She exchanged salutes with the guard at the sea gate, walking through the open portals and under the snouts of the flamethrowers that protruded from the bunkerlike slits in the flanking towers. There was a fair bit of traffic; boots and wheels and hooves boomed on the bridge over the ditch. The smell of stale water came up from it, around the bases of the sharpened stakes that bristled forward from the lower bank around the moat. That mixed with other smells-woodsmoke and horse sweat, leather, cooking from the tangle of Fiernan huts that had gone up outside, dung from the corrals. There were as many locals as Americans in the bustle. Spear Chosen war chiefs coming to learn or take council; traders, scores of them, with little oxcarts or pack donkeys or porters, or hauling stuff up from the beach where they'd landed coracles or canoes or whatever; others come to trade labor for the wonderful things the strangers had, or just to gawk. Even a few weirdly tattooed men from across the channel to the west, from what the locals called the Summer Isle.
The pier was even busier. As she came to the end, a sedated, blindfolded, hobbled, and still rather resentful-looking horse swung up into the air and over to the Eagle's deck on a line and a band slung under its belly.
"Let go… and haul," the line leader barked.
The animal slid down gently, whinnying as its hooves made contact with the decking. Alston paused for a moment, looking up at the clean lines of rigging and clewed-up sails and masts, feeling the familiar rush of love at the sight of her ship. Beautiful as… as Swindapa, by God, she thought, smiling with a slight quirk at the corner of her mouth. Right now the Eagle was leaving her for a while. Heading back home, with a cargo of horses, firkins of butter, and meat pickled and salted and smoked. Plus several small, heavy little chests full of gold bars and dust and some crude silver ingots.
Tom Hiller came up and saluted. "Captain." The sailing master was looking harassed, his long face like a basset hound's expecting yet another kick. "She trims… oh, hell, she trims as well as you'd expect. She wasn't built for carrying horses, Captain."
"She wasn't built for carrying anythin' but people, Mr. Hiller," she replied, returning the courtesy. "Needs must when the devil drives. How are the new hands shaping?"
They'd sworn on two dozen Fiernan deckhands, out of hundreds wild to enlist. Which is a good sign in itself. They're not afraid we're going to roast and eat them as soon as we're out of sight of land. Taking on locals also meant that she could get another transatlantic voyage in without putting too many of her precious trained Americans out of reach. For various reasons, she'd seen that more than half of the recruits were young women, and all from the coastal fishing hamlets.
"Pretty well," Hiller said, turning his cap in his hands. "They're all fit-better than your average cadet was to start with, and they're used to living rough. And they pick up stuff like haul and climb damn quick. That phrasebook was really useful, by the way."
"Thank the Arnsteins. What else is on your mind, Mr. Hiller?"
"Look-" He hesitated. "Look, Captain, I just don't like leaving right now. Couldn't somebody else-"
"No," Alston said bluntly. "You're the best sailor, and you're leaving with the next tide. Everyone else who could command Eagle is doing something I can't spare him or her from. And I need those wagons, and all the rest of it."
"Yes, ma'am," he sighed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
July – September, Year 2 A.E.
"One of them died, Chief," Miller said. "I think we over-tranked it in that storm off the Azores. Heart just stopped-or maybe it died of fright. Damn all horses anyway."
"Damned lucky it was only one," Cofflin said.
The Eagle was back at her usual berth, the old Steamboat Wharf. The wild-eyed little horses were led down a special ramp rigged with canvas barriers on either side, snorting and balking. It was a bright breezy-cool day in early July, with only a scattering of people watching; today was a working day, and there were enough fishing boats these days to sop up most of the able hands on the island. Even the strong sea breeze couldn't quite hide the odors of drying fish, offal in the giant tubs waiting to be hauled out to the fields. A whale-catcher was coming in between the breakwaters as well, the long dark shapes of its catch towing behind. A cheery toot-toot cut through the bustle, sending a white cloud of gulls storming skyward.
Well, we're certainly a seafaring island again, Cofflin thought.
Beside him Angelica Brand was rubbing her hands with glee. "Ninety-seven, ninety-eight," she counted. "All mares. Marvelous."
"It means we can spare Captain Alston the people she wants," Cofflin nodded. "Wasn't sure it was possible."
Hiller looked up sharply. "How so?" he asked.
Cofflin hid his smile; he'd noticed that the Guard people all bristled like that at a suggestion that Alston wasn't infallible. Sign of a good boss. God, but we were lucky. They might have gotten a regulation-worshiping martinet… or, heaven forbid, someone with political ambitions. A grownup Walker. He gave a mental shudder at the thought.
"Angelica's arithmetic," he said aloud.
The woman beside him touched her gray-streaked brown hair. "Oh, my, yes. The reapers are ready to go-all we lacked was traction. Two horses to each, so with the ones we've already got, that's over seventy-five reapers we can put into the fields. Fifteen acres a day each, say a thousand acres a day all up, that means we can harvest the whole small-grain acreage in less than a week with only a hundred and fifty people. Granted we still have to shock and stook it by hand, and then there's the threshing, but it's still hundreds of people rather than thousands, the way it was last year. Plus we can use horse-drawn cultivators to spare a lot of hoe work done by hand."
"Which frees up people for a lot of other work," Cofflin said. "Not that it took that long even with sickles, but the people had to be here-sort of tied 'em down." He exchanged grins with Angelica. "We could use a lot more livestock like this."
"Oh, my, yes," she said. "Another hundred horses at least, and a couple of hundred cows, more sheep too. As long as we can feed them on salt-marsh hay and fishmeal, they're a perfect way to put humus and minerals in the soil. Virtuous feedback cycle, little fertilizer machines."
"The captain said we'd be bringing back machinery," Hiller said.
"And specialists to handle and repair it," Cofflin agreed.
One of the crew came down the gangplank, duffelbag over her shoulder. It took a second glance before he realized she was a… local, he reminded himself. Quite a nice-looking youngster, apart from a few missing teeth that showed as she glanced around with a dazed grin. A Guard cadet came clattering down behind her, and they walked off hand in hand.
Angelica left too, anxious to shepherd her precious horses out to Brand Farms. Cofflin stood looking after her for a moment.
"I'm worried," he said abruptly.
"Why?" Hiller said. "Everything's going according to plan, so far."
"That's what worries me," he said, and shrugged. "Well, let's get to work."
"Ahhhhhh," the crowd muttered.
Alston nodded and smiled, raising a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. Inwardly she was breathing a long sigh of relief; horses were better, but they were using oxen for this demonstration, because they were so much more common. Evidently they would work, too.
The bright burnished-bronze color of the ripe grain was a pleasure to the eye, she had to admit; field after field of it, across the gently rolling surface of the downs. The reaper rumbled and clanked down the edge of one field, the little red-and-white oxen rolling their eyes and walking at an almost-trot as the driver goaded them. A small girl led the four-ox team, and her mother drove the machine itself-they wanted to show how easy these were to use. The plank-and-wire reel spun like a slow paddle wheel, bending the tall stalks backward. Behind them the serrated edges of the cutting bar hummed, slicing the grain off three inches above the ground; it fell onto the moving canvas platform behind, and the raking attachment let it fall behind in a neat linear row.