She called the unit commanders together, sketched plans, shifted a squad over to provide backup in the wagon circle, checked that the handset radios were all working, then dismissed them to their troops. Very faint, the sound of combat came from over the rise ahead. Lieutenants and petty officers checked equipment, and quietly blistered ears over loose straps or clasps unbuckled for marching and not done up again. Then the Americans stood at parade rest, spears vertical with the butts resting on the ground and both hands clasped on them at chest height, or loaded crossbows carried at the port. No time for fancy tricks with caltrops this time, and no heavy equipment along. A straight stand-up fight. Good ground, at least. It looked like the enemy thought they were just going to stomp straight over everything in their way.
Christ, I run away to sea and here I am, in the goddam Army.
A thousand yards, mostly level, straight ahead; steeper ground to the left and right. Open, except for a few hurdle fences, not even much planted ground. Then a dip down to the creek, and the enemy would have to forge uphill from the water to reach this plateau.
A spatter of Fiernans came past first, the fastest ones, many wounded, many weaponless. The others murmured, milled about, then slowly settled down again. One of her scouts came trotting up over the rise, galloped across the open ground, then drew rein and saluted.
"Here they come, ma'am, just like you said they would," he said, grinning from a painfully young face. "Three hundred and fifteen by my count, seven chariots, nothing fancy, just heading straight for us as fast as they can."
"Very good."
She glanced aside. Swindapa was watching the rise to the east, her face gone milk-pale under the light tan, hands quivering-tight on the reins. Christ, I forgot. These are the same sort of people who captured her. She brought her horse a little closer and rested a hand on the girl's armored shoulder.
"Dapa, you're not alone now. We're going to kick their butts and send them off howling for their dead." She paused. "Don't let me down."
A start, and a flush, then a tight smile. "I won't, Marian."
"By the Dagadevos, who are you?" Dekarchar son of Wirronax, high chief of the Keyaltwar, asked. "You look like a Tartessian to me."
Lieutenant Commander Victor Ortiz, born in Havana, raised in Florida, commissioned by the United States, and currently serving in the Coast Guard of the Republic of Nantucket, smiled and spread his hands. They'd assigned him to slip around to the east coast of the island and raise some trouble in the enemy rear because he'd picked up the language faster than the other ship commanders.
"Some of my ancestors came from there," he said. "I'm of the… Eagle People."
The chieftain scowled and looked through the door at the end of his hall at the schooner rocking at its moorings in a channel that wound through the marshes. "You mean you're a friend of that turd of a wizard Hwalkarz and his Iraiina shit-eaters and Tartessian arse-lickers?" he rumbled menacingly.
The Keyaltwar chief had reddish-gold hair and the pale complexion that went with it, liberally starred with light brown freckles, and rather protuberant blue eyes in a narrow, beaky face. The way he clenched his hand on the handle of his ax was probably unconscious, rather than a direct threat to his guest. So was the red flush of rage that crept up his cheeks under beard and scars.
"Are all the children of Sky Father friends of the Iraiina?" Ortiz asked rhetorically, following the script the captain and the Arnsteins had mapped out for him.
"Well, no," the chief grumbled, sinking back in the chair.
"So not all the Eagle People are friends of Hwalkarz. He is an outcast among us; oathbreaker, murderer by stealth, thief. A wolfs head, we call such a man-that's why he uses it as his banner."
The Americans' visit had coincided with spring cleaning; women and slaves were raking out the old reeds from the dirt floor, and a winter's accumulated bones and garbage with them, and replacing them with fresh. The fires were out-rekindling them would be one of the year's most important ceremonies and the hall was rather fusty and disarranged.
Ortiz sank down on the stool before the chiefs seat and smiled, moving one hand in a spreading gesture. "You haven't bent the knee to Daurthunnicar yet, I take it."
"Never! Never!"
The chief did rise this time, waving his ax in the air. The other warriors hanging about his hall did likewise, stamping and screaming. Some of them dyed their hair with lime, which made it stand out in spikes. They looked like enraged daisies as they waved their weapons and shrieked; the noise grew so loud that other folk from the hamlet put their heads in to see what was going on, and they shouted too. Eventually even the animals got into it, loud enough to startle clouds of ducks and geese and storks out of the tidal marshes that stretched for mile after mile along the north bank of the Thames.
Ortiz waited out the spontaneous demonstration. So this is what they fake at political conventions, he thought.
"Our folk came here as conquerors!" the chief brayed.
Probably chased here by stronger tribes on the mainland, Ortiz thought, remembering his briefings. Like the Iraiina. Possibly by the Iraiina, generations ago. There seemed to be a billiard-ball effect to these migrations, with the end ball getting bumped out over the Channel. The original impetus might have started as far away as the Ukraine or even Central Asia.
"We live as free men! We sent Daurthunnicar's dogs back with a boot under their tails, and he and his wizard haven't done a thing but puff and stamp!"
Actually you're just too difficult to get to; too much swamp and bog forest in the way, Ortiz thought.
"Why don't you raid them, for such an insult?" he said. "Why don't the Keyaltwar show the wizard and his dog what they think of him?"
"Well, now," Dekachar said, sitting back. He signaled for more beer to be brought. "Well, now, we Keyaltwar are men of honor, but we aren't fools. Daurthunnicar has too many allies now, curse him, and the wizard has given his men fine weapons-armor of this iron stuff. And they're far away, many days' journey."
"Farther than that," Ortiz said. "The Iraiina and their allies are moving west, against the Earth Folk. Their steadings lie stripped of fighting men. Stuffed with cattle, bronze, gold, women, cloth, the new iron tools and weapons."
"What?" Dekarchar leaned forward eagerly. "You know this?"
"I know it. My… high chief fights them even now, in the west."
Dekarchar counted on his fingers, called for counsel from his advisers. "No, no," he said regretfully. "It would take too long for a raiding party to strike at the Iraiina lands and return-they'd catch us in the open with numbers we couldn't withstand. They move too fast these days, curse them, all this riding." He shivered slightly. "And the wizard… no, no."
"That's if you go by land," Ortiz said helpfully. "My ship could carry three, four hundred warriors for a short journey… say over to the south bank of the river, west of here. From there it's less than a day's march to the northernmost Iraiina steadings, or to tribes allied to them. Or we could carry you and your warriors to a point on the south coast near Daurthunnicar's own ruathaurikaz. Stuffed with the plunder of a dozen tribes…"
Dekarchar began to breathe heavily. "Tell me more of this," he said.
Here they come, black as hell and thick as grass, Marian Alston thought, with a slight ironic twist of her lips. That had been the cry of the British sentry at the battle of Rorke's Drift, during the Zulu War. The Sun People war band coming over the rise wasn't as numerous or as disciplined, but they had a good deal of the same ferocious impetus and will to combat. These buckra mean business. They fought to kill, and defined winning as being the only one left standing.