And there was no road to Power that didn't involve hard work; that made the work satisfying in itself, fun, worthwhile. He bent back to his task.
"Lord King," a soft voice said a few hours later; he noticed that, as he hadn't the noiseless slaves who'd turned up the kerosene lanterns.
Walker looked up. It was his house steward, the chief of the residential staff. "Yes, Eurgewenos?" he said.
"Lord King, shall I have the kitchens send a meal here? And do you wish a particular girl for the night?"
"Mmmm, no."
He looked out the window; almost dark. Dinnertime, by the wall clock; they'd finally gotten those to work well enough for everyday use and were closing in on chronometers good enough for navigation. When he'd arrived, Mycenaean Greek had used a moment for all times less than their vague conception of an hour…
"Inform the Lady Ekhnonpa that I'll be dining with her and the children."
"The King commands; we obey."
A hareem was very pleasant, but he had a certain nostalgic affection for Ekhnonpa and he'd kept her around. She'd borne him three children, and put on a good deal of weight, but her undemanding adoration was relaxing, sometimes. Her father, Daurthunnicar, had been a chieftain up in Alba, his first base of operations after he'd cleared out of Nantucket; he'd won the daughter and heir-apparent status by beating the tribal champion… to death, with his hands and feet. The Nantucketers had upset that applecart-he touched the scar and the patch over the empty eyesocket Alston's sword had left, and his lips curled back from his teeth for a moment.
Time to settle that debt, he thought. In full. With interest.
Swindapa raised her head, took a long breath through her nose, cocked an ear. "Not long now," she said. "That's hearth smoke, and a dog barking."
The deer track widened and turned into a rutted mud road as it wound upward; that made the forest less gloomy, but it also let in more of the rain coming in from the Welsh mountains. A clearing appeared, and little thatched clusters of round wattle-and-daub huts with sheepfolds and cattle corrals around about; the cold breeze ruffled rain-dimpled puddles. Smoke came leaking out of thatch in tatters that ran down the wet driving wind-or in a few cases from chimneys of brick or sheet iron, nowadays. A noisy dog brought some of the inhabitants out to the side of the road. They were wrapped in sheepskins and blanketlike cloaks of raw wool, looking like hairy bundles with feet.
A few carried weapons-steel-headed spears or crossbows handed out to the Republic's Fiernan allies during the Alban War a decade ago, and a couple of trade muskets with waxed leather wrapped around the flintlock and pan. They relaxed and pointed the business ends skyward when they saw the Nantucketer gear and uniforms, and the standard-bearer that marked an embassy. The Stars and Stripes hung limp and wet on the pole socketed into the bearer's stirrup, but the gilt eagle above was a bright flash in the rainy dimness.
Marian glanced backward out of the corner of her eye; the khaki-clad Marines were sitting their horses easily, reins in their right hands and Werder rifles riding in the crook of their left arms, eyes wary even here among friendlies. She had her eye on their sergeant, Zena Ritter, for possible promotion-a slender, wire-tough young woman with cropped dark-red hair and an implausible number of freckles, who'd been taking correspondence courses from Fort Brandt OCS via Westhaven HQ. The Republic's military needed people who could function out on their ownsome without undue hand-holding, satellite links, or a Pentagon to do their thinking for them.
As she watched, Ritter tossed a bar of ration chocolate to a clutch of children. The waxed paper wrapping came off to squeals of delight.
Generous, Marian thought. Even back on Nantucket chocolate was still expensive, gathered wild in Central America and traded to Islander schooners working the Main. And they recognized it. Must be a fair bit of trade through here…
Swindapa reined her horse aside and spoke to the locals in the purling glug-glug of the Fiernan Bohulugi tongue, a language that had vanished a thousand years before the birth of Christ in Marian's history. She dropped the knotted reins on her saddlebow to let her hands move in fluid accompaniment to her thought. When she rode on she was shaking her head in amazement.
"Sugar?" Marian asked. Lord, if you tied a Fiernan's hands, they'd be struck dumb.
"It's… these people are out in the… what's the word, the sticks'? They talk a dialect I can barely follow."
The black woman smiled to herself; Swindapa's lineage, the Kurlelo, lived by the Great Wisdom-Stonehenge-far south of here in Wiltshire on the open upland downs. By Fiernan reckoning, that made them the center of the world; the Kurlelo Grandmothers were the high priestesses of Moon Woman and students of the stars that revealed Her will. Those dry and sunny hills were thickly peopled and closely farmed as well, very different from these middle lands of Alba; here human habitations were still islands amid swamp and a wildwood-jungle of giant oak trees on heavy clay. Not until the Age of
Iron brought better tools and plows would settlers make much progress against the King trees and the thick fertile low-country soils that bore them. In the original history at least…
"In the sticks, yes," Swindapa went on, in pleased wonderment at how far the changes had gone. "And yet look at all they have! Ten years ago, they would have made most of their tools of wood and bone and stone, shared one bronze blade with the whole family. Now they have steel axes, pans, spades, scythes, Nantucket plows… even iron stoves. And yes, they say we're getting near Irondale. Right where you thought we were."
"Glad of it, 'dapa. Gettin' old and creaky for riding in the rain like this, much less a God-damned week of it."
She kept herself in shape as conscientiously as she worked at any other duty-a certain bleak inner honesty made her admit that compulsive would be a better description-but today creak and click and joint pain told of the teeth gnawing, quiet and relentless. The Event had sent thousands back through time, but every one of them still slid down the slippery slope of entropy at a minute per minute on their own personal world-line.
Oh, hell, this is nothing compared to standing a quarterdeck watch in the Roaring Forties.
Wet wool clung and chafed against her skin, and the raw clammy chill had sunken in toward her bones. The cleared fields grew and spread out to the edge of sight, muddy plowland and pasture with treelots, and then the terrain rose slightly, hills deep in forest once more. The road climbed with it, becoming broader and better-built as it did, then snaked down a dry gully toward the Severn, winding its way from the mountains of Snowdonia to the estuary far southward.
She looked up to where the sun would have been, if the sky weren't the color of wet iron. It was getting on toward evening; somewhere a wolf called to its pack and the sobbing howl echoed through the gathering dusk. The crossbred Morgan-chariot pony mounts scarcely flicked an ear at it; their shaggy coats were wet and mud-streaked, and their heads drooped. One blew out its lips in a blubbery sigh, and Marian slapped her mount's neck in reassurance.
"Warm stable and oats soon enough, boy. We all need it."
"I'd rather have some roast pork and a bed, myself," Swindapa said, her urchin grin bright. "And a bath, nice and hot."
Marian suppressed an involuntary groan at the thought of sulking into a steaming tub. Irondale's lights showed bright through the wavery murk ahead as they came down onto the road along the narrow riverside flat. By the roadside was a man-tall granite boundary-marker. On one side were Fiernan geometries; the other bore the Republic's eagle, with an olive branch in one claw and a bundle of arrows in the other.
"It's grown," Swindapa went on thoughtfully, looking at the town's lights. They'd last visited in 04, when the new settlement was nothing but mud, stumps, tents, and construction-yard litter. "Three thousand four hundred residents, according to the latest report."