Slightly to Marian's surprise, Swindapa willingly shook the young chief's hand. Only someone who knew her well could have detected the chilly edge to her smile.
"That was good of you," Marian said softly, when they'd walked past the local welcoming party and were among the uniformed Islanders beyond.
"No, it wasn't. It was cruel," Swindapa said.
Marian made an interrogative sound, and the Fiernan continued: "The men who hurt me are dead; how could hurting their children soothe my heart? But in a generation or two the Irauna will be gone, as if they had never been-they'll be Eagle People-and they will have done it to themselves. I am well avenged."
There are always new depths to you, Alston thought, shaking her head slightly, then turning to look out over the base.
The tented camps were mostly down now, and there were a good thirty sail riding at anchor in Portsmouth Base's harbor. Five of them were major warships, Lincoln-class clipper frigates, just under a thousand tons, with twenty-four eight-inch Dalghrens each, and half a dozen smaller armed schooners. They rode at anchor in deeper water, decks shining and sails furled, the diagonal red slash and fouled-anchor symbol of the Coast Guard bright on their sea-gray sides. Beside them was the Farragut, the newest addition to the Republic's fleet. It was slightly smaller than the frigates, lower-slung, also with three masts but with a long slender smokestack forward of the mainmast. On either side were boxes for the paddle wheels, armored to the front by wedge-shaped timber frames sheathed in bolted steel plates, and more of the same on her ax-shaped bows; her armament consisted of two four-inch rifled cannon at bow and stern, mounted with pivots to the rear and wheels forward running on circular steel tracks set into the deck. That let them be turned rapidly in any direction.
Good ship to have in a fight. It was a pity that she sailed like a pig of cast iron, but you couldn't expect every design to work perfectly the first time, the more so as this was something genuinely new, not working to a pre-Event historical model.
The rest of the fleet were civilian ships mobilized for the war, or hired transports for hauling troops and equipment. The Marines had gone aboard the troopships in neat files, packs on their backs and rifles slung, gear boxed to be swung from dock to hold. Embarking the native irregulars was something else again.
Marian Alston-Kurlelo clasped her hands behind her back and rose slightly on the balls of her feet. Southampton Base was nearly as old as Westhaven; this was near where the Eagle had landed on that first trip to Alba, better than ten years ago now. Her head turned right, northward, remembering that day. That had been early spring, cold and windy like this, but sunny rather than overcast. She'd been heading into the beginnings of a war then, too, only she hadn't known it. Her eyes sought a tall fair head among the throngs along the brick-paved waterside; Swindapa was holding a checklist, issuing curt orders to several chiefs. One of them bridled, a backwoodsman from the northeast by the look of his pyrographed leather kilt and forked beard. A comrade grabbed his arm, whispered urgently, led him aside. The rest of them nodded and scattered to obey.
Marian allowed herself a quirk of the lips, remembering how the chief of the Irauna hadn't even realized she was a woman, back when the Eagle made its first trip up the Southampton Water. She remembered the chaos of the Irauna camp she'd found, as well. The noisy sprawl of pushing and shoving around the docks here was order itself compared to that, although it was loud enough to scare flocks of wildfowl from the marshes across the harbor, where Gosport would have been in the other history. Even the Sun People could learn…
She watched one war band filing up a gangplank in excellent order, the tough wood bending a little under their feet, the sideropes moving under their hands and prompting uneasy glances downward-few of that breed were seamen yet. They were in no uniform, but most of them wore trousers, jacket, and boots of Islander inspiration. The webbing harness, packs, and bayonets were Nantucket-made, and so were the Werder rifles slung reverently over their shoulders-the bandoliers were going to stay empty until they arrived at their destination, of course. Most of them had long tomahawks thrust through the straps of their knapsacks, a few still bronze-headed. Their leader might almost have been an Islander himself, though, a young man with cropped hair, clipped mustache, shaven chin, polished boots, a new Python revolver at his waist. And a list in his hand, from which he was obviously reading…
Hmmm. On the other hand, not all progress is unambiguously positive. Not every Sun People warrior who enlisted in Guard or Marines took citizenship and stayed in the Republic after his hitch was up. Those who came back to Alba and their tribes brought their knowledge with them; many of them were the sons of chiefs, and all of them became influential men, with the skills and prestige and gold they'd earned.
Nothing like getting the hell beaten out of you to provide an incentive for learning, she thought uneasily. The Fiernan Bohulugi were genuine allies; the Sun People were that in theory, and a resentful protectorate in fact.
Teaching a barbarian can make him civilized… or just a more dangerous savage. You did what you had to do in the short run, but the long-term worries were killers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
September, 10 A.E.-Babylon, Kingdom of Kar-Duniash
September, 10 A.E.-O'Rourke's Ford, east of Troy
September, 10 A.E.-Babylon, Kingdom of Kar-Duniash
September, 10 A.E.-O'Rourke's Ford, east of Troy
September, 10 A.E.-Babylon, Kingdom of Kar-Duniash
September, 10 A.E.-Walkeropolis, Kingdom of Great Achaea
September, 10 A.E.-Babylon, Kingdom of Kar-Duniash
Lord King, your armies are victorious!" the officer the New Troops said, rising from his prostration and snapping off a salute he'd learned from his Nantucketer instructors.
Kashtiliash leaned back in the chair of state, elbow on the arm of the chair and jaw resting on thumb and forefinger. The officer was dressed in something similar to the Nantucketer uniform as well, boots and breeches and loose jacket with many pockets, with webbing harness of coarse double-ply canvas. He'd added an ostrich plume to the front of the cloth-covered steel helmet, though; Kashtiliash decided to check to see that nobody was wearing them thus in the field. It had been hard for him to grasp that firearms made it essential for soldiers to skulk like hunters or bandits. It would not do for them to acquire bad habits that would turn lethal when they met enemies armed likewise.
"You drove the Aramaeans before you?" Kashtiliash asked skeptically. That wasn't particularly difficult.
Even without firearms, it was seldom a problem to beat the Aramaeans… if they would stand and fight, which they almost never did unless they vastly outnumbered the force sent against them. Aiming a blow at the sand thieves was like driving a chariot wheel through a mud puddle; the contents spattered and flew apart in tiny globules, then ran together again and all was unchanged. So the nomads were, striking at defenseless peasant hamlets or the donkey-caravans of merchants, then fading back into the endless wastes to the west. Sometimes a King could frighten them into meekness by occupying water holes, or going after their women and sheep, but even that was difficult. Every year they grew bolder and more numerous. Villages had been abandoned in the areas most subject to their raids, and canals left to silt. Yet if the edge of cultivation moved back, then the herdsmen took those fields over and districts further east became exposed to raids.