"All looking good, Pete," Eddie said. "We've got twenty-six horses fit to ride. Six of the rifles really out of commission, but one's just a hammer sheared off. I think I can fix that from the Tartessians' kits; they have some spare parts."
"How much ammo?"
"Most of them had a few rounds left in their bandoliers, didn't get a chance to shoot themselves dry. Another fifty each in the saddlebags, and more in the wagon, with priming powder to suit. Hey, Jaddi! What's it all come to?"
The ranger woman looked up from the circle at the tail of the vehicle. "Two hundred eight rounds per weapon, Eddie."
"'tuk-huk-sau-hau-hau-hau-haur Eddie Vergeraxsson whooped and shook his own weapon southward toward the Tartessian fort two days' march away. "We've got the mortar, twenty bombs for it, and the rocket launcher and ten rockets."
"Hmmmm," Giernas said, lifting the bronze tube.
It weighed about twenty pounds. Nothing complicated, just two wooden handholds fastened to the weapon with rivets, an elementary ring-and-post sight, and brackets where a conical boiled-leather shield could be fastened to protect the user's face from the backblast. In operation a loader would push rockets up the rear and set off their fuses with a flint-and-steel lighter.
"Well, we're going to have to use up some of that rifle ammunition showing the locals how to use 'em," he said. "Say ten rounds or so."
Eddie nodded; the unspoken thought went between them: For all the good that'll do. It took time to make a rifleman, and a lot of practice at things like estimating ranges. These single-shot weapons weren't submachine guns, you couldn't spray bullets in the general direction of the enemy and pray for a hit. They were precision instruments, or they were just noisy clubs. The locals would probably be nearly as formidable with their spear-throwing atlatls; at least they really knew how to use those. But having death-sticks of their own would undoubtedly do wonders for their morale.
The chief began speaking, ran into subjects beyond the meager vocabulary he shared with Tidtaway, and they called for Jaditwara.
"These Big Dogs," he said. "Some say there are bad spirits in them-that we should kill them all and eat them, to gain power over this medicine."
Eddie snorted tactlessly. "Couple of them tried to get on horseback 'cause it looked like easy fun," he said. "No bones broken. I think."
Tidtaway had been practicing off and on for a couple of months, and he still rode like an animated sack of potatoes; these locals would be hopeless for a good long while. According to the books he'd read back when-part of ranger training and interesting in its own right-in the original history the Indians had taken to horses like ducks to water. Whole tribes had given up farming, moved onto the Plains, and become mounted buffalo-hunters and mobile raiders almost overnight. But overnight apparently meant years rather than months.
"You already have a few dead ones to eat," he pointed out. "And these horses will be very useful to you. To fight the Tartessians, and then to carry things and carry men faster than they can go on foot." He searched for an example. "Hunters could ride very far and fast, and then bring meat to camp easily."
The chief grunted, then looked at the horses staked out to the picket line dubiously. "Maybe," he said. Then more brightly: "We have given the Tartessians a bad defeat. Their women will wail and put tar on their hair; their war chief will cut his cheeks and roll in the dust. Maybe now they will leave us alone, and everything will be as it was."
Peter Giernas sighed. "All you have done is enough to enrage them-as if you stamped on a man's foot, or threw one spear at a bear," he said. "If you go home now, they will strike again. And you will be weaker from the plague."
The older man glanced up sharply. "But now we have their magic of the cow" he said. "Your shamaness says she can protect us."
"We can protect you, here, yes. Your women and children at your camp, yes. But not all the tribes even in the valley of this river-and none of the ones in the other land south of the delta, or in the coast valleys. Already they will begin to sicken, and when the sickness has gone past one man in two, maybe three in four, will be dead. These are the men that might have helped you fight the Tartessians. If you-all the people who dwell here-do not come together now and make an end of them, they will make an end of you. Not this year, not next, but someday, as certain as the rain in winter and the grass in spring."
The chief winced, as if the outlander had spoken in the same tones as the voice at the back of his head. His shoulders slumped.
"Then we will have to take their camp with the big houses," he said in a dull voice. "But how? The Great Camp has walls like a mountain, and they have the thunder-makers there, big logs that throw death a mile or more, and many men with the death-sticks that you call rifles."
"We need a plan," Giernas said. "For that, we need better knowledge of their fort."
He'd have to talk to people who'd been inside. The problem with that was they'd generally have only fuzzy ideas of what he wanted to know. When you put perception and language problems together, not much but noise would come out.
"And we must make sure that nobody warns the Tartessians," he went on. "So that they don't miss their men too soon." They'd caught the patrol early in its swing out into the boondocks, and it wasn't due back for weeks. "And we must gather many, many warriors. As many again as we had today, and as many more, and as many more again, at least."
At least Indigo and Jared will be safe, he thought.
When the chief went off shaking his head, Eddie Vergeraxsson laughed and shook his rifle southward again, calling out a single sentence in his mother tongue. Giernas recognized the sound, if not the meaning. Eddie had once told him that he didn't even dream in the Sun People language anymore, but now and then he used a stock phrase.
"What does that mean?" Giernas asked.
"Oh…" Eddie frowned for a moment, lips moving. "Near as I can render it… Oh, you sorry bastards are fucked now!"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
September, 10 A.E.-O'Rourke's Ford, eastof Troy
Colonel O'Rourke glared around the enclosure in an instinctive search for something more to throw into the fight. Spears and arrows lay thick on the ground, many stood up from the dirt, giving it the bristling look of a hedgehog's back. More flew in continously, their heads flashing in the light of the fires that burned here and there along the barricade. The roof of the hospital seemed to have caught as well-which at least was keeping most of the enemy snipers off it; they'd brought them forward from the hillside to the south as night fell. All around the walls was a swarming melee as the Marges stabbed and smashed and cut, heaving the enemy back from the parapet and shooting whenever they got the chance to reload.
Thank God for the bayonet, a corner of his mind thought. As soon as the Republic started issuing firearms in the Year 2. they'd found to everyone's surprise that rifle bayonet in skilled hands made a better hand-to-hand weapon than bladed weapon and shield; it combined the virtues of a spear, a quarterstaff, and a halberd.
Chaplain Smith was still doing the rounds with spare ammunition and Scripture, using a broken spear as an improvised crutch; a sopping red bandage circled his thigh. Some of the others passing out ammunition could do no more than crawl. Most of the rounds in the chaplain's sack were loose, stripped out of the remaining Gatling drums now that fhe weapon was useless. Even with the wind a standing fog of powder smoke ghosted around the Islander outpost, leaving everything hazed in burned sulfur; a corner of his mind estimated that every Marine in the compound must have fired something like two hundred rounds, and it was still four hours to dawn.