That was extremely different from things up in the twentieth. Here you got close enough to look into your opponent's eyes, close enough to smell him. Close enough to watch the expression as edged metal slammed home. Of course, it also had the advantage of being close enough to see what they intended for you.
The crowd of Fiernans outside the camp was larger, watching silently as the Americans formed up. Some of their Spear Chosen were turning thoughtfully, looking at the ordered ranks before them and then at the clots of followers squatting or sitting or leaning on their spears behind them. They don't know what we've got, but they want it, she thought.
The scouts were already fanning out ahead. Alston took her horse's reins, put her foot in the stirrup, and swung into the saddle with a slight grunt; the armor rattled, and she could swear she heard a slight ooof from the horse as well. It was a pony, really, barely thirteen hands high, but a sturdy, stocky little beast.
"Forward… march."
The officers relayed it. Drums beat and the lead company swung off by the left, spears bobbing in unison. More blocks of troops, then wagons-including the well-sprung ones with the wounded. Alston clucked to her horse and trotted down the line to the front, flags rippling and snapping behind her, and fell into position at the head of the line. The track wound off into the downs; not far from the camp it passed six graves on a hillside with a good view of the battlefield, with stout oak crosses marking them until they had time to do proper stone markers. Alston's right hand came up to the brim of her helmet with a tick. Behind her orders snapped:
"Eyes… right!"
The flags dipped, and the formations honored their dead. Even the Fiernans behind made gestures of respect, although they'd suffered far more cruelly than the armored Americans in the brief deadly fight.
"Soon," Swindapa said as they went through the shallow stream and back up onto the downlands. The burned village was already being rebuilt; the Sun People hadn't had enough time to completely wreck it. "A few miles to the southeast, and they'll send someone to meet us. News will have spread everywhere, to the Great Wisdom and as far north as the Goldstone Hills." Or the Cotswolds, to use a terminology three millennia out of phase.
She sounded eager, but not nervous anymore. Alston looked over at her; the Fiernan was riding with her helmet off and held before her on the saddlebow, looking in her armor like the cover of an adventure novel. The fight last week had changed something. For the better, as far as she could tell.
The landscape became flatter, the fields more open, larger, with more cattle and sheep and less cultivation as they rose. Long earthwork banks ran across it-field markers or symbols or something completely strange. Mounds rose above it, turf-green, sometimes with enigmatic shapes drawn across them in chalk. The crowds along the rutted trackway grew denser as the hours passed.
"Graves," Swindapa said, pointing to the mounds. "For great folk."
A scout came back up the trackway at a canter and saluted. "Party approaching on foot," she said.
Alston returned the gesture. "Carry on."
Swindapa fell silent, went pale, bit her lip, and blinked hard again and again. A party was approaching down the rutted, trampled dirt road. They wore woven straw cloaks against the rain, and broad hats. Two women with walking staffs, an older and a younger, and a couple of men with spears and bows. Alston threw her hand up, and the trumpet sounded halt and then stand easy. The Fiernans ahead flinched a little at the crashing unison as a hundred and fifty feet pounded to a stop, then came on again. Their eyes went wide again in astonishment as Alston removed her helmet and let them see her skin and features. The middle-aged Fiernan woman moistened her lips and began to speak:
"The Grandmothers of the Great Wisdom have sent me," she said slowly and ceremoniously. Alston found she could follow it, more or less. "To tell you that no strangers in arms may approach the holy place. Stop here, then, or we will call the Sacred Truce against you."
"Mother!" Swindapa squeaked, in her own language, throwing herself off the horse.
The woman's eyes went wide, really looking at the yellow-haired rider for the first time. "Swindapa!" she cried, spreading her arms.
The older woman was in her forties and looked a decade or so older, rangy and blond; the family resemblance was obvious. She wore a longer version of the string skirt that seemed to be standard women's dress here, made of interwoven strips of soft wool, each a subtly different color. Her belt had a gold buckle; the shirt above it was the natural gray of the fleece. Gold bands studded with amber were pushed up her bare arms, and the hands below were worn and capable-looking. Her eyes were the same deep blue as her daughter's; they kept going back to the young woman at Alston's side.
"Swindapa?" her mother asked. "I heard… I didn't believe…" Tears trickled down her cheeks.
Swindapa hugged the two women again and again, then the men. "Marian, my mother-Dhinwarn of the line of Kurlelo-my sister, Telartano, my uncles Grohuxj and Adaanfa."
Fiernan purled and bubbled between them, too swiftly for Alston to follow. The camp was going up faster than usual, with the early start and the troops fresh from a short march. Dhinwarn blinked a little at it, and more at the folding canvas chairs that appeared outside the commander's tent. She sat in one gingerly, as if expecting it to collapse under her. A bundle on the younger woman's back began to cry; she shifted it forward under her rain cloak, revealed a swaddled infant, and began to nurse it. At points in Swindapa's tale her mother and sister wept again, quite openly; the uncles growled curses as well as shedding tears. Later they glanced back and forth between Alston and their kinswoman with awe and wonder. At last the torrent of speech slowed down so that the American could follow some of it, or her ear grew accustomed to the machine-gun rapidity. It was her turn to blink.
She can't be saying what I think she's saying, can she?
"Ah… 'dapa, what are you telling them now, exactly?"
A brilliant, proud smile: "I'm telling them what a wonderful lover you are!"
I thought so, Alston thought with a slight wince. Telling them in extensive detail, from the sound of it; she'd learned Pieman anatomical vocabulary quite thoroughly. Talk about your culture clashes. " 'Dapa, no need for blow-by-blow, okay?"
She leaned back, resting her elbows on the arms of the chair and steepling her fingers, marshaling her scanty command of this language. Silence fell, and Swindapa's mother took up her carved staff.
"We come… friends," Alston said at last.
The Fiernans rose, came forward, and placed their hands on Alston's shoulder for a moment. "Thank you," Dhinwarn said solemnly. "You have returned my daughter to life." The others repeated it. "My sister."
"My sister's daughter who I put on my knee."
Alston cleared her throat, touched; like the Navajo, the Earth Folk spoke thanks only for the very greatest of gifts, taking everyday things for granted.
"Swindapa, speak for me," she said, when they were back in their chairs. "Tell them we'd like-I would, and a few others of us-would like to travel to the Great Wisdom and talk to the Grandmothers."
Dhinwara frowned, unhappy. "Why would you want to do that?" she said. "You are… Spear Chosen of the Eagle People."
Swindapa stopped translating for a moment and began to explain, or tried to. Dhinwarn smiled and shook her head.
"Swindapa says you are much more than that," she went on. "But a young woman in love often thinks more with her warm heart than her star-cool mind."
The Fiernan metaphor came through accurately enough, but from what she grasped of the original the phrasing was much more… earthy. Alston suppressed a giggle.