Against the Tide of Years (38 page)

“Command me, Prince of the House of Succession,” he said.

Kashtiliash nodded regally. “Your men will work under the direction of this officer of our allies to force a passage to the river.”

The nobleman did a quick double take. “Under a
woman,
Lord Prince?” he said.

Thunderclouds began to gather on the prince’s hawk-nosed face. “You will obey a purple-arsed Egyptian ape if I command it!” he snapped.

Kathryn cleared her throat. “Prince?” she said. He looked over at her. “With granting leave, will handle this.”

Kenneth Hollard nodded. Kashtiliash caught the gesture, shrugged, and signed assent.

“Settle this quickly,” he said, and to the nobleman: “The war will not wait on your vanity.”

Kathryn tapped the Babylonian nobleman on one shoulder. “You have problem, working under me?” she said mildly.

The Babylonian sneered. “Women work
under
me,” he said, accompanying it with a gesture.

She smiled, shrugged, and kicked him in the crotch. Her brother recognized the technique—
sekka no atari,
to strike without warning.

Well, thank you, Master Musashi, as the commodore would say,
he thought. Aloud, he continued to Kashtiliash, “Doesn’t pay to underestimate an opponent.”

The prince was grinning openly, and the injured noble’s personal retainers—the bronze-armored spearmen who grouped around his chariot—saw it and checked their instinctive rush. The file of Marines behind Kathryn kept their rifles at port arms, ready for instant action.

“Harlot!” the Babylonian nobleman wheezed, straightening.

From the sharp sound of the blow, he’d been wearing some sort of cup protector, probably of boiled leather, but the impact of the Nantucketer’s steel-capped boot must have been painful nonetheless.

Slow learner,
Hollard thought, as the man reached out for the woman with a grasping hand.

She stepped forward and to one side with a gliding lunge, grabbed the wrist with her right hand, and twisted it to lock the arm. Then she turned with a whipping flex of the waist and torso, smashing the Babylonian’s muscular forearm across her left. There was an audible crack of breaking bone, like a green stick snapping, and the man’s face went gray. He gave a small choking grunt of pain and stood motionless—understandably so, for the point of Kathryn’s bowie knife was resting on his upper lip, just under the base of his nose. Hollard jabbed with delicate precision, just enough to raise a bead of blood, then stepped back and bent to clean the blade by stabbing it in the earth before wiping it on the seat of her shorts and sheathing it.

Kat’s feeling good-natured today,
her brother thought.
Just broke his arm.
With a little luck, that would heal. She could have broken his elbow—that strike was usually aimed there.
That
would have crippled him for life.

Kashtiliash’s grin had turned into a laugh; the generals, aides, and courtiers around him took it up. “You have displeased me, Warad-Kubi son of Utul-Istar. You may withdraw to your lands until your wound is healed and the anger of my heart abated. Do not show your face in the city until you receive word.”

He looked down at Kathryn Hollard.

“That is an interesting art of fighting you have,” he said. “I would like to learn it sometime. A wise man never passes up a chance at knowledge.”

To the elder Hollard he went on: “I will array the host. If we can pass the chariots and infantry through on your bridge, we will deploy on the riverbank. I go; send word when all is ready.”

And there goes our prestige if we screw up,
Hollard thought, watching the prince’s chariot trot away in a cloud of dust and a flash of plumes and bronze. That was the problem with being the magical strangers from Beyond the Land. You had to keep delivering.

“Smart cookie,” Kathryn said pensively, hands on her Sam Browne and fingers tapping the buff leather. “Seems a lot more open-minded than most here.”

“I think he’s more concerned with results than process,” Colonel Hollard said. “Of which I heartily approve. Okay, let’s get moving. Scouts!”

That was Captain O’Rourke. “Sir?” he asked, in a voice with a slight trace of a brogue in it; he’d been an Irish student working on-Island when the Event came. About Hollard’s age now, and his broad snub-nosed face was the color of a well-done lobster sprinkled with freckles. It clashed horribly with bright-blue eyes and carroty hair.

“I want the other side of this marsh under observation,” Hollard said.

“Well, that’s what we’re for, Colonel,” O’Rourke said cheerfully.

The recon company spread out and waded into the muck, testing the footing and holding their rifles, priming horns, and cartridge boxes high over their heads. Hollard lifted the handset to his ear.

“Testing. Hollard here. Over.”

“O’Rourke here,” came the reply. A few of the Babylonians made covert gestures or clasped the talismans at their waists at the voice that came from a box.

“Sir, the reed belt’s about six hundred yards broad.” A pause. “I’m on the edge, Colonel. It’s about a quarter mile to the riverbank, stubble fields and fallow, and a big irrigation canal about halfway there.” Another pause. “Definitely movement by the river, on the south bank as well as the north. I can see small parties of what looks like bowmen retreating toward the river—probably we flushed them out. Shall I investigate?”

“That’s negative, Captain. Remain in place and prepare to bug out. What’s the footing like?”

“Bad, sir, but it’s not impassable if you’re careful. Try running and you’ll sink to your waist in no time. Definitely not suitable for vehicles, horses or troops in heavy gear, or in any numbers. You can sort of walk on the roots, but if you trample this muck it turns into glue.”

“Do you think the enemy still has scouts in there?”

“Impossible to tell, if they’re quiet, sir. You can’t see more than three or four feet through these reeds.”

“Good work, Paddy. Let me know if there’s any movement. Over.”

Wonderful things, handheld radios.
Another pre-Event convenience they might as well use while they could; the batteries were already dying one by one.
Hmmmm. Now, I could just shell and mortar anyone who comes close—but that wouldn’t hit their morale the way a stand-up fight would. Let’s see . . .

“You,” he said, indicating one of the departed nobleman’s retainers. “Get us reed mats—several score of them, at least. Now!”

The peasant levies might not have been much at a pitched battle, but they certainly knew how to work—and Babylonian organization was well up to seeing that there were plenty of sickles and mattocks.

Kathryn’s battalion stacked arms, stripped to their skivvies, and set to, marking out the lines for the ditches. The Babylonian peasants waded into the swamp as well, bronze sickles flashing; they tied the reeds in neat foot-thick bundles and carried them back on their heads. More of them went at the ditches-to-be, cutting through the low rise that blocked off the riverside swamp. The loose columns of the Babylonian army were gathering further back in the desert plain, gradually coalescing into clumps and sorting themselves out into lines, with much blowing of bronze horns and waving of standards.

“They’re not going to miss that,” one of Ken’s company commanders said. “They’ll be able to see the reeds falling from the higher ground along the river. And they must have been watching our dust since sunrise.”

“Right,” he replied. “We’ll deploy First Battalion in double line, ready to move up in support. C Company in reserve. Move the field guns and the launchers up—guns loaded with canister and short-fused shrapnel shell. Hmmm. Get me the local who’s running this bunch now that Warad-Kubi’s gone.”

Okay, let’s see. Practical range on the bows is three hundred yards max.
The locals used a horn-and-sinew-reinforced model that had plenty of range. The best ones were expensive, though, hence rare.
On the other hand, that causeway’s going to be fairly narrow.

The Marines spread out along the edge of the dry land. Carts creaked past, carrying dry desert clay to mix with the layer of mud that went over the bundles of reeds, and more mud flew from shovels. Now that the endless desert march was over, he could hear laughing and joking from the working parties, despite their being smeared with the thick, glutinous soil of the swamp.

Kathryn came up, grinning through a mask of mud as dense as that on any of her troops; the salute was a little incongruous coming from someone dressed in a pair of regulation-issue gray cotton panties under an inch-thick overall coat of Diyala ooze. He returned it with a snap anyway; the causeway was a good job of work.

“Going faster than I thought,” she said. “We’ll be through by midafternoon at this rate.”

“Glad to hear it, Kat. Think the causeway will bear the traffic?”

“Once, at least.”

“Good. Make sure your people move their rifles along as it extends.”

“
De nada,
boss,” she said and plunged back into the ordered chaos of the construction. There were about a thousand men and women working on it now. He studied one of the two-wheeled oxcarts that was bringing up soil, looking carefully at the way the wheels sank.

“Captain Chong!”

The artillery officer came up at a trot. “Captain, I want you to get ready to move two of your field guns forward onto the causeway.”

“Yessir.” The face of the artillery officer was calmly intent as he pulled out his binoculars, studied the causeway, then trotted over to walk the ground. “I think it’ll take it, sir,” he said when he came back. “Better to manhandle the pieces and limbers forward separately. I’ll need a couple of platoons to help.” The guns weighed two tons apiece and were usually drawn by six-horse teams.

“By all means.”

“The mortars?”

“Not yet. We can’t observe the fall of shot well enough.”

Hollard forced himself to take a swig of water, although his stomach was suddenly sour.
Christ, the last time I went through this I was a grunt.
The Marines had been out on punitive expeditions since, teaching Olmec priest-kings and restive Sun People chiefs to mind their manners, but that didn’t really count beside pitched battles.

Arnstein’s informants—and King Shuriash’s—said that mysterious envoys from the north had been seen in Asshur. Rumor made them sorcerers . . . envoys from the Hittites?
If they’re from Walker, they could have shown the Assyrians guns.

The radio at his waist beeped, rescuing him from the gnawing anxiety of speculation without facts.

“Hollard here.”

“Sir.” That was O’Rourke. “Enemy advancing from the riverbank; two to three thousand. Light troops, archers and slingers. Over.”

“Keep them under observation as long as you can, Captain. Out.”

All at once the strain fell away; he reined himself in. Light-headed overconfidence was as bad as worrying yourself into paralysis.

Aloud: “Get the locals out! Everyone else, stand to your arms! Set sights for two hundred yards; rapid fire on the word of command.”

Messengers went out, and the naked mud-spattered peasants poured through the Nantucketer ranks, heading back to where their arms-cum-farming-tools were piled. The Islanders who’d been working with them climbed up onto the causeway, scraping off mud and snatching up their rifles, weapons, and webbing harness—that went rather oddly with the nudity and wet dirt, but neatness bought no yams when you were in a hurry. A dense bristle of rifle barrels pointed into the swamp now, and the more usual line of the rest of the battalion two-deep along the edge of the reeds.

“Sir.” O’Rourke again. “Sir, they’re sending men into the swamp, daggers and spears.”

“Pull out to the flanks and keep me informed,” Hollard replied. “Over.”

“Sir. Withdraw to flanks, keep enemy under observation. Over.”

Fairly soon now . . . More locals came by, these carrying bundles of reed mats up to the causeway, behind the massed Islanders. There was a crackle of fire from inside the swamp itself, yells, the
crump
of a grenade. Hollard strained to see what was happening, but nothing
could
be seen, only swaying reeds and a few drifting puffs of powder smoke.

“Sir! The enemy are massing along the edge of the swamp! Numbers around twenty-five hundred. We’ve disengaged and have them under observation.”

“Thank you, Captain.” A hundred and fifty yards away, or a little less . . . Hollard drew the
katana
slung over his shoulder and raised the blade. Platoon commanders turned to face him, their own swords raised, eyes on the curved sliver of bright steel in his hand.

There was a massed snapping hum, like thousands of out-of-tune guitar strings being plucked, then a long whistling rush. Light sparkled on the bronze arrowheads rising in a flock over the tall reeds, winking as they reached the top of their arcs and began to descend.

“Fire!” The sword slashed down.

BAAAAAMMM.
Eight hundred rifles fired in less than a second, the cannon adding their long plumes of off-white smoke and thudding detonations to the mix. They recoiled and were run back with enthusiastic hands while the infantry were busy with breech-lever, cartridge, and priming horn.

The humming swish of the arrows turned to a whistling as they fell. Mostly short; one of the gunners dropped kicking with a shaft through his throat, and here and there a Marine was dragged back wounded. There were shouts of “Corpsman!” and stretcher bearers ran forward, then back with their burdens, heading for the horse-drawn ambulances.

The return fire was a continuous crackling roar, like a mixture of Event Day firecrackers and heavy surf; the massive fist-blows of the cannon were punctuation. Smoke rose in a heavy bank, drifting back slowly with the light breeze; Hollard coughed and waved a hand before his face in futile effort to see better. What he could see was enough. The Marines of the First Expeditionary Regiment could all fire six rounds a minute—more here, since all they needed to aim at was a waist-high point in the general direction the arrow storm was coming from.