Against the Tide of Years (19 page)

Swindapa had led the Fiernan Bohulugi service last night, she being the senior of the Star Blood on the island at present.
Which makes her, technically, a Grandmother.
And wasn’t
that
an odd thought. Alston had attended that, it being in the family and she being an adoptive Fiernan of sorts—nobody cared if she actually believed in it, they didn’t think that way.

“War is an evil,” Gomez was saying. “But in this fallen world, we are often forced to a choice between a lesser evil and a greater. Our citizens and their Meeting have determined that the interests of our Republic demand that Walker be brought down before his power grows too great, and that is a just decision. He has shown himself to be utterly without scruple.

“To protect our people, our children, our nation, from such a threat justifies this war. But there is another and greater reason for it. Walker is one of ours. When he spreads death, suffering, slavery, among the peoples here in our exile home,
we
bear part of the responsibility.”

Alston winced inwardly. She’d
suspected
Walker had something up his sleeve, but there hadn’t been any proof . . . and he’d struck without warning, taking the
Yare
and heading out. Cunningly, too, using Pamela Lisketter as a decoy to give himself time.

“And since Walker is at least partially our sin, so we must pay the price of his suppression. Let us pray to Almighty God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, that He does not require a payment more than we can bear. For whatever the price may be, bear it we must.”

And on that cheerful note,
she thought, bowing her head. Alston hadn’t prayed since she was about fourteen, but whatever your opinion of his beliefs, Gomez was a man to respect. They weren’t exactly friends—several reasons for that—but they worked together well enough.

The silent moment ended with a trumpet and bugle call. The crowds cleared the street, and the men and women of the Marines and the crews formed up to march down to the docks.

Alston picked up her cap and drew a deep breath. “Let’s go,” she said.

 

“Yeah, boss, this is more like it,” Bill Cuddy said, holding out his wine cup for a refill.

A slave girl in a filmy kilt of Egyptian linen knelt gracefully and poured from a long-stemmed glass jar.

William Walker leaned back in the great terra-cotta hot tub set in the floor of the bathing suite and smiled at his machinist, enjoying the sensation of steaming water soaking the knots out of his muscles.

“What did I promise you back in Nantucket, Cuddy-my-main-man?” he chuckled.
Master of Engineers, technically.
“Gold, girls, all the comforts of home, within reason.”

The new house—
palace, in fact
—was almost finished. He’d built it not far from the site of classical Sparta, on a rise overlooking the Eurotas valley. The basic materials were the ones the locals were used to working in, but he’d made some modifications. Pitched roofs of baked-clay tile, for instance; the local flattops leaked like a bastard in the winter. Floors of glazed tile, the way he had this area set up, or polished marble; he looked around with satisfaction at the mural frescoes, mostly battle scenes from the conquest of Sicily last year. Running water wasn’t a completely unknown concept here, but the sort of full-suite setup he’d put in was, and that went double for the flush toilets with S-curve pipes. Central heating, too, with underfloor ducts, and furnaces and tanks for hot water on tap in the master’s quarters.

“Yeah, you came through, all right, boss,” Cuddy said. “Funny how much easier this was than Alba.”

“Lot more organization to start with,” Walker pointed out.

Although that has its drawbacks,
he thought. His glance went to the tall French doors. He couldn’t see much out of them, the best they could do for window glass still being sort of wavy and opaque, and it was raining outside on the terrace anyway. If it had been clear and he’d gone outside, he could have seen down the valley to the palace of the underking of Sparta, whose sons had all conveniently died in the Sicilian campaign.

He really shouldn’t have tried to have me offed back in Mycenae,
he thought. Of course, the guy was sick these days himself . . . courtesy of dear, dear Alice Hong.
God, but it pays to have a doctor on your staff.
And once Wannax Menelaos was gone, Walker knew
exactly
who the high king was going to appoint in his place.
Odd. I expected them to be brothers. More like third cousins once removed.

But on the whole, operating in civilization of a sort was a hell of a lot easier than cobbling together a kingdom out of the tribes up in Alba. There was a lot the Achaeans didn’t know, but at least he didn’t have to teach them
everything.
He smiled at the vista beyond the windows; he’d left plenty of room for expansion later.

Something imposing, but not ostentatious,
he thought.
Something along the lines of San Simeon.

“Easy to get used to this sort of thing,” Cuddy said, raising his cup in toast. He looked aside at the girl, who was kneeling, sitting back on her heels with eyes cast down. “Like, getting laid whenever you want, for example.”

Walker nodded, although he wasn’t the sort of three-ball man that some of his American followers were. Rodriguez, for instance, and even he’d slowed down a bit now that it was not longer a big deal.

“You deserve it,” Walker said sincerely. “You’ve got the machine shops working fine now.”

Cuddy shrugged and beckoned. The girl came over and knelt behind him, kneading his shoulders.

“The first part was the hardest,” he said, tilting his head back against her breasts. “Like, one makes two, two makes four, you know? Lathes make lathes. Look though, boss—these guys I’ve trained, they don’t really
understand
any of this stuff. Well, maybe one or two. It’s all monkey-see, monkey-do for the rest.”

“It’s the results that matter.”

“Surprised you sent Danny Rodriguez off to Sicily all on his lonesome,” Cuddy went on.

“Oh, I put the fear of God into him well enough,” Walker said. “Besides, Odikweos will keep him in line . . . and I can rely on Odikweos to see that our great good friend and liege-lord Agamemnon doesn’t hear about exactly how
many
musketeers we’re training over there. Christ, but these people don’t have much idea of spook-work. Odikweos, he’s the exception.”

“Yeah, well, you got Odi the viceroy’s job,” Cuddy said. “He owes you—it’s a fucking gold mine.”

“Gratitude is strong; the bottom line’s even stronger.” Walker chuckled and finished his own wine. “He’s raising a regiment of musketeers himself—most of these wog VIPs, you’d think getting out of their chariots was like cutting off their own balls. Odikweos doesn’t think that way.”

“He’s keeping the sulfur and asphalt coming, too,” Cuddy said with satisfaction. “And the other stuff.”

Sulfur for gunpowder, of course. Sicily was rich in brimstone ores. The asphalt wells near Ragusa-that-wasn’t were extremely handy too; you could distill something roughly like kerosene out of it without much trouble, and the residue had a dozen uses, like waterproofing these baths so the adobe brick didn’t turn to mudpie. They were even paving some crucial stretches of road with it. Plus the slaves, timber, and grain that kept other projects going.

“Yeah, that’s going pretty well,” Walker said. “Pretty soon we’ll be ready to start whipping on the neighbors again.”

Cuddy looked at him. “Why bother, boss? Shit, we’re practically running this place—will be, in a couple of years. Why bust our ass taking over more territory?”

“Two reasons, Cuddy. First, because I say so.” He met the other man’s eyes until they dropped. “Second,” he went on more genially, “we’ve got to hit while the hitting’s easy. We’re not exactly building tanks and helicopter gunships here. Anything we’re doing, the locals can learn, and we give them time, they
will
start picking up tricks—my buddy Isketerol already has, of course. So we’ve got to conquer as much as we can while we’re ahead. That way, we’ll have
numbers
on our side too. Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Cuddy nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, when you put it that way . . .”

“Besides, it’s fun. Booze and cooze are all right, but you can only party so long.”

“Ah,
try
me on that one, boss!” They laughed. “Yeah, I see what you mean, though. Sort of a challenge.”

Walker went on: “Anyway, I’m off. Alice has something really
special
planned for those two that came in with the last shipment, and I’ve got a starring role.”

Cuddy made a slight face. “Whatever, boss.”

Walker laughed again as he heaved himself out of the tub. Water hissed over the indigo and white of the tiles, and the girls hastened over to rub him down with linen towels and dress him in a long embroidered robe imported from the Hittite country.

“Oh, she’s a complete nutcase, I know,” Walker said. “But it can be sort of diverting, for a change.
Hasta la vista.
”

And the screams and bodies keep the staff
really
on their toes,
he thought, glancing back over his shoulder as he left. Two of the serving-maids were sliding into the tub, minus kilts, giggling and squealing.

Guards brought their muskets to present arms with a slap of hands on wood and crash of hobnailed heels on stone. Walker nodded back with lordly politeness.

“Philowergos, Eumenes,” he said.

He’d seen a movie once, when he was young—
Battleship Potemkin,
that was it, about a mutiny in the Russian navy, sailors given rotten food and such. He still remembered his own reaction of contempt; what sort of doink shorted the hired muscle?
He
knew enough to spread around the vig generously, and that included knowing names. The thought warmed him as he walked past into the main body of the mansion.

Glass windows kept it reasonably bright even on an overcast winter’s day, and fires boomed in proper fireplaces at either end; the floor was honeycomb yellow marble from a nearby quarry. He’d kept the traditional high seat on the southern wall, but added tables and chairs to make it more like a formal dining room. A curving staircase led to the second floor and Hong’s quarters—Ekhnonpa and the children he’d had by her were over in the other wing, and glad to be there.

No mistaking Hong’s door, dark oiled beechwood with silver bolts through it, and the mask of a skull in a golden setting above it with a candle burning behind the empty eyes. He walked through, past a sitting room with couches and a couple of beautiful locally woven rugs in front of the cheerful fireplace, and into the bedroom.

“You’re late,” Hong said. “But I haven’t really started. Just sort of establishing the scenario.”

Despotnia Algeos,
the locals were calling her: the Lady of Pain, avatar of Hekate, with power over life and death. Some of the noble Achaean ladies were incorporating her suggestions in their rites. She was dressed in black gold-stamped sandals, a silver domino skull-mask, and an ivory-hilted riding crop thonged to one wrist, with a few straps and buckles elsewhere. He had to admit it all looked quite dramatic.

He didn’t think the subjects today were concerned with niceties like that at the moment. One was a thirtysomething Sophia Loren type, spread eagled naked to the wall and bound with built-in ties at wrists, ankles, and waist. Her mouth was gagged with a leather ball tied with a strap around her head, and tears and spittle ran down her face and heavy breasts. There were thin silver needles through her earlobes, the webs between finger and thumb, and a few other parts of her body, and ivory alligator clips on her nipples. Thread-thin trickles of blood crept over her skin, disturbed by shuddering twitches.

The other, on the bed, was about fourteen, with small, pert breasts and a black fuzz of hair between her legs. He had a good view of that, because she was secured to the four-poster with a net of straps and buckles that held her arms stretched taut above her head and her legs spread wide and hauled back. There was a creaking and sobbing as she struggled.

Trays of polished instruments stood on wheeled trays above the gleaming tile of the floor; the rugs and tapestries were rolled up and safely elsewhere, leaving the half-done murals bare . . . and Hong had drawn those herself. She wasn’t bad, sort of an Alphonse Mucha Art Nouveau style, but with subjects the Czech had never gone for. A bed of glowing coals burned in the fireplace, where other blades and spikes heated to cherry-red. Walker went to a sideboard and poured wine into an elegant shallow local cup, then sipped it. Too sweet, but not bad for all that.

Hong smiled at him sidelong, licked her lips and let the tip of the springy whip trail down from the bound girl’s mouth, slowly drawing it across sweat-slick skin and down to her crotch, tickling with the tuft of feathers. Then her hand moved with blurring speed and thin red welts appeared on the inside of her victim’s thighs.

Dr. Alice Hong gave a long shivering sigh at the squeal of helpless pain.“Just the right reception for visiting princesses, don’t you think?” she said. The whip flicked again, a sharp, expert motion that brought a heaving convulsion. “Oh, does that smart, little princess? Shall I kiss it better?”

Actually they’re the wife and daughter of an important rebel chief,
Walker thought, watching her work and drinking again. An important
dead
chief; the rest of his relations were digging sulfur, hauling stone, and building roads in the new Achaean fiefs of Sicily—the ones who weren’t hanging on crosses beside the roads. He pulled the robe over his head and tossed it aside. Alice would have been quite happy to include the chief himself in this little playlet, she was an equal-opportunity sadist, but he just didn’t find that much of a turn-on.

Hong chuckled as she watched him. “Impatient as always, Will,” she said, reaching out to tickle him strategically with the feathers. “But all right, let’s start with the traditional defloration . . . or would you rather give momma there something to remember . . . ?”