The Americans had triumphed back home in the future, but it wasn't because they were better at espionage or covert operations or dezinformatzia. Even the stupid Russians had been better at that.
Now…
He took a deep breath. "Eumenes, Taltos, I'll go on alone from here."
The guards stationed down the long corridor bore the shoulder flashes of the regent's personal regiment, recruited from his ancestral estates in Ithaka. They stood like statues against the iridescent mosaics of the walls, no doubt ready to put down any challenge to their master's power.
Any challenge that can be met with brute force, Mittler thought. Not that brute force is to be despised, but I think I've just demonstrated its limitations. Odikweos would need him… and there would come a time when he didn't need Odikweos.
A last pair of guards firmly but courteously relieved him of his weapons and opened the tall doors with their wolfshead handles. The study within was one Walker had been fond of, with French doors overlooking a terrace, the gardens and the city he'd founded. I will keep the name, Mittler decided.
The… well, not exactly the regent anymore… was seated behind the desk. Two steel longswords rested on the subtly beautiful inlay; Mittler's brows rose, but he supposed there was some superstitious reason. At this stage of historical evolution such things were to be expected-the dialectic predicted them.
"My lord Regent," Mittler said. "I regret to report that rioters-doubtless in the pay of the conspirators-have eliminated the remaining family of our beloved fallen lord."
Some of the children had had to be dragged out of closets and from under beds. Regrettable, but given the dynastic beliefs of these people, necessary.
The Achaean nodded, his craggy features set and somber in the light of the single lamp. "Everything you say, my friend, is to the point," he said. "You are a man of swift wit, Lord Mittler. But you have never been a sailor."
"A sailor, my lord?"
"If you had, you would know that a rope is no stronger than its weakest part. So with a braided rope of thoughts. If the first strand is weak, all the others fail, be they braided with ever so much skill."
The French doors opened, and a tall man stepped in. He was in Achaean dress, but height and the glasses on his beak nose and the whole way he held himself shouted of the twentieth century.
"You," Mittler whispered.
"Me," Ian Arnstein said. He smiled unpleasantly. "The Jew-boy. We do meet again, Herr Mittler. I understand that you enjoy chess… and so do I. Check, and mate."
Mittler felt blood running to his face, and rage made the collar of his uniform tunic too tight, "you," he said. "I should have known-
Odikweos lifted one of the swords and rapped it on the table. "You should not have assumed that because a man was born in this time, he was a fool. The King of Men, for all his cunning, also thought so," he said gently. "I have never made that mistake, even with women, slaves, or barbarians. A man who underestimates a foe is a fool indeed."
"You were in this with the Jew!"
The Achaean shook his head. "By no means. I was angry with my lord, and so I told this man. I told him also what I would do were my lord to fall; but I did not raise my hand against him. Nor did he slay my lord. You did, Lord Mittler. Thus when you die, my lord is avenged… and I am free of obligation, in the eyes of Gods and men. And Walker's hand-fast men are free to follow me, since their lord's sons died with him."
The noise from the city beyond was swelling. The crackle of small arms came loud, and the flat boom of cannon, and the screaming of many voices.
"That is the attack on the headquarters of your ministry," Odikweos said.
"You- ' Mittler forced his anger down. "I will serve you well," he said. "You need me."
Odikweos laughed; it was a sound no man of the twentieth could have made, and entirely amused. "Serve me as you served the lord you betrayed?" he said. "No, Lord Mittler, I do not need you. I am not a foreigner who must rule the telestai of the Achaeans by putting them in constant fear. I am of the blood of Zeus; I am a man they can obey without cost to their honor. They have been at war and in a storm of change for near ten years. They will welcome one of their own-who holds the capital and the armies-and they will welcome a time of rest."
Arnstein crossed his arms and smiled again; Mittler wondered why he had ever thought the other man soft. The Achaean lord put the point of his sword under the blade of the other, near the hilt. With an expert flip of his thick wrist he flicked it up, to land at the German's feet. The steel sang with a discordant harmonic.
"Pick it up," Odikweos said, coming around the desk. He moved lightly despite the solid strength of his shoulders. "The talons of the Kindly Ones are on your neck, Mittler. My lord
Walker's ghost waits for your blood to be spilled in offering before he crosses Lethe."
Mittler picked up the sword. It felt heavy and awkward in his hand; for a brief instant he wondered how the same weight could be so graceful in Odikweos's grip.
The steel kopesh was lead-heavy in Djehuty's hand as he retreated another step; the ring of Egyptians grew smaller as they stood shoulder to shoulder around the standard. For Khem, he thought, and slashed backhand. The edge thudded into the rim of an Aramaean's shield, and the leather-covered wicker squeezed shut on the blade. The nomad shrieked with glee and wrenched, trying to tear the weapon from the Egyptian's hand. Djehuty's lips bared dry teeth as he smashed the boss of his own shield in the man's face, then braced a foot on his body to wrench the sickle-sword free. For Sennedjem! he thought, swinging it down. Distracted, he did not see the spearhead that punched into his side just below the short ribs. Bent over, wheezing, he saw the spearman staring incredulously at the way the bronze point had bent over double against the iron scales of his armor, then scream frustration and club the spear. Exhaustion weighed down his limbs as he struggled to turn, to bring up shield and blade. Something struck him again, he couldn't tell where, and the world went gray.
His last thought was that the earth tasted of salt from the blood that soaked it.
Bits of the formulae for addressing the Judge of the Dead flitted through Djehuty's head along with blinding pain as his eyelids fluttered open. But it was not jackal-headed Anubis who bent over him, but a foreigner with a cup of water. The Egyptian sucked it down gratefully before he thought to wonder at it.
Prisoner, he thought. I must be a prisoner. But he was not bound, and beneath him lay a folding cot with a canvas bed, not the hard ground. He turned his head carefully. He was under a great awning, amid rows of others. Sennedjem! His son lay not far away. Djehuty gasped relief to see his chest rising under a mummy's swath of bandages. But what was held in the clear glass bottle that was connected to his arm by a flexible tube?
Djehuty's eyes went wide when he realized that the same piece of sorcerer’s apparatus drained into his own arm. Gradually the fear died, and the pain in his head became less. When the foreigner's black commander came, he was able to stare back with something approaching dignity as she sat on a folding stool beside his cot.
She spoke, and the Sudunu interpreter relayed the words:
"You and your men fought very well."
Djehuty blinked, then nodded. "You deceived us very well. Ransom?" he went on without much hope.
She shook her head. "When the war is over, we will release all our prisoners."
Djehuty blinked again, this time in surprise. It would take a strong commander to deny victorious troops the plunder of victory, and the sale of prisoners was an important part of that. Even Pharaoh, the living God, might have difficulties. With an effort, he fought down bitterness against Ramses; what the Pharaoh decreed, must be done… even if it destroyed the Brigade of Seth at the word of the foreigner Mek-Andrus.