When Doreen was silent for a long moment the Mitannian girl reached out a hand and touched her arm. "I pray to Hebat… Arinna, they call her here in Hattusas… that your man will return and hold the son you bear in his arms," she said gently. "My father died while I was in the womb, and that is a heavy thing."
Doreen found herself blinking back tears, and gave the younger woman's hand a moment's squeeze. "Thanks, kiddo," she said.
"I hope it's a daughter, though," she went on. "One of each."
Raupasha looked a little baffled; many sons was a common goodwill wish in this part of the world. Doreen went on, smiling a little: "Now Ken, he'd be a little disappointed if you'd turned out to be a boy, for instance."
Raupasha's face lit up as if a lamp were burning behind it. "Do you think so? Really?" she said, flushing. "Oh…"
Doreen chuckled. "But there are difficulties. Not least, there's Kenneth. He… feels sort of protective toward you, I think."
Raupasha looked puzzled. "Should a man not feel that he should protect his woman?"
"Well… that depends. I think part of your problem is that he's got this idea you're like a little sister."
Raupasha snorted. "He will have to learn I am not a little girl!" A sigh. "But there are more difficulties than that." She paused and changed the subject. "Doreen, what is a Jew?"
Doreen's eyebrows arched. "Well, it's sort of- ' hmmm. Can't say "religion," because Ian and I aren't believers, much. And religion's a nearly meaningless word here, where you can mix'n match your deities. "-sort of like a tribe."
"But you are all Eagle People, all Nantukhtar, aren't you?"
"Well… yes. It's a little more complicated than that… why do you ask?"
"Because I heard someone say that the Jews are clever, and I wondered what they meant." She chuckled. "If you are a Jew, then playing this game with you makes me think it must be so."
Doreen laughed with a sigh in it, and looked down at the chessboard. "Yes, I think you could say 'clever.' Part of it's that we've usually been few compared to our neighbors and not much liked, so we had to outsmart those who had more… weight of fist than we did. And part of it's that our God made us some fiendishly complicated laws, and we spent a lot of our time studying and arguing about them. Or we made the laws fiendishly complicated so we could spend our time arguing and studying them. That got to be a habit-so we ended up arguing with everybody and studying everything; like me with the stars, or Ian with ancient times."
Raupasha nodded. "It's good to be clever," she said. "It helps when you're not strong, and when you are it makes your strength more-
"It's the ship!" David squealed. "Dad, it's Dad!"
Doreen dashed over and pushed the boy aside, peering through. The Emancipator, right enough. Why haven't they radioed? she thought furiously. Was that a good sign, or a bad? What's been happening in Troy?
"They're over the wall in the lower town," Major Chong said.
"That mean what I think it means?" Ian Arnstein asked.
The air was thick with smoke drifting up from the lower city, smoke that stank of things not meant to burn. Through the narrow window he could see the flames, under an overcast sky darker than the inside of a whale's gut.
And I'm Jonah, in the belly of the beast, he thought, as a red spark arched out from the darkness into the maze of flat-topped buildings. The spark snapped with a vicious quickness, flying dirt and timbers showering skyward, then the shadows fell again. Slightly further away a line of orange fire traced across the night. Flamethrower, he thought. Simple to use; one man on the hose, two working the pumps… and the attackers would be under the stream of burning oil as they fought their way through the narrow twisting streets.
Chong coughed and grimaced; a bandage hid most of the left side of his face, crusted dark. "It means that they're going to be here and damned soon. We cut it close, Councilor."
"I'm not altogether happy about leaving." King Alaksandrus was down there, defending the city. And I talked him into fighting to the last, he thought with a sharp stab of guilt. A wave of sound came with the flicker of the fires, a distant screaming babble of voices, punctuated with explosions and a growing crackle of gunfire.
"Sir, you've got your orders and I've got mine, and the war isn't over yet. There are Marine units only three days' march away."
"That isn't going to do the Trojans much good," Arnstein said, unfolding himself from the chair.
"Neither is getting yourself killed, sir," the Marine said. "You know what the commodore says."
"Yeah, the Light Brigade got what they deserved, like Custer." Ian sighed. "All right." It'll be good to see David again, and Doreen. Even though she's going to ream me out like a Roto-Rooter for getting caught here in the first place.
"Wait a minute," he said. "I thought it was too risky for the airship to set down here?"
"They're not," Chong said. "We've got a big net set up on the highest roof, fastened to a hook on a pole. They're going to snatch us off with a slow approach."
"Oh, joy."
The offices of the Islander mission were as bright as the kerosene lanterns could make them. As he watched the radio operator gave a last tap at the key, flipped open the casing of the radio and began methodically smashing the interior with the butt of her rifle. He winced again, at the waste; at least this was one of the post-Event models, not the irreplaceable pre-Event printed circuits. Others went by with armfuls of documents, throwing them onto the fire in the courtyard outside.
"Let's do it," Arnstein said.
"Right," Chong replied. "I've got the explosive charges ready on my mortars, with all the remaining ammunition."
The palace-citadel of Troy was like a set of adobe sugar cubes piled three stories high around irregular courts; there were gleams off colored shapes on the walls as they passed, a glimpse of hands raised in prayer, a boar turned at bay, a great-eyed goddess leaning on a long sword. Humans were few, palace servants huddled in corners clutching at each other, once a man running by with a golden vase in his arms. A slave, from his skinny shanks and ragged tunic; where he thought he was going with his loot was a mystery, given what Walker's barbarian allies were rumored to do in a captured town. Others lay sodden and unmoving, breached amphorae of wine spilling like blood beside them. That was a lot more sensible, all things considered.
"Up through here, Councilor," Chong said, looking over his shoulder as they came through into a broad upper chamber- part of the queen's suite, he remembered.
The Islander party broke into a trot-mostly Islanders, there were a couple of locals along with the Marine escort, both girls; there had been enough time for that. One of the office staff had snatched up a toddler from somewhere, and the child was making a steady, thin wail. The vanguard of the escort vanished up the next staircase; Ian turned to take a last haunted look at the dying city outside the broad unshuttered windows.
Something happened. Ian Arnstein never remembered exactly what; in the next moment of clarity he found himself lying on his back, with his head twisted up against the wall. An inlaid griffin-footed table lay against his body, but he could see around the edge of it. Things were happening in the darkened room-the kerosene lantern was burning in a corner, the liquid from its reservoir spreading slowly over the gypsum slabs of the floor. Gunshots were strobing, the vicious repeated snaps of revolver fire, the heavier red blades of rifles, a bloom of white-red from a shotgun. But the sounds were distant, muffled; his ears hurt, and he raised a hand to paw feebly at one. His fingers came away red and wet from his face, but he felt no pain.