McAndrews nodded; with their only real trade route downstream to Egypt, the free Kushites-dwellers in what he'd known as the northern Sudan-were on the receiving end of a monopoly.
"Spearheads are made of copper and tin," McAndrews said. "Or they were, until I brought the art of iron and steel to these lands."
He clapped his hands; a guard brought a sword. It was made to a traditional Egyptian pattern, a half-moon slashing blade with a short straight section above the hilt, called a kopesh. This was blue-gray gleaming steel, though. The hilt was checked olive wood and the pommel gold and lapis. It was the blade that drew Ghejo's eyes; they lit as he took it up, tested the edge, stood to sweep it through a few practice slashes.
"A gift," McAndrews said grandly.
"A good gift!" Ghejo replied.
"The ore from which this iron is made," McAndrews said, wiping his mouth on a linen napkin and eating a fig, "is common in your land."
Ghejo's head came up with a snap like a striking snake. "Say you so?" he breathed softly.
McAndrews smiled, carefully prepared words moving behind his eyes. "I do," he said. "Isn't that interesting?"
Ghejo's eyes narrowed, and he nodded. McAndrews had picked up considerable experience with barbarians over the past ten years. Most of them weren't much moved by the prospect of being civilized; civilization meant someone like Ramses hitting you up with the bill for his palaces and wars and forty-foot gold statues. He had found that barbarians were just as enchanted as anyone else at the prospect of wealth, and their chiefs were as greedy for power as any Pharaoh. The trick would be to make any arrangement look like a good solid exchange of value-for-value, from someone their bloodthirsty code could let them respect. They were strange, but not necessarily fools.
Meroe, he thought, as the verbal fencing went on.
The first great sub-Saharan African kingdom had been there, about where Khartoum was in the original history. It was through there that ironworking had spread to the black peoples. That was slated for five hundred years from now, though, in a history that wasn't going to happen. In this history, the rest of the world was getting an enormous leg up while black Africans were still just getting started. Egypt had more people than all the rest of the continent put together. Most of Africa was still pygmy and bushman country, nearly empty. His own black ancestors were a thin fringe of farmers and herdsmen along the southern edge of the Sahara. They'd barely begun the great millennia-long migration that would take them all the way to Zululand in the Iron Age, and make them masters of the tropical jungles.
It's not that Alston wants to do down Mother Africa, he thought grudgingly. Or even Cofflin and the others.
She-all the Islanders-just didn't much care. West Africa wasn't worth their while, considering the effort it would take to push through to the few Neolithic farmers of the savannahs. With so much easier and more agreeable territory open to them…
But if someone didn't do something, outsiders would take the empty parts of Africa-he'd seen how when farmers met hunters, the farmers pushed the hunters aside without even really noticing they were there. And if the Islanders were too principled to do it, others who'd learned from them would. Black folk would be confined to a little patch in the northwest of the continent, and they'd be an enclave of primitives even there, easy victims for any aggressor.
Ghejo wouldn't know what he was talking about, if he tried to explain.
"You are rich here," the chief said. "You have great power here. Why do you wish to make alliance with us? We live in little villages, or follow our herds." By the way he was looking around, Ghejo wouldn't mind an alternative lifestyle himself.
"I have wealth and power here," McAndrews said. "But I also have many enemies here. If they prevail against me, I would have somewhere to go… but not as a fugitive, dependent on the favor of others. And with me I could bring many others, skilled in making"-he nodded to the steel kopesh- "and other things besides; the fire-weapons."
"Ahhh…" Ghejo said. McAndrews recognized the look; it was a man seeing possibilities. "We must speak more of this- and I must consult my neighbors…"
"You will go from here with rich gifts," McAndrews said, smiling. "And perhaps you and many others might gain some experience with the new weapons in the war that begins soon, if you could furnish troops and workmen…"
There was a lot of potential around Meroe. He knew how to build dams and canals-the area south of Khartoum had plenty of land that could be watered, to support millions of people where now a few villagers scratched fields of millet and herded goats. There was iron ore nearby, and other minerals fairly close. If he wanted a better climate, the Ethiopian highlands were right there to the east, and to west it was flat open grasslands for six thousand miles to the Atlantic. Easy for innovations to spread. When the Nantucketers, or the Achaeans, landed from their helicopters, they weren't going to find nekkid savages with grass skirts, nohow.
I'm just a dumb nigger with his head full of Afrocentrist shit, hey, Walker King of Men? Didn't occur to you that if I couldn't find the black Egypt of my dreams, I could fucking build one of my own, did it?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
November, 10 A.E.-Western Anatolia
October, 10 A.E.-Long Island, Republic of Nantucket
October, 10 A.E.-Coast of northwestern Iberia
October, 10 A.E.-Long Island, Republic of Nantucket
November, 10 A.E.-Western Anatolia
"I don't think retreating blisters hurt any worse than advancing blisters," Private Vaukel Telukuo said seriously, glancing down at his moving boots. "About the same, they are."
"That's supposed to be a joke, Vauk, you great Fiernan gowk," Johanna Gwenhaskieths growled.
When she glanced aside and saw his grin she gave him a halfhearted elbow in the ribs.
"Could be worse," he said. "Could be raining."
"It was raining half the morning," she replied.
That was obvious enough; the track they followed to the southeast was deep in mud. That clung to boots, adding a half pound to every step, and a constant squelching undertone. Her company was near the end of the front section, two hundred and fifty helmeted heads ahead of her, then the baggage and sick-carts, then about as many more behind that. It looked a formidable host to her eyes; ten times as many fighting men as her clan had, about as many as her whole teuatha.
Former tribe, she reminded herself. Some might go back to Alba after their hitch, but she certainly couldn't. The Corps is my clan and the Republic my tribe now. And this is a piss-poor excuse for a road.
Especially compared to the watertight ones in Nantucket. It was pretty obvious that someone had driven a big herd of cattle this way not long ago; Johanna looked at the cowpats and hoof-prints with envy. Driving off cattle was fun; besides, it meant beef.
Somebody ahead stumbled, and she cursed as she checked and nearly stumbled herself in the slippery mud. She cursed again, silently, as she tried to get her legs back into the automatic rhythm that would carry her along without much thinking on how they hurt. It was well past the stop for the noon meal, but not nearly time to break off the day's march and make camp.