"But…" Swindapa said, an edge of trouble in her voice.
"But?"
"It looks… it looks smaller than I remembered it, somehow," she said, swiveling her head. "And sort of… messy."
You can't go home again, Marian didn't say. That was one lesson everybody had to learn… or maybe not, here. Here things stayed the same, usually. They didn't build time-share condos and golf courses over the place you were born and the churchyard where your great-grandfather was buried.
A changed note ran through the burble of Fiernan Bohulugi conversation. Someone was coming running down the trail from the east, stumbling as he ran. A minute, and she could see there was blood on his face, and running down the arm he held cradled in the other; He stopped in shock at seeing the obvious foreigners, but some of the locals who were tagging along with the American column caught him as he started to buckle.
On the other hand, raiding arsonists can also rearrange the landscape.
"Lieutenant Trudeau," she said. "Deploy from column of march into line, if you please. Nyugen, scouts out forward."
She and Swindapa spurred forward to the group around the wounded man. He stared from one to the other, wide-eyed. A torrent of Fiernan consonants followed, and Swindapa answered; both were too fast and complex for Alston to follow.
Swindapa's eyes went wide as well. "A big Sun People raiding party-many of them, a great host, more than a hundred men. Not far up the track-he ran for perhaps an hour. But there shouldn't be, not this far west and north!"
"Walker has changed things. Get some details, numbers, weapons."
That took some time. Alston used it to remove her helmet, get out her binoculars, and stand in the stirrups, scanning slowly from left to right ahead. There. A faint trace of smoke. Burning things seemed to be a Sun People fixation. Time to stop ambling along being a tourist. And very faintly came the huuuu-huuuu sound of an aurochs-horn war trumpet.
She looked back. The wagons were drawing up in a circle, frontier-style… or Boer style, which was irony, if you thought about it. The three-hundred-odd Americans were fanning out, running to take up position in a line perpendicular to the rutted, muddy track on which they had been marching, with their left wing resting on the wagons and their right… well, hanging in air. And the locals…
Alston spurred her horse out in front of them. Most of the farmers were running for their huts-probably to get their spears and bows. The noncombatants were streaking for the tall timber or local equivalent, or herding their stock and children toward the big palisaded roundhouses. And the Spear Mark men who'd come along were starting to run toward the smoke-smudge, all seventy or eighty of them.
"Well, you can't fault their guts," she said; the Fiernan might not be long on organization, but they had a terrier courage which made it more understandable how they'd held out against the invader tribes so long. She trotted out ahead of them.
"Stop!" she shouted. "Stop now!" That much Fiernan she could manage.
The leading Spear Chosen was a rangy young man with freckles and a fiery head of copper-colored locks trained in dozens of braids. "Why?" he said. "We come to fight the Sun People; they burn our houses, attack our kindred."
"Swindapa, tell him we'll show him how the Eagle People fight. Remind him that they usually lose fighting the charioteers, but tactfully."
Swindapa broke into voluble, arm-waving speech, a little odd to see from horseback; eventually they started listening to her. Alston put her helmet back on, swinging down the new hinged cheekpieces and clipping them together under her chin. The padding was rough against her skin, and the world took on a hard outlined shape from beneath the low brim. About half of the Fiernans stopped, sullen and restless, shifting their feet; the steel-headed spears the Americans had handed out danced in their hands. The others pelted by, heading for the invaders. Light-armed riders fanned out ahead of her, crossbows bouncing at their backs. They came back minutes later, galloping.
"Ma'am, they've taken a village about two and a half miles up thataway. Seven chariots, say a couple of hundred men. They've stopped to loot."
"Any sign of out-time equipment, weapons, armor?"
"Hard to say for sure, ma'am. Most of it was straight Bronze Age stuff, right out of the briefings."
"Carry on." Well, they won't stay stopped to loot when that gang of wild men that went haring off down the lane hits them, she thought. They'd beat the Fiernans like a drum; for starters, they outnumbered them eight to one. And then they'll chase them, all the way back here.
Other fires were puffing smoke into the sky, from hilltops around about or from the big round enclosures. "Alarms?" she said to Swindapa.
"Yes, to show that the Sacred Truce is invoked. Many Spear Chosen and their bands will come soon now. Well, in a while."
Alston nodded; about what she'd expected. From what she'd been able to gather, none of them had ever been able to take land back from the invaders, though. And there was only one end to a game where the rules went what's mine is mine, what's yours is negotiable.
Swindapa rode back to the injured man, now being treated by an American medic. She swung down out of the saddle, going to one knee beside him, then led her horse over to Alston again.
"Marian, it's odd. From what that man tells, those were Zarthani, from one of the eastern tribes of the Sun People, east of the Great Forest. Not Iraiina at all."
"Walker has made some friends," Alston nodded. She studied her position, then rode over to the Spear Chosen.
"Maltonr, put all your men with bows and slings in there, on the beds of the wagons." The canvas tilts had been rolled up until they offered only overhead protection. The Americans were linking the vehicles together with chains and spiked steel bars. "The spears, to the right of my line."
Maltonr scratched his red head. "Why?" he said. "First the shooting, then the fight hand-to-hand."
"They'll be more effective shooting all together. Trust me. And when the Sun People hit us, your archers can fight from behind the wagons, like a fort."
The Fiernan shrugged; the Eagle People were strange, but he'd go along. Lord have mercy if I don't win this fight, Alston thought, licking dry lips and fighting down an urge to drink from her water bottle. Stopping to pee in this armor was just too damned difficult, particularly for a woman.
Instead she rode down the American line. "No different from the cannibals, boys and girls," she said. More than half had been with her among the Olmecs, and the rest had been drilling with them for months, five days a week. "Hold steady, listen for the word, then shoot straight and hit hard. Remember, we fight as a unit. Anyone who gets carried away will have his or her ice cream ration reduced." Laughter, a little nervous, and some grins.