It was a great honor-and possibly the death sentence for the Brigade of Seth.
The courier threw back his head and drank, water running down his chin into the stubble and soaking into the filthy gray wool of his uniform tunic. The smithy was scorching, its thick adobe walls soaking up the heat of the two charcoal hearths, steam hissing as the hot shoe was plunged into the water. The man whose horse was being shod kept an eye on it even as he stuck the cup into the well bucket again; cooler out here… and even now, a certain magic clung to ironworking.
It had been a long ride overland from his landfall in Athens, even with good roads. The almond trees in the field across from the smithy and relay station were in bloom, their scent a breath of freshness amid the dust and dung of the roadside smithy. Soon he would be in Walkeropolis, where he could rest.
The saddlebags had the Wolf Lord's blazon on them. The death-fate laid on him if they were lost was gruesome.
The smith bent and lifted the right rear hoof between his knees, nails ready in his mouth. A slave girl came by just then, looking over her shoulder at the uniformed courier and letting her thin tunic draw tight against her buttocks. He smiled and worked the pump for her to fill her bucket.
Nevertheless, he was stern in his duty, shaking his head ruefully when she looked back at him from around the corner and rolled her eyes toward the stables. She made a face at him and walked off; he sighed and took the bridle of his horse as the smith's boy led it out. He swung back into the saddle and heeled his mount to the graveled verge of the road.
"Good intelligence can be worth an extra regiment," Marian Alston-Kurlelo said, returning Kenneth Hollard's salute and then taking his hand.
It was going on two years now since she'd ridden into Camp Grant and told him that he was going to Babylonia. Grown a good deal. Thirtysomething, but looking older and a bit thinner, and tired. Done a good job.
"It had better be worth a regiment," he said bluntly. "Because these two battalions are all I can spare, with the local levies. If we take any more from the northern front, we're fucked. Ma'am."
She chuckled, looking out over the vast sprawling chaos of the muster point where the hosts of the southern Hittite lands were gathered. Many of the assembled Hittites-and Syrians and Aramaeans and whatever-were still in hysterics from the Liberator's visit; she'd sent the airship right back for another load of heavy weapons anyway. The dust and heat were already fearsome; even in April, the Damascus area was well into what felt like summer. The green oasis helped some, and the sight of the cedar-forested mountains to the westward.
Take me back to the River Jordan, she thought/quoted to herself. It's about seventy-five miles thataway, south by southwest.
"Most of the Egyptians will be old-style troops," she said reassuringly. "Doreen may be in her seventh month, but her spies are very mobile. Their rifle units won't be as good as the Tartessians, and they weren't as good as Walker's men in Sicily… and he's got all his best facing you."
Hollard nodded. "This is damned important, though, ma'am," he said. "A couple of crucial alliances depend on turning the Egyptians back."
"Awkward. I'd been hoping to bring my people in from Sicily directly in your support-invading Greece directly just now is out of the question, I'm afraid; I don't have the firepower or troops. Well, needs must when the devil drives; I'll handle the Egyptians if you can hold Walker. Good luck. Brigadier Hollard. Good hunting."
"And to you, Commodore," he said.
"I do not like the thought of cowering in a hole," Djehuty said.
The valley stretched out before him, land flat and marshy in spots, in others fertile enough even by an Egyptian's standards. Wheat and barley billowed in green waves with yellow streaks; the fallow plots between the fields were densely grown with weeds. Olive trees grew thick on the hills that rose on either side of the southeastward trend of the lowlands; orchards of fig and pomegranate and green leafy vineyards that would produce the famed Wine of the North stood around hamlets of dark mud brick. These lands were well peopled, a personal estate of Pharaoh and on a route that carried much trade from the north in times of peace.
"All the courage in the world won't stop a bullet," Mek-Andrus said. "A man in a hole-a rifle pit-can load and fire more easily, and still be protected from the enemy's bullets. They must stand and walk forward to attack; and the Divine Son of Ra has ordered us to defend."
Djehuty made a gesture of respect at the Pharaoh's name. "So he has," he said. You purple-arsed baboon, he thought to himself. Pharaoh was a living God, but a commander in the field was not always bound by his sovereign's orders-it was the objective that counted. And occasionally Egyptians had committed deicide. No. He thrust the thought from him. That was a counsel of desperation, and Ramses had been a good Pharaoh, strong and just.
"How do you advise that we deploy, then?" Djehuty said.
He looked back. Most of the Brigade of Seth were out, forming up in solid blocks.
"Let us keep the pass to our backs," the foreigner said.
"So-half of a circle?" Djehuty said, making a curving gesture.
"No, not today. That would disperse the fire of our guns. Instead-
Mek-Andrus began to draw in the dirt with a bronze-tipped stick he carried. "Two redoubts, little square earth forts, on either end of a half circle whose side curves away from the enemy. That way they can give enfilading fire."
"Please, O Favored of the Divine Horus, speak Egyptian; I plead my ignorance."
Mek-Andrus looked up sharply. Djehuty gave him a bland smile; let him see how a civilized man controlled his emotions.
The foreigner nodded. He held both hands out, fingers splayed, then crossed those fingers to make a checkerboard. "Enfilading fire means that the paths of the balls or grapeshot from the cannon cross each other, so," he said. "Instead of one path of destruction, they overlap and create a whole field where nothing can live."
The Egyptian's eyes went wide. He struggled within his head, imagining… Those Nubians who tried to raid the fort, he thought. A great wedge had been cut through their mass, as if sliced by the knife of a God. Within that triangle only shattered bone and splattered flesh had remained. In his mind's eye he overlapped that broad path of death with thirty more, and put Hittite charioteers in place of naked blacks with horn-tipped spears. His hand went of itself to the outlander's shoulder.
"I see your plan!" he exclaimed, smiling broadly. "It is a thing of beauty. And how shall we place the musketeers?"
Djehuty's son listened closely, waiting in silence until Mek-Andrus strode away. "Father and lord," he said hesitantly. "Is it possible that… some among us have been mistaken concerning the outlander?"
His father shook his head. "He knows much," he said. "But it is still a violation of ma'at, of the order of things, that an outlander should stand so close to the Great One. And to be granted a Royal woman as his wife! Not even the Great King of the Hittites was given such honor, when we were allied with them and at peace. No," he went on, dropping his voice. "The day will come when the foreign dog who knows not the Red Land or the Black will have taught us all he knows. On that day…"
Father and son smiled, their expressions like wolves peering into a mirror. Then Djehuty raised his voice: "Officers of Five Hundred. Attend me!"
Odd, Philowos thought, as he took the sealed folders from their leather casing. There are six. Five is the standard number.
The Assistant Underscribe (Ministry of Communications of Great Achaea, on loan to Walkeropolis-central from the Mukenai branch office) shrugged. There wasn't any regulation about it; and these were personal Royal correspondence. The King did as he willed, not as other men did.