened a folder of maps that Intelligence had put together in the two months since their arrival. Hmmm.
I need to talk to Kat about this, he thought. His second-in-command would probably be in her quarters; she'd been out on a field problem for the last two days-forced marches, among other things, getting the troops used to moving in this heat.
He left his office, returning the salute of the sentries, and walked briskly across the lane behind the praetorium headquarters-Officer Country was a row of cottages behind the central square where the routes from the main gates met; the design was based on a Roman legionary marching camp.
"Kat!" he said, walking into the sitting room. "News from-ooops."
Major Hollard couldn't actually shoot to her feet; not with the Babylonian woman on her lap clinging so hard and facing away from the door. She did manage to disengage, rise, and brace to attention, flushing visibly even in the light of the single dim lamp and making an abortive effort to button her shirt. There was a flask of the local wine on the low table beside them, and two cups.
Hollard's eyebrows shot up; the local woman was one of the ex-slaves King Shuriash had sent as part of his gift to the Islanders. Then further. You know, I could have sworn to God Kat was straight as a yardstick, he thought, shaken. Not that I mind, but it's a bit of a shock. And…
"I presume this isn't a violation of Article Seven, Major," he said coldly.
A blow to his chest startled him. It was the Babylonian; she'd slugged him at eye level to her, she being about five nothing and wearing neither shoes nor anything else except sweat and a few hickies. This close, he was suddenly aware of her scent, a musky smell that made him momentarily but acutely conscious of how long he'd been celibate. She had probably hurt her fist a lot more than she had hurt him, but she was winding up to try again; a plumply pretty young woman, round-faced and olive-skinned, her blue-black hair falling to the small of her back.