He grinned. "You say that this illness can be transmitted by the clothing of the sick, as well as their blood and breath and sweat?"
The healer nodded. "Unless such clothing is thoroughly cleaned, with boiling water and strong soap, and exposure to clean air and sunlight. The disease may lurk therein for years, otherwise."
Alantethol laughed aloud. "Then let the blankets of those who had the sickness be preserved, in a dark warm place," he said. "If any chief is stubborn, we will send him a gift-a gift of good wool blankets."
The healer's laughter echoed his own. "A jest fit for the Jester, lord," she said. "So Arucuttag inspires the captains He favors in cunning trickery; in killing by stealth and by bold manslaying."
She withdrew with another bow, and Alantethol sprang up from behind his desk-the Eagle People word came so naturally now that he did not feel any jar in the rhythm of his thoughts-and paced. The King would be highly pleased if he increased the profits of the settlement without demanding expensive trade goods brought the long weary dangerous distance from the homeland-voyages took a hundred days and a score even when the winds were favorable, sometimes half as much again. The King would be highly pleased…
No, this is not important enough for the magic talker, not in time of war. I will send the report with the next shipment, in code. Scarcely needed, given the odds of encountering an Islander vessel, but the Tartessians needed no teaching from the Eagle People in the difference between bravery and carelessness.
He stopped at a redwood sideboard and poured himself a measured dollop of brandy, looking out the open shutters- even the commander's house did not rate window glass yet; the very goblet in his hand was a sign of privilege and luxury. Yet also a sign of how far the kingdom had come; ten years before it would have been an unimaginable extravagance even at Pharaoh's court. The only glass in Tartessos then had been beads.
Yes, the King is as fierce as a lion, but also as cunning and stealthy as a ferret, Alantethol thought with wholehearted admiration. You could tell that he had spent his young manhood as a merchant, not lolling in a palace.
Where better to hide a secret such as this than on the other side of the Eagle People's own continent? And within that wisdom, more wisdom to put it here so far from the sea. And to arrange that the supply ships remain offshore, sending in a boat to work upriver to set the rendezvous.
If a single Islander ship did put in at the great bay where the river flowed into the western ocean, or even one did in every year, they would see nothing except in the fantastically unlikely happenstance that they came at just the same time as the meeting between the Hidden Fort's barge and the Tartessian vessel… and how likely were they to come far inland, up that river and its northern tributary? Here he was midway between the gold of the mountains and the cinnabar ore of the coast ranges. Cinnabar, that precious stuff so necessary to make the newest of the new weapons, and to refining ore, and to trade with Great Achaea for powerful cannon.
He finished the brandy, relishing the bite of the spirits and the cold fire running down to his belly, but he was reluctant to return to the papers and ledgers just now. A thought tugged at him-ah. He must fulfill his oath to Arucuttag, and soon. No man was lucky who stole from the Gods, particularly that God. He would go down to the pens, and select the sacrifice.
Ranger Peter Giernas of the First Trans-Continental Expedition raised his bow, exhaling softly as he did. The arrow slid smoothly back through the centerline cutout of the weapon, wood and horn and sinew creaking slightly.
Cool morning air stroked his skin, throwing the shadows of the tall ponderosa pines behind him out onto the intense fresh spring green of the grass, starred with orange California poppies, cream-colored pasques, pink bunchberry, lavender water-leaf, golden asters, like a living Persian carpet swaying waist high. The sappy resin scent of the pines was strong, mixed with minty yerba buena, his own smells of woodsmoke and leather, and a hint of snow and rock from the peaks of the Sierra Nevada behind him.
The elk in the meadow before him raised their heads, ears flicking and jaws working as they glanced around, a few raising dripping muzzles from the little stream that ran through it. They were big reddish-brown beasts like scaled-up deer, with a pale yellowish patch on the rump and small white tails. The males had shed their antlers a while ago-it was late spring now-but they were bigger, with shaggy chestnut-brown hair on their necks like a short mane.
About thirty, he thought.
No old bulls, it was too early in the season for them to stake out breeding territories, this spring of the Year 11. A round dozen cows with their calves, some of them newborns, none more than a month or two, coming around to butt at their dams' udders or frolicking clumsily. And the ones he was interested in, adolescents of a year or two.
The whole herd was alert now, looking up into the wind from the west and away from him. Then a bristling gray-brown shape burst out of the cover at the far end of the oblong meadow, followed by two more. They seemed a whole pack as they leaped the stream and dashed about, growling, lunging, barking. The elk milled backward in dismay amid high-pitched squeals of alarm from the calves, sharp barking sounds from the cows. They faced the dogs for a moment, waiting for a rush that did not come, then turned about and surged through the flower-starred grass that came nearly to their chests, their heads thrown high and eyes wide with alarm. The pace was more a fast walk than a run, though, and the predators made no effort to close or even to cut out a calf, nipping at heels instead. One of the smaller, younger canines rolled over yelping when a cow's hind hoof caught it in the ribs with a painful, audible thump.
"Nice job, Perks," Giernas muttered, rising smoothly from his crouch as the herd slowed; they were more confused than frightened.
The bowstring came back to brush the angle of his jaw, and the triple-bladed steel head rested above his thumb. The elk had no time to react to his presence before he loosed, and the arrow was a long arcing streak that ended just behind the shoulder of a two-year-old cow. He could hear the meaty thwack of impact, and the animal staggered, ran half a dozen paces, then collapsed with frothy blood pouring out of its nose. The herd scattered in genuine panic now, the more so as the dogs abandoned their driving tactics and bored in, bellies to the ground, moving like blurred streaks with teeth. Giernas laid down his weapon and ran forward himself, drawing the long Seahaven bowie from its sheath along his right calf. He bounded past the elk he'd shot; that one was clearly dying fast. The dogs had another, a yearling cow; one gripped its nose, another a hind leg. The third, largest, had the neck, but it released its hold and backed away as Giernas came up. The man dodged a flailing forelimb, got his left arm around the animal's neck and neatly slit the hairy throat with a looping motion of his knife before leaping back.
The elk collapsed to its knees, then to its side, kicked, voided, and died. One of the dogs moved in and made as if to bite at the invitingly pale stomach; its bigger companion shouldered it away and gave a warning slash of fangs that didn't quite connect, to remind it that the humans had precedence.
"Good boy, Perks," Giernas said.
The dog was a wolf-mastiff hybrid six years old, huge-jawed and massive in a rangy long-limbed fashion; four parallel grooves down the right side of his muzzle and a tattered ear marked an indiscretion with a cougar.
And some of the other marks are from knives and spears, but nobody's done it twice, he thought.
The ranger had been training Perks since puppyhood, and the dog had walked all the way from the East Coast with the expedition. Right now he gave a canine grin, then settled in to lap at the blood pooling around the elk's throat.