CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
May, 11 A.E.-Hattusas, Kingdom of Haiti-land
June, 11 A.E.-Babylon, Kingdom of Kar-Duniash
December, 10 A.E.-Tarim Basin, Central Asia
September, 11 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket
June, 11 A.E.-Ural River, Central Asia
September, 11 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic ofNantucket
Battalus Interruptus, Kenneth Hollard thought, dazed. Here I've spent the last three years of my life getting ready to defeat Walker, and they just up and kill the bastard!
He felt a surge of irritation, which died of shame when images from the last field hospital visit went through his head. Outside the command pavilion the sounds of the greatest block party of all time filtered in through the warm spring air. So did the smell of roasting meat; no more need to conserve every beast.
"No," Odikweos, King of Men, was saying.
"Excuse me?" Doreen Arnstein said sharply.
Her expression was sharp, but she hadn't let go of Ian Arnstein's hand since they sat down side by side at the head of the big table. He still looked a little stunned, after his first glimpse of his daughter.
"I said, no" Odikweos repeated, flashing a white smile through his grizzled beard. "Is this not your English word?" He tossed his head.
"No, I will not give up all the Wolf Lords… that is, the eqwetai of my former liege-lord. Those who needed slaying have been slain. The others are too useful to me; I shall confirm them in the most of their estates and titles, and their sons shall be Achaeans and serve my son. Nor will you attempt to slay them by stealth if you value my friendship. I will withdraw my troops from the Hittite lands; and since you hold it already, I will agree to make no moves against Sicily. Beyond that, I rule Great Achaea, and I shall make such changes there as seem good to me. We are not defeated suppliants in this war; we have decided to end it at our pleasure, for our own reasons."
Oh, please God, don't order me to invade Greece, Hollard thought.
Scratchy through the speaker, Jared Cofflin's dry Yankee voice spoke:
"Something there. Let's thrash this out."
King Kashtiliash pulled at his curled beard. "I came here because of my treaty with you, to put down the threat of Walker," he said. "Now that threat is gone. I wish to go home, and settle my realm." A broad carnivore grin. "Since my realm now includes Canaan, the Egyptians having withdrawn from it."
Tudhaliyas stirred unhappily. Kashtiliash raised a soothing hand: "And my brother the One Sun of Haiti-land will doubtless have much to do. Now that he is the only monarch with the new weapons in these lands, who may easily sweep to the Achaean sea, put down the Kaska mountain tribes, and push his frontiers far to the north and east in the Caucasus and around Lake Van."
Tudhaliyas's long dark clean-shaven face began to smile; it looked a little unnatural on his gloomy countenance. "Oh, indeed," he said, rubbing his hands. Then he cocked a sharp eye at the other Great King: "Provided nobody encroaches on my domains of Karkemish and Ugarit."
"But of course," Kashtiliash purred, a rumble in his deep chest. "Although we should consult about these horse-tamer tribes they say are advancing against us through northern Elam, the…"
"Medes and Persians," Kathryn Hollard said. "And Saka and Scythians and whatnot."
"Yes, those. Perhaps we should divide those lands between us."
"Perhaps we should," Tudhaliyas said thoughtfully.
"Perhaps we should indeed," the Seg Kallui of Kar-Duniash said. "First thing I'm going to do, though, is visit Dr. Clemens and get the IUD removed. Please hold any wars for about ten months."
Everyone chuckled. Well, nearly everyone; Marian Alston just smiled slightly. "You're making a good start on getting back to managing your own affairs," she said. "Still, I think a general treaty all 'round would be a good idea-trade, that sort of thing."
"Ayup," Cofflin's voice said. They could hear a murmur in the background, as of someone speaking softly in his ear. "I've got some ideas on that…"
King Kashtiliash crouched to look down one of the avenues of the great model city atop the table. Justin Clemens and his wife Azzu-ena waited uncertainly amid a bustle of scribes, clerks, engineers Babylonian and Nantucketer, officers, and attendants. Outside the tent, the great sprawling construction camp on the west bank of the Euphrates was in full swing. Most of the streets and broad avenues were still only pegs and string, but thousands of laborers were already trenching the lines for sewers and water systems.
From the corner of his eye he could see a first section of sewer actually being built, an egg-shaped tunnel of fired brick set in asphalt mortar. Not far away rested lengths of ceramic water pipe, tubes ten feet long and a yard across, with walls four inches thick. The great petroleum-fired kilns added another tang to the air, under the massed stink of Babylon across the river.
"Ah, Justin Clemens son of Edgar!" the King said. Clemens bowed. "How goes your work?"
"Faster than I thought it could, King of the Four Quarters," Clemens said.
He walked to the edge of the model; it was twenty feet on a side, resting on thick planks and those on trestles. The city of dreams it showed was definitely Babylonian-marked with the terraced pyramids of ziggurats, the blocky shapes of palace and temple. The layout wasn't, though; a gridwork of avenue and street, with broad radial ways driving through from the center. Along the water side was a great brick wall and highway to contain floods, and three long-arch bridges crossed the broad Euphrates. There was no city wall; instead a quartet of low-slung forts bristling with cannon covered the landward approaches and commanded the river passage. Blue-painted canals brought water to parks and gardens as well.
Clemens pointed to his own project near the northeastern corner.
"The waterworks are going up quickly," he said. "The big pumps just arrived from Irondale in Alba, and a couple of Leaton's people. We should have enough clean water for the labor force within a week."
Kashtiliash nodded. His wife Kathryn looked up from the other end of the table, making a quick note and handing it to a messenger.
"I want to get the sewer works functional as soon as possible too," she said. "If we can get the farmers using processed sludge rather than raw night soil, it'll cut dysentery in the villages around here by three-quarters."
"We need to put in village wells as well," Clemens noted quickly. "Sealed-tube wells with hand pumps."
"All in good time," Kashtiliash said. "There is work for my lifetime, and my sons'." He looked at his queen and grinned, and she returned the expression.
A shake of the leonine head. "But that is not what I wish to speak of, best of healers," he said. "Here, come."
He drew a cloth from a smaller table. The model there was of a complex of buildings, two-story blocks around courtyards; there were even models of tiny palm trees there.
"You wished to remain in the land of Kar-Duniash, did you not, Justin son of Edgar?"
Clemens nodded, a little wary. There was more good he could do here, and he thought it would be easier for him to adapt to this than Azzu-ena to Nantucket.
"Well, here you shall. It shall be called the Clemens Teaching Hospital."