Swindapa tried to whisper a Cursing Song, but it didn't feel right, as if the Moon Woman couldn't hear her in this place. She started again as footsteps moved toward her, from the other side of the two-wheeled oxcart. Please. It wasn't time for the woman who brought her food and water. Brought most days; sometimes they forgot. The big leather tent twenty paces away in that direction was Daurthunnicar's. Sometimes men came over from there and forced her or hurt her in other ways. That hadn't happened for twice seven of days; she'd tried to make herself too filthy, by voiding in the dirt instead of the trench they'd made her dig, and rolling in the mud. If they were drunk enough on mead or hemp they might not care-
It was the woman, and a few others with her, and behind them the whole crowd was returning to camp, chattering. There was a high note to their voices, excitement or fear.
The women paused around her. "She stinks," one said. "The guests will be insulted."
Swindapa stayed huddled on the ground, legs drawn up under her and ready to scrabble away. Sometimes the women were kind, but other times they kicked her, or dropped the food in the dirt.
"She did that to keep the men off," another voice said. This one was younger, and there was colored work in the shoes beneath the dyed woolen skirt. "They haven't been at her for two seven-days now. She'll look all right when she's cleaned up. The bruises are mostly gone."
Another voice chuckled. "It'd take more than a whiff to keep that boar-stallion away when he's had a few horns." The tone changed. "Diasas. Get up." The toe prodded her in the ribs.
"Yes, Iraiina," Swindapa said.
The tribe-name meant "free" or "noble" in the Sun People tongue. She came to her feet, gritting her teeth and stretching. The Iraiina women averted their eyes a little; it was shameful to go without clothes among the Sun People. That was why they'd kept her stripped, to shame her. Among her people, clothes were for warmth or comfort or show, but now she knew what their word naked meant. It meant helplessness.
A kinder voice spoke: "Come. The rahax says you are to be washed clean." That one made a tsk sound between her teeth. "He should have bestowed you long before this. He wouldn't treat a dog so, why a woman?"
"Wirronnaur's arm festered where she cut him," the younger woman explained. "And her kin wouldn't pay enough for her, they don't, you know-they say that if they pay for one, we'll take others, so it's against their law. The rahax was angry."
"Well, he still shouldn't have let them treat her like this, as if this were a raiders' camp. Come on, Earth girl, we have to clean you and see you're sound."
"Why?" Swindapa asked.
The woman sawing the leash tugged on it painfully. "The rahax says it."
"Careful," the older women said. To Swindapa: "Foreigners came today, in a great ship."
"Wizards," the younger woman said, spitting in the dirt and making the sign of the horns. "Night Ones, maybe."
"No, these Eagle People are men. Maybe wizards, and very strange, but men," the older woman said. She had a plump face, with four braids of graying black hair secured by bronze rings. Her voice was not unkind as she spoke to Swindapa. "Don't worry, you'll be treated better when you have one master to protect you. The rahax is to give you as a feasting-gift tomorrow. You'll be the stranger chief's. If you please him, you might be free soon, even become a second or third wife. You'll live well then-the strangers are rich and powerful. Come, we've got soaproot and sweet herbs, and then we're to feed you. That will feel better, won't it?"
"Why do we have to carry these pigstickers, sir?" one of the cadets asked, looking dubiously at the spear he'd been handed.
"Because the natives don't know what guns are, and we aren't going to let them know unless we need to surprise them, and we don't want them to think we're unarmed except for funny-looking clubs, either," Lieutenant Walker said. He looked around with a bright-eyed interest that was somehow also cool. "Now shut up."
Alston noted the byplay and forced herself to stop fiddling with her gloves. She was in dress uniform-well, mostly, damned if she was going to wear a skirt-and a lot was riding on the impression she made. The medal ribbons were ridiculous, but that was one of the Coast Guard's little foibles. You could get four or five of them just for getting out of boot camp or the Academy.
There were twenty in the shore party: herself, Arnstein, Rosenthal, Walker, and an escort of cadets, picked largely because they still remembered how to march smartly in step, not something the Coast Guard generally put much emphasis on. The cadets all had Army Kevlar helmets from Nantucket, a little incongruous but better than anything available locally. They carried spears and shields made up in the island machine shop, for show, and likewise short swords. The pistols at their waists and the rifles and shotguns across their backs were for emergency use. If it came to that she supposed they could shoot their way out without much problem; people who'd never been exposed to firearms of any sort would scatter at the first blast and not stop running for a while.
And it had better not come to that. They needed the grain back on the island. Badly. Besides, she didn't relish the thought of gunning down men virtually unarmed.
She was wearing a sword herself, one she'd saved several years to buy, back in her early twenties in San Francisco, and a shorter companion on the other side of her belt. She wondered for a moment what Sensei Hishiba would think of where the set of katana and wakizashi had ended up…
"Let's go," she said. "Ms. Rapczewicz, you have the deck."
The boatswain's pipes squealed. "Eagle departing!" rang out as she stepped into the boat and the davits swung out to lower it. The ship's bell rang three times, then again a single time.
Oars bit the water; the boats threw long shadows ahead of themselves as the sun sank behind. Bonfires blossomed ahead, up and down the shoreline, but the forest inland was a rustling sea of darkness. When full dark came, the sky overhead would be a frosted blaze of stars, as it never was ashore in her own time. A low chanting was running through the crowds ahead, backlit against their fires, deep men's voices and a keening female oversong weaving among trumpets that sounded like nothing so much as Tibetan radongs. Drumbeat thudded under it… no, she realized, that was the sound of feet, pounding the earth in unison. A crawling went up her spine, less fear than sheer lonesomeness. The oars caught slightly.
"Steady there," she said.
The boats' keels grounded on sand and shingle. Oars nipped up in unison, and the landing party disembarked. The sailor crews pushed the boats off again, to wait ready just in case.
Marian Alston stepped ashore onto dry land that crunched under her boots. The chanting and stamping cut off. A bristle of trumpets sounded again, upright shapes six feet long with gaping mouths shaped like the heads of wolves and boars. The cadets formed around her and the other officer, except for those who were lugging the bundles of gifts. She blinked aside strangeness and the failing light to see what awaited her.
More of the green boughs, for starters-evidently a peace signal, like the Biblical olive branch. A group of men waited, in the leather kilts she'd come to expect but with brightly dyed tunics and leggings as well, bracelets and neck rings of chased gold, pendant necklaces of amber and gold, silver pectorals set with colored stones. Behind them their chariots were drawn up. The horses wore headdresses of nodding plumes, and hangings of felt covered with writhing colored applique shapes of animals and monsters along their flanks.