Rapczewicz whipped her head back and forth. The two wooden schooners couldn't use such a weapon, not without destroying themselves; they'd anchored well away, too. They did each have hundreds of Fiernan Spear Chosen packed below their decks. As the Sun People warriors scrambled up the sides, the Earth Folk fighters came screaming up the companionways. They boiled to the sides, stabbing with spears, slamming clubs down on Sun People heads and arms and fingers.
A cry behind her. "Boarders!"
Some of the canoes had circled around and were approaching from the landward side. The Eagle's skeleton crew dashed to meet them, drawing weapons or snatching javelins from racks along the rail. Wrought-iron grapnels came upward at the ends of knotted ropes, and the warriors behind them. Armored Americans stabbed and shoved and tried to cut the grapnels free, but the ropes were wound with metal wire for several feet down from the loops that held them to the iron hooks.
Rapczewicz drew the radio with her left hand. "Rapczewicz to Pentagon Base," she said. "Report status."
"Base One here. Status is go, ma'am."
"Do it. Rapczewicz out."
Her right hand drew the Colt and thumbed back the hammer. A bearded warrior in a kilt tried to force his way through a gap. She fired at two yards' distance, and a round blue hole appeared in the man's forehead. The back of his head blew away, and he toppled backward to land on a canoe and overturn it. She blinked to let the muzzle flash that strobed across her vision die away, then aimed at another point-blank target.
Isketerol of Tartessos flung up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the flame, keeping his other braced against the gunwale. The raw wood was rough and splintery under his palm, reminding him unpleasantly of how fast it could burn.
"Dragon's breath!" his cousin said, his voice trembling.
"Dragon's shit," Isketerol said, and spat over the side. "Remember the pump?"
Miskelefol turned to him, his eyes wide and tinted red by the light. "The pump!" he said incredulously.
Walker had rigged up a piston-style pump for the Tartessian encampment, sucking through a cast-iron pipe from a deep well.
"Well, think, cousin. That's a pump there, only it's spurting out oil-fish oil, whale oil. Then they set it alight."
The terror of the supernatural faded out of the other Tartessian's eyes. "That's clever," he said. "But using it on a ship-"
"On a ship of steel," Isketerol said, peering through his binoculars. "Wait… the savages are heading around to the other side of Eagle. And they're closing in on the schooners, by the Crone. More balls than sense."
Miskelefol tensed. "If they can carry them-"
"No." Isketerol spat again, peering through the dark. "Too many fighters-more on board than I thought they could have, hidden belowdecks. May the Crone's knife cut the fatherless sheep-sucking bitch, she's clever."
As clever as you? Isketerol thought uneasily. As clever as Will?
"Still, they're heavily engaged. We may be able to run-"
He was about to raise his voice in a shouted order to close in when the chuffchuffchuff sound from the Amurru-kan camp rose in pitch and speed. A high shrill whistle clove the air; he recognized it, a steam whistle from one of the hot-water-engines the Amurrukan used on Nantucket. Then it changed to a hard quick rapping sound, as of a stick dragged quickly down a set of iron rods.
The air whistled, a different note. One of the rowers pitched sideways, threshing. Isketerol could see the fletching on the short heavy dart that stood three-quarters buried in the man's temple. Another two quivered in the timbers of the galley, sunk almost as deep. The water whickered to his right as a spray of the same missiles hit it. The full force had struck the galley to his left, and half the rowers were down. His eyes widened. That's over two thousand paces away! his mind protested. Then it leaped quickly, to the big spinning wheels the steam engines had… flywheels, that was the word. If you could somehow make a flywheel grab and throw arrows-
"Back to the ships! Retreat! Retreat!" he bellowed through the megaphone.
The galley leaped in the water as it turned. Isketerol forced himself not to crouch or cringe. "What next!" he screamed, shaking his fist backward at the taunting reach of Eagle's masts. It wasn't fair. "You'll pay for this!"
The buzzing noise overhead was back, and louder.
The radio beeped. Swindapa murmured in her sleep and then stirred, waked from her doze as much by her companion slipping out from under the blankets as by the noise. Low words followed, lost before she was fully conscious of them.
Marian was smiling as she came back toward the bed; Swindapa could feel it, if not see it, but the smile was not, a happy one. Reeds crackled and rustled under her feet, but she was invisible with only the faint reddish ghost-glow reflected from the beams and thatch above.
"What happened?" Swindapa asked drowsily.
The wicker partitions gave them privacy from sight, but none from sound. It wasn't very noisy; a dog stirring now and then, a baby crying, a couple making love, the low crackle of the central hearth. Swindapa found the noises broke her rest more than she'd expected. That's strange. This is home. How can it be hard to sleep, when I slept here all my life? Without the woven walls, either-those were for elders. She was glad of the flea powder Marian had sprinkled on their bedding, too. I've become fussy. Her relatives had stared as she ate with a fork and wiped her lips with a cloth.
"What happened?" Marian repeated. Her voice had a growling undertone. "The ships back at Pentagon Base were attacked-the Tartessians, we think, with local allies."
Swindapa stiffened and gripped her as she slid beneath the blankets. "What happened!"
Marian gave a whispering wolf-chuckle. "Let's put it this way-the flamethrowers worked."
"Oh." A bad death, she thought. On the shadow side, they deserved it. If they want to live long, let them stay at home. "Good."
The black woman sighed after a moment. "I was worried," she admitted, her voice soft against Swindapa's shoulder. "Damn worried. Complex plan. Too many things that could have gone wrong. And I couldn't be there."
The Fiernan smiled in the darkness, holding her close and stroking her back, feeling the tension in the muscles. So many worries, she thought. Only me to hear them. Marian bore a weight heavier than the Grandmother of Grandmothers knew. For everyone else she must always be strong.
"It did work," the Fiernan said. Lips met in darkness. "Now forget that, and pay attention to me. And this."
"Sugar, I'm a little tired-mmmm!"
"You're not tired, you're tense. And you're pretty… so pretty."
Some time later Marian was quivering again. "If you only knew how fine that feels," she sighed.
"I know exactly how it feels," Swindapa purred. "But maybe this will feel even better."
Marian made a choked sound, turned her head aside and bit into the coarse wool of the blanket, then relaxed with a long sigh.
"You're not tense anymore," Swindapa chuckled, raising herself on her elbows and peering up toward the other's face.