At last most of the guests and all the women were gone- except for Lady Kylefra and the princess, both of them exceptions to the usual rules, for different reasons. The commander of the escort company was a man he'd fought beside many times, Born-born like Ohotolarix; his second was an Achaean from Thessaly. They talked of the siege of Troy, feints and counterstrikes and raids, boasting genially of men killed and goods plundered and women raped. He took away an impression that casualties had been higher than anticipated, but not disastrously so.
"You won't find it dull here while the princess is visiting," he said after a while, leaning back in his chair and holding out his cup to a slave. "The hunting here is as good as any I've ever seen-no lions or leopards, but deer, auroch, wolves… bears, bears beyond number. Every once in a while we have an expedition against the natives, or pitch in to help the Ringapi against their neighbors. Just dangerous enough to be real sport, and then we can collect something-slaves and cattle, at least. Something a bit different, before you return to the real war."
The Achaean sighed-he went by the name Eruthos, "the Red," although his hair was dark-brown, so he'd probably shed a lot of blood. He and the Born, Shaukerax, exchanged glances. "We're here until recalled, and so's the princess," he said. "Brought a whole raft of her things, you'll find-boxes of books, servants, and tutors."
"That's right," the girl said; she'd been drinking wine cut with two parts of water, and slowly, but she still spoke with care. "Damn, Harold's still with Father, getting to see all the fun stuff." Then she brightened. "But I forgot to tell you; when we took Troy, we captured I-an Aren-stein."
She pronounced the name slowly and carefully; they'd been talking the Achaean of the court, salted with English words and the Eagle People accent, and it didn't clash that much.
"Hmmm, that is news," Ohotolarix said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
That had been his first sight of the Eagle People, after he woke on their great iron ship; the bearded face of that tall old man, a thing of sanity amid alien madness. It had been Arnstein and his woman who learned the first words of his tongue, too. Later word had come that Arnstein had risen very high among the enemy, become wiseman and adviser to the Islander King, Cofflin, and his emissary to the great rulers of the East.
"A great blow against the enemy," he said.
Althea nodded. "It was Auntie Hong's ninjettes who captured him, the Claws of Hekate," she said eagerly. "They climbed right up into the citadel, the night the city fell-caught him and held him until the Guard got there."
The officers nodded sourly. Kylefra's eyes sparkled at their discomfiture. "And so the two Claws you saw were among those sent with the princess, to help instruct her," she said proudly. "They bore messages from the Daughter of Night for me." She looked at Althea fondly. "In a year or so, Princess, you will be eligible for initiation-there's much they could teach you."
"How to climb up walls and use those cool throwing stars, sure," Althea giggled, then touched a hand to her mouth. "But I'll worship as my father does. And now I should go to bed. May the sweet rest of drowsy night be yours, lords. Lady Kylefra."
Hmmmm, Ohotolarix thought. Now, there goes one who will be as bad to cross as her father, in her time. And afraid of nothing, nothing at all. Odd to think that of a girl, but things were different now… Oh, well, Harold will inherit.
The scar-faced Achaean officer had been exchanging glances with Kylefra. After a moment they excused themselves. Ohotolarix waved the slaves away and poured for himself and Shaukerax, dropping back into their birth-tongue. The speech of the teuatha of the Noble Free Ones sounded a little rusty and strange in his own ears, but it was pleasant to speak it again.
"He'll get more than he bargained for," he said, jerking a thumb after Eruthos, and they laughed together.
"Oh, you know these Achaean stick-at-naughts," Shaukerax half joked. "They'll put it in a girl, a boy, a goat-anything that's handy, even a black-sun witch."
"Surely you do them an injustice," he replied solemnly. "They'll take a sheep before a goat, and an ewe before a ram." Ohotolarix shook his head as their mirth died down. "This Eruthos, is he capable?"
"A born killer. He fought very well indeed before Troy. A friend of his fell in a sortie, while Eruthos was off the field, and he went berserk-slew the enemy commander and dragged his body around as if he couldn't bear not being able to kill him again and again. That's when we named him. His father called him Ach… Akhil… too much wine, I can't pronounce the damned thing, one of those -eus names. He's of good birth, though, his father a petty King and his mother a high priestess. From Thessaly; the Greeks there aren't quite as oily as the southern ones."
Ohotolarix nodded. Shaukerax went on: "It's good to see the work you've done here, too. I remember the first years after we came to Achaea from Alba, and you've done better, faster, by Diawas Pithair. Especially since it's been only, what, barely a year and a bit?"
The Guard commander shrugged. "I had a lot more to work with than the King did to start with," he said. "And I had Great Achaea to draw upon whenever I found something lacking, man or machine. And I didn't have to break the trail or deal with all that tricky Achaean intrigue-if those faithless dogs didn't have lords and kin, they'd betray each his own self for the joy of it."
"These Ringapi do seem more our kind of men."
"That they are. The King told me he'd considered coming here, rather than Mycenae. Sometimes I wish he had."
Shaukerax shook his head violently. "Too far from the sea. Sitting here, how could we take revenge on the cursed Eagle People for breaking our tribe?"
"We could have fought them at a time of our choosing, not theirs. This is a richer land than Achaea, in many ways. And there's a pleasure to building that's as great as raids and wars, I find. But…" He sighed, drank, shrugged.
"A man's fate is as it is," Shaukerax agreed. "I do hope the rest of this war is more entertaining than the siege of Troy; that was more like being a mole than a warrior, and they held out until the men weren't worth selling or the women having."
He grinned and punched Ohotolarix on the shoulder. "Speaking of which, you have that Trojan to prong; she's still a virgin, and if you knew how difficult that was to arrange, with the stallions-on-two-legs I have to command…"
Ohotolarix rose, laughing and slapping the other on his thick shoulder in turn. "We can find you a virgin-a girl, not an ewe-if you want, even if she isn't sired by the ruler of a great city."
Shaukerax finished his wine and wiped his mouth with the back of a hairy ham-sized fist. "You're the one who's been sitting on his arse like a great chief taking his ease, brother," he said cheerfully. "I've been traveling hard for weeks. I want a woman, not a wrestling match. You'll need the exercise."
His host snapped fingers for the steward of the house and gave instructions; the two men parted, promising to meet for a boar hunt soon. He paused on his way up the stairs, looking back over the feasting-hall of the commandant's house as the slaves cleaned and swept and polished. A man's fate was as it was… but the thread could take some strange twists. From the hut of a common warrior-herdsman of the tribe to this! What might have happened if Walker and the Eagle People had not come?
You would have died of thirst in that coracle, fool, he told himself. And many another man who's died in those years since might yet live.