Barracks? Baracoons? Tenements? Ian wondered, looking at the long rectangular buildings of mud-colored adobe brick that made up most of the town; each alike, standing row upon row with a terrible impersonality that reminded him of Victorian milltowns. Many of the ships at the docks had the same look of something slapped together with a maximum of haste and no concern but pure function, boxes with blunt wedges for bows and what even his landlubber's eye saw was an almost comically simple rig, dozens of them unloading endless streams of some dark mineral. Three shoreside blast furnaces about the same height as the ships' masts belched smoke that straggled off across the water, smelling of coal and acid. More smoke trailed from smaller smokestacks around them, and across the soot-slick water came an endless thump and rattle and clangor of metal on metal.
Not everything was quite so ugly. There were bigger houses up on the slopes of the hill overlooking the town, sleek galleys oar-striding across the water with their painted eyes glaring above the bronze rams, the greyhound grace of well-built modern sailing ships, and Bronze Age craft from all around the Middle Sea. The mountains above were dark with fir and pine, and the damp air carried a breath of them over the harsh coal smoke and metallic stinks and the tar-fish-wood smells of a harbor town.
In the twentieth this was the outskirts of the Mani, an eroded limestone wasteland where a local joke said a goat would have to bring its own provisions. Here it was more like the coast of California. Parts of Marin County, say.
All in all, it doesn't look much like Gythio, he thought-he'd visited here before the Event. On an island half a mile out was the low-slung hulking shape of a fortress, and a strong stone causeway between there and the mainland. Only the looming triangular peak of Mount Taygetos and the knife-edge ridges that fell away from it were recognizable at all, and that was like looking at a skeleton and suddenly seeing it covered in flesh.
Philowergos bent to touch the stone-block pavement and murmured a prayer after they came down the gangway; Ian thought he caught a promise of a goat to Poseidaion.
The soldiers of the escort exclaimed; Ian recognized the tone if not the slang. He'd heard much the same as men settled down to watch a baseball game on either side of him. The little group stopped, standing in the thin rain and craning to see over the shoulders and slung rifles of the troops who stood in a protective box around a gangplank.
That ship had a sour sewer-and-locker-room reek even in cool weather, and was unloading coffles of filthy near-naked men with shaved heads, wearing iron collars and chained neck to neck. A helmeted officer in Walker's gray uniform stood beside the gangplank, a man with a scar along his jawline showing white through his beard and holding a swagger stick cut from a vinestock. He examined the slaves carefully, stopping now and then to raise a man's chin with the stick and look into the man's eyes.
Every tenth or fifteenth man was tapped with it, and taken out of the coffle. The same sentence was repeated to them, in half a dozen different languages. Most crowded forward eagerly. A few shook their heads, and were sent back to the coffles. One man spat in the officer's face; he took the vinestaff across his cheek and dropped limp as an official explanation, drooling blood and spitting out a tooth on the dockside. The tough wood cracked.
"Fetch me another!" the officer snapped, kicking the man at his feet with vicious efficiency as he wiped a sleeve across his face. A soldier hurried up with another swagger stick.
"And get rid of this carrion. The rest of you, you're the best of a bad lot-begin! Show me if you can do something besides scratch dirt for your betters!"
Ian blinked in astonishment as the rest of the slaves formed pairs and began to fight. None of them had much science by the standards of, say, Marian Alston or Kenneth Hollard, but they all went at it as if they were fighting for their lives; he could hear fists smack on flesh, screams of anger and pain. One pair fell and rolled, grappling and tearing and biting, hidden by the legs of the guards until the vanquished shrieked and the victor rose and spat out an ear, grinning amid the blood that ran down his chin. Laughter and cries of admiration came from the watchers.
The hard-eyed officer went down the row of men again, tapping this one and that-not always the winner, either, although he did take the ear-biter. The rejected were hustled away, and a man with a bolt cutter took the collars off the dozen selected.
"What was that?" Arnstein asked, when they were on their way again.
"First cut," Philowergos repeated amiably. "The Achaean lands don't have enough youths for the King of Men's armies. If they endure through the training camps, those men may"-he tapped the two silver bars enameled on his helmet-"become officers, perhaps even lords with land to the horizon. Even if they're not found worthy of the Army, they may become overseers, or police, or be trained for skilled work. Those sent on, they'll do for the rough work of mines and fields and forges. The chosen are men of spirit, as you saw. Such men make bad slaves."
Possibly, Arnstein thought. Although that guy who spat in the face of Herr Gruppenfuhrer there showed plenty of spirit, in my opinion.
Past the dockyards the streets were paved with asphalt or stone blocks, with raised sidewalks on either side; there were men in green uniforms at the intersections, blowing whistles and holding up white batons to direct traffic; that was everything from Bronze Age oxcarts with solid oak wheels through rickshaws and handcarts to-he did a double take of astonishment-a Victorian-style horse-drawn omnibus. Most of the buildings seemed to be tenements, better than the row-housing he'd seen from the water, with small shops on the ground floor.
More than half the men and women who crowded the sidewalks wore collars, of iron or bronze or silver.
"I've seen the Bronze Age," Ian murmured to himself, in English. "I've seen the changes we make in it. Now I'm getting a firsthand look at Walker's idea of improvements."
He was lost enough in his thoughts to bump into the Achaean officer's broad back when Philowergos stopped suddenly.
Three uniformed men were blocking the way. One Ian knew immediately was from the twentieth… something about the eyes, or the way he stood. A blocky-square man with a square slightly jowly face, in early middle age, short blond-and-gray hair, clean-shaven face with something wrong about it. The uniforms were much like Philowergos's, but with a different waffenfarbe on the collars; a silver death's-head over a black numeral 1.
Uh-oh, his mind gibbered, with a banality that surprised him even now. The lead man's eyes flicked over him. They had none of Hong's gleeful, gloating anticipation. That was like a depraved child waiting for some monstrous Christmas present. These were like a dead man's, or a tired man looking at a fly on a hot day.
"Thank you, Captain Philowergos," the man from the twentieth said, in pelucidly pure Achaean with the slightest guttural undertone. "I will take custody of this prisoner now."
"Ah… Lord Mittler, I don't think…"
"Exactly, Captain Philowergos. You are not paid to think."
Mistake, Ian thought, watching the flush of rage come up over the Greek's collar. Telling an Achaean he was paid to obey was like calling him a slave. That's right, Philowergos, get good and angry, please, for God's sake-
He'd had time to recover from the shock of Troy; time to get his balance back, so he could know just how frightened he should be and to start cursing himself for thinking that getting killed was the worst thing that could happen.
"Lord Mittler," Philowergos said, "I was instructed by the King himself to take this man to Category One confinement in the palace. My head will answer for his."