Two big kettles were simmering with Jesus Stew-cubes of bouillon for stock, dried beans and peas, parched barley, chopped-up lengths of desiccated sausage and similarly "desecrated" vegetables, garlic powder, and sage, that service legend claimed not only proved the doctrine of the Resurrection, but was the Life. Together with bread baked that morning at the base camp and hard crumbly Alban cheese it made a pleasant enough dinner; the Marines tore into it with the thoughtless, wolfish enthusiasm of hardworking youngsters who'd mostly been raised on Bronze Age farms where this would be feast-day food.
Despite the day's work a flute came out; the song that set them swaying and clapping was half-new, a mutation of something dug out of a book during the dark, hungry winter of the Year 1, and crossbred since with things native to this era:
"I'll sing the base and you sing the solo-
Hob y derri dando!
All about the clipper ship the Marco Polo-
Ganni, ganni yato!
See her rollin', though the water…"
Marian Alston watched them with amused affection as she gnawed a goose drumstick, back a little around a separate fire as befitted senior officers. There's a big part of our future, she thought with satisfaction.
Some would go back to their birth-countries after their hitch. Most would settle down in the Republic as new-minted citizens, already English-speaking and literate, used to brushing their teeth and keeping clock-time and not attributing anything unusual to black magic, not to mention the males having something approaching civilized attitudes toward women beaten into their thick skulls. Then they'd become farmers or factory workers, clerks or sailors or shopkeepers, and their children…
After an hour the fires had burned low, only a few sparks drifting upward to the darkened, overcast sky; Ritter looked at her watch, nodded slightly to the platoon sergeant, and he called lights-out in a fine seagoing bellow:
"And this isn't a hunting trip, either. You useless bastards have work to do tomorrow, and I'm going to see that you do it! Clarkson, bank the fires. Standard watches, and keep your eyes open and your ears, too. If any of you get y›our throats cut I'll find a wizard to raise you from the mound and kill you again myself. Jump, you slackers!"
The sassafras tea woke her a little past midnight. She slipped on her boots-remembering that snake, and the reptiles' liking for warmth-and looped her pistol-belt over one shoulder be-fore heading out to the sanitary trench. The air was much colder outside, but despite that she spent a long instant looking at the play of lightning to the westward, lighting up castles and palaces of cloud… and beyond them were the stars…
Someday, she thought fiercely. For Heather's and Lucy's great-great-great-grandchildren.
Walking past the tree she whistled softly, to let the unseen sentries know she was moving; there would be one up in the biggest cork oak, and the others were invisible even though she knew roughly where they were. Nobody in a force she trained was going to blunder around in plain sight of God, radar, and skulking bandits and call it sentry-go!
As she walked back, the wind from the west blew stronger, and the first drops of rain struck her skin; hard luck on the ones pulling sentry duty… there was a faint rumble of thunder from that direction, too.
And voices; first a low happy moan, then a sleepy, hissed grumble: "Shut the fuck up, or at least shut up while you fuck, will you? The rest of us are sleeping, god-damn-it."
The language lessons were working well, if someone could pun in English half-awake. She slipped back into her tent, a two-person model if the two were friendly, and closed the flap. The rain beat harder, hissing on the oiled canvas above her, filling the darkness with a blur of white noise. Swindapa mumbled in her sleep as her partner sipped back under the blanket, throwing a thigh across Marian's and nuzzling into her shoulder. Alston let her mind drift; images of maps, reports, rivers, rain, marsh, swimming… an idle hope that the rain would be over by 0600, when they were due to break camp and get back to base. There was a thought teasing at the back of her consciousness, but forcing it would only make it recede faster.
In the morning as she woke the thought was quite clear, and Marian Alston gave a slow, hard grin at the gray overcast sky.
Ian Arnstein's throat felt sore. It had been an inspired idea to end the long night of talk with Homer; in this place, with this archaic Greek clangorous in his mouth, it was fitting. He soothed his vocal cords with more of the watered wine and went on:
The more she spoke, the more a deep desire for tears
Welled up inside his breast-he wept as he held the wife
He loved, the soul of loyalty, in his arms at last.
Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel
When they catch sight of land… so joyous now to her
The sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,
That her white arms embracing his neck would never
For a moment let him go…
Odikweos was weeping, leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair and his head against the hand that covered his face.
I should have expected that, Ian thought.
More than wealth, more than power, sometimes more than life itself, an Achaean noble craved undying fame-the only real immortality their beliefs allowed; their afterlife was a bitter shadowy thing, where it was better to be a hired hand on a poor peasant's farm than King among the strengthless dead. Fame was what Achilles had chosen, though the price was an early end in battle far from home.
Dawn with her rose-red fingers might have shone
Upon their tears, if with her glinting eyes
Athana had not thought of one more thing.
She held back the night, and night lingered long
At the western edge of the earth, while in the east
She reined in Dawn of the golden throne at ocean's banks,
Commanding her not to yoke the wind-swift team
That brings men light, Blaze and Aurora,
The young colts that race the Morning on…
"So," Odikweos said when he had finished.
He wiped his eyes with his hand unselfconsciously. An Achaean warrior felt no shame at tears before poetry that moved him.
"So, it is given to me to know how the men of years to come will think of me… three thousand years, you say?"
"Five hundred years from this night, until that poem is written down. Near three thousand more to my time."
The Achaean shook his head. "That is a number the mouth can say, but the heart cannot grasp. And my deeds will still be known! Or at least a ghost of them will be known… or my deeds and name would have been known, if things had gone forward as they did in the past your age remembers."
Brief murderous rage lit his craggy features: "And this Walker has robbed me of!"
He sat silent, thinking, before he went on: "And much of what Walker knows is the fruit of my people's minds and hands?"
"All the beginnings of it." He'd glossed over the Dark Age that had lain between this time and the glories of the Classical period. "The foundations of the house my people built. Every generation of ours finds fresh inspiration in it."
"And all that Walker has taken from us," Odikweos said. "I followed him for wealth, and power-and because I thought he would make our land great with his outland knowledge."