"Oh, hell," Marian said.
They'd killed the Tartessian commandant with their game-rifle barrage, all right; the massive bullet had taken the top right off his head and he lay with a sprinkle of glittering shattered glass dusted over the wetness. The woman draped over him didn't look much better; the exit wound in her back was big enough to hold paired fists.
Well, the gun was designed for elephant and buffalo, she thought with angry resignation, as automatic reflex drew a cloth out of her belt and ran the sword through it.
It wasn't that Marian Alston-Kurlelo objected to killing -» women, specifically. I scarcely could, being one myself. What she hated was noncombatants getting injured, and the Tartessian woman obviously was no warrior. Not least because of the baby lying on the floor by the desk, still swaddled in cloth as was the custom here, screaming angrily, its face and wrappings spattered with its parents' blood and bits of their lung and brain and bone.
Cost of doing business, she thought. Which is why I hate this business. Leave out the waste, filth, misery, wounds, pain, and death, and war would be a glorious thing.
Swindapa snapped her sword aside with a wrist movement that flicked off excess blood, cleaned and sheathed the steel over her shoulder in a single fluid motion, and went to one knee beside the child.
"A boy," she said after an instant, an infinite tenderness in her tone. "Not hurt, just needs changing."
That's a relief, Alston thought, her shoulders relaxing. Do Jesus, I've got enough on my conscience.
The Intelligence specialist had fallen on the desk and filing cabinets, eyes gleaming behind his spectacles; he looked like a rabbit on pure crystal meths, giving little mewing cries of astonishment as he worked. First he stuffed his satchel full, and then he dragged Marines over by their webbing harness, cramming more files into their knapsacks.
He was literally wringing his hands when they were full; this time he reminded her of a big dog she'd seen at a barbeque once, its stomach distended like a ball and a pile of bones under its front paws. It had looked at them mournfully, moaning, longing to eat and unable to find space for another bite…
She went to the window. The firing in the streets was picking up; a glance at her watch… Do Jesus, only fifteen minutes? But at some point the Tartessians were going to get organized, even with their commander dead.
"Ortiz!" she said into the handset, and looking down toward the dockside. There were buildings burning now, and the light grew by the minute. "Report."
"Ma'am, the barges're moored with a thick chain running around the outermost train and linked to iron bollards but-
Crack! A flash of red fire and a cheer she could hear clearly even hundreds of yards away.
"-but that's got it!" She could hear him turn his head, the voice fading a bit as he yelled: "Lay aloft there, get those sails sheeted home-Johnstone to the tiller!"
"Carry on." A switch of frequencies; Lord Jesus, but they were going to miss these things when they wore out! The post-Event equivalents were barely man-transportable, and ludicrously unreliable. "Major Stavrand."
"On schedule, ma'am! Target-rich environment here. I feel like a kid in Sweet Inspirations with a sack of gold!"
"Get it done, Mr. Stavrand," she said. "Soon."
The artillery officer liked blowing things up, which was why he doubled as a demolitions expert. He was also very good at it. And he grew up after the Event-otherwise he'd have said "a credit card." So the twentieth century vanished, bit by bit.
She began to turn, then staggered and threw up her hand as the tower quaked beneath her and adobe dust smoked out of the walls. One of the squat mud-brick warehouses vanished in a gout of flame and pillar of smoke, and wreckage came pattering out of the sky for a thousand yards in every direction. Much of it was burning, and no doubt it would set more fires despite the rain.
Well, Stavrand took me at my word, she thought, blinking and shaking her head. Just then the pontoon bridge lit up, a poca-poca-poca-poca of small explosions sending sheets of poor man's napalm-benzene and kerosene with soap flakes-in every direction; the wood was damp and green but it caught at once, and sent a wall of flame and black smoke up across the river. Squads were moving among the piles of cargo on the wharves, sloshing kerosene about and setting yet more fires; once they danced back yelling from a pile of barrels that turned out to be full olive oil. That poured like a sluggish river of red lava down the streets as it burned…
"Go, go, go!" Marian said to the others. The Marines went, and the Intelligence officer stumbled in their wake.
Swindapa had the baby on the desk, efficiently rewrapping it in a shawl and a section of tapestry. Without looking up she spoke:
"Before you ask what I'm doing, I'm saving the baby."
' 'Dapa… we just killed his parents…"
"Yes, and we're going to blow this place up in a minute," she said. "That just means he needs someone to look after him, doesn't he?" She jerked her tight-braided blond head at the window, and the Walpurgisnacht of explosions and fire and cold rain outside. "And we can't leave him in that, either, can we?"
"When you put it that way…" Marian sighed. She flicked the cylinder of her Python open, spilled the spent brass and reloaded. "Let's go."
Down the stairs, past the combat engineers setting the demolition charges and backing away, unreeling fuse from a spool they held between them. Out into the rain, Swindapa loping beside her with the squalling infant in the crook of her left arm I and her pistol in her right hand. Chaos on the docks, towering pyramids of flame with scraps of tarpaulin floating up into the rainy smoke cutting the visibility even beyond what nature occluded. The bitter stink of things not meant to burn choked her until she coughed. She blinked watering eyes, wiped the back of her hand across them; the barge-trains were pulling away from the dock, the wind was light but in the proper direction, and they were operating with the current, thank God. Troops were pouring back to the wharf and over the retaining wall into boats and barges; some came laughing, smoke smut on their faces, alight with the thoughtless pleasures of destruction. Others limped, or staggered with comrades' arms over their shoulders, or were carried on folding stretchers. Another came grinning with a butchered lamb carcass from some Tartessian pantry under one arm and a field dressing across the side of his face.
She felt her face go grimmer, thinking of the labor that had gone into making all this, pushing plows and swinging hammers and working the heddles of looms.
Not many Islanders hurt-surprisingly few, with an operation this size. She looked at her watch again. The glowing dials of the self-winding radium face showed 0230 hours. Less than half an hour, by God. The Tartessians were recovering, though: pretty soon they'd…
Schooonk. Dozens of heads whipped up at the all-too-familiar sound.
"Medium mortar," she said quietly.
There were thousands of things the Islanders knew how to do but couldn't because the materials were too hard to find, or the tools too complicated to build. On the other end of the curve were smoothbore mortars firing finned bombs; one of those simple ideas like the stirrup or the rudder that weren't thought of until long after the technology to produce them was available. The eighteenth-century level Tartessos had achieved was more than ample…
Shuddump!
Dimly, half-seen, a fountain of water leaped up out of the river, hung, fell in shattered spray. "All right, people, let's get out of here before they start hitting things."