The prince was grinning openly, and the injured noble's personal retainers-the bronze-armored spearmen who grouped around his chariot-saw it and checked their instinctive rush. The file of Marines behind Kathryn kept their rifles at port arms, ready for instant action.
"Harlot!" the Babylonian nobleman wheezed, straightening.
From the sharp sound of the blow, he'd been wearing some sort of cup protector, probably of boiled leather, but the impact of the Nantucketer's steel-capped boot must have been painful nonetheless.
Slow learner, Hollard thought, as the man reached out for the woman with a grasping hand.
She stepped forward and to one side with a gliding lunge, grabbed the wrist with her right hand, and twisted it to lock the arm. Then she turned with a whipping flex of the waist and torso, smashing the Babylonian's muscular forearm across her left. There was an audible crack of breaking bone, like a green stick snapping, and the man's face went gray. He gave a small choking grunt of pain and stood motionless-understandably so, for the point of Kathryn's bowie knife was resting on his upper lip, just under the base of his nose. Hollard jabbed with delicate precision, just enough to raise a bead of blood, then stepped back and bent to clean the blade by stabbing it in the earth before wiping it on the seat of her shorts and sheathing it.
Kat's feeling good-natured today, her brother thought. Just broke his arm. With a little luck, that would heal. She could have broken his elbow-that strike was usually aimed there. That would have crippled him for life.
Kashtiliash's grin had turned into a laugh; the generals, aides, and courtiers around him took it up. "You have displeased me, Warad-Kubi son of Utul-Istar. You may withdraw to your lands until your wound is healed and the anger of my heart abated. Do not show your face in the city until you receive word."
He looked down at Kathryn Hollard.
"That is an interesting art of fighting you have," he said. "I would like to learn it sometime. A wise man never passes up a chance at knowledge."
To the elder Hollard he went on: "I will array the host. If we can pass the chariots and infantry through on your bridge, we will deploy on the riverbank. I go; send word when all is ready."
And there goes our prestige if we screw up, Hollard thought, watching the prince's chariot trot away in a cloud of dust and a flash of plumes and bronze. That was the problem with being the magical strangers from Beyond the Land. You had to keep delivering.
"Smart cookie," Kathryn said pensively, hands on her Sam Browne and fingers tapping the buff leather. "Seems a lot more open-minded than most here."
"I think he's more concerned with results than process," Colonel Hollard said. "Of which I heartily approve. Okay, let's get moving. Scouts!"
That was Captain O'Rourke. "Sir?" he asked, in a voice with a slight trace of a brogue in it; he'd been an Irish student working on-Island when the Event came. About Hollard's age now, and his broad snub-nosed face was the color of a well-done lobster sprinkled with freckles. It clashed horribly with bright-blue eyes and carroty hair.
"I want the other side of this marsh under observation," Hollard said.
"Well, that's what we're for, Colonel," O'Rourke said cheerfully.
The recon company spread out and waded into the muck, testing the footing and holding their rifles, priming horns, and cartridge boxes high over their heads. Hollard lifted the handset to his ear.
"Testing. Hollard here. Over."
"O'Rourke here," came the reply. A few of the Babylonians made covert gestures or clasped the talismans at their waists at the voice that came from a box.
"Sir, the reed belt's about six hundred yards broad." A pause. "I'm on the edge, Colonel. It's about a quarter mile to the riverbank, stubble fields and fallow, and a big irrigation canal about halfway there." Another pause. "Definitely movement by the river, on the south bank as well as the north. I can see small parties of what looks like bowmen retreating toward the river-probably we flushed them out. Shall I investigate?"
"That's negative, Captain. Remain in place and prepare to bug out. What's the footing like?"
"Bad, sir, but it's not impassable if you're careful. Try running and you'll sink to your waist in no time. Definitely not suitable for vehicles, horses or troops in heavy gear, or in any numbers. You can sort of walk on the roots, but if you trample this muck it turns into glue."
"Do you think the enemy still has scouts in there?"
"Impossible to tell, if they're quiet, sir. You can't see more than three or four feet through these reeds."
"Good work, Paddy. Let me know if there's any movement. Over."
Wonderful things, handheld radios. Another pre-Event convenience they might as well use while they could; the batteries were already dying one by one. Hmmmm. Now, I could just shell and mortar anyone who comes close-but that wouldn't hit their morale the way a stand-up fight would. Let's see…
"You," he said, indicating one of the departed nobleman's retainers. "Get us reed mats-several score of them, at least. Now!"
The peasant levies might not have been much at a pitched battle, but they certainly knew how to work-and Babylonian organization was well up to seeing that there were plenty of sickles and mattocks.
Kathryn's battalion stacked arms, stripped to their skivvies, and set to. marking out the lines for the ditches. The Babylonian peasants waded into the swamp as well, bronze sickles flashing; they tied the reeds in neat foot-thick bundles and carried them back on their heads. More of them went at the ditches-to-be, cutting through the low rise that blocked off the riverside swamp. The loose columns of the Babylonian army were gathering further back in the desert plain, gradually coalescing into clumps and sorting themselves out into lines, with much blowing of bronze horns and waving of standards.
"They're not going to miss that," one of Ken's company commanders said. "They'll be able to see the reeds falling from the higher ground along the river. And they must have been watching our dust since sunrise."
"Right," he replied. "We'll deploy First Battalion in double line, ready to move up in support. C Company in reserve. Move the field guns and the launchers up-guns loaded with canister and short-fused shrapnel shell. Hmmm. Get me the local who's running this bunch now that Warad-Kubi's gone."
Okay, let's see. Practical range on the bows is three hundred yards max. The locals used a horn-and-sinew-reinforced model that had plenty of range. The best ones were expensive, though, hence rare. On the other hand, that causeway's going to be fairly narrow.
The Marines spread out along the edge of the dry land. Carts creaked past, carrying dry desert clay to mix with the layer of mud that went over the bundles of reeds, and more mud flew from shovels. Now that the endless desert march was over, he could hear laughing and joking from the working parties, despite their being smeared with the thick, glutinous soil of the swamp.
Kathryn came up, grinning through a mask of mud as dense as that on any of her troops; the salute was a little incongruous coming from someone dressed in a pair of regulation-issue gray cotton panties under an inch-thick overall coat of Diyala ooze. He returned it with a snap anyway; the causeway was a good job of work.
"Going faster than I thought," she said. "We'll be through by midafternoon at this rate."
"Glad to hear it, Kat. Think the causeway will bear the traffic?"
"Once, at least."
"Good. Make sure your people move their rifles along as it extends."
"De nada, boss," she said and plunged back into the ordered chaos of the construction. There were about a thousand men and women working on it now. He studied one of the two-wheeled oxcarts that was bringing up soil, looking carefully at the way the wheels sank.