"They are… forethoughtful, careful, they work very hard to make every small thing happen as they desire," she said. How do you say methodical or systematic? she wondered. That sort of thing happened all the time these days, and it made her head itch inside. You just couldn't say some things she'd learned in her birth tongue.
Swindapa's mother shifted her youngest sister around and began to nurse. The girl fought down a sharp stab of envy, followed by an all-consuming anger. Her own hand clenched on the hilt of her katana. The Iraiina would pay for robbing her of that, pay with pain. Yet if all of them died, it would not be enough.
"They have more things than these machines you've seen," Swindapa's mother went on. "Wonderful things… I've seen the hills of the Moon Itself with their tel-e-sk-opes." Everyone touched brow and heart and genitals in awe.
"And the tools, the weapons and armor, and the cloth, and the ornaments," the dark-haired Spear Chosen said eagerly. "We must have these things! We must find what they want in exchange."
"No," Swindapa said slowly. The others looked at her in surprise. "We must learn how to make these things, for ourselves. Or we would become as little children to the Eagle People forever, without their meaning us any harm."
Slow nods went around the circle.
"Another raid so soonly?" Isketerol said, in English. "Soonish? Nowly?"
"So soon," Walker said, correcting him absently. Odd. He's kept getting better at English… oh, he must speak it with what's-her-name, Rosita.
"Political necessity," he went on in Tartessian, unshipping his binoculars. "Got to keep the tribes thinking about the war, if we're to get the levy together again."
Bastard quieted as he dropped the reins on the horn of his saddle. The shade of the trees overhead was welcome- it'd been getting pretty hot for an English summer, and they'd all been out in it as the war of ambush and border skirmish went on relentlessly. Sweat trickled out of the padding of his armor, and out of the helmet lining, stinging his eyes. It mixed with the heavier smell of Bastard's sweat, the oiled-metal scent of armor, going naturally somehow with the creak of leather and the low chinking of war harness from man and horse alike.
Typical enough, he thought, scanning back and forth across the enemy hamlet. They were up on the downs of what would have become Sussex, just on the edge where the open chalklands gave way to the forested clay soils lower down-New Barn Down, the Ordnance Survey maps called it. The Earth Folk settlement was five round thatched huts inside a rough rectangle of earthwork, two of the walls overlapping to make a sort of gate; a palisade of short poles topped it all around. Square fields and pastures of an acre or so each lay about the steading, fading off into forest on the hills to the north. A rutted track led off that way, through a shallow dry valley between two of the downs. There was something odd, though…
Isketerol spotted it. "They've been beforehand with their harvest," the Tartessian said. He looked up. "It's been hot and dry for this sodden marsh of an island, but it's still early for them to have it all in."
Walker lowered the binoculars and nodded thoughtfully. The grainfields were all reaped stubble, not even any sheaves of grain standing in the fields. Usually the locals left those in little three-sheaf tipis in the fields, so the crop would dry better. He looked through the field glasses again. Yup. Grain stacks inside the wall. Even so… He did a quick mental calculation. Less than there should be, and the harvest had been good this year from all the scout's reports. Maybe they'd rushed it because of the war.
"Yeah, something funny there," he said slowly.
The creaking got a little louder. He looked around; his followers were grinning and sweating with single-minded eagerness. For them it was just another fight, and an easy one with sixty of them in full gear against one little farm hamlet. Plus there were cattle and sheep grazing around the Earth Folk settlement, and he'd found that the Iraiina and their relatives had a peculiar attitude about livestock. Sort of like a yuppie and his Lamborghini, or his car and his bank account put together. Their idea of status was to sit and watch endless herds of their very own cow-beasts driven by: Iraiina used the same word for big herd of cattle and wealth in general. Not entirely unlike the Bitterroot ranchers he'd been raised among.
"All right," he said quietly. "Let's do this by the numbers."
Ohotolarix raised his aurochs-horn trumpet to his lips. It dunted huu-huuu-huuuu through the beeches and oaks, a harsh droning echo. With a crashing and ripping of branches and underbrush, two parties of a dozen men each spurred their horses out and around on either side, heading upslope to cut the Fiernans off from the north. The rest came out of hiding more carefully, forming into a line and trotting forward. Screams sounded from ahead; Fiernan herders tried to get their charges moving north, then saw they'd be cut off and abandoned the animals to run for the settlement. His followers whooped triumph as they rounded up the bawling, baaing livestock and edged it out of the way, back toward the woods.
No horses, he thought. Not much of a surprise; the Earth Folk didn't keep many of them. He swung down out of the saddle and the rest of the band followed, except for a few scouts; youths not ready for full warrior status came forward to hold reins. Make more sense to have the men do that, taking turns. Not possible, though. Honor forbids. He sneered a little. That attitude would have to go eventually, but for now it wasn't worth the trouble of offending their superstitions.
"Let's go," he said, drawing his sword. "No male prisoners." Too much trouble to take back; they were a fair way from home. "Forward!"
The men bayed answer: "Forward with Sky Father! Horned Man with us!"
Hard dusty ground and ankle-length stubble caught at his feet. Shieldmen formed up before and on either side of him, and his bannerman by his side. His head swiveled as he checked. Front rank with shields up-the Fiernans had some pretty good archers, much better than the eastern tribes-and spears bristling. Crossbowmen behind them, with their shields slung over their backs. He frowned as he looked ahead. Those L-shaped entrances could be tricky; you couldn't just hit the wall on either side and storm the gate. All right, we'll hit the outer wall, cross the laneway, and then turn in. He gave orders, and the pace picked up to a trot, his plate armor clattering among the musical chink-chink of the others' chain hauberks. Makes it easy to stay in shape, this does. No more steppercizer.
An arrow wobbled out from the palisade and stood in the dirt. Men barked laughter, and the taut whung of crossbows sounded. They were well within range, and the heavy quarrels would probably go right through the rickety stakes that made up the chest-high defenses; those were as much to keep livestock in as enemies out. Screams of pain confirmed the thought.
Walker paused a half-stride to pull the enemy arrow out of the ground. About thirty inches long, ashwood, fletched with gray goose feathers-fairly standard. The head was not- a narrow steel thing like a miniature cold chisel. His teeth skinned back from his lips. Nantucket-made, to an old pattern. Bodkin point, they'd been called in medieval England.
Arrowheads like that had flown in deadly storms at Crecy and Agincourt.
The first wave of Walkerburg men hit the embankment and scrambled up, chopping the edges of their shields into the turf as they toiled to mount the breast-high earthwork; the others stood close behind and shot over their heads-his men didn't just bull in regardless, he'd gotten that well drilled into them, that winning was more important than showing how brave you were. He hung back himself, watching the action. Walker had proved himself often enough to make that possible, and besides, he was a wizard-halfway to a god, in fact, which exempted him from the usual standards.