He sighed, straightened, ran a hand over his cropped hair. "I suppose… no, you are right." He smiled into the dark eyes. "What would I do without you?"
"I will do you good and not evil all your days," she said softly, quoting the marriage ceremony. Then she laid a hand on her stomach and her smile grew wider. "And you have already done something with me you could not do without. I was going to wait another week, but…"
He folded her in his arms, feeling joy blaze. The haunting thought of blankets and baskets traveling from one port to the next didn't quite fade, but it was enough. It was reason to keep going.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
April, 11 A.E.-Feather River Valley, California
After so long in tunic and leggings like those of the rangers, it felt a little odd to Spring Indigo Giernas to go once more in nothing more than a brief wraparound skirt of deerskin, much like what she would have worn in summer as a young woman of the Cloud Shadow people. She leaned into the tumpline that held the big carrying basket on her back, both hands gripping the rawhide just past the padded section that rested across her forehead. How quickly you got used to having horses to carry things! The burden made it natural to keep her eyes down on the graveled surface of the road. It also made it easier to hide the smile that threatened to break through when she remembered how Peter-Sue had told her the name meant "rock," which was very good-had bellowed and roared when she told him that she had to be the one to scout the enemy encampment.
Who shall go? she'd said. My sister, with her eyes like the summer sky? Jaditwara, with those eyes and hair the color of the sun, too? You, my husband, taller than a tree and bearded like a bear-a bear whose face hair is always on fire? Even if the hair and eyes were like these people here, you all have faces like hatchets, pushed forward. Or like Eagles, of course, very handsome once it stops being strange! No, no, it must be me- didn't you say that your law was one for men and women?
She hid a chuckle behind a decorous face. Oh, he had bellowed, yes, roared and pawed the earth like a bison in the rutting season… which he was like, and in more ways than on the blanket. She and Sue had worn him down though; for he was a fair man and just. It was well for a strong chief to have two wives who worked in concert-they could usually make a man see reason, which was better for everybody.
Spring Indigo licked dust from her lips, putting down fear. The fort of the Tartessians came nearer with every step, growing from a description, a shadow, to a thing like a mountain made by men.
I am just one woman of the land to them, she told herself. They will not see my face among so many.
To her, the differences between her people and these dwellers in the sunset lands were obvious, easy to see at a glance- her people were taller, with a different cast of face. But the enemy would see what they expected and no more.
Tidtaway was trudging beside her, carrying a hide sack over his shoulder. She didn't like Quick Tongue. He'd kept trying to get her to lie with him, which was bad manners if the husband did not make the offer. Still, he is brave and has guided us well. It would be too odd for a strange woman to come here unaccompanied; that would make them really look at her.
The roadway grew crowded as they approached the great fortress of the Tartessians; occasionally she stole a look at the immense log that speared up into the sky from its center. The people of the land walked to either side, leaving the center of the roadway free for riders and wagons. She glanced nervously aside at those, and up at the ramparts ahead of her.
This is as nothing before the arts of the Eagle People, who are wise and strong, she told herself. She was one of the Eagle People herself now; when they went to Pete's home she would see far stranger, far greater things. All this the Tartessians learned from us, like a child following her mother and imitating the roots she gathers.
For a moment it daunted her; if this was just a child's copy, a poor imitation, what was Nantucket itself like? No real picture had formed in her mind of the Island, the stories were too wild and strange…
"Now I must be as a still pool, to reflect, and to remember," she muttered to herself.
The roadway rose above the crop fields on either side. Men and women were working in those, some Tartessians, some tribesfolk captives driven to work with blows. Horses pulled machines with wheels and many iron teeth down rows, and the teeth turned the soil like a digging stick but far faster. Another machine with long wooden arms that turned around and around stood and groaned, and water poured out of its base, to run off through ditches between fruit trees; workers tended the ditches with hoes, piling up earth here and tearing it down there. Beneath an open shed, men were struggling with animals-sheep, they were called-the long hair of their coats being cut off with iron shears. The near-naked beasts looked comical as they were driven away, giving bleating cries, and women carried off the hair-the wool-to great bins.
They neared the gate. She looked for the details the others had told her to observe. Squat towers bulked on each side of the massive log portal, and the snouts of cannon, which were like rifles but vastly larger, poked out. Lower down were long slim tubes through narrow slits in the walls. Those would be the throwers-of-flame; she shuddered at the thought. Many enemy warriors, all dressed curiously alike in green and brown, paced on top of the palisade above the sloping turf of the earth wall. More waited by the gates; there was a broad flat place with tables, and Tartessians sitting behind them on chairs. She recognized both from what the expedition had made for the cabins where they wintered in the mountains. The sitting men were differently dressed, in long tunics but with their legs bare, and strapped sandals on their feet. They waved and shouted, and she followed Tidtaway over to them.
A man of the land stood beside the seated official. He spoke sharply to Tidtaway, and the guide walked humbly to them and spoke. Eyes on the ground, Spring Indigo tensed. This was a dangerous part of the plan. The interpreter was of this area. Tidtaway could not pretend to speak his language anything but badly. He was to claim he came from far up the valley to the north, where the tribute caravan had passed through. They both turned so that the little round puckered scars of the vaccination could be seen.
It seemed the Tartessian accepted Tidtaway's story. He grunted and took the little leather bags from the guide's satchel and poured them out. Dust and nuggets panned from streams piled up, a dull yellow color against the smooth pottery on which they lay. There was a machine before the official, a metal stand with pans on either side, pivoting in the center of the arm that bore them. The seated man took one of the pans from its nest of chains, scraped nuggets and dust onto it with a spatula, replaced it, put little metal weights on the other side until they balanced. Then he consulted notes on paper; she recognized the signs, the al-pha-bet she had been learning herself, but of course in the foreign language of Tartessos. His fingers flicked stone beads strung in columns on another pottery square.
Her eyes tracked movement. The warriors in green cloth and brown leather were tensing. Very slightly, but it was the tension of men ready for a fight. They held their rifles across their chests, the sun bright on the knives clipped to their ends to make them spears as well.
They think that perhaps Tidtaway will become angry, she thought. She thought of remarks she'd heard translated as Peter and Sue and Jaditwara discussed. Ah… because he will be cheated. An angry man might forget he was alone.
The Tartessian pushed round metal disks-coins such as she'd been shown by Peter and the others-across the table. Two were of gold, but shining much brighter than the nuggets. Others were of what must be silver, and more still of copper, a metal she knew from small ornaments brought in trade from the far north to her birth-people. All bore fascinating pictures; of a beak-nosed man, of a woman in a fanciful headdress; of a dreadful figure with three legs and a single eye. She didn't understand how these beautiful things could be worth less than a handful of dust and heavy rock.